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Chances are that you are getting at least a few emails and IMs with links to YouTube videos every day. While watching these alone can be fun, Synchtube turns this into a far more social experience. Synchtube allows you to share and discuss a video in real time with up to four of your friends. The first person to enter the room controls the playback and also has the ability to change videos.

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To get started, just head over to Synchtube.com and copy and paste a link to a YouTube video into the box in the lower right corner. Then send out the link to the room to your friends and start the video once they have arrived.

In our tests, the service worked just as advertised. The chat room itself is basic, but it fulfills its purpose without getting in the way. The video sync sometimes lagged behind a bit by up to 4 seconds. This is definitely within an acceptable range, however.

Just like these commenters on Reddit, we would love to see a few additional features in the app, including the ability to create playlists, search for videos within the app or give control over the room to another user. The developers have promised to continue to work on this app and plan to add more advanced features in the near future.

Verdict

For now, if you are looking for an easy way to watch YouTube videos with your friends without having to install a desktop app like DeskTube, Synchtube is one of the easiest apps to use. The app has some limitations, but for the vast majority of users, the current version should work just fine and most of the current issues will surely be fixed in the near future.

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Wish you all a very happy and prosperous New Year 2010. JFI was the first food blog event I ever participated after starting this blog. Now I’m a proud host of the same. Thank you very much Indira for giving me this opportunity.

JFI means Jhiva for Ingredients and every month a natural ingredient relating to India or Indian cuisine is featured. I couldn’t think of any ingredient other than Ragi (Finger Millet). I feel that this grain is being neglected by us (or at least by me) like many other healthy Indian food ingredients. We are generous enough to embrace ingredients from other parts of the world, not that its wrong, but I feel that we should do justice to cereals and grains grown in our home country too.

From this year onwards I’m going to take a resolution to try at least one Indian ingredient every month, which I have been neglecting all these days, starting with Ragi in Jan 2010. Are you with me on this? Thanks to the Internet and food blogs, I’m seeing a lot of ragi recipes off late. So it should not be a problem to prepare at least one healthy meal, if not more using whole ragi or ragi flour.

Send in your entries (old and new) and let us create a hub for ragi recipes to benefit everybody. Please note that the ragi flour we get in Indian grocery stores is devoid of the bran which is rich in fiber. So its not a whole grain flour, but this should not stop us from using this quite often, because something is better than nothing. If possible try to use the whole ragi by soaking and sprouting it.

Now for the rules of the event.

Late in December, when inspiration for new articles runs dry, we journalists love getting boozed on  “SOMETHING of the Year” spirits. So here’s an aperitif to cap off 2009. What was Obama’s most important economic decision of the year? Noam Scheiber has an answer. Passing the $787 billion stimulus package? No. Picking Tim Geithner? No. Taking over General Motors? Heavens, no.

It was … the stress tests?

Here’s Noam.
Per usual, this is clear-headed, straightforward thinking and you
should read the whole article. For my two cents, Dan and I have said
for a while that one of the most important things the government did
early when the recession was still mostly a financial crisis was we
stood behind the banks and essentially said: Armageddon will not
happen, and we have the trillions to back that promise up. The Federal
Reserve opened wide its balance sheet to buy bad assets. The Treasury
swung open its doors with hundreds of billions of dollars of TARP to
throw at struggling banks. We put AIG and Citi on government crutches.
We arranged a semi-forced marriage between Merrill Lynch and Bank of
America. These steps told investors that the United States was not in
the business of managing large-scale nationalization or allowing
large-scale bank failure. We were in the firefighting business.

The stress tests, whether they were honest or not, were the damage
report. They told investors that the house that was once on fire was
going to stand. When history judges this year, it will probably
characterize the bailouts as a double-edged sword. On the one had, the
government’s implicit guarantee to save Wall Street probably averted a
depression. On the other hand, by setting a floor on bank losses we
deepened our troubling tradition of moral hazard, which encourages top
tier bank institutions to bet big, knowing the government will have to
bail them out if they lose. But those implications are next year’s debate. This year, I agree with the Noam that the stress tests are something to be thankful for.

See here. Their reviewer calls our book a “tour-de-force statement about the current state of science in America,” continuing:

The writing is engaging and should find an important audience. As opposed to many science-centered books, this book will appeal not only to teachers, but, more importantly, to undergraduates who are slowly becoming aware of political issues. This book should therefore find readership beyond just science students to all students interested, or becoming interested, in current issues important to politics, education, and the general state of our nation.

You can read the full review/recommendation here. We are also of course psyched that our fellow Discover blogger Phil Plait also recently gave Unscientific America an Xmas-time plug, observing,

This book doesn’t complain about how the public doesn’t get science, it actually has advice — good advice — for how people can take up this charge.

You can read Phil’s full take here. We’re very gratified by the new wave of attention the book is receiving this holiday season, and are just about to begin updating it for the paperback due out next summer. So, more soon….

The Transportation Security Administration is attempting to find the source of a leak of a sensitive security directive that followed a failed airline bombing attempt on Christmas Day. Two travel bloggers have revealed that they have been subpoenaed to provide information that may lead to the source of the leak.

Shortly after an attempted “underwear” bomber was discovered on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 from Amsterdam to Detroit on December 25, the Transportation Security Administration issued immediate, temporary changes to security procedures in an attempt to prevent similar incidents. The particular details of those changes were issued in an internal security directive, intended only for TSA employees. However, copies of the directive were leaked to several bloggers and quickly spread around the ‘Net.

Writers Chris Elliott and Steven Frischling both received copies of the security directive from anonymous sources, and both published the text of the directive after mass confusion set in among holiday travelers affected by the sudden changes in security procedures. It appears that the TSA is not punishing either for publishing the document; rather, they are trying to find the source of the leak.

“The DHS & TSA are taking this matter seriously, and that tells me that they are paying attention to security in detail,” Frischling wrote on his blog. So far, neither has admitted to knowing the identity of the source of the TSA directive.

The leak is somewhat embarrassing for the TSA, though, in light of a recent leak of the entire contents of the TSA’s “Standard Operating Procedures” manual online. That disclosure was due to improper redacting of the document, which the TSA later claimed to be out of date.

What is a “Brief” post?”

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Another year has come and gone. 2009 saw a couple of major operating system releases, but the releases of Windows 7 and Mac OS X 10.6 were just a couple of the stories that piqued our readers’ interest over the past 12 months. Here are the ten news posts with the highest number of pageviews over the past year, followed by the five most popular features.

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Chicago Shakespeare Theater (CST) continues the 2009/10 Family Series with Short Shakespeare! The Comedy of Errors, a family-friendly 75-minute abridged production of Shakespeare’s madcap comedy, directed and adapted by David H. Bell.

CST’s Short Shakespeare! program is designed for parents, grandparents, teachers—or anyone with children in their lives—to introduce young people to the timeless works of Shakespeare and the magic of live theater.

Immediately following each performance, the actors remain on stage for a brief question-and-answer session and then join the audience in the lobby for one-on-one conversations and photo opportunities.

Tickets are $16 for students (18 and younger), and $20 for adults.

Short Shakespeare! The Comedy of Errors runs Saturdays at 11:00 a.m., January 23 through March 6, 2010 in Chicago Shakespeare’s Courtyard Theater on Navy Pier. All CST patrons receive a 40% parking discount.

For further information and to purchase tickets, call the Box Office at 312.595.5600, or visit the Theater’s Web site at chicagoshakes.com.

The Comedy of Errors tells the wildly entertaining tale of Antipholus and his servant Dromio landing in Ephesus, searching for their long-lost twin brothers. Everywhere they go in this foreign land, strangers insist that they’re old friends.

Mistaken identities abound, but in the end, chaos gives way to clarity in this comedy filled with mayhem and madness as identical twin brothers and their identical twin servants get lost in a hilarious, mixed-up world of mistaken identities.

For young audiences being introduced to live theater, Chicago Shakespeare’s Courtyard Theater provides a close relationship between audience members and the actors, enhancing the play-going experience.

For this production, the Theater is configured with the addition of main floor seating on the proscenium stage itself, creating a theater-in-the-round.

Usually when you see copyright infringement claims, it’s for copying something that someone else held a copyright on, but THREsq points us to a case where Canadian songwriter, Gordon Peterson, is suing singer Eddie Vedder for supposedly changing lyrics in a version Vedder did of Peterson’s song “Hard Sun.” Assuming that the song was properly licensed (which is also in dispute, but that seems to be a separate issue), it’s difficult to see what sort of copyright infringement claim there would then be for modifying the song. After all, the modifications wouldn’t be covered by Peterson’s copyright at all. But, alas, this is what you get with today’s “ownership culture,” where people just assume more ownership rights over something than they actually have under the law.

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If you need motivation to keep your New Year’s goal of getting more exercise in 2010 and beyond, here are 15 great reasons you can’t argue with:

1. Exercise, along with a healthy diet, can prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes.
2. It improves stress levels and can even make your work life more tolerable. Taking your lunch break to exercise can help you readjust your perspective when things are tough at work or home.
3. Exercise has been shown to improve productivity at work.
4. Regular exercise like brisk walking for 30 minutes three days a week can have a positive impact on your cardiovascular health.



5. People who exercise may live longer than those who don’t! Research has shown that people who exercise live up to three years longer than people who aren’t exercising.
6. Exercise like yoga has been proven to reduce low back pain.
7. You may gain great friends my participating in group sports or just by maintaining a group of walking or running partners.
8. Exercise will help you lose weight!
9. Regular exercise can help reduce high blood pressure.
10. Weight-bearing exercise like walking makes your bones stronger, helping to prevent osteoporosis and possible bone injuries.
11. Exercise can improve your self-esteem and confidence. (Especially when naked!)
12. Physical activity helps you reduce your bad LDL cholesterol while increasing your good HDL cholesterol.
13. Exercise helps you fight anxiety and depression.
14. Regular exercise gives your immune system a boost.
15. You’ll sleep better when you exercise (unless you overdo it).

What’s your motivation to exercise more this year and beyond?

(Image via stock.xchng)

Post from: Blisstree

15 Reasons to Exercise This Year

>> Grocers on Marketplace

Everyone has a favorite local specialty shop—the Italian butcher who sells the best prosciutto or the Mexican grocer with the amazing dried chili peppers. Making a list of the best in any city (let alone country!) is impossible, but we’re trying nonetheless. Add your local favorites in the comments.

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We’re a privileged bunch here at Autoblog. We drive some pretty amazing cars and go to the world’s best automotive events. Of course, it’s our job to not just keep these experiences to ourselves, but let others enjoy them as well. Our cameras are perpetually in hand, capturing the best moments of each test drive, auto show, auction, race and everything else to share with you, our faithful readers.

With 2009 coming to a close, nothing reminds us more of how lucky we are than browsing through the thousands of photos we’ve taken ourselves throughout the year. Of course, we wanted to share the memories with you as well, so we picked out our favorite images taken by the Autoblog team in the last year and put them in one big gallery. We’ve also included a link to the original story from which each image was pulled, just in case you missed out the first time. So to honor the year that was, we give you Autoblog’s top 100 photographs of 2009. Enjoy, and let us know which are ones are your favorites!

For nostalgia’s sake, feel free to also check out the top 50 photographs of 2008.

All photos copyright (C)2009 Autoblog / Weblogs, Inc.

Autoblog’s Top 100 Photographs of 2009 originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Chicago White Sox have a limited number of two-night hotel reservations and weekend passes to SoxFest 2010 at the Palmer House Hilton available to fans.

The special SoxFest hotel rate is $259 (plus tax and applicable charges) for a two-night stay.

White Sox fans have the opportunity to purchase up to two rooms per reservation and those who purchase a two-night stay are eligible to purchase up to four SoxFest weekend passes at $75 each.

SoxFest hotel packages and weekend passes together are available for purchase online at whitesox.com/SoxFest.

Weekend passes only are available for purchase by fans who book the two-night stay.

SoxFest 2010, presented by Comcast SportsNet, Miller Lite, the Palmer House Hilton and Pepsi, will feature appearances by the following White Sox players: Gordon Beckham, Mark Buehrle, Freddy Garcia, Andruw Jones, Paul Konerko, Mark Kotsay, Scott Linebrink, Jayson Nix, Juan Pierre, Jake Peavy, A.J. Pierzynski, J.J. Putz, Alexei Ramirez, Mark Teahen and Matt Thornton, along with manager Ozzie Guillen.

They will joined by former White Sox stars Floyd Bannister, Roland Hemond, Kevin Hickey, Lance Johnson, Ron Kittle, Bill Melton, Minnie Minoso, Gary Peters, Billy Pierce and Bill “Moose” Skowron.

Coaches Harold Baines, Don Cooper, Jeff Cox, Juan Nieves, Mark Salas, and Greg Walker, along with broadcasters Ed Farmer, Ken “Hawk” Harrelson, Darrin Jackson and Steve Stone are all scheduled to appear at SoxFest this year.

SoxFest 2010 will be held Friday, Jan. 22, Saturday, Jan. 23 and Sunday, Jan. 24, 2010.

Days and times are: Friday, 4:00 to 9:00 p.m.; Saturday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.; and Sunday, 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m.

It’s the last show of 2009! It was a good year for RIM, as they released a number of high-quality devices — the Curve 8900, the Tour, the Curve 2, the Storm 2, and the Bold 9700. They’ll surely gear up for a similar year in 2010. But we don’t quite talk about that. Instead, it’s all about RIM’s big promise: security.

So click on over here to hear the BBGeekcast (11 min, 24 sec)

And don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss future episodes!

You can also subscribe to the BBGeekcast in iTunes.

Highlights include:
(more…)

Visit BOWMAN at the SPATEX 2010 Show in Brighton, 6-8th February 2010 and see the new Titanium Swimming Pool Heat Exchanger.
Also on show will be a Stainless Steel version which is suitable for the Aquatic market.

Bowman Sales Manager, Jamie Pratt said,
“We have experienced major sales growth from the 2 new additions which we first launched earlier this year at Piscina Barcelona, the new Titanium units are also ideal for Spas and the Stainless Steel units are suited for the Aquatic market. This is an excellent opportunity to launch our new products here in the UK”.

Titanium is ideal for Swimming Pool Heat Exchangers as it is impervious to fluctuations in pH levels. Units are manufactured to proven designs for optimum heat transfer – saving energy and cost whilst heating pools quickly, using boilers, heat pumps or solar panels.

Visit our Stand U110 during the Brighton Spatex Show, to discuss your requirements with our highly skilled and trained team who will assist you in selecting the most appropriate heat exchanger.

Bowman can offer worldwide sales support and rapid delivery from extensive stock levels.

Tel: +44 (0)121 359 5401
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.ejbowman.co.uk

Radiant Coil Furnaces are ideal for the process heating of liquids and gases to high temperatures over a wide range of operating pressures, where the combination temperature and pressure make heating techniques practical.

Wellman has designed and built numerous Radiant Coil Furnaces for many different applications including:

Heating air at 550 psig to 1700°F

Heating a mixture of natural gas and steam to 1000°F at 3100 psig.

Heating an acid to 1400°F (760°C) to catalyze a chemical reaction.

A four-coil unit, having a total heat capacity of almost 2.0 MW, to heat a process • chemical to 1040°F (560°C) at 700 psig.

A two chamber system for the supercritical oxidation of organic material in waste water (SCWO) using a unique alloy to minimize corrosion at 4050 psig and 425°C.

Dayton, Ohio — The ArcWorld® IV-6200SL “slim line” solution features dual MA1400 welding robots with multiple robot control, a high-speed trunnion positioner, integrated welding package, operator interface and a total safety environment. Independent drive on each of the three positioner axes enables the operator to index the load station or allows both stations to turn while the positioner sweeps, saving cycle time.

The MRM2-250M3XSL and MRM2-750M3XSL positioners feature the fastest indexing time in their class. They are available with 250 kg or 750 kg payloads. The 250 kg payload version indexes in 1.75 seconds; the 750 kg payload version indexes in 2.5 seconds.

The slim line positioner, a redesign of an existing positioner, reduces floorspace. The width of the positioner/workcell is only 1 meter wider than the fixture span. Because the positioner can be serviced from the front of the workcell, additional space can be saved by placing cells next to each other without aisles. These positioners are available in standard lengths of 2.0 and 3.0 meters between mounting surfaces, but can easily be extended. They provide a turning diameter of 1.3 meters to accommodate large parts and tooling.

The MRM2-250M3XSL and MRM2-750M3XSL positioners utilize independent servo motor drives on each of the three axes for high-speed positioning. This reduces cycle times by allowing fixtures to rotate into working position while the main sweep axis indexes between stations. Application flexibility is also a benefit because the load station can be programmed to a more ergonomic orientation. The operator can also jog the load station if manual tack welding is required.

The positioners utilize the MotoMountTM fixture mounting system. This patented design eliminates stresses from poor fixture alignment from being transferred into the bearings or servo drives.

The ArcWorld workcell is available with an optional nozzle cleaner. It can also be combined with automatic tip checking devices such as ToolSight® or ToolSight6D. ToolSight is designed to automatically detect variation in wire position (TCP) before parts are produced.

A PC-based Human Machine Interface (HMI) is available to show cell and production related data. The HMI provides local control for memory backup and displays diagnostic data in an easy-to-read format on a color touch screen. Cell I/O and uptime data is presented graphically. Screens are also provided to allow operators to edit weld positions.

Narrow tolerances are the only way for gear wheels to transfer forces quietly with almost no loss. Compliance with these tolerances must also be measureable. GEAR PRO® is a software module for CALYPSO® measuring software from Carl Zeiss. It is a user-friendly plug-in that guides users through the entire gear wheel measurement. Graphic input windows facilitate this process. The measurement results are displayed as a measurement log or a graphic. Already captured measurement data can be reevaluated subsequently – even with changed parameters. The various modules of GEAR PRO permit the standard and workshop-compliant measurement of practically all gears. GEAR PRO 3.6 is a new, optimized version of this measuring software.

Screw compressors and rotors can be quickly and easily measured using the new module GEAR PRO rotor. Even complex contours with undercuts are automatically measured by GEAR PRO rotor. The internal CAD model helps determine the stylus that best fits the rotor contour.

With GEAR PRO bevel it is now possible to measure pinions and ring gears without a rotary table. The part can be aligned in any coordinate axis. This function is particularly useful for the measurement of long shafts (>1 meter) for commercial vehicles and ships. In the past, such parts could only be measured with rotary tables and measuring machines with an accordingly large Z measuring range. Now there are practically no limitations on the shaft length. Ease of use is ensured by the automatic stylus selection which chooses the best stylus for the corresponding position on the workpiece. Ease of use is ensured by the automatic stylus selection which chooses the best stylus for the corresponding position on the workpiece.

The GEAR PRO involute module with the beveloid plug-in enables the measurement of very simple beveloid gears such as those found in twin-clutch transmissions and ship gearing. Until now, these gear wheels had to be measured over several runs. GEAR PRO captures the complex run in one measuring program. This also means that one measurement log contains all results.

With the extensions for the existing software modules of GEAR PRO and the new GEAR PRO rotor, Carl Zeiss demonstrates that the measurement of gears does not have to be complicated.