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T-Mobile is anxious to close out its merger with MetroPCS so it can begin the swallowing the regional operator’s spectrum into its 3G and 4G networks, but MetroPCS’s biggest shareholder, hedge fund Paulson & Co., isn’t eager to see the deal rushed.

In a statement distributed to financial media, hedge fund manager John Paulson said it would vote its 9.9 percent stake against the merger deal as it stands today. The complex deal would see Deutsche Telekom merge its U.S. arm into MetroPCS, creating a new publicly traded company and paying Metro’s shareholders $1.5 billion in cash. According to Paulson, that just isn’t enough.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Paulson said he would reconsider his position if Deutsche Telekom and MetroPCS could restructure the final company’s debt, lower its interest rate, pay more cash to Metro shareholders or give them a bigger portion of the merged company. Paulson said he believes there are potentially more lucrative deals in the offing, based on interest shown in Metro by Dish Network and Sprint.

Paulson now joins hedge fund P. Schoenfeld in opposing the merger. Together they own about 12 percent of the company, which isn’t enough to derail the deal, but if they can attract other investors to their cause, the Metro board could have a problem on their hands.

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• A look back at mobile in the third quarter
• Mobile 2012 and beyond
• 12 tech leaders’ resolutions for 2012

The U.S. district court judge that presided over the landmark patent trial between Apple and Samsung last summer has slashed $450.5 million from the $1.05 billion Apple was awarded by the jury, Bloomberg reported Friday. In addition, the judge said some Samsung products included in the previous ruling should get a new trial.

Judge Lucy Koh removed the $450.5 million from the award because they correspond to 14 Samsung devices that she says should get a new hearing as to whether they did infringe on Apple’s mobile patents. Those devices include, according to FOSS Patents:

Galaxy Prevail, Gem, Indulge, Infuse 4G, Galaxy SII (AT&T), Captivate, Continuum, Droid Charge, Epic 4G, Exhibit 4G, Galaxy Tab, Nexus S 4G, Replenish, and Transform

If these products are still found to infringe on Apple’s patents in a new trial, Apple could win back that $450.5 million in damages, or perhaps get even more depending on what the new jury determines.

Updated with more detail at 12:55 p.m. PT.

 

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• The state of cross-platform media measurement
• How emerging technologies will influence collaboration
• CES 2012: a recap and analysis

Meet Jordan Novet, who will be covering cloud computing and big data for us, from our San Francisco office. Jordan will focus on ways that the cloud — and our ability to grab, store and analyze massive amounts of data – is changing not only our infrastructure but also how businesses operate. Jordan has already been on the job for about a month; you can see a sample of what he’s been writing here, here and here.

Jordan grew up in New York City and went to college at the University of Missouri. Before joining GigaOM, he spent two years as a business reporter at the Bulletin newspaper in Bend, Ore., where he covered two things near and dear to developers’ hearts: beer and data centers. You can reach him at [email protected].

Jordan will be working closely with the other members of our stellar cloud and data team: Derrick Harris, who loves big data and think pieces on the intersection of data and policy, machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other topics; Barb Darrow, who covers the big companies in cloud and the traditional enterprise companies (as well as some startups in Boston, where she’s based); and Stacey Higginbotham, who has begun to transition into a new beat — the internet of things — but who still writes stories here and there about software-defined networks and physical infrastructure.

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• GigaOM Research highs and lows from CES 2013
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Mobile payments startup Square has apparently run afoul of the Illinois Department of Financial & Professional Regulation.

In a cease and desist order sent to Square, the Illinois department says that Square is “engaged in the business of transmitting money in Illinois, as defined by the Act, without the required license.”

The “act” that they refer to is the state’s “Transmitters of Money Act,” which says that:

No person may engage in this State in the business of selling or issuing payment instruments, transmitting money, or exchanging, for compensation, payment instruments or money of the United States government or a foreign government to or from money of another government without first obtaining a license under this Act.

The act clarifies that transmitting money means “the transmission of money by any means, including transmissions to or from locations within the United States or to and from locations outside of the United States by payment instrument, facsimile or electronic transfer, or otherwise, and includes bill payment services.”

Square has responded, saying,

“We’ve been in close contact with the Illinois Division of Financial Institutions for several months and are addressing their concerns.”

Far from an expert in legal affairs, I won’t attempt to make any additional comments about the order other than the fact that it looks like Square simply needs to obtain a license.

[TechCrunch]

Google will not have to pay to use snippets of news content in Germany, according to a copyright law (pdf) that was passed in the country.

We discussed the proposed law last year, which Google had spoken out about. At the time, it looked like, if passed, it would have required search engines and aggregators to pay to license content from publishers in order to display headlines (with links) and snippets of text.

At the time, A Google spokesperson told WebProNews, “We don’t have any sympathy for these plans, as an ancillary copyright lacks all factual, economic, and legal foundation. And we are not alone with this opinion: The Federation of German Industries (BDI) and 28 other associations vehemently oppose an ancillary copyright for publishers. The German parliament is divided on the issue as well. For a good reason: An ancillary copyright would mean a massive damage to the German economy. It’s a threat to the freedom of information. And it would leave Germany behind internationally as a place for business.”

“Publishers should be innovative in order to be successful,” the Googler added. “A compulsory levy for commercial internet users means cross-subsidizing publishers through other industries. This is not a sustainable solution.”

“In difficult economic times, the Internet is thriving, generating economic gains, creating jobs and giving struggling businesses a vital lifeline,” they said. “It is important that any legislation supports, rather than hinders innovation on the internet to encourage new jobs and economic growth.”

It appears that things went a lot better than they could have, but the law still leaves question about how much text can actually be used in a snippet. As TechDirt points out, the wording says that quotations will still have to be licensed unless they are “single words or the smallest excerpts,” without defining what “smallest excerpts” actually means.

I guess we’ll see where it goes from here.

Server sales are up after a sluggish start to 2012, but growth isn’t coming from the incumbent server vendors, say several new reports. The “other” category, which includes Quanta and other companies building custom servers for large cloud companies had the most impressive growth, suggesting a significant impact for Open Compute designs at the expense of major server makers like Dell and HP.

So while reports from IDC and Gartner show a slightly down year for servers, there was positive growth in the fourth quarter, driven by hyperscale data centers. Enterprise adoption of new server hardware was sluggish, with hyper-scale Internet companies and service providers driving growth.

Gartner and IDC saw revenue increase 5.1% and 3.1% respectively in the fourth quarter of 2012 versus same period 2011, but both saw declines of 0.6% and 1.9% for the year compared to 2011. IDC said The Q4 increase was the first quarterly increase in five quarters.

Growth offset by enterprise sluggishness, virtualization

While hyperscale data centers were a bright spot in fourth quarter sales, overall annual sales are still being dragged down by enterprise delays. “2012 was a year that definitely saw budgetary constraint which resulted in delays in x86-based server replacements in enterprise and mid-sized data centers,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner. “Application-as-a-business data centers such as Baidu, Facebook and Google were the real drivers of significant volume growth for the year.”

Gartner’s outlook for 2013 suggests that modest growth will continue. These increases continue to be buffered by the use of x86 server virtualization to consolidate physical machines as they are replaced. Some replacements are likely to begin in the enterprise segment as servers continue to age and economies improve.

IDC says the x86 server market experienced sharp revenue growth in 4Q12 as systems based on Intel’s Sandy Bridge processor — which was launched in early 2012 — experienced strong demand which helped drive sharply higher average selling prices across the market.

Trends of Note

IDC is observing an increased interest from the market for converged systems, suggesting enterprises are latching onto the idea of turnkey solutions. Servers optimized for high density were helped by the growth of service providers in the market as well.

“In addition to HPC, Cloud and IT service providers favor the highly efficient and scalable design of Density Optimized servers,” said Jed Scaramella, research manager with IDC. Revenue for Density Optimized Servers grew 66.4 percent year over year in 4Q12 to $705 million.

“Blade servers are being leveraged in enterprises’ virtualized and private cloud environments,” said IDC, which said enterprise IT organizations are viewing converged systems as a method to simplify management and increase their time to value. IDC said blade server revenue grew 3.3 percent from last year to $2.4 billion, accounting for 16.3 percent of total server revenue. Gartner said blade servers posted a revenue increase of 3.2 percent but a shipment decline of 3.8 percent for the year.

Another interesting trend is being driven by Open Compute. Gartner’s data shows strong growth for vendors lumped under “Others,” which includes Quanta and other companies (Hyve, ZT Systems, WiWynn) building custom servers for large cloud companies.

High performance computing and cloud helped Linux, according to IDC, and now represents 20.4% of all server revenue. Microsoft Windows server demand continues to increase as well. What took the biggest hit is Unix, which saw its share decline for the sixth consecutive quarter. “Relatively weak mainframe and RISC/Itanium Unix platform market performance kept overall revenue growth in check,” said Jeffrey Hewitt, research vice president at Gartner.

Growth from a geographic perspective

IDC had forecast that server demand would begin to improve in the second half of 2012, following a number of product refreshes in the first half of the year. That was correct, albeit the turnaround was a quarter later than expected due to sluggish enterprise buying and soft market demand in particular regions.

“While this did happen in the fourth quarter, market demand was uneven with the U.S., Asia/Pacific and Latin America all experiencing sharp growth, while demand in all other regions remained soft,” said Matt Eastwood, group vice president and general manager, Enterprise Platforms at IDC. ”Average selling prices for servers increased sharply in the quarter as large and small enterprises continued to invest heavily in new server capacity to drive additional consolidation and virtualization initiatives.”

Gartner saw similar growth patterns from a geographic perspective.There was server revenue growth in spite of relative softness in some regions, most notably Western Europe. The three highest growth rates were shown by North America (5.5 percent), Asia/Pacific (3.4 percent) and Latin America (0.2 percent) in terms of unit shipments. These were the only regions to experience an increase in shipments. These three regions grew at a rate of 16.3, 15.5 and 6 percent respectively.

The Revenue Market Share Rankings

Both research houses once again had had IBM as the top server vendor. IDC said it had 36.5% market share, while Gartner accords Big Blue a 34.9% market share. IDC attributed IBM’s growth to improvements in demand for its System z mainframes, which recorded their highest quarterly revenue for System z in more than a decade. Revenue for IBM’s System z mainframe running z/OS increased 55.6 percent year-over-year to $1.8 billion, representing 12.3 percent of all server revenue in the fourth quarter.

Jean S. Bozman, Research Vice President in IDC’s Enterprise Platforms Group attributed the System z growth to several factors, including “technology refresh, new products such as zEnterprise, new accounts in emerging economies, and consolidation of some enterprise Linux workloads onto IBM System z, using the Integrated Facility for Linux (IFL) specialty engines. Although revenue results for System z are traditionally heavier in the fourth quarter, this accelerated acquisition shows the breadth and depth of the IBM mainframe installed base.”

HP is number two, with both IDC and Gartner pegging its share at 24.8 percent. Dell ranks third,  with IDC placing it 15.1 percent factory revenue market share in the quarter, while Gartner has it at 14.3 percent.

And then there’s Cisco Systems, the networking giant which entered the server market in 2009. This was the first quarter that Cisco maintained a position in the top 5 server rankings for IDC. Of Gartner’s top five vendors in server shipments worldwide, Cisco was the only vendor to experience an increase in shipments in the fourth quarter of 2012. Cisco’s worldwide server shipments increased 40.9 percent in the quarter.

Apple’s (AAPL) award from last summer’s landmark patent trial with Samsung (005930) has been reduced to $598.9 million, according to a new report. The Wall Street Journal issued the report on Friday afternoon, and it comes as Apple shares dropped to a new 52-week low during Friday afternoon’s session. Apple was originally awarded more than $1 billion when various Samsung devices were found to infringe on six Apple patents. Judge Lucy Koh, who presided over the trial and cut Apple’s award, plans to schedule a new damages trial once judgements have been issued for all outstanding appeals.

TED2013 has come to an end. Here, the final session — about the doers and givers who never stop spreading their ideas. In session 12, these speakers shared their bold words and even bolder actions. And it all built to a riveting finale.

Here, the speakers who appeared in this session. Click on their name for a recap of their talk:

Sometimes controversial, always practical ethicist Peter Singer stirs public debate about morality, from animal welfare to global poverty.

Orly Wahba helps spark acts of kindness with viral cards (pass ‘em around!) and her memorable short film, “Kindness Boomerang.”

Everything the donating public has been taught about giving is upside down, says Dan Pallotta, and he aims to transform the way society thinks about charity and change.

Julia Sweeney is an actor and writer who does comedic solo shows that tackle deep issues: cancer, family, faith. Her next book is “If It’s Not One Thing, It’s Your Mother,” on parenting and being parented. She performs regularly with Jill Sobule, telling stories alongside Jill’s songs, in their “Jill & Julia Show.”

After creating and conducting a worldwide virtual choir on YouTube, Eric Whitacre is now touring with an astonishing live choir.

After weeks of fighting, we’re almost at the end of the first round in the Injustice: Gods Among Us Battle Arena. The last two fights match up Superman against Sinestro, and Hawkgirl against Green Arrow.

Earlier this week, fans and “celebrity analysts” said that Superman and Green Arrow were the favorites to win this week’s matches. Spoiler: They were right on the money.

Sinestro put up a terrific fight, but it’s really hard to compete with Superman. Still, Sinestro is high on my list of villains who could actually pose a threat to the Man of Steel.

As for the Green Arrow’s win, I don’t think we can really give it to him. One of DC’s more prominent villains really stole the win here.

Starting next week, we’ll finally be getting into the quarter finals where Batman will take on Wonder Woman. It should prove to be an incredibly entertaining fight.

Injustice: Gods Among Us launches across the Xbox 360, PS3 and Wii U on April 16.

Google says on its new “How Search Works” site that it launched 665 “improvements to search” in 2012.

In a graphic looking at data from 2012, Google explains that it had 118,812 “precision evaluations,” which are described as “The first phase is to get feedback from evaluators, people who evaluate search quality based on our guidelines. We show evaluators search results and ask them to rate the usefulness of the results for a given search.”

From there, it had 10,391 side-by-side experiments.

“In a side-by-side experiment, we show evaluators two different sets of search results: one from the old algorithm and one from the new, and we ask them for details about which results they prefer,” Google explains.

You can see Google’s Search Quality Raters Guidelines (at least a “cliffs notes version“) here (pdf).

Google ran 7,018 live traffic experiments in 2012. “If the evaluators’ feedback looks good, we move forward with a ‘live traffic experiment,’” Google explains. “In these experiments, we change search for a small percentage of real Google users and see how it changes the way they interact with the results. We carefully analyze the results to understand whether the change is an improvement to the search results. For example, do searchers click the new first result more often? If so, that’s generally a good sign.”

From there, came the 665 actual launches.

“Finally, our most experienced search engineers carefully review the data from all the different experiments and decide if the change is approved to launch,” says Google. “It sounds like a lot, but the process is well refined, so an engineer can go from idea to live on Google for a percentage of users in 24 hours. Based on all of this experimentation, evaluation and analysis, we launched 665 improvements to search in 2012.”

Typically, Google has been providing monthly lists of “search quality highlights” showing some of the tweaks they’ve made, but they haven’t done it in months. Despite today’s effort in transparency, it remains to be seen whether we’ll see exactly what Google has been up to since October.

Fans of Rovio’s Angry Birds franchise may be interested in a new movie tie-in the company has in the works. Later this month Dreamworks is releasing The Croods, an animated look at pre-historic humans. Rovio has partnered with Dreamworks Animation to release a new, free game based on the motion picture. Not much information is provided regarding game play for the new title, but Rovio’s teaser text indicates the Croods will “Hunt & Gather their way through spectacular new landscapes as they tame fantastic and never-seen-before creatures.” Rovio lists the game as being available for phone and tablet devices running both Android and iOS on March 14th. You can check out the teaser video after the break.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Come comment on this article: Rovio releases teaser video for The Croods

Owners of the Verizon Galaxy Nexus got excited when a Tweet from a Verizon Support rep (LH) sent yesterday stated that Samsung was going to push an update out, but didn’t have any other information. Speculation is that it will be Android 4.2.2 or at least 4.2.1. Tweets from Verizon support should always be taken with skepticism as there are countless examples of mistakes and miss information.

Let’s take a look at this tweet. They said that Samsung is going to push it. If an update does occur, we already know it will be Google, but that could be an honest mistake, so I will give him or her the benefit of the doubt. A little later another rep (EO) tweeted..

 

A glaring problem with this one is the link goes to the original Jelly Bean update that took place several months ago. I’m not here to say that the Galaxy Nexus will or won’t get another update, but I am going to tell you not to expect an update based on these tweets. Personally, I will be surprised if the Verizon GNex gets another update, but hopefully I’m wrong.

source: @VZWSupport

Come comment on this article: Do these Tweets mean the Verizon Galaxy Nexus is about to get an update? Probably not

The second SpaceX mission to resupply the International Space Station (ISS) began early this morning as a Falcon 9 rocket lifted the Dragon capsule into orbit.

Though the launch was successful, a problem with three of the capsule’s four thruster pods delayed the opening of its solar arrays. SpaceX engineers had to wait until the capsule was over its Australia-based ground station to “command inhibit override” and reactivate enough of the thruster pods to deploy the arrays. While only one of the thruster pods was reactivated, it was enough to successfully deploy the arrays.

SpaceX spent hours trying to reactivate the two thruster pods that were still malfunctioning. At around 3 pm EST Space X founder Elon Musk tweeted that the thruster pods were back online and that the capsule is no longer drifting:

The problems caused the capsule to miss one of its scheduled burns that would take it toward its scheduled docking with the ISS. As a result, the docking could be delayed.

SpaceX and NASA have scheduled a teleconference for 3 pm EST. More details about the Dragon capsule and its docking schedule should be revealed during the call.

The Dragon capsule is carrying 1,200 pounds of cargo and science equipment that will be delivered to the ISS’s crew of six international astronauts. The capsule is scheduled to return with refuse and used equipment on March 25. SpaceX successfully completed its first resupply mission to the ISS back in October 2012 when it delivered 882 pounds of supplies to the satellite.

The launch of the capsule can be seen in the video below, which NASA released earlier today:

We’ve seen Google’s search quality raters referenced numerous times, but now Google has made available the whole set of guidelines in one giant PDF for your perusal. The document is called “Search Quality Rating Guidelines,” and interestingly, it’s labeled version 1.0, and is dated November 2012. It was released as part of Google’s new “How Search Works” site.

“Google relies on raters, working in countries and languages around the world, to help us measure the quality of our search results, ranking, and search experience,” Google explains. “These raters perform a variety of different kinds of “rating tasks” designed to give us information about the quality of different kinds of results in response to different kinds of queries. The data they generate is rolled up statistically to give us within the Google search team a view of the quality of our search results and search experience over time, as well as an ability to measure the effect of proposed changes to Google’s search algorithms. Raters’ judgments do not directly impact Google’s search result rankings. While a rater may give a particular URL a score, that score does not directly increase or decrease a given website’s ranking. Instead these scores are used in aggregate to evaluate search quality and make decisions about changes.”

In the preface of the document, Google notes that the document itself is not the entire version that raters actually use on a daily basis, but rather a “Cliffs Note” version.

“The raters’ version includes instruction on using the rating interface, additional rating examples, etc.,” Google explains. “These guidelines are used as rating specifications for search raters, and this document in particular focuses on a core type of rating task called ‘URL rating.’ In a URL rating task, a rater is shown a search query from their locale (country + language) and a URL that could be returned by a search engine for that query. The raters ‘rate’ the quality of that result for that query, on a scale described within the document. Sounds simple, right? As you’ll see, there are many cases to think through, and this document is used to guide raters on some of those cases and how to look at them.”

In a Webmaster Help video released this past October, Matt Cutts also discussed the quality raters’ “impact” on algorithms.

Here’s another one they put out in May talking about how Google uses the human raters:

Games for the Weekend is a weekly feature aimed at helping you avoid doing something constructive with your downtime. Each Friday we’ll be recommending a game for Mac, iPhone or iPad that we think is awesome. Here is one cool enough to keep you busy during this weekend.

Flick Champions ($0.99 iPhone, $1.99 iPad) is more than just another sports game, in fact it is eight different sports games all in one.  The difference is that rather than striving to make each game as close to the real thing as possible, the game provides a quick and fun way to challenge your friends and become a true Flick Champion on all of your touch devices.

The eight different sports can play either a quick exhibition match or a bracketed cup challenge.  Within each game there are four degrees of difficulty to choose from: Rookie, Pro, Veteran or VS mode. The first three increase in difficulty while playing in single-player mode, while the fourth choice, VS, is where you literally go head to head against another opponent. Rather than being an online multiplayer experience, VS mode in Flick Champions has both players sharing the same device.  Taking full advantage of Apple’s implementation of multi-touch, each player can touch the screen at the same time.  While some of the sports are played in real-time, others are played like a turn-based game, each side taking turns trying to score points against the other.

You view the playing field from a top-down, third-person perspective. Each game has its own style of gameplay. Soccer is one of the games that has more of a turn-by-turn game play style. Rather than moving your players all over the screen chasing a fast-moving soccer ball, each player occupies a different zone on the field and plays more like a stationary object. Once kicked, and when the ball eventually slows down, it finds its way to the nearest player on the field.  With players occupying a specific position, it feels more like one of my all time favorite table games of foosball rather than a computerized version of a soccer match. As you kick the ball down the field, it pays to pass to your teammates closer to the goal rather than try to make a shot across the entire field.

The gameplay of soccer is in stark contrast of how both hockey and tennis are played. Each of these two games are played in real-time and feel more like a the arcade classic, Pong.  With each experience you do end up chasing either a fast-moving puck or tennis ball all over the place. The biggest difference between these back and forth games lies in one of the other configurable options available to each sport.  In hockey you can change the size of the puck while in tennis you can change the speed of the court.  Each sport has its own configuration that you can use to fine tune how you play the game.

Basketball, on the other hand, plays more like a game of Horse. Each team is given a chance to make a single shot from a different position on the court. You can opt to turn on the extra shot mode, where you keep getting the ball after each successful shot. This “make it take it” option can be really fun when playing against a friend. Bowling, archery and golf have more of a “take your time, set up your shot, and aim carefully” style to them. Golf in particular has its own challenges as it takes on more of a putt-putt feel to it as you must make bank shots and overcome obstacles that stand in your way on the green.  These three games in particular will remind you more of the playful Nintendo Wii Sports than the more realistic style of Electronic Arts’ Madden Football.

The most complex sports game of the eight is definitely football. With football you start each down by selecting a formation for your team to line up in.  This is true whether you are playing offense or defense. Then the opposing team chooses their formation. Each player on the field then charges and pushes against each other. The quarterback waits patiently for an opportunity to pass by sliding your finger around the field and letting go to trow the ball downfield. Sometimes you get lucky and a player breaks away from the pack and scores a touchdown. Other times your pass is either intercepted or incomplete.

The game does initially start out with many of the sports and gameplay options locked. You unlock additional sports and unique gameplay options by earning experience points.  If you like, you can elect to unlock all of the games and optional content through an in-app purchase.  And if you are looking to explore even more sports that play like Flick Champions, you can check out two additional titles in the series, Flick Champions Winter Sports and Flick Champions World Edition.  Flick Champions is a fun game to play on your own and one you can easily carry with you for the times when you want to play a quick and competitive game with friends.

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TED Senior Fellow alumna Gabriella Gomez-Mont made a suprise appearance at TED2013 with some incredible news – she’s just been appointed chief of Laboratory for the City (Laboratorio para la Ciudad), a creative think tank for Mexico City that aims to make it not only the most vibrant and sexy city in the world, but an experimental lab for City 2.0. The cultural curator of Tóxico Cultura tells how she tells how she landed herself the job, almost by accident, via a TEDx event.

So now you’re a bureaucrat. 

I’m a bureaucrat! I still can’t believe it. I’ve been a bureaucrat for a whole week. I would have never thought. I’ve worked in the independent space for mostly my whole working life. And suddenly in a weird, serendipitous, strange zigzagging road, TED led me right into the bureaucratic structure of Mexico City government.

How did it happen? 

About six months ago, I organized a TEDx with two good friends of mine. And we decided to invite Dr. Miguel Angel Mancera, our then mayor-to-be, to speak. He was running for mayor at the time, but everybody knew that he was going to win. We also chose as other speakers people that we thought it would be fascinating for him to hear about – people who have really great ideas for Mexico City. And as well as seeing a huge richness that already is, we also feel that there is enormous potential to make it an even more exciting city.

After that, I got an invitation to propose a project. At first, I thought they would be willing to fund some things on the outside, but it turns out that he invited me to jump on his team.

What did you propose?

It was a project that is called Laboratory for the City. This would be Mexico City’s new creative think tank. This is not a space that exists in any other government in the world.

One of the things we will be doing is to incubate good ideas and create pilot programs. We’ve been very much inspired by, for example, a project in Boston called New Urban Mechanics that’s directed by Nigel Jacobs. They are creating an incubator of good ideas from civil society and inside of government, working as a more experimental space that can mitigate risk. They’ve done amazing stuff, from working with a mother whose kid has autism to create all sorts of tools that she’d been working on informally that will now be implemented in public schools, to, for example, these apps where you can report if there’s a pothole.

If and when ideas prove successful in the experimental space, then we can actually work with other departments to inject these ideas into a more formal structure.

I’m also super excited that this is going to become a space to think about the city in a multidisciplinary manner. It’s very much akin to what I had been doing with Toxico Cultura, and it’s also very much incorporates what I’ve learned from three years as a TED Senior Fellow.

I met my mayor because of a TEDx, but the reason why I got offered this job is because, through TED, I’ve been put through a three-year school dealing with things that not only have to do with art and culture, but a lot to do with technology and innovation – basically pushing forth a series of conversations that are not only related to arts and culture.

So what’s your vision?

We’d like for this to become a vortex to think about the city as a concept, and a place to invite people in from all over the world, across disciplines, to try out new ideas. In a conversation with a friend recently, we discussed how it hasn’t been since modernism that the concept of what a city is has been so much up for grabs. What is a digital city? What is a smart city? Is densification a good thing?

Mexico City, which has been a megalopolis since Aztec times, was the poster child of everything a city should try to avoid. We have all the problems of an emerging-world city: social divide, pollution, problems with water, you name it. But now, Mexico City has a great potential to be the epitome of a city that can prototype ideas. It has an absolutely enviable infrastructure, and it’s the eighth largest city economy in the world. This is not something that a lot of people know. Because there’s densification, there are many interesting minds that are there to clash and meet and breed ideas, as Matt Ridley would say. And we just got a prize for sustainable transport, competing against smaller cities like Copenhagen.

Basically TED has been fundamental in pushing this forth in a strange serendipitous way, preparing the mindspace for all that is coming. How can we create cities together? What is needed for Mexico City to become one of the world’s sexiest, most interesting cities?

In yet another example of what-happens-on-Facebook-happens-in-front-of-everyone-in-the-world-please-stop-posting-private-crap-on-Facebook-it’s-going-to-get-you-fired-or-arrested news, a Confluence, Pennsylvania police chief has resigned after a questionable photo made its way on the site.

The photo seen above of chief Tom Keller and a woman packing serious heat popped up on Facebook.

In his defense, Keller claims to have been the victim of a hacker that’s “just trying to embarrass him.” That would explain the fact that photo wound up on Facebook, I guess. But explaining the photo itself, well, that’s a different task.

According to Somerset County’s the Daily American, Keller has resigned his position after being suspended without pay.

“This photo was meant to be private,” he said. “It is a propped photo, a family photo of me and my wife just having fun.”

In response to the situation, town mayor Allen Gyorko said,

“In the winter, people get a little, what you call, cabin fever, you know. And they do goofy things..We’re a little distraught about it.”

[CBS Pittsburgh via CNET]

Bonnie Franklin, who starred in the ’70s sitcom “One Day At A Time”, has died from complications related to pancreatic cancer. She was 69 years old.

Franklin announced last year that she was battling the disease but released a statement saying she would continue with her normal schedule as much as she could. A rep for her family said she would undergo treatment for the illness and that “she and her family remain extremely positive and thank everyone for their support and concern.”

Franklin was reunited with her onscreen daughter, Valerie Bertinelli, when she made a guest appearance on “Hot In Cleveland”, which also stars Betty White. She remained a television regular after “One Day At A Time”, appearing on shows like “The Young And The Restless”, “Touched By An Angel”, and “Almost Perfect”. She also enjoyed a film career, landing a role in the Hitchcock film “The Wrong Man” opposite Henry Fonda. Many of her television fans didn’t know that she also enjoyed a stint on Broadway, where she showed off her singing skills in Applause.

Franklin often staged one-woman shows in New York, much to the delight of her fans, and did regional theater in her later years. She left quite an impression in the business, especially for her work on “One Day At A Time”, a show which broached the difficult topic of divorce at a time when no one else would touch it.

“Even though Ann Romano was not the first divorced woman on TV, she embodied that subject matter in a way that had not been done before,” said Syracuse University television scholar Robert Thompson.“The show focused on a young divorced woman who was getting by, but also she had a sense of being flustered and exasperated. She was by no means the perfect mother who had all the perfect answers and did everything right.”

When Joshua Prager was young, he dreamt he would grow up to play baseball. Or be a doctor. He never imagined that at the age of 19 he would find himself paralyzed in the hospital, and that he’d have to reteach his body to move, to relearn to breathe and speak. In his new book Half-life, Prager returns to Jerusalem, where a truck hit the bus he was riding in and broke his neck.

On stage today Prager tells the story of his return to Jerusalem and the challenge of facing the man who had so radically altered his fate: the driver of that truck. One year ago, he recalls, he set out to find this man. He didn’t have a phone number or address, but he knew his name — Abed — and the town outside Jerusalem where he lived. Twenty-one years before outside this city Prager broke his neck when he was hit by a speeding truck. Now he was off in a silver Chevy, “to find a man and some peace.”

That night 21 years ago, Prager was 19 and reveling in his newfound strength. He had just grown 5 inches and was playing basketball with his friends. He was sitting in a mini-bus off to get pizza he had won on the court when from behind there was a great bang, as loud and violent as a bomb. Prager’s head snapped back, his shoes flew off, and he flew, too.

When he landed he was a quadriplegic. Over the next few months he learned to breathe, sit and walk, and back home he was in a wheelchair for the next four years in college. After college he went back to Jerusalem. As he reflects, “I rose from my chair for good, leaned on my cane and looked back.” He contacted other victims and looked at old photographs, mourning all he had lost and not yet done and which was now impossible. On that trip Prager sought out Abed, not mentioning his condition or the fact that he knew Abed had had 27 driving violations by the age of 25. He said he wanted to meet with Abed, but later when he called back the number had been disconnected. Then, he said, “I let Abed and the crash go.”

Prager returned to New York and began his life as a journalist, typing hundreds of thousands of words with just one finger. His friend pointed out that all his stories mirrored his own: an entire life changed in one instant. His book was almost complete when he realized he still wanted to meet Abed: “I wanted to hear this man say two words: I’m sorry. People apologize for less.”

Prager went back to Jerusalem to search for Abed. He was carrying yellow flowers as a gift when he realized how ridiculous it seemed. “But what to get a man who broke your fucking neck?” (He settled on Turkish delight.) A torrent of questions filled Prager’s mind: What would Abed say and do? Who had he become since the accident? Who was he? Was he who he was before the crash? Are all of us the result of things done to us? And done for us? As Prager says, “It seemed we could be nothing more than gene and experience.” He looked back on the road and imagined that had the accident not happened he would have been a doctor, a husband, a father. And a little less mindful of time and death.

With help from a man he met in the street, Prager arrived at Abed’s house. Abed’s wife said her husband in 4 hours. (Her Hebrew wasn’t very good and she later confessed she thought Prager was there to install the Internet.) Abed arrived home. The two men shook hands and smiled, and Prager gave Abed his gift.

Inside Abed began his tale of woe: He had just had surgery on his eyes, he had lost his teeth in the crash. Prager knew the police report said that Abed had come away from the accident unharmed. He brought polaroids and his driver’s license to show Prager what he looked like before. But Prager didn’t want to relive the crash. As he said, “I wanted to exchange Turkish dessert for two words and be on my way. I was quiet because I had not come for truth. I had come for remorse.” He said to Abed, “I understand that the crash wasn’t your fault. But does it make you sad that others suffered?”

“Yes,” said Abed. “I suffered.”

He explained that before the crash he had lived an unholy life, and so God had ordained the crash. Now Abed was religious, and God was happy. Just then on television the news showed a crash in which three people were killed. “It is a pity the police in this country are not tough enough on bad drivers,” mused Abed. Prager was baffled. “Abed … I thought you had a few driving issues before the crash.” Abed responded, “I once went 60 in a 40.” Thus 27 violations became one. As Prager reflects, “No matter how stark the reality, a human being fits it into a narrative that is palatable.” It was that moment he realized that Abed would not apologize. He was not a particularly bad man, nor a particularly good man. He was a limited man.

“This,” Prager quotes, “is the last of the human freedoms: to choose our attitude in any human circumstance.” The aging and the anxious, the divorced and balding and bankrupt … everyone can choose to rise above bad fortune, to enjoy community, study, work, adventure, friendship, love. The good. Prager quotes Melville: “Truly to enjoy bodily warmth some small part of you must be cold.” It’s in the contrats that we find the good. Prager ends his stunning story: “You know death so you may wake each morning pulsing with life.”