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  • El V8 electromagnético del Verde Supercar

    verde1.jpg

    Hace unos días os habíamos mostrado un teaser del Verde Supercar, de Revenge, un casi ignoto constructor norteamericano que desvelaba su proyecto de V8 híbrido. El vehículo por cierto que no ha pasado inadvertido, gracias a su V8 electromagnético, una designación que bien puede ser clasificado como de ficción, pero que es perfectamente realizable, como lo ha probado Revenge con este proyecto.

    Además de poder llevar los clásicos motores V8 de Ford o Chevrolet y de ser un deportivo con un diseño realmente espectacular, con aires de Ford GT, el secreto del Verde es su motor V8 que puede funcionar en base a etanol, que entregaría 400 caballos, consumiendo lo mismo que cualquier híbrido de última generación.

    Su economía se logra mediante la aplicación de la tecnología HP2g, que está integrada por un motor eléctrico dentro mismo del bloque motor, que permite operar individualmente cada cilindro, mediante magnetos cerámicos. De esta manera, el Verde puede funcionar a pleno con sus ocho cilindros, u operar en marcha económica, con un sólo cilindro, si se quiere.

    El pulso electromagnético entra en acción emitiendo electricidad para el motor eléctrico mediante pulsos y no de manera continua. Asi se ahorra energía, mientras el sistema de frenado va regenerando electricidad a las dos baterías que lleva el coche.

    Sería bueno tener disponibles algunos datos más, pero imaginemos por un momento que es un V8 propulsado por 8 pequeños motores eléctricos en cada cilindro y que pueden mover el pistón que sea, a gusto. Me quedan dudas en cuanto a cómo pueden cambiar el orden de encendido cuando no opera con los ocho cilindros y otras cosas, pero parece ser una tecnología prometedora. Habrá que esperar a que el prometido motor HP2g salga a la luz o más datos del constructor.

    Vía | Piston Heads



  • Visible Technologies Tracks Down $22M for Global Expansion

    Visible Technologies
    Gregory T. Huang wrote:

    Things are really heating up for Visible Technologies. The Bellevue, WA-based maker of software to help companies monitor social media and manage their online reputations announced today it has raised a Series C funding round worth $22 million. The round was led by a new investor—Investor Growth Capital (IGC), the growth-stage venture arm of Investor AB. Existing investors Ignition Partners, Centurion Holdings, In-Q-Tel, and WPP also participated.

    “This funding allows us to accelerate our growth path to continue meeting the demands of global customers and help them drive real business results through successful online consumer engagement,” said Visible CEO Dan Vetras in a statement. “We chose IGC as our partners to lead the round for their market expertise, track record in creating sector-leading companies and ability to help us expand in markets outside North America, especially in Europe.”

    Visible Technologies was founded back in 2003, and its cutting-edge technology finds positive and negative content about a brand online, for example, and uses keyword placement, optimization, and linking techniques to make the positive entries pop up higher in search-engine results. In the past year, the company has raised smaller amounts of equity and debt financing—it had raised a total of $23.5 million as of October 2009. Its customers include Microsoft, Autodesk, and Xerox.

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  • S&P Downgrades California To Third World Country Status

    thehills tbi

    Ok, S&P actually downgraded California to A-. And since developing countries have some of the best balance sheets around, maybe the title is especially unfair to those countries.

    The reason?

    The budget situation remains horrible.

    Dow Jones:

    Due to uncertain assumptions of major portions of the budget, S&P said the state’s credit is more susceptible to adverse economic developments.

    As a result, it lowered its ratings on the state’s $63.9 billion of general obligation debt by one notch to A-, which is four notches into investment grade. That is the lowest such rating for any state in the U.S. California also has a negative outlook, meaning future downgrades aren’t out of the question.

    And while the budget proposal includes efforts to make some structural improvement to the state’s projected fiscal imbalance, S&P said it does so by assuming what it considers to be “significant increases in federal reimbursements and funding and reduced federal spending mandates–provisions over which the state lacks singular or direct authority.” It also requires voter approval of two ballot measures to allow the redirection of $1 billion in funds presently earmarked pursuant to two prior election results.

    Read the whole story — >

    Bonus: Now see the real state of collapsing state revenues — >

    Join the conversation about this story »

    See Also:

  • Updated: People Text To Donate As Haiti Earthquake Becomes Hot Topic On Twitter


    mGive Asks You to Text HAITI to 90999 to Give $10 to Red Cross

    Donations are pouring into the Red Cross by text message to support the victims of the Haiti earthquake. The campaign, which lets you donate $10 using your cellphone bill, is spreading quickly on Twitter, Facebook and other social networks. Within hours of operation, the program had raised $800,000 $750,000, and is quickly growing, according to the company.

    After the magnitude of 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on Tuesday, mGive’s Co-Founder and Chairman James Eberhard was woken up in Pakistan last night by the U.S. State Department to get the short-code up and running, wrote Alec Ross, a senior advisor at the state department on Twitter. Since then, “Haiti,” “Text,” and “Red Cross,” have all become major trending topics on Twitter.

    The message spreading on Twitter and Facebook is simple: Text “haiti” to 90999 to donate $10 to Red Cross for Haiti relief efforts. In general, Americans are largely considered uncomfortable with buying things on their cellphones, but clearly the traumatic events taking places in Haiti have left them room to reconsider. While reports from the country are still pouring in, it appears that many schools, hospitals and other buildings have collapsed in a nation that is already considered the poorest country in the western hemisphere.

    A company employee confirmed that Eberhard was indeed woken up in Pakistan, where he was traveling on business, and said that ever since the call the Denver-based company has been “buzzing around, and donations are pouring in.” The employee said the results are “fabulous,” and that already $750,000 had been raised. Donations are set at $10 a text and individuals are limited to donating three times a month. On Twitter, Ross wrote that “#Haiti seems to me to be the first crisis situation in which @twitter is playing an important role connecting people and amplifying info.”

    mGive said that 100 percent of the donations will be passed along to the Red Cross, and the company has agreed to wave all fees at this point.

  • would you want that South Africa accept immigrants from other african countrys.

    question..!would agree that South Africa should accept immigrants from other african countrys.:banana::yes or no :ohno: .

  • Ways To Support The Relief Effort In Haiti (UPDATED) | The Intersection

    The 7.0 earthquake that hit Haiti yesterday is devastating. We will continue to update this post with ways to support relief efforts and encourage our readers to add additional legitimate initiatives in comments. We ask that those with blogs repost these links on their sites.

    American Red Cross International Response Fund
    AmeriCares Help For Haiti
    Direct Relief International
    Doctors without Borders
    HaitiArise
    Haiti Emergency Relief Fund
    Mercy Corps
    Oxfam
    UNICEF
    Yele Haiti

    @wyclef on twitter:

    ‘Haiti is in need of immediate AID please text Yele to 510 510 and donate $5 toward earthquake relief.’ ~Wyclef Jean, founder of Yele Haiti

    @nytimes/haiti-earthquake

    ‘Reports from individuals, news orgs, relief agencies in Haiti.’ ~NYTimes Haiti earthquake twitter list


  • General Motors Drops Tiger Woods

    No more free Cadis for Tiger. Earlier this week, Elin Nordegren was rumored to be trading in her Cadillac Escalade for a new whip — and with good reason. General Motors has ended its relationship with embattled golf star Tiger Woods, PEOPLE.com reports.

    Gatorade, Tag Heuer, Accenture, and AT&T have also cut ties with the world’s No. 1 ranked golfer in the wake of a sex scandal that linked him to at least 13 mistresses. The company’s endorsement contract with the golf star ended in 2008, but his driving deal was extended through Decemeber 31, 2009. As of Jan. 1, Woods will no longer be permitted to drive GM cars for free.

    Word is, the vehicles have already been returned to the manfacturer —including the 2008 Cadillac Escalade Tiger crashed into a fire hydrant last November —will be repaired and sold.


  • Net Neutrality: The Story of The Seven Pipes

    Tim Rowe wrote:

    Today at 4:30 at the Media Lab’s Bartos Theatre, the FCC will hold a public workshop to discuss net neutrality policy. What is the importance of net neutrality to the innovation community?

    We can learn a great deal about this by examining the stories of the seven pipes going into most American homes. Most homes are connected to pipes that carry water, electricity, telephony, cable TV, sewer, gas and Internet. (You can think of the Internet as a separate pipe, anyway, even though it usually comes in over the cable or telephone line.) Yet only one of these pipes has historically offered everyone the chance to innovate on top of it. We should be able to learn something about the importance of open innovation by examining the “innovation histories” of these seven pipes.

    Lets start with water, gas, and sewer. Perhaps Xconomy readers can point out some innovation in the last couple of decades in these areas. There sure aren’t many.

    How about electricity, telephony and cable TV? These sectors often sport a degree of competition, usually with two to three players offering alternatives in each geographic market. But competition is not the same as open innovation. Electric utilities, for example, have struggled for years to broadly adopt a single modest innovation: the ability to pour power back into the grid. Telephony saw some minor innovations about 20 years ago—things like caller ID and *69—but nothing since. Cable TV saw the addition of a few more channels, and a few more pixels, but nothing that fundamentally expands what it does for us.

    And then there is the Internet. Open competition on the Internet “pipe” has spawned so much innovation that industries are being turned upside down. Ask folks in the music, news, broadcast media, and telephony industries, to name a few. Have you been to a travel agency recently? How often do you physically walk into a bank? Many people believe the Internet changed the course of the most recent Presidential election. Oh, and it has placed the greater part of all the world’s knowledge at our fingertips. Enough said.

    Some might say this comparison is unfair—that the other pipes could never have had this kind of impact. Of course, we’ll never know. But if you think that this level of innovation could have been achieved if the Internet were, like the other pipes, managed by a single large, benevolent service provider, one need look no farther than AOL to see what that really did look like.

    In the early days, AOL was the Internet, except that it was under the aegis of a single, large, benevolent service provider. And AOL was great. We all remember chat rooms. But there is no comparison between the innovation AOL spawned and what the “open Internet” would later bring.

    Companies providing Internet service would like to be able to control what flows on our Internet pipes, giving preference to their own services, and squelching others’ offerings. That would be a recipe for turning the Internet back into AOL. Recently, the FCC has started to put in place policies to prevent that. Let’s support this move. We don’t want a future in which the Internet pipe works like the other pipes.

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  • Haiti’s Immediate and Longer-Term Health Crises

    HaitiWith many medical facilities damaged or destroyed in the earthquake, doctors and aid organizations are scrambling today to care for severely injured patients in Haiti. But once the most immediate phase of the crisis passes, massive public health problems will remain.

    “Right now, you have the acute devastation – people dead, dying,” Warren Johnson, an infectious disease specialist with ties to Haiti told the Health Blog today. But there are other, longer-term problems brewing as well.

    “There’s no running water, there’s no sanitation, there’s no food, there’s no electricity” said Johnson, who is based at Weill-Cornell med school in New York. “A week from now, you’re going to have diarrhea and respiratory infections.”

    Doctors Without Borders runs three health-care facilities in Port-au-Prince; all of them were knocked out of commission by the earthquake. The group is treating patients in temporary outdoor facilities, but “the best we can offer … is first-aid care and stabilization,” the group’s project manager for Haiti, who is based in Toronto, said on a press call today. Many patients have crushed limbs and other severe injuries that “cannot be dealt with” in the temporary facilities, he said.

    The first two days after the quake offer the best chance for saving trauma patients, William O’Neill, a dean at the University of Miami’s Miller School of Medicine, told us.

    The school, which has long-standing ties to nearby Haiti, sent a neurosurgeon, two trauma surgeons and an anesthesiologist to Port-au-Prince on a private jet this morning. But with the city in disarray, it’s unclear where they’ll operate. “We don’t really know what the ground conditions are,” he said.

    Johnson, of Cornell, serves on the board of a Haitian AIDS treatment center called Gheskio; the group’s two main facilities in Port-au-Prince were both “severely damaged” in the quake, he said. Roads are largely impassable, and people with diseases such as tuberculosis and AIDS may not be able to get medicine.

    “We treat 500 people with tuberculosis at Gheskio,” said Dr. Johnson. “Most of them with also have AIDS. Now they don’t have food, they don’t have water, they don’t have TB medications.”

    According to 2006 figures from the WHO, life expectancy in Haiti is about 60 years, and annual per capita spending on health care is $96.

    Photo: Associated Press


  • How Microsoft Can Get Back in the Mobile Game

    LG says it’s betting heavily on Android to help the handset maker build its smartphone business, a move that contrasts starkly with last year’s vow to make Microsoft’s Windows Mobile its primary operating system. But in doing so, LG joins a small army of fellow manufacturers that have shifted their focus away from Microsoft’s mobile OS — among them HTC , Sony Ericsson, Motorola and Palm — and, with the lone exception of Palm, toward Android. And the revelation comes on the heels of rumors that the launch of Windows Mobile 7 may be pushed back yet again, to 2011.

    In the meantime, as the mobile skies continue to darken over Redmond, we’ve compiled a few ideas that could get Microsoft back in the game:

    • Make Windows Mobile free to manufacturers. That’s a strategy our friend Chetan Sharma examined more than a year ago; since then Microsoft has continued to lose market share as open-source OSes gain traction in mobile. Making WinMo free — but not open source — might encourage some manufacturers to at least reconsider moving away from the platform.
    • Acquire (or adopt) another operating system and ditch WinMo. Building a mobile OS from the ground up is a Herculean task, but Microsoft has the deep pockets to pick up a newer platform and throw WinMo on the scrap heap. While rumors of a takeover of RIM seem outrageous given the price tag, Microsoft could pick up Palm’s webOS for substantially less. And while Microsoft has historically feared Linux — upon which webOS is based — it last year began indicating it may be softening its stance regarding open-source software.
    • Build a top-notch app store designed for business users. Consumer-focused mobile app stores have quickly become a kind of Moroccan bazaar where users are confronted with a dizzying number of offerings on the cheap. Microsoft — like RIM — could set its Marketplace for Mobile apart from the crowd by combining high-end enterprise and productivity apps with a small library of the best entertainment titles.
    • Make Windows Mobile 7.0 a worthy competitor with a focus on the enterprise. Mobile malware is sure to cause more problems as the popularity of the iPhone and Android-based devices continues to surge. In addition to making WinMo more user-friendly, Microsoft should position it as an ultra-secure platform designed to ensure the safety of mobile data for high-end executives. To sweeten the deal, maybe it should give out a free golf shirt with every WinMo device sold.

    As we’ve said before, it may simply be too late for Windows Mobile to re-emerge as anything but a niche play for a small number of business users. If the gang in Redmond has begun taking mobile seriously, though, it should consider some of these ideas as a way to regain relevance in the increasingly competitive smartphone space.

    Related GigaOM Pro Research: As Windows Mobile Stumbles, Which Smartphone OS Will Seize the Lead?

  • Valentine Giveaway for Pets

    Your sweet purring cat nudges your nose gently and you get the whiff of tuna. That’s fine since he’s so cute, but wouldn’t it be nice to have a breath freshener on hand for your cat or dog?

    cats-valentine

    Don’t let a little stinky breath get in the way of Valentine snuggles with your pet.

    Enter to win DogToids and CatToids — pet breath mints in stylish tins you can slide into a pocket or glove box.

    They’re made in the US from human-grade ingredients by Bamboo.

    CatToids, with natural salmon and liver flavor, include parsley to freshen breath and the essential amino acid taurine for good health.

    DogToids include natural fish, beef and liver flavor with parsley. The pet mints retail for $4.99 per tin, but two lucky winners can try them for free.

    valentine-mints-cat-dog-mints

    Each winner will receive a tin of DogToids and a tin of CatToids! Just leave a comment on this post before 11 pm CST on Friday, February 5 for your chance to win.

    Winners must have a US mailing address and reply to my request for an address within five days. Please check spam filters on February 6.

    Good luck and happy Valentine’s Day!

    (Images via flickr.zemlinki -cats; and Bamboo – mints)

    Post from: Blisstree

    Valentine Giveaway for Pets

  • TechStars Boulder Now Accepting Applications For Summer Mentorship Program

    If you procrastinated on applying for TechStars Boston and missed Monday night’s deadline but still want to attend a TechStars event, their summer program in Boulder, Colorado is now accepting applications.

    TechStars is a highly competitive funding and mentoring program based in Boston, Boulder and Seattle that helps young startups jump-start their businesses. Their impressive list of over 50 mentors includes WordPress founder Matt Mullenweg, venture capitalist Fred Wilson and Foundry Group director Brad Feld.

    Sponsor

    This summer’s program will be the fourth class of companies to go through the Boulder program, and if last year’s class is any example of how things will go this year, big possibilities await applicants. TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen announced last November that six of the 10 companies from the 2009 Boulder class closed investment deals with venture capital firms.

    One disadvantage Boulder applicants face is that any unselected applications from the Boston program are automatically rolled over into the Boulder applications, making the selection more competitive. The same thing will happen in Seattle, which means Seattle applicants will be ultimately vying for spots against the Boston and Boulder rejects.

    The deadline to apply for this summer’s Boulder program is Monday, March 22 at midnight Mountain Standard Time. Seattle applications open the following day.

    Photo by Flickr user Let Ideas Compete.

    Discuss


  • 2006 Nissan Urge concept spotted uncovered on trailer

    Filed under: , ,

    The 2006 Nissan Urge looks like a dead man walking. The three-year-old concept designed as a Mazda MX-5 competitor was once planned for the market, but then the market got really, really sick and so the roadster was killed. That didn’t stop Auto Express from claiming that the Urge would be coming in 2011 back in May.

    Nor has the little two-seater’s deceased state stopped Nissan from trailering it hither and thither, right out in the open. And who was there to catch the incident? None other than motorcar rendering guru Jon Sibal. It looks just like it did at its Detroit Auto Show debut and it’s spotless in the photo, which makes us think they haven’t been hauling the concept uncovered for two years. Thankfully.

    Click the link for the rest of Sibal’s shots, and have a look at it in the high-res gallery below. Maybe this means you’ll be seeing it on a show floor sometime next year… or not?

    Gallery: Nissan URGE Concept

    [Source: Jonsibal.com]

    2006 Nissan Urge concept spotted uncovered on trailer originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 15:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

  • Make your Mac experience easier with Smart Folders

    Mac OS X offers a computing experience that, according to many, is still unparalleled by its competitors. Built on a rock solid UNIX foundation and continually adding refinements that make interaction easier, OS X has a lot of powerful functionality that many users were unaware existed. One of these is the idea of “Smart Folders” and with a little primer, you can begin using them to make your Mac experience easier (and faster).

    Read more from The Apple Blog

  • Eat Your Books: An Online Index for Your Cookbooks

    2010_01_14-EYB.jpgEver since the internet came on the scene, we have used our cookbooks less and less. It is so much more convenient and functional to use the web to search for recipes, ingredients, techniques, and everything else we want to know. Who knows what’s in all those cookbooks we have! While we still enjoy dipping into them for inspiration, they feel far less functional (i.e. searchable) than our trusted food resources online.

    But what if your cookbooks were indexed and searchable online? What if you had a virtual bookshelf with all your cookbooks, searchable and cross-referenced by ingredient and keywords? Well, that changes everything. Meet Eat Your Books.

    Read Full Post


  • Home Organization – Sorting Out Books

    Put down that book. Now, step away from the bookshelf nice and slow and no one will get hurt. I can’t believe you’d try that. Seriously, just because it is missing the cover, is possibly the worst book to ever be published and none of us will ever read it again, you want to get rid of a book? What is wrong with you? I admit it. That was me. The book hoarder. The “I don’t care if they found out the earth was round, this book about the earth being flat doesn’t deserve to be tossed out!” book hoarder. I plugged my mental ears when we covered weeding in collection development courses in college. I felt sad when I weeded books that hadn’t been picked up in two years out of the collection. And at home? I didn’t weed at all. organizing books

    Then, I took a hard look around my house, saw all the books I had and got ruthless. I designated one set of shelves for sentimental books, one set for home and garden books, one set for craft and art books and one for each kid. If it didn’t fit, it had to go. Once I decided on a specific amount of space for books, it was a lot easier to get rid of books we didn’t really need or want. I even dusted off my collection development skills to help me decide which books to keep:

    • Medical books should be no older than five years. Drug guides should be only one to two years old. Even then, make sure you research anything that could have changed by making a call to your doctor or checking reliable websites. Even first aid procedures have changed a lot over the last hundred years, so grandpa’s first aid guide should probably be replaced with a new version.
    • Encyclopedias should also be about five years old or less, although classic versions of Encyclopedia Britannica are worth keeping even if they are much older.
    • Classic books can be as old as you want as long as they aren’t abridged.
    • Kids’ stories are tough. I remember enjoying Little Golden Books when I was a child and have a big collection of them. They’re sentimental so I keep them, but most of them are not actually that well written and are hard to read at bedtime! If you love it, keep it. If you hate it, but the kids love it, keep it. Otherwise, even if it is a hardback that set you mom back $23.95, get rid of it.

    Do you have a problem getting rid of books?

    Photo: SXC

    Post from: Blisstree

    Home Organization – Sorting Out Books

  • ARTICLE: Windows Mobile 6.5 available for HTC Touch Pro2 and Ozone

    HTC Touch Pro2

    Verizon Wireless Touch Pro2 and Ozone owners sick of Windows Mobile 6.1 can breathe a sigh of relief, as Windows Mobile 6.5 has come to town.  Detailed instructions for downloading on the Touch Pro2 and the Ozone can be found at PCD’s website (PCD, previously known as UTStarcom, is the company that makes the devices for HTC).  All of your customizations and downloads will be lost when the device is upgraded, so be sure to back up necessary data.

    As happy as I am for Windows Mobile customers, I’m not so sure that Windows Mobile 6.5 is relevant.  Sure, it still commands marketshare, but with Android, iPhone, and BlackBerry operating systems all major players, I’d say Windows Mobile 7 needs to hit the market sooner rather than later.

    HTC’s original tweet can be found here.  Go get your download on and let us know what you think of the update!

    Via BGR


  • Why a Blu-ray Player Might Become Your Only Set-Top Box [Blu-Ray]

    My love for Blu-ray players grows whenever companies add another feature that has nothing to do with Blu-ray. Now any worthwhile player is a home-entertainment hub, replacing cable box and Apple TV alike. How soon till they handle everything?

    We looked at the four newly announced flagship players from the four biggest Blu-ray companies, LG, Panasonic, Samsung and Sony. Any self-respecting Blu-ray player today has Pandora and Picasa, and of course Netflix subscription streaming video. They also have some form of pay-per-view movie download service, from Vudu, Amazon or Roxio’s CinemaNow and Blockbuster apps.

    This year, though, the companies turned up the juice. LG added a built-in hard drive; Sony surprisingly built a remote-control iPhone app. And now all top Blu-ray players will go 3D. Integrated Wi-Fi was a stand-out feature last year; this year it’s par.

    These won’t be out till the summer, and there’s no pricing announced yet, but already we’re excited. See, putting everything but the the kitchen sink into a firmware upgradeable $200-to-$300 box is way smarter than jamming it all inside a $1500 TV, where picture quality should be the chief concern.

    What Do Blu-ray Players Still Need? Video File Support

    If you want to know who will soon be putting HD media players out of business, look no further than these connected Blu-ray players. Samsung and LG won’t let smaller companies steal their spot on the TV stand; my guess is that they will have amazing file compatibility at launch or slightly after. I mean, LG put in a hard drive, for God’s sake. If that isn’t for dumping crazy video files, I don’t know what is.

    The hard drive sounds nice, but it’s not even necessary. With Wi-Fi connectivity and DLNA compatibility, these players should technically be able to play all your home videos, wherever they are. But they absolutely need 1080p DivX, H.264 and AVC (TS) compatibility—and the ability to read DVD disc images—in order to be considered viable HD video players.

    I don’t list reported file compatibilities here because I have learned that spec sheets can easily lie when it comes to supported video, especially when the combination of codec, wrapper, resolution and file size all affect readability. Until the players are shipping, their true file support is a mystery. Still, I have hope for these.

    The $100 Roku is already on the ropes thanks to current Blu-ray players, since they give you what Roku does plus disc playback. The $120 Roku HD-XR hasn’t yet taken advantage of its USB jack, and the company didn’t announce anything at CES. If they wait too long before providing wide HD video file compatibility, that product, too, will be hurting.

    If the makers of Blu-ray players get with the program, and address the need for true universal home-video playback, they will easily shove aside Asus O!Play and everything else too.

    OK, not everything else. Game consoles, already bestsellers, have been actively converting non-gamers by adding streaming video services, and developing natural interfaces like the Wii’s popular motion controls and the more ambitious forthcoming Xbox 360 Natal project.

    Hopefully this will be the year they see the light on video support, too. The PS3 could have been the ultimate set-top box, but Sony’s inability to see the commercial value of openness killed the PS3’s non-gamer appeal. The Xbox is a lot closer to the ideal, but it doesn’t yet support all files, and betting on HD DVD—and then not jumping to Blu despite Ballmer’s frequent (and justifiable) promises—means no HD disc support, also a mistake.

    Look, some of these Blu-ray players won’t go all the way with file support, either. Speaking of Sony, can you imagine the king of patent royalties and DRM embrace file formats it doesn’t get cash payoffs from, or could possibly be used in the service of piracy? Still, at least one great Blu-ray player will rise here. Am I dreaming? A year ago I would have thought so, but from what we all now regularly get from our cheap HD media players, my dreams are likely to come true—and soon, too.







  • The Indifference of Data [Image Cache]

    Pundits, humanitarian organizations, and even the Haitian government haven’t fully assessed the devastation on the earthquake-shattered half-island. Seen through machine eyes, yesterday is a blip; through human eyes, it defies description.

    If you’d like to donate to an organization that can help, here are some places to start:

    • MSF/Doctors Without Borders
    • The American Red Cross International Response Fund, or text “HAITI” to 90999, which donates $10 to the same—Thanks, Complexified!

    Additionally, online tech store SmallDog is matching any MSF/DWB donations up to $200. [The Big Picture]







  • Katharine McPhee Shape Magazine Feb. 2010

    In the Feb. issue of Shape Magazine, former American Idol finalist and bulimia survivor Katharine McPhee talks about her new healthy lifestyle.


    Image Source….

    “The more I focused on my weight, the worse my bulimia got,” the recently-blonde singing star recalls. “Now I’m more easygoing. I stopped fighting myself and became more forgiving of my body. Ironically, the weight came off naturally through exercise but no dieting.”

    The new issue of Shape hits newsstands January 18. Katharine’s sophomore album, Unbroken, is available now.