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Host: Larry Hryb, Xbox LIVE’s Major Nelson (Xbox LIVE ) (Twitter)  
Co-host : e (Xbox LIVE ) (Twitter)  
Co-host : lollip0p (Xbox LIVE) (Twitter)
Co-Host: Stepto (Xbox LIVE) (Twitter) 

Special Guest: Aaron Greenberg (Xbox LIVE) (Twitter) 

Interview: Geoff Keighley, 2009 Spike TV Videogame Awards ( 38:12 – 56:56)
Interview: Rod Moye, Guitar Hero Van Halen ( 56:57 – 1:05:03)
Interview: Paul Helquist, Borderlands DLC ( 1:05:03  – 1:12:44)
Interview: Patrick Redding, Splinter Cell Conviction ( 1:12:44 – 1:30:28)
Name The Game
Xbox 101
And much more

 
Note: I’ve added the above show notes to the ID3 Lyrics data field. If your device supports displaying lyrics, you’ll find this useful 

Links to some of the things mentioned in this episode:
Guitar Hero Van Halen
Borderlands

Zombie Island for Borderlands
Splinter Cell Conviction
Splinter Cell Conviction on Xbox LIVE Marketplace
Dec. 21-27 Deal of the week: Shadow Complex
http://marketplace.xbox.com/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802434307de
http://marketplace.xbox.com/games/media/66acd000-77fe-1000-9115-d802434307df

Bonus: Here is a behind the scenes photo of this recording session 

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Filed under: Etc.

Patrick Schiavone, Ford‘s design director for trucks and crossovers, is leaving The Blue Oval. In his 21 years with the company, Schiavone has penned and helped develop Fords both naughty and nice: the last two F-150s; the Flex; Expedition; Cougar; Focus; Lincoln Navigator and Blackwood; the Mighty F-350 TONKA and Ford F-150 Lightning Rod concept trucks; and the Contour show car.

His inkwell is likewise responsible for the 1994 Ford Mustang, the car that did the phoenix routine on the pony car line. It’s an impressive resume, and is probably why he “received a great job opportunity outside the auto industry.” His last day at the office will be sometime early next year.

[Source: Inside Line]

Pat Schiavone, Ford Flex and F150 designer, resigns originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 20 Dec 2009 14:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Article Tags: ClimateGate, You could not make it up, YouTube

This is a few days old and some of you may have seen it, how many questions did Al Gore get wrong, ALL, SOME or NONE?

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“Innovation” is one of those buzzwords we hear every now and then in the games industry. Which games or consoles innovated the most? Which ones didn’t? According to BioWare co-founder Greg Zeschuck, JRPGs as a whole have

Article Tags: Fred Singer, Kenneth Haapala, Updated

SEPP SCIENCE EDITORIAL #30-2009 (Dec 19, 2009) By S. Fred Singer, President of SEPP

Note: This will be the first of a series of mini-editorials on the “junk science” influencing the global warming issue. Other topics will include the IPCC’s Assessment Reports 2, 3, and 4, the UN Environmental Program and some individuals heavily involved in these matters. ]

Junk Science #1: IPCC’s First Assessment Report

In 1988, two UN agencies, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) and the UN World Meteorological Organization (WMO), set up a climate science panel, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Its Charter directs the IPCC to assess worldwide scientific, technical and socio-economic literature “relevant to the understanding of the risk of human-induced climate change.”

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File attachment: The Week That Was December 19 2009.pdf
  

Europe’s October trade surplus exploded higher in October, hitting $8.3 billion. Note this was even before the Euro really started to crash against the dollar.

Still, Europe’s trade surplus says more about the continent’s inability to consume imports, rather than a ability to trade right now. Exports fell less than imports, yet both fell.

Trading Economics: Unadjusted exports fell 17 percent year-on-year in October while imports dropped 24 percent, the European Union’s statistics office said. Adjusted for seasonal swings, the surplus was 6.3 billion euros, up from 4.3 billion in September as exports eased 0.2 percent month-on-month while imports fell 2.2 percent on the month.

December’s dollar rally means the Euro Area’s trade surplus could keep widening.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Euro Breakup Will Be THE Story Of 2010, As Analyst Expects Ireland And Greece To Leave The Union
• Skype’s Niklas Zennstrom Pitches VC Firm, Bullish On Euro Startups
• Time Bomb For The Euro: Greek Debt Poses Threat To The Common Currency

‘Tis the season and all that, and this time of year I find myself thinking a lot about my parents. This is exactly the sort of thing they’d have said (if my childhood had been, oh, 20 or 30 years later), and it would have driven me CRA-ZEE.

Funny thing: It’s also exactly the sort of thing I find myself saying to my own kids.

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And speaking of ’tis the season, thanks and all the best to all of you who’ve read, tweeted, forwarded and commented on Noise to Signal this year. Have a great holiday if you’re celebrating, and just have a lovely week or two if you aren’t. I’ll see you in 2010.

More Noise to Signal.

Discuss

Good news, Europe. You won’t have to wait too long to join North America in all the MAG shooting action next year. Zipper Interactive and Sony have dated the 256-player multiplayer shooter’s European release.

Our mission at ReadWriteWeb is to explore the latest Web technology products and trends. We’re fortunate to have a great group of sponsors who support this goal. So, once a week, we write a post about them — about who they are, what they do, and what they’ve been up to lately. Pay them a visit or tweet them a “Thank you” (see link below each sponsor) to show your appreciation for their sponsorship of this site. Or you can follow all of our sponsors at once using our Twitter list.

Interested in being a ReadWriteWeb sponsor? ReadWriteWeb is one of the most popular blogs in the world and is read by a sophisticated audience of thought leaders and decision-makers. We have several innovative new features in our sponsor packages that we’d love to tell you about. Email our COO for all the details.

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Crowd Science

Crowd Science gives online publishers reports on the demographics and attitudes of their audience. We at ReadWriteWeb have signed up to this new service, because demographic data is something we’ve struggled to get in the past. It’s important for any online business to know their audience, so Crowd Science is a welcome addition to the stats armory that most of us in the Internet biz use.

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Mashery

Mashery is a platform for Web services, allowing companies to manage their APIs using Mashery’s expertise. At the “Business of APIs” conference, Mashery CEO Oren Michels explained to the audience that while APIs are a technology, their use is a business decision. He went on to say that Mashery has helped customers such as WhitePages.com, Thumbplay, Compete.com, and Calais. Check out the white paper “Five steps to scaling your business development using Web services” to discover how you can use APIs for your business.

You can find out more about APIs and their business use at www.mashery.com.

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Rackspace

Rackspace is one of the world’s largest hosting providers, but it’s also competing in the cloud computing arena. Rackspace Cloud Hosting offers a suite of services which combines a scalable web and application hosting platform (Cloud Sites) with a cloud storage solution (Cloud Files) and on demand server instances (Cloud Servers). The addition of SliceHost a popular cloud computing and hosting provider and JungleDisk, a favorite online backup service that supports Cloud files, makes the Rackspace Cloud a powerful cloud hosting solution.

Explore Rackspace‘s hosting and cloud computing solutions.

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Aplus.net

Aplus.net offers a variety of services relating to Web hosting, including shared hosting, Web design, marketing and online advertising services, search engine optimization, e-commerce solutions, and domain registration.

You can register for Aplus.net here.

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Codero

Codero is a former division of Aplus.net. Codero became a separate entity focusing on dedicated and managed hosting solutions after the acquisition of Aplus.net’s shared hosting, web design, and domain registration services by Hostopia. “Codero” stands for collaboration, engagement, focus, reliability, and flexibility. It means a more secure computing experience for email, shopping, and data transfer.

Codero is a dedicated and managed hosting company focused on the real needs of today’s small and mid-sized businesses. The company believes in supporting robust websites, storefronts and online communities that will grow and adapt.

Groupsite

Groupsite.com is a self-serve platform for creating social collaboration communities called Groupsites. Groupsites combine the most useful features of social networking and collaboration tools enabling groups large and small to communicate, share and network. Groupsites are currently in use by more than 30,000 groups as user communities, intranets, member communities, team workgroups and social networks. Each Groupsite can be branded and customized and includes discussion forums, calendaring, file sharing, member profiles (professional or social), activity feeds and full-featured sub-groups among other group-centric features.

Sign up and create a free Groupsite in minutes.

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Faroo

Faroo is a peer-to-peer Web search engine that has no centralized index and crawler. Each web page visited by users is automatically included into the distributed index. Search results are ranked based on distributed usage statistics of Web pages visited by Faroo users, which leads to more democratic, user-centric ranking.

Faroo protects the privacy of users by encrypting search queries and anonymizing its distributed architecture. The decentralized peer-to-peer architecture scales with Internet growth and requires no infrastructure or operational cost.

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MyDomain.com

MyDomain is a leading ICANN-accredited provider of domain name registration and online business solutions. For over 10 years, MyDomain has offered low-cost domain names and free domain services including complete DNS management. Today, sub-$10 domains without the constant upsells you’ll find at some competitors are the norm at MyDomain. MyDomain’s complete range of solutions include Web hosting and VPS hosting, email, SSL Certificates and more.

Web 3.0 Conference

The emergence of a new era of technologies, collectively known as Web 3.0, provides a strategically significant opportunity to make media and business run better. Also known as the semantic web or linked data, web 3.0 is a web in which data is linked to allow for more meaningful, actionable insight to be extracted. At the conference, we will explore how companies are using these technologies today, and should be using them tomorrow, for significant bottom line impact in areas like marketing, corporate information management, publishing, customer service, and personal productivity.

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litl

Give the all new litl webbook this holiday season and avoid family help desk duties in the new year.

• Operating System as a Service. Litl handles all upgrades, viruses, and backups for free for the life of the machine.
• Intuitive web UI without menus, icons, folders.
• No hard drive – storage/backup not user task.
• Best photo frame. Connected, aggregates flickr, shutterfly, 178 degree viewing angle.
• “A stone-cold brilliant design” – Fast Company.

Learn how litl’s fresh design and modern OS makes computing simple.

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Conduit

Conduit enables web publishers to distribute their offerings directly and through its global network of 200,000 publishers and their 60 million users. The Conduit platform is a powerful marketing tool that allows you to: offer the best of your site through a custom community toolbar, send desktop alerts to your users, get advanced Analytics, and more.

The Conduit platform opens a new world of content sharing. Your site visitors can add your content right to their browser by clicking on a branded 2go button that you place on your site. You can also share your content in the Conduit Marketplace, where all the publishers and users in the Conduit network can grab it.

The platform has been adopted by major brands such as Fox News, iWin, Major League Baseball, TechCrunch, and Travelocity, as well as thousands of small and medium organizations in 120 countries.

If you want to Conduit Your Site, visit: www.conduit.com

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If you’ve ever wondered what ReadWriteWeb looks like behind the scenes, or if you’ve never seen the Movable Type publishing interface – that’s it on the left. We recently upgraded to MT 4.23, which is the latest version. We got onto this release as soon as it was available – in fact our contacts at Six Apart emailed the actual code to us before it was up on their website. That’s customer service for you!

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Two kidney transplant patients are critically ill due to Balamuthia mandrillaris encephalitis they acquired from the organ donor:

The same infection probably killed the organ donor, but it was not diagnosed; his doctors thought he had an autoimmune disease. Two other patients also received heart and liver transplants from the donor, but neither has become ill.

Infections due to free-living amoeba are extremely rare; those acquired from transplant even more so.

Hence the lesson from these transplant-related cases is not that there’s a new threat to the health of transplant recipients.

But it’s a reminder that the infection risk will never be zero.  We cannot test donors for every possible disease, and the shortage of available organs means that some donor-derived infections will inevitably continue.

(These LCMV cases caused quite the stir around here a few years ago.)

Organ transplantation remains one of the great miracles of medicine.  With the caveat that I don’t know further details about this donor’s case, it seems that a (small) risk of donor-derived infection is the price of doing business.

(Edit:  And now the WSJ has weighed in here. Focus is on those harmed by the infection, understandably, and the need to make the process safer — but the fact remains that transplant will never be 100% safe.)

Filed under: China, Europe, UK

Not to be deterred by the woes and recent fate of Brilliance — or perhaps, having learned from it — vehicles from Great Wall, the Chinese automaker, will be imported to Europe next year by the UK-based I.M. Group. Brilliance, you might remember, suffered a disastrous couple of crash tests that doomed the company’s chances pretty much everywhere. Even after it rebounded with a much improved design, people couldn’t un-see and un-remember the catastrophe that was the BS6, and the company’s German importer went under.

I.M. Group already imports Subaru, Isuzu, and Daihatsu. That not only gives it some of the best experience possible in bringing Asian cars to Europe, that means it isn’t solely reliant on Great Wall to be a success. As well, I.M. is starting with Eastern Europe, planning imports to Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania first, with further expansion planned for 2011.

We’ll say for the record that if Great Wall builds the Phenom Concept (pictured) as is, and the car gets a good crash rating, we’d have absolutely no problem giving it a try. Even with a that grille. You can read the I.M. Group’s release after the jump.

[Source: I.M. Group]

Continue reading Great Wall cars headed to Europe in 2010

Great Wall cars headed to Europe in 2010 originally appeared on Autoblog on Sun, 20 Dec 2009 12:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Bijan Sabet started it with a great post titled We Gotta Do A Deal Together and Fred Wilson followed with an equally great post titled Trading Deals, A Lost Art?  I’m going to try to add to the mix with this post by describing our strategy at Foundry Group around syndication and explain a little of where it came from.  Please read both Bijan’s and Fred’s posts as it’ll provide a lot of context for this one.

At Foundry Group, we describe ourselves as syndication agnostic.  Specifically – we are delighted to work with a syndicate of other investors and we are equally delighted to invest by ourselves.  Another way to say this is that we are indifferent as to whether or not we have co-investors in a company with us at any stage of the investment cycle.  I realize this isn’t the classical definition of agnostic but I think it’s an appropriate use of the adjective form. 

Here’s what this means in practice.   In an early stage investment we decide whether or not we want to invest and then leave it up to the entrepreneurs if they want to add anyone to the syndicate.  If so, and they are someone we like working with or would like to try working with for the first time, we encourage it.  If the entrepreneurs just want to get going with us, that’s fine also.

Now, assume there is no syndicate for the seed or Series A financing (e.g. it’s just us).  Well in advance of when the company needs to raise the next round we’ll decide whether or not we’ll make another investment.  If we are supportive, we are direct with the company, figure out a price we are willing to do it at (we are willing to invest by ourselves at a higher price if we believe the progress of the company merits it), and give the company the choice of having us invest in another round by ourselves or add another investor to the mix.  Again, it’s up to the entrepreneur, but we signal our intent clearly and early, are willing to put a term sheet down, and lead the financing with or without a new investor.

Two things make this strategy work for us.  We only invest in software and Internet companies.  We have a deeply held belief that we can figure out “if things are working” by the time $10m is invested in a company.  As a result, we are willing to invest up to $10m on our own to play out the early to medium stages of a company.  By the $10m point we have to make a theoretically harder decision, although ironically it’s usually a pretty easy one.  The company is either unambiguously on a success path, at which point adding additional investors to the syndicate is easy (since it’s a highly desirable later stage investment) or it’s a tough situation that’s not working out.  Occasionally it’s in the middle (e.g. unclear and ambiguous), but not very often.

Some recent examples help illustrate this:

Next Big Sound: We led the seed round and co-invested with Alsop Louie (Stewart Alsop) and SoftTechVC (Jeff Clavier) – two VCs that we love to work with.  We could have easily invested by ourselves, and Next Big Sound had a long list of VCs that wanted to invest (more than 5, less than 10).  The founders chose the syndicate.

StockTwits: The seed round was led by True Ventures.  We decided proactively that we wanted to invest in StockTwits as part of a new theme we are developing and approached Howard Lindzon (the founder/CEO).  He was in the midst of closing a follow-on with True.  We have enormous respect for True but hadn’t done a direct investment with them (I’ve personally invested in several companies with them) so were extremely interested in doing something together.  They reciprocated and we put together a bigger financing than planned (although still a relatively modest amount as Howard isn’t interested in raising a lot of capital) that allowed everyone to be happy with their stake in the company.

Cloud Engines: Cloud Engines had raised some angel money (from well respected angels) prior to our investment.  We did the first round by ourselves and recently did a second round by ourselves.  We did this quickly because we were thrilled with their progress and this allowed the company to ramp up production to meet demand.  We left the financing open for a strategic co-investor although we are perfectly happy to take the remaining piece for ourselves.

The common two themes from this for us is: (a) we only co-invest with people we like, trust, and respect and that like, trust, and respect us and (b) we view it as our responsibility to make a decision about whether or not we want to invest independent of any other investors (VC or angels) at the table.

For completeness, we love investing with Union Square Ventures (we are co-investors in Zynga) and Spark (we are co-investors in AdMeld) and we hope to make additional investments with both of them in 2010. 

Ultimately the syndicate is the entrepreneurs’ choice.  And our goal is to make the discussion simpler, cleaner, and crisper, so the entrepreneurs aren’t having to guess, or jump through bizarre hoops, or play a difficult VC-centric game as they finance their company.

Great question, and a very important question. If you didn’t already know, increasing your water intake helps lubricate joints of the neck. Water intake helps with the flow of fluid in the joints, as well as into the discs.

The real key is not only to increase your water, but getting motion in the neck and putting it into proper alignment. Normal alignment allows everything to communicate and flow as it should. Motion in the neck from exercises, neck tractioning, or stretches helps mobilize the water and lubricate the joints better.

Throughout the day discs become dehydrated because the weight of the head from gravity weighs on the spine pushing water out of the discs. Moving the head back into extension helps create a vacuum affect in the spine, pulling water into the disc.

Keeping the discs hydrated is extremely important because they create a space or hole (foramen) for the nerve roots to travel out of. Keeping that space open equals no nerve pressure; allowing it to close down (stenosis) equals nerve pressure and because of this Pain will follow.

Visit Arc4life.com for your online selection of cervical support neck pillows, orthopedic pain relief products and Home traction units. Products for pain relief.

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Art is a many-faceted thing, and there are so many angles from which one can approach it.  While some dabble in the traditional mediums of paint and pencil, others turn to digital media.  Africa has seen a rise in digital media productions.

BMW-M Concept by Idries Noah (courtesy www.idi3dblog.com)

Jamati Online talked about the O Twins, a high quality 3-D animation cartoon that mirrors life in Nigeria, and Wangechi Mutu, a Kenyan artist who uses creative mediums to form collages with a definite message.  They put their passion behind their work, and are highly acclaimed for it.

Another aspect of design, albeit one that isn’t always recognized, is the design of cars.  Vehicle concept design is the stuff that the next hot vehicle is made of.  Enter Idries Noah, a South African designer whose designs have generated excitement in the auto industry.  His BMW-M concept car is said to be the answer to the competing Audi R8.  It is not the first time that he has made waves with his unique design concepts.

Murcielago Concept by Idries Noah

Noah started off in the animation industry as a 3-D artist.  He proceeded to work in the motion and picture film industry on all 3-D aspects and advertisements.

In 2006, following his passion for cars, he  moved to the automotive industry, taking a position as visualization designer with General Motors Holden.

It was there that he honed his skills in 2D/3D automotive renderings, 3D modelling and animation, and brochure renders.

Idries Noah

Idries Noah is currently a freelance vehicle artist with Virtual Mechanix where he works on concept design and vehicle art. His company, Idi3D focuses on 3D/2D concept design, automotive visualization, brochure renders, and 3D modeling/animation.  You can view his portfolio here.

Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep wasn’t the only game Square Enix showed off at this year’s Jump Festa. They also brought along Final Fantasy Versus XIII. All the Final Fantasy XIII hoopla may have put it out of your mind, but it’s

Welcome to the playoff semis, everyone. For last-minute updates and advice, please stop by Fantasy Football Live. The show kicks off at noon ET. We’ll have all the essential weather and injury info.

To submit your questions, CLICK HERE.

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