Blog

It might’ve been hard to watch pictures of the latest natural disaster striking the island of Haiti recently, but lending a hand in the relief effort shouldn’t be. If you’ve got an older cellphone — functioning or otherwise — batteries, chargers, or other accessories, ReCellular wants to hear from you. The cellphone recycling company has launched a Phones for Haiti program, whereby you can donate your unwanted handsets and rest assured that 100 percent of the revenue raised from them will go to helping Haiti survivors rebuild. Partnering with the American Red Cross, ReCellular will even pay for the shipping of your castoff electronics, so really, how much easier do you want it?

ReCellular will recycle your phone and donate all proceeds to Haiti disaster relief originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Jan 2010 05:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Inhabitat  |  ReCellular  | Email this | Comments

Buy This Item: [Click here to buy this item]

Article

All you McLaren fans out there, it’s time for yet another teaser related to your favorite team’s official car for the 2010 Formula One season. While the team announced that the first time the media and fans will get to see the MP4-25 in all of its glory will be on January 29th, the twitter page of the Woking organization recently fed us with a latest picture of the car’s mirrors for 2010.

All we got, however, was a single picture, explained by the team to be a prototype mirror for the MP4-25…. (read more)

Johnny Depp is still raising his eyebrows at earning People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” title – admitting he initially thought the honor was a “joke.”

The Pirates of the Caribbean star, now 46, was christened the world’s most attractive man in the lifestyle mag’s annual poll of entertainment’s most handsome stars. Depp previously scooped the award in 2003, but insists he doesn’t belong on the list, next to other double winners like Brad Pitt, George Clooney, and Richard Gere.

“That should be someone else, that confuses me beyond recognition. I don’t know how to react,” Depp told The Associated Press Monday. “I really thought it was a joke.”

SANTA CLARITA, Calif. – (Business Wire) BioSolar, Inc. (OTCBB: BSRC), developer of a breakthrough technology to produce bio-based materials from renewable plant sources that reduce the cost of photovoltaic solar modules, was …

Bronx foreclosures in the multifamily sector have been driven largely by speculative deals and impractical gentrification projects, according to New York City housing advocates and analysts.

According to a survey done by the Right to the City Coalition, more than 600 condo buildings in South Bronx, Harlem, West Village, Bushwick and Lower East Side were largely vacant or incomplete because speculative investors thought that there are a lot of buyers who can afford to buy high-priced units in the properties they acquired at overinflated prices.

In most of the areas where $36,538 is the median family income and where a large number of households are below the poverty level, condo units were being sold for more than $500,000 to $1.5 million. For over a year now, these properties have remained vacant and have been deteriorating as fast as repo homes in these neighborhoods.

One sad example of property speculation gone bad in New York City was the forced acquisition and conversion of a former factory that was turned into a 42-unit subsidized housing. Despite seeing that the building was already occupied legally by artists, a private equity investor still targeted it, purchased it and filed a court action to evict the artists. Those that resisted were threatened with individual lawsuits.

The building was later resold to a developer who paid almost $20 million, with a $9.8-million loan from American International Group. In 2008, the apartment units were offered for sale at $1,100 per square foot, but there were no takers. Now, the building is abandoned and as dilapidated as the other Bronx foreclosures in the area.

According to William Apgar, adviser to HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan, about 100,000 occupied apartment units in New York City are headed toward foreclosure. Owners have not been able to pay their mortgages and do needed repairs because of low rents, high vacancy rates, expiration of rent subsidies and stricter property lending.

Apgar said that foreclosure rates in the multifamily sector could increase as foreclosures in the single-family sector slow down. Families living in distressed properties could experience worse property conditions and could be forced out of units as lenders pursue repossession proceedings.

Benjamin Dulchin, director of the Association for Neighborhood and Housing Development, also added that about 10 major speculative deals involving over 21,000 apartment units in the Bronx, Harlem, Washington Heights and other areas are in danger of foreclosure in 2010.

The long-delayed acquisition of Sun by Oracle may be finally going through after several setbacks and a mounting opposition campaign lead by MySQL’s creator. All Things D now says that sources from both companies are claiming that EU regulators are very close to putting their seal of approval on the deal, even as early as tomorrow, clearing the last ma… (read more)

If the real world is just too dull for you, you need what is known in the business as “augmented reality” glasses. These glasses – usually seen in a military context or on shows like “24″ – allow you to view the real world as well as computer generated imagery at the same time.

Vuzix, which makes high end augmented reality glasses for the defense industry now offers the Wrap 920AR for consumers. The glasses feature a 67-inch display as seen from 10-feet and a stereo camera pair that “looks” into the world, bringing mixed and augmented reality content to life.

With the Wrap 920AR, users can view the real-world environment and computer-generated imagery seamlessly mixed together, allowing video game characters to jump out of the TV and come to life in your living room. Magazines and books could have animated links that bring you back to the web in real time. Pretty cool, huh?

The stereo camera pair, each capturing 752 x 480 images at 60 fps, delivers a single 1504 x 480 side-by-side image that can be viewed in 3D stereoscopic video on the Wrap eyewear displays.

Sure, you’ll look a bit dorky wearing these glasses, but something tells me that hardcore gamers are not going to care.

The Vuzix Wrap 920AR is expected to hit stores in the second quarter of this year and will retail at around $800.

Related posts:

1. Hidden Pen Camera Lets You Play James Bond
2. The Only New Years Eve Glasses Worth Wearing
3. Citroen GT Supercar Leaps from Video Game Into Reality

Luke Timmerman wrote:

The new CEO of Quanterix isn’t afraid to dream big, and say it out loud.

“We participate in an $8 billion market,” says CEO Dave Okrongly, referring to the business of antibody-based diagnostics. “Quanterix can be a platform for that whole $8 billion market.”

Okrongly was named CEO of the Cambridge, MA-based company in September, and now that he’s been settling in for a while, I got a fresh update just yesterday. The company is the latest brainchild of Tufts University chemistry professor David Walt, who previously hit gold with Illumina (NASDAQ: ILMN), the San Diego-based genetic analysis powerhouse. Quanterix hasn’t said much publicly since it raised $15 million in venture capital back in August 2008, so I’ve been curious for some time about the company’s game plan for approaching the first segments of that $8 billion antibody-based diagnostics market.

Before diving into that, I first wanted to know a little about Okrongly. It turns out he’s got a doctorate in chemistry, and a resume with a lot of commercial experience, most recently as the senior vice president of the molecular diagnostics unit at Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics. Earlier in his career, he caught the startup bug at Applied Immune Sciences, an early gene therapy company that was acquired in 1995 by what’s now Sanofi-Aventis.

So while Okrongly, 51, rose in the ranks at big companies, and introduced a number of clinical diagnostic tests around the world, he felt the urge to come back to a startup to create something new. When he first heard about Quanterix, he didn’t think it was for him. “It seemed early and raw,” he says.

Then he met personally with Walt, who changed his mind. “I thought, holy cow, this could change the whole way we do immunodiagnostics. I gotta give this a run. This is a transformative technology with top-notch people around it.”

Dave Okrongly

Walt is equally enthused about the new leader at Quanterix. “Dave has exactly the right blend of diagnostics experience and strong technical background. He has helped push the company’s market strategy forward while helping it achieve its technical milestones,” Walt says.

The initial idea at Quanterix is to find a way to detect trace quantities of proteins in the blood, which could be an early warning sign for cancer or a neurodegenerative disease like Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s. Quanterix says its test is about 1,000 times more sensitive than the gold standard ELISA assays. The older tests employ specific antibodies that are made to bind with certain biomarkers, known as antigens.

Some of these older tests can be quite cheap and reliable, but they also have their limits. One of the emerging ideas in biology is that tumors and other diseased tissues spill off specific proteins in the bloodstream, but these proteins generally come in trace amounts too small to be detected by the standard ELISA tests. The Quanterix system is designed to detect thousands of single molecules simultaneously, with proprietary chemistry and what the company calls “a relatively simple” instrument with a light source, optics, a digital camera, and an automated handling system. Software is then used to analyze the images.

Quanterix is betting that its ultra-sensitive tests can fill some of the gaps that ELISA tests struggle with. One well-known example is the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening test …Next Page »

Comments | Reprints | Share:  

 
 
 

Cardinal tennis is back.

After a three-year rare downturn for the Stanford men’s tennis program, the Cardinal announced its return to dominance at the Sherwood Cup, as sophomore Bradley Klahn captured the singles title and Klahn and sophomore Ryan Thacher reached the semifinals in doubles.

Stanford Daily File Photo

“I think the team as a whole we had a pretty good showing,” Klahn said. “Singles, guys were plying pretty well and had some good wins. Doubles was decent; I think we got a lot of room for improvement, but we’re heading in the right direction.”

Klahn defeated Baylor’s Denes Lukacs 6-3, 6-4 on Sunday afternoon to claim his second singles title of the year. Klahn took home hardware at the ITA Northwest Regional Championships previously in the year.

“I felt pretty good the entire week,” Klahn said. “I got better with each match and was playing my best tennis by the middle of the semis and finals. I improved my serve and backhand. That was one of things I was working on the most over the summer and fall and it’s starting to show.”

The championship victory was especially gratifying for junior Alex Clayton, who lost to Lukacs 0-6, 6-2, 6-2 in the semifinals. Clayton reached the semis after the No. 1 seed in the tournament, USC’s Steve Johnson, could not play due to back spasms.

There were more Stanford ties in the tournament. Nine Cardinal players entered the singles tournament and five – Klahn, Clayton, Thacher, freshman Matt Kandath and senior Richard Wire – survived the first round. In the second round, Wire and Kandath both fell in straight sets to USC’s top two players – Johnson and Robert Farah.

“I feel in much better shape now than I did before the tournament,” Wire said. “I think everyone used it as a good warm-up.”

In the quarterfinals, Klahn and Thacher, Stanford’s No. 1 ranked doubles team, squared off against each other. Thacher kept it close in the first set, losing in a tiebreaker, but could not keep up with Klahn in the second set, losing 6-2.

On the doubles side, the Cardinal, which has been mixing up the lineup and pairings, had a solid, if unspectacular, showing. Klahn and Thacher had a bye into the quarterfinals. Clayton and Wire, Stanford’s No. 2 ranked team, advanced out of the first round, while the duos of freshman Walker Kehrer and junior Ted Kelly and Kandath and freshman Denis Lin had early exits.

In the quarterfinals, Klahn and Thacher made quick work of their UC-Irvine opponents, defeating them 8-3. Clayton and Wire lost 8-3 to a USC team featuring the same Johnson who could play Clayton a day earlier.

In the semifinals, an unranked USC squad upset Klahn and Thacher, 8-3.

In order for Stanford to win its 19th NCAA championship, the doubles must improve.

As the Sherwood Cup showed, the Cardinal’s singles lineup can play with anyone in the nation, so “the doubles point could be the difference” in advancing to the next round, according to Wire.

Stanford opens its regular season against Sacramento State this Saturday. While picked to win the Big Sky Conference, the Hornets should not pose too much of a threat to the Cardinal, if Stanford plays at the same level it did at the Sherwood Cup.

The match is scheduled to start at 1 p.m. at the Taube Tennis Center.

A bevy of Hollywood stars are donating the outfits they wore to last weekend’s 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards to Haiti Earthquake Relief.

Gerard Butler, Meryl Streep, Josh Brolin, Amy Poehler and House’s Olivia Wilde are among those donating their duds. The outfits will be auctioned off by Artists for Peace and Justice to help the people of Haiti after the devastating earthquake.

The auction will start next week on eBay.com.

That lumpy Android MOTOROI phone from Motorola that was only supposed to launch in Korea WILL actually be released worldwide, according to executives. And very soon too, we hear, with March being the proposed month. [Korea Herald – Thanks Cliff_Dangers!]

The Chargers have won 11 straight – no one wants to play them. The Colts haven’t played a real game in months – they’re rusty. The Cowboys are on fire – they can beat anyone. The Saints lost all their energy by losing their last three games – they can’t handle a high-powered offense.

Whoops. Shows you what momentum does for you.

Momentum is like a basketball team’s record on Fridays or head-to-head results from 50 years ago – it gives the media something to talk about for the days leading up to a game. And who can blame them? Writers and broadcasters have to talk about one matchup for days, so they have to keep coming up with new angles to discuss. There’s only so much you can say about schemes and players and statistics.

Of course, momentum does mean something. Anyone who has ever played a sport can tell you that it’s easier to play well when you’ve been playing well already.

Professional athletes should be able to bounce back and neutralize momentum though, and the NFL is probably the least conducive league to maintaining momentum. Football is played once per week, so there’s a long time for momentum to wear off. Also, football is such a physical game that players mainly react by instinct rather than feeling the pressure of the moment or trying to maintain positive momentum.

The proof of this could be seen this past weekend. The two hottest teams coming in, San Diego and Dallas, were by far the biggest disappointments. The Chargers were expected to steamroll the happy-to-be-there Jets, but the home team looked like the nervous underdogs, making numerous errors in crucial situations and allowing the unspectacularly consistent Rex Ryans to come out on top.

The Cowboys were the trendy upset pick of the weekend. In fact, so many people projected a road victory for “America’s team” that the betting line was nearly even. Instead, Dallas ran into a far superior team in Minnesota, and the Vikings dominated their overhyped counterparts, racking up more sacks (six) than the Cowboys had points (three).

The other two games also defied the expected rust vs. momentum battles. The Ravens and Cardinals both impressed a lot of experts with offensive explosions against good defenses in the first round. Although both were expected to lose in the wild card round, Baltimore and Arizona combined for 84 points to defeat New England and Green Bay, respectively.

These two teams rode their apparent momentum into matchups with two “rusty” number one seeds in Indianapolis and New Orleans. Both home teams had fallen off after undefeated starts, and both teams had question marks on defense, so many people expected the Ravens and Cardinals to have success on the offensive end. Instead, the Colts and Saints shut down their opponents, holding them to 17 points combined while forcing six turnovers.

Thus, in two short days, the whole concept of momentum was completely turned upside down. What does that tell us? Well, maybe there’s a reason these teams had the records they did. Maybe there’s a reason the Colts and Saints won their first 27 games combined. Maybe there’s a reason the Cowboys had the largest ups and downs of any team in the league, while the Vikings were consistently among the top teams in the NFC. It all comes back to execution – you can have all the momentum you want, but the team that plays better at the right time will win.

It sounds simple, but the stats don’t lie. So far in these playoffs, the team with more total yards is 8-0. The team that forces more turnovers is 8-0. That’s about as sure-fire of a formula as you’ll ever see.

Predictions and analysis are great, and I memorize the facts experts say on television as much as anyone. But things often don’t go the way people expect (in case you didn’t notice, the Jets are in the AFC Championship Game.)

As Chris Berman so appropriately says, “that’s why they play the games.”

No, it won’t be Giancarlo Fisichella the driver to join Kamui Kobayashi in the 2010 starting lineup of Sauber F1 Team, but another Formula One veteran, namely Pedro de la Rosa. Although recent reports have suggested that the Spaniard is set to test McLaren’s MP4-25 car during the first day of the Valencia test (on February 1st), Sauber today confirmed the Spaniard will drive for his team through the 2010 campaign.

Pedro has spent many years working for a top team at the highest technical leve… (read more)

One of the the highest-grossing films in motion picture history is about to get the porn treatment. James Cameron’s sci-fi epic, Avatar, will become a “blue movie” for real when the feature made into an X-rated parody by Hustler Studios later this year.

The adult film purveyors are planning a porn parody of box office blockbuster that will debut sometime in the coming months, Hustler said in a statement Monday. The news came a day after Avatar won a gong for Best Motion Picture at the 2010 Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles. This Ain’t Avatar XXX is among the DVD releases planned by the company this year, following the success of porn parodies of classic features like Star Trek, The Jeffersons, Beverly Hills 90210, and Saved By The Bell.

Having topped $1.6 billion in worldwide grosses, Avatar is within hailing distance of Titanic’s record of $1.84 billion, long considered unassailable.

The Chrysler 300C vehicle donated by Olivier Francois, Chrysler brand CEO, was signed by more than 300 A-list celebrities at the Golden Globe awards on January 17, 2010. The car, a special "eco style" edition, will be auctioned to raise funds to benefit the American Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

The car was one of the seven vehicles Chrysler provided for the event in charity purposes. The other six were Chrysler 300 vehicles, used for transporting Nominee Meryl Streep, presente… (read more)