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Los Angeles – United States – California – Counties – Business and Economy

It’s high time we had another UK get-together, and what better opportunity than to mark our founder Rafat’s leaving us.

Join us at MSN’s HQ at 80 Victoria Street, London, SW1E 5JL for nibbles, drinks and a natter on Wednesday, June 2, from 6 pm.

Thank-you to MSN UK’s executive producer Peter Bale, who is generously supporting us by providing the space.

We will use the opportunity to think positively, after a difficult year, about what opportunities may lay ahead in digital media.

During a Q&A session, we will ask Rafat and Peter to focus on why the future’s bright, and will ask Rafat to share his thoughts on the last eight years at the ContentNext helm.

See you there.

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As governments around the world continue to go overboard in their condemnations of Google’s (admittedly bad) collection of open WiFi data via its Street View cars, much more interesting than the political grandstanding is the legal limbo mess that the collected data has been placed into. After realizing that it had accidentally collected this data, Google announced that it would stop collecting and begin deleting the data it collected (Update: more specifically, it said it wanted to delete the data, but would discuss with regulators before doing so). But that raised alarm bells from some, who worried that doing so would be deleting evidence for a possible lawsuit against Google. Then, governments started demanding that Google share the data with regulators, so they could determine how serious a privacy breach this really was. However, Google is noting that sharing the data would be a violation of privacy rights in many countries, pissing off regulators who put those privacy laws in place in the first place.

So… Google can’t collect this data, but it can’t delete the data it accidentally collected. Regulators want to see the data to see if it’s okay for Google to delete it, but they can’t see it, because that would violate privacy regulations. But, regulators feel they need to see it, to see if Google violated privacy regulations. So, basically everyone’s stuck in a state of limbo.

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Yesterday I was chatting with a House aide about the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” legislative repeal. Before I could ask about inflection points for passage in a House vote that could come as early as this evening, the aide waived me off his entire chamber. Don’t even bother with the House, the aide told me. The big question for is whether the Senate Armed Services Committee can approve the repeal.

And it just did. The vote was 16 to 12, with Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) joining 15 Democrats in voting to attach an amendment to repeal the military’s ban on open gay service to the fiscal 2011 defense authorization.

LGBT activists have waited for this day for 17 years. A sample reaction from the press releases flooding my inbox:

“The importance of this vote cannot be overstated – this is the beginning of the end of a shameful ban on open service by lesbian and gay troops that has weakened our national security,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “The stars are aligning to finally restore honor and integrity to those who serve our country so selflessly.”

Or:

“This initial victory today in the Senate Armed Services Committee is an historic first step forward in the drive to finally get the onerous ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law off the books forever,” said Alexander Nicholson, Executive Director of Servicemembers United and a former U.S. Army interrogator who was discharged under “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” “All of us who have served under ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ and who have been impacted by this law will remember this day as the beginning of the end for ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.’”

From Chris Anders of the ACLU:

“For years, without being able to live openly, gay and lesbian service members have been fighting and dying for their country alongside straight soldiers. Our men and women in uniform deserve to be treated fairly, honestly and with dignity. We applaud the committee for including this provision and urge the House to pass its amendment as well. We cannot dare lose momentum now.”

A House vote on attaching a similar amendment will come possibly as early as tonight. But Senate Republicans tell TPM’s Brian Beutler that they’ll do anything to stop the Senate bill when it goes to the floor.

When it was revealed Wednesday that developer and noted open web champion Tantek Celik was joining the Mozilla Foundation, a wave of congratulations swept across Twitter and the blogosphere. But not everyone was happy to learn that Celik — the former chief technologist at Technorati and before that an open standards advocate at both Microsoft and Apple — was joining the company behind the Firefox browser. Ben Metcalfe, a programmer and startup adviser, said on Twitter that while he was happy for Celik, his hiring meant that “none of the open web usuals remain independent.”

By “open web usuals,” Metcalfe was likely referring to prominent open advocates like Chris Messina and David Recordon, both of whom over the past several years have been among those leading the charge for open standards online, including developing and promoting the OpenID standard. Messina is now a Google employee and Recordon works for Facebook. While both continue to promote open standards — Messina’s title is “open web advocate” and Recordon is “senior open programs manager” — they’re doing it from inside two of the world’s largest web companies, both of which have corporate interests as well as (presumably) a commitment to being open.

Is that a bad thing for the web? When Metcalfe’s post from Twitter appeared on Google Buzz, it drew a comment from a Google engineer named Adewale Oshineye, who said that instead of seeing Messina and the others as no longer independent, “[Y]ou could say that the ‘open web usuals’ have all found ways to make an even bigger impact.” Metcalfe said that he didn’t agree with this argument, however, because “most of them have had to ‘tone down’ their perspectives in their new fancy corporate jobs.” Oshineye subsequently agreed that “there’s a tension between influence and independence.” Indeed.

So do Messina and Celik and Recordon now have more influence over the openness of the decisions that get made at the world’s largest search company, the world’s largest social network and one of the world’s primary browser developers? Or are they spitting into the prevailing wind at these relatively gigantic organizations, all of which have their own corporate agendas? Although both Google and Facebook are open in many ways — Google more so than Facebook — they also have a clear interest in pursuing their own tactics online. And while the Mozilla Foundation isn’t a typical for-profit corporation, it has its own interests at heart as well.

The tension is clear, not just between these open advocates and their respective corporations, but also between those with conflicting views about what it means to be open. After Facebook launched the Open Graph protocol at the f8 conference, Messina wrote a post taking issue with the description of the Facebook initiative as being “open” at all. Recordon then wrote a blog post for O’Reilly in response, talking about how the protocol was a good thing for the open web.

Messina, Recordon and Celik would likely argue that they can have far more influence within the companies they work for than they could ever have by shouting from the sidelines — and that might even be true. But despite their best efforts, and their reputations as longtime champions of the open web, they are inevitably going to be seen (at least by some) as instruments of the corporations and entities that pay their salaries. In the end, all we can hope is that they have some success in moving those large organizations in the right direction, and that other open web proponents come along who can take over the role of independent web champion.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req’d): Why New Net Companies Must Shoulder More Responsibility

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user Duarte

With sales of music games dropping at alarming rates, the savvy game designers at Harmonix (or more likely, the desperate marketers) have decided that in order to revive their flagging franchise, they needed something truly mind-blowing. “I know! How about a keytar?!”

I’m not really sure it’s the best way to go. I mean, the keytar didn’t really work out so well for… anybody. Or itself. It was an oddity in its own time, and is a subject of near-universal mockery. Be aware that the instrument in the following is not a keytar:

This is a keytar:

See where I’m coming from here?

[image from Synthtopia]

This Game Boy soap doesn’t actually play Tetris, but it does wash off the stink of gamersweat. So really, that’s something. [Etsy via Geeky Gadgets] More »










Game Boy – Nintendo – Video Games – Games – Console Platforms

According to a source of ours inside Sprint, the EVO 4G’s $10 premium cost doesn’t seem to cover the Qik video chat capabilities, as previously thought. As you can see in the screenshot below, the service will be cost a $4.99 premium, payable via PayPal. This shot comes straight from training materials that Sprint will be handing out to its employees tomorrow.

The fact that payment is made via PayPal leads us to believe that the extra fee is not being charged by Sprint, but rather by Qik, themselves. We hope to have more details on the matter as soon as they roll in. We may even get some more screenshots to share. In the meantime, if this news is bumming you out, you might want to check out Fring.

Be sure to keep checking AndroidGuys for more updates.

Might We Suggest…

• EVO’s Front-Facing Camera Shows Mirrored Image… Tsk Tsk
  Our buddy Andrew over at Androinica has brought up something rather disturbing about the EVO’s front-facing camera–it shows everything as a mirrored image. This “glitch” shows itself when taking phot…

Self-healing “smart building materials” have the potential to reduce structure repair costs, lower cement-production carbon emissions and even save lives. One barrier that has kept these materials from being commercialized, however, is their potentially labor-intensive and thus expensive production process. Recently, an engineering student from the University of Rhode Island (URI) announced that she has developed a self-healing concrete that would be inexpensive to produce…
Continue Reading Student creates cost-effective self-healing concrete?

Tags: Building and Construction,
Concrete,
Self-healing,
Structure

Related Articles:

• New ‘green’ geopolymer concrete delivers win-win for industry and the planet
• Self-healing paint is just the beginning
• Calera and Novacem use concrete to capture CO2
• Self-healing electronics using carbon nanotube-filled microcapsules
• New bones from old wood
• Waterproof, recyclable concrete – just add Hycrete

EPA recognizes local communities, like Coachella, for their initiatives targeting at clean air.  Coachella began the build-out of its hydrogen infrastructure.  …

…   “SunLine Transit Agency was the first transit agency to own and operate a hydrogen generation and dispensing station, operating five generations of hydrogen buses that utilize the fuel station. With the support of state and federal agencies, SunLine upgraded the hydrogen station to also allow the public and outside fleets to purchase hydrogen 24 hours a day.”   …

Via EPA: Clean Air Initiatives (Link).

Coachella area alternative fueling station.

Filed under: Classics, Auctions, Etc., Technology, Hatchback

When one thinks of advanced technology, the AMC Gremlin rarely (if ever) pops to mind. In fact, these days, unless you happen to be watching re-runs of the first season of True Blood you likely wouldn’t think of the Gremlin under any circumstances. Today’s eBay Motors find is a very special hydrogen-powered Gremlin that we’ve never heard of before.

As the story goes, back in the early 1970s, 64 university teams built cars to compete in the Urban Vehicle Design Challenge, with this machine coming out of the labs at the University of California – Los Angeles. The Gremlin was donated to UCLA by American Motors and Ford provided a 351 Cleveland V8. The UCLA team worked with suppliers such as Hooker, Edelbrock, Union Carbide and none other than Kustom Kar King George Barris to get the supplies needed to convert the V8 to run on hydrogen and get the car competition ready. The Impco-provided hydrogen tanks in the back only gave the Gremlin a 68-mile range, but considering the lack of fuel injection and sophisticated electronics, that’s not bad.

The wanton nostalgics among us aren’t just drawn to the car’s eccentric powertrain, but also to its period-appropriate mustard yellow paint, tire-tread bumpers, vintage Polyglas tires, and a couple of racing buckets that we’d like to mount on swivels and have in the Autoblog Living Room.

Incidentally, the Gremlin ultimately won the competition based on the fact that the steam emanating the from the tailpipe was cleaner than the air going into the carburetor. At this point, there are no bids on the car and it’s not clear if it runs, but we’d stand we-hell back before firing it up for the first time.

[Sources: eBay Motors, Wired]

eBay Find of the Day: Hydrogen-powered 1972 AMC Gremlin by George Barris originally appeared on Autoblog on Thu, 27 May 2010 18:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Anticipation gave way to celebration today in Harvard Yard as more than 7,000 students graduated during Commencement Day ceremonies. The day was marked with ancient rites and hallowed traditions, with memories and hope for the future. It was a day to spend with family and friends to thank those who supported them in good times and bad, and to finally savor achievements won through hard work and determination.

50 Cent weight loss pictures

50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson made a huge sacrifice for his new movie “Things Fall Apart.”

In general, the MC looked like a linebacker in the NFL, but his starring role in “Things Fall Apart” directed by Mario Van Peebles, a film that was written 50 years ago, made him to cut 54 pounds, to play a college football player who is battling cancer. 50 Cent is on a liquid diet, he runs three times for one hour a day. Curtis used to weight 214 pounds, and now he is an unhealthy 160 pounds, as reported by U.S. Weekly.

It is not uncommon for actors to have this kind of weight loss for film roles. Matt Damon had to be skinny for his role in Courage Under Fire. Will Smith did it for “Seven Pounds” and Christian Bale got to be weak for “The Machinist.” But those were all for major releases. There is no information yet on whether this film will reach theaters or not.

Maybe this role will be important in 50 Cent’s career. As an actor, 50 Cent has played in only a couple of major releases and in other movies that came out directly to DVD. His film debut came in 2005 with the semi-autobiographical “Get Rich or Die Tryin” and in 2008 he starred is the “Righteous Kill” movie.

All his projections indicate that he should stick to his day job, although it seems that he is committed to Hollywood stardom.

50 Cent weight loss pictures

Related posts:

1. 50 Cent Liquid Diet Weight Loss, Curtis Jackson 50 Cent Prepairing for Things Fall Apart Movie
2. 50 Cent Massive Weight Loss Pictures
3. 50 Cent Looking Horrible in New Look

2011 Fisker Karma

Fisker Automotive will be building about 70 to 100 Karma plug-in hybrid sedan this year for testing purposes, a major investor in the company said.

“These will be tested internally, crash tested and used for other testing purposes,” Ray Lane, managing partner at U.S. venture capital fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers told Reuters. “Some of them will be given to customers for testing purposes as well, out in the real road.”

Lane said that Fisker will start mass production of the Karma sedan in February with a planned 15,000 units annually. Fisker also has plans to do a convertible version of the Karma shortly after the sedan hits roads.

Click here for more news on the Fisker Karma.

Refresher: Power comes from Fisker’s Q-DRIVE system, which is made up of two 201-hp electric motors that are powered by a lithium-ion battery pack. That allows the 2010 Karma to travel up to 50 miles without the use of any gasoline. A generator attached to a 260-hp turbocharged 2.0-liter Ecotec direct injection gasoline engine by General Motors provides an extended range of up to 300 miles. 0 to 60 mph comes in 5.8 seconds with a top speed of 125 mph.

2011 Fisker Karma:

– By: Omar Rana

Source: Reuters

PLoS Biology has a review of Elements of Evolutionary Genetics up, Evolution Is a Quantitative Science:

But why has evolutionary genetics stood apart from biology’s resolutely qualitative, rather than quantitative, tradition? Most remarkably, while biomechanics employs the laws of physics, and biochemistry is founded on the quantitative science of chemistry, evolutionary genetics is based on axiomatic foundations that are entirely biological, and yet are capable of precise mathematical formulation. The rules of Mendelian genetics, encapsulated by unbiased inheritance and random mating in a diploid genetic system, predict Hardy-Weinberg frequencies, the binomial sampling of gametes in finite populations determines the properties of genetic drift, and, with a Poisson process of mutation, the complex theory of neutral genetic variation can be established on the basis of very simple assumptions.

A few books to get a historical perspective of the origins of modern evolutionary genetics (albeit with a pop gen focus), The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics, Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology and R.A. Fisher: The Life of a Scientist.

An anonymous tipster has confirmed the long-whispered rumors that Amazon will offer a Kindle that isn’t white. A mystery unit, described by our tipster as “exactly like a Kindle DX but black,” was being photographed at a Seattle coffee shop (with a 5D mk II, he or she notes) and Mr/Mrs Tipster had the presence of mind to snap a picture before they put it away.

A quick google suggests that this isn’t the only one out there; a report from only a few days ago describes a black Kindle with no keyboard at all. There is no guarantee this wasn’t an iPad, but it’s intriguing nonetheless. That Amazon is photographing the unit now suggests a final design and an imminent launch. In the next month, even?

New colors don’t necessarily mean new features, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Darth Kindle sported an updated screen, and perhaps more internal memory. A refresh like this (visual and performance-wise) would be a good holdover for people already invested in the Kindle ecosystem.

The Timberwolf deal, infamously tagged a “shitty deal” during the Goldman Sachs Senate hearings, is now at the center of a criminal investigation around the firm, according to the Huffington Post.

Federal prosecutors are focusing on this deal, and its connections to the collapse of the Australian David Mapley’s hedge fund. Supposedly that deal cost Mapley $100 million, and the life of his hedge fund, Basis Yield Alpha Fund.

Mapley has claimed that the Timberwolf deal was a “fraudulent concoction.” He is currently working on an out of court settlement.

Read the full story at The Huffington Post >

Check out the winners and losers from the Goldman Sachs fraud case >

Join the conversation about this story »