Selected by digikat

• 
  Holy Kaw!

• Horror flick mirror scare mash-up [video]

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:25 am

  Horror movies love to rely on cliches to scare the bejeezus out of us, but does it really surprise anyone that the axe murderer is going to pop in the reflection of a mirror? Ok, yes, it still totally sparks a few pee-in-pants moments. Check out this mash-up of mirror scare moments (fair warning: don’t watch alone in a big, dark, scary house): Full story at Four Four. Boo! Tons of scary and not so scary movie news. Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• 7 things you shouldn't do on Valentine's Day

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:13 am

  Ah, Valentine’s day. February fourteenth marks that special moment in the year when Hallmark cashes in on our emotions and cupid gets busy shooting arrows. Whether you’re indifferent, excited, upset, or madly in love—there are seven things you just shouldn’t do on this lovey-dovey holiday. See a few do-not-do’s below: Go on a first date. First dates are hard enough, why add the extra pressure? Call your ex. Abort mission! On a day like this, it’s normal for your thoughts to drift to the one you used to be with, but you broke up for a reason. So, spare…

• How to succeed as a consultant

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:43 am

  Thinking of going solo as a consultant? Richard Greenwald, Caspersen School of Graduate Studies at Drew University in Madison, provides a list of ingredients for you to succeed in this endeavor: Think Long Term Join a Network Have Your Own Space Think Like an Entrepreneur Full story at Wall Street Journal. More small business tips and tricks. Photo credit: Fotolia Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• Big trouble in McItaly

  9 Feb 2010 | 1:06 am

  McDonald’s new sandwich, endorsed by the Italian government, is leaving a bad taste in food critics’ mouths. Proud Italians rejected the McItaly as being unrepresentative of Italian culture. The government responded by calling the critics “ignorant Stalinists” and claimed that these same critics rejected the Italian-ness of pizza. Do you think the McItaly will take root? Read the full article at the BBC. More on Italy. Photo credit: Fotolia Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• Man sets sword swallowing record

  9 Feb 2010 | 12:54 am

  An Australian man broke his own record for sword swallowing today, cramming 18 of the things down his throat. How did he do it? “I stretch my throat with hoses and use a few different techniques to basically enable me to do what, until now, has been impossible.” Read the full article at the BBC. Keep up with more of the headlines from the BBC. Photo credit: Fotolia Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• 
  O'Reilly Digital Media

• One hundred eighty degrees of freedom: signs of how open platforms are spreading

  Andy Oram

  Visualize open networks--and remember how far we've already come from the days before flat-rate long distance phone calls (much less app stores for cell phones).

• What Facebook's HipHop means for developers and businesses - O'Reilly PHP author Kevin Tatroe puts Facebook's PHP project in context

  Mac Slocum

  Facebook claims to have reduced CPU usage by 50 percent with its HipHop for PHP project, and now it's releasing the code as open source. O'Reilly author and PHP expert Kevin Tatroe digs into HipHop's applications beyond Facebook.

• Four short links: 1 February 2010 - Android Charting, Trojan Cameras, Web-based IDE, Projected UIs

  Nat Torkington

  Bespin -- sexy HTML5 "code-in-the-cloud" IDE from Mozilla Labs. If the future is truly in locked-down hack-free devices whose only interface to the world is through the web browser, these sorts of IDEs are going to become critical for finding and raising the next generation of hackers. This and more in today's Four Short Links.

• Web developers can rule the iPad

  Simon St. Laurent

  Arise, web developers! Our time has come to dominate! A lot of tech commentators seem disappointed that the iPad feels more like an evolutionary step than a revolutionary step. For one group of technologists, though, the iPad is an opportunity for revolution, to take center stage in creating experiences users will want, and even want to buy. The iPad is all about consuming content, but most of the conversation about that content has seen it in traditional silos...

• Check Mate: Apple's iPad and Google's Next Move

  Mark Sigal

  There is an axiom that the biggest game-changers often result from ideas that, at first blush, seem easy to dismiss. So it goes with yesterday's launch of the iPad, Apple's entry into what they call the 'third category' of device -- the middle ground that exists between smartphone and laptop. Why is the iPad (seemingly) so easy to dismiss? Well, for one, it is an evolutionary device when conventional wisdom suggests that it needs to be a revolutionary device to find a wedge into a new market. In this instance, conventional wisdom is just plain off base.

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  TED Blog

• Photoblog: The TED balloon

  8 Feb 2010 | 5:00 pm

  TED2010 photographer Duncan Davidson took this happy shot outside on the Plaza this morning -- and recalled the sad fate of last year's balloon, which flew off in a storm and was never heard from again. "I actually saw it as it started to rip off," he remembers, "but then I turned my back on it, so I didn't see it fly away." This year, it stays firmly anchored. Photo TED / James Duncan Davidson.

• How to expose the corrupt: Peter Eigen on TED.com

  8 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

  Some of the world's most baffling social problems, says Peter Eigen, can be traced to systematic, pervasive government corruption, hand-in-glove with global companies. At TEDxBerlin, Eigen describes the thrilling counter-attack led by his organization Transparency International. (Recorded at TEDxBerlin, November 2009, Berlin. Duration: 16:12) Watch Peter Eigen's talk from TEDxBerlin on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDTalks.

• TED banners are up!

  5 Feb 2010 | 11:00 am

  Above: TED banners have started flying over Long Beach in preparation for next week's

• The painter and the pendulum: Tom Shannon on TED.com

  5 Feb 2010 | 7:31 am

  TED visits Tom Shannon in his Manhattan studio for an intimate look at his science-inspired art. An eye-opening, personal conversation with John Hockenberry reveals how nature's forces -- and the onset of Parkinson's tremors -- interact in his life and craft. (TED in the Field: Recorded May 2009, New York, NY. Duration: 13:22) Watch Tom Shannon's talk on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDTalks.

• A new strategy in the war on cancer: David Agus on TED.com

  4 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

  Traditionally, David Agus says, cancer treatments have had a short-sighted focus on the offending individual cells. He suggests a new, cross-disciplinary approach, using atypical drugs, computer modeling and protein analysis to treat and analyze the whole body. (Recorded at TEDMED, November 2009, San Diego, CA. Duration: 23:44) Watch David Agus' talk from TEDMED on TED.com, where you can download this TEDTalk, rate it, comment on it and find other talks and performances from our archive of 600+ TEDTalks.

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  CNET: Digital Media News

• Netflix has Blockbuster on the ropes

  Greg Sandoval

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:21 am

  As Blockbuster suffers through another round of layoffs and its stock trades for less than a postage stamp, one has to wonder when Netflix will deliver a knockout. Originally posted at Media Maverick

• EA losses drop, but sales and outlook decline

  Lance Whitney

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:22 am

  Aggressive cost cuts trim Electronic Arts' quarterly loss, but lower game sales take a bite out of revenue. Meanwhile, the company lowers its forecast for current quarter. Originally posted at News - Gaming and Culture

• Twins learn of teen brother's death on Facebook

  Chris Matyszczyk

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:32 pm

  Twins logging on to Facebook to read birthday wishes instead discover that people have left RIP posts about their 17-year-old brother. Police hadn't notified the family. Originally posted at Technically Incorrect

• University worker accused of extorting student file sharers

  Greg Sandoval

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:47 pm

  Security analyst at University of Georgia tasked with catching copyright violators allegedly uses his position to shakedown students. Originally posted at Media Maverick

• 1080p streaming not coming to Netflix this year

  Josh Lowensohn

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:30 pm

  After an earlier report, the popular DVD-by-mail and video-streaming company now says it does not plan to stream full HD content to its users later this year. Originally posted at Web Crawler

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  Google Blog Search: Digital Media

• Making Your Own Website Uptime Monitor

  unknown

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:03 am

  Digital Media Minute recently did a list post evaluating seven website uptime monitoring services; here's a nice tutorial from catswhocode.com ...

• Digital Media Buzz - CROSS MEDIA NYC CONFERENCE LAUNCHES WITH ...

  DMB Writer

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:46 am

  Digital Media Buzz is for professional and social media industry people interested in reviewing, sharing and discussing the latest in digital media technologies.

• New Digital Media Swatchbook | PaperSpecs

  The PaperSpecs Team

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:03 am

  The Avery Graphics Digital Media Swatchbook is now available in North America from Avery Dennison's Graphics & Reflective Products Division. The Digital.

• Virtualizing a Future in Green IT | Digital Media Buzz

  mavrasin

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:30 am

  As the IBM senior-certified IT architect for IBM Global Business Services, John Lamb works as part of an influential group of architectural engineers changing how IT departments approach energy usage.

• HP-Microsoft Merger Promises Upgrades in Cloud Computing | Digital ...

  mavrasin

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:30 am

  Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft agreed to increase cloud-based services to their consumers. The question is, how will this partnership improve the dependability of cloud-based services?

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  CD DVD Duplication & Replication Blog

• Thermal Printer Comparison: Rimage Prism vs Rimage Everest

  USDM

  9 Feb 2010 | 1:09 am

  Most comparison articles focus on the differences between two products from competing manufacturers. Today, we’re going to switch it up a bit by looking at two different thermal printers from the same company! The Rimage Corporation produces a variety of thermal disc printers including the reliable Prism and the best-selling Everest III. Both of these machines are designed to print on CD and DVD discs, but which one is the better deal? To find out, let’s look at each printer in depth. The Prism thermal CD/DVD printer uses a monochromatic ribbon to print text and simple logos…

• New Duplication Packages Are More Earth Friendly

  USDM

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:17 am

  There’s a reason why the top of our website says “Your Duplication Experts” when you visit the CDROM2GO home page: it’s not just our tag line, it is our philosophy! Expert duplication is the heart of what we do and it is our job to provide the best CD/DVD duplication services possible, especially where the environment is concerned. That’s why we are proud to announce eight new options to our line of environmentally conscious duplication packages. Previously, we took some big steps towards sustainable duplication by expanding our lineup to include Digipak cases…

• Blu-ray Sales Climb as Prices Continue to Fall

  USDM

  4 Feb 2010 | 1:14 am

  Can you believe that Blu-ray has been around for almost five years now? Although the successor to the DVD format was prohibitively expensive at first, this is no longer the case. Now, the world’s premier high-definition video format is coming of age as prices continue to fall and sales continue to climb. It is amazing how much the Blu-ray market has changed over the past few years. When Pioneer’s first Blu-ray burner, the BDR-101A, came out in 2006, it cost about $1,000 dollars! Today, Blu-ray burners cost about a tenth of that. Everything has come down in price from drives to…

• Meet the Accutower LS+ LightScribe DVD/CD Duplicator

  USDM

  3 Feb 2010 | 1:03 am

  Last year CDROM2GO unveiled the Accutower LS, which was our first-ever line of LightScribe compatible towers. Not only do customers love them, but we have written about them extensively over the past several months. Now, it’s time to take things to a whole new level with the Accutower LS+ DVD/CD duplicator. What exactly is the Accutower LS+? (Note the plus sign). At first glance, it doesn’t look all that different from the LightScribe towers we introduced last year. It’s got the same great 22X SATA burner drives, the same easy-to-use menu, and the same 250 GB hard drive as…

• Microboards Gets Competitive with New DVD Duplicators

  USDM

  1 Feb 2010 | 1:47 am

  To most people, the name Microboards means one thing: automated CD/DVD printers and loaders. But don’t get the wrong idea about this Minnesota-based company, because they are more than just a one-trick pony! Microboards is also getting competitive with its stand-alone DVD duplicators, starting with their new line of QD Series value towers. Microboards has been quietly selling their line of Premium Pro DVD/CD duplicators for years. The Premium Pro is just that: a premium disc copying machine packed with loads of features and options. But what if you just need a basic, no-frills…

• 
  On the Media

• The Ocean Full of Bowling Balls (On The Media: Friday, 05 February 2010)

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:04 pm

  Some unpublished Salinger writing has already found its way into the world. For instance, the Firestone Library at Princeton University has a collection of never-published stories by the author. While patrons aren't allowed to check them out or even to photocopy them, that hasn't stopped obsessive Salinger fans from making the pilgramage to see the stories. OTM producer PJ Vogt is one such fan.

• With Love and Squalor (On The Media: Friday, 05 February 2010)

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:59 am

  JD Salinger died last week, nearly 50 years after publishing his last short story. The reclusive author claimed to have been writing novels in private over the last half century. Slate columnist and devoted Salingerophile Ron Rosenbaum talks about what might be locked in Salinger's safe, and when we might get to see it.

• Trauma at Home (On The Media: Friday, 05 February 2010)

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:52 am

  When we think of journalists experiencing trauma, we often think of war correspondents and yet trauma can happen in one’s own backyard. Two years ago, a shooting rampage in the small community of Kirkwood, Missouri left local journalists covering the murders of their friends and neighbors. Don Corrigan, editor of The Webster-Kirkwood Times, says he’s never seen journalism in the same light since that day.

• Game Time (On The Media: Friday, 05 February 2010)

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:43 am

  The typical televised football game lasts about three hours. But according to a recent study by The Wall Street Journal, only 11 minutes of that time is actually devoted to live play. Bob Fishman is a game director for CBS Sports, the person who decides what home viewers see and when they see it. He explains how he spends the other two hours and 49 minutes of a broadcast.

• Field Guide (On The Media: Friday, 05 February 2010)

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:36 am

  For years, the remarkable accuracy of video game football was the closest armchair quarterbacks could get to actual NFL play-on-the-field. The actual game inspired the virtual one. But increasingly, according to Chris Suellentrop in this month’s Wired Magazine, the trend has reversed. A generation of actual NFL players, raised on games like Madden NFL, are bringing the influence of video games into their real play.

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  TradePub: Network / Communications

• Identifying and Thwarting Malicious Intrusions

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:50 pm

  The phenomenal growth in social media has opened the door for all new malicious intrusions from gangs of cyber criminals. Utilizing the trusted relationships in social networking and benefiting from immature security and content controls, hackers are seeing increased performance in their attacks. This just released white paper from MX Logic discusses the dark side of social networks and Web 2.0 and covers three main areas:Malware Types & Threats, including the future of malware;Malware Distribution & Control, including bot propagation & sustainability and recent malware milestones; Detecting…

• Lightwave Direct e-Newsletter

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:50 pm

  Sign up to receive this newsletter and stay up-to-date on these important industry topics:Fiber-optic cabling, networks, connectors and management systemsOptical subsystemsBroadband equipment and companiesSinglemode and Multimode fiberOptical transceivers and other componentsNetwork communicationsPremises, campus, metro, long haul, long distance and LAN networksROADMsVOIP, FTTX, IP, Ethernet and videoTransmission systems and networksATM, FDDI, SONET and SDHMultiplexingFiber-optic testingPacket transportAnd much more!Request Free!

• Faster, Cheaper and Easier to Maintain: Can You Afford Not to Upgrade Your Servers to Today's Advanced, Energy-Efficient Technologies?

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:50 am

  The current economic downturn has increased the magnitude and difficulty of the challenges facing data center managers. Many data center managers have abandoned their traditional refresh cycles, keeping servers that would normally be decommissioned in operation for an extra year — or more. Although it may seem counterintuitive, the best economic strategy for many data centers is to accelerate refresh cycles, not extend them.Request Free!

• Rethinking Server Virtualization: Breaking Performance and Manageability Barriers

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:50 am

  Many of virtualization's additional benefits - including built-in, cost-effective High Availability (HA) and Disaster Recovery (DR) - require external shared storage with a comprehensive feature set to support HA and DR. Unfortunately, it is all too easy to spend the savings from server virtualization on inefficient storage systems. Because they overcome many of the cost and management limitations of traditional SANs, iSCSI SANs are becoming the preferred choice to support virtualized environments.Request Free!

• Next -Generation Management Software for Blade Environments

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:50 am

  Hewlett-Packard (HP) designed the HP BladeSystem portfolio to address some of the key total cost of ownership (TCO) issues facing today's datacenter, including server management costs, utilization, and power and cooling. Since the launch of the HP BladeSystem c-Class family in 2006, HP has risen to claim the number 1 spot in the blade server market. As part of the BladeSystem, HP features three fundamental technologies:HP Insight Software for infrastructure managementHP Virtual Connect for virtual I/O networkingHP Thermal Logic for power and coolingThese technologies play a central role in…

• 
  SubHub

• SEO Tips - Your Search Engine Optimization Questions Answered

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:57 am

  Here at SubHub, a lot of our most frequently asked questions are understandably based around SEO and everything it relates to - optimizing and ranking of sites, competitor analysis and so forth.<br /><br />For a while i've been meaning to write an article that answers most of the questions we're asked and provides some useful SEO tips. So here it is!<br />

• 15 Top Tips For Getting Great Testimonials

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:46 am

  Testimonials are sometimes referred to as 'the secret sales force', and with good reason. Psychologists have long understood the principle of 'social proof', which basically says people will do what they see other people doing.

• Using Audience-Driven Marketing and Customer Service to Build and Support Your Brand

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:47 am

  As ever increasing numbers of web users utilize social media (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, blogs and forums etc.), to engage and interact with others, so it figures that businesses of all sizes are wanting to get a piece of the action.In this article we look at how you can use social media for marketing and customer support.

• Niche Content Millionaire: How A Membership Website Made Its Owner A Millionaire

  4 Feb 2010 | 4:53 am

  If you are thinking of getting into online publishing, or if you already have a site that is underperforming, it would be worth you taking a look at the Niche Content Millionaire book by David Eedle.

• Guardian Media Group CEO: 'Paid Content May Work'

  3 Feb 2010 | 2:33 am

  Guardian Media Group CEO Carolyn McCall says paid content may work, in a report published this week in the Financial Times.No one who understands newspapers well would argue that a solid paywall around all of a newspaper's content would make sense.  But there's plenty of evidence that people will pay for content that is unique, high quality, timely, actionable and valuable to a given niche or special interest.

• 
  Inside Digital Media

• Rewriting Apple’s History

  pleigh1@tampabay.rr.com (Phil Leigh | Podcasting & Blogging Consultant)

  6 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am

  Video Insider Logo As Mark Twain put it, “Very few things happen at the right time, and the rest don’t happen at all. The conscientious historian will correct these defects.” Normally the winners write history, but Apple’s success and lofty stock price has given a number of media executives a bad case of P/E envy. They’re distorting the past by accusing Apple of dictating terms of media consumption on the Internet. For example, when Apple convinced the recorded music industry to sell digital downloads in 2003 it allocated seventy percent of the sales proceeds to the record labels…

• Inventing the Future at Apple

  pleigh1@tampabay.rr.com (Phil Leigh | Podcasting & Blogging Consultant)

  30 Jan 2010 | 3:00 am

  Phil Leigh As Xerox PARC pioneer Alan Kay once put it, “The best way to predict the future is to invent it”. Much like it did with the iPod and iPhone, Apple again invented the future when it introduced the iPad tablet computer in January. From one perspective the iPad is an evolutionary extension of the iPod Touch. It uses the same operating system and user interface. Consumers familiar with the iPod Touch will quickly get the hang of the iPad. Neither device has a hard drive, or unpacks out of the box with a keyboard. Both can use the approximate 140,000 apps available at the Apps…

• Lessons from a Digital Media Pioneer

  pleigh1@tampabay.rr.com (Phil Leigh | Podcasting & Blogging Consultant)

  23 Jan 2010 | 6:00 am

  Phil Leigh Like the lost adventurer Carnehan from Rudyard Kipling’s The Man Who Would be King, RealNetworks crept back into the  news with the recent resignation of its CEO and Founder, Rob Glaser. Also like Carnehan Real hardly resembled the robust $12 billion market value industry leader it was at the turn of the Century having since dropped 95% in stock price. While Carnehan had an amazing story to tell, at least Glaser has an edifying  one. Real broke the sound barrier on the Web by bringing streaming audio in 1995. Two years later it incorporated video into the RealPlayer. Glaser had…

• Apple Service Might be a “Game Changer”

  pleigh1@tampabay.rr.com (Phil Leigh | Podcasting & Blogging Consultant)

  18 Jan 2010 | 12:56 pm

  Phil Leigh It’s become obvious over the past seven years that Apple can develop innovative products that revolutionize both emerging and established industries. An example of the first is the iPod. When it hit the market about seven years ago it was the first portable MP3 player with enough capacity to enable most of us to carry our entire music collection around with us. An example of the second is the iPhone which forever changed our concept of what a mobile phone should be able to do. In short, it combined voice telephony with unlimited Internet access. Now, speculation is rife that…

• How to Make Google AdWords Work

  pleigh1@tampabay.rr.com (Phil Leigh | Podcasting & Blogging Consultant)

  9 Jan 2010 | 6:00 am

  Download to iPhone or iPod If you would like to learn how to make Google AdWords be more effective, this interview is for you. Today’s guests are Dr. Donald Berndt and Ricardo Lasa who are the founders of Sitewit.com. Their company enables users of Google AdWords and similar online ad platforms to obtain better results by employing artificial intelligence to manage campaigns.  Sitewit provides an analytical engine to dynamically optimize such ad campaigns as an online service. Since the Great Recession of 2008 it has become abundantly clear that conventional advertising is not working as…

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  PookyMedia Films

• Agile Dimensions - Cost Effective and Green Conferencing in Second Life

  31 Jan 2010 | 2:31 pm

  Working with Bill Krebs from Agile Dimensions on a recent conference, we demonstrate the successful use of video to illustrate how important and cost effect working in a Virtual World environment can be.

• Plastic Dreams - Ming Bridges' Virtual Music Video

  7 Jan 2010 | 12:32 pm

  Ming Bridges, 2006 winner of Teenage Icon, becomes an avatar for this music video of her hit song, Plastic Dreams.Screenplay by Rick Roman, produced by Pooky Amsterdam and directed by Russell (Rosco) Boyd.

• Puppy Clips

  4 Jan 2010 | 8:07 am

  Using Second Life's more endearing personalities, we bring you an idea where the tinies actually headline.Written and produced by Pooky Amsterdam, directed by Russell (Rosco) Boyd and Executive Producer Rick Roman.

• Document of Time - Interview with Holocaust Survivor Fanny Starr

  14 Dec 2009 | 4:02 pm

  Document of Time - Interview with Holocaust survivor Fanny Starr who endured the full six years of hell and living in deplorable conditions. Fanny Starr’s liberation day occurred on April 15, 1945. The British Army liberated Bergen Belsen concentration camp.Ms Starr answers questions about her lifetime and wartime experiences in a revealing interview which captures on record one of the most appalling times of human history. These are the answers to questions she had to answer to make the world aware and for the sake of record.Thanks to Roadrunner Island, and Strat Inshan, Metropolitan State…

• Foundation Studies in Second Life - SLENZ

  28 Sep 2009 | 2:22 pm

  The Second Life Education in New Zealand foundation build known as The Skill Mastery Hyperdome is the location for this video. It is a step into the future into a real time environment where students can learn, develop and practice interview skills enabling progress towards their career goals.

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  3DVIA 3D Model Blog

• Best of SolidWorks World 2010

  cmedling

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:23 pm

  SolidWorks World 2010 was a great event! This was my first SWW ever, and I was extremely impressed with the presentations, the strong community of users, and how well organized the event was.  It was great to speak to so many users, and meet other SolidWorks and Dassault Systèmes employees.  From my perspective, there were four hot topics that came out of the show, which I share in this quick video. Thanks to the SolidWorks team for their input in this video.  Jeremy Luchini designed the Hot Rod electric car model in SolidWorks, which you can see here on 3dvia.com. If you want to see more…

• 3DVIA Featured Artist – Partha Das (XQH_XXX)

  dswavely

  7 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm

  Parth (XQH_XXX) is one of the most well-known users on 3DVIA as a leader in the community both in modeling and in exemplifying the 3DVIA spirit of friendliness and helpfulness. Rarely does a day go by that doesn’t include an exciting new model from Parth along with a slew of comments filled with suggestions! Parth is also the leader of the 3DPLM Initiatives that help 3DVIA Shape evolve as a free 3D modeling tool and help the 3DVIA community thrive and grow. You’ll often see the 3DPLM tags that show Parth and his group are busy again. Parth has well over 200 models here on 3DVIA…

• 3DVIA Top 10 models – 058

  dswavely

  4 Feb 2010 | 6:30 am

  The best models uploaded to 3DVIA.com during the week of Saturday, January 23rd through Friday, January 29th are highlighted here. Everything is as mad as a hatter this week! Scorpio is the hardest challenge yet for the 3DVIA Top 10 Team, but with a combination of whimsy, imagination and hardcore hardware, by the end of the day Scorpio is tamed and we’re all relaxed and back to enjoying the flowers as we relax by the fireplace or watch the telly. Easy links to the previous Top 10 lists: 001 – 002 – 003 – 004 – 005 – 006 – 007 – 008 – 009…

• Call to Action! The Exploding Barrel

  jdelrio

  30 Jan 2010 | 6:48 am

  3DVIA’s Call to Action! [Graphics still in-progress]  This is a new program I am starting here that attempts to bring our Community members together with our Developer Community.   We have alot of artists constantly expressing their creativity on 3DVIA.com and we also have just as many developers working in Virtools and MP who are always creating fun and entertaining Scene’s. This week we are looking for the ubiquous Exploding Barrel.  A staple in over 120 games, this innocent looking barrel of highly flammable liquids has helped many a  mild mannered gamer take on the…

• Building Games Driven by Artists & Small Teams Webinar

  Emmy

  29 Jan 2010 | 10:51 am

  Take 30 minutes on Thursday, February 4 to learn new skills with 3DVIA Virtools and have the chance to WIN a $100 Apple® Gift Card* Building Games Driven by Artists & Small Teams Thursday, February 4, from 10:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. EDT While programmers are an obvious piece of the game development puzzle, this presentation demonstrates why industry professionals must recognize that artists (including game designers) could become THE most important piece. After all, games are a form of art. Join us to explore the tools available for empowering artists to take the lead on numerous…

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  TUTORIALIZED.COM

• Rigging Character With Biped

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:01 pm

  We have to decide to animate character in 3d studio max the simple way is to animate character we have to rig biped with character simply we have a character and its open in 3d max now we have to set ... Cloud Servers in Demand - GoGrid Start Small and Grow with Your Business. $0.10/hour

• How to Create a Realistic Candle Scene with 3ds Max and FumeFX

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:01 pm

  When dealing with FumeFX, and other effects generating tools, it can be said that knowing how to convincingly merge your effects into your 3d scene is just as important as knowing how to create the ef... Microsoft SQL Server® Value Calculator Reduce Costs & Increase Value with Microsoft SQL Server® 2008. Download Today!

• Create an Interactive 3d Model Viewer using 3ds Max and Wirefusion

  7 Feb 2010 | 10:01 pm

  In this two part tutorial, you will learn how to create an energy drink can in 3ds Max using poly modeling and splines, and then export your mesh to Wirefusion and add a user interface wich will allow... IT Training Programs Get The It Skills That Gets Jobs! Further Your Career Today

• Face Animation Tutorial

  17 Jan 2010 | 10:01 pm

  http://www.3dm3.com/tutorials/noobsThis is my tutorial on how to animate facial expressions with morpher modifire in3ds Max.I must warn you that befour you star this tutorial you allready have to have... Game Design Degrees Video game designers in high demand! Get degree - Start now and work in 1 yr.

• Material 2D Lip sync in Max

  13 Jan 2010 | 10:01 pm

  -We will create a material that can be animated to change from one mouth pose to another for 2d lip sync in Max. -Using Photoshop to create the different mouth poses. -Importing audio with the new Pro... Ready for Windows 7 See how other companies are building and growing Windows 7

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  Hiperia3D News

• Ace Of The Skies: Get Up To 25% Off

  5 Feb 2010 | 11:57 am

  I have finished my project for Renderosity called Ace Of The Skies. This is a 3D model for Poser and DAZ Studio. Soon I will tell you more in detail about the process of building and testing, and some story behind this. For now, here are some renders... *** CLICK THE TITLE AND READ THE FULL STORY ***

• 70% Off On Female Characters For Poser And DAZ Studio

  3 Feb 2010 | 6:38 am

  Freja and Adiene are putting on a sale for all their Renderosity store and offer up to 70% off for a limited time! These vendors offer mainly female characters for poser models, meaning textures and morphs to make characters like Victoria 4 for Poser... *** CLICK THE TITLE AND READ THE FULL STORY ***

• Virtual London Grows!

  2 Feb 2010 | 6:53 am

  Metaversum, developer of Twinity, the virtual world based on real people and real cities, is adding new areas to the beta of Virtual London on February 3rd. To mark this occasion, members will be greeted with lots of events and new launches. ... *** CLICK THE TITLE AND READ THE FULL STORY ***

• 10 Augmented Reality Videos

  1 Feb 2010 | 9:44 am

  In the last times there's an increased interest in Augmented Reality, and it's not strange because in a near future we will begin to see it integrated in our lives. Here's a selection of videos that show some kind of augmented reality I found during... *** CLICK THE TITLE AND READ THE FULL STORY ***

• All 3D Base Human Figures For Free At DAZ 3D

  24 Jan 2010 | 11:36 am

  All DAZ3D base figures are free: Victoria, Michael, Freak, She-Freak. The Girl, Hiro, Aiko... All of them. In case you don't know it, DAZ is the creator of DAZ Studio and these figures are used to make rendered 3D art by artists all over the world. ... *** CLICK THE TITLE AND READ THE FULL STORY ***

• 
  MarketSaw - 3D Movies, Gaming and Technology

• 3D Game Shows Coming Soon? And Another 3D Education Opportunity

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:16 pm

  Michael here. The Hollywood Reporter has an article about a 3D clip of Wheel of Fortune that was screened Friday morning on the Sony lot at an open house for Sony's new 3D Technology Center. The... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• DRIVE ANGRY 3D Casting Rumors!

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:55 am

  Jim here. Got an update for you on Nicholas Cage's DRIVE ANGRY 3D thriller that Patrick Lussier is helming. BloodyDisgusting says that apparently William Fichtner (ARMAGEDDON) and Amber Heard... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• The TOP TEN Of 2010! Jim's S3D Movie Guide...

  7 Feb 2010 | 7:24 pm

  Jim here. Here is my 2010 S3D Movies Guide for you! I waited a while to ensure I captured all the recent S3D conversion announcements! Here are my most anticipated S3D movies for 2010: 1. TRON... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 3D Shorts: Taylor Lautner As STRETCH ARMSTRONG; JP Morgan Finally Gets That $700m For Digital Rollout; Realtime 2D To 3D Conversion Tech?

  6 Feb 2010 | 5:05 pm

  Jim here. S3D news is coming fast and furious (HEY! Time for that franchise to go 3D too!) and I've got 3 more breaking stories for you! First up, Troy Lautner has just been cast in Universal's... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 5 New Posters: CLASH OF THE TITANS 3D!!

  6 Feb 2010 | 7:35 am

  Jim here. YES!! Finally we get to see posters showing off the fact that CLASH OF THE TITANS will be in stereoscopic 3D! Thanks to UGO for providing these. Click to enlarge. Man oh man, that Kraken... [[ This is a content summary only. Visit my website for full links, other content, and more! ]]

• 
  Official Second Life Blog

• Avatars United Update

  8 Feb 2010 | 2:18 pm

  Since announcing our acquisition of Avatars United, we've had a ton of Second Life Residents getting involved and playing with the site. A big thank you to everyone who's been trying it out!Currently, avatar ownership on Avatars United is not verified (see the site's FAQ) for any virtual world or MMO on the platform, including Second Life. However, now that we've acquired the site, we've already started working on a standard, easy method of verifying ownership of Second Life avatars. You’ll hear more about that soon.In the meantime, note that Avatars United provides a unique URL for every…

• Avatars, Unite!

  29 Jan 2010 | 10:10 am

  Second Life made strides in 2009, as T talked about in his recent blog post, but we still have work to do. There are some big changes ahead this year as we start to make SL more intuitive, more relevant and more connected to the social Web. Today I want to talk about one of the social strategy initiatives we have planned, and tell you about an acquisition we've just completed that will help us in this area.I've met many amazing people in Second Life and I am sure you have too.  This is a big part of what makes Second Life so powerful.   It's the "social glue" of experiencing an online…

• Linden Homes to Launch February 17th

  25 Jan 2010 | 4:08 pm

  After a really successful Beta period we are delighted to announce that Linden Homes will be launching for all Premium members on February 17th.Last month we opened a Beta program for a new feature of Premium Subscription that we've called a Linden Home. You can read the original blog post. We invited a few thousand existing Premium members to take part in the Beta and 750 of you took the option of a Linden Home, which is incredible.This month we surveyed those Beta testers and as expected, we got some great feedback. Happily the large majority of testers told us that they have really enjoyed…

• 2009 End of Year Second Life Economy Wrap up (including Q4 Economy in Detail)

  19 Jan 2010 | 9:00 am

  Second Life economy totals $567 million US dollars in 2009 - 65% growth over 2008Gross Resident Earnings are $55 million US Dollars in 2009 - 11% growth over 2008 In 2009, the rest of the world caught up with what Second Life Residents have known for a long time - that virtual goods can be a very good business.  Headlines about a billion-dollar plus trade in virtual items appeared in the mainstream press, but in many cases the articles focused on the platforms that create and provide virtual goods to their users, not on the users themselves. And this is what sets Second Life apart: our users…

• 
  NPSL: Nonprofits in Second Life

• Nonprofit Commons Video Premiers on YouTube

  DustyArtaud

  4 Feb 2010 | 7:06 pm

  TechSoup and the Nonprofit Commons have released a new video created by machinimatographer Draxtor Despres. Filmed both in real life and Second Life, it shows how nonprofits collaborating in the virtual world can make a difference in the real world, one avatar at a time. Bookmark/Search this post with: read more

• Member Spotlight: Layal Rabat aka Ninlil Xeltentat

  penguin kuhn

  26 Jan 2010 | 11:13 am

  Layal Rabat, otherwise known as Ninlil Xeltentat in Second Life is the Volunteer Manager for Nonprofit Commons in Second Life. I had a chance to chat with Layal about her nonprofit work in real and virtual worlds. What organization do you work for? Bookmark/Search this post with: read more

• Virtual Haiti Relief: Special Nonprofit Commons meeting tomorrow

  penguin kuhn

  21 Jan 2010 | 1:41 pm

  [post by In Kenzo @npsl @amoration] Have you wandered around the grid & web and wondered how you can directly support the people of Haiti? Bookmark/Search this post with: read more

• TSDIGS Event Followup Interview with Buffy Beale!

  Genesis

  6 Nov 2009 | 1:39 pm

• Digital Storytelling Challenge Awardees Announced!

  Beth J. Bates

  24 Oct 2009 | 8:02 am

  On October 21, we held our Digital Storytelling Challenge Awards Party here at TechSoup headquarters in San Francisco. Bookmark/Search this post with: read more

• 
  New World Notes

• Have You Been to the Beanstalk (the Oldest User-Generated Content in Second Life)?

  SLHamlet

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:00 am

  Over the weekend someone said they had read in my book about the giant beanstalk of Steller Sunshine, the first piece of user-generated content in Second Life, and wanted to pay a visit. Not having been there lately myself, I...

• Virtual Haiti Relief in Second Life Has a Homepage, L$1.2 Million (About US$5000) Raised So Far

  SLHamlet

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:50 pm

  Though it's somewhat fallen from the front pages in recent weeks, the humanitarian disaster in Haiti remains dire. Fortunately, a number of Second Life Residents and groups like Nonprofit Commons have put together a great homepage for Virtual Haiti Relief,...

• Who Has the Most Friends on Avatars United? (And Will Their Network Lead to Twitter-esque Fame and Influence?)

  SLHamlet

  8 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

  Linden Lab's new social network Avatars United has been running as a Linden property for nearly two weeks, and I'm curious how effectively it's, well, uniting avatars. One data point for that is looking at accounts with the most friends....

• New World Notes' Top Five Posts Last Week

  SLHamlet

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:06 am

  Philip Rosedale Attempting to Create Sentient Artificial Intelligence That Thinks and Dreams in Second Life! The Top 10 Hottest Second Life Male Avatars of 2009 (Pt. 2) Second Life Strategy Game Posts Results to Twitter (With Teleport Link For Challenging...

• Weekend Machinima: J-Pop Video From SL *Idoru* Group

  SLHamlet

  7 Feb 2010 | 1:21 am

  If you like J-Pop, you'll love this aggressively cute video featuring Piatto, a Japanese girl group that exists only in Second Life. (As William Gibson might call them, "Idoru".) Even if you don't, you'll still admire the great production values...

• 
  Twitter / SecondLie

• SecondLie: Sorry, Second Lifers, but just like Facebook is only for real people, Google Buzz will only be for childhood imaginary friends.

  Second Lie

  9 Feb 2010 | 10:27 am

  SecondLie: Sorry, Second Lifers, but just like Facebook is only for real people, Google Buzz will only be for childhood imaginary friends.

• SecondLie: As a token of my appreciation, anyone friending me on Avatars United can have a free Secondlie Bear! (Just IM me in-world)

  Second Lie

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:33 am

  SecondLie: As a token of my appreciation, anyone friending me on Avatars United can have a free Secondlie Bear! (Just IM me in-world)

• SecondLie: ZOMG! They're poaching my friends list! Well, two can play at that game... MASS FRIENDING STORM!

  Second Lie

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:39 am

  SecondLie: ZOMG! They're poaching my friends list! Well, two can play at that game... MASS FRIENDING STORM!

• SecondLie: Apple is working on virtual mall for their products and support. No more BO at the Genius Bar! Hooray!

  Second Lie

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:33 am

  SecondLie: Apple is working on virtual mall for their products and support. No more BO at the Genius Bar! Hooray!

• SecondLie: CHALLENGE: If I get the most friends on Avatars United, I'll give $100US to SL Relay For Life.

  Second Lie

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:55 am

  SecondLie: CHALLENGE: If I get the most friends on Avatars United, I'll give $100US to SL Relay For Life.

• 
  SLurl

• SLurl: We Are The Network 12pm Are We Engineering the Species that will Replace Us? @joelfoner http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wells/89/56/26/

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:58 am

  SLurl: We Are The Network 12pm Are We Engineering the Species that will Replace Us? @joelfoner http://slurl.com/secondlife/Wells/89/56/26/

• SLurl: Tonight Live @paisleybeebe 6pm Jack Linden Skye Galaxy Bathsheba Darkfold http://slurl.com/secondlife/Northpoint/153/48/29

  7 Feb 2010 | 1:18 pm

  SLurl: Tonight Live @paisleybeebe 6pm Jack Linden Skye Galaxy Bathsheba Darkfold http://slurl.com/secondlife/Northpoint/153/48/29

• SLurl: Brahma Yoga 4am http://slurl.com/secondlife/Airtol%20Hill/177/112/59

  7 Feb 2010 | 4:02 am

  SLurl: Brahma Yoga 4am http://slurl.com/secondlife/Airtol%20Hill/177/112/59

• SLurl: Collective behavior experiment 5:30pm Percepts and Concepts Laboratory http://slurl.com/secondlife/Limestone%20Quarry/195/96/33

  5 Feb 2010 | 2:51 pm

  SLurl: Collective behavior experiment 5:30pm Percepts and Concepts Laboratory http://slurl.com/secondlife/Limestone%20Quarry/195/96/33

• SLurl: The Wall v3 Carp/Diabolus 2pm http://slurl.com/secondlife/Benvolio/128/109/2506

  5 Feb 2010 | 1:23 pm

  SLurl: The Wall v3 Carp/Diabolus 2pm http://slurl.com/secondlife/Benvolio/128/109/2506

• 
  MacRumors iPhone Blog

• MacRumors: Claimed Fourth-Generation iPhone Parts Surface Revealing Taller Form Factor

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:31 am

  iPhone 3GS on left, claimed fourth-generation iPhone on right iPhone repair site iResQ has posted photos of what it claims are parts for the fourth-generation iPhone presumably due for launch later this year. Among the most notable fe...

• AT&T Rolls Out FamilyMap iPhone Application

  5 Feb 2010 | 10:55 am

  AT&T today announced the release of AT&T FamilyMap, a new iPhone application that integrates with the company's existing FamilyMap service to allow families to keep track of each other while on the go.The AT&T FamilyMap app b...

• MacRumors: Sling Media Denies Collaboration With AT&T on 3G Streaming

  5 Feb 2010 | 8:30 am

  Yesterday, AT&T announced that it had finally decided to allow Sling Media's SlingPlayer Mobile to stream video over the carrier's 3G network. As part of the announcement, AT&T claimed that it had "worked with" Sling Media to develop a version of th...

• Apple to iPhone Developers: Geolocation Not to Be Used Solely for Ads

  5 Feb 2010 | 8:00 am

  In a posting on its news page for iPhone developers earlier this week, Apple encouraged developers to integrate the Core Location framework into their apps, offering the ability to deliver information to users based on their location. Perhaps more i...

• MacRumors: Apple's iPhone Continues to Outpace Smartphone Industry Growth

  4 Feb 2010 | 8:32 am

  Research firm IDC today issued a report highlighting fourth quarter and full year worldwide sales numbers of "converged mobile devices", more commonly known as smartphones, revealing continuing outstanding growth for Apple's iPhone above the overall ...

• 
  The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

• Navigon adds some unique features to GPS app

  Mel Martin

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:30 am

  Filed under: Software, Odds and ends, iPhone, iPod touchNavigon has been very aggressive about keeping its highly rated MobileNavigator app [iTunes link] up to date. Now, new features are putting it even further ahead of a lot of the competition. The update adds three innovative features: in-app connection to Facebook and Twitter, Panorama View 3D with 3D terrain views powered from NASA data, and personalized route delivery via NAVIGON MyRoutes, an intelligent direction provider. For Facebook and Twitter connectivity, a simple icon tap posts the user's current position, destination, and ETA…

• Game developers on iPhone outnumber DS and PSP two-to-one

  Mike Schramm

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:00 pm

  Filed under: Gaming, Multimedia, Apple, iPhone, App Store, SDK, iPod touchGame Developer Research has published its 2009/10 survey of video game developers, and the results are pretty impressive for the still relatively fledgling iPhone platform: The number of developers who are working on mobile games increased by 12 percent, and there are actually twice as many developers working on iPhone games as are working on the Nintendo DS and Sony's PSP handheld consoles. That's a pretty amazing number, though it's not quite a surprise when you consider it. First of all, Nintendo DS and PSP…

• Plants vs. Zombies coming to iPhone on February 15th

  Mike Schramm

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

  Filed under: Gaming, Software, Developer, iPhone, App Store Yes, PopCap is at it again -- this time, their crazy addictive (just like all of their games) take on the tower defense genre, Plants vs. Zombies, is headed off to the iPhone. They just tweeted confirmation a little while ago, and released this trailer showing all of the flower vs. undead action that we enjoyed so much in the other versions of the game, squeezed into the smaller screen of the iPhone. They don't mention a price point, but I'm guessing it'll come out at $4.99, since that's what most of their releases have debuted at…

• Loopt teams with Mobile Spinach for check-in discounts, Booyah talks about MyTown

  Mike Schramm

  8 Feb 2010 | 2:00 pm

  Filed under: Software, iPhone, App StoreIf the iPhone has a leading app genre, aside from gaming, I'd say the current surge of "check-in" apps is probably it. Sure, back when the App Store first opened up, Twitter apps were everywhere (and they're still being made daily, it seems), but in terms of a genre that can only exist on a location-aware device like the iPhone, "check-in" apps like Foursquare, Gowalla, and so on, are making their mark right now. Here's news on two such apps continuing to grow on the App Store skyline. First up, Loopt [iTunes link] has announced a partnership with a…

• Purported pics of next-gen iPhone front face surface

  Chris Rawson

  8 Feb 2010 | 12:00 pm

  Filed under: Hardware, Rumors, iPhoneiResQ, the iPhone/iPod repair site, has posted pics of what they claim is the front faceplate of the next-gen iPhone. Two things about this piece of hardware are particularly interesting. First, the part is approximately 1/4 of an inch taller than the iPhone 3GS, indicative of a slightly taller form factor for the next-gen iPhone. Second, there's a small, reflective strip directly above the hole for the phone speaker. iResQ believes this is likely to be the new location for the iPhone's proximity sensor rather than an indication of any new hardware;…

• 
  How to Make iPhone Apps

• How to Use UITextField in iPhone Programming

  mattjdrake

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:30 am

  Here is the standard way of getting user input and then using the input in your app. UITextField works with the delegation pattern in Objective-C. That is, you need to designate an object to act “on behalf” of the text field object. In this video I show you how to use the UITextField to ask a user for input and then post the results to a label. [Read More] Please share this if you like it!

• iPood: What The iPad Means For Mobile Apps

  mattjdrake

  5 Feb 2010 | 5:00 am

  In this week’s show I share my thoughts on Apple’s iPad announcement last week. Show Notes iPood You may have wondered why I missed the last podcast… Well, the reason is that I was meeting my new daughter: Keira Ruby! Just want to welcome her as the newest member of the mobile app family (iPood: there is an app for that!). What I’ve Been Up To (Other Than Changing Diapers) This week I’ve been creating content for the Mobile App Mastery Silver Program. Specifically, I am working on the NO-BS Cocoa-Touch module. This one is fun because it introduces what is unique about the iPhone…

• Here is How You Use the Segmented Control [UISegmentedControl]

  mattjdrake

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:29 am

  A segmented control displays a list of options that a user can choose from. Each segment sort of looks like a button; the segments remains “pressed” even after the user lifts his or her finger. You can detect when a different segment is selected and also what corresponding value in an array (that you supply) is referenced by the selected segment. Here is an example… [Read More] Please share this if you like it!

• How To Use UIScrollView in Your iPhone App

  mattjdrake

  1 Feb 2010 | 10:28 am

  Sometimes you would like to be able to display an image or view that is larger than the iPhone or iPod screen. UIScrollView gives you this ability plus the feature of zooming using the pinch gesture. This video will show you how to implement this in your own iPhone app. Source Code follows video. [Read More] Please share this if you like it!

• Examples of Objective-C Loops

  mattjdrake

  25 Jan 2010 | 10:27 am

  Using loops to repeat actions in programming is a common task. Objective-C does this chore in more or less the same way as other programming languages. However, if you are still unfamiliar with the Objective-C syntax you may feel a little disoriented. [Read More] Please share this if you like it!

• 
  Stuff I Make On My iPhone

• Psychedelic Thanka. Created with PhotoTropedelic, Pro HDR,...

  7 Feb 2010 | 7:40 pm

  Psychedelic Thanka. Created with PhotoTropedelic, Pro HDR, Low-Mob and Photogene.

• Batgirl Trio

  6 Feb 2010 | 12:34 am

  Batgirl Trio

• Batgirl. Created with ToonPaint, SketchBook and CameraBag.

  3 Feb 2010 | 9:27 pm

  Batgirl. Created with ToonPaint, SketchBook and CameraBag.

• Bathrooms of North America: Office Depot. An unpleasant surprise...

  2 Feb 2010 | 7:03 pm

  Bathrooms of North America: Office Depot. An unpleasant surprise I tried to make the best of by creating this mini-documentary on my iPhone. Created with ReelDirector.

• WTF Slogan of the Day

  27 Jan 2010 | 8:15 pm

  WTF Slogan of the Day

• 
  Linux News

• Email

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:13 am

  We've been working on an "OSNews version 5" upgrade for several months, and with several months to go, we decided to make some incremental changes to OSNews on the existing codebase.

• How To Reverse Engineer A Motherboard BIOS @ Phoronix

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:36 am

  Since being let go by Novell last year where he worked on the RadeonHD Linux graphics driver and X.Org support within SuSE Linux, Luc Verhaegen has continued work on his VIA Unichrome DDX driver as well as other X.Org code and he has also become involved with the CoreBoot project that aims to create a free software BIOS for most chipsets and ...

• Inside CloudLinux's New Linux-Based Cloud OS

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:03 pm

  For the past 13-years, Igor Seletskiy has developed a series of innovative new products for the hosting industry, including the control panel H-Sphere, container-based virtualization product FreeVPS, single server control panel CP+, Web-based file manager WebShell, and website building tool SiteStudio.

• IBM launches eight-core Power7 processor, servers

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm

  Agam Shah 09 February, 2010 07:43 IBM on Monday launched its latest Power7 processor, which adds more cores and improved multithreading capabilities to boost the performance of servers requiring high up time.

• linux c++Programming

  8 Feb 2010 | 9:43 am

  Jeff gives us a head-start for learning C++ on our own. Object-Oriented programming is a hot topic in the computer industry these days, and most experts agree that C++ is the predominant object-oriented programming language.

• 
  OSNews

• NVIDIA Unveils Optimus Seamless GPU Switching

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:18 am

  Notebooks with dual GPUs have been shipping for a while now, but switching between the fancy discrete GPU and the low-power integrated one hasn't exactly been painless. Today, NVIDIA introduced a technology called Optimus, which makes the switching process automatic and transparent. In Windows, that is.

• Battery "Bug" Caused by Batteries, Not by Windows 7

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:55 pm

  The past few weeks or so, there's been a lot of interest in a supposed battery status report bug in Windows 7. After installing Windows 7, some users reported seeing "consider replacing your battery"-warnings in systems that appeared to be operating just fine on Windows XP or Vista. After extensive research, Steven Sinofsky has now explained on the Engineering 7 blog that the fault is not with Windows 7 - it really, really is your battery.

• AMD Reveals Fusion CPU+GPU, To Challenge Intel in Laptops

  8 Feb 2010 | 3:34 pm

  "The 'Llano' processor that AMD described today in an ISSCC session is not a CPU, and it's not a GPU - instead, it's a hybrid design that the chipmaker is calling an 'application processor unit', or APU. Whatever you call it, it could well give Intel a run for its money in the laptop market, by combining a full DX11-compatible GPU with four out-of-order CPU cores on a single, 32nm processor die."

• Concept: Stream Adaptive Computer System, Locus OS

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:38 pm

  Developed by industrial designer Barton Smith, the Stream Adaptive Computer System is an interesting take on making computing easier and more adaptable to suit the user's current needs. Today, he also unveiled the operating system and user interface that would run on Stream. It's... Amazing.

• Power7: Big Blue Eye on UNIX

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:38 am

  "The scuttlebutt is that IBM seemed perfectly content to wait until May to launch the Power7-based Power Systems servers, but something changed and compelled the company to move up the announcement of its first machines using the eight-core processor to today. Big Blue is not in a habit of explaining its motives or its timing for product launches, but it seems clear that IBM wanted to get out in front of a whole lot of processor and systems launches that are expected between now and the summer."

• 
  Coding Horror

• Cultivate Teams, Not Ideas

  Jeff Atwood

  25 Jan 2010 | 8:00 pm

  How much is a good idea worth? According to Derek Sivers, not much: It's so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.) To me, ideas are worth nothing unless executed. They are just a multiplier. Execution is worth millions. To make a business, you need to multiply the two. The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That's why I don't want to hear people's ideas. I'm not interested until I see their execution. I was reminded of Mr.

• The Great Newline Schism

  Jeff Atwood

  18 Jan 2010 | 5:00 am

  Have you ever opened a simple little ASCII text file to see it inexplicably displayed as onegiantunbrokenline? Opening the file in a different, smarter text editor results in the file displayed properly in multiple paragraphs. The answer to this puzzle lies in our old friend, invisible characters that we can't see but that are totally not out to get us. Well, except when they are. The invisible problem characters in this case are newlines. Did you ever wonder what was at the end of your lines? As a programmer, I knew there were end of line characters, but I honestly never thought much about…

• A Democracy of Netbooks

  Jeff Atwood

  8 Jan 2010 | 5:00 am

  I'm a big fan of Joey DeVilla's excellent blog, Global Nerdy, but I take exception to his post Fast Food, Apple Pies, and Why Netbooks Suck: he end result, to my mind, is a device that occupies an uncomfortable, middle ground between laptops and smartphones that tries to please everyone and pleases no one. Consider the factors: Size: A bit too large to go into your pocket; a bit too small for regular day-to-day work. Power: Slightly more capable than a smartphone; slightly less capable than a laptop. Price: Slightly higher than a higher-end smartphone but lacking a phone's capability and…

• Responsible Open Source Code Parenting

  Jeff Atwood

  29 Dec 2009 | 5:08 am

  I'm a big fan of John Gruber's Markdown. When it comes to humane markup languages for the web, I don't think anyone's quite nailed it like Mr. Gruber. His philosophy was clear from the outset: Markdown is intended to be as easy-to-read and easy-to-write as is feasible. Readability, however, is emphasized above all else. A Markdown-formatted document should be publishable as-is, as plain text, without looking like it’s been marked up with tags or formatting instructions. While Markdown’s syntax has been influenced by several existing text-to-HTML filters — including Setext, atx, Textile,…

• Building a PC, Part VI: Rebuilding

  Jeff Atwood

  17 Dec 2009 | 6:30 pm

  I can't believe it's been almost two and a half years since I built my last PC. I originally documented that process in a series of posts: Building a PC, Part I: Minimal boot Building a PC, Part II: Burn in Building a PC, Part III: Overclocking Building a PC, Part IV: Now It's Your Turn Building a PC, Part V: Upgrading Now, lest you think I am some kind of freakish, cave-dwelling luddite, what with my ancient two and a half year old PC, I have upgraded the CPU, upgraded the hard drive, and upgraded the video card since then. I also went from 4 GB of RAM to 8 GB of RAM, but I didn't happen to…

• 
  Software Made Simple

• iPad Musings

  Paul Lefebvre

  2 Feb 2010 | 11:48 am

  I don’t know if the iPad is something I’ll get, but it sure looks cool. I’ve already had two friends of mine, who are not computer-savvy at all, say they really want one! One friend just bought a netbook because she wanted a small, portable computer to do some light internet surfing, email and general writing. I tried to talk her into a Mac, but even used ones were more than she wanted to spend. After the iPad announcement, she said “I’m returning my netbook and buying and iPad. It’s exactly what I want.” Another friend owns a hair salon and was…

• ExpressCard SSD in MacBook Pro

  Paul Lefebvre

  26 Jan 2010 | 8:47 am

  I’m always looking for ways to get more speed out of my MacBook Pro. Last month, Mac OS X Hints published a hint about using an ExpressCard SSD in a MacBook Pro. Then early this month, Rob Griffiths of Macworld (and the Mac OS X Hints guy) posted both an article and video on how he bought and set one up with his MacBook Pro. The speed improvement seemed pretty impressive, so I ordered one myself (from TigerDirect). Specifically, I ordered the FileMate SolidGo 48GB ExpressCard Ultra SSD. I usually order tech gear like this from NewEgg, but TigerDirect had a better price ($140 vs. $170)…

• Installing Windows 7 x64 on a MacBook Pro Using Bootcamp

  Paul Lefebvre

  5 Oct 2009 | 8:38 am

  I have been running Windows 7 RC x86 (the 32-bit version) in Bootcamp for several months now. It’s worked well, but I really didn’t like that it couldn’t see the full 6GB of RAM in my MacBook Pro (Late 2007). Snow Leopard comes with new Bootcamp drivers that support 64-bit Windows and adds a new file system driver to allow you to read your OS X files while in Windows. So I decided it was time to upgrade. I quickly learned that I would need to to a complete reinstall. Microsoft doesn’t let you do an in-place install from a 32-bit version of Windows to a 64-bit version.

• Dead MacBook Pro Displays: Final Update

  Paul Lefebvre

  24 Sep 2009 | 1:08 pm

  I’m back up and running. This post is being written on my repaired MacBook Pro! Wednesday night (9/23) the status of my laptop changed from “On hold” to “Repaired”. And to my surprise this morning I saw that it was out on a FedEx truck for delivery to my house. Apple had shipped it overnight from their repair facility in Texas! Upon opening the laptop, it showed two items as being repaired: 605-1791 Logic Board (No Video) 616-0261 Battery (Runtime Too Short) I had never noticed that my battery runtime was too short, but then I don’t use the MacBook Pro on…

• Dead MacBook Pro Displays: Update 2

  Paul Lefebvre

  22 Sep 2009 | 6:13 am

  It appears a lot of people have been affected by the NVIDIA chip bug. A poster on the Apple Discussion forums posted that he suspects more people are being affected by this now because of Snow Leopard, which uses the GPU more heavily. This seems plausible to me. Anyway, still no love for my MacBook Pro. It’s been sitting at the Apple Repair Center since 9/15 with the status “On hold – Part on order”. As of today that means the part has been on order for a week and still hasn’t arrived. So more waiting for me. Considering that others have said the repair has taken…

• 
  Programmable Web

• Vancouver Olympics Mapped by Google and Microsoft

  Adam DuVander

  8 Feb 2010 | 10:57 pm

  The Winter Olympics start this weekend and there’s no shortage of ways to enjoy them. That includes via map mashups showing facilities, parking and the path of the torch relay. All thanks to the Google Maps API and Microsoft’s Bing Maps API. Microsoft’s Vancouver office even put together a contest for its developers to create useful visitor applications. Among the half dozen entries are the parking finder shown below and MoBuddy, a mobile social networking app that was awarded the gold medal. The official site of the olympic games gets in on the fun, too. It uses a Google…

• Google’s Secret Weather API

  Adam DuVander

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:43 am

  It’s 54 degrees today in Mountain View, which any Googler could tell you by looking outside… or by using the company’s undocumented weather API. The service was created for use with iGoogle, but the interface is easily discoverable and covers a handful of other features, in addition to weather. Dennis Delimarsky compared several weather APIs and decided that Google’s is best, despite having no documentation or support from the company. One reason Delimarsky found it useful is that Google left little work to the developer: Unlike many others, the XML response for Google…

• Get 60,000 Concert Setlists with the Setlist.fm API

  Matthew Casperson

  7 Feb 2010 | 11:39 pm

  Setlist.fm, a service that allows music buffs to post setlists from live music performances, has opened up access to a beta version of their API. Setlist.fm made this announcement in their blog: We’re proud to announce the first version of the new setlist.fm Application Programming Interface. The setlist.fm API has been designed to give you easy access to setlist data in order to build fancy websites and other applications. The REST service provides methods to get both setlists and components of setlists such as artists, cities, countries or venues, and is free for non-commercial use.

• 6 New APIs: Powerful Americans, Moods, Museums, Web Analytics and Web Hosting

  John Musser

  6 Feb 2010 | 10:35 pm

  Last week was a busy one for new APIs and in addition to the 7 new APIs we profiled earlier this week, here are 6 more new listings from our API directory. These include an API for tracking political and business relationships (an “involuntary facebook of powerful Americans”), a real-time website analytics service API, an API for getting the Mood of the Nation, a ringtone search API, a museum geolocation service, and an API for internet hosting and resellers. Below are more details on each of these new APIs: LittleSis API: LittleSis is a free database tracking the key…

• 40 APIs Used in 7 Days: Google, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, Yahoo, and WeatherBug

  John Musser

  5 Feb 2010 | 11:10 pm

  This past week 15 new mashups were added to our mashup directory and 40 different APIs were used to build them. Some of the newer or less frequently seen APIs include BooRah Restaurant Search, FlightStats, Google Wave, Livekick, Mobypicture and True Knowledge. The most often used APIs this week are Flickr, Google Maps and Twitter. And the most commonly used types of APIs were Search (6 APIs, 8 mashups), Mapping (5 APIs, 13 mashups) and Photos (4 APIs, 7 mashups). The list below shows which APIs were used by which mashups:  Amazon eCommerce used in Insider Arts, Tinkrbox  BooRah…

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  Twitter Status

• Reason #4132 for Changing Your Password

  2 Feb 2010 | 3:43 pm

  As part of our ongoing efforts to monitor our user base for odd activity, we noticed a sudden surge in followers for a couple accounts in the last five days.  Given the circumstances surrounding this, we felt it was best to push out a password reset to  accounts that were following these suspicious users. Then we started doing some digging and, given what we found today, we felt it important to share this information.  An outline of what appears to have happened follows … Torrent sites aren’t exactly “new”; however, this is one of the first times that we’ve seen an attack that…

• Working on Tweet delivery delays

  27 Jan 2010 | 9:57 am

  We are investigating the source of tweet delivery delays this morning. Update (10:51a): We’ve temporarily disabled lists and local trends as we further diagnose the delay problem. Update (11:10a): The delivery issue has improved and lists, local trends and name search remain temporarily disabled. Some users will also not receive delivery of tweets via SMS. Update (11:36a): Local trends and lists have been re-enabled and we are working on the SMS delivery issue. Update (12:27p): SMS delivery has been re-enabled. Update (2:00p): Systems are back to normal with the exception of tweet delivery…

• Flash widget disabled

  22 Jan 2010 | 1:21 pm

  We’ve been notified about a vulnerability in our Flash widget and out of an abundance of caution we’ve disabled access as we assess the situation. Please note that the javascript widgets are unaffected and are a good alternative for those of you who had been using the Flash version. We haven’t heard of any accounts affected by this vulnerability. If you’re concerned that your account could have been affected in some way, feel free to contact us, accountsafe [at] twitter.com.

• Extremely high volume of whales

  20 Jan 2010 | 4:22 am

  We are experiencing an outage due to an extremely high number of whales.  Our on-call team is working on a fix. Update (5:18a): We are recovering from this incident. A sudden failure coupled with problems in switching to a backup system produced a high number of errors for around 90 minutes. This made the site largely inaccessible. No data was lost or compromised during this outage.

• SMS delivery temporarily disabled

  12 Jan 2010 | 9:27 pm

  We have temporarily disabled the SMS delivery of tweets. We are continuing to work on a fix for the misdelivery problem noted earlier and will turn the service back on as soon as this is resolved. Update (11:47p): This issue has now been fixed. Both updating from SMS and receiving messages via SMS should work as expected.

• 
  Twittown Blog - The Apps and Widgets Community and Forums -

• Facebook Homepage Gets ANOTHER Redesign

  Rob

  9 Feb 2010 | 2:35 am

  1 Points Facebook has redesigned their homepage - AGAIN. In case you aren't keeping track, that officially means that Facebook's homepage gets a redesign more often than Barbara Walters' face, which is actually scarily often. read more This is a content summary only, please visit twittown.com for the full article.

• Are Twitter and Facebook Bad for Your Brain?

  Twittown Editors

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:08 am

  2 Points Recently on CNN it was mentioned that scientists are beginning to think that all of this social networking that is going on, especially something like Twitter just might not be all that beneficial for us, especially children who are still developing mentally. Scientists believe that... This is a content summary only, please visit twittown.com for the full article.

• The Google Super Bowl Ad

  Twittown Editors

  7 Feb 2010 | 6:23 pm

  1 Points So the rumours were correct. Google has invested in and run an ad during the Super Bowl. See what you think but in our opinion, they could have been much more creative. The ad just shows searching google for someone that is interested in France and Paris. Everyone already knows... This is a content summary only, please visit twittown.com for the full article.

• Watch All the Super Bowl Commercials on YouTube

  Twittown Editors

  7 Feb 2010 | 6:06 pm

  1 Points For those who don't have time to watch the game or those not interested in football but want to see the epic ads that are always aired during the super bowl, YouTube has the solution for you. read more This is a content summary only, please visit twittown.com for the full article.

• 10 Football Apps for Your Blackberry on Superbowl Sunday and Beyond

  Twittown Editors

  7 Feb 2010 | 7:49 am

  2 Points Game day is here for NFL and American football fans.  With football on the mind, we thought it to be appropriate to make sure you are covered for both NFL superbowl news and also fun on your Blackberry.  Every fan in the country will do their best to be beside a TV or the net... This is a content summary only, please visit twittown.com for the full article.

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  The Semantic Web

• Siri offers virtual assistance, with a little help from your iPhone

  Paul Miller

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:29 pm

  Semantic Technology startup, Siri, releases a Virtual Personal Assistant for the iPhone and simplifies a wide range of tasks for US consumers on the move. Just by speaking to their phone, users can make dinner reservations, check the weather, find movies, flights and more.

• Oracle delivers native support for Thomson Reuters' OpenCalais service

  Paul Miller

  1 Sep 2009 | 5:15 am

  Thomson Reuters and Oracle today announced support for the media giant’s OpenCalais metadata generation service within release 2 of Oracle Spatial 11g. The integration gives Oracle users and developers direct access to OpenCalais’ natural language processing (NLP) capabilities. More importantly, perhaps, direct integration with an Enterprise product such as Oracle’s database says much about how far [...]

• Moving Data.gov towards the Semantic Web

  Paul Miller

  10 Aug 2009 | 3:46 am

  Government transparency in all its forms would appear to be very much in vogue at present, spanning everything from the Obama administration’s Data.gov portal and Prime Ministerial pronouncements in the UK Parliament to municipal proclamations of openness in Vancouver and compelling grass-roots demonstrations by activists and even newspapers. At the heart of many of today’s initiatives [...]

• New open source Semantic Web store from Garlik capable of enterprise scale

  Paul Miller

  14 Jul 2009 | 5:20 am

  An oft-repeated concern in discussing large-scale deployment of Semantic Web ideas is that of ’scale.’ With many of the better known data stores upon which the Semantic Web depends capable of storing only tens or at best a few hundreds of millions of RDF triples, it can be difficult to argue that the technology is [...]

• [Sponsored]

  14 Jul 2009 | 5:20 am

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  Social Business

• The art of social redundancy

  Jennifer Leggio

  8 Feb 2010 | 11:42 am

  Arrington wants a fix to social spam and noise, but can a tool really do what we should be doing for ourselves?

• Foursquare as a dating companion?

  Jennifer Leggio

  2 Feb 2010 | 11:21 am

  This could give a whole new meaning to the "Player Please" badge.

• Xerox pushes social media from the inside out

  Jennifer Leggio

  1 Feb 2010 | 8:03 am

  The company works with its employees to spread the word of the Xerox brand.

• Modern communities - no longer exclusive clubs

  Jennifer Leggio

  29 Jan 2010 | 1:16 pm

  The concept of a community is not new. In fact, it is very old.

• Seriously, Apple, are you messing with me?

  Jennifer Leggio

  27 Jan 2010 | 12:05 pm

  The thing is, Apple can do whatever it wants. Like sheep, we will still follow and buy.

• 
  Web User : Internet & Technology News

• 'Silver Scribblers' web campaign launched

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:47 am

  An online campaign has been launched to get older people - or 'silver scribblers' - to join book clubs and write novels.

• Internet Explorer for kids launched

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:57 am

  Microsoft has launched a child-friendly version of its Internet Explorer browser in association with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.

• iPhone app launched to track MP

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:50 am

  A Labour MP has become the first politician to launch an iPhone app that keeps track of his movements.

• Porn mix-up with children's website

  9 Feb 2010 | 2:36 am

  Children searching for government-run information website Buster's World were directed to a gay porn site with the same name.

• Safer Internet Day: Think B4 U Post

  9 Feb 2010 | 2:21 am

  The web is marking Safer Internet Day on Tuesday 9 February in an effort to encourage safer online behaviour among younger people.

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  Mixpanel - Analytics for startups

• Maintenance issues and an explanation

  2 Feb 2010 | 4:13 am

  Update: ETA is within the next day or day and a half to be fully caught up. Update (Feb 4th, 2:50 AM): Seeing good stability across new infrastructure and we're crunching data a lot faster. Update (Feb 4th, 7:35 PM): Processing through the backlog of data. It's about 1 day backed up however you should see data before Feb 3rd 17:00:00 UTC at least. Update (Feb 6th, 11:56 PM): We are now back to real-time and all systems are stable. For the past few days many of our customers must be wondering what's been going on with Mixpanel and why they have been seeing a lot of red percentages and zeroes.

• Mistake in "unique" visitor traffic for Jan 30th

  31 Jan 2010 | 10:50 pm

  Due to an edge case programming error you may notice your unique visitor traffic is spiking if you do a high data volume with us. We regret to say that we made a mistake and you should ignore it. Please note this pertains to only the average and unique visitor traffic for events and properties not funnels or retention. Rest assured we fixed the problem and looked for additional places where the same bug could also be. Taking how we run things here one step further, at Mixpanel we heavily are now using unit tests to make sure data is precisely 100% accurate all the time. Any change made that…

• How to Analyze Traffic Funnels and Retention in Facebook Applications

  28 Jan 2010 | 1:06 pm

  In several months, Facebook’s event, f8, is going to launch its third hackathon. Every year I like to take a step back and ask, “what did I learn?” With Mixpanel, we have the opportunity to work with lots of companies and developers, helping them really understand what their analytics mean with regard to their applications. I am going to go over some of the general things that I think all developers can benefit from: Visitor retention Also called “cohort analysis,” understanding visitor retention is probably the most underrated yet most important metric all…

• Releasing Mixpanel Tests, a new way to A/B test your events

  26 Jan 2010 | 3:13 pm

  We've been working hard at Mixpanel over the past couple of months, bringing you a major redesign, improving some features, and now adding a new way for you to interact with your data.  We're excited to release Tests, which has quickly become one of our favorite features. Overview To give you a brief overview/reminder: Mixpanel tracks on-page events, (such as 'play song' or 'poke') with which you can include properties that describe the event and/or user, such as gender, site version, or -- get this -- the test group the user is in. The value of Tests  Tests…

• Backtype does split testing with Mixpanel

  7 Dec 2009 | 1:20 pm

  The guys over at Backtype wrote a post about their adventures in split testing. Check it out: http://tech.backtype.com/split-testing-with-mixpanel Permalink | Leave a comment  »

• 
  Sample the Web

• Boogie Board Tablet mini-Review

  C.K. Sample III

  29 Jan 2010 | 6:17 am

  I ordered a Boogie Board tablet (pictured above) for sketching after reading about how it was a pressure sensitive display that never needed to be charged, ran off of a watch battery, and lasts for 5+ years. As you can see from the scan of my actual Boogie Board above, the “ink” is much darker than is indicated by all the bogus marketing materials on the Boogie Board site, where it appears as a bright sort of green. I’ve created a Flickr set, titled Boogie Board sucks that you can click through if you want to see more. So as you can tell so far, the Boogie Board wasn’t…

• Overanalyzing Steve Jobs’ grammar gaffe: missing helper verb in iPad presentation

  C.K. Sample III

  28 Jan 2010 | 6:47 am

  If you’ve actually watched the video of Apple’s iPad Special Event Keynote from yesterday (January 27, 2010), you probably noticed a few unpolished spots, like the Brushes developer being a little nervous with shaking hands while on stage (understandable), the N.O.V.A. game demonstration when the first time they attempted to fling a grenade using a “simple two-fingered, multitouch gesture” failed, and the very noticeable missing bit of Flash on this—”the best way to browse the web” aka “it’s like holding the internet in your…

• Working on a comic: Bosh & Bill

  C.K. Sample III

  24 Jan 2010 | 8:41 am

  So, I have started working on a comic featuring the two guys drawn above. The angry looking one in the upper left of the picture is named Bosh. He’s the half-rabbit half-human demigod (and therefore immortal) bastard child of the Easter Bunny (aka Eostre) and he’s basically chaotic neutral, if not extremely so. The second character is either Bill or Bilge or Bill G. (just some wordplay on Bosh and Bilge), but I’m not sold on that name and would love some input from others on what they think he should be named. I’m not sure what he is (maybe half-man / half-dog but…

• My hope for Apple’s announcement

  C.K. Sample III

  18 Jan 2010 | 10:38 am

  I‘ve avoided jumping into the maelstrom of rumor-mongering that has exploded around the reported iSlate tablet-esque computer that Apple supposedly will be announcing on January 27th, mostly because the lion’s share of that “reporting” has been totally ridiculous, but also because I happen to have a source who has given me what I believe to be some legitimate information on what will be announced. I promised my source that I wouldn’t share this information publicly in writing. So I won’t. However, the artwork accompanying the invitations to Apple’s…

• After years of being participant in Chinese censorship, Google stops participating due to security breaches, and the entire internet praises Google for the move?

  C.K. Sample III

  13 Jan 2010 | 6:11 am

  Really?! I’m shocked to say this, but I agree 100% with Valleywag’s take on this scenario: “Only now, amid executive turnover at Google China and a continued failure to best their state-sponsored competitor there, and after Chinese hackers have endangered the company’s interests globally, does Google get firm on the issue of human rights. It’s a clever way to dress up a security breach — and an embarrassing attempt to partner with China’s authoritarian leaders — as an act of nobility and courage.” Shame on Google for going into business and…

• 
  Cult of Mac

• Daily Deals: iPhone 3GS 32GB $249, 1TB Time Capsule $430, Moto Chaser

  Ed Sutherland

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:28 am

  We start off with a deal on a 32GB iPhone 3GS from AT&T for $249. Next up: a 1TB Time Capsule back-up drive for $430. Finally, once while you are on hold and backing-up your life, take some time to wind down the road with Moto Chaser, a racing game for your iPhone or iPod [...]

• Microsoft’s My Documents Folder Makes Triumphant Return – On iPad

  Giles Turnbull

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:15 am

  Earlier today, I was reading Infoworld’s article, The iPad questions Apple won’t answer. The first question they listed was “Can you save and transfer documents to the iPad?”, and their assumed answer was “No”; they suggested that the only way to do this would be to open a document from an email message. I read that [...]

• Pop Cap’s “Plants vs. Zombies” coming to the App Store on February 15th

  John Brownlee

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:29 am

  Courtesy of PopCap Games’ Twitter account, I can now tell you the exact date that my girlfriend will plant herself in her apartment with her iPod Touch and gradually undergo a zombie-like desiccation process herself: February 15th. Because that’s the day that Plants vs. Zombies is finally coming to the App Store. Plants vs. Zombies is [...]

• Update: Apple Logo Dispute Down Under

  Nicole Martinelli

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:13 am

  Australian retailer Woolworths is buying time in the latest Apple logo dispute. At the core of the corporate tussle is a “W” logo of a peeled apple with leaf filed back in August 2008 for the 80-year-old supermarket chain. The new logo was supposed to symbolize fresh produce, but speculation was that Apple opposed it because the [...]

• DevTeam releases Pwnage Tool for iPhone OS 3.1.3

  John Brownlee

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:59 am

  It never takes long for the Dev Team to pry open the seams of the latest iPhone OS firmware, tickle its insides and come up with a fresh Jailbreak. Less than a week after Apple released their iPhone OS 3.1.3 update, the Dev Team followed it up with an update of their own: Pwnage Tool [...]

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  Reality Distortion: Macs, Mac OS X, and Apple stuff

• iPhone Game Review: Trivial Pursuit

  Matt

  25 Jan 2010 | 2:50 am

  Last year Electronic Arts released an iPhone version of the popular Trivial Pursuit trivia quiz game. Here’s my review of the “International” version of the game (I’m not sure what the other versions are called). The game features a single-player option, as well as 2 multiplayer options: “Pass ‘n Play”, where each player takes turns with the same device, and “Wi-Fi Multiplayer”, where each player has their own device. A basic question pack is included, and you can also buy additional packs within the game. The questions are all in…

• Underworlds revisited

  Matt

  21 Dec 2009 | 9:20 pm

  Back in June I reviewed Underworlds, a role-playing adventure game for the iPhone. In the review I mentioned a few niggles with the game, including: Short play time Linear game play A single character class The limit of 10 character levels Fiddly movement controls Since then, Pixel Mine have released a free update to Underworlds that addresses practically all of these issues. I have to say I’m impressed, considering it was a free update. What’s more they’ve even lowered the price of the full app from $5 to $3! The new version has: More than double the content A new city…

• My Super Collection of iPhone Sync Errors

  Matt

  26 Nov 2009 | 3:34 pm

  Is it just me, or does iTunes come up with a different excuse for not syncing with the iPhone each and every day? Don’t get me wrong – syncing is pretty reliable on the whole, and whenever an error does occur, a resync or reconnect usually sorts it out. Still, I’m amazed at the sheer number of things that can apparently go wrong during syncing. It doesn’t exactly inspire confidence, does it? I must get an error dialog of some sort at least once a week. So I started collecting them (sad I know). Here’s the collection I’ve built up so far, over the last few…

• Castle Warriors: A simple iPhone Strategy Game

  Matt

  19 Nov 2009 | 11:19 pm

  Castle Warriors from GameResort is a fun little iPhone/iPod Touch battle game that I’ve been playing with for a while. It falls under the Real-Time Strategy (RTS) category. Rather than waiting for your turn, you make decisions in real time as the action happens around you. In many ways, Castle Warriors is a 3D version of the excellent Galcon. Instead of planets, you have towers. You start with all your soliders in 1 tower; tap it, then tap a target tower to move a certain amount (half by default) of your soliders to that tower. You can move to empty towers or enemy towers this way…

• Should You Buy a Mac?

  Matt

  26 Oct 2009 | 5:59 pm

  My esteemed colleague (and fellow Mac user) Simon Meek recently wrote a piece about why designers tend to use Macs. This got me thinking: Why did I buy a Mac? I’m more of a coder/”computer nerd” than a designer. And what sort of people (apart from designers) are Macs suited to? Here are some handy guidelines to help you decide whether or not a Mac is right for you. First, some good reasons to buy a Mac… You should buy a Mac if: You’re a creative type. Macs are very well suited to designers (as already mentioned), musicians, artists, photographers, and folks in…

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  Macgasm

• Apple releases Aperture 3 complete with 200 updates.

  Joshua Schnell

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:32 am

  When everyone was looking for new Macbook Pros, Apple decided to slip in an Aperture update. Those sneaky people at Apple managed to trick us all. It’s nice having a little surprise like that. The rumour mill is so ramped up these days that it’s hard to sneak anything by us. I’m not a photographer, so I can’t really speak to the innovation in this bundle, but Apple does claim that there’s over 200 new features and tweaks, and some of them seem pretty substantial. They now let you manage video, audio, and photos from the application, and you can now create…

• If you like casual games Fall Down’s probably for you

  Joshua Schnell

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:00 am

  Some of my favourite games for the iPhone are ones that let me get in, get my gaming on, and then get out. If I plan to spend some prolonged time gaming, I’ll probably sit down at my computer or my Xbox 360. Fall Down is one of the simpler games on my iPhone, and it’s super fun, especially if you like challenging friends to a game of “Get the best score.” The concept of the game is super simple. Tilt the screen to make the ball roll from left to right, while trying to make sure you don’t get squished between the top of the screen and one of the neon rows. The…

• 3 Things to help you check the condition of your battery

  Joshua Schnell

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:00 am

  Have you ever noticed that your battery is acting little funky, but you have no idea what you can do about it? There’s a couple of applications and tricks available to you to determine whether or not your batteries starting to fail on you. If you’re on a highway to the danger zone you’re going to want to figure out just how much time you have left before you’re flying solo, sans laptop. Option+Click your battery icon The first step is making use of a hidden feature in OS X Snow Leopard. Apple’s introduced a whole slew of handy hidden options, by holding down the…

• iPad Camera kit gets some competition from Zoomit

  Joshua Schnell

  9 Feb 2010 | 4:00 am

  A lot of people criticized the iPad for the lack of an SD card reader, despite Apple releasing the iPad Camera kit. I’m still not sure where I fall on that argument yet, but it appears like someone else has heard the cries from photographers around the world. The fine folks at Zoomit have created an SD card reader for the iPhone and iPod touch lineup. The device pairs up with the companies free  iPhone / Touch application to give users access to SD cards on their mobile devices. There’s no mention of them releasing an iPad version, but I feel fairly confident in my guess that…

• Could Apple be lowering the price of the iPad?

  Gerard Lagana

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:00 am

  How many of us were surprised when we heard that the iPad was starting at $499?  I for one was most certainly surprised, along with the many netbook makers that were planning on undercutting the price of the iPad.  They were planning on dropping the price on the already low cost netbooks; however, this all changed when Steve Jobs announced the iPad at a whopping $499.  Which leads me to my next point.  Can the iPad be sold for less? Well, according to a piece from the Wall Street Journal’s MarketBeat, this is exactly what Apple plans on doing.  Now don’t get overly excited.  There…

• 
  Student Press Law Center

• Wesley Chapel High School’s First Amendment values = Fail

  Frank LoMonte

  5 Feb 2010 | 6:36 pm

  Tampa-area Wesley Chapel High School declined last year from a “C” to a “D” in Florida’s school performance ratings. Only 40 percent of Wesley Chapel students meet high standards in reading, and the school was recently mired in a grade-changing scandal that included a star football player. Its administrators would appear to have plenty of [...]

• Next, NFL will claim it invented jambalaya

  Adam Goldstein

  1 Feb 2010 | 1:31 pm

  If you’re contemplating wearing your favorite Saints T-shirt to a Super Bowl party, make sure there aren’t any NFL lawyers invited first. That’s because the NFL has decided to commit the 21st century’s defining example of corporate shark-jumping by threatening to sue its fans. In this case, the NFL is sending cease and desist letters to [...]

• Federal court’s ruling on teacher First Amendment rights is a wake-up call for Nevada union officials

  Frank LoMonte

  29 Jan 2010 | 1:43 pm

  It is disappointing when image-conscious school administrators seek to sanitize students’ writing about sensitive subjects. It is doubly disappointing when the pressure comes from — of all places — a teachers’ union, the people who should appreciate most the perils of a school where controversies cannot be publicly discussed. Because teachers are taking their jobs into [...]

• Haitian earthquake photos available to student media

  Mike Hiestand

  28 Jan 2010 | 8:26 am

  We have had several students contact us regarding their use of news media photos to include with their newspaper or yearbook coverage of the Haitian earthquake. As usual, the general rule for using copyrighted material applies: If you didn’t take the photo and/or you don’t own the copyright to it, you must first obtain permission, which [...]

• Supreme Court reaffirms: Trials must be open to the public

  Frank LoMonte

  19 Jan 2010 | 3:17 pm

  In a rarely used procedural maneuver, the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday agreed to decide — and then, decided right on the spot — the issue of whether excluding the public from watching jury selection violates the accused’s right to a fair trial. The Court’s 7-2 answer: Yes, unless the judge shows that she has considered [...]

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  Media and Communications Policy

• Citizens United and the Commentariat

  Patrick Maines

  27 Jan 2010 | 7:19 am

  Nothing’s quite so inspiring as the sight of journalists, in high dudgeon, trashing the First Amendment.  Such has been the rule since last Thursday, when the Supreme Court issued its opinion in the campaign finance case called Citizens United. For the uninitiated, the cause of the hysteria, at places like The New York Times and The Washington Post, is the Court’s entirely correct decision to liberate political speech from the clutches of the Federal Election Commission, such that labor unions, for-profit, and nonprofit corporations will hereafter be able to spend general…

• How Sweet It Is!

  Patrick Maines

  21 Jan 2010 | 1:17 pm

  The opinion handed down today in the Supreme Court re McCain-Feingold is good news for everyone who values free speech in general, and political speech in particular.  The relief it grants to labor unions, nonprofit and for-profit corporations, who are now free to sponsor issue ads within close proximity to federal elections, is particularly gratifying and long overdue. As congressional proponents of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act scramble to write legislation in an attempt to work around the Court’s decision, they will now have to confront this daunting fact: As of today,…

• Net Neutrality in Retreat?

  Patrick Maines

  19 Jan 2010 | 4:28 am

  If you’re a “net neutrality” critic, and dabble in schadenfreude, things are looking up!  First, there was oral argument in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals (Comcast v. FCC), during which the panel clearly appeared to reject the notion that the FCC had authority to pursue its ambitions in this regard. Then, just last week, there was the White Paper filed at the FCC on behalf of Time Warner Cable by constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe, arguing that net neutrality as proposed is likely unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Last but not least is the report,…

• Media 'Reform' and the First Amendment

  Patrick Maines

  13 Jan 2010 | 7:04 am

  Despite their general lack of experience or expertise in law, commerce, finance, or technology, people with journalistic backgrounds are these days testifying before Congress and regulatory agencies, sponsoring seminars, and writing papers in a broadly coordinated effort to influence laws and regulations that govern the media. They are doing this, they say, out of a concern for the “future of journalism,” but to the extent that policymakers act on the journalists’ recommendations they may do damage to the commercial media, old and new, and great violence to the First…

• Stuart Benjamin: The FCC's 'Spectrum Reformer'

  Patrick Maines

  17 Dec 2009 | 7:24 am

  Amid their other problems, broadcasters now have a new one: the FCC’s recently appointed Scholar in Residence, Stuart Benjamin, a law school professor at Duke University.  According to an FCC press release, Benjamin will work on “spectrum reform,” among other issues.  The problem that broadcasters have is with some articles written by Professor Benjamin, earlier this year, on that very subject. One such, “Roasting the Pig To Burn Down the House,” seeks to answer the question being asked by all fair-minded people: “Should we welcome new regulations…

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  Media Law Prof Blog

• The FCC's Openness Principles and Content Providers

  Media Law Prof

  8 Feb 2010 | 8:53 am

  Rob Frieden, Pennsylvania State University Dickinson School of Law, has published "Why the FCC’s Proposed Openness Principles Cannot and Should Not Apply to Internet Application and Content Providers." Here is the abstract. The Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) has issued a...

• Press Complaints Commission Criticized

  Media Law Prof

  8 Feb 2010 | 8:18 am

  Both Sir Ken Macdonald, former Director of Public Prosecutions, and Alan Rusbridger, editor of the Guardian, are highly critical of the Press Complaints Commission, the group presently charged with overseeing regulation of the British print media. Sir Ken told a...

• The National Merit Scholarship Corporation and the Blogger

  Media Law Prof

  8 Feb 2010 | 8:03 am

  The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on an incident involving the National Merit Scholarship Corporation and a blogger; the NMSC objected to what it calls the blogger's publication of "proprietary information" on her blog and implied it would seek legal...

• And Starring As Los Angeles....

  Media Law Prof

  7 Feb 2010 | 11:04 am

  From the New York Times, how other states audition to play California. Tax credits and computer animation help out.

• What Is the FCC's Regulatory Over the Internet

  Media Law Prof

  4 Feb 2010 | 9:15 am

  James B. Speta, Northwestern University School of Law, has published "The Shaky Foundations of the Regulated Internet," in volume 8 of the Journal of Telecommunication and High Technology Law (2010). The Federal Communications Commission's order directing Comcast to cease certain...

• 
  Digital Trends

• Nvidia Optimus Promises Notebooks Best of Integrated and Discrete Graphics

  Geoff Duncan

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:19 am

  Nvidia's Optimus technology will let notebooks transparently shift between battery-saving integrated graphics and high-performance discrete graphics...from Nvidia, of course.

• Navigon Updates MobileNavigator iPhone App with 3D Terrain, Twitter

  Dena Cassella

  9 Feb 2010 | 9:17 am

  Navigon released its Version 1.5.0 update for the MobileNavigator iPhone app.

• Belkin Laptop Cooling Pad Saves Legs, Extends Notebook Lives

  Geoff Duncan

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:54 am

  Know how using a "laptop" on your lap can be well-neigh impossible? Belkin's improved Laptop Cooling Pad saved your thighs...and keeps your notebook cool.

• BioShock 2 Launches Worldwide

  Geoff Duncan

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:37 am

  The followup to the 2007 Game of the Year is on sale now for PS2, Xbox 360, and Windows PCs one put players in the boots - and complete diving suit - of Big Daddy.

• Google Lowers Nexus One ETF, Adds Phone Support

  Dena Cassella

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:13 am

  Nexus One gets a lower early termination fee (ETF) and a phone support line.

• 
  Publishing Talk

• If the Digital Economy Bill fails, we’ll all pay

  Danuta Kean

  8 Feb 2010 | 4:52 am

  Danuta Kean is a journalist and publishing analyst whose work appears in national newspapers and specialist magazines. Follow her on Twitter at @Danoosha. In a year when the iPod moment for books looks increasingly likely to happen, failure to pass the Digital Economy Bill isn’t a lost opportunity, it’s a tragedy. Opposition is growing to the UK government’s Digital Economy Bill, which includes a “three strikes and you’re out” clause to deal with Internet piracy. The Guardian reports “strong criticism” within the House of Lords to the plan to cut the…

• How to be a Rock Star

  Anna Lewis

  2 Feb 2010 | 3:44 pm

  Anna Lewis is the co-founder of CompletelyNovel.com. Follow her on Twitter at @anna_cn. Should you find a publisher or publish yourself? Why not be a rock star and do both, asks Anna Lewis. A frequent question that crops up from writers on my website is: “Should I self-publish or should I send my work to agents and publishers?” The writers are aware of how competitive the traditional route is, but still want to give it a shot. Yet, at the same time they feel like it could be time to take things into their hands. How should they choose which path to take? My answer is – why not do both?

• Celebrity Big Book Club – Day 14

  Jon Reed

  31 Jan 2010 | 3:54 pm

  So has TV Book Club combined formats with Celebrity Big Brother now? Do we get to evict one each week? If so, judging by this evening’s Twitter comments, it seems a popular move. But it’s not just the Gok-shaped gap on the sofa that improved things this week. It was having fewer presenters discussing the chosen book more enthusiastically – and being allowed the time to do so. The first two shows were pre-recorded back-to-back, so this is the first chance they’ve had to respond to feedback. And they have. Nathaniel was great, and Laila was allowed to get a word in. This…

• Publishing Talk relaunch

  Jon Reed

  29 Jan 2010 | 1:45 pm

  Just a quick announcement to let you know that there will be a bit of disruption to normal service for a few hours on Sunday. We’re finally ready to re-launch Publishing Talk! As well as a new look, we’re adding new features, more contributors, a better jobs section and a new events section – which will include details of our new tweetups, the first of which will be at the London Book Fair in April. There will also be further resources and a podcast to come later this year. Here’s a sneak peek at the new design: Since Twitter is such an important part of the Publishing…

• Do iPad or do I Kindle?

  Tom Evans

  29 Jan 2010 | 6:58 am

  Tom Evans is an author, author mentor, writer’s unblocker and e-publishing wizard. Follow his memes and musings on Twitter @thebookwright The debate is not about which device is better than the others. It’s about authors and publishers embracing a whole new world of opportunity. Much has been written over the last 48 hours or so about Apple’s new iPad. Some think it’s the best thing to hit the planet this decade and that it will change the face of publishing. Others are moaning about its bezel and that it doesn’t have a camera. Some are obsessed with the…

• 
  The Kindle Reader

• Kindle Genre Watch: Sci-Fi, Romance and Western Fiction (8 Feb 10)

  Jan

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:59 am

  Genre fiction - as opposed to nonfiction, graphic novels and picture books - lends itself to enjoyable Kindle reading because when you pick up a book of fiction you don't necessarily expect it to be illustrated. Authors of mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, romance novels and westerns paint word pictures and their readers use their own imagination to picture the scene of the crime or the stare of a vampire or the track of an alien space craft hurtling towards earth. Spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the…

• Kindle Genre Watch: Fantasy and Mystery Fiction (6 Feb 10)

  Jan

  6 Feb 2010 | 6:52 am

  Genre fiction - as opposed to nonfiction, graphic novels and picture books - lends itself to enjoyable Kindle reading because when you pick up a book of fiction you don't necessarily expect it to be illustrated. Authors of mysteries, science fiction, fantasy, romance novels and westerns paint word pictures and their readers use their own imagination to picture the scene of the crime or the stare of a vampire or the track of an alien space craft hurtling towards earth. Spend less time searching for new genre fiction and more time reading it as I watch for newly-released genre fiction in the…

• A Week of Entertainment: Books Reviewed in Entertainment Weekly 5 Feb 10

  Jan

  4 Feb 2010 | 7:05 am

  Each week Entertainment Weekly reviews a small selection of popular new books. Titles available for the Kindle reviewed in the February 5th issue include:Alice I Have Been, by Melanie Benjamin. Delacorte. NOVEL. EW's slant: "...works valiantly to conjure up the real girl behind the Wonderland myth, and finds glints of genuine magic..." Amazon customer rating: 4 stars (53 reviews). Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled."Alice Liddell Hargreaves’s life has been a richly woven tapestry: As a young woman, wife, mother, and widow, she’s experienced intense passion, great privilege,…

• Savoring the Past: New Kindle Books for History Buffs (2 Feb 10)

  Jan

  2 Feb 2010 | 7:26 am

  History is a kind of introduction to more interesting people than we can possibly meet in our restricted lives; let us not neglect the opportunity. - Dexter Perkins.The American philosopher George Santayana is quoted as saying that those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it. With more than 27,000 books in the Amazon Kindle bookstore "history" category, Kindle-owning history buffs will not run out of reading material any time soon. Recent history nonfiction includes:The Intimate Lives of the Founding Fathers, by Thomas Fleming. HarperCollins. Amazon customer rating: 5 stars…

• Books They're Talking About: Kindle Books in the Media (31 Jan 10)

  Jan

  31 Jan 2010 | 7:28 am

  Media interviews are a popular way for writers to introduce new books they hope will catch the viewer's eye and open their pocketbooks. Here's a selection of forthcoming Kindle books by authors scheduled for interviews on TV and radio programs. Books are arranged in chronological order by the date of the scheduled interview.ON NBC'S TODAY SHOW (02 FEB 10):I'm Still Standing: From Captive U.S. Soldier to Free Citizen - My Journey Home, by Shoshana Johnson. Touchstone. Kindle edition $9.99. Text-to-Speech: Disabled."In March of 2003, when Operation Iraqi Freedom was only days old, world…

• 
  Publishers Newswire

• New book, ‘Prosperity Plans’ by architect Donald J. Berg may help your dreams of a new home

  Angela Polchat-Ferris

  8 Feb 2010 | 1:23 pm

  ROCKVILLE CENTRE, N.Y. /Publishers Newswire/ — Has today’s economy made you put off your dreams of a new home? The new book, “Prosperity Plans” (ISBN: 978-1450559645), just published by architect Donald J. Berg, might get you dreaming again. Berg’s new book proposes that today’s architects, builders and prospective homeowners can all learn from a series of fascinating “Growing House” designs created in 1934. That was the time of the Great Depression and Dust Bowl droughts, when Americans faced economic horrors that make today’s problems…

• Brain Drain: Doctor’s New Book Shows Us How To Tap Into the Power of the Mind

  Angela Polchat-Ferris

  5 Feb 2010 | 12:34 pm

  POMONA, N.Y. /Publishers Newswire/ — Brain Drain (ISBN: 0984196307; 978-0984196302) authored by Charles F. Glassman, M.D., FACP, is a powerful new book that teaches people how to break free of their brains’ automatic responses through understanding and controlling their mind/body connections. Brain Drain was patient driven. Five years ago, Dr. Glassman, founded the New York Center for Longevity and Wellness – its goal to take a comprehensive approach to medicine and to balance mind/body concepts with conventional medicine. Two years later, he began distributing a weekly,…

• Business & Decision and Sofon Sign Partnership Agreement for North America

  Angela Polchat-Ferris

  5 Feb 2010 | 11:42 am

  PHOENIX, Ariz. /Publishers Newswire/ — Sofon and Business & Decision today announce that they have signed a partnership for the marketing, sales and implementation of Sofon Guided Selling by Business & Decision in the North American market. Business & Decision, an international Consulting and Systems Integration company with over 2,700 employees worldwide, has added Sofon Guided Selling to its portfolio. Sofon Guided Selling is a standard software solution for accelerating, simplifying and improving the sales and quotation process. Business & Decision will market…

• Updated Steganography SearchPak for ADF Solutions Triage detects 768 applications

  Angela Polchat-Ferris

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:59 am

  FAIRMONT, W.Va. /Publishers Newswire/ — Backbone Security, the global leader in advanced digital steganalysis tools, in conjunction with ADF Solutions, the global leader of forensic triage tools, is pleased to announce the availability of an updated Steganography SearchPak for use with ADF’s revolutionary digital forensic triage tools currently deployed at law enforcement agencies, government organizations, and commercial corporations worldwide. The Steganography SearchPak was created from hash values extracted from the latest version of the Steganography Application Fingerprint…

• Del Mar DataTrac® Signs Three Lenders for Commission Management Software

  Angela Polchat-Ferris

  3 Feb 2010 | 4:57 pm

  SAN DIEGO, Calif. /Publishers Newswire/ — Del Mar DataTrac, Inc. (DMD), the leading provider of affordable mortgage lending automation solutions, and an industry pioneer in business intelligence, document imaging and management, and loan process workflow tools, has added three lenders for DataTrac Commission. Formerly referred to as CommissionTrac, DMD’s commission management tool helps lenders maintain commission accuracy, and accountability for RESPA-related fee compliance. Added to the DMD DataTrac Commissions customer roster are The Legacy Group, a Washington-based lender also…

• 
  Book Publishing News

• Zondervan and Baker Announce Free, Easy Alternative to the Self-Publishing Model

  31 Jan 2010 | 10:02 am

  Authors of unsolicited manuscripts will no longer see their work returned to them with a "Thanks-but-no-thanks" letter from Christian publishers like Zondervan and Baker Publishing Group. Instead, they will receive a letter or email encouraging them to post their manuscripts, free-of-charge, on authonomy.com/Christian."authonomy.com allows authors to quickly get valuable feedback from consumers on the relevance of their work and gain traction in the market without giving up any of their publishing rights," said Steve Sammons, Zondervan's executive vice president of Consumer Engagement. "It…

• How unknown first time author is Amazon No.1 Best-selling business book

  31 Jan 2010 | 9:59 am

  Victoria B.C./San Francisco Vancouver Island first time author Dawn McCooey saw her new business book "Keeping Good Employees on board - Employee Retention Strategies to Navigate Through the Economic Storm" rocket to the top slot on Amazon Canada best-selling business books yesterday. It is every first time author's dream to achieve this within a few weeks of launching their book so we asked her to share her secret. You can watch the 3 minute interview aired on Shaw TV featuring six local authors and Dawn McCooey giving an inspirational message about their journey to become published authors…

• Fastpencil Offers Free Printed Book And Ebook

  31 Jan 2010 | 9:57 am

  FastPencil today announced a promotion offering the first 1,000 people to register at https://www.fastpencil.com/offer/consumerpromo a free paperback and eBook copy of their work. FastPencil gives these authors an end-to-end authoring and publishing platform where they can maintain control of the content creation, price, distribution and sales activity every step of the way. FastPencil blends social media, marketing, production and distribution while offering total flexibility in choosing when and where they distribute to hardcover, paperback and eBook. The authoring service strips out the…

• Social Science and Humanities Publishers Stood Up to Challenges in 2009

  25 Jan 2010 | 7:33 am

  Faced with challenges from disruptive technologies, an uncertain future for its traditional publishing model and a titanic global recession, the market for social science and humanities publishing has still managed to grow, according to "Social Science and Humanities Publishing 2009-2010" (http://www.simbainformation.com/redirect.asp?progid=76566&productid=2071801), the latest strategic market report from Simba Information, a leading media industry forecast and analysis firm.The global social science and humanities publishing market grew total sales 1.6% to $2.4 billion in 2009. Poor…

• Amazon Announces New 70 Percent Royalty Option For Kindle Digital Text

  25 Jan 2010 | 7:32 am

  Amazon.com announced details of a new program that will enable authors and publishers who use the Kindle Digital Text Platform (DTP) to earn a larger share of revenue from each Kindle book they sell. For each Kindle book sold, authors and publishers who choose the new 70 percent royalty option will receive 70 percent of list price, net of delivery costs. This new option will be in addition to and will not replace the existing DTP standard royalty option. This new 70 percent royalty option will become available on June 30, 2010.Delivery costs will be based on file size and pricing will be…

• 
  Joe Wikert's Publishing 2020 Blog

• eReaders & eBook Prices

  Joe Wikert

  8 Feb 2010 | 6:03 am

  I considered opening with a snarky comment about the Nook ereader.  Something about how it's destined to be the RC Cola of ereaders seemed appropriate.  And when I went looking for a graphic to insert, guess what I found?  Amazon is actually selling the Barnes & Noble device on their own site!  Whodathunkit? Nevertheless, how would you like to have been B&N these last couple of weeks?  There you are, trying to get some enthusiasm for your newly-released Nook while Amazon is fighting for any sort of attention amidst the biggest announcement in years: Apple's iPad.  Good…

• Why Publishers Should Jump on the iPad Bandwagon

  Joe Wikert

  1 Feb 2010 | 5:12 am

  The worst-kept secret in recent tech history, Apple's iPad, was unveiled last week.  Some folks were wowed by the announcement while others were left asking, "is that all there is?"  I was somewhere in between. A buddy called me that day and said he bet Jeff Bezos was..., well, requiring an undergarment change.  I told him I doubted it.  Not because the iPad won't have a significant impact on the Kindle...it will...but because Wednesday's announcement was the confirmation of something Amazon, like the rest of us, already knew about.I'll get to the Kindle…

• Adding the Word "Free" to Your Marketing Dictionary

  Joe Wikert

  28 Jan 2010 | 6:19 am

  Today's post is courtesy of Ben Richter, eReader enthusiast and owner of Best-eReaders.com, a review site for eReaders, tablets and ebooks.  Ben wrote this as a follow-up to my earlier plea for Amazon to share the data related to free Kindle content.  Here's what Ben has to say:In today's marketing world, both online and offline, it's getting harder and harder to put your product in front of potential shoppers. The internet has turned the world upside down, and although there are more ways today to promote your product, the competition is getting tougher. So, how can…

• Amazon, Share the Data! (Please?...)

  Joe Wikert

  25 Jan 2010 | 5:30 am

  It doesn't take a rocket scientist to see that free books are popular on the Kindle.  Take a look at the Kindle book bestseller list on any given day and you're likely to find a bunch of zero-priced items.  Even as I write this post I see that 14 of the top 25 titles are free. "Selling" these free titles is easy and their publishers/authors obviously have something bigger in mind than just giving away content.  Many are hoping to be discovered, thereby broadening their audience so that these new fans will actually pay for the next title in the series, for example. …

• Has the Magazine Industry Heard of the iPhone?

  Joe Wikert

  18 Jan 2010 | 12:02 pm

  What is the magazine industry waiting for?  The iPhone is now 3 years old and there appears to be little to no interest in creating paid apps with their content.  Go to the App Store, search for "magazine" and look at the hodgepodge results. Many of the ones that actually have apps treat them more like news feeds than new ways of rendering their magazine (e.g,. see the Sports Illustrated app, for example).  Hey, I've got plenty of news apps already.  If I'm taking the time to download your app it's because I want the magazine content, not another news feed.I…

• 
  TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home

• Calibre 0.6.38 released

  Paul Biba

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:50 am

  * Driver for the Irex DR 800 * Driver for the Booq e-book reader * Allow automatic series increment algorithm to be tweaked by editing the config file tweaks.py * Various improvements to the catalog generation. Larger thumbnails in EPUB output and better series sorting. Better handling of html markup in the comments. * MOBI Output: Make font used for generated masthead images user customizable. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news.

• Wattpad teams up with Lulu and Bharti Airtel of India

  Paul Biba

  9 Feb 2010 | 8:18 am

  Wattpad has teamed up with Lulu and will open the Wattpad Marketplace on Lulu.com. The marketplace will sell POD editions and offer free and for sale ebooks as well. Additionally, Wattpad has connected with Bharti Airtel, the largest mobile operator in India with over 100 million mobile subscribers. The Wattpad mobile ebook app will now be available in the Bharti Airtel application store. More info here. Digg us. Slashdot us. Facebook us. Twitter us. Share the news.

• The eBook Wars: The Price Battle (IV) — Value

  Paul Biba

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:43 am

  It seems like every post is about value. Low-quality books have low price values. We all agree on that. The question unanswered, however, is what value does a book have regardless of its form? That is one tough question! What brought this to mind was an article in The Economist titled “The Lowdown on Teardowns” (January 23, 2010, pp. 62-63), which was subtitled “Ripping apart smart-phones reveals their true cost.” I tried to rip apart a book to find its true cost but didn’t have any success. Unlike the smartphone, a book is primarily intangibles. But the article is intriguing. Not…

• Ebook formatting from a publisher’s perspective – it isn’t easy or simple!

  Paul Biba

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:21 am

  Editor’s Note: I received the following email from publisher Linda Houle and I thought it should be shared with all our readers. PB I recently noticed there seems to be a trend toward “blaming” publishers for poor ebook quality. As a publisher I wanted to bring something interesting to your attention, with the idea you might want to explore it as a possible blog topic. I mentioned “apps” and formatting in my subject line because I found out something about our L&L Dreamspell ebooks. An ebook that I had formatted perfectly in Mobipocket .prc came out either…

• Penguin CEO calls ebooks the new paperback

  Paul Biba

  9 Feb 2010 | 7:05 am

  Since the Wall Street Journal is subscription only I can’t get at the article, but the Bookseller has a good summary of this interview with the CEO of Penguin, John Makinson. He calls the ebook the direct descendent of the paperback, an idea which Penguin invented. Makinson also argued that there was limited scope to play with e-book prices and royalties, saying: “The small cost of producing ebooks is viewed by authors as an opportunity for higher royalties and by consumers as an opportunity for lower prices. Fair enough. Yet the physical cost of a book – manufacturing,…

• 
  thedigitalist.net

• links for 2010-02-04

  delicious

  4 Feb 2010 | 2:30 am

  Amazon Buys Touchscreen Company for Its Kindle Division [REPORT] An alleged insider told The New York Times today that Amazon has just bought a startup specializing in touchscreens, and that Amazon will merge the company and its technology into its own Kindle division. (tags: amazon kindle ipad strategy) Textbook Firms Ink E-Deals For iPad - WSJ.com Major textbook publishers have struck deals with software company ScrollMotion Inc. to adapt their textbooks for the electronic page, as the industry embraces a hope that digital devices such as Apple Inc.'s iPad will transform the classroom.

• links for 2010-02-02

  delicious

  2 Feb 2010 | 2:30 am

  DBW Summary « Chapman/Chapman I have six pages of notes (10pt. font!) from Digital Book World. Plenty of takeaways and tips, a few of which are mentioned below (tags: ryanchapman dbw) The Amazon/Macmillan Kerfuffle « Chapman/Chapman For those of you following the craziness around Amazon pulling Macmillan titles from its store Friday night, I direct you to the New York Times wrap up and Macmillan CEO John Sargent’s statement. There’s also a great post from John Scalzi (Tor author) from the author perspective. (tags: amazon macmillan)

• links for 2010-01-30

  delicious

  30 Jan 2010 | 2:30 am

  Overhyped, Overpriced & Disappointing: iPad? No, iPod in 2001 "I still can't believe this! All this hype for something so ridiculous! … I want something new! I want them to think differently! Why oh why would they do this?! It's so wrong! It's so stupid!" (tags: apple ipad ipod)

• revolutionary

  James Long

  29 Jan 2010 | 4:33 am

  I’m coming around to iPad now, two days on. I’m having my mind gradually changed by some of the analysis and reaction out there. A particularly helpful piece from Mac Slocum is on the O’Reilly Radar. My reactions to the iBooks application stand, but I think the device is possibly more of a potential ‘replacement’ device than I previously thought. If you profile your average home computing consumer, I expect the main tasks needed are all covered by iPad - email, tapping out your CV on Pages, doing the household accounts, etc. And then, it brings the iLife into…

• links for 2010-01-29

  delicious

  29 Jan 2010 | 2:30 am

  Digital Publishing Forum Presentation slides now available: It's convergence, Steve, but not as we'd hoped it might be (tags: paevents) IPad Pricing Is an Issue for Print Publishers - NYTimes.com With a few notable exceptions, the print world welcomed Apple’s new iPad on Wednesday, eager to tap into the 125 million customers who already have iTunes accounts and are predisposed to buying more content from Apple. (tags: apple ipad content)

• 
  Tools of Change for Publishing

• Why Mobile Will Win: eReaders are Sustaining, Mobile is Disruptive

  25 Jan 2010 | 4:00 am

  In one of the comments to Friday's speculation post about The Tablet, Scott Lewis sums up one of the most common objections to the viability of smartphone-based reading: 3.5" screen... 3.5" screen... 3.5" screen! Can't think of anything else to say. It's too small for serious reading. And Scott is correct that a 3.5" screen offers an inferior reading experience compared with a paperback when measured using the attributes that define a quality print reading experience. And that's precisely what Kindle and other eReader and eInk-based devices attempt to do, which is "help ... sustain the rate…

• The Unicorns are Here, They're Just Not Evenly Distributed Yet

  22 Jan 2010 | 7:00 pm

  I really didn't want to do another post about The Tablet. But then I saw this piece from Fortune (via @jafurtado -- does he ever sleep?) and this sentence drove me to it: [S]ome publishing industry watchers think that if a deal were to go through, it could lead to an Apple-enabled selling platform that would allow publishers to sell books at a price they determine. ARRGHHHH! Sincere apologies to William Gibson for the the title of this blog post, but everything that publishers seem to want from this device that will deliver them from evil is in fact already here. The iPhone and the iPod (and…

• 2009 O'Reilly Ebook Revenue up 104%

  22 Jan 2010 | 5:00 am

  During the past 18 months we've seen a dramatic shift in customer preference from print to digital when looking at sales from oreilly.com, which is a substantial sales channel for us. And looking across all of our sales channels for individual ebooks -- including mobile apps -- 2009 ebook revenue was up a staggering 104% on 2008 (which was more than 50% above 2007): Overall, printed books are still the biggest sellers for us (though Safari Books Online is our second-largest individual sales channel), but with the market for printed computer books declining at a double-digit rate, digital…

• Ten Reasons Why You Should Sign up for TOC 2010 Right Now

  20 Jan 2010 | 4:00 am

  In no particular order, here's ten links/reasons you should sign up right now for TOC 2010: "A Conversation with Tim O'Reilly & Ray Kurzweil" Arianna Huffington is one of the keynotes this year "Bringing e-Books to Africa and the Middle East" (speakers Ramy Habeeb and Arthur Attwell interviewed by James Turner) Ignite! TOC hosted by Brady Forrest The hotel block is filling up fast We sold out the last two years "The New How" author Nilofer Merchant's workshop "Reinvention as an Economic Necessity" "Running Two Companies -- Taking Book Publishing beyond Publishing Books" An incredible…

• Why the Apple/Publisher News isn't Really News

  19 Jan 2010 | 2:28 pm

  The interwebs are abuzz over reports that Apple has been in talks with the "big 6" publishers to make their content available on the mythical (and purportedly forthcoming) Apple Tablet. Mike Shatzkin has a nice analysis piece on why publisher-set pricing is a potential game-changer for ebooks, and while it is indeed refreshing to see retailers and publisher drop the physical-goods framework used to set most current trading terms, it's hard for me to see it as news for a few reasons: It's already been done. The "publisher" sets the price in the App Store, the Android Market, Scribd, and…

• 
  eMedia Vitals

• SEO, porn, bounce rate and you

  Derek Slater

  8 Feb 2010 | 7:36 am

  My website published a news article about the Chinese government's crackdown on Internet porn. I am not going to link to it because this is one of the rare instances where I do not want a CSOonline article to get more link juice. You see, for a matter of months this article ranked fairly high on Google searches for the search phrase "Chinese porn". Analytics tell us about the behavior of people landing on the site from that specific search. Their bounce rate – the percentage of visitors who left the site without visiting any additional pages – is 98%. Their average time…

• Q&A: Dennis McKenna, CEO, e.Republic

  Naomi Reiter

  5 Feb 2010 | 7:09 am

    e.Republic has faithfully served its audience of government technology buyers for nearly 30 years. The award-winning public sector publisher’s brands include Government Technology, Governing, Public CIO and Emergency Management. The company also produces events and sells research. In an interview, CEO Dennis McKenna, who founded the company in 1983, shared his thoughts on the state of the media industry, including what he calls the “communitizing” of B2B publishing. eMV: In what direction do you see the industry moving? McKenna: The entire nature of B2B media is…

• How clean is your customer data?

  Rob ORegan

  3 Feb 2010 | 9:18 am

  Publishers are relying on data more than ever to drive their business. Data fuels advertising campaigns, audience development efforts, even editorial decisions. There’s a heaping, growing pile of information about your audience and your prospects – and collecting, storing and managing all of it is a growing challenge. The two biggest issues: Keeping your customer data fresh, and finding a way to integrate multiple, disparate sources of information. These challenges are the major impediments to developing a clear, consistent view of your audience in order to increase the…

• 5 tips for successful event marketing - with no ad budget

  Heather Martin

  1 Feb 2010 | 4:31 am

  Attracting and retaining audience is a known challenge for any events business. Over the years, Fierce has cultivated a successful formula for driving qualified attendees to our portfolio of live and virtual events using both paid and free registration models.  We produce an average of 10 events each year – a mix of one-day executive summits, virtual tradeshows, executive breakfasts and networking events. In an economic climate where many shows are suffering from attendee attrition, Fierce has maintained, and in some cases grown, the audience for its portfolio of…

• Audience development: New roles, new challenges

  Rob ORegan

  28 Jan 2010 | 5:58 am

  Audience development has come a long way from managing the circulation file. Today’s audience development teams face an ever-expanding job description, with oversight of such wide-ranging tasks as subscription management, search marketing, email newsletters and social media. “Audience development has been turned upside down,” says Gloria Adams, senior vice president of audience development at PennWell, a B2B publisher of more than 40 trade publications. “It used to be pretty simple: Pay attention to the audits, set your BPA statement goals, and when you met those…

• 
  Personanondata

• Media Week 4 (Vol 3): Google Wave, Reed Elsevier, Lexis/West, Elsevier,

  PersonaNonData

  8 Feb 2010 | 2:53 pm

  Google Wave could be part of Google's plan to enter the educational market: eSchool NewsRaymond Schroeder, director of the University of Illinois’s Center for Online Learning, Research, and Service, said an instant replay of students’ waves answers “the age-old question posed to faculty members: How do you know that everyone contributed to the project?” “With playback, you can view the wave in time-lapse, blip by blip—even those that are deleted. You can see who contributed what at what time to the wave,” said Schroeder, adding that free access to Wave could be a fiscal godsend…

• Munich: February 6th 1958 - Repost

  PersonaNonData

  4 Feb 2010 | 10:50 pm

  Originally posted on 2/6/08.Today is the 5oth anniversary of the air crash that killed eight members of the Manchester United football team among 23 who died when a plane they were on crashed on take-off. It was the aircraft’s third attempt to gain altitude but the snow and ice that had accumulated on the plane and slush at the end of the runway ensured it never achieved the lift necessary for take-off. The plane clipped a fence at the end of the runway and split open on impact. The team members who died were Roger Byrne, Billy Whelan, Tommy Taylor, Duncan Edwards, Mark Jones, Eddie Colman,…

• OnCopyright 2010: The Collision of Ideas - Conference

  PersonaNonData

  3 Feb 2010 | 11:11 am

  Hosted by Copyright Clearance Center is an upcoming conference in NYC On Copyright. Here is their spiel:The debate over copyright—its value, its limits, its virtues and its future—is raging as never before. Technology innovation is creating new models for content distribution and disrupting the economics of entire industries. Ad-based media companies are wondering what the future holds and are questioning whether high-quality content is still a viable commodity. Artists are exploring new forms of creativity and pushing the edges of rights and ownership ever outward. And there are new…

• Beyond the Book: Does Piracy Improve Book Sales?

  PersonaNonData

  1 Feb 2010 | 12:32 pm

  At the Digital Book World conference last week, founder and principal of Magellan Media Brian O’Leary discussed research his firm has conducted that shows that eBook sales are boosted by pirated copies of eBooks. Brian discussed these findings with Chris Kenneally, host of Copyright Clearance Center’s Beyond the Book (http://bit.ly/d2w2TY). Brian explains that the publishing industry has always given away content in order to sell content by citing examples like book readings, signings, etc. For more details, you can see the transcript of the interview here:…

• Media Week 3 (Vol 3): Elsevier, Gale/Questia, Legal Improvements,

  PersonaNonData

  31 Jan 2010 | 6:45 am

  Elsevier Launches Next-Generation Digital Learning Platform (Elsevier Press Release):Accessible offline or online through Elsevier's market-leading Evolve portal, Pageburst is Elsevier's new platform for accessing a much wider array of features and functionality for its digital textbooks. Pageburst is easy for faculty and students to access and use and is delivered through the device most college students already have - a computer. Elsevier's community of health education experts designed Pageburst to enhance the way health professions students think, learn, and study. For example, students…

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• LMS Tracking of Podcasts and Video Casts : eLearning Technology

  Tony Karrer

  9 Feb 2010 | 6:47 am

  LMS Tracking of Podcasts and Video Casts on eLearning Technology - a blog about eLearning tools, software and trends.

• EduIQ Advanced eLearning Builder v3.6.15

  mrsandvik

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:47 am

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• Free Silverlight eLearning Courseware player : Mark Harrison 2010

  Mark

  9 Feb 2010 | 5:04 am

  Point8020 have decided to give their Silverlight eLearning Courseware player away for free. It allows you to display videos and other training resources (such as PPTs, PDFs, Docs, etc in a nice format like the following: ...

• Advanced eLearning Builder v3.6.15 Keygen only

  mrsandvik

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:49 am

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• Advanced eLearning Builder v3.6.15 Keygen only

  mrsandvik

  9 Feb 2010 | 3:48 am

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