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Booyah, the mobile gaming company full of alums from Blizzard Entertainment, just rocketed ahead in the world of location-based gaming.

Their MyTown app, which is kind of like Monopoly for the real world, now has 450,000 users who log-in for 30 minutes a day on average. That’s the average for all users, not just active ones, according to Booyah CEO and co-founder Keith Lee. Lee adds that MyTown has had more than 31 million check-ins from 2.1 million unique real-world locations. These stats could put it ahead of other startups like Gowalla and Foursquare.

But Booyah takes a slightly different approach from them. Booyah starts with the gaming first, and then incorporates real world elements. It’s more of a classic game than a social network. Location-based networks like Foursquare start from the opposite angle: they ultimately are about socializing and location-sharing and happen to use gaming elements to incentivize people to play.

In MyTown, you get a bit of virtual currency when you join so you can “buy” real places in the game like your local coffee shop. If you manage them properly and upgrade them from time to time, you can earn rent and amass a virtual real estate empire. When you check-in to a location, or let the app know that you’ve visited the real place, you might find a treasure chest with extra cash inside the game that can help you purchase more properties or level up. Booyah’s designers have created a virtual economy inside MyTown, where property prices fluctuate based on demand and how many check-ins they get from other users.

Lee has a couple recommendations for app developers looking to promote discovery of their work:

• Work with recommendation apps like Chomp from the get-go and make sure you get lots of reviews onto app-sharing sites simultaneously.
• Invest in advertising for your app with companies like AdMob and Quattro, both of whom were recently acquired by Google and Apple respectively.
• When you initially release the app, focus on getting four to five days of steady installs. “It’s more important to get a sustained rate of downloads over a spike of installs,” he said.

He said he’s not advertising inside MyTown yet, although that will come in the next version. Booyah has 18 employees and raised $4.5 million from Kleiner Perkins’ $100 million iFund last year. The company has the pedigree to make real-world mobile gaming work. Its three founders were instrumental in making games at Blizzard Entertainment, now part of Activision Blizzard, like Diablo II and at Insomniac Games with titles such as Resistance: Fall of Man and the original Ratchet & Clank.

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In the wake of Google’s threat to forgo the China market, the question we ought to ask is: Should Google go home?

In the flurry of Internet commentary, hopeful stock analysts have focused on language in the company’s announcement regarding pending discussions with the government about operating an unfiltered search engine inside China. At worst this reflects naivete regarding the Party’s determination to control the internet. At best this is sop to Wall Street – a feeble attempt to demonstrate that management tried to maximize shareholder value. Don’t be misled – Beijing will no more negotiate with an American Internet company about free speech than Tel Aviv would negotiate with hostage takers about ransom. Google is most likely going home.

Other commentators have tripped over the issue of cyber attacks – the suggestion by Google that their decision to abandon the booming China market was motivated by hackers trying to access the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Recall, however, that Google does not maintain on Chinese soil any services that involve personal or confidential information. In other words, the Gmail servers are not located inside China and pulling out of the country will have zero impact on future cyber attacks. More bluntly – the hacker story, while certainly true, is a public relations cover.

Still other pundits fall into the tempting cynical trap. Google, they say, would bring in a mere one percent of its 2010 profits from China, and thus the apparent principled stance is really a commercial retreat from a market dominated by domestic rival Baidu. But Google’s search market share has climbed from 13 percent in 2006 to 36 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009. Given the number of Internet users in China, the remaining vast expansion potential and a distinguished list of foreign failures that includes Yahoo! and eBay, Google’s adventure in the Middle Kingdom is not a commercial defeat.

That leads us back to our initial question: Should Google go home?

To find an answer we must first establish an objective. Google’s goal, as stated during Congressional hearings in February 2006 regarding the collaboration of American technology companies with China’s efforts to control the Internet, is to make the world’s information accessible to everyone, everywhere, all the time. During those same hearings, representatives of Google argued that it could provide more access to more information for more Chinese citizens more reliably by offering a censored search service inside China than by staying away.

What has changed since those Congressional hearings? Not a thing, except Google’s mind.

The core question, however, remains: Was Google right four years ago when it decided to provide censored search inside China, or is it right now in deciding to go home?

The next step toward an answer is to ask what will happen when Google is gone. The competition in China is Baidu, which commands a 58 percent share of the search market. If we assume that Baidu will grab at least that much of Google’s current market share, it would enjoy a 79 percent slice of China’s search market pie. What might this domestic Chinese company do with that kind of market muscle?

Although Baidu’s corporate mantra isn’t “be evil,” their policy with respect to paid search contrasts rather sharply with our friends from Mountain View. Google decided long ago that their search results would be as good as they could make them, unbiased and objective, clearly labeling paid search results as advertising. Baidu, on the other hand, offers paid search results, as alluded to in its most recent annual report. The vast majority of Baidu’s revenues come from their pay for placement service that literally auctions off to the highest bidder priority placement of links in key word search results.

An example might help to drive home the point. Let’s take the Chinese word for beer – the first local term learned by many expatriates in the Middle Kingdom. On Google China the top five results include news articles, a Baidu encyclopedia entry, general pages that list many beer companies and Google maps with the location for bars and restaurants. Baidu? The right side results, which look like advertisements, provide company names, a tagline and a link. The left side, which look like pure search results, have four beer companies and the Baidu encyclopedia entry.

With or without Google, search inside the Great Firewall will be the world according to Chinese law. Without Google, search also becomes the world according to Baidu.

During China’s tainted milk scandal that followed the 2008 Beijing Olympics, it was alleged that Sanlu, the Chinese company that put more melamine industrial chemical into their infant formula than any other, attempted to pay Baidu three million renminbi (US$440,000) to censor out negative search results. Baidu denied the allegation.

Eight months later, however, an Internet post suggested that the wealthy family of a hit and run driver who killed a university student in Hangzhou also attempted to pay Baidu to filter out the bad news. The vast majority of people commenting on the post believed that Baidu took the money. Although the cynics were apparently wrong this time, the risk of having a market with only paid priority search listings and censored results, is more than a theoretical possibility.

And so we return to our original question: Should Google go home? On behalf of the company’s shareholders and its China-based users, I say bye bye Google – we are sad to see you go.

Nathan Green is the pen name for a long time China hand and author of The Great Firewall, a forthcoming novel on China’s internet adventure.

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The U.S. Department of Energy has given out billions of dollars to clean energy companies and projects since President Barack Obama took office — most of which has been geared toward producing jobs in the sector, including many industrial and manufacturing jobs to replace other shipped overseas. But today, the department is announcing $85 million in stimulus grants earmarked for 69 scientists still in the early stages of their careers.

The news suggests a shift in focus for the government, which has been showing more interest in developing high-level green-collar talent. Instead of just throwing money at creating the most jobs possible, it is now pinpointing individuals who could have the greatest impact on the future of America’s power mix. The idea is to give them the resources they need — over the course of five years — to eventually become leaders in their respective fields. Right now, they are expected to be either tenure-tracked assistant professors or government lab employees not yet 10 years out of doctoral programs.

The grant money will be divided between academic researchers, who will receive at least $150,000 each year for five years, and scientists based in national labs — including some working at the DOE itself — who will get at lest $500,000 a year to cover salary and research expenses. A new crop of recipients will be chosen each year by the DOE’s Office of Science.

To put the sum involved into context, the department just allocated less ($80 million) to jumpstart employment in the biofuels industry. The money will go to two consortia working to commercialize jet, diesel and gas-substitute fuels derived from algae and other feedstocks. The grants are being divided among many groups and people, not select individuals. Another sign that the DOE is looking to home-grow high-level talent: earlier this week it announced $187 million in grants that would help employ 500 skilled researchers and engineers in the advanced vehicle industry.

While the first round of winners has already been selected out of 1,750 candidates, the DOE is calling for more applications. In particular, it is looking for researchers working in computing, the energy sciences, environmental and biological labs, fusion energy, high-energy physics and nuclear physics.

Below is a full list of the 69 individuals chosen in the recent round. Not all of the projects they are working on sound immediately relevant to the U.S.’s most pressing energy questions. With titles like “Multifunctional Oxygen Evolution Electrocatalyst Design and Synthesis,” they seem to be more focused on the steps that come before applicable technology development. It’s nice to see the government funding such forward-looking interests.

The current winners hail from a diversity of institutions and laboratories. Unsurprisingly, there’s a dearth of women, but several are represented. It will be interesting to see how the DOE leverages the results of their projects to change the way regular Americans use and view energy, climate change and the environment.

Here’s the full list:

Early Career Research Program Selectees

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If spending money to build a satellite phone network reminds you of a few recent financial debacles, you’re not alone.

But regardless of its past foibles, Globalstar has created a real business and is announcing today that it is taking the first steps to deploying its $1.29 billion second-generation satellite phone network.

While satellite phones seem quaint at a time of growing cell phone coverage, Tony Navarra, president of global operations at the Milpitas, Calif., company, said that many of Globalstar’s 375,000 customers are in remote regions of the U.S. and Canada. The phones used to be the size of bricks, but they’re now about twice the size of typical cell phones, with a little antenna nub sticking out of them.

In an interview, Navarra said that this new network could prove far more cost effective than the last one. For $1.29 billion, Globalstar will be able to launch 24 satellites into orbit and build another 24 for the future. These satellites should last for 15 years, until 2025 and beyond, compared to just 7.5 years for the company’s first-generation satellites.

It’s last network cost $4.5 billion to complete and the debt load was so heavy that it drove Globalstar, founded in 1994, into bankruptcy in 2004. It restructured its debt and then went public in 2006. In the summer of last year, it did a debt financing of $738 million. Competition includes Inmarsat, Iidium Satellite, SkyTerra Communicaitons and Orbcomm. Globalstar needs to get the satellites deployed because service quality is starting to diminish.

Navarra said the satellites in the first network are becoming weaker. The low-earth orbiting satellites circle the globe about 850 miles in the sky. As they age, Globalstar takes them up about 1,000 miles above the earth and then replaces them with new satellites.

Since the technology has improved, the second-generation network will be able to handle duplex voice and data at a rate of 256 kilobits per second, compared to just 9.6 kilobits per second earlier. It has high quality, and the data transfer speed will now be better.

To further finance its new generation, Globalstar has raised $505 million in loans from a consortium of French banks and another $71 million from satellite maker Thales Alenia and rocket maker Arianespace.

The company generates about $76 to $80 per subscriber per month for voice service and $10 per subscriber per month for data service. The company also makes money from engineering services. And its Spot division recently announced a satellite communicator to go with Delorme’s navigation handheld.

Navarra said the company will launch one or two rockets this year, using Arainespace. Each rocket will carry six satellites. Today, the company said it has begun to install upgrades at its gateway ground stations around the world to get ready to deploy the second-generation satellite constellation.

In the third quarter ended Sept. 30, Globalstar lost $5.5 million on revenue of $17.5 million. That compared to a loss of $26 million on revenue of $22.5 million a year earlier.

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Via debuts M’Serv 2100 server with 64-bit Nano CPU originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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RED ONE getting Mysterium-X sensor upgrade next week originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 Jan 2010 15:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Paul Smith online shop is now carrying their Assam model. The shoes are a suede or a leather brogue and are crafted on a classic Oxford brogue pattern. The silhouette is very slim and are detailed with a very distinct look. They are available in two colors blue for suede and brown for Avila leather. Available now at Paul Smith.

Continue reading for more images.

Toyota has shown that they know how to retain customers. At Tuesday’s Automotive News World Congress, Toyota received four wards for customer loyalty, and Yoshimi Inaba, president of Toyota Motor North America Inc. has said that Toyota has no intention of stopping there.

“Our quality and safety were severely questioned,” he said, referring to Toyota’s recalls in 2009. “We learned lessons the hard way, but with the support of our dealers we will do everything to let our customers know how much we care for them and how committed we are that they drive the safest cars on the road.”

Inaba also mentioned Toyota’s commitment to leadership in environmentally friendly auto manufacturing, including the expansion of the Prius label, and the implementation of ToMoCo’s three-phase plan to gradually introduce a plug-in hybrid in two years, a battery electric vehicle by 2012, and a fuel-cell hybrid by 2015.

The recently ignored Scion label will also receive two new products geared to rejuvenate its youth-appeal. Inaba also said that he is hopeful that FT-CH concept showed in Detroit will become a full-production entry-level hybrid as part of the Prius family. He estimates a sales increase of about 10% this year with sales of about 11.5 million units, and even greater growth in 2011 and 2012.

2010 Detroit: Toyota FT-CH Concept:

All Photos Copyright © 2009 Stephen Calogera – egmCarTech.

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

WSJ.com’s Environmental Capital has posted its last post.

Lead writer Keith Johnson blogs:

After more than two years and over 2,000 posts, Environmental Capital is closing its virtual doors.

It’s been, in equal measure, a fun, grueling, and educational ride.

Special thanks are owed to the folks who got it all started and kept it going—Mark Gongloff, Jeff Ball, and Russell Gold—not to mention all the Dow Jones and Wall Street Journal folks who fed the beast so well all this time.

Of course, the biggest thanks of all goes to our readers—both of you. You’re what got us out of bed in the wee hours every morning. Well, that–and the paycheck.

We didn’t have any warning about the blog’s demise and Johnson declined comment on it, though his quip about “our readers – both of you”  suggests that the central brains weren’t sufficiently impressed with the traffic.

Too bad, it was our first read in the morning. Not sure if NYTimes.com’s Green, Inc., is going the way of the Dodo too. A mass extinction of green energy, policy and finance blogs.

In case you aren’t sick of hearing it yet, Ke$ha stopped by The Wiggy Wendy Williams Show for a live performance of her breakout hit “Tik Tok” on Thursday. The grungy party girl showed up with her signature bedhead. and frailed around the stage for five minutes to the delight of Wendy’s studio audience.

Why buy a digital camera when an iPhone or BlackBerry can take relatively decent pics? It’s likely a question that many smartphone owners—aside from pro and amateur photographers—have asked themselves at least once. For Eastman Kodak, the increased use of camera-enabled smartphones could have been a major problem in terms of lost revenue. But the company was proactive—cutting tech licensing deals with many of the big handset manufacturers— so that it could at least make money from their use of its digital imaging technology in their new phones.

Problem is, Kodak has never managed to get Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) or RIM (NSDQ: RIMM) to agree to any licensing deals—meaning it’s not getting a cut of the billions of dollars worth of sales of two of the most popular camera-enabled smartphones. So it’s suing both companies for patent infringement.

Kodak first filed suit with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC), claiming that Apple’s iPhones and RIM’s camera-enabled BlackBerry devices infringe on a tech patent it holds for image previews. Separately, it filed two other suits against Apple in a New York District Court over digital camera and computing technology patents overall.

In the ITC case (ZDNet has the pdf), Kodak is seeking a “limited exclusion order” preventing the importation of infringing iPhones and BlackBerry devices; in the District Court cases, it’s seeking damages from Apple, and hoping to “permanently enjoin” the company from further infringement.

The company says it has been trying to negotiate licensing deals with both Apple and RIM “for years,” and that it’s been forced to file the suits “to protect the interest of our shareholders and the existing licensees of our technology.” Kodak has deals with 30 other electronics companies, including LG (SEO: 066570), Motorola (NYSE: MOT), Nokia (NYSE: NOK) and Samsung. Release.

Green Energy Reporter caught up with Dot Earth blogger Andrew Revkin to talk about Copenhagen and the future of the climate.

Read the whole thing at GreenEnergyReporter.com>>

Join the conversation about this story »

We’re exploring some very cool ideas to clarify the stream of notes and emails in Highrise. We want to make it easier to scan the streams and differentiate notes from emails from comments. Along the way we’re also cleaning up a lot of complex, overly-DRY code. It’s a great project, but it’s not quite as simple as it sounded at first.

Our initial plan sounded simple:

“Redesign the recording streams.”

“Recording” is an abstraction for the things that appear in streams: notes, comments, emails and more. They’re just notes that appear in a stream, like a blog index. How hard can it be?

When I started working on the new design and touching the code, I realized that recordings have a ton of dependencies. I made a quick and dirty graffle to keep them all in my head:

Recordings appear in multiple places: “aggregated streams” like cases and the dashboard, and “non-aggregated streams” like the stream for a particular person. Recordings include comments, and comments are mixed in with all other recordings but also appear in dedicated “comment streams” on recording perma pages. Recordings can be filed, they show privacy status, they have special states if you move them out of the current stream, and on and on. None of these things are obvious at first glance.

And none of this is a problem. We can even use this new design iteration to reduce the complexity. But it’s a good reminder that things often look simpler on the surface. When you dig into an established feature there may be a lot of dependencies and factors that only the source code and some careful spelunking will reveal.

If you’re an Android handset owner who happens to double as a Rhapsody customer, you might have spent the last few months feeling like you’ve been left out in the cold; more specifically, you might be a bit chuffed that the iPhone has a Rhapsody application while Android phones don’t.

We’d heard tales that Rhapsody was all set to launch for Android by the end of 2009, but, as anyone with a calendar could tell you, that just didn’t happen. It may be a bit later than we expected, but Rhapsody took their first big step into the Android-waters just minutes ago by launching the Rhapsody for Android Beta program.

They’re not making it available on the Android Market just yet — but beyond that, it looks like they’re only limiting testing to those who: A) Are Rhapsody-to-go members (there’s a free 7 day trial – don’t forget to cancel!), and B) know the proper URL. Speaking of which, you can find the Rhapsody for Android Beta download at: http://www.rhapsody.com/android/download. The Android app appears to give you access to Rhapsody’s 8-million-plus catalog of on-demand music, along with features like Rhapsody Radio.

Remember, of course: this is beta software, so it’s not without its flaws. Amongst the known bugs so far: folks rocking HTC Heros or Nexus Ones might see a few freezes here and there, tracks may end a bit abruptly while streaming over a 3G connection, and there’s an issue with purchasing MP3s while the handset is connected to a computer via USB. If sketchy bugs freak you out, stay away for a while; otherwise, dive on in.

Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies

Harrison Ford is in hot water with Chicago’s Mayor Daley…..

Patent deals between generic and branded drug makers have been getting lot of attention lately on both sides of the Atlantic. Today, Pfizer took a turn in the spotlight.

The world’s largest pharma company said it was among those asked Tuesday by European regulators to disclose their patent agreements with generic makers. Pfizer said that its record is clean and that it’s cooperating with European Union officials, Dow Jones Newswires reported.

The EU’s regulatory arm has been upset that cheaper generic drugs aren’t getting to consumers faster as they come off patent and it wants to know if branded makers are making payments to generic rivals to delay the competition. As we noted yesterday, the EU also sent requests for information to AstraZeneca, GlaxoSmithKline, Roche, Novartis and Sanofi-Aventis.

U.S. regulators are stoking the pay-for-delay issue as well. The FTC said this week that payments in patent settlements typically delay generic competition by 17 extra months, compared with deals when there are no payments. Here is more on what the FTC found.

Image: iStockphoto

First Lady Michelle Obama resumed her visits to federal agencies to thank employees this morning when she stopped by the Department of Labor. She even made time to stop by a day care center to read Dr Seuss’ Green Eggs & Ham.

Oh, and she has a new haircut too…

Here are the First Lady’s remarks courtesy of WhiteHouse.gov…

REMARKS BY THE FIRST LADY

DURING VISIT TO THE DEPARMTENT OF LABOR

U.S. Department of Labor

Washington, D.C.

 11:09 A.M. EST

MRS. OBAMA: Thanks, everybody. (Applause.) Now, remember, you weren’t supposed to get out of your seats — (laughter) — until the program was over. And you all agreed. I heard it. (Laughter.) But that’s okay. (Laughter.)

Good morning, everyone. I am as thrilled to be here as you all seem to be. (Laughter.) But before we begin, I do want to take a moment just to express my profound heartbreak and our nation’s deepest support for the people of Haiti in the wake of this just devastating disaster that they have suffered.

The destruction and the suffering that we see, the images that are coming out of that country are just overwhelming, and it is important for the people of Haiti to know that we are keeping the victims of this tragedy and their loved ones in our thoughts and our prayers. And that also includes prayers going out to all of the Haitian Americans who have families and friends there, and they’re worried about them back home. It’s difficult to get word. People don’t know where folks are. This is a tough time for Haitian American citizens here, as well. And we also want to send our thoughts and prayers out to the American citizens who are working and living in Haiti, as well.

Right now my husband and the administration are focused on moving as many resources as possible into Haiti as quickly as possible so that we can save as many lives as we can. And later today I’ll be taping a public service announcement for the Red Cross, which is providing on-the-ground support — food, water, medicine — that’s desperately needed right now, particularly in this short period of 48, 72 hours after the disaster.

So for those Americans who are watching this, who are listening, who want to help — and everyone’s help and resources and energy at this time are critically important — you can go to the White House Web site at www.whitehouse.gov to see what you can do to support our friends in Haiti in this time of urgent need.

And as you know, it’s not just in the weeks and months ahead. This is going to be something that we’re going to have to put our attention to for many years to come. So again, our thoughts and prayers go out to the country of Haiti.

But I’d like to start by first thanking your wonderful Secretary, Secretary Solis, not just for that very kind introduction but for all of her work that she’s doing in this department. She is doing a fabulous job in so many areas. And all of you know — (applause) — and she’s not just working here, but she has taken the time to travel with me on my special projects. We’ve spent a wonderful day in Denver, participating in a mentorship and leadership program there for young girls. And Secretary Solis was right there, the first one to sign up to go, as a busy Secretary, still never too busy to give back to an amazing group of girls — and I will be grateful to her for a very long time for her outstanding work and willingness to step up and outside of her role. So we are grateful to you.

I also want to thank all of you here today and all your colleagues here in Washington who may not be in this room or across the country for all of your work. As you all know, I have spent a lot of time in the first year — yes, it’s been a year — (laughter) — since we’ve arrived in Washington, visiting agencies. And it’s been wonderful for me to use these visits — it’s a way to learn more about the work that you do, to listen, to observe, to hear your concerns, and then to bring that information back to the White House so that my husband is getting even more feedback on how things are going.

So these visits have been so very important to me getting to better understand how this place works, and getting to know all of you.

 And I know that some of you have been working in these departments for a very long time, for decades. And we have some of those long-term workers standing behind me. We have some of the longest-serving employees here at the department right behind me.

But something that the Secretary chose to do uniquely is to also recognize the many folks here who are just beginning their careers. And we can’t forget those — a lot of young people who are stepping into new roles and a lot of not-so-young people stepping into roles. (Laughter.) So also on the stage with us today are some of the very newest employees here at the Department, as well.

 But I know that whether you all have worked here for decades or for days, you’ve been working very hard for the American people, and one of my primary reasons for being here is to express on behalf of not just myself and my family and the President, but the entire nation, our gratitude for the service that you have put in. We often forget about the work that you do to make things happen for this nation. And it’s important that we shed this light on each and every one of you over the course of this year.

I am also looking forward to visiting some little people here. (Laughter.) After I speak here I’m going to go down to the childcare center, and as you know, I’m a sucker for kids. (Laughter.) I told the Secretary if I can come to the childcare center, I’ll be here every week. (Laughter and applause.)

But I’m going to get to read one of my favorite books, “Green Eggs and Ham” — (laughter) — Dr. Seuss. And I’m also going to get to meet — although I see some of you here — some of the culinary students, young people who are working in the training program. (Applause.)

And I’ve heard that you have prepared a delicious and, hopefully, healthy snack for our children. (Laughter.) But we’re grateful for you, and I’m looking forward to meeting you all.

I was pleased to hear that there was a childcare center here at the Department of Labor that not just serves the employees of the department, but working families throughout the area. And, as a parent, I know centers like this one create a great deal of peace of mind, so that people know that their kids are being taken care of. And that means that you can focus on your work and not worry about whether your kids are doing okay.

And that’s actually what I’d like to just spend a few brief moments talking about today, an issue that I’ve talked a lot about, and that’s the issue of work-life balance. You know it: the constant struggle to meet our responsibilities both as employees, but also as breadwinners, and mothers and fathers. It’s one of those issues that we, as a society, still haven’t quite figured out yet. We’re still working on it. And as the mother of two young girls — who are doing just fine, by the way — (laughter) — it’s an issue that is particularly near and dear to my heart, as I have spoken about.

In my current life as the First Lady of the United States, I am incredibly blessed and I know that, because I have more support than I could have ever asked for and ever imagined, including my mother, who has moved here to help us sort through all the challenges.

But I didn’t always live in the White House, as you know. For many years — just a few years ago, we came to Washington, I was a part of that work-family struggle to balance that full-time job, plus being an around-the-clock role — that role you play as mom, particularly when you have a spouse who is traveling a lot.

And I’ve said this before, but probably like many of you, I consider myself one of those 120-percenters, which essentially means that if you are not doing everything at 120 percent, you think you’re failing. I suffer from that malady. So when I was at work during these times, I always felt like I was shortchanging my girls. But then when I was at home, I was worried that I was letting people at work down. And with that kind of anxiety, comes a lot of additional stress and a whole lot of guilt. So I know all of us are walking around with a whole lot of guilt, just carrying it around. (Laughter.)

And I was lucky even back then, because I had understanding bosses, people like Secretary Solis, who shared my same values for the importance of doing a good job but also raising a good family. And I was also fortunate to work in jobs that were reasonably accommodating, with people who understood that if you left a little early for — to get in the car line, that that wasn’t some huge definition of your dedication to your job.

And while there’s certainly plenty of employers out there who recognize the value of good work-life policies, many people in this country just aren’t as fortunate to work with those employers. And with the job market the way it is right now, many folks can’t afford to be picky. You just can’t. When you have a job, you keep it; and you settle for the terms that you have because you know you’re blessed to even have a job. And many don’t have access, as a result, to good family leave policies or any kind of flexibility in the workplace at all. It’s just not possible. So they struggle to find affordable childcare and emergency childcare when their usual arrangements fall through, which they always do — right?

And believe it or not, today roughly 40 percent of private-sector employees work at companies that don’t offer a single day of paid sick leave. Not a single day. And I think that reflects a larger problem, that for too long we as a society have viewed policies that help people balance work and family as somehow a special benefit maybe to women who shoulder that, rather than an essential part of a workplace that can benefit everyone in the workplace.

To this day there’s still the perception that workers who need time off to care for a sick parent, or who want a more flexible schedule so they can go to the potluck or the play or the parent-teacher conference, are somehow less committed or less desirable. There’s this idea that workplaces that accommodate these needs are destined to be less profitable, less productive somehow.

But we now know that that’s just simply not the case. There’s a lot of evidence out there from companies who’ve implemented really innovative processes to help families. We now know that these kind of policies can actually make employees more productive. We all know this, right? Because instead of spending all day at work worrying about what’s happening at home, they have the support that they need to concentrate on their jobs. And it makes a huge difference in terms of productivity. Just mental health comfort and stability helps workers be better. We know that.

And that’s why we need to change the way we look at these issues so that our workplaces can catch up to the realities of our lives. It’s time we viewed family-friendly policies as not just niceties for women but as necessities for every single working American — men and women — because more and more men are shouldering that same kind of burden. And that’s good, but that’s new. (Laughter and applause.)

Staying home to care for a sick child or taking an elderly parent to a doctor’s appointment shouldn’t mean risking one’s job. That shouldn’t be the tradeoff. People shouldn’t have to choose between taking the time they need after giving birth, for example, or adopting a child, and keeping that job that they need to support the child they just had. That shouldn’t be the choice.

Things like paid family leave and sick days and affordable childcare should be the norm, not the exception. That’s why we think it’s important to highlight companies that are embracing these policies, ones that are experimenting with things like flex time and telecommuting and focusing on performance and output rather than face time. That’s why the President and Secretary Solis have spoken out in favor of the Healthy Families Act, which would let millions more working Americans earn up to seven days a year of paid sick time to care for themselves and their families. That would be innovative and new. But we are happy that we have a President and a Secretary of the Department of Labor who had the vision and the foresight to see that this now needs to happen. (Applause.)

But the administration also knows that we essentially have to put our money where our mouths are, so the administration is working to practice what we preach and make the federal government a model of what we’re asking others to do. From expanding telework options to providing emergency childcare and affordable day care, we need to be implementing all of those ideas throughout the federal government. I was particularly pleased to learn that the childcare center here at the Department of Labor actually provides financial aid to help employees afford excellent care regardless of the size of their paychecks, and those are the kind of things that we need to be doing all across the government. (Applause.)

So these are just a few examples of the kind of concrete steps that we can take to restore some semblance of balance and sanity into the lives of people that you all know, because it’s probably you. (Laughter.) And this is just the beginning. And there’s a lot of work to do — as we all know, as the President has said. He said it before he took the oath of office — change is important, change is hard, and change takes time. I remember him saying that. (Laughter.) So we all know that we have a long way to go, again, and it won’t be easy. But as one of Secretary Solis’s predecessors, President Roosevelt’s Labor Secretary Frances Perkins once pointed out that most of our problems — and this is a quote — “have been met and solved either partially or as a whole by experiment based on common sense and carried out with courage.”

That’s what we need today as well. We need all of you to take the lead — or continue to take the lead in this effort. And all of us, in both government and the private sector, will need to come up with new ideas, try out new approaches, and rely on our courage and our common sense to guide us along the way.

But as I say in all my visits, we’re going to need all of you maintaining some level of energy and optimism through the tough days, because we know you all are working hard — many people staying late, putting in overtime, going the extra mile to make sure that the Department of Labor is strong and it continues to be a source of pride, not just for the administration but for the entire country. And we are grateful to all of you for that, and oftentimes you don’t hear it, but we are grateful. We are a grateful First Family, and we are a grateful nation for the work that you do. We couldn’t do it without you.

So hang in there. If we have all of you continuing to work as you do, I am confident that we will meet these challenges. So thank you all so much. And with that, I’m going to shake some hands and then read “Green Eggs and Ham.” (Applause.)

 END 11:28 A.M. EST