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Arduino, 3D Printers, Kickstarter, and BitCoin
Posted: 10 Dec 2012 01:49 AM PST
| Arduino, 3D Printers, Kickstarter, and BitCoin Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:15 AM PST AVC regular Dan Ramsden posted a thougtful essay on GigaOM yesterday. After I read it, I sent Dan an email and I said "do you think big beats little in this phase we are in?" Dan replied that he did and asked me what I thought. I think David beats Goliath all day long if you are focused on the right sectors. Clay Christensen has shaped my thinking on this. You just need to look for sectors where the incumbents can't and won't adapt to new emerging models and where the innovators look like and are being derided as "toys". I told Dan that Arduino, 3D printers, Kickstarter, and Bitcoin are four "toys" that I think will radically reshape some big industries in this decade. Of course it may not be Arduino as we know it. Or it may not be Bitcoin as we know it. I will avoid commenting on Kickstarter since we are investors there. The leaders in 3D printing today may not be the leaders in 3D printing tomorrow. All you have to do is look at the big guys suing the little guys to know that there is a lot of innovation and change afoot in 3D printing right now. I have said this before. The more I hear people laughing at, deriding, and dismissing something the more I think it is likely to be a big deal. I remember when the common refrain about Twitter was that nobody wants to know what someone had for lunch. Well maybe they do. And maybe Bitcoin will be accepted in Starbucks someday. And maybe your phone will be made from Arduino components and the cover will be 3D printed. And maybe the movie you are going to see in the theater today will have been funded on Kickstarter. Maybe is a powerful word. If maybe represents something big and powerful then it is worth chasing that maybe. And it is worth funding it too.  | You are subscribed to email updates from A VC
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Introducing a New Type of Blogging Conference: BlogH.O.T.
Posted: 10 Dec 2012 01:41 AM PST
| Introducing a New Type of Blogging Conference: BlogH.O.T. Posted: 09 Dec 2012 06:50 PM PST  As you all know, I have been busier than usual over the past few months. Part of the reason why is because I’ve been working on my first book, Think Like A Rock Star. But I’ve also been working on another special project that I haven’t been ready to talk about publicly until now.
On March 25-27th in Los Angeles the first BlogH.O.T. conference will be held. This conference will be unique in several ways, the first is the name, BlogH.O.T. The H.O.T. stands for Hands On Training. We have created an agenda that focuses on having you learn by doing something. Second, over the last three years of running #Blogchat I’ve occasionally had someone ask me about the possibility of having a #Blogchat conference. This is the next best thing as #Blogchat and Digital Sherpa will be the initial co-sponsors for BlogH.O.T. As such, what we’ve strived to do is take the things that make #Blogchat so successful, and work them into the structure of BlogH.O.T. For example, a big key to the success of #Blogchat is the interactions and engagement that happens constantly throughout the chat. If I have a question about how to build engagement on my blog, I can throw that question out there, and within minutes a dozen or more people will be helping me and giving me guidance. With that in mind, we structured BlogH.O.T. so that the sessions will encourage interactions. We didn’t want you to be spending all your time simply listening to a speaker and taking pages of notes. We want you to learn by doing, and by interacting with others. That’s a big key to the success of #Blogchat, and we’ve structured the BlogH.O.T. agenda so there’s a premium placed on interaction throughout every session. The conference’s agenda is broken down into three tracks over two days: Knowledge: This is where we have one expert covering one a particular blogging topic. Interactive: The sessions in this track are led by two experts, who are facilitating a room-wide discussion about a particular blogging topic. This is the perfect chance for you to get feedback not only from the experts, but your fellow attendees. The topics of the Interactive track are also chosen specifically to compliment topics covered in the Knowledge track. Instructional: This tracks focuses on a workshop structure where one expert leads an overview and deep-dive of a particular blogging topic. The expert will walk attendees through exact examples of how to implement the blogging tactic or strategy they are teaching. The speaker lineup is absolutely phenomenal. See for yourself. One thing we really tried to do when we fleshed out this conference was we let the topics pick the speakers. We first decided on the topics that business and professional bloggers needed help with, and then we chose the speakers. Topics such as building engagement, generating leads, measuring results, optimizing for search and social. Seriously, we could not be more pleased with the experts that we have committed so far, and we have a few more that we will be announcing in the coming weeks. BTW there is one speaker I wanted to give a special thanks to, and that’s my man Marcus Sheridan. I am working with Digital Sherpa to advise them on the content and to also help them bring on the speakers. Looking back, I probably screwed this process up from the start because I started trying to convince the keynote speakers first, specifically, the very first speaker I reached out to was Marcus. So here I am emailing Marcus asking him if he wanted to keynote an event that was in its first year, that had NO confirmed speakers at the time! But we wanted Marcus because he is an amazingly dynamic speaker, plus he knows firsthand how to build a business via excellent blogging. So as soon as I told him what the focus of the event was, and that we were going to focus on teaching attendees by interacting and doing, he was in. Marcus is the Day Two Opening Keynote, and his Keynote is Enough of the Kumbaya: How to Get Real Business Blogging Results in an Age of Empty Chatter. How can you not love that? So check out the agenda for yourself. It’s amazing, and I could not be prouder of the value this event will provide. We were extremely picky with the people we targeted because we really weren’t looking for speakers, we were looking for teachers. People that aren’t just amazing speakers, but also people that have extensive workshop experience. That are comfortable conducting breakout sessions and leading groups through room-wide discussions. People that can help you become better bloggers. I could not be more excited to be a part of this event, and hope you can be as well! One final note. Attendance to BlogH.O.T. will be capped at 200 people. Again, we want a smaller audience to better facilitate interaction. So if you are considering going, please get your ticket ASAP, we also have an early-bird price in effect right now of $895.00! Also, rooms at the Omni where BlogH.O.T. is being held are only $195 a night now through March 5th!
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8bitfuture: SteamBox to be available next year. Valve boss Gabe...
Posted: 10 Dec 2012 01:37 AM PST
| 8bitfuture: SteamBox to be available next year. Valve boss Gabe... Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:45 PM PST  8bitfuture: SteamBox to be available next year. Valve boss Gabe Newell has said that Steam's recent big picture mode was received "much stronger than expected" by consumers, and the company will now push ahead to get Steam Linux out of beta and onto specially designed PC packages, which he expects to be available next year. He expects that along with Steam-manufactured boxes, third party manufacturers will also bring similar devices to market, which will be able to be hooked directly up to a TV and run Steam right out of the box. He confirmed they will compete with next-gen consoles from Sony and Microsoft. "I think in general that most customers and most developers are gonna find that [the PC is] a better environment for them," Newell told me. "Cause they won't have to split the world into thinking about 'why are my friends in the living room, why are my video sources in the living room different from everyone else?' So in a sense we hopefully are gonna unify those environments." | | Hi Stowe, This is Powell from across the street. Hero saw mention of one of your other blogs on Beacon Citizen. I didnt know you were into social tools, etc! Web social is my bread and butter also, in a manner of speaking. I am lead developer for two global social media platforms at a major financial company. And I have been working in this space for almost 5 years. We have much to talk about. Funny that our little block seems to be a social media hotbed. :) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 05:04 PM PST Nice! We should have you guys over to dinner anyway, we could talk about it all. | | "A company begins as a start-up. It creates tremendous buzz and goes through a period where anything..." Posted: 09 Dec 2012 01:55 PM PST "A company begins as a start-up. It creates tremendous buzz and goes through a period where anything goes. There is no concern for paying bills as the company explores new rules. Below a level of fifty employees, there seems to be a lot of random behavior. Between fifty and one hundred employees, if the company has survived, this is when the sigmoidal behavior begins. At that stage the company needs bureaucracy, human resources, compliance, and so on. The company more and more becomes the bureaucracy. The innovative phase gets phased out, unlike a city. A city tolerates all sorts of crazy people walking around. No corporation will tolerate that. Companies become very intolerant to new ideas, rhetoric to the contrary. When a company starts cutting down the bloat, it no longer can be cool. The last time I was at Google I already could feel the tentacles of the bureaucracy encroaching—and Google's awareness of the problem. There are signs of mortality creeping in. It may well be that Apple recognizes this problem and is fighting it like crazy by being open to new ideas. The question is: Is that possible?" - msg Santa Fe Institute physicist and organizational theorist Geoffrey West, quoted in "Inside Apple" (via buzz) Yancey first introduced me to Geoffrey West and his way of thinking (cities never die, corporations mimic the life/death of humans.) For a bit more on the topic you can watch Geoffrey West's TED Talk on the topic. | You are subscribed to email updates from Stowe Boyd
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Consumers Spend 20-30% of Time Online in Social; Ad Tolerance Improving [Study]
Posted: 10 Dec 2012 01:35 AM PST
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WordPress Plugin Releases for 12/9
Posted: 10 Dec 2012 01:29 AM PST
| WordPress Plugin Releases for 12/9 Posted: 09 Dec 2012 06:00 AM PST New plugins Fonts adds more fonts and font size control to the Visual editor tab. WP Social Share helps you and your users to share blog posts directly from your blog. Updated plugins Bad Behavior complements other link spam solutions by acting as a gatekeeper, preventing spammers from ever delivering their junk, and in many cases, from ever reading your site in the first place. Facebook makes your site deeply social by integrating functionality from Facebook. HyperDB is an advanced database class that supports replication, failover, load balancing, and partitioning. | You are subscribed to email updates from Weblog Tools Collection
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Staple’s Arc Notebook
Posted: 10 Dec 2012 01:19 AM PST
| Staple’s Arc Notebook Posted: 09 Dec 2012 05:51 PM PST 
I recently received some Emergent Task Planner Pad returns from Amazon; whoever returned them just didn’t like them after opening the package, and they were still good. I’d forgotten how luxuriously thick the paper is, almost decadently so, and I’ve been using them instead of hand-drawing them every morning. I have been thinking it’s a darn shame I don’t have a suitable binder to archive my used sheets. So I went to Staples, our local office supply megastore, to see what they had in stock.
I eventually stumbled upon their Arc Notebook System, which is very similar to Levenger’s Circa Notebook System. In fact, the two systems are compatible with each other according to this thread on Fountain Pen Network. The Levenger version, which precedes the Arc by many years, is quite expensive at $40 for the full-sized notebook. Staple’s Arc version was 40% off today, which dropped the price to $12.00. That was more like it. 
One thing I liked immediately about the Arc was the rigidity of the leather-bound front and back covers. I like stiffer notebook covers, because they are firmer backings for writing. I don’t want my notebook moving around on me when I’m writing. Most pad binders I saw today were plush but wimpy. Another advantage is that you can completely fold the cover back, like with a good double-wire binding, which takes up less space when you are at a crowded coffee shop. 
After getting the notebook home, I had to figure out how much paper I could fit comfortably in it. The Arc comes with 60 pages of thin paper in it. I found it nasty, and removed all but 10 sheets of it. I had purchased some dividers, so I put one divider between that and one week’s worth of blank ETP paper (punched with the Arc Punch I also purchased for $39). I also added a 12″ ruler to the front to act as a dual-use strain relief, and a business card holder in the back. And that was all that would fit before the binder started to feel sloppy; following are the slop tests I used: - Does the notebook fold back without tension or threaten to pop up?
- Does the topmost sheet of paper lie flat with the cover folded back?
- Does the notebook thickness not exceed the ring diameter when laying at rest?
With just 7 pieces of ETP available, this means I have to transfer each sheet to another binder after a week, which is not a bad thing. It forces review of the week, after all. I probably need to buy another Arc notebook (40% off, after all) and a bunch of rings. It’s conceivable that I could also make my OWN out of regular cover stock, the punch, and a set of larger rings. Perhaps I will look into that option instead. Though still…40% off!!!   
I’m going to be giving this setup a try this week as my official planning notebook. My other notebook (the Cachet Classic Graph) will become my new modern spellbook for 2013, where I will write down thoughts related learning new subjects as I work. The inspiration for this is Jordan Mechner’s Prince of Persia journal, which took me back to the days when I used to actually write stuff down as a way of remembering it. By the end of my senior year, it had accrued some reputation on its own. There’s a few things I’d like to try with mixed media too (printouts, sketches) after seeing my friend K’s beautiful art journals. 
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Personal Branding Weekly and Protecting Yourself from Experts
Posted: 10 Dec 2012 01:05 AM PST
| Personal Branding Weekly and Protecting Yourself from Experts Posted: 09 Dec 2012 12:00 PM PST Personal Branding Weekly Editor's Note: I've met many wonderful people during some recent personal branding and social media seminars and sessions that I've presented at lately. When we visit after my presentation, I find that unearthing your brand is by far the most interesting and most challenging aspect of personal branding for them. Do you find that to be true for you? Are you able to articulate your brand so crisply that there's no mistake what makes you unique? This week's posts from interviews, to job seeker apps and then a great post about what to bring to a networking event or conference, there's some solid insights that you can springboard your personal brand unearthing and communication. I'm interested to hear which articles "speaks" to you this week!  Protecting Yourself from Experts
We look for help or outside assistance when we do not have the time or the know-how to perform a task. In these cases, we often use help to make things simpler and more successful. Unfortunately, there is one thing to consider about help – it can be good and it could be bad. Important Qualities of a Personal Brand Marketing Consultant Expert in the field Consider the fact that experience is everything when looking for help. Not everyone who claims the title "expert" is going to have the experience to be a help for your brand. It's important to understand who it is that you're dealing with before delegating your personal brand communication. Transparent and authentic Now, ponder over how they could help you. Do they have a clear and real understanding of who you are and how you fit in your industry? One of the most frequently encountered issues that any brand has with help is that the assistance provided isn't in tune with the brand. While being true to who you are and your brand, every brand wants to be connect with their target market in a way that is meaningful and of value to their target audience. Without this, rather than the boost you were looking for, help can quickly hinder your efforts and become a burden. Flexible to changes Think about why you need help. For many brands, marketing can be one of the most time consuming and diverse areas to cover. For a person, that's even more pronounced and makes personal brand marketing difficult to manage. Social networks constantly require a fresh analysis to keep up with the current audience and guarantee that your personal brand is reaching out effectively. So, take into account how important it is for someone to understand clearly how to utilize social networks in marketing your brand. Effective Communicator Whom ever you decide to include in the execution of your personal brand strategies, understand that communication between your outsourced agencies and you should be clear and concise. When they inform you of a decision they've come to, and you ask why, they should be able to tell you how they came to that conclusion. Communication is one of the most important, and crucially decisive, components of a quality working relationship. After all, if they're helping you communicate your unique personal brand image, it's important that you know why they're doing what they think is necessary. Experts often are awesome forward thinkers in their industry or subject matter. Yet, remember, they're not an expert on you. [tweet this]. Author: Maria Elena Duron, is managing editor of the Personal Branding Blog, CEO (chief engagement officer) of buzz2bucks.com – a word of mouth marketing firm. She helps create conversation, connection, credibility, community and commerce around your brand. Maria Duron is co-founder and moderator of #brandchat - a weekly Twitter chat focused on every aspect of branding that is recognized by Mashable as one the 15 Essential Twitter Chats for Social Media Marketers. | | A Subtle Way To Look Smart Posted: 09 Dec 2012 10:30 AM PST It’s really easy to look smart.  One of my favorite parts of my work as a keynote speaker is after a presentation when students come up to me to ask a question. I love getting the chance to speak to people individually to help them with their specific challenges.
However, there is one aspect of this that is incredibly frustrating. After every one of my presentations (on how to get your dream job after college), there is always at least one student (and usually many students), who will ask me a question like "Pete, I want to do ______ after college. Do you have any advice for me?" I'm always polite when I get questions like this, but they really drive me crazy. After hearing practical advice for an hour, this is the best question you can ask? It makes me wonder if the person asking the question listened to anything from my presentation. Why not ask me to expand on one of my tips or ask for my advice in applying one of my tips to their specific situation? Contrast the "Do you have any advice for me" question with the following questions that other students have asked me after some of my recent presentations: - "Pete, what questions could I ask to impress people at a networking event for environmental engineers?" (One student asked me this question after a presentation where I talked about the importance of asking great questions. This question impressed me because it showed me that the person was listening to me.)
- "Pete, what can I do to stand out in a group interview?" (This question impressed me because it was specific and because it was not something I had addressed during my presentation.)
- "Pete, I run a student group on campus and am having difficulty motivating some of my fellow members. How can I motivate them?" (This question had nothing to do with my presentation, but it impressed me because it showed that the student asking the question was a leader who wanted to have a bigger impact.)
Was there anything earth-shattering about these questions? Of course not. Anyone could have asked them. However, I can tell you from fielding questions after presentations for thousands of people that it's very rare to be asked great questions. Most people just say something like "Do you have any advice for me?" Want to look smart when you are networking and interviewing? Ask specific questions. They prove that you care, that you were paying attention, and that you did your homework. Author: Pete Leibman is the Founder of Dream Job Academy and the Author of the new book titled "I Got My Dream Job and So Can You" (AMACOM, 2012). His career advice has been featured on Fox, CBS, and CNN, and he is a popular Keynote Speaker at career events for college students and at conferences for people who work with college students. | | Three Tricks to Get Your Email Opened Posted: 09 Dec 2012 02:30 AM PST We all know that getting over the inbox hurdle can be a challenge. Whether you are trying to land an informational interview, a sales call or a job interview, getting your email opened is the first step to success.  The challenge is that people routinely get dozens – even hundreds – of emails in their inbox every day. This means that every time they open their inbox, there are a million things screaming for their attention.
So, how the heck do you get your email opened? How to get your “cold” email opened every time! Today, we’re going to assume that you have the biggest challenge ahead of you: getting a cold email opened. A cold email is one that you send to a person (or company or email address) that you have no relationship with. This means that they have no reason to open your email or respond to you. This means that to get your email opened, you have to win them over in the subject line. How to Stand Out From All the Noise Now, remember, getting your email opened is only the first step to getting a response. You’ll want to combine a succinct well-written note with a minimal call to action for your best chance of getting hired. To get your email opened, all it takes is these three tricks. Don’t forget the second one — it’s the most important. 1. Send emails between 11:30 and 12:30. By sending emails at this time, they get it while they are at lunch or right after they returned. This is a low energy time for most people and something easy and productive (like opening your email) is more likely to be opened and viewed positively! 2. Use a Subject Line that Pops! You only have one short sentence to convince them to open, so it has to be good. I recommend using your Super Hero Story for that specific job as the subject line. The idea is to communicate the value of opening the email to the person you are sending it to in the subject line. Pique their curiosity! 3. Use a Reputable Email A bad email address can only hurt you! There are lot of email clients (the part of your email after the @) that make you look professional. Any website that you proudly own can be used. But, in terms of free email clients, using a Gmail email address is your best bet. If you are applying for work, it is NEVER okay to use your employer email. Additionally, double check your “From” name – it should simply be your first and last name, with proper capitalization. Author: Rebecca Rapple has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Business Insider, Keith Ferrazzi's My Greenlight and more. You can learn more about the fundamentals of a remarkable job search on her site, The Resume Revolution. | 
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This Homemade, Playstation Controller-Operated Syrian Battle Tank Is Unbelievable
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:39 PM PST
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3 Common Reasons Why People Flounder
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:23 PM PST
| 3 Common Reasons Why People Flounder Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:47 AM PST This is from a recent issue of the “Productive Living” newsletter. Hi Folks, The major complaint about our Getting Things Done methodology is not that it doesn’t work or that the principles aren’t sound—it’s that people don’t work the system. I’ve learned that many times the problem is not lack of motivation or discipline, but instead some rather mundane and practical behaviors that can be easily changed to make things work much better. I’ve identified three in this essay. If you do a quality check on your own system and where you notice you have cracks and stress fractures, it could likely include at least one of them. All the best, 
DAVID’S FOOD FOR THOUGHT THREE COMMON REASONS WHY PEOPLE FLOUNDER There are three common reasons why most people seem to flounder with their personal workflow. At least part of their systems lack one or more of three essential variables: consistent, current, and contextually available. This was reaffirmed for me in a coaching session I did with a senior executive. Here’s what showed up: Consistency: She had some phone call reminders on pieces of paper, some in her head, some on sticky notes stuck to the phone. Keeping the same kind of reminders about the same kinds of to-do’s in different media in different places is hugely inefficient and confusing. Information or reminder triggers of a specific type must be kept in the same place, the same way, all the time. Otherwise we have to make the “what do I do with this?” decision with every such particle, and that throws up a quick barrier to engagement. She decided to go with simple file folders labeled “Calls – Work” and “Calls – Personal”, as the best way to manage those, and sanity began to prevail. Currency: No matter how consistent the system is, if it is not current (i.e. completely up to date with all items in a category) it still can’t be trusted in a way that relieves the psyche of the job of remembering and sorting. You’ll look at a list and some part of you knows it’s not the whole list, so (a) you won’t totally trust your choices and (b) you’ll still try to use your head to keep track. And if your brain still has that job, instead of trusting your lists, you won’t be motivated to keep your external system going (it will be too much work for the value received.) You’ll feel like it’s hard work to keep the list and will resist looking at it anyway because you’ll know it’s only partial and it will remind you that you’re “behind.” Contextually available: She had been trying to organize action reminders by project or by topic, instead of by where the reminder needs to be seen in order to get it done. Project thinking and planning need to be seen by the title or topic, because that’s when we need to see that information (when we’re meeting or thinking about it). But reminders of the next actions required need to be seen where those actions can occur–phone calls when we’re at a phone; errands to do when we’re about to go out in our car; emails to send when we’re at our computer; etc. Information and action reminders should always be stored in such a way that we are likely to see them when we need to see them, and can use or move on the data. If you store your Next Action reminders by what or who they’re about, every time you’re in a place where you can do work (at a phone, at your desk, in your car, at home) you’d have to look through dozens of folders or files to find reminders of all your options. And when you’re running fast and only have a short window of time, you won’t really check the whole inventory and you’re likely to make choices from latest-and-loudest instead of objective overview. David Allen’s “Productive Living” newsletter is free and sent about every 4 weeks. You’ll find essays from David, thought-provoking quotes, and productivity tips you can use every day.  | You are subscribed to email updates from GTD Times
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Stay Away from Tourist Traps (343/365)
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:13 PM PST
| Stay Away from Tourist Traps (343/365) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 12:00 PM PST In 2004, I had the professional opportunity to travel to Mexico multiple times in a short span. On those trips, I had a few chances to visit some of the sights of rural Mexico. One of the stops that really sticks in my mind is the opportunity to climb up a small Aztec pyramid at Teotihuacan. With some of my travel companions, we climbed up to the top of the pyramid, enjoyed the wonderful view, and also enjoyed the amazing architecture and design of these small pyramids. Unfortunately, the primary path to reach these pyramids forced one to walk through a quarter of a mile or so of souvenir stands, all of which were hawking some kind of good. Since we were there as a large group, some people naturally finished with the pyramid tour before others and found themselves stuck standing there by all of these souvenir stands. A few people wound up buying things from these souvenir hawkers. Those that did not were either drawn in to look or spend significant time trying to ignore them. In either case, the souvenir hawkers produced a pretty unwanted – and in a few cases, expensive – effect on what was otherwise a wonderful vacation stop. 
Thanks to Quinn Dombrowski for the photo
Thankfully, there are a few things you can do to avoid such tourist traps. First, stick together as a group. Naturally, you’re going to have people who move at different paces in the group. If you find yourself wanting to move faster than the rest of your group, hang back for a moment and wait on them instead of charging ahead. Similarly, if you feel that everyone is waiting on you, hurry up a bit. How does this help? If you all stick together as a group, you won’t be stuck at the souvenir or gift shop by yourself waiting on the rest of your group. Similarly, if you’re all together as a group, it becomes much easier to limit your time shopping for such souvenirs – or, better yet, skip them entirely. Second, acquire memories, not stuff. If you want to remember your stop at an amazing place, take a lot of pictures. Record a bit of video. Write about it in your journal. Tell (and show) others about it. A great travel moment lives on in your mind and your heart, not your stuff. Finally, bring back only things that matter. If you’re going to bring back a souvenir for someone, chances are you’re not going to find a cool souvenir in a souvenir stand in a touristy area. You’re going to find something much better off the beaten path in a place you didn’t expect. If you’re planning on buying a gift for someone, put aside a bit of time to do just that and go to a place that’s genuinely local instead of just grabbing something less interesting from a souvenir stand. It will mean more, it will be far more interesting, and you’ll get more quality for the dollar. Keep your dollars and spend them somewhere where you’ll get more meaning and value for your pennies. You’ll be glad you did. This post is part of a yearlong series called “365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),” in which I’m revisiting the entries from my book “365 Ways to Live Cheap,” which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere.  | | What Seems Simple Rarely Is Simple Posted: 09 Dec 2012 06:00 AM PST I enjoy watching cooking shows – you know, the ones where they actually focus on presenting a recipe and show off some of the techniques used in preparing that recipe. My favorite cooking show host is Julia Child, by a fair margin. There’s something I’ve always found really comforting about her – I don’t quite know what it is. Anyway, here’s a prime example of her work, in which Julia prepares beef bourguignon in a classic episode of The French Chef: I would not describe Julia Child as a truly expert chef. She is probably best described as a highly skillful amateur with a strong knack for presentation. Even so, she does have more than enough skill to prepare something like coq au vin or beef bourguignon from scratch. When you sit down and watch an episode of The French Chef, you see enough of the steps and techniques for preparing the recipe that you can conceivably know how to do it in your head. It seems pretty straightforward, and you go away convinced that you could indeed prepare a pretty good beef bourguignon at home. You know what the end goal is. You know what the basic steps are. It’s all very simple, right? The first roadblock is that it’s impossible to show every detail of preparing a complex dish in a half hour program. You just can’t do it. Cooking show hosts tend to focus on just a few techniques from the recipe to show you – they simply can’t show every technique that they use. There isn’t time. Still, someone who has spent some time in the kitchen can roughly fill in the blanks, right? I have enough skill that I could make a pretty solid shrimp etoufee in my kitchen if I saw a half hour cooking show on the recipe. Even given that, it would still be pretty challenging to make a good meal at this point. The next roadblock – and this is a big one – is that completing something that seems simple still requires a lot of skill, subtlety, nuance, and continuous effort. A few years ago, I pulled off an amazing coq au vin in my kitchen. Still, there were pretty big imperfections in my recipe. It was good – even very good – but it was still flawed. The end lesson here is that even in things that seem incredibly simple and straightforward, it takes a lot to pull it off with excellence. One of the most common things that home cooks are recommended to master is the simple scrambled egg. Can you scramble two eggs well? Even in that simple task, there are tons of techniques, talents, and efforts. In order to truly master even a simple scrambled egg, you must be skillful in many different areas. Have you scrubbed your pan clean? Did you beat the eggs in a clean bowl? Did you wash the bowl properly first? Did you beat the eggs enough to mix them, but not so much to disturb the molecular composition of the egg whites? Have you turned up the heat to the proper level? Have you heated the pan enough, or is it too hot? All of these questions – and we’ve not even put the eggs in the pan yet! Here’s another example, in which Richard Paterson, a master blender of Scotch whisky, demonstrates some of the technique in maximizing enjoyment out of something as simple as drinking a bit of Scotch: The things that seem simple rarely are, once you start digging into them. This is absolutely true for personal finance. The goal of personal finance is simple. You want to increase your net worth over time and provide financial security for yourself and for your family – that’s the goal for most people, anyway. It’s straightforward. But how do you get there? Investing is one piece. So is frugality. So is self-reliance. So is psychology. The list goes on and on. A person that’s successful at some areas can fail in others and everything will fall apart on them, much like a baker who remembers everything but the baking powder in a cake. Within each of those areas, there’s a ton of technique as well. Every time a dollar crosses your fingers, you’re managing psychology. You’re managing time. You’re making buying decisions. A person who succeeds at making a great meal isn’t perfect. They’re simply focused enough that they manage to perform all of the necessary tasks well enough to result in a successful meal. They might be particularly strong at some elements – say, making sauces – but they’re able to do other things well enough to achieve the result they want. A person who succeeds at creating financial security isn’t perfect. They’re simply focused enough that they manage to perform all of the necessary tasks well enough to result in financial success. They might be particularly strong at some elements – say, frugality – but they’re able to do other things well enough to achieve the result they want. A person who succeeds in either of these areas – or any area – is strong enough at the multitude of little things that they make it all come together and seem really easy. For example, when you go into a store and focus on your grocery list, you’re not only saving money, you’re honing a better technique for shopping. You’re becoming a better personal financier by strengthening one technique, much like a person in the kitchen who chops vegetables for a few hours. In a given day, I overcome temptation a lot of times. I make countless little decisions about how to spend my time. I’m often faced with lots of little purchasing decisions, too. I have to make sensible professional choices, and I also have to look for ways to improve other income streams, too. I have to stay focused along the way. The end result – financial independence – is so simple and straightforward, but there are so many little techniques needed to get there. Each of those little techniques are very simple themselves, but it is the blend of all of those techniques that create the sweet taste of success. The big thing seems simple, but when you look closer, it’s actually complex. So, instead, focus on the little things. You’ll find that eventually the big thing starts to fall right into place.  | You are subscribed to email updates from The Simple Dollar
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Nintendo restreint les jeux 18+
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:12 PM PST
| Nintendo restreint les jeux 18+ Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:35 AM PST Le contenu mature ne peut être consulté sur Wii U qu’entre 23h et 3h du matin. 
| | La Batmobile Tumbler en LEGO Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:07 AM PST Il y en a qui savent occuper leur week-end en bons geeks. C’est par exemple d’un individu sur Sariel qui s’est lancé dans la conception d’une version LEGO de la Tumbler, soit la Batmobile apparue pour la première fois dans Batman Begins en 2005. Disposant de quatre suspensions indépendantes ainsi que d’un double lance-missile, ce bolide téléguidé de 2,34 kilos a pris plus d’un mois de temps à son concepteur. Un concepteur qui s’est également donné du mal pour la présentation vidéo qui suit. 
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Stiq Figures, November 26 - December 2: ATV Offroad edition
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:10 PM PST
| Stiq Figures, November 26 - December 2: ATV Offroad edition Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:30 PM PST Welcome to Stiq Figures, where the sales data is after the break and the posts don't matter. Every week, we take a look at, uh, something - meanwhile, the previous week's Japanese hardware sales figures are posted after the jump, and a discussion of said figures takes place in our comments. It may not be conventional, but it's a time-honored Joystiq tradition.
ATV Offroad Fury doesn't feel like an old game, even though it launched in 2001 for PS2. When taking one look at the game's official website, its age certainly shows. Of all the old websites for games we've looked at on Stiq Figures, this one certainly stands out. Not only is it complete with a rather awful flash game, but it also allows viewers to get a 360 degree panoramic view of a few of the game's tracks. Arguably the best (read: worst) part is the site's ATV builder section, which features two tire types: a large set "for the adventurer" and a small set "for wussies." These web designers weren't messing around, apparently. Continue reading Stiq Figures, November 26 - December 2: ATV Offroad edition  Stiq Figures, November 26 - December 2: ATV Offroad edition originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 09 Dec 2012 23:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Galcon 2: Galactic Conquest hits Kickstarter Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:30 PM PST The sequel to space-themed RTS Galcon recently landed on Kickstarter. The series' creator Phil Hassey first made Galcon in 1995, and continued improving and re-releasing the game over the years with standout versions available on iOS and Android. Hassey recently took to Kickstarter to fund development on the game's true sequel, Galcon 2: Galactic Conquest. The sequel would include expanded modes, an auto-match feature for online play, a trophy system and clan support. Hassey's goal is to launch the free-to-play game on PC, Mac and Linux, with plans to port it to iOS and high-end Android devices. The Kickstarter project is seeking $23,099 by January 7. Galcon 2: Galactic Conquest hits Kickstarter originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 09 Dec 2012 22:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Bundle in a Box has Shuggy, The 4th Wall, Eversion, more for you Posted: 09 Dec 2012 06:00 PM PST On this chilly, relaxing Sunday, take a break from all that lounging around and have some fun with a bundle of indie games priced at "whatever you want" - because you deserve it. The Bundle in a Box is live for eight more days and includes the following games for exactly the price you think they're worth: Shadows on the Vatican: Act 1, Delve Deeper (and DLC), War of the Human Tanks, Eversion and Fibrillation. By paying more than the average (currently at $2.87), you get The Adventures of Shuggy, Stay Dead, The 4th Wall and Flibble. Also, the more bundles that are sold, the more extra goodies are unlocked for everyone, including the Shuggy OST and comic, the War of the Human Tanks OST and the Droidscape: Basilica OST. The soundtrack for Shadows on the Vatican is already unlocked, you lucky dogs. Delve Deeper, Eversion and Shuggy all come with Steam keys, while Eversion and Stay Dead are compatible with Mac. Bundle in a Box has Shuggy, The 4th Wall, Eversion, more for you originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 09 Dec 2012 21:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments | | PSA: Lemmings out now for PlayStation mobile Posted: 09 Dec 2012 05:00 PM PST | | Still finding love in turn-based Japanese role-playing games Posted: 09 Dec 2012 04:00 PM PST This is a column by Kat Bailey dedicated to the analysis of the once beloved Japanese RPG sub-genre. Tune in every Wednesday for thoughts on white-haired villains, giant robots, Infinity+1 swords, and everything else the wonderful world of JRPGs has to offer. When Japanese role-playing games come up in casual conversation, one word that I hear a lot is "nostalgic." As in, it's a genre that brings people back to a childhood spent playing old SNES RPGs, or maybe PlayStation classics like Final Fantasy VII. Traditional JRPG storytelling and gameplay tropes are seen as outdated, none more than the turn-based battle systems that drove all those 8 and 16 and 32-bit RPGs. It's a sentiment shared by many in the industry itself. Responding to the repeated drumbeat for change, for example, Square Enix has broadly hinted that the next numbered Final Fantasy will be an action RPG. In Japan, the action-based co-op RPG Monster Hunter has become something of a holy grail for the industry - the series that everyone aspires to emulate. This is where I take a stand though. Much as I like Ys and a handful of other action RPGs, I like good old-fasionhed turn-based RPGs that much better. Not every RPG has to be as frenetic as a Call of Duty. In fact, I rather prefer it when they're not. Case in point? The turn-based Persona 4 Golden, which remains as relevant now as it was when it first arrived on the PlayStation 2 in 2008. Continue reading Still finding love in turn-based Japanese role-playing games Still finding love in turn-based Japanese role-playing games originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 09 Dec 2012 19:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Linux system requirements pop up on some Steam games Posted: 09 Dec 2012 03:00 PM PST Valve provided the Linux system requirements for a handful of games on Steam over the past week, perhaps gearing up for a full, public launch of Steam Linux. Steam added more than 30 games that run on Linux, spanning standard releases and a few Greenlight games, and Steam Linux is currently in closed beta. We attempted to find the Linux system requirements on a PC and via a virtual box running the latest version of Ubuntu, but to no avail. A few faster people snapped screenshots of the specs, such as the above image of Serious Sam 3: BFE's Linux requirements taken by Techgage. Yesterday's discussion of a Steam Box, direct from the mouth of Valve founder Gabe Newell, raised questions of Linux as a potentially pivotal player in Valve's arsenal. That thing will have to have an OS, after all, and Linux would be a natural option. As we discussed on the Super Joystiq Podcast last week, Big Picture mode plus Linux might equal a big ol' Steam Box. Linux system requirements pop up on some Steam games originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 09 Dec 2012 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments | | GTA: San Andreas gets Dec. 12 PSN launch date from PS Hong Kong [update: confirmed!] Posted: 09 Dec 2012 01:30 PM PST | | Halo 4 and Hitman: Absolution on sale on Amazon today Posted: 09 Dec 2012 12:00 PM PST | | Popcap seeks dev with Frostbite 2 experience for a AAA game Posted: 09 Dec 2012 10:30 AM PST Popcap is looking for a generalist software engineer with "experience working with the Frostbite 2 engine" for a "AAA console title," a job posting spotted by Superannuation reveals. Popcap is, of course, the mobile and social studio behind Bejeweled and Plants vs. Zombies, so a foray into AAA territory is surprising, to say the least. The job listing says, specifically: "The PopCap studio is looking for an experienced generalist SE to build a AAA console title. This generalist will work on a broad range of game systems including, but not limited to: animation, audio, resource management, pipelines and visual effects. The ideal candidate will also have experience working with the Frostbite 2 engine." Keep your eyes peeled for a first-person version of Plants vs. Zombies - the twist? You play as the plant. Popcap seeks dev with Frostbite 2 experience for a AAA game originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 09 Dec 2012 13:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Ken Levine: BioShock Infinite box art is for the uninformed Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:00 AM PST Irrational Games boss Ken Levine talked with Wired recently about the cover art for BioShock Infinite, which was unveiled just over a week ago to the groans of many. Levine compared games to salad dressing when talking about the intentions of the game's box art, saying, "I don't read Salad Dressing Weekly. I don't care who makes it, I don't know any of the personalities in the salad dressing business." Levine said that members of the team went to frathouses to ask if gamers have played BioShock, and "not a single one of them had heard of it." He makes the distinction that the box art for BioShock Infinite is for those uninformed players that don't read news on gaming sites. So, it's not for you, dear Joystiq reader, though Levine addressed you as well, noting that the developer will be releasing a "whole set of alternate covers that you can download and print. We're going to be working with the community to see what they're interested in." Levine added that the BioShock team had to "make that tradeoff in terms of where we were spending our marketing dollars. By the time you get to the store, or see an ad, the BioShock fan knows about the game. The money we're spending on PR, the conversations with games journalists - that's for the fans. For the people who aren't informed, that's who the box art is for." BioShock Infinite will launch March 26, 2013 for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC. Levine also recently spoke with Joystiq about the game's themes of faith and evolution of its central character, Elizabeth. Ken Levine: BioShock Infinite box art is for the uninformed originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 09 Dec 2012 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Email this | Comments | | Dark Souls 2 screens are a little shy Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:30 AM PST Okay, so maybe we wanted to believe that there are adult Shy Guys in Dark Souls 2. At least, that's what we thought when viewing the announcement trailer during the 2012 VGAs a few nights ago. That's our mistake, but when you look at these screens from said trailer, can you really blame us? Not much is known about Dark Souls 2, besides From Software's unswerving commitment to making the game incredibly difficult. We can say with certainty that Shy Guys first appeared in Super Mario Bros. 2. Dark Souls 2 has the number two in it as well. "Shy Guy" is also two words. None of that is a coincidence, right? Continue reading Dark Souls 2 screens are a little shy Dark Souls 2 screens are a little shy originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 09 Dec 2012 10:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Ask any entrepreneur: The freelance economy is a sucker's game (Sarah Lacy/PandoDaily)
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:06 PM PST
| Ask any entrepreneur: The freelance economy is a sucker's game (Sarah Lacy/PandoDaily) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 10:55 PM PST | | Cold water for Google Fiber fans: Covering the whole country could cost $140 billion (Brad Reed/BGR) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 10:20 PM PST | | Facebook and Instagram to Crack Down on Insta-Spam (Mike Isaac/AllThingsD) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:45 PM PST   Mike Isaac / AllThingsD:
Facebook and Instagram to Crack Down on Insta-Spam — It may be the most popular mobile photo-sharing app in the world, but Instagram still has some big problems. The biggest right now? Spam. It's everywhere. — Hopefully, not for much longer. Instagram announced late on Friday …
| | Facebook data suggests Microsoft has sold 4.2 million Windows Phone handsets since October (Alex Wilhelm/The Next Web) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:40 PM PST | | What's new in Internet Explorer 10 for Windows Phone (Amin Lakhani/The Windows Blog) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:55 PM PST | | Samsung reveals final details of Galaxy S3 'Premium Suite Upgrade', includes easy mode, camera updates (Jon Russell/The Next Web) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:25 PM PST | | Australian Police Warn Against Use of Apple Maps Due to Safety Concerns (Juli Clover/MacRumors) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:55 PM PST | | Half A Million People Voted Against Facebook's Governance Changes, But Not Enough As Polls Close Tomorrow (Josh Constine/TechCrunch) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:25 PM PST | | The enduring Apple TV Fantasy (Jean-Louis Gassée/Monday Note) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 06:20 PM PST  Jean-Louis Gassée / Monday Note:
The enduring Apple TV Fantasy — We all want TV Done Right, free of the Soviet Era set-top box, UI and opaque contracts. We imagine Apple will put all the pieces together. But what's desirable and “obvious” might not be so simple or soon... “When I go into my living room and turn on the TV … | | Yahoo teams up with NBC Sports to share online and broadcast sports news and coverage (Jon Russell/The Next Web) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 05:35 PM PST | | The White House joins Pinterest, invites users to holiday social (Alex Howard/digiphile) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 04:15 PM PST | | Confirmed: Effective Immediately, Say Goodbye to Instagram Photos Inside of Twitter (Mike Isaac/AllThingsD) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 02:10 PM PST | | Air Force Stumbles Over Software Modernization Project (Randall Stross/New York Times) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 01:30 PM PST  Randall Stross / New York Times:
Air Force Stumbles Over Software Modernization Project — IN policy circles, problems that are mind-bogglingly difficult or impossible to solve, like global warming, are formally termed “wicked.” — For the United States Air Force, installing a new software system has certainly proved to be a wicked problem. | | Instagram Photos Will No Longer Appear In Twitter Streams At All (Leena Rao/TechCrunch) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 12:15 PM PST | | Facebook, Google, Zynga Ask Courts To Reject Patents On Abstract Ideas That Plague Tech Innovation (Josh Constine/TechCrunch) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:45 AM PST | You are subscribed to email updates from Techmeme
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How Gamification Can Take Your Business to the Next Level
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:42 PM PST
| How Gamification Can Take Your Business to the Next Level Posted: 09 Dec 2012 06:00 AM PST  The workplace is no place for games, right? Not anymore. Gamification, an idea originally created as a way for brands to incentivize and encourage consumers to engage, has entered the enterprise level. As a younger generation, armed with their smartphones full of games and apps, enter the workforce, many employers are finding new ways to incentivize, train, and challenge their staff. So What’s This Gamification All About? Gamification is adding game-like experiences to non-game apps, services, and processes. This can be applied to various different industries, but gamification as a business tool is how the term has become more than just a buzzword. The hours spent training new and current employees on procedures, processes, and technology is extensive. It can be consuming for human resource departments, and most employees just try to find a way to suffer through and get the information they need. There's also rarely a great way to test employees on the subjects covered. But building on a layer of gamification to training, using the ideas of game theory and game mechanics, can make a training session challenging, interactive, and rewarding. Tasks don't just become an endless checklist — they are a way to get to the next level. This also creates a new challenge for HR professionals. How do you make training and the workplace more engaging? It's a new way to look at employee skills, retention, and ongoing instruction. And it can only lead to improved experiences in the workplace. Play for Pay Companies such as Hilton Garden Inn have created interactive, 3D training programs for employees. BankersLab created a simulation-based experience for bankers to learn lending strategies. Companies are helping employees to learn real skills, simulating real experiences, and doing it in an entertaining environment. A recent study by Deloitte said, It's a trend [gamification] that analysts claim will be in 25 percent of redesigned business processes by 2015, will grow to more than a $2.8 billion business by 2016, and will have 70 percent of Global 2000 businesses managing at least one "gamified" application or system by 2014. Gamification can be incorporated into the workplace by using a variety of tools: - Badges
- Leaderboards
- Progress Bars
- Virtual Currency
- Point Systems
- Feedback and social interactions
Find Inspiration for Your Enterprise Games Current games and applications available on any mobile marketplace can provide a wide range of ideas for adding a layer of gamification to your organization. Download and play the top games. See how you are instantly rewarded for the right moves, how getting to the next level gives you a sense of accomplishment, and how the game showcases that you've made a mistake. Study how the games pull you in by showcasing what level you are currently at, and how the higher levels are displayed in a way that makes you want to reach them. These apps are rich with ideas and built on concepts that can make your employees lead scorers. Chris Luck is the CEO and Founder of Appiteks, a company that produces iPhone apps. Appiteks launched its first game in October 2012, Boomie vs. Pirates. The game reached the Top 100 Free Puzzles and Top 100 Free Action games on the iTunes App Store in its first week. Chris has had a passion for games since he was a little kid and is excited to have the ability to continue the dream of building games and placing them into the hands of millions of people all over the world. Copyright © www.blogtrepreneur.com - visit the site for more great content. | 
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Google Killed Free Google Apps for Businesses
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:41 PM PST
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A Guide To Working With ‘Difficult’ Clients
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:26 AM PST
| A Guide To Working With ‘Difficult’ Clients Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:07 AM PST We love our clients! This indeed is a true statement for without clients, there can be no success or even a business in the first place. However, once in a while a client comes along that is not so easy to work with. For example, there are those who never seem to know what they [...] The post A Guide To Working With ‘Difficult’ Clients appeared first on Search Engine Journal. | | With Relevancy Totally Irrelevant to Its Success: What is Google? Posted: 09 Dec 2012 05:14 AM PST I am writing this article in response to the recently posted“Google Quality Rater Guidelines 2012″ document, seemingly leaked, speculatively injected into the market. Before I dissect the specimen, let me start with a general Google overview first. For all practical, technical, scientific, and artistic purposes, Google is not a search engine, at least not for me. [...] The post With Relevancy Totally Irrelevant to Its Success: What is Google? appeared first on Search Engine Journal. | | With Instagram out of the Picture, Rumors of Twitter’s Own Photo Filtering Feature Reemerge Posted: 09 Dec 2012 02:21 AM PST | You are subscribed to email updates from Search Engine Journal
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Killing as Many Birds with as Few Stones as Possible with Content: Defining the Types
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:25 AM PST
| Killing as Many Birds with as Few Stones as Possible with Content: Defining the Types Posted: 08 Dec 2012 09:58 PM PST 
In an ideal world, we would have the time and resources to create four types of content: converting website content, engaging website content, SEO content, and social media content. Throw in public relations content, supporting content, and consumer resources and now you have a ton of content needs without a ton of time to create it. This is where the bird-hunting content producers of the world can shine. Thankfully, just about anyone at a business can kill multiple birds with each content stone if they know how to do it right. Understanding the Importance of Each Type of Content Content that is placed on your website, blog, supporting sites, and social media is normally done so for a reason. Sure, there are people who love to write, take pictures, or shoot videos as a hobby, but in the business world we normally want to get a benefit from our efforts. One of the biggest speed bumps that businesses often make is that they don’t know how to properly define the goals of their content. With a proper definition, the content has less of a chance of being successful. For now, we’re not going to look at conversion content, PR, support, or consumer resources. They are much more focused types of content and while it’s possible to hit them with content that achieves multiple goals, it’s best to attack them individually. For example, you can say that a press release is something that can help with SEO as well as get shared on social media, but it doesn’t replace the real SEO content or content that is designed for social media engagement. It’s an addition and therefore is normally not crafted to accomplish the other goals as well. Let’s focus on engaging website content, SEO content, and social media content. Done properly, the vast majority of the pieces of content you create for one can apply to all three. - Engaging Website Content – This is the content that is designed to bring people in who are not necessarily looking for your product at that particular moment. They were a nice-to-have type of content prior to the Google Penguin update of April, 2012, but now they are absolutely essential thanks to Google’s adoration for content that can be enjoyed, that brings value to the visitor, and that can be shared through social media as well as being the target of inbound links. Engaging website content does not sell a product or service. It supports the sale of those products in some way. It might be as direct as showing clever integration methods between an iPhone and a car, showing how the new Ford Fusion has systems that SYNC nicely with your smartphone. It might be as indirect as a gallery of images from different angles of the Seattle Space Needle. For a Seattle Ford Dealer, both of these examples would work nicely to accomplish the goal of making their website engaging to their potential customers.
- SEO Content – The days of writing content on or off of your site or blog for the sheer sake of manipulating your search rankings are far behind us. 2011′s Google Panda update and the several tweaks and improvements since then have forced businesses to take a longer look at quality over quantity. It’s about manual and unique versus automated and duplicated. Today’s SEO content brings value to the table. This ties in nicely to the other two types of content listed here.
- Social Media Content- It’s hard for many businesses to understand the levels of quality that are required on social media because of the camouflage created by all of the bad content that’s shared every day by others. It cannot be understated that well-crafted content posted on social media can bring more value than dozens of low value posts. In fact, these low value posts can actually do harm. Crafting the right content for social media is the only way to tie it in directly with SEO and website engagement.
“Quality” is a buzzword that is dramatically overused in today’s content marketing atmosphere. As a result, it’s often misunderstood. One does not have to be a Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist to post high-quality content. Some of the best content producers I know can barely form a sentence without a grammatical mistake. It’s about bringing value, entertainment, or both to the table. It’s about being interesting. It’s about posting on your expertise, namely the business that you operate. If you sell Fords for a living, chances are you know a lot more than the average Barney or Betty about the capabilities of an F-250 diesel. If you don’t, someone at the store does. Use it. In the next post, we will go into details about “Thinking Three Dimensionally” to help you select the right topics and take the appropriate steps to post. Stay tuned. Related articles | 
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Does a “wing man” help you meet women?
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:18 AM PST
| Does a “wing man” help you meet women? Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:00 AM PST Target and Neiman Marcus are about as opposite as two retailers can be, but they share a common interest in high-end design — and attracting stylish women. That is why this promotion is so smart: They released a joint line of products that you can buy at either store. Neither is at risk of losing customers to the other — they are too different. But both brands benefit from the surprise of seeing them work together. The result: A 7:00 AM line out the door on launch day. Who can be your wing man?
![]() ![]() | | Get a free copy of my book Posted: 08 Dec 2012 01:00 PM PST 
This holiday season: Buy the comic book or audio editions and we’ll send you a free, signed paperback copy. From now through December 31st, email a receipt of your comic book or audio edition purchase to edi...@wordofmouth.org and we’ll mail you a signed paperback edition for free. (Sorry, but we can only ship our free paperback copies to U.S.-based addresses.) The comic book edition is the action-packed, condensed, and illustrated version of the Word of Mouth book. It’s all the fantastically useful word of mouth ideas from the full book in a format that’s even easier to read, implement, and share. Buy it here. The audiobook edition is the most convenient and mobile way to learn all of the practical, actionable ways you can get more people talking about you. For your commute, your big road trip, or your morning workout — this is a great way to learn the essential word of mouth skills. Buy it here. | 
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La carcasa de iPhone con adaptador para objetivos réflex y móviles baratos para estas navidades. Constelación VX (CXXII)
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:16 AM PST
| La carcasa de iPhone con adaptador para objetivos réflex y móviles baratos para estas navidades. Constelación VX (CXXII) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 03:44 AM PST 
Aquí estamos, un domingo más, con la sección a través de la cual recopilamos algunos de los posts más interesantes que hemos encontrado en un puñado de publicaciones de Weblogs SL. Vamos allá.
Y aquí lo dejamos hoy. La semana que viene volveremos con más.    | | Adelanto de 'KRUNCH', un indie creado por Lou LeGrudge y Dirk Rugged, con banda sonora de Dirk y Disasterpeace ('Fez') Posted: 09 Dec 2012 02:49 AM PST 
Quienes me conocen saben que le doy mucha importancia a la banda sonora en un videojuego. Logra que mi valoración final sobre un trabajo pase de lo brillante a obra maestra sin pestañear. Hoy por hoy, entre mis compositores independientes favoritos se encuentran Disasterpeace, creador de la sensacional banda sonora del no menos sensacional ‘Fez’ (no os perdáis su disco ‘Rise of the Obsidian Interstellar’), y Souleye, del retro-amoroso ‘VVVVVV’ (escucha obligada su disco ‘Adventure’). Pues bien, a raíz de estar suscrito al correo del primero, se me ha notificado que cuenta con trabajos nuevos, siendo uno de ellos sobre el juego del que os venimos a hablar ahora mismo: ‘KRUNCH’. Obra de Lou LeGrudge (diseño, programación y niveles) y Dirk Rugged (gráficos, música y niveles), con la colaboración especial de Disasterpeace para algunos temas, ‘KRUNCH’ es un juego que requiere de muchos reflejos para lograr escapar de cada pantalla sin morir en el intento. Surgió como un prototipo de la Ludum Dare, recibe su inspiración de la época de NES, y sus creadores toman como referencias el antes citado ‘VVVVVV’ y el mítico ‘Mega Man’. Sólo por esto debería tenerse en cuenta. ‘KRUNCH’ contará con más de 100 niveles enmarcados en cuatro zonas distintas, cada una con su correspondiente jefe final. Se distribuirá mediante la página oficial creada para la ocasión, pudiendo realizar su reserva ya mismo, y según sus creadores se pondrá a la venta la próxima semana. Podremos comprarlo suelto, en un pack con su genial banda sonora, o reservar su edición coleccionista en formato físico (mucho más cara; 29,99 dólares), la cuál se empezará a enviar a partir de febrero de 2013. Y con número limitado de unidades, como era de esperar. Os dejamos con su tráiler, y tras él los enlaces a su banda sonora, que podéis escuchar en streaming o comprar al instante en diversos formatos, y su página oficial por si queréis realizar su reserva. A ver si os gusta. Que por cierto, viene libre de DRM, y es compatible con Linux, Mac y PC. Así da gusto, ¿verdad? Vídeo | Vimeo
Banda sonora | KRUNCH – Disasterpeace & Dirk Rugged
Sitio oficial | KRUNCH    | | 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City' para iOS: análisis Posted: 08 Dec 2012 11:23 PM PST 
‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’, otro análisis de un juego para iOS y otro texto en el que me va a tocar hablar de problemas que ya deberían estar solucionados. El juego genial, como en 2002, pero la diferencia entre jugarlo en una pantalla táctil y hacerlo con un mando en las manos es infranqueable. Mejor suerte correrá la versión de Android, sobre todo para aquellos que puedan disfrutar de un dispositivo con controles táctiles de esos que empezaron a poblar las financiaciones en masa de Kickstarter desde hace más de un año. No sé en qué demonios están pensando en Google para no lanzar su propio controlador táctil compatible cuando podría ser el peso que desestabilice la balanza en su lucha con Apple. En Cupertino siguen dormidos con este tema, crearon un modelo de negocio y se han sentado a verlas venir sin intentar evolucionarlo aún más. Al final tendrá que ser OnLive o alguna compañía con ganas de explotar un nicho de mercado totalmente desaprovechado la que les saque las castañas del fuego. 
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, la potencia sin control… Rockstar hace lo que puede con una pantalla táctil a la que los ocho botones de acción del mando de PS2 se le quedan, no grande, enormes. Puede pasarse por alto en los primeros compases, en los que te das cuenta de que si por defecto la conducción está activada con dos botones, uno para girar a cada lado, en vez de la alternativa presentada con un joystick virtual, es por tu bien. Sin embargo es imposible olvidarse de ello cuando tienes que disparar, a pie o desde un vehículo, huir de la policía con todas las estrellas activadas o controlar un helicóptero que tiene que girar sobre su eje a derecha e izquierda, ascender, descender e inclinarse, únicamente usando los dos pulgares que la genética decidió regalarte. Lo he dicho cientos de veces, ni siquiera hace falta recurrir a ese accesorio que añada algo palpable a los controles y pueda guardarse en un bolsillo o colgarse como un llavero, lo único que haría falta para mejorar la experiencia es una zona táctil en la parte trasera del dispositivo. Costaría acostumbrarse a ello, no lo niego, pero eso es mejor que nada. Más aún teniendo en cuenta que esa “nada“ desgracia un juegazo de la talla de ‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’. 
Un título que cumple visualmente Como decía antes lo que podía hacerse con esta edición que conmemora el décimo aniversario del lanzamiento del juego está innegablemente ahí. Las luces de neón de Vice City en una pantalla Retina Display son toda una gozada, se mantienen las mejoras ofrecidas en la versión de Rockstar Vienna y los cambios en algunas texturas se agradecen. Choca, eso sí, ver modelados con una resolución muy buena colocados frente a texturas muy pobres que afean el conjunto. Tocaba mano de pintura en más elementos de los que se han arreglado y las cinemáticas le pasan factura a esa falta. Nada a criticar cuando estamos en movimiento, aunque he presenciado algunas caídas de frame rate esporádicas cuando hay mucho que ver a tu alrededor y la fortuna, o una embestida policial, lleva a tu vehículo a dar un giro de 360 grados lo más brusco posible. Que ocurra dos veces de diez, sin embargo, no es una mala cifra. 
La historia de Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, su mejor baza Si jugaste a ‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’ en su día sabrás lo que tiene que ofrecer su historia. Bien por sus subtítulos y mejor aún por poder disfrutar de un guión así en plataformas completamente aleladas por la sucesión de pájaros e historias sin grandes aspavientos que tienen que soportar a diario. Pierde un poco de mérito por no ser una aventura original destinada a insuflar cierta madurez a una parte del sector que la necesita para evolucionar, pero al menos sus ventas darán un toque de atención a aquellos que creen que no hace falta ir más allá. Eso incluye también a Rockstar, por descontado, que aunque ofrece el port no se arriesga a apostar por una historia nueva que acogeríamos con unos brazos abiertos en los que los nudillos de ambas manos se tocarían por detrás de la espalda. Tocará seguir soñando, imagino. Bien también por incluir funcionalidades como la de la opción a repetir misiones de forma automática en las que hemos acabado arrestados o con nuestros planes ahogados en la bahía (sigo esbozando una sonrisa al recordar a Timmy Vermicelli y sus manguitos flotadores en ‘Driv3r’), pero el que se acerque a ‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’ debe hacerlo pensando que la estructura de juego y sus misiones no casan con el juego esporádico de cinco minutos en la parada del autobús. Menos aún teniendo en cuenta que no hay autoguardado y tendrás que depender de los viajes a los pisos francos o de mantener la aplicación abierta en segundo plano. 
Conclusión ‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’ es un juegazo, lo era antes y lo es ahora. Es una lástima que el tema del control acabe pasándole factura al conjunto, pero eso no quita que continúe siendo una compra imprescindible si no pudiste disfrutarlo en el pasado o quieres avivar la llama de tu espíritu nostálgico. Entre las horas de juego que tienes por delante, la divertidísima historia que propone y lo surrealista que es su banda sonora, 4,49 euros no me parece en abosoluto un precio excesivo. Eso sí, hazlo sabiendo qué te vas a encontrar e intentando priorizar el jugarlo en la pantalla de una tablet en vez de en un smartphone, tus ojos lo agradecerán. Grand Theft Auto: Vice City | iOS  - Plataformas: Android, PC, Mac, iOS (versión analizada)
- Desarrollador: Rockstar Games
- Distribuidor: Apple
- Lanzamiento: Ya disponible
- Precio: 4,49 euros
- Comprar en iTunes: Grand Theft Auto: Vice City
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City vuelve por la puerta grande, con mejora gráfica pero sufriendo los problemas relacionados con el control desde una pantalla táctil. Vídeo | Youtube En VidaExtra | Rockstar nos devuelve a la ciudad del vicio con el tráiler de ‘Grand Theft Auto: Vice City’ para smartphones y tablets   | | Imagen de la semana: el peligro de las pistas en Miiverse Posted: 08 Dec 2012 01:28 PM PST 
El componente social en Wii U se llama Miiverse, y lo cierto es que la idea parece haber cuajado muy bien entre la comunidad de jugadores, con comentarios y comentarios de toda índole para cada juego. Miiverse mezcla varios conceptos. Es mitad foro, mitad Twitter, mitad Facebook… O lo que es lo mismo, tenemos apartados especiales para cada juego, podremos dejar comentarios que no superen los 100 caracteres (sí, menos que en Twitter), y hasta podremos hacer “Me gusta” a los comentarios de la gente. Podemos hablar de lo que sea, siempre y cuando esté relacionado sobre lo que se trata en el espacio indicado, podemos mandar mensajes con dibujos, e incluso capturas de pantalla para comentar cosas especiales sobre zonas avanzadas de un determinado juego. Y que aparecerán ocultas para no estropear sorpresas. El que quiera, le puede dar y revelar su contenido. Muy práctico. Hasta aquí todo bien. Pero claro, la maldad de algunos siempre está presente. Y si vemos a alguien que nos da una pista sobre una zona oculta de un juego no quiere decir que nos esté diciendo la verdad. Aunque hay formas de controlar esto también. Pero vaya, que alguno siempre va a pringar, como muestra esta viñeta de Brawl in the Family que se convierte en nuestra imagen de la semana. 
Vía | Dorkly > Brawl in the Family    | | Capcom anuncia 'Street Fighter x Mega Man', un crossover en plan 'Mega Man' y que pronto podremos degustar gratis en PC Posted: 08 Dec 2012 11:55 AM PST 
Tanto ‘Street Fighter’ como ‘Mega Man’ están de 25 aniversario. Pero ya sabemos que Capcom no está cuidando muy bien a su mascota Rockman, hasta llegando a cancelar su ‘Mega Man Universe’. Sorprendentemente descubrimos ahora un giro inesperado, y es que Capcom nos brindará muy pronto un nuevo ‘Mega Man’, y además muy especial. Todo un crossover con la saga ‘Street Fighter’. Y no sólo eso, sino que será completamente gratuito. Viniendo de Capcom es toda una sorpresa, ¿o no? El caso es que como decimos ‘Street Fighter x Mega Man’, que así se llamará, nos pondrá en la piel nuevamente de Mega Man, y con el objetivo de hacer frente a ocho luchadores del universo ‘Street Fighter’. Aquí más de uno pensará en el plantel inicial de la segunda entrega, la más famosa de la historia, pero no. Estarán Ryu, Chun Li, Dhalsim o Blanka, sí, pero también Rolento o Rose. Y como es lógico, tras abatirlos ganaremos sus poderes. No está nada, pero que nada mal este homenaje. El próximo 17 de diciembre, desde su espacio personal dentro de la página de Capcom-Unity, podremos descargarlo gratuitamente y empezar a darle caña en nuestro PC. Aquí su tráiler. Vídeo | Youtube
Vía | Capcom-Unity
Sitio oficial | Street Fighter x Mega Man    | | 'Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition' para Wii U: análisis Posted: 08 Dec 2012 10:24 AM PST 
Debutó en EEUU junto con la Wii U, pero en Europa hemos tenido que esperar una semana hasta su llegada a Nintendo eShop. Analicemos, pues, este ‘Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition’. Como hemos recalcado a lo largo de todas las noticias que hemos publicado en torno a este primer trabajo de WayForward en Wii U, se trata de una adaptación del título ya visto en la Nintendo eShop de Nintendo 3DS que salió bajo el nombre de ‘Mighty Switch Force!’. En su momento nos pareció un juego a tener en cuenta a pesar de su corta duración, y la principal duda que teníamos sobre esta versión para Wii U era saber si merecía la pena teniendo el original de Nintendo 3DS. ¿Queréis la versión resumida antes de profundizar en el análisis? No, no lo recomendamos si disponemos del original. ‘Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition’. Más de lo mismo 
WayForward ha desaprovechado una oportunidad cojonuda al adentrarse en una nueva consola de sobremesa, y todo por ofrecer, básicamente, más de lo mismo. Las dieciséis fases del original serán un calco aquí, salvo por el renovado apartado gráfico, alejado de los píxeles como puños (que nos encantan), para pasarse a los gráficos dibujados a mano, aunque no tan preciosistas como otras producciones, como el ‘Rayman Legends’. Incluso tendremos los mismos artworks al completar las fases que ya vimos en Nintendo 3DS. Un poco de novedad no le habría sentado nada mal… Una pena. Por no cambiar no cambia ni la historia, con Patricia Wagon viéndose obligada a capturar de nuevo a las presas (Space Hooligans) que se han escapado de su custodia. Como comentamos en su día, éstas no nos atacarán, y las capturaremos tan solo con tocarlas. Para pasar cada fase habrá que capturar a cinco, y así sucesivamente para el resto de las fases. El problema vendrá de parte de los enemigos y los puzles que tendremos que afrontar, esto último siempre con el casco de sirena en mente, gracias al cuál podremos alterar el estado de determinados bloques. Ahí radica toda la gracia de ‘Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition’, puesto que ni es un plataformas al uso, ni tampoco un plataformas de acción. Todo eso es secundario. El reto es capturar a las presas en poco tiempo. Esto se irá complicando a medida que superamos pantallas, obligándonos a dominar bien la alteración de bloques, tanto los normales como los que nos impulsarán o podremos fijar (azules y rojos). En algunos casos puede ser frustrante (salvo que hayamos jugado previamente al de Nintendo 3DS), y nos exigirá por momentos memorizar ciertas partes, como qué bloque de impulso coger, o qué bloque fijar para poder llegar a otra zona más alejada. ¿La pena? Nos lo podemos ventilar en una tarde. Aunque el doble de largo… pero esto tiene truco, cuidado 
Sí, una de las contras del original se repite aquí, aunque deberíamos matizar este asunto. De entrada contamos con 16 fases, igual que en el original, pero al completarlas desbloquearemos 5 extras. Las mismas que a Nintendo 3DS llegaron vía DLC gratuito meses después. Pero hay más, ojo. Tras pasar esas cinco fases adicionales (nada fáciles, por cierto), desbloquearemos de golpe 21 más en versión Hyper. Y aquí es donde está el truco. Son las mismas de antes, salvo que más complicadas. Bastante más, por lo enrevesadas que son, con bloques situados en zonas más conflictivas, ver pinchos donde antes había plataformas… Vamos, que nos exigirán un reto mayor y más paciencia. Lo malo es que no dejan de ser, en el fondo, las mismas 21 fases que habíamos superado antes, con lo que la tarea se hace un poco aburrida. Además lo que nos quedará por desbloquear es una tontería: ver a Patricia Wagon con menos ropa si superamos todos los tiempos. Sí, tal cuál la vemos al finalizar las primeras 16 fases. Eso por no mencionar el disparo potenciado al completar simplemente esas 16 fases, pudiendo rejugar las fases que hayamos completado con ese arma potenciada para superar más fácilmente los tiempos. Y es que podremos eliminar a cualquier enemigo de un simple disparo o destruir bloques duros (no de los que se alteran, sino de los pequeños que podíamos destruir tras unos disparos y los grandes mediante los enemigos bomba). Toda una gozada el Mega Blaster. La pega, repetimos, es que en el fondo ‘Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition’ no deja de ser lo mismo, y además a un precio sensiblemente más caro (de los 6 euros del original pasamos a 9,99 de éste), y sin un extra a mayores. Hubiese estado bien, ya que son tan parecidos, en algún modo adicional si disponemos del original de Nintendo 3DS. Pero no. Por no tener no tiene ni marcadores online. Por lo tanto, no recomendable si disponemos del original de Nintendo 3DS. Y si no lo tenemos, tampoco. Mejor la versión portátil, que es más barata. Aunque éste de Wii U no deja de ser mal juego, ojo. Pero hay que tener las cosas claras: no es nuevo. No se puede valorar del mismo modo. Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition | Wii U  - Plataformas: Wii U (eShop)
- Desarrollador: WayForward
- Distribuidor: WayForward
- Lanzamiento: 6 de diciembre de 2012
- Precio: 9,99 euros
‘Mighty Switch Force! Hyper Drive Edition’ viene a ser una adaptación a la alta definición del título ya visto en Nintendo 3DS. Aporta realmente poco más. Vídeo | Youtube    | You are subscribed to email updates from Vidaextra
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Leona Lewis is Trapped in a Birdcage in Lovebird Music Video
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:15 AM PST
| Leona Lewis is Trapped in a Birdcage in Lovebird Music Video Posted: 07 Dec 2012 07:35 PM PST  The music video for Leona Lewis's new single, "Lovebird," has been released. The single is from Leona's new album, Glassheart, which has been released in the U.K., but not in the U.S. The music industry really needs to go global and coordinate its releases. Leona appears trapped inside a birdcage at the start of the music video. One of the outfits Leona wears looks like lots of fabric and scarves were sewn together. We like the bejeweled look she has above her eyes. Take a look: Photo: Sony Music Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest  | | First Family Lights National Christmas Tree Posted: 07 Dec 2012 07:15 PM PST  The First Family lit the National Christmas Tree last night. First Lady Michelle Obama read Twas the Night Before Christmas with Rico Rodriguez to children as part of the lighting event. This year's tree contains 450 strands of LED lights and 120 star-shaped LED ornaments from GE Lighting. GE says the lights this year consume 80% less energy (4,000 watts vs. about 20,000 watts) compared with incandescent technology. Take a look:  Photos: Official White House Photos by Lawrence Jackson (top)/Pete Souza (Second) Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest  | | Macy's Stores to Remain Open for 48 Consecutive Hours the Weekend Before Christmas Posted: 07 Dec 2012 07:00 PM PST  Macy's has announced it plans to keep most of its stores open for 48-hours straight during the final weekend before Christmas. The stores will be open beginning at 7 a.m. on Friday, Dec. 21 through 7 a.m. on Sunday, Dec. 23. Peter Sachse, Macy's chief stores officer, said in a statement, "For the first time ever, Macy's will keep most stores open around the clock for the last weekend of holiday shopping, an expansion of our successful marathon that began at select stores in 2006," said Peter Sachse, Macy's chief stores officer. "We hope to make it easy for our customers across the country to finish their shopping at any time of day or night, and with the benefit of the great deals and value they count on from our One Day Sale events." The Macy's is downtown Cincinnati, Ohio is pictured above. Photo: Macy's Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest  | | Anti Gay Group Calls For Boycott of J.C. Penney for Featuring Ellen DeGeneres in Holiday Commercial Posted: 07 Dec 2012 06:00 PM PST J.C. Penney has angered the One Million Moms group by allowing openly gay talk show host Ellen DeGeneres to star in one of its Christmas commercials. The group now wants consumers to boycott J.C. Penney saying, "JCP has made their choice to offend a huge majority of their customers again," Christians must now vote with their wallets. We have contacted J C Penney's several times in the past with our concerns, and they will not listen. They have decided to ignore our complaints and so we will avoid them at all costs." The group has been outspoken against any corporations which are supportive of gays. Here is the commercial in question which features Ellen in a diner negotiating with some elves to give out 80 million holiday buttons. The buttons give customers a chance to win gifts and trips. We certainly hope customers ignore the group and its call for a boycott. Take a look: Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest  | | Bunn Launches Trifecta Coffee and Tea Brewer Posted: 07 Dec 2012 03:55 PM PST  Bunn-O-Matic has announced the launch of its Bunn Trifecta coffee and tea brewing machine. Trifecta features 25 different brew setting combinations. It uses what the company's "Air-Infusion technology." Bunn-O-Matic says the Trifecta holds water consistently at 200 degrees Fahrenheit. It comes with two brew chambers, a brew pitcher, scoop and scale. The brewer costs $549 and can be found at BunnatHome.com. Photo: Bunn-O-Matic Corporation Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest  | | Melissa Clark Makes Crown Roast of Pork with Fennel and Lemon Posted: 07 Dec 2012 03:00 PM PST The New York Times' Melissa Clark demonstrates a perfect main course for Christmas dinner -- a crown pork roast. Melissa says it's expensive, so it's perfect for that special occasion. The crown roast is a pork loin which has been trimmed, with the bones left on. The butcher will cut it properly for you, then tie string around it to get it to stand up like a crown in roasting pan. Most people roast the meat with the bones up and put little paper hats on the bones to keep them from getting black. Melissa prefers to roast the meet bones down, so that the fat on the top gets brown. She prepares an herb and olive oil paste, covers the meat with it and then puts it in the oven to roast. Take a look: You can find Melissa's recipe for Crown Roast of Pork with Fennel and Lemon here. Facebook | Twitter | Pinterest  | You are subscribed to email updates from ShoppingBlog.com
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‘Oblivion’ Trailer: Tom Cruise Thinks He’s the Last Everyman on Earth
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 11:03 AM PST
| ‘Oblivion’ Trailer: Tom Cruise Thinks He’s the Last Everyman on Earth Posted: 08 Dec 2012 07:32 PM PST 
Get past the idea that Tom Cruise plays a lonely technician — or we’re meant to believe he does, at least — and this first trailer for Oblivion, the new film from Tron: Legacy director Joseph Kosinski, looks pretty appealing. While I have trouble buying Cruise as the last everyman on Earth, there’s a lot of good stuff here. The trailer is, as we expected from Kosinski, full of great designs. And there’s a lot of classic sci-fi reference in here, as well as some nods to much more recent work. (The poster doesn’t just pull the basic aesthetic made popular by Christopher Nolan’s Batman films; the movie even apes the football stadium push-in from The Dark Knight Rises.) So have a look at this vision of a decimated future Earth, on which Tom Cruise discovers that there’s more humanity left than he thought, when he runs across Morgan Freeman and a band of ragged survivors. There’s a good question about what’s real and what’s not, and I suspect that my difficulty buying Cruise as the drone repair guy may be addressed by the plot. There are shades of Solaris in there (vague ones, but still), and that makes me hopeful for the film. If nothing else, it will be great to look at for at least one viewing. Apple has the trailer. Oblivion opens on April 12. Tom Cruise stars in Oblivion, an original and groundbreaking cinematic event from the director of TRON: Legacy and the producer of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. On a spectacular future Earth that has evolved beyond recognition, one man's confrontation with the past will lead him on a journey of redemption and discovery as he battles to save mankind.
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Killing The Ego
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:50 AM PST
| Killing The Ego Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:23 AM PST In an interview, the poet and memoirist Mary Karr describes the spiritual practices that bring her sanity: Our autonomic nervous system breathes for most of us, and a priest friend told me once, when I asked him how I was supposed to know God's will for me, that I should see what is. If you're breathing, just presume you're supposed to be alive and start looking around for some way to make yourself useful. If you're suicidal, your mind is actually the keenest threat to your survival. Yet depressed people still listen intensely to their minds even though said minds NEVER have anything good to say. Think of it, you try to employ the diseased organ to cure itself! If someone outside your body were shouting those awful things you say to yourself in such times, you'd plug your ears and sing lalalala. You have to stop that mind or die. A simple meditation practice I started twenty-three years ago involves counting my breaths one to ten over and over. Pure hell at first. I evolved through various practices — some Christian and Ignatian spiritual practices taught to me by a Franciscan nun and a few Jesuits along the way. I came back to breath last year. For me God is in the moment, and I tend to do everything I can to avoid being in such a stalled, unproductive place as the present. The ego has to stop inventing its reality and notice what's actually going on, which process kills it (the ego) a little if you're lucky. For more on Karr's religious life - and long struggle with alcoholism - read her remarkable memoir, Lit.  | | Always Write Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:31 AM PST Silas House reveals his writing habits: The No. 1 question I get at readings is: "How many hours a day do you write?" I used to stumble on this question. I don't write every day, but when I first started going on book tours I was afraid I'd be revealed as a true fraud if I admitted that. Sometimes I write for 20 minutes. Other times I don't stop writing for six hours, falling over at the end like an emotional, wrung-out mess, simultaneously exhausted and exhilarated. Sometimes I go months without putting a word on the page. One night, however, I was asked that question and the right answer just popped out, unknown to me before it found solidity on the air: "I write every waking minute," I said. I meant, of course, that I am always writing in my head.  | | Ask McKibben Anything: Preparing For The Worst? Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:30 AM PST | | Quote For The Day Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:30 AM PST "In French, one can say Je suis seul (I am alone) or Je me sens seul (I feel alone), but nothing as baldly distressing as 'I am lonely' or 'I am lonesome.' Or, even worse, 'I am a loner.' My first poems were often about loneliness. My father was a military man and my brothers were athletes, so I was always looking for a different way to be a man. To look inward and explore the darker corners of the soul is one of the functions of the lyric poem. I think immediately of Hopkins, whose poems I love. I hate having to apologize for, or defend, inwardness. It was the American poet Marianne Moore who said that solitude was the cure for loneliness, but if I spend too much time alone, I am called égoïste, or selfish. Surely, it is impossible to be a writer without being égoïste," - Henri Cole.  | | The View From Your Window Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:01 AM PST  Northampton, England, 7.30 am  | | Darwinian Populism Posted: 09 Dec 2012 06:14 AM PST Susan Jacoby profiles Robert Green Ingersoll, who travelled across 19th century America lecturing on behalf of secularism and the separation of church and state. His ingenious argument for Darwinism: He told his audiences that when he first read On the Origin of Species (1859) and became acquainted with Darwin's theory of evolution, his initial reaction was to think about "how terrible this will be upon the nobility of the Old World. Think of their being forced to trace their ancestry back to the duke Orang Outang, or the princess Chimpanzee." This sentence demonstrates what a brilliant orator he was, here taking advantage of American hostility to Old World and especially British aristocracy—hostility that was still very much alive in the 19th century. He used the American disdain for unearned hereditary privilege (which, then as now, did not necessarily extend to inherited wealth) to make the idea of descent from lower animals more accessible and less threatening.  | | Poetry In The Trenches Posted: 09 Dec 2012 05:17 AM PST  In an interview, Faith Barrett, who describes the Civil War as a "poetry-fueled war," points to the way verse was inextricably connected to the way Americans experienced the crisis of the house divided: Poetry in mid-19th-century America was ubiquitous in a way that it just isn't now. It was everywhere in newspapers and magazines, children were learning it in school… Americans were encountering poetry on a weekly basis, if not a daily basis, in the Civil War era, and that's a profound difference from contemporary poetry and its place in our culture. There are so many accounts in newspapers of soldiers dying with a poem in their pockets, poems written on a scrap of paper folded up inside a book; so many accounts of songs or poems being sung or read to political leaders at particular moments. For example, after Lincoln announced the second call for a draft ... James Sloan Gibbons wrote this song poem called "Three Hundred Thousand More," which he supposedly sang to Lincoln in his office one day. So there's a kind of immediacy of impact, that poetry is actually, I suggest, shaping events, not just responding or reflecting on them. (Photo from Wikimedia Commons)  | | Philosophical Self-Impovement Posted: 09 Dec 2012 04:09 AM PST Riffing on the work of the French thinker Pierre Hadot, and reviewing a number of recent biographies about philosophers, Costica Bradatan channels an older, half-forgotten approach to philosophy - that it is a "way of life": In this understanding of the Western tradition, the chief reason for studying philosophy is not a desire to know more about the world, but a profound sense of dissatisfaction with the state in which one finds oneself at a given moment. One day you suddenly, painfully realize that something important is missing in your life, that there is a gap between what you currently are and the sense of what you could be. And before you know it, this emptiness starts eating at you. In a way, you don't even exist yet. (It must have been in this sense that Socrates used the term "midwifery" for what he was doing; by subjecting those around him to the rigors of his philosophy, he was bringing them into existence properly.) Philosophy thus presupposes a certain degree of self-detestation. It may well be that philosophizing begins in shame. If you are a bit too comfortable with yourself, if there is nothing you are ashamed of, you don't need philosophy; you are fine as you are.  | | Soaring Above Our Senses Posted: 08 Dec 2012 06:28 PM PST Jessa Crispin unearths an old Nick Cave lecture on love songs. Cave insists that the Psalms and the Song of Solomon are two of the greatest love songs ever written: The love song must be born into the realm of the irrational, absurd, the distracted, the melancholic, the obsessive, the insane for the love song is the noise of love itself and love is, of course, a form of madness. Whether it be the love of God, or romantic, erotic love – these are manifestations of our need to be torn away from the rational, to take leave of our senses, so to speak. Love songs come in many guises and are seemingly written for many reasons – as declarations or to wound – I have written songs for all of these reasons – but ultimately the love songs exist to fill, with language, the silence between ourselves and God, to decrease the distance between the temporal and the divine. He adds: Alas, the most endearing form of correspondence, the love letter, like the love song has suffered at the hands of the cold speed of technology, at the carelessness and soullessness of our age.  | | "It's A Friggin' Taco Fest In Here" Posted: 08 Dec 2012 05:36 PM PST And other gender-swapping observations: Alyssa finds kernels of truth in the parody: As far as pointing out bad/lame behavior via gender role reversal, the video's an equal-opportunity expose. It's also a good advertisement for avoiding the meat market bars, and the social rituals that go along with them. Because the main takeaway from this video is that long lines, loud bad music, shots, and the pressure to meet someone by the end of the night drives everyone insane, no matter whether they're hitting the club in tight tank tops or collared shirts.  | | Banking With Bud Posted: 08 Dec 2012 04:19 PM PST In an interview with Planet Money, John Davis explains the difficulties of running a legal marijuana business in Washington state. He also provides tips for the pot entrepreneur: Buy three safes. One for "bulk product," one for "inventoried, ready-for-sale product," and one for cash. "If you put your cash in with the cannabis, it will end up smelling like cannabis, and when you go down to the bank, I guarantee you're going to have a talk with the manager of that bank." Get an ATM — and be prepared to stock it with cash yourself. Credit card companies may not want to do business with you. Same goes for the companies that run ATMs in small businesses. "The companies that traditionally maintain ATMs will not stock your cash," Davis says. "Why? Because it's possible that the federal government will come, break down the door and take that cash."  | | A Poem For Saturday Posted: 08 Dec 2012 03:42 PM PST  "My Young Mother" by Jane Cooper: My young mother, her face narrow
and dark with unresolved wishes
under a hatbrim of the twenties,
stood by my middleaged bed.
Still as a child pretending sleep
to a grownup watchful or calling,
I lay in a corner of my dream
staring at the mole above her lip.
Familiar mole! but that girlish look
as if I had nothing to give her—
Eyes blue—brim dark—
Calling me from sleep after decades. (From The Flashboat: Poems Collected and Reclaimed by Jane Cooper. Copyright © 2000 Jane Cooper. Used by permission of W.W.Norton & Company. Photo by Flickr user mrsdkrebs)  | | The Nude Vanguard Posted: 08 Dec 2012 02:32 PM PST  Debbie Nathan reviews How Sex Became a Civil Right. She explores how the ACLU shifted from defending speech about sex to defending the acts themselves: The early ACLU leadership vacationed together at Martha's Vineyard. On isolated beaches there, many practiced nudism. Nudists today are largely winked at if not ignored. But in the 1930s and '40s, they saw themselves as an avant-garde movement. Going undressed, they believed, would strengthen democracy by challenging the class distinctions so visible in clothing. They also thought the sight of people casually strolling in the buff would cool the frisson of obscenity. In 1934, ACLU started not just defending nudists' right to publish material depicting them and their families naked, but to gather that way in private. The organization thus entered a new arena. Heretofore it had defended speech deemed sexually inappropriate. Now it spoke up for acts in the privacy of the bedroom—including, a generation later, homosexuals' right to commit "sodomy." (Detail from 1953 article on nudists by Flickr user x-ray delta one)  | | Curses Posted: 08 Dec 2012 01:48 PM PST Robin Hemley ponders their persistence: Curses most often belong to the dispossessed, their last and ultimate defense. The best curses come from those who have a history of oppression. Think of the Roma in Europe, Haitians, Afro-Cubans, "Can curses pierce the clouds and enter heaven?" Queen Margaret asks in Richard the Third. A curse is a last resort, when earthly justice fails, an act of desperate rage that requires no surefire answer from God as to its efficacy. The curser curses first and takes credit later. One of Hemley's favorites comes from the Algiers section of New Orleans, recorded by Zora Neale Hurston: "That the South wind shall scorch their bodies and make them wither and shall not be tempered to them," it reads in part. "That the North wind shall freeze their blood and numb their muscles and that it shall not be tempered to them. That the West wind shall blow away their life's breath and will not leave their hair grow, and that their finger nails shall fall off and their bones shall crumble. That the East wind shall make their minds grow dark, their sight shall fail and their seed dry up so that they shall not multiply." This is only a fraction of the text of the curse, which ends despairingly, "O Man God, I ask you for all these things because they have dragged me in the dust and destroyed my good name; broken my heart and caused me to curse the day I was born. So be it."  | | Mental Health Break Posted: 08 Dec 2012 01:20 PM PST Linda Holmes reflects: PBS Digital Studios started its "Icons Remixed" series with a charming Fred Rogers video that was hugely successful this summer, and followed it with "Happy Little Clouds" from Bob Ross and "Keep On Cooking" with Julia Child. Now, they're back with "In Your Imagination," a remixed Reading Rainbow video that not only highlights great little phrases that are both funny and profound (I will never get tired of Levar Burton saying "I love maps," I don't think) but also reminds you just how long Burton has been working on this project — which went off the air in 2009 after 23 years and 155 episodes, but which has been relaunched, thus far as an app, by Burton himself.  | | In Hiding From Humility Posted: 08 Dec 2012 12:31 PM PST In a review that Gawker declared "The Best Hatchet Job of 2012," Zoë Heller eviscerates Salmon Rushdie's new memoir, Joseph Anton: A man living under threat of death for nine years is not to be blamed for occasionally characterizing his plight in grandiloquent terms. But one would hope that when recollecting his emotions in freedom and safety, he might bring some ironic detachment to bear on his own bombast. Hindsight, alas, has had no sobering effect on Rushdie's magisterial amour propre. An unembarrassed sense of what he is owed as an embattled, literary immortal-in-waiting pervades his book. He wants us to sympathize with the irritation he felt when the men in his protection team abbreviated his grand, Conradian-Chekhovian alias to "Joe." He wants us to appreciate his outrage at being given orders by jumped-up Scotland Yard officers. ("It was a shaming aspect of his life that policemen felt able to talk to him like this.") He wants us to understand the affront he felt when diplomatic efforts on his behalf were held up by negotiations to bring back British hostages from Iran: "Terry Waite's human rights had to be given precedence over his own." Above all, he wants us to share his aggrieved sense that he was a prophet without nearly enough honor in his own country.   | | Face Of The Day Posted: 08 Dec 2012 11:46 AM PST 
Danny Olda spotlights an unsettling series of portraits: Artist Maja Ruznic paints what she remembers. Ruznic acts in a literal way on the idea that remembering is a creative process. Painting from experience and filling in the unknown, her paintings feel like their plucked directly from the middle of a narrative. Speaking of the way past experience plays into her creative process Ruznic says: "Sometimes I am drawn to someone's hands, to one's rhythm of speech, to one's constant checking of their cell phone. This interest usually serves as an incentive to begin a painting."  | | Writers' Doubt Posted: 08 Dec 2012 11:14 AM PST After reading Vonnegut's Letters, Lydia Kiesling concludes that "Kurt Vonnegut's biggest obstacle to happiness was Kurt Vonnegut": It shouldn't surprise me, because I am pretty sure it's some kind of trope, but I am nonetheless surprised that a successful, vital, and by most accounts delightful man, who was always coming out with important books and fine statements, should have so often felt the need to convince other people of his worth — and particularly, that he would engage people from the three demographics least likely to budge from a position about one's merits or lack thereof: critics, philistines, and one's own children. More Dish on Vonnegut's letters here. Read a fascinating excerpt here. Meanwhile, in another letter to his wife, Kurt recommended An ABZ of Love, a 1963 Danish "dictionary of romance and sexual relationships." Maria Popova excerpts and explains: The book is presented with the disclaimer that rather than an ABC textbook for beginners, it is a "personal and subjective supplement to the many other outstanding scientific books on sexual enlightenment already in existence," setting out to describe "in lexical form a few aspects of sexual relationships seen from a slightly different standpoint." Indeed, the book was in many ways ahead of its time and of the era's mainstream, pushing hard against bigotry and advocating for racial, gender, and LGBT equality with equal parts earnestness and wry wit.  | | Moving Too Fast For Memory Posted: 08 Dec 2012 10:26 AM PST  Thomas Beller recalls the memoir of photojournalist Tim Page, who wrote using his own contact sheets as prompts: Having contact sheets for all sorts of episodes in your life seemed to me intriguing and desirable. So much of my own history is beclouded by time, but a few sharp rays, in the form of pictures, falling upon a given day would resuscitate whole contexts. And from this archipelago of moments, scenes, episodes, you could see the larger tectonic movements of your life forming and unforming. You would be reminded of who you are. Or at least of who you were. In 1996, this condition was the luxury of professional photographers. We are now all Tim Page. Or, we have contact sheets. At least, those of us who snap streams of images as though they were jelly beans being scooped into a hand. But a jelly bean in a hand makes sense as long as you eat it. What would you say about a person who collected jelly beans? Whose home was filled with glass jar after glass jar of them? One could ask such a person, What are you planning on doing with all those jelly beans? He concludes: It's an era of controlled deprivations and detoxification, of fasts and cleanses. Perhaps everyone should make a weekly ritual of twenty-four hours of undocumented life. Periods of time in which memory must do all the heavy lifting, or none of it, as it chooses, the consequences being what they may be. No phone, no eclipse glasses to mitigate the intensity of what lies before you. The only options are appetite, experience, memory, and later, if so inclined, writing it down. (From the series Nude by Shinichi Maruyama via Kyle VanHemert)  | | Spy Fiction For One Posted: 08 Dec 2012 09:47 AM PST Tina Rosenberg's D For Deception tells the true story of Dennis Wheatley, a British spy novelist hired to deceive Hitler. Rosenberg recounts part of the amazing tale to Scott Horton: Deception worked like this: First, Wheatley and his colleagues drew up a cover story ("story" is actually the term of art) for each operation — what they wanted Hitler to believe. Then they began to scatter crumbs for the Nazis to find. Wheatley created enormous charts detailing what lies to tell on what date, and through what channel. Diplomatic gossip? False reports by double agents? Physical means such as "losing" a rucksack or a dead body? Nothing too direct or it wouldn't be believable — the Germans had to gradually construct the story themselves. That is how to write a deception plan. It's also how to write a novel. The biggest difference was that instead of writing for millions of readers, Wheatley was writing for just one. And, as Rosenberg notes, "the deception plans he wrote to trick Hitler were in many ways echoes of his Gregory Sallust stories, which were all set against the backdrop of real events." While on staff, Wheatley worked with a young intelligence officer named Ian Fleming, the author of the James Bond series, which premiered in 1953.  | 
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Razer Carcharias Headset redesigned for Xbox 360 action
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:48 AM PST
| Razer Carcharias Headset redesigned for Xbox 360 action Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:45 AM PST  When it comes to playing video and computer games, you can say that having the right kind of equipment is essential to making the most out of your gaming enjoyment. Well, it goes without saying that you can always rely on your skill to “get the job done”, otherwise it is always prudent to make sure that you have the best kind of gaming equipment at your disposal. A pair of headphones are essential in the modern day, as they will be able to do their bit in letting you know just where your opponent is, as well as making sure you can hear what is going on in the rest of the map or to look out for audio alerts of something else that is happening in the vicinity. Well, Razer has just announced their spanking new and improved Razer Carcharias gaming headset for the Xbox 360.
Continuing from where the original Razer Charcharias for the PC left off, it will have the base of its predecessor’s ergonomic and aural standards, and this time around, it would be Xbox 360 owners who will be able to enjoy pro audio fidelity whenever they game on their console, not to mention enjoy doing so in extraordinary comfort. The full over-ear coverage ensures that, where the Razer Carcharias boasts of a fully adjustable, padded head rail, 1.25 in/3.18 cm on either side, allowing it to accommodate a vast array of head sizes, all courtesy of its soft, pliable, removable ear cups. Robert "RazerGuy" Krakoff, president of Razer USA, said, "Xbox gamers – get ready to experience extreme comfort with circumaural ear cups and interchangeable ear cushions with the new Carcharias. This fan favorite of ours is now redesigned for the Xbox 360 and gamers are going to love it." You can pick up the new Razer Carcharias Gaming Headset for Xbox 360 for $69.99 if you are living in the US, although folks living across the pond will have to fork out €69.99 for a pair. Press Release
[ Razer Carcharias Headset redesigned for Xbox 360 action copyright by Coolest Gadgets ] | | Fagor Spoutnik microwave Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:21 AM PST  Most of us would figure out that a microwave is, well, a microwave. After all, how many kinds of shapes and sizes can a humble microwave come in other than the standard issue rectangle? Apparently, more than that – if the designers want to get creative, that is. When talking about the Fagor Spoutnik microwave, we are looking at a space age design which will certainly send heads turning and tongues wagging whenever they take a peek into your kitchen. Why do we say so? Why, just take a look at the above image and you will know why for yourself!
Firstly, you can say that the most noticeable feature of the freestanding Spoutnik would be its transparent dome design, which paves the way for a 360-degree view of its interior. In this method, a user is able to observe the cooking process fully. Not only that, the dome that comes with it will also boast of a 28-cm (11-inch) turntable complete with grid lines, making it far easier to position the dish. The Fagor Spoutnik will illuminate itself whenever the cooking process begins, changing from red whenever the dish starts to cook, and it goes all the way to blue when the dish is ready for eating. Just in case colors are not your cup of tea, things get even easier as the Spoutnik will also be able to emit an audible signal once the cooking has finished. Boasting a lever which paves the way for a smooth lifting of the dome that opens up to a 65-degree angle, this is one design that guarantees full access to the interior. Those who spend plenty of time in the kitchen would welcome this, especially since it makes life easier whenever you want to clean up the crusty residue within which is more often than not the result from microwave cooking. You can pick up the Fagor Spoutnik for £179 a pop. Product Page
[ Fagor Spoutnik microwave copyright by Coolest Gadgets ] | You are subscribed to email updates from Coolest Gadgets
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'This Week' Transcript: Two Powerhouse Roundtables (ABCNEWS)
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:42 AM PST
| 'This Week' Transcript: Two Powerhouse Roundtables (ABCNEWS) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:35 AM PST | | Newark Mayor Booker considering runs for governor, Senate (Kevin Bogardus/The Hill) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:30 AM PST | | Sen. Corker open to higher tax rates as part of deficit-cutting deal (Julian Pecquet/The Hill) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:20 AM PST | | For the first time, same-sex couples wed in Wash. state (Elizabeth Weise/USA Today) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:15 AM PST | | The Link Between High Tax Rates and Corruption (Dan Mitchell/International Liberty) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:10 AM PST | | U.S. Senator Protests Climate Talks With Activist Who Believes The UN Is The Anti-Christ (Zack Beauchamp/ThinkProgress) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:45 AM PST | | GOP Rep. Cole: Take Obama's offer to gain tax cuts for '98 percent' (Kevin Bogardus/The Hill) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:45 AM PST | | Egyptian opposition remains defiant after Morsi annuls decree (Washington Post) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:35 AM PST | | Flanking Maneuvers - I've been meaning to bring up the following ... (Steven Hayward/Power Line) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 08:15 AM PST   Steven Hayward / Power Line:
Flanking Maneuvers — I've been meaning to bring up the following New York Times graphic since it was published last month, as it shows that Republicans are at their highest level of control of state governments in 60 years. Not bad for a party supposedly in deep trouble and on death's door.
| | Lagarde: 'Zero' U.S. growth without a deal (Adam Levy/CNN) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:45 AM PST Adam Levy / CNN:
Lagarde: ‘Zero’ U.S. growth without a deal — Washington (CNN) — The head of the International Monetary Fund warned that the American economy won't grow next year without a deal on the fiscal cliff. — Chistine Lagarde, the managing director of the IMF, spoke to CNN's Candy Crowley on … | | Clinton's Countless Choices Hinge on One: 2016 (Jodi Kantor/New York Times) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 07:35 AM PST  Jodi Kantor / New York Times:
Clinton's Countless Choices Hinge on One: 2016 — You're one of the most famous women on earth, and you're jobless for the first time in decades. You'd like to make money, but you don't want to rule out running for president. So what do you do all day? — Right now, aides and friends say … | | Ed Miliband to wage war on George Osborne over benefit cuts (Toby Helm/Guardian) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 06:30 AM PST | | Pennsylvania Considers Electoral College Reform (James Joyner/Outside the Beltway) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 05:50 AM PST  James Joyner / Outside the Beltway:
Pennsylvania Considers Electoral College Reform — MoJo's Nick Baumann has an alarmist post titled “GOP Resurrects Plan to Rig Electoral College.” The actual proposal, though, is inarguably more democratic than the status quo. … Changing the rules in September would have been blatantly unfair … | | White House could protect middle class from looming tax hikes (Kyle Balluck/The Hill) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 05:15 AM PST | | Volcanoes, Not Meteorite, Killed Dinosaurs, New Study Suggests (Tia Ghose/The Huffington Post) Posted: 09 Dec 2012 05:15 AM PST  Tia Ghose / The Huffington Post:
Volcanoes, Not Meteorite, Killed Dinosaurs, New Study Suggests … REACT: — FOLLOW: — Video, Dinosaur Death, Dinosaur Extinction, Dinosaurs Asteroid, Dinosaurs Deccan Traps, Dinosaurs India, Dinosaurs Lava, Dinosaurs Volcano, Volcanic Activity Dinosaurs, Volcanoes Killed Dinosaurs, What Killed Dinosaurs, Science News | You are subscribed to email updates from memeorandum
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Gift Guide: Kindle Paperwhite
Posted: 09 Dec 2012 09:40 AM PST
| Gift Guide: Kindle Paperwhite Posted: 09 Dec 2012 06:00 AM PST  Short Version The Kindle Paperwhite is Amazon’s latest ereader. After four generations of devices, Kindle users expected a slight incremental update from the previous Kindle Touch. But everything was improved in the Paperwhite, from the operating system to the display resolution. On top of that, Amazon added frontlighting. After two months of use, it remains the best reading device. Long Version Features: - Frontlit E Ink display (6″, 758×1024)
- Capacitive touch screen
- 3-8 weeks of battery life
- Optional 3G connectivity
- Everything is synced with your Amazon account
- Works with the Kindle Store
Info: - MSRP: $119 (Wi-Fi) or $179 (Wi-Fi + 3G)
- Remove screensaver ads for $20
- Manufacturer/retailer: Amazon
The Kindle Paperwhite is… … a major improvement over the Kindle Touch. With all the attention on the Kindle Fire, ereaders could have become an afterthought for Amazon. But with this device, the company knows that it is talking to its most devoted fans and to heavy readers. The LED frontlighting system was an expected addition, but it wasn’t the only improvement. First, Amazon chose a more traditional capacitative touch screen instead of an infrared-based screen. It is much more responsive than the slow Kindle Touch. Navigating the interface or even just turning a page is much quicker. The display finally received a resolution bump. For years, it was stuck at the original resolution of the first Kindle released in 2007, 600×800. Text looks better on the new display. Buy the Kindle Paperwhite for… … the avid book readers you know. The Paperwhite still shares the same DNA as previous Kindles. It has a great battery life, doesn’t cause eyestrain and is very portable. Previous Kindle owners that have been waiting for a major change in the Kindle line can get this one. Since the Kindle 2, all models came with the “pearl” E Ink display, including the current $69 non-touch Kindle. The Paperwhite finally changed that. Some will regret that Amazon still doesn’t provide a “next page” button on touch-based Kindles. It would certainly be a good addition as you have to move your thumb for every page turn instead of simply pressing a button. But you forget about that quickly. Because… … we are now living in an always-connected world. As a writer, following the constant stream of news and keeping up with your social network feeds can be tiresome. Many share the same feeling. Stepping away from that and reading a chapter or two, at your own pace, can easily become an important part of your day. If you want to keep wireless on all the time as I do, get the Wi-Fi version. It will be much better for battery life and it will sync last page read without even having to think about it. I get around 3 weeks of battery life. If you buy the Kindle for yourself, buy it with the ads as you can always remove them later in your Amazon account. The Kindle Paperwhite is the perfect gift for book lovers. Between smartphones and tablets, there is still room for dedicated reading devices. This year’s Kindle is certainly a good choice in this category.
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Google apps for business is one of the best service out there to get a custom domain Email address and earlier they used to offer free Google Apps account up to 10 users. I have already shared about how to use it earlier here and here. In fact, setting up your own domain Email address is one of those things which I always recommend to all the bloggers to add a professionalism to their blog. Unfortunately, Google [...]
