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The agriculture-focused Capital Press carried a rather unsurprising story yesterday: Sugar farmers are pleased that beverage makers are replacing high fructose corn syrup with ordinary sucrose (cane and beet sugar). One example: The San Francisco school district announced that its chocolate milk will switch sweeteners beginning next month. As with most of these moves, this one is based on hearsay and pseudoscience. And for a great example of who’s spreading the sweet nothings, look no further than Sugar Association CEO Andrew Briscoe.

Briscoe told the Capital Press that sucrose is “the only sweetener that’s all natural,” has “only 15 calories per teaspoon,” and “it’s a sweetener you can pronounce.” Sound like a bunch of hooey? That’s because it is. First, the Food and Drug Administration has approved of the use of the term “natural” to describe high fructose corn syrup. Second, high fructose corn syrup has 15 calories per teaspoon, just like sucrose.

And third, you can pronounce high fructose corn syrup – and so can lots of news anchors, apparently. But whether something is two syllables long or six doesn’t mean anything.

This is really nothing more than another overly simplistic Michael Pollan “food rule.” Heard of calcium lactate? It’s found in aged cheeses and some baking powders. And it’s part of an FDA list of hundreds of sometimes hard-to-pronounce ingredients that the agency classifies as “Generally Recognized as Safe”—a classification that it also applies to high fructose corn syrup. Looks like a strikeout for Briscoe.

Even Marion Nestle, no friend of food companies, remarks that these sugar swaps don’t have much substance: “[I]t’s really just sugar and the switch to sucrose is about marketing, not health.” While it may only happen once in a blue moon, we think Marion the Contrarian is right on target. As for the boss of Big Sugar, we have to hope any marketing strategy that’s this short on substance will eventually dissolve.

Michael Tillman was freed today in Chicago after 23 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. He is yet another victim of the reign of terror of former Chicago Detective Jon Burge, who orchestrated the torture of as many as 200 suspects while overseeing detectives on Chicago’s South Side in the 1990s.

Tillman has said for two decades that he was tortured into admitting to a crime he didn’t commit. Even when another man was arrested and convicted for the murder, however, Tillman’s confession stood up in court and he remained imprisoned. He says Chicago detectives waterboarded him with 7-Up, punched him in the face and stomach until he vomited blood and put a plastic bag over his head, and that he gave them a false story to make them stop.

Thanks to Burge and other corrupt detectives, Tillman suffered an unimaginable injustice and the family of the victim in this case has endured years of repeatedly seeing their relative’s murder reinvestigated. Nobody wins.

(more…)

We heard about AT&T’s Voicemail-to-Text service back in December, but now it’s being shoved down our throats again with email reminders aplenty. Why don’t we care about the $10/month service? Because we can get something better. For free.

Google Voice and it’s transcribing powers were our first thought, but it’s not the only alternative. Ribbit Mobile offers some decent transcriptions and has a pretty solid iPhone app available and as does YouMail.

Lifehacker actually made it a point to pit some of these transcription services against each other a long time ago, but I’m certain that both quality and prices have changed since then. Either way, these services remain free—or at least cheaper than AT&T’s service—and have been around long enough to work out some kinks. So check them out and spend the ten bucks you’ll save each month on ice cream or something.

O lançamento da SpaceFox 2011 deverá ser no meio do ano, já que a produção de Pacheco na Argentina, onde é feita, está sendo priorizada para a Amarok. 

Fonte: Auto Esporte.

-Remember the broad that went batshit after someone effed-up her cheeseburger at Mickey D’s? Well, the cops found her. Alesha McMullen was unhappy with her meal and wanted everyone to know about it. The 19-year-old trashed a Kansas City McDonald’s to the tune of $3,000 last month, and it was all caught on tape. She tells officers she was angry because she was having “a bad day….”

–RhymesWithSnitch.com has allegedly gotten its hands on Gary Coleman’s nude scene from the upcoming bomb Midgets & Mascots. I refuse to believe that thing belongs to Gary. (Not Safe For Work, Life, or While Eating!)

-DJ AM Wrongful Death Lawsuit Settled….

-Fantasia’s VH1 trainwreck is a hit!

–The Real Housewives of New Jersey’s Teresa Giudice’s husband was charged Thursday with driving under the influence after crashing his car into a telephone pole in New Jersey….

-Jimmy Choo for Uggs!

–Miley Cyrus, Justin Bieber, and Ricky Martin will be among the presenters at the 2010 Grammys later this month…..

-Bossip thinks R&B heartthrob Trey Songz is a part of The Rainbow Tribe…..

-Alec Baldwin prefers to date women his own age – because he has nothing in common with younger ladies…..

–Project Runway Season 7 premieres Thursday night on Lifetime…..

-Teddy Pendergrass Funeral Information…..

-Speaking of the legendary singer, Complex has a list of the Greatest Hip-Hop Samples inspired by Teddy P….

-Like free beer? The Washington State Blood Bank may have a proposition for you….

-Donald Goerke, the Campbell Soup executive who created Spaghetti O’s and Chunky Soup, died Sunday. He was 83.

–Kelis tells PETA to kiss her grits…..

-Woman Arrested For Cursing Out Daughter’s Principal…..

-Carrying more than three condoms in Washington, will get you thrown in the pokey. Maybe someone should tell the cops that DC has the highest HIV/AIDS infection rate in America — Washingtonians need all the condoms they can get….

-Cristiano Ronaldo for Armani!

-Wanna get rid of acne? There’s an app for that. A Houston dermatologist has created an iPhone app that treats acne…..

-First grader accused of sexual harassment!?

Please take a moment to help those affected by the devastating earthquake in Haiti. It just takes a moment to donate to the Red Cross via text message — just text “Haiti” to 90999. You can also donate to Wyclef Jean’s Yele! Haiti Foundation….

Audi today continued its teasing of the upcoming A1 compact that will debut at the 2010 Geneva Motor Show. The German automaker released a new video with Peter Schwarzenbauer, Member of the Board of Management for Marketing and Sales at Audi AG, speaking about the A1. Schwarzenbauer said that Audi expects to sell a total of 80,000 units of the A1 in its first full year.

“The subcompact segment is forecast to grow in Europe by the year 2015 – in Germany alone growth of 30 percent is anticipated. We’re currently expecting to sell 80,000 units of the A1 in its first full year,” said Schwarzenbauer. “People who for practical reasons choose a small car want not only the basic functions, but an exciting design and the latest technology as well. With the A1, we’re giving these customers what they want by launching the first premium car in the subcompact segment.”

“The new A1 also benefits from innovations taken from larger Audi models, such as the A3 and A8,” Audi said in a statement. “As well as its state-of-the-art engines, examples of what the A1 has to offer include a start-stop system, brake energy recuperation and an on-board computer with efficiency program.”

Click through for the video of Schwarzenbauer interview.

2011 Audi A1 (Teasers):

– By: Omar Rana

When asked what shapes Portland’s startup culture, Silicon Florist blogger Rick Turoczy named 3 defining aspects of the industry – hardware roots, open source projects and iPhone development. Turoczy has been in Oregon for the past 15-years and started Silicon Florist as a way to cover the region’s early stage startup scene alongside other Portland tech sites like Mike Rogoway’s Silicon Forest blog and Strange Love Live.
Since then he’s watched his town grow into a bustling tech hub and enjoyed every minute of it. ReadWriteWeb caught up with Turoczy and a few other Portland influencers to get a feel for the scene.

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Turoczy explained, when Tektronix and Intel hung their hats in Oregon, scores of great developers and technologists found themselves settling the once sleepy blue collar region. As employees broke off to start new ventures, a startup community was born out of it. Concurrently, the open source communities and iPhone communities sprung up.

Entrepreneur and Urban Airship CEO Scott Kveton manages to keep a foot in both the open source community and the iPhone community. While Urban Airship focuses on building out iPhone infrastructure for developers, Kveton is also well known for working with Oregon State University to start the Open Source Lab – the first state-wide open source development curriculum. Coupled with the fact that O’Reilly’s OSCON and the Linux creator Linus Torvalds call the region home, Oregon’s developers understand the value of shared knowledge and community. When asked how the open source movement has shaped Oregon’s entrepreneurs, Kveton replies, “Portland has a live free or die attitude. We engage in community and unlike other groups we really share our knowledge.”

The majority of ReadWriteWeb’s team calls Portland home. Agrees Marshall Kirkpatrick, “There’s a very supportive community, lots of very creative people and a great history of geekery.  People interested in open source, wikis, RSS and mobile apps will find some of the most influential developers and companies in the world available to connect with in Portland.”

Raven Zachary is one such developer. Zachary helped start BarCamp Portland, Ignite Portland, iPhoneDevCamp and still serves on the board of Legion of Tech – a group that organizes Oregon-based tech events. Through his work as the President of Small Society he’s built iPhone apps for a number of influential campaigns including the Obama ’08 iPhone app. When asked what he thinks of Portland he explains, “Portland attracts people – people who want to stay here and ideally work for local businesses. We have a huge population of telecommuters in this city working for out of state employers, many in California. The talent is here, the greater challenge is the receptivity of investors to bet on Portland-based tech companies.”

Portland Entrepreneur Josh Friedman knows as well as anyone how hard it is to raise funding. Friedman took the skills he’d learned from Intel and applied them to start Eleven Wireless and startup co-working facility Nedspace. Says Friedman, “It was hard as hell to raise money and at the time I was pretty well connected.There’s a gap in funding resources for Portland entrepreneurs looking to raise between $25,000-250,000 dollars and it needs to be addressed…While our Angel investors are great, they simply aren’t doing the volume to take chances on early-stage companies.” Friedman is looking to expand Nedspace to ten additional cities in 2010 and is rumored to be raising a seed fund for Portland-based startups. Says Friedman, “If it wasn’t exciting here I don’t think I’d live here. I really believe in my heart and soul that Portland can be the best city in the world to start a business. The fact that it’s a cheap to live, in addition to being a clean and cool place makes it a good place for entrepreneurs. If we combine that with the right investors, people will move here in droves.”

Says Rick Turoczy, “In some ways this whole town is an incubator. People here view technology as an artistic pursuit and they like to muck about in coffee shops and co-working facilities. In the 15 years I’ve lived here it’s the most cohesive and collegial community yet. This sort of creative spirit doesn’t always come with a business plan, but as more companies like Jive and JanRain get funding, we’re starting to see the developers and VCs get on the same page.”

Additional Resources

Oregon Entrepreneurs Network: OEN helps Oregon and SW Washington-based entrepreneurs manage their early-stage companies. The group’s programs include the Portland Angel Network, Women’s Investment Network and Oregon Angel Fund. The group also hosts conferences including Angel Oregon and Venture Northwest as well as a series of business-related PubTalks on the second Wednesday of every month.

Portland Ten: Portland Ten is an incubator program where companies buy into their own development and make a goal to reach to $1M in revenue by Oct, 2010.

Coworking Portland Wiki: This wiki keeps a list of local co-working spaces and requests for shared spaces.

Beer and Blog:On Fridays between 4-6pm Portland residents meet up at the Green Dragon to share in their mutual love of beer, blogs and all things Portland.

If you’ve got more resources for the Portland area let us know in the comments below.

Photo Credit: Stu Seeger

Discuss

Los Angeles:
The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is asking for the public’s
help in identifying a suspect who has robbed two businesses in the Van
Nuys area, at gunpoint, over a two week period.

On December 30, 2009, during the early evening hours, the suspect
entered a business in the 17600 block of Vanowen Street.  Though the
business was full of customers at the time, the suspect was not
deterred and walked calmly to the register and quietly demanded money. 
The employee opened the register and gave the suspect about $700 in
cash.

The second robbery occurred on January 8, 2010, also in the early
evening hours.  The suspect entered a business in the 16200 block of
Victory Boulevard and approached clerks inside the businesses and
demanded money from the cash registers.  

The suspect is described as a male white, 5’8”- 5’10” in height,
weighing 170-200 pounds.  He was last seen wearing a distinctive black
and gray hooded jacket and sunglasses.

Video has been provided to investigators to assist in their
investigation.  The suspect in each case is dressed in the same
fashion, specifically a two-toned hooded jacket, which investigators
are hoping is unique enough to help the public identify this
individual.  

Video of the crime and suspect was captured by surveillance cameras and is available at www.lapdtv.org

Anyone with information about these crimes is urged to call West Valley
robbery detectives at (818) 374-7730.  During non-business hours or on
weekends, calls should be directed to 1-877-LAPD-24-7.   Anyone wishing
to remain anonymous should call Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS
(800-222-8477).  Tipsters may also contact Crimestoppers by texting to
phone number 274637 (C-R-I-M-E-S on most keypads) with a cell phone.
All text messages should begin with the letters “LAPD.” Tipsters may
also go to LAPDOnline.org, click on "webtips" and follow the prompts.

Turner Broadcasting has had success with pay apps in news, games and sports; now, the Time Warner (NYSE: TWX) unit is turning to the movies. The new Turner Classic Movies app launches today in iTunes for $2.99; versions for Blackberry App World and Android Market are due next month. At first glance, some of the features seem more apt for a free promo app: movie schedules, access to “optimized” versions of the TCM database and movie blog, photos. Amazon’s IMDB app is free and as a user I’d be hard pressed to pay for something it also already does so well. But the TCM app also promises serious video content—hundreds of movie clips, trailers, promos, including some for widescreen—and it has TCM’s own expert library with articles that go deep for nearly every movie the network shows. Plans call for more video and full database access, among other features.

First Look: The video is definitely the killer part of this app for now. Dipping into scenes from The Way We Were, Bridge Over The River Kwai, and more is a nice respite and the clips are lengthy enough to be meaningful, not 30-second snippets. At first, I thought there wasn’t enough video, barely more than a dozen of the movie clips, a batch of trailers, a few promos. But that was what was accessible through the main navigation. Most of the video can be found by looking for a movie on the schedule. Six clips for Battleground, three for That Hamilton Woman, etc. It doesn’t work every time. I struck out on Bang The Drum Slowly, which has no video at all. No John Travolta disco either, not even a trailer. Back to Redford.

Following on the heels of its announcement last week of $100 million in Energy Training Partnership green jobs training grants, the Department of Labor announced another set of green jobs training grants this week: the Pathways Out of Poverty Grants. These grants are especially meaningful to the Apollo Alliance, as they represent the fruition of years of work by Apollo on the Green Jobs Act, which was passed as part of the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 and authorized $125 million per year in funding to train workers for jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy. It also represents our more recent work on the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which finally provided the funding for the green jobs training programs authorized by the Green Jobs Act.

The Pathways Out of Poverty Grants were awarded primarily to organizations serving communities with poverty rates of 15 percent or higher. The $150 million in grant funding will go toward programs that not only train workers in the skills they need for jobs in energy efficiency and renewable energy, but also provide trainees with basic literacy and job readiness skills. Many of the programs will also provide support services like assistance with childcare and transportation.

Trainees served by the programs come from populations that face a variety of barriers to employment—high-school drop outs, ex-offenders, veterans, people with limited English proficiency and people with disabilities, among others. If the programs succeed, they will ensure that our growing green economy “lifts all boats” and “connects the people who most need work with the work that most needs to be done,” as Van Jones, former Apollo board member and founder of Green For All, who was instrumental in the passage of the Green Jobs Act, testified before Congress last year.

Among the 38 programs that will receive Pathways Out of Poverty grants are many the Apollo Alliance is familiar with. Goodwill Industries International will employ a four-phased model in its training program, designed to move job seekers from an intensive individual assessment through a job placement in energy efficient building construction or renewable energy in six cities: Atlanta, Austin, Charlotte, Grand Rapids, Phoenix and Washington, DC. Jobs for the Future Inc. will partner with the AFL-CIO Working for America Institute to ramp up pathways for unemployed and disadvantaged individuals in Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, Milwaukee and Philadelphia to move into green industries like energy-efficient building, construction and retrofitting. The National Council of La Raza will provide linguistically and culturally competent training in energy efficiency and clean energy for individuals with limited English proficiency in San Jose, San Diego and Chicago.

Many other deserving programs will receive Pathways Out of Poverty grants. For a full list, visit the Department of Labor website.

White House Also Announces Clean Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit Awards

Meanwhile, at the end of last week, the Obama administration announced the beneficiaries of an ARRA reward that could create some of the jobs that Pathways Out of Poverty trainees might eventually attain. The clean energy manufacturing tax credit will benefit 183 manufacturing facilities in 43 states, by providing them with a 30 percent tax credit for investments in facilities that produce renewable energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, advanced batteries and other clean energy products. The administration estimates that the $2.3 billion in tax credits will provide much-needed support to the domestic clean energy manufacturing sector and generate more than 17,000 jobs.

In December, the Obama administration proposed expanding the clean energy manufacturing tax credit by $5 billion because the program was oversubscribed by a ratio of 3-1, which meant many qualified manufacturing facilities that applied for the tax credits were not approved.

 “The Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit program, which supports the building and equipping of factories to make the products of the green economy, has been wildly successful since its inception,” said Phil Angelides, chairman of the Apollo Alliance.

You can read the press release about the companies that will be awarded the tax credit on the White House website. Visit ApolloAlliance.org to read our statement on the proposal to expand the tax credit.

In other news …

*Center for American Progress says there’s good news about U.S. clean energy policy. This week, the Center for American Progress released an evaluation of the Obama administration’s progress on clean energy issues over the last year. The report, A Breath of Fresh Air: Obama Seizes the Energy Opportunity, says that despite setbacks like the failure of the Senate to vote on a clean energy and climate bill in 2009, the President and Congress made significant progress last year in the transition to a clean energy economy. They list the limits on greenhouse gas emissions from automobiles; the announcement that the EPA will regulate greenhouse gases; the inclusion of $100 billion in the Recovery Act for clean energy programs; and several other achievements that will have real-world impact. To read the report, go to the Center for American Progress website.

*Coming Soon: Clean Energy Week. Led by ACORE (the American Council on Renewable Energy), some 40 national organizations (including the Apollo Alliance) are organizing a week of action from Feb. 1–5, 2010, to encourage enactment of federal clean energy and climate measures. Clean Energy Week will consist of breakfasts, lunches, dinners, receptions, workshops, press conferences, rallies and outreach activities on Capitol Hill and across Washington, DC, sponsored individually by the participating organizations. To find out how you can participate, visit CleanEnergyWeek.org.

Update: Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile are waiving text message fees for those that text message 90999 from their device.

Incredible news today by way of donating: As of 4 PM EST, US wireless carriers had received $5 million in donations from customers. 

To break the data down, that’s $5 million in 48 hours, based on $10 increments.  In comparison, contributions for all of last year (2009) totaled just less than $4 million.  All proceeds go to the Red Cross for earthquake relief efforts in Haiti.

To donate $10 to the Red Cross, text “HAITI” to 90999 from your mobile device.  The numbers will be revised as I receive them.  $5 million and counting – let’s keep up the good work!

Via Twitter

—AudioBoo platforms: The iPhone audio service aims to launch an Android version in the next couple of months and perhaps a BlackBerry version later this year, CEO Mark Rock told Thursday’s News:Rewired event in London.

—Agence France-Presse: The French news agency launched an iPhone app. Included is access to its multimedia news and content in English, Spanish, Portuguese and German. Release (via Business Wire)

—Vodafone360: The operator’s app store is getting seven new widgets, all incorporating location-based services. Traffic information, entertainment listings, Multimap maps and restaurant guide and booking service Toptable are included among them. Release
(via Trading Markets)

It’s no surprise that Ubisoft is all ready to jump aboard the motion control developing wagon. What is curious is that between the two new entries in this game control arena, they’re more keen on leaning towards

…online censorship edition. If viewed on a computer screen that resides in China, this image actually has a gaping, country-shaped hole. [Information is Beautiful]