Get ready for even more programming from the Garden State.
Oxygen is edging its way in on the bridge-and-tunnel craze created by docusoaps such as MTV’s Jersey Shore and The Style Network’s new reality smash Jerseylicious.
The Real Housewives of New Jersey meet high-fashion on Jersey Couture, premiering Tuesday, June 1 @1 PM ET/PT, the show centers around Diane & Co., an over-the-top dress shop that specializes in leopard prints and bedazzled ball gowns — two things Jersey Girls love. The docusoap follows the lives of the tough as nails and thick as thieves Scali Family who run the establishment.
“With a no nonsense attitude, the Scali family’s extravagant dress store is the premiere glamour stop in New Jersey,”Oxygen describes. “Get ready for the Cinderella experience of a lifetime. Whether it’s for her bride’s maid’s needs or her high school prom frills, when it comes to ‘what to wear’ to that elegant affair, no one gets the job done like the ladies at Diane & Co.”
When Apple finally revealed the iPad to the world back at their January 27th event, it was a long time coming for many an Apple fan. After almost three years with the iPhone around, everyone figured it was time for Apple to unleash a full-sized, proper tablet. However, time and time again the rumor mill was incorrect, as Apple Event after Apple Event came and went with nary a mention of a tablet device. So when the announcement finally came, and when pre-orders finally were being taken, many prepped to grab the iPad on day one. That day came on April 3 with the launch of the Wi-Fi iPad in the United States, which you can now purchase at the Apple Online Store.
The hype has been off the charts, so let’s step back for a minute and examine this thing. The iPad sits somewhere between the iPhone juggernaut and the ridiculously popular MacBook. Many have said that it is simply a “big iPod touch” and nothing more. Apple has called it “magical and revolutionary.” Who’s right?
We bring you the answers in our review, so hit that read link and follow along as we delve into the iPad.
The International Union for the Conservation of Nature released a report early last month that included categorizations of the most threatened species in the world, including well over 600 primate species that are at risk due primarily to human activities; primarily the degredation of their natural environments. While this information is certainly eye-opening and motivates individuals worldwide to try and make changes to help the threatened species; something was seriously lacking in this report.
Kirkland, WA-based Market Leader (NASDAQ: LEDR) announced today that Mike Galgon has joined its board of directors. Galgon is the co-founder of online advertising technology firm aQuantive (along with Nick Hanauer and Scott Lipsky) and the former chief advertising strategist for Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Hanauer is also a board member and investor in Market Leader, which was formerly known as HouseValues, and makes marketing software and tools for the real estate industry. (History lesson: rumor has it that Galgon was about to join Pacific Coast Feather, Hanauer’s family business, when they hatched the plan for Avenue A Media, which became aQuantive.)
For a while now, IBM has been positioning itself as being in favor of really fixing our broken patent system (even as it’s remained at the top of the food chain in terms of companies filing for patents). However, we’ve always been a bit skeptical of IBM’s claims about this — as they quite often seemed to be more of a PR positioning move, rather than any real commitment to fixing the patent system. Almost exactly five years ago, the company made a big stink about freeing up approximately 500 patents for use in open source offerings. At the time, even that seemed like more of a PR stunt than anything else, but still, you’d at least think they’d live up to their word.
Not so apparently.
Slashdot points us to the news that IBM has threatened an open source project with some patents — including two that were in that list of 500 (along with over 100 others). In the past, when IBM’s nastier patent activities have gained attention in the tech-blog world, it’s been known to back down, so it wouldn’t surprise me to see that happen again here. But the fact that it made this threat in the first place, yet again, calls into question IBM’s real commitment towards moving away from supporting patents as a bullying tool.
The body of a 60-year-old man who had been arrested on a domestic violence charge was found hanging from a telephone cord inside his jail cell at the Burbank Police Department, authorities said Tuesday.
John Flores was taken into custody Saturday at 1:20 a.m. after allegedly assaulting his wife. He was also charged with assaulting an officer and resisting arrest, Burbank Police Sgt. Robert Quesada said in a statement.
Flores was placed in a cell about two hours later.
The following day about 4:50 p.m., a police jailer noticed Flores hanging from a cord. He was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics.
The Burbank Police Department is investigating the incident. No other information was given.
You think you’ve gone out of your way to earn a Foursquare badge? Not as far as Parker Liautaud, who hopes to be the first to check in at the North Pole using the mobile social network later this month, which will earn him the specially-created Last Degree badge (pictured below). Oh, and he’s 15 years old, which will also make him one of the youngest explorers ever to ski to the North Pole. Parker, who was born in California but goes to school at the prestigious Eton College in England, is trying to raise awareness about and funds for environmental issues facing the Arctic. His expedition is being sponsored by General Electric.
Although Parker’s willpower and determination is not in question (he is also accompanied by experienced Arctic explorer Doug Stoup), mounting such a resource-intensive expedition is probably helped by the fact that his father is Bernard Liautaud, who co-founded Business Objects and later sold the company to SAP in 2007 for almost $7 billion. Parker has a Facebook page set up for his quest, where he has been posting videos, and fans can also sign a petition that the young adventurer hopes to present to world leaders or they can record and upload a video expressing their thoughts about the environment. Parker also has a YouTube channel and is on Twitter.
Embedded below is a video of Parker talking about the expedition and the various kinds of cold-weather gear and equipment he has to pack into his sled.
Lindsay Lohan’s father is going to be walking down the aisle with a woman almost a quarter century his junior and only a few years older than the famous daughter he’s desperately trying to “save:” the former flame of his ex-best friend reality dad Jon Gosselin.
Michael Lohan, 50, and ousted Star Magazine reporter Kate Major, 27, have announced their engagement and the couple is estatic about the marriage plans.
“I’ve never met anyone who’s been there for me like Kate. She’s always been there for me. The one thing about Kate is that she doesn’t come with baggage,” Michael exclaimed.
“Michael went down with me to Florida for Easter, to meet my father to ask for his permission, and my father gave his blessing,” says Major, the plain blonde who made headlines in 2009 after she fell in love with the then-married Gosselin while covering him for a story.
That’s all behind her now — Kate says’s she’s committed to building a life with the ex-con and father of four.
“I’m very happy. Michael and I have known each other for four years, and it’s meant to be…”
That’s nice, Toots, but you may still want to watch your back…or at least invest in a trusty bottle of Mace: Michael’s last fiancee, another Long Island twentysomething named Erin Mueller, accused Michael of vicious verbal abuse and alleged that he once kicked her in the vagina.
What happens when you take what seems to be the same supposed iPhone 4G LCD/bezel we saw a few weeks ago, add a pinch of Coldplay, and toss in a camera that just can’t seem to focus? This video.
We’re going to continue taking these videos with the grainiest grain of salt in all of Grainsville until someone can come up with a reasonable explanation as to why a bunch of random iPhone repair shops are getting pre-release parts. In the mean time, feel free to get all antsy in the pantsies about what certainly seems to be a hole for a camera (as opposed to a tinted window for a proximity sensor) right there on the bezel.
Sage Bionetworks, it can now be said unequivocally, is on fire. The Seattle-based nonprofit that aims to spark an open-source movement for biology, has secured one of three $5 million grants that were announced this afternoon by the state’s Life Sciences Discovery Fund.
The state’s biotech fund, which suffered a deep round of budget cuts a year ago, picked just three proposals as winners in the most recent round of grants. Besides the Sage Bionetworks effort spearheaded by former Merck executive Stephen Friend, another $5 million grant went to a team of ultrasound researchers at the University of Washington led by Tom Matula. And a third program, led by Peggy Porter at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, was awarded a $5 million grant to set up a multi-institutional system for collecting and sharing biological specimens for cancer research, diagnosis, and treatment.
“These world‐class teams will create critical information, material, and technological resources that are expected to provide competitive advantages to Washington’s researchers and companies and, ultimately, accelerate the development of new diagnostics and therapeutics for serious health conditions,” said Lee Huntsman, the executive director of the Life Sciences Discovery Fund, in a statement.
Friend’s vision is to convince biologists from around the world to dump their experimental data into a public commons, instead of holding it close to the vest until they publish their Eureka moments in a high-impact scientific journal. By sharing data openly, Sage hopes to stitch together “network biology” models that seek to connect the dots between variations in DNA, RNA, and proteins, and understand how that is correlated with clinical symptoms of disease that physicians see. If Sage can help create these network models, the thinking goes, it ought to help drugmakers do a better job of predicting which drugs will succeed in clinical trials, and help physicians prescribe the right drug to the right patient.
Here’s a brief look at the other two programs receiving support from the state:
—Matula’s team will seek to establish a Washington Molecular Imaging and Therapy Center, which will seize on UW’s existing expertise in ultrasound, recruit new faculty, and support novel research projects, the Discovery Fund said. “Partnerships with clinicians, industry, and venture capitalists are anticipated to accelerate clinical translation and commercialization,” the Discovery Fund said in a statement.
—Porter’s team will set up a consortium among research centers to collect and share biological specimens that are necessary to develop new diagnostics and drugs. The consortium will have an informatics system to analyze data coming from the specimens, and the researchers will set up a standard method for material transfer and intellectual property management, the Discovery Fund said. The consortium includes the Hutch, UW, and Seattle Children’s Hospital and Research Institute. The idea “represents a collaboration between patients and researchers that provides an opportunity for cancer patients, their families, and friends to contribute to basic science and exciting discoveries that may one day lead to cures,” the Discovery Fund said.
The grants were picked from a group of 19 proposals that were vetted earlier by a panel of experts from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Discovery Fund said. They were rated on scientific merit, and potential to improve health care and economic benefit in Washington state.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: Unscrupulous industry engages in amoral business practices, uses its political influence to block meaningful reform and neutralize its regulators, catastrophe ensues. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The health care industry avoided accountability for exorbitant rate hikes, overmarketed and undertested products, and rescission of insurance coverage for trivial reasons. They killed the public option, and the reform bill that was supposed to rein them in turned into a bailout instead.
The financial industry looks like it’s going to avoid accountability for crashing the economy with dodgy financial instruments while regulators looked the other way; instead of fines and jail time, they got a $700 billion bailout. It appears unlikely that they’re going to be subjected to any meaningful reform either.
And now 25 Massey Energy miners are dead because OSHA couldn’t do anything more than levy fines for the thousands of safety violations at Upper Big Branch, and Don Blankenship decided he would rather pay than address worker safety.
These are just the most recent and high-profile examples of a business community implacably and successfully opposed to regulation and oversight in general. As dday puts it in his post on OSHA’s enfeeblement:
The Reagan revolution ushered out real enforcement of industry and ushered in industry capture or resource starvation. This has continued largely unchecked until today.
In any kind of sane and rational world, no industry would be allowed to write its own regulations or choose its own regulators, or to pressure the government into starving oversight agencies… but that is exactly what has happened, over and over and over again. And our elected officials allow this not because it’s good for the country, or good for their constituents. They allow it because corporations can deliver more money to their campaign, or to their spouse, or to their life after government than we can.
To put it another way: The Chamber of Commerce and all the industry lobbyists don’t win because they’re smarter than we are, or better organized than we are, or better messagers than we are. They win because they have more money to promise to their friends, and to the enemies of their enemies. Campaign finance is the means by which the system is gamed, and until we find a way to fix this institutionalized corruption, we will continue to see an endless parade of pro-corporate Democrats pushing pro-corporate sham bills that reform nothing.
The iPad doesn’t have a built-in camera, but you can give it something better. By putting an app onto each an iPad and an iPhone, you can connect the two via bluetooth and have a wireless camera for your iPad. More »
NASA’s Goddard Space Center has released a fascinating time lapse video of Earth’s North Pole turning into a popsicle from orbit. So much for global warming: More »
Our screens are filled with signals that the economy is recovering, and yet one area where there’s no discernable improvement is housing. At best the bleeding has stopped. At worst there’s plenty of room to fall.
This should stand in sharp contravention with news that the consumer is coming back, especially given the conventional wisdom that the home is (or was, anyway) the ultimate ATM, and that it was the so-called housing wealth effect that fueled years and years of American spending.
What gives?
Paul Jackson at HousingWire reckons that what we’re seeing is the twisted result of Obama’s mortgage schemes. Basically, scads of troubled Americans are living in their homes, waiting for some type of modification, not paying their mortgages, and thus freeing up an unusual amount to spend on stuff.
Jackson’s logic:
There are 7.4 million non-current loans in this country (a ton of folks living in a home but not paying at the moment for said home).
Most Americans behind on their mortgages have now gone a year without paying a single bill.
As we know, Americans are discontinuing their mortgage payments before other payments.
And he writes:
Consider the following individual as a case study — an actual ‘HAMPlicant’ at one of the nation’s larger servicing shops, as highlighted in a guest post at the Calculated Risk blog. They had an $1,880 monthly payment on their mortgage they’d defaulted on, yet their bank statements for the past 30 days included the following expenses:
visits to the tanning salon
visits to the nail spa
some kind of gourmet produce market
various liquor stores
A DirecTV bill that involved some serious premium programming or pay-per-view events
Over $1,700 in retail purchases, including: Best Buy, Baby Gap, Brookstone, Old Navy, Bed, Bath & Beyond, Home Depot, Macy’s, Pac Sun, Urban Behavior, Sears, Staples, and Footlocker
His conclusion: If half the 7.4 million homeowners are skipping a $1,000 monthly mortgage payment, that provides a potential $3.7 billion boost to consumer spending.
If Jackson’s reasoning is correct, it suggests that critics of Obama’s mortgage schemes are attacking them from a completely wrong angle.
It’s not about, as the Santellis of the world might suggest, that it’s some grave evil to be helping your neighbor who may or may not have gotten in over their head. It’s more basic: the scheme is creating serious economic distortions, and are bound to unravel in ways that the market isn’t properly anticipating.
For all the flaws of “crass Keynesianism” (see today’s wankfest between The White House and Edmunds.com over cash-for-clunkers) characterized by charges of pulling demand forward is just as silly. The real economic violence comes from messing with economic signals, which appears to be what’s going on here.
Jackson’s point also jibes with what we heard when we talked to a Phoenix mortgage pro, who noted the violence to his market that mods were creating.
Until these really filter through the system, these, mortgage mods not only make the housing market suspect, but obviously other areas of the economy as well.
A spin-off of Finnish software development company Nodeta, Flowdock aspires to help developers and others sift out actionable bits of knowledge from ongoing conversations and make them retrievable. Their team messenger services allows separation and tagging of conversational elements.
“In Flowdock, the epiphany comes when you tag a chat message for the first time,” Nodeta and Flowdock’s CTO Otta Hilska wrote us. “You realize how you just took a piece of conversation and turned it into a nugget of knowledge. Somebody talked about a bug, and you turned it into a bug report. Or pasted a snippet of code, and you categorized and organized it. The real validation for the concept comes when you are looking for some other snippet of code, a link to a partner, an eBook or something else and come to think ‘I wonder if it’s tagged in Flowdock”. Sure enough it will be.’”
Sponsor
Designed for groups, Flowdock attempts to address a new kind of information overload, the one that intensified when social media tools began to be adopted by exponentially more people. The theory is that by tagging bits of the conversation, they are made discreet and retrievable based on folksonomy.
Jaguar XJ220 dies a slow death – Click above for image gallery
Ever wonder what happens to all those supercars that go to the Persian Gulf? After seeing this images, we kinda wished we hadn’t.
This Jaguar XJ220 – a veritable poster child for the dawn of the modern supercar era, the one-time standard bearer of the 200 MPH Club and one of only 281 produced – made its way from Coventry to Lebanon, then through a Dubai dealership before finally ending up in Qatar.
With only 900 kilometers (560 miles) on the odometer, this big cat has clearly been subjected to more abuse than any supercar lover (or animal rights activist) could possibly stand to see. The neglect, from the pictures at least, doesn’t look much worse than a good washing could recover, so here’s hoping.
Nearly 2 million robins ruled the roost in the 2010 Great Backyard Bird Count, outnumbering all other species in the 13th annual tally of North American birds reported by 63,000 volunteer bird watchers.
The large number of American robins was mainly because of a massive roost in St. Petersburg, Fla., where birders reported 1.4 million during the four-day event in February.
"They sometimes gather in a large roost like that before they start migrating," Pat Leonard of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology said Tuesday. "There’s a big mangrove swamp in St. Petersburg that they like."
The count also showed a dramatic increase in tree swallows and a decrease in winter finches such as redpolls, pine siskins and evening grosbeaks, which were unusually abundant in northern states in the previous two winters.
The count, sponsored by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, National Audubon Society and Bird Studies Canada, helps document changes in the number and distribution of birds over time. Changes may reflect variations in food supply, reproduction, habitat loss and other factors.
"We don’t want to overstate what the data show," Leonard said. "You can’t draw conclusions from one count. The value is in looking at such a large area, an entire continent, and collecting long-term data."
The 13-year-old Backyard Bird Count is relatively new compared with Audubon’s 110-year-old Christmas Bird Count and is more loosely structured, with volunteers recording birds they see in their yards over a four-day span. The Christmas count, from Dec. 14-Jan. 5 each year, takes a census under strict methodology in designated areas.
Both can help scientists spot trends that may warrant a closer look.
The introduction of the Eurasian collared dove from the Caribbean to Florida and its subsequent expansion across North America is illustrated in bird count data. In 1999, about 1,000 doves were reported in nine states. This year, more than 14,000 doves were found in 39 states.
Winter finch numbers can vary dramatically from year to year because of changes in food supply or reproductive success in the far northern part of their range. Annual fluctuations in the number of northern gulls along the Pacific Coast are less understood. The numbers were down markedly this winter in California, Oregon and Washington state.
In addition to robins, the most numerous birds were Canada geese, snow geese, American crows and European starlings.
The Great Backyard Bird Count data "become more and more valuable with each passing year," said Dick Cannings of Bird Studies Canada. "Over time we’ll be better able to see significant changes that may occur in the numbers and distributions of birds which may be tied to climate change, habitat loss, disease or other factors."
A spin-off of Finnish software development company 
