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Filed under: Macworld, TUAW Business

For the past several years, IDG World Expo has created a community on Ning for Macworld Expo. You can join up and follow various bloggers and companies, and now TUAW has a group page for the show.

To join the group, just head over to http://macworldexpo.ning.com/group/tuaw. You can participate in our Macworld Expo discussion, find out where TUAW bloggers will be at the show, and even find out about possible meetups in San Francisco during Macworld.

It’s all free, and we’d love to have you join in on the fun. If you already have a login for the Macworld 2010 site, simply ask to be added to the group. For those who don’t have a login, you can sign up by clicking the appropriate Sign Up link on the right side of the page.

TUAWGoing to Macworld Expo 2010? Join our community for updates and news originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google has announced that Gmail will now operate using HTTPS, a secure connection between a browser and a server, by default. Previously, users could turn on HTTPS connections as default in their settings, but the situation has now been reversed.

Google said that after taking a look at the trade-off between speed and security, the primary concern in this case, they decided that it was worth it to the end-user to automatically use a secure connection.

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A group of 37 security and privacy specialists sent Google a letter (.pdf) last June, urging the company to offer this feature. Gmail became the third largest email provider last August, with more than 37 million unique visitors.

For all of you sitting at a coffee shop all day, using its unsecured wireless network, Google may have just saved you some serious headaches. That extra couple of seconds of load-time may just be worth it. Of course, if you don’t use Gmail or your service doesn’t offer HTTPS, there are always solutions like Pretty Good Privacy to keep your private emails secure.

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How much money will Google leave on the table if it makes good on its threat to walk away from China?

Depends who you ask.

Last night JP Morgan (JPM) analyst Imran Khan estimated that Google (GOOG) might give up $600 million in 2010 revenue if it bails. Today, Citigroup’s (C) Mark Mahaney ballparks the number in the $300 million to $350 million range.

Both analysts agree with Google’s description of the revenue loss as “immaterial”, though.

For now, that is. The real worry, of course, is that if Google gives up on China now, it will have forgone a huge business opportunity in the future.

So the real question — and one we won’t get an answer to for a bit — is whether Google thinks it is still negotiating with China, or whether it has already written off the world’s biggest population of Internet users.

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In an interview with Bloomberg last week, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz gave herself a “B-minus in her first year.”

The anniversary of her arrival at Yahoo is, in fact, today. (Her first words as CEO at a press conference a year ago? “Yahoooo!” and “Friggin.’”)

In the Bloomberg interview, Bartz was less effusive, saying should have moved faster to reorganize and also strike the online advertising and search partnership with Microsoft (MSFT), even as she noted that the management challenge at Yahoo (YHOO) “was a little tougher internally than I think I had anticipated.”

Predicted Bartz about the Silicon Valley icon: “You’re just going to see Yahoo bloom more.”

That’s nice, especially since BoomTown loves getting pretty-smelling flowers!

But, ever the stickler, it is incumbent on this Yahoo-obsessed column to weigh in on grading too, starting tomorrow and drilling down a lot more specifically on Bartz’s overall performance in 2009.

Thus, I will be looking at five overall areas from which to render her marks: Management, financials, product innovation, deal-making and, yes, moxie–or, if you want to be dull, inspirational leadership.

Until then, please enjoy this highlights video below from my most excellent interview with Bartz at the seventh D: All Things Digital conference last May, in which she both touched my knee and cursed me out.

Let me say, Bartz gets an automatic A-plus for that!

And here is the video of the full session, if you’re interested, clocking in at about 49 minutes:

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The first early sales data for Google’s Nexus One are in and it would seem to belie the “superphone” superlative the company has attached to it. According to market analytics firm Flurry, the Nexus One sold an estimated 20,000 units in its first week.

An unremarkable showing, to say the least–especially for a device launched amid so much buzz. Flurry estimates that Nexus One was outsold by Motorola’s (MOT) Droid by more than 12 times and by Apple’s (AAPL) iPhone 3GS 80 times.

Now, Flurry’s Nexus One sales estimate is obviously the roughest of guesses–the company gets its numbers by monitoring application usage on the iPhone and Android platforms, not from any hard sales data. That said, it’s likely at least directionally correct and suggests that Google (GOOG) may have a tough time moving the five to six million Nexus One handsets analysts have been calling for it to sell by the end of 2010–especially if customer support issues associated with it continue.

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The Italians and European Union are preparing a light 2-seat airplane for takeoff powered by hydrogen fuel cell and lithium ion batteries. I’ve talked about manned hydrogen fuel cell airplanes before, with and without the aid of lithium ion batteries.

The Rapid 200-FC hydrogen fuel cell manned airplane has an electric 40 kW propeller and a 20 kW hydrogen fuel cell, made by British company Intelligent Energy. The fuel cell airplane also contains a 20 kW lithium polymer battery pack to add more power for takeoffs.

The hybrid fuel cell airplane has a couple of advantages over a conventional small plane. First, the hydrogen plane is a zero emissions vehicle that emits only water and heat as byproducts. Second, the FCV airplane is very quite.

Because of noise abatement issues, some airports limit the amount and size of airplanes that can takeoff and land especially at night. Near where I live all airplanes are barred from taking off after 9 pm. This kind of quite small plane would fit into the low noise mandate on airports such as this and expand the flying time for pilots and their companies.

This Rapid 200-FC is part of the European Community “ENFICA-FC” project (Environmentally Friendly Inter City Aircraft powered by Fuel Cells). The aircraft has just completed its first high speed taxiing test. The aircraft has been built, however, to attain a maximum speed of 110 mph.

If your subscription is paid, you can watch Netflix for free on your computer, your Blu-ray player, your PS3, and soon, your Wii—but not on the Xbox 360. Microsoft, it’s time to kill the Xbox internet tax

In case you don’t own an Xbox, what I’m talking about is Xbox Live, Microsoft’s online gaming/content/social network system for the Xbox 360. The free, or “Silver” version of the service offers a slim set of online capabilities, limited to game demo and add-on downloads, and some downloadable video content. But all the other stuff the Xbox does online—the online gaming, the movie and music streaming, the social networking—requires an Xbox Live Gold subscription, which costs $50 a year, $20 every three months, or $8 a month.

In return, Microsoft gives you online gaming, something which has obvious costs for them, and which I can understand paying for. But they’re also effectively selling you access to services that aren’t theirs, services that are free, or services that you’ve already paid for:

• Netflix. If you have access to Netflix instant streaming, you’re already paying at least $9 a month for the service, and whatever you pay for your broadband connection. You can stream it for no extra charge on all other consoles, and the content is streamed from Netflix’s servers, so why are we paying Microsoft for this?

• Last.fm, Twitter and Facebook. These are recent additions to Xbox Live, and Microsoft obviously spent a fair bit of time and resources devising new interfaces for these services. It would be fair, then, to charge a set number of Xbox Points for these apps, but to charge a recurring Live Membership fee to access these otherwise free services doesn’t make sense.

• Zune. This, of all the services in the Xbox Live Gold ghetto, makes the least sense. In the Zune video marketplace, you pay for movies with Xbox points. In other words, you have to pay for Zune movies or TV shows twice: once with your Live Gold membership, and once with your actual media purchase. UPDATE: A Microsoft rep got in touch:

All Xbox LIVE members, including Silver, can rent, buy, and stream videos from Zune on Xbox LIVE.

That did seem like a little much—I stand corrected.

I’m not saying that Microsoft should scrap Live altogether, or that there can’t be a paid tier for the service. I’m also not saying that other companies are innocent here—Sony, while they’re not charging for Netflix access, do require a Sony-tied login to access it, which seems like an unnecessary, albeit costless, extra layer between you and the external service you’ve already paid for. I’m just saying that Microsoft needs a Live subscription system that only asks you to pay Microsoft when Microsoft gives you something in return. Charge for online gaming, charge for Netflix Parties, charge for things that cost money.

Just stop charging us for things that we’ve already paid for, or that we don’t—or even can’t—pay for anywhere else.

Filed under: Truck, Recalls, Safety, Honda

Honda is recalling up to 7,600 Ridgeline pickups from the 2006 and 2007 model years over possible HVAC issues. According to Honda and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a harness connector above the passenger-side footwell is susceptible to being kicked by exuberant passengers. The blows can cause the connector terminal to overheat, which in turn can cause all sorts of other issues, like a short-circuit and/or fire.

If you own one of these unibody pickups, your local Honda dealer will remedy the issue free of charge by inspecting the wiring, replacing it if necessary, and fitting a protective cover to deflect the possibility of future passenger kicks. More info on the recall in the notice after the jump.

[Source: The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration]

Continue reading Honda recalls 2006-2007 Ridgeline because your passenger might have a dangerous kick?

Honda recalls 2006-2007 Ridgeline because your passenger might have a dangerous kick? originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Filed under: Detroit Auto Show, Convertible, Coupe, Performance, Audi

The V10-powered Audi R8 5.2 FSI is a fantastic car, whether in coupe or convertible form. Heck, it’s even great in brown, as proven by the pair of cars on the show floor. It might not be our first color choice for the German supercar, although it was a nice change from the usual white, silver, and gray cars that usually are strewn about the Audi stand.

Not that it matters, of course. A look on Audi USA’s web site reveals that the color isn’t available here in the States. Neither are the carbon ceramic brakes that are hiding behind the 19-inch wheels. A sign of things to come? Perhaps, and we wouldn’t be too heartbroken if they came up as future options. Check out the gallery below and decide for yourself whether the color suits the R8.

Photos by Drew Phillips / Copyright (C)2010 Weblogs, Inc.

Detroit 2010: Audi R8 5.2 FSI coupe, Spyder make brown look good originally appeared on Autoblog on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 hit another milestone as the best-selling video game has passed $1 billion in retail sales since its launch in November.

Activision Blizzard’s record-breaking game is second only to James Cameron’s Avatar film, which also passed $1 billion and is on its way to passing up Titanic as the biggest box office hit of all time. According to BoxOfficeMojo, Avatar has generated $1.34 billion in sales so far. More people have seen the film, since movie tickets cost less than the $60 game. There’s a kind of race between the two properties going on.

But Modern Warfare 2 beat Avatar in its first five days, generating $550 million in sales. And it beat other films such as Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince and The Dark Knight. The surprising thing with Modern Warfare 2 is that it is a hardcore game, which by its very nature has a more limited appeal to the mass market. It just so happens to be one of the most riveting game experiences ever. It also got a lot of attention because of a controversial scene where the player participates in a civilian massacre at a Russian airport; developer Infinity Ward has since included an option to skip the controversial scene.

I’ve been playing multiplayer since November and now have a rank of Major II in the game. I’m ranked worldwide at about 3.9 millionth. There are so many people playing the game that when I took six days off for the Consumer Electronics Show, my rank dropped by 300,000. The game does a wonderful job of holding your attention for weeks and weeks, mainly by doling out rewards for extended participation.

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El lunes la Organización de las Naciones Unidas (ONU) inaugura el Año Internacional de la Biodiversidad en Berlín, Alemania, con una advertencia: la rica variedad de flora y fauna se está perdiendo a un ritmo mil veces superior al normal como resultado de la actividad humana.

Ocho años atrás, los gobiernos prometieron reducir la velocidad a la que están desapareciendo las especies para 2010. Sin embargo, esta meta no se ha logrado.
El crecimiento de las ciudades y la actividad agropecuaria son dos de las principales razones.

Alerta
En opinión de Ban Ki-moon, secretario general de la ONU, el fracaso en proteger la biodiversidad debe servir como una advertencia que nos impulse a buscar una forma efectiva para proteger los bosques, las cuencas hidrográficas, los arrecifes de coral y demás ecosistemas.

A medida que los sistemas naturales como los bosques o los humedales desaparecen, la humanidad pierde los servicios ambientales que estos ecosistemas proveen de manera gratuita como por ejemplo la purificación del aire y el agua o la protección frente a los eventos climáticos extremos.
La rapidez con la que se están extinguiendo las especies ha hecho que muchos biólogos afirmen que atravesamos actualmente la sexta era de grandes extinciones de la Tierra. Las cinco anteriores fueron provocadas por eventos naturales, como el impacto de asteroides.

La Convención de la ONU sobre Diversidad Biológica (CBD, por sus siglas en inglés) fue acordada en la Cumbre de la Tierra de Río, en Brasil, en 1992, junto con la Convención sobre Cambio Climático.

Más cumbres“Estamos frente a una crisis”, aseguró Jane Smart, directora del grupo conservacionista Unión Internacional para la Conservación de la Naturaleza (UICN).

Sin embargo, la esperanza de la ONU está puesta en la Cumbre sobre Diversidad Biológica el próximo octubre en Japón, donde se discutirá la posibilidad de llegar a un acuerdo vinculante para tratar de frenar la pérdida de la biodiversidad.

Fuente Bibliográfica

We saw plenty of Samsung’s wild conceptual efforts while at CES, but it looks like they’ve not yet completely given up on actual products. Good news for Korea, today — it looks like they’ll be getting three new all-in-one PCs from the company any day now. The MU100 boasts an Intel Atom N450 CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB hard drive, and Intel GMA 3150 graphics, while the 2-inch MU200’s got an Intel Pentium T4400 processor and GeForce G310 graphics with 512MB of VRAM. Finally, the 23-inch, full HD MU250’s got an Intel Core 2 Duo T6600 CPU, 3GB of RAM, a 500GB of HDD, GeForce G310 graphics with 512MB of VRAM. Both the M200 and the M250 displays are multitouch, and all three systems run Windows 7 Home Premium. There’s no word yet on pricing or availability outside of Korea.

Samsung busts out three all-in-one PCs for Korean market originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 11:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading ‘World’s first’ LCD greeting card captures your child’s adoringly banal moments for posterity

‘World’s first’ LCD greeting card captures your child’s adoringly banal moments for posterity originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Jan 2010 10:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Some mobile startups do something that can’t be done online. Others copy an online business and bring it to mobile. And then there are companies like Scoutmob [iTunes link]. They take a great online business and make it ten times better by allowing you to take advantage of the service on-the-go.

Scoutmob is Woot on mobile, done on a local scale. Scoutmob provides location-aware coupons directly to your mobile device. They launch in Atlanta, and their first offer is for 50% off at Murphy’s, which is a 4-star restaurant according to Yelp. The offers, according to CEO Dave Payne, have a rapid expiration time (in this example, 24 hours), so you need to use the coupon within one day. They’ll have a different offer every day, so don’t weep if you can’t fly into Atlanta by midnight – you’ll be able to hit up Octane Coffee Bar and Lounge tomorrow.

For those of you who caught it, one obvious downside is “they launch in Atlanta.” That’s not to say Atlanta isn’t a cool place (hey, they brought us Coca-Cola and the Dirty Bird), but just that I doubt there are as many iPhone owners there as in San Francisco or New York City. That said, Dave’s existing business, SkyBlox, is a company that provides WiFi to 2,500 local businesses in Atlanta, so they’ve got an incumbent customer base to draw on for their offers.

Scoutmob seems to be entering an interesting business at a great time. Real-time and location-based mobile apps are hot as balls right now, and the virtual coupon business is making headlines too. Of course, it’s also super crowded – as there are many location-aware coupon apps on the iPhone, including Yowza!, which has made headlines because its founder is Heroes star, Greg Grunberg.

An interesting side-story (and a knock against Scoutmob) is that Dave has no technical expertise himself and does not have a technical team to make or maintain the application. Instead, he outsourced the technology to a web developer friend from college who didn’t know Objective-C. How the hell did he make an iPhone app with Push, a native UI and geolocation with a web developer? He used Appcelerator’s Titanium product, which enables web developers to create iPhone and Android applications. I’ve sat down with CEO Jeff Haynie, and Titanium, which is free, seems to be a cool way for web developers to create native-looking iPhone apps without having to code in Objective-C.

Scoutmob is available on the iTunes store and their first promotion is today.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Yesterday, Google announced that it was fed up with China. It had been struggling with China for quite some time, tolerating its censorship laws, due to its policy to follow the laws of whatever countries it does business in. But China has finally struck its last nerve: it is now threatening to shut down its operation in China. Most analyses that I’ve read think that would be a pretty bold move, but I’m not so sure.

Before getting into my thoughts on this topic, I want to direct your attention to a post from last night by James Fallows. He’s forgotten more about China than I know, so his analysis on the political and global implications of this event is extremely valuable. He believes that this development adds to the argument that China’s government may be entering a phase where the rest of the world views its leaders as deliberately antagonistic.

So what exactly caused Google’s anger? They had been tolerating censorship for quite some time, but something different happened recently: a new and extremely disturbing cyber attack occurred. Google’s blog explains:

In mid-December, we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google. However, it soon became clear that what at first appeared to be solely a security incident–albeit a significant one–was something quite different.

First, this attack was not just on Google. As part of our investigation we have discovered that at least twenty other large companies from a wide range of businesses–including the Internet, finance, technology, media and chemical sectors–have been similarly targeted. We are currently in the process of notifying those companies, and we are also working with the relevant U.S. authorities.

Second, we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. Based on our investigation to date we believe their attack did not achieve that objective. Only two Gmail accounts appear to have been accessed, and that activity was limited to account information (such as the date the account was created) and subject line, rather than the content of emails themselves.

Third, as part of this investigation but independent of the attack on Google, we have discovered that the accounts of dozens of U.S.-, China- and Europe-based Gmail users who are advocates of human rights in China appear to have been routinely accessed by third parties. These accounts have not been accessed through any security breach at Google, but most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on the users’ computers.

A cynical view of this news might be that Google’s hubris caused its reaction to this attack. Once its intellectual property is at stake, it gets serious. But thinking more deeply about what the company actually says above, I think a very different conclusion should be reached.

We know that a) cyber attacks are not uncommon and b) Google had managed to tolerate China’s censorship polices up to now. The difference here is the nature of the attack. Google is infuriated, not just that its own data was compromised, but that the attack appears to have been politically motivated. What angers Google so much is that opponents of human rights are trying to gather the private information stored through Google services of those who fight for human rights.

Now Google doesn’t come out and say that the Chinese government orchestrated these attacks. But whoever did certainly doesn’t sympathize with human rights activists’ cause — and neither does the government. So, to me, this sort of looks like a situation where Google is challenging the Chinese government to take action against those who sought to violate the privacy of human rights activists. If China fails to comply with this request, then Google may exit China. The one thing it won’t tolerate is the Chinese government’s acquiescence to hackers targeting a specific group of individuals for political reasons.

From a business perspective, this shows a pretty serious dedication by Google to its ideals. It’s “don’t be evil” mantra is being upheld here, at the cost of significant revenue potential in China. It’s easy for someone like me to say that Google shouldn’t do business in a nation that has such politically unsavory policies, but I don’t have millions or billions of dollars at stake like Google does by making this decision.

I think it would be rather tragic if Google does exit the Chinese market, however. On some level that would kind of be like Google “letting the terrorists win.” If it really wishes to fight evil, as its motto indicates, then simply throwing in the towel seems like the easy way out. If Google really wants to make a statement, then it should continue to fight the good fight and use its technological prowess to make its systems impenetrable to such attacks so that its search and services can enhance the lives and knowledge of the Chinese people.

by Peter Sinclair

If you’ve poked around on the web for information on climate change, you
probably heard the meme – “32,000 scientists signed a petition debunking
global warming.”
32,000 of the world’s leading scientists? 
Is that really true?
Well, no…

Related Links:

It’s cold outside—What happened to global warming?

What does climate consensus look like?

Scientists demand meeting to talk climate with head of American Farm Bureau

I have the sneaking suspicion that one could collect any partially opaque object, hang it en masse encapsulating a central light source and have themself a clever chandelier. Further investigation necessary, if I could only find my glasses…

[Stuart Haygarth via Very Very Nice via Dude Craft via MAKE]

Note: Use of “themself” explained more here for resident grammarians. I’m trying to bring themself back like Timberlake brought sexy.