When I was a kid, there was a time when artificial red food dyes came under intense scrutiny because of their purported health risks. In 1976, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the dye FD&C Red #2 because scientific studies showed it had carcinogenic effects on female rats. In response to the public concern about red food coloring, food manufacturers discontinued some of their red products, even if they didn’t contain Red #2. I remember this clearly because it meant that certain types of candy (such as M&Ms) no longer included red-colored pieces, and that I avoided any red candies I came across. More recently, another type of red food dye, FD&C #40, has been linked to increased hyperactivity in children, although it remains on the list of FDA-approved color additives.
Because of the controversy surrounding these artificial dyes, some food manufacturers have turned to another source of red coloring. Known as cochineal, or in some forms, carmine, this dye, produced from a type of insect native to South America and Mexico called the cochineal, has a history that goes back hundreds of years.
A Prickly Subject The cochineal insect’s entire life cycle takes place on the pads of certain species of prickly pear cacti. Although sometimes mistakenly referred to as a beetle, it is in fact a scale insect, a type of bug that is usually quite small and that lives by attaching itself to a host plant and drawing sustenance from it. Like other scale insects, the cochineal produces a protective covering for itself, which appears as a white fluffy material on the pads of the cactus. The females are larger than the males, and live longer than the one week that is typical for males. Cochineal insects produce a chemical called carminic acid, which helps them repel predators, and is the source of the dark purple color used to make cochineal dye.
The traditional method of obtaining the dye is to remove the insects from the cactus pads by hand, and then to dry them in the sun before crushing them into a powder. It’s estimated that it takes about 70,000 cochineal insects to produce one pound (about 500 grams) of the cochineal powder. Carmine is a further refinement of the cochineal dye, obtained through a process of boiling the powder with certain other chemical compounds.
The Cochineal Craze The production of cochineal was well established in Mexico when the Spanish first arrived there in the 16th century. Impressed with the vividness of the dye, they soon began exporting cochineal to Spain and the rest of Europe in vast quantities. Cochineal became a prized commodity on the Continent (Spain refused to trade it with the English), and it created huge profits for Spain. For this reason, the cultivation of cochineal was aggressively restricted to Spanish-controlled Mexico, although this changed when a French naturalist managed to smuggle cochineal-infested cactus pads to Haiti in 1777.
From there, cochineal production eventually expanded to South America, India, Portugal, and the Canary Islands, where it became particularly successful. The long-time demand for cochineal started to ebb in the late 1800s as new synthetic dyes were developed, and soon it was no longer economically viable to continue its production.
Seeing Red Now, however, cochineal has emerged as a non-toxic alternative to the artificial dyes that supplanted it in the 1800s, and it is again cultivated in the Canary Islands, Peru, and Mexico. Not limited to food, cochineal and carmine are used to give alcoholic beverages, cosmetics, shampoo, and pharmaceuticals a bright red color, and are now regularly added to such food items as meat, poultry, jam, cheese, pastries, yogurt, and fruit juices.
Until recently, manufacturers in the U.S. were not required to list cochineal and carmine as specific ingredients in their products, but in response to public protest, the FDA began to look into the issue in January 2006. Certain groups of people, among them vegans, those who observe kosher or halal dietary restrictions, and people who have found they are allergic to cochineal, argue that they should be warned about food items containing crushed insects. I agree with them; although I have no concrete objection to consuming insect carcasses with my daily yogurt, I would appreciate having full knowledge about what I’m eating all the same. —Morgen Jahnke
The following is a guest post from Angie at Easy Living Mom.
If you don't have time to clean the house, you would be surprised at how tidy your space looks if you're able to clear the clutter. More importantly, you'll know where everything is, and your life will be simplified. I stick to the following eight rules in my house to keep clutter at bay.
1. Full Hands In, Full Hands Out
This is a trick that I learned in my days of waiting tables. It was a rule that no one could go in or out of the kitchen without full hands. I use the same rule in my house. We have areas of items that need to go downstairs, items that need to go upstairs, and items that need to go somewhere specific. No one can pass by the area without taking some of the items.
2. Spaces in House
To keep piles from accumulating around the house, it's easiest to have a designated "home" for all of your belongings. I keep the following spaces in my house: items that need to go to people (such as borrowed items), items that need to go somewhere (such as library books), sentimental projects and papers created by the children, items to be donated, and on-the-go items (such as child water bottles, outerwear, and strollers).
3. Minimalism
It's much easier to have fewer, high-quality items than a lot of "stuff" that you rarely use and may not even like. Imagine if you loved all of your clothes, enjoyed looking at all of your home decorations, and used every toy and tool that you own. Wouldn't that make life easier?! Try to minimize the amount of "stuff" that you have, and your clutter will automatically begin to disappear. If you're not sure where to start with paring down your possessions, this Org Junkie post will be very helpful for you: How to Make Weekly Household Purges Happen.
4. 60 Second Paper Rule
Paper is usually the fastest thing to accumulate in a home. Try to deal with all paper with 60 seconds. In this time, you should be able to do one of the following: throw it away, keep it in a "to do" folder, file it, or save it where it belongs. Here is my file system that eliminates all paper clutter in our house:
5. A Place for Everything
One of the biggest reasons people don't deal with clutter is that they don't know what to do with the items. If you spend a little time to create a system for your house, all of your paper and belongings will have a home. Use a filing system to keep important papers to which you'll need to refer in the future, a safe or separate file for important papers that you need to keep but do not need to reference, and the spaces in your home as described above. If an item has been sitting around for a while, ask yourself if it has a home, and if not, create one for it. Here is a "before" and "after" of my hair appliances when I realized that they needed a home:
6. Use Electronic Systems
Do as much as possible electronically. You can pay bills online, scan papers and save them in electronic folders, store music on your computer or mp3 player, save pictures on an external hard drive, and purchase books on an e-reader. All of this will save the amount of clutter that you accumulate, and allow for safekeeping.
7. Clear Counters Daily
If you get into the habit of clearing your counters every night, you will not run into a situation where you have so much clutter to clean that you don't know where to start. Also, you will more easily recognize where everything belongs, and will become very efficient at putting it all away.
8. Have an Abundance of Storage
Although I tout minimalism, storage devices are my major exception. I keep many storage bins and boxes of all sizes and frequently find the need to use them. This will help make sure that you always have a place to put something that is sitting around.
How do you avoid clutter in your home?
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My name is Angie, and I am honored to be guest posting on Org Junkie. I'm an avid reader of all types of helpful information, and known to friends and family as an "ideas person." I have enjoyed writing my entire life, and consider it my hobby. My other hobbies are water sports, and trying to squeeze in some exercise when I can. I am fortunate to have a wonderful husband, two spirited children, and a career that I love in academia. I started my website Easy Living Mom in May, 2012. On this site I like to write about any topics that simplify life for busy moms (is there any other kind?). Please check it out and you can find me on Facebook too. To send me a private message, please email me at an...@easylivingmom.com. Thanks for taking the time to read my post!
Data scientists are changing the way decisions happen by making better use of big data. Rather than finding ways around them, we need to make data science more accessible as a profession and need to provide easier tools for data scientists.
Kevin Kelly, in "Better Than Human,” tells us how the future is going to go down. As we increasingly automate existing occupations, we create new jobs in order to instruct and direct those robots. We build robots to take over the instructional positions, and create new jobs that set parameters and develop feedback loops. We build new systems that are flexible and dynamic and create more new jobs — such as data scientists — to analyze and build models for these new systems. It is obvious that in such a world, where static models cannot keep up, data scientists will be indispensable.
Given this future, the argument presented in a recent GigaOM post, "We don’t need more data scientists – just make big data easier to use," misses some key points. Its premise — that we need simple ways to deliver big data to business decision makers — is correct in that we need better tools, yet it misses an important distinction about who will use these tools. To complete author Scott Brave's analogy of web content systems, data scientists are the designers and the content creators of today, not the software engineers or the IT bottleneck.
Every organization will need someone wearing the data scientist hat just like very organization has people responsible for product, sales, marketing and support. Unfortunately, to date, the tools available to data scientists have been rudimentary. Data scientists have had to learn diverse and complex computer languages for working with data. That world is changing as we create simpler ways for data scientists to use big data.
Even recommendations are more than just recommendations
Retail recommendations are a basic example of why we need data scientists today. A retailer sees a return on investment by showing any suggestions to its customers, whether or not the recommendations are relevant. That has been true ever since magazines and gum first flanked the checkout line. Data scientists can do better, but not by creating more sophisticated mechanisms for recommending the same gum and magazines. Recommendations are a very crude use of data.
As veteran retailers know, the art of cross-selling and upselling is not as simple as showing a customer what other customers bought or a list of related items. Data scientists are now building models that anticipate our needs. They are finding new ways to delight us and define experiences that create natural guides toward ideal outcomes. Soon, we will not need recommendations; with well-defined models, the subsequent decisions and actions will be obvious and then they will be automated.
Consider a retail experience that goes beyond recommendations. The elders among us recall once having delightful interactions with a local shopkeeper. The teller was the owner and knew every item in the store and every customer in town. The owner was able to personalize in his head, matching each customer to precisely what they needed. We lost this experience when we started to optimize for price and diversity over experience.
Using data analysis, we no longer need to choose between efficiencies and experiences. Instead, we expand the definition of efficiency to include customer experience. In order to stay competitive, a retailer can no longer focus just on the efficiency of moving products to the right locations. Competitive retailers are building a deep understanding of how customers use their products. Efficiency means matching the right product to the right customer at the right time, even as both evolve.
And that’s the easy part
Retail is a tangible example because we are all consumers, but retail is not the most instructive example of why data science is becoming such an important field. The fields of health care, education and energy are all evolving at a rapid pace:
We are discovering new drugs and new techniques, and finding new ways to measure how to best care for patients.
The ubiquity of laptops and tablets, the emergence of online courses and the thirst for ongoing education are creating new opportunities to measure (not test) how students learn and refine how we teach.
Energy is on the cusp of a radical shift — from oil to gas, from fossil fuels to renewable energy, from manual heating, cooling, driving and flying to automated, fine-tuned and efficient use of the energy we produce.
We cannot begin to conceive of static models that will track and analyze these advances. We cannot replace data scientists with vertical defined, highly segmented solutions delivering slightly better analytics to existing decisions makers. Instead, we need to develop new creative thinkers and give them high-level tools to help them apply detailed data-driven models across a range of challenges.
Like storytellers, data scientists embody the heart and soul of an organization and find ways to make it better. Every organization is going to employ someone whose responsibility is to use data to drive automated decision systems. With time, the decisions these data scientists make will become obvious and can be automated. Today's decision makers get to spend time on more important jobs we haven't even thought of yet.
We need data scientists, and we need hundreds of thousands of them. They will do their magic, create new ways of experiencing life, products and services and, as Kevin Kelly says, "dream up new work that matters."
Omer joined WibiData in 2012 having worked for three years at Cloudera, bringing Hadoop to the enterprise market. He was previously at Vertica (now HP) where he led the Field Engineering team. Omer holds a B.Sc. in Computer Engineering from Tufts University and was a visiting scholar at Oxford University reading in Computation and Engineering, focusing on architectures for large scale distributed systems.
If you are reading this and thinking 'that guy's just an old-fuddy-duddy' (which, to be fair, no young person today would ever actually say), and you are also patting yourself on the back because YOU are a great multitasker, go take a break from this piece, google 'multitasking myths' (or just read this) and then come on back. Bummer, eh?
And it's not just about getting stuff done, as that too is just massively overrated. It's about a lack of peace and calmness. When do we take time anymore just to do nothing. Even standing in line for a coffee (which is, of course a take out coffee, since there's no time to just sit in a cafe and enjoy a hot cup of coffee in a real cup) everyone's on their phones, doing stuff. The human brain actually needs time, every day, just to do nothing and process all of the events that are transpiring (great article here on 'doing nothing').
I couldn’t agree with him more — real time has its benefits and it is great, but there is a time, when everything doesn’t need to be instantaneous. I have been trying to do the same: the email, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram apps have moved off the front screen to the second screen of my iPhone. But that’s still a bandaid. As Nova Spivack once said in a conversation:
“With the real-time web, the amount of information we have to handle is changing the Now,' he said. 'Now is becoming a lot denser. There's a lot more information in per unit of Now. The Now is getting shorter. The horizon is getting narrower. Now has gone from days to hours to seconds.'”
Some might say — turn off the notifications and exercise some self control. I have tried that, but the behavior of constantly reaching for my iPhone has become too ingrained in my mind. You take out your phone to take a photo or send a text message and next thing you are doing is checking emails, liking photos on Instagram, using Foursquare and reading the latest tweets.
There are some apps which give some control over real-time: Tweetbot for instance has a sleep option, which I religiously use. I have removed the Facebook app and use their website when I need to, so it has made the process a little bit slower than before. My colleague Mathew Ingram brought up the real human challenges of the realtime in a brilliant post over two years ago.
As a result, our lives are becoming more "real-time," whether we like it or not. Just as Google and Microsoft's Bing are upgrading their search indexes to make them more real timeby capturing things as they occur, instead of hours or even days later, we are being forced to upgrade our internal processes to do the same thing. But doing that isn't quite as simple as tinkering with a search algorithm — we have to find ways of managing the real-time demands placed on us while still maintaining something approaching a healthy personal life, something Stacey wrote about a little while ago. How do we handle the demands of our our spouses, our children, our relatives and friends? How do we maintain our health when we are always on, always available, in real time?
If apps like SnapChat and Highlight are any indication, then the realtime nature of the Internet isn’t going away and in fact it is going to become more pervasive. What would be really cool is an individual “off switch” for these real time apps. In one simple toggle of a virtual button, email is off — like my stereo is when I power it down. A flick of the switch turns off Twitter. You get the idea. Why? Because I do like to use these real-time apps during parts of the day, especially when I am working. However, I don’t want to deal with them at night or say when I am hanging out with friends or when at dinner.
I don’t know about others, but I would welcome that “off switch.” Turn off tweets till the dinner is done and switch it on when ready to jump into the real-time information stream. I think taking that break is becoming more and more essential.
It was a banner year for mobile in 2012. Smartphone use eclipsed that of feature phones in the U.S., and time spent on mobile devices jumped 40 percent. And yet our expectations for mobile are still an order of magnitude too small. The truth is, many of us remain blind to the possibilities of the devices we carry in our pockets because we continue to view the future of mobile in the context of the web.
Mobile is not an iterative step for the web, but a complete revolution. So instead of asking ourselves how we can adapt web-based stores to our smartphones, we should be asking how we can use unlimited access to information to help us when we are in actual stores. The full potential of the mobile revolution won’t be realized until we build the tools that make every moment of our lives better.
The internet squeezed onto mobile devices
It’s understandable that we use the web as the baseline for measuring mobile, especially since many of our most widely used apps and services originated online – email, text, maps, Twitter, Facebook, Amazon and so on. The comparison has worked until now because we’ve spent our first years with smartphones reformatting the desktop experience of the web to fit into our pockets.
Today the web itself is the product of decades of adapting the real world onto the connected desktop. First we ported over letters (email) and posters (websites). Then we moved what we could of traditional businesses online to the large screen perched on our desks: Bookstores and record stores became (literally) Amazon.com and iTunes; travel agents became Kayak.com and Yelp.com.
Since smartphones have brought computing power and an internet connection to our pockets, naturally we want those tools everywhere we go. But porting these advancements to our phones is only a pre-game to the real mobile revolution: when connectivity reshapes our minute-by-minute lives.
The offline opportunity
Opportunity is everywhere: The offline world is filled with friction, inefficiency, incomplete information, tedium and excess capacity. We feel it all the time. Waiting for elevators. Waiting for delivery drivers. Going across town only to find an empty bar. Forgetting the name of the person you just met.
These problems are so frequent and inherently human we are often blind to them. But for almost every problem we encounter, relief will be found in the same place: The device we carry with us. We don’t need to log in. Sensors minimize the information input. Smart assistants and voice recognition allow hand’s-free use and allow the least technically capable among us to use their deepest, richest features.
Last year saw the first mass implementations of phones making what used to be our offline lives better with companies like Uber and HotelTonight, but 2013 will be the year in which we start looking to our devices to scratch our every itch – for companionship, entertainment and much more.
Why now?
A number of these ideas have been around for a long time, but 2013 will be our first chance to build many of these new companies.
When Amazon.com started in 1994, less than 10 percent of U.S. adults were online. But even though that small segment of the population was spread around the country, everyone used the product in the same way whether the user was in Dubuque, Detroit or Dallas. Everyone hit the same website, bought the same things and was plugged into the same distribution network. In its infancy, Amazon only needed a tiny fraction of the country to use its services.
The comparison today with Uber, the real-time limo service, almost makes itself. Uber instantly pairs available drivers and cars with demand for rides. Crucially, Uber needs a critical mass of both supply and demand on its platform in the same geographical area, down to the same neighborhoods and streets, and needs to be able to update and match them in real time based on their current locations – a task nearly impossible to accomplish at scale on desktops or laptops. There are several forces beyond raw adoption numbers though that enable Uber’s success:
Smartphones free us from our desks. When we have problems, questions or desires, we don’t need to return to our homes or offices to satiate them; we can address them on the spot.
Touchscreens, Android and iOS are amazingly simple to use. Not only do people have the technology readily available to them, but even the least technically savvy can (and do) use it.
Apps are simple, elegant problem solvers. Small, beautiful, and easy-to-use, the best apps are easily understood in seconds.
This is the year these trends will reach critical mass in almost every major market in the US. The result will be that more great companies will be started, gain meaningful traction and drive investment. More startups will get more tries at solving problems, and a virtuous cycle will accelerate the trends.
Bringing the offline world online poses unique hurdles and rewards
While some problems are easy to identify they may be difficult to solve. Unlike many of the first internet companies, the real world has legacy industries with entrenched lobbies, distribution providers or regulations. Many require real infrastructure that needs to be acquired, integrated with or leased. In the offline world, scale is often much harder than simply spinning up additional servers.
On the other hand, many of these new companies will become natural monopolies – difficult to overthrow once they achieve scale, lock up resources within their systems and start generating significant cash. Many are adaptations or improvements of current businesses, but given the inability of incumbents to design, develop and deploy revolutionary software, we can expect many to be upset by startups.
Looking to the future
Unlike any technology we have ever seen, mobile has the opportunity to improve our minute-by-minute lives, wherever we are. While there are unique perils to the offline world, the significant rewards to those that build these new companies more than offset the risk.
Companies like Uber and HotelTonight are just the tip of the iceberg. Square isn’t just revolutionizing payments, but the experience of paying for things in real life. A company like Highlight will eventually be a real-time, in-person LinkedIn that gives us context, history and information for all of our encounters.
Mobile isn’t a portal to the internet we know today, but a gateway to build world-changing companies that will upend entrenched incumbents and exponentially recast even the most bullish of mobile expectations.
Edward Aten is a designer and entrepreneur. He is the founder and CEO of CopThis and previously founded Swift.fm. Follow him on Twitter at @aten.
Bacteria that live almost a mile under the surface of the ocean, where light is scare, have adapted biological ways to harness tiny amounts of light very efficiently, and in some cases can use photosynthesis to convert 100 percent of the light they find into electricity. In contrast a typical solar panel commonly converts around 15 percent of sunlight into electricity.
Now researchers at the University of Cambridge are studying the light-harvesting proteins of the deep sea Green Sulfur Bacteria to see if they can provide breakthroughs for solar energy and other electricity devices. The research is in an area called quantum biology, and the scientists say it falls outside of 'classical' physics, and into quantum physics.
Organisms that do photosynthesis use a network of pigments held in place by protein structures, or what scientists call pigment-protein complexes, where electrons are harvested. In many organisms as the electrons move through these systems they lose energy. But in the Green Sulfur Bacteria they are able to move electrons through their photosynthesis system to the point of harvest without losing that energy on the way.
Raising the efficiency of solar cells (which make up solar panels) is very important work for solar companies. The higher the efficiency of the cells, the more electricity can be created by the panel and the fewer cells and panels needed.
Solar companies have been working diligently on these innovations in recent years, as the basic low efficiency solar panels become more and more commoditized. For example, Alta Devices, makes cells that can convert a whopping 28.8 percent of sunlight into electricity. But those types of cells are far more expensive than the standard cells, and many are still in the research and development phase.
If other cloud providers — the Rackspaces, Hewlett-Packard’s, Joyents, Softlayers, Terremarks and GoGrids of the world — don’t take advantage of Amazon Web Services data center snafus over the past year, they should have their heads examined. What competitor would not tactfully point out to corporate prospects that AWS US-East has been ground zero for at least three major sets of outages over the past 12 months?
For all the talk of Amazon’s dominance in public cloud, we’re still very early on in this game. Outside of web startups and SaaS companies, many businesses have barely dipped their toe in the cloud to date. That means there is big opportunity for those vendors that can provide an enterprise-class cloud. At the very least, Amazon’s miscues has definitely prompted them to think of using multiple clouds and/or evaluate private vs. public cloud where they feel they have more control. So the other cloud players have to play up their strengths either as a replacement or an adjunct to AWS.
Differentiate your cloud from the rest
Not surprisingly, Rackspace is turning up the volume on its “fanatical support” pledge to woo business users who really really want a phone number to call and a hand to hold during cloud deployment — and as needed thereafter. Many customers also like that Rackspace lets them mix workloads between private and public clouds. That private-public-cloud mix is one advantage HP, Softlayer, Joyent and others can offer over AWS. To be fair, Amazon has not stood still here. It’s pushing its own Virtual Private Cloud, that lets users cordon off a chunk of AWS infrastructure for their own use. It has also struck an alliance with Eucalyptus to ease hybrid cloud deployments between AWS and Eucalyptus-based clouds.
Bestfit Mobile has moved some workloads from Amazon to Rackspace because it hit scaling problems with Amazon’s load balancing, said Ray Williamson, VP of software for Bestfit. Rolling out a mobile app for a big retail customer, Bestfit initially launched all the data on Amazon but ran into scaling issues with its load balancer. “Amazon uses a software load balancer — cloud is great for many things but sometimes you need real hardware.” Williamson said.
Sometimes the best cloud is a mixed cloud
Bestfit ended up deploying a mixture of on-premises hardware load balancers and cloud-based infrastructure linked by a fast Rackspace Connect connection without huge additional cost.
But support was also a huge differentiator. “With Amazon it’s hard to get an engineer on the phone. With Rackspace, we pay an extra $400 a month and we get help. We call, they call back and the Rackspace guys can log in and fix the problem if needed. AWS cannot log into your machine by policy,” he said.
San Francisco-based Joyent has some high-profile customers like LinkedIn but remains something of a stealth player — albeit one with a solid reputation if you drill down. It, like Softlayer, has made noises in the past about taking on Amazon, but has not been blatant in doing so. Still, Hoffman’s not shy about saying that AWS US-East outages are not flukes. Instead, he said they result from underlying architectural issues with how its control plane is set up that make some services, notably Elastic Load Balancer, vulnerable, in his view.
“For some of these services one failure leads to another to another and the whole thing has to be rebooted to fix. Theser are not ‘oh gosh, oh golly gee, something happened’ but things that will keep on happening and it’s why they keep happening, “Hoffman said.
Joyent CTO Jason Hoffman said the company sees lots of prospects that are AWS users. “Do we sit down and go after [AWS] in our materials? No. But we do talk about our availability from an uptime perspective and in aggregate we do less than 10 seconds of downtime per year. So from an availability standpoint we do very well and our conversations with customers touch on that.”
Joyent, Softlayer, Neogrid, OpSource and NephoCloud are what David Linthicum, founder of Blue Mountain Labs and a GigaOM Pro analyst characterizes as ”found clouds.”
“They are typically not on the A list, but are found through evaluation and analysis. I put them on the radar for my clients, but I always get a ‘who?’”
Beware of AWS bashing
It’s probably smart not to be too blatantly opportunistic in bashing Amazon. “Most cloud providers suffer outages from time-to-time, AWS is just more scrutinized than the rest since they are the leader,” Linthicum cautioned. Any cloud company could blast AWS this week and have an outage tomorrow. “However, they certainly can provide up-time statistics that compare their services with those of AWS, and other players. That’s both fair, and productive.”
I vividly remember my first International Consumer Electronics Show. It was 2006 and I was working with the talented Engadget team. I had no idea what to expect simply because one can’t imagine a million square feet of electronics in the Las Vegas Convention Center. Oh, and don’t forget the private meeting spaces at practically every hotel up and down the Vegas Strip. I’ve run three marathons and I swear those 26.2 mile jaunts were easier than the annual geek pilgrimage known as CES.
What I remember most, however, is how much I toted around with me during those early shows. This is my eighth consecutive journey to the show and I’m taking far less this year. That’s good for my back and my feet, of course, but the more interesting point is that we can do so much more with fewer, more capable mobile devices.
Some of my 2006 memories include trying to find electric outlets at every possible venue, for example. Why? Because my Toshiba M205 TabletPC was only good for two or three hours on a charge. Today we have tablets that run for 10 or more hours; double if you add a keyboard accessory with integrated second battery.
Smartphones of the day were clunky beasts, although my XV6700 with Windows Phone and QWERTY keyboard served me well enough the first iteration of EVDO for mobile broadband. Fallback was the obscenely slow 1xRTT that was barely good enough for email. And the “huge” 2.8-inch screen boasted a 320 x 240 resolution that it outshined by even the cheapest feature phones of today!
I remember capturing video back then with a heavy camcorder that might get an hour of recording time on a single charge. Fast forward a few years and I switched to a very compact high-definition camera, then to a Flip camera and this year, I left the video camera at home. There’s just no need for it when you consider most smartphones today double as an HD video camera and weigh even less.
I could go on and on, but you get the picture. (See what I did there?) As a result of our more connected, smaller, lighter and yet more powerful mobile devices, I’m taking less than ever to CES. Everything fits in a small backpack that’s meant to hold a 13-inch computer; and when I say everything, I mean everything: Charging cords and small accessories too. Here’s a rundown of my gear bag this year:
Computer: 13-inch MacBook Air (late 2010 model) This skinny device still runs for at least 6 hours on a single charge, which is very important since outlets can be scarce or fought over at CES. I’ve used this machine for blogging since I bought it, although for the past six months, it has generally collected dust as I moved my work effort to a Samsung Chromebook. I really wanted to take the Chromebook. Why take the Air then? One key reason: Video editing is still far easier and faster on the Air than via a web-based method on the Chromebook. And connectivity — a near-necessity for Chromebooks — is highly variable during CES.
Communications: Apple iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2. I could certainly get away with one handset, but I like to have a backup because the airwaves get jammed up good when 150,000 CES attendees are vying for the same phone service. I have an AT&T SIM in the iPhone and a T-Mobile-compatible SIM (through Straight Talk) in the Note 2. Both can act as hotspots if needed. I’ll use these for tweeting from the show, sharing pictures, managing my schedule, and trying to check email as time allows.
Video:Apple iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy Note 2. I don’t see the need to add the extra weight and the battery anxiety of a handheld video camera these days. Will I miss the optical zoom of my dedicated shooter? Maybe, but most video I share from CES is with close-up looks at gadgets. Hopefully, this choice to leave behind the video camera isn’t a mistake.
Still images:Canon S95 point-and-shoot. I considered leaving this behind as well since both phones are more than capable of capturing usable images. The S95 rivals the size and weight a playing card deck, however, and it provides the optical zoom that my phones don’t have. This can be handy for the massive press events where a “good seat” is still 30 meters or more from the stage. The camera was one of my favorite gadgets of 2010 and is still a super performer.
Accessories. Again, I’m taking the less is more approach. I have one small 3,000 portable battery with a USB output, so it can recharge either of my handsets. I have two USB cables: One for the Note 2 and one for the iPhone. A spare battery for the Canon and the required charger are with me. And, of course, the power cord for my MacBook Air.
That’s it. Everything fits in the old Booq bag I bought in 2005 for my Toshiba TabletPC. Compared to my first few CES events, this amount of gear is probably one-third of what I used to take in terms of weight and bulk. It’s all because of how far the mobile industry has advanced in terms of hardware, software and cloud services. Everything is lighter, runs longer, has faster connectivity and has more capabilities than ever before.
As I get older, I doubt I’ll make it through eight more CES events. It will, however, be interesting to watch the devices and services evolve during that time. Who knows: Maybe by CES 2021, the show will come to me via virtual reality instead of me trekking across the country and up and down the Vegas Strip!
Last year I wrote an article on the “Consumerization of Energy” in which I compared a growing trend towards distributed energy to the “Consumerization of IT.” I predicted that:
"Distributed energy technologies . . . will soon be able to provide electricity at costs and reliability levels that are competitive with grid power. For the first time in 100 years these technologies will enable consumers to bypass their local electric utility company."
This article examines what has and hasn't changed in the intervening year.
Low natural gas prices
Let’s start with one of the biggest factors driving this trend — one that hasn’t changed — which is the availability of abundant cheap natural gas in the U.S. Natural gas spot prices generally stayed below $3.50/mmBtu in 2012, reaching a low of $1.95/mmBtu in April, and prices are expected to remain low for the foreseeable future according to EIA forecasts.
Shale gas continues to revolutionize the U.S. energy industry, driving the shift from coal to natural gas in traditional power generation, spurring interest in liquid natural gas exports, reviving plans for natural gas vehicles and making it more difficult for renewable energy to compete with fossil fuels without subsidies. Distributed generation technologies like fuel cells and turbines that use natural gas as a fuel will continue to benefit from low fuel prices, making these resources increasingly attractive from an energy cost perspective.
Severe weather & the grid
The first and most important actual change in 2012 was the impact of severe weather events on grid reliability — specifically the impact from Hurricane Sandy, which devastated large portions of New York and New Jersey. It’s fair to say that Sandy was the watershed event that is forcing utilities, governments and energy consumers to rethink the concept of reliability in an era of increasingly destructive and more frequent severe weather events.
Many articles and studies have pointed out that the grid is not adequately designed, built and operated to withstand these types of storms. However, measures to harden the grid by burying or relocating transmission and distribution infrastructure are very costly and may not resolve the issue. Indeed, a recent New York Times article pointed out that ConEdison “expects to spend as much as $450 million to repair damages to its electric grid in and around New York City.”
Typical residential bills “would have to rise by almost 3 percent for three years to cover those expenses alone. Putting all of its electric lines underground would cost around $40 billion, the company estimates. To recover those costs, electric rates would probably have to triple for a decade or more.”
However, a much greater use of distributed energy resources integrated as part of smart buildings and community micro-grids could be a much better solution to reliability in the face of severe weather events. For example, New York University’s recently commissioned combined heat and power (CHP) plant remained operational during Hurricane Sandy while the surrounding areas of lower Manhattan lost power. NYU’s CHP plant uses natural gas and steam turbines to provide electricity to 22 buildings and heat to 37.
Future with fuel cells
Another change worth noting has been the increasing popularity of fuel cells. Like NYU’s CHP plant, at least two major fuel cell installations remained operational during Hurricane Sandy. Delmarva Power had one such installation and stated that its “Bloom Energy Servers in New Castle, Delaware rode through Hurricane Sandy without incident and continued to feed power to the regional power grid despite all the challenges the storm presented.”
The other installation was a UTC Power PureCell system installed at 1211 Avenue of the Americas that powers part of News Corp. headquarters. It is notable that UTC Power is being acquired by another fuel cell company, ClearEdge Power, creating a fuel cell solution provider capable of serving a range of residential, small business and large enterprise customers.
Also notable is the traction that Bloom Energy has been gaining, particularly with mission critical facilities like data centers. In 2012 Bloom Energy signed a landmark deal with eBay wherein the fuels cells will be the primary energy source for its new data center in Utah. Bloom also announced aditional deals with AT&T, making it Bloom’s largest non-utility customer.
My (unofficial) prediction is that the combination of low natural gas prices, severe weather events and advances in fuel cell and CHP technologies will be the primary drivers going forward for the consumerization of energy.
IDC Energy Insights provides research-based advisory and consulting services focused on market and technology developments in the energy and utility industries. IDC Energy Insights serves a diverse global client base, including electric, gas and water utilities, IT vendors, independent power producers, retail energy providers, oil and gas companies, equipment manufacturers, government agencies, financial institutions, and professional services firms. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company.
The new year brings mixed feelings for many, but one company that will definitely be glad to see the back of 2012 is Sulake, the Finnish owner of youth-centered virtual world Habbo Hotel.
LaFontaine had only been in the job for a year or so, but in a blog post, LaFontaine bade a kind farewell to the community, referring obliquely to the abuse scandal and outlining the site’s biggest problem: low engagement.
The voice of the community is the strength of the community. Proof of this was clear in the summer. The community weathered a tremendous storm together, and Habbos stood strong. The way you reacted with one strong voice was inspiring. You will be left in good hands. Our new Community Team will lead Staff in the Hotel to serve you. Engagement will increase, and the spirit of Old Habbo will rise again.
Around half of Habbo’s active user base appears to have departed in the last year, causing a dramatic reaction inside the business. In the fall, Habbo decided to reposition itself as a platform for games, laying off 60 staff in the process. Changes were long overdue, but in the wake of the scandal they felt like panic. However, at least under LaFontaine it had some strategic experience in the field — he had come to Habbo from running ops and distribution at Playdom, the online game developer bought by Disney for $763 million in 2010.
LaFontaine’s post is being taken, for the time being, by Markku Ignatius (he’s the one on the right) — a long-time employee who was previously the company’s head of legal affairs and corporate communications. He will have had a busy 12 months, no doubt, but the jury is out on whether his experience will help Habbo navigate its transition to the tricky world of games.
But turning to Ignatius does not mean that the site’s owners are simply turning to old Habbo hands for guidance. He’s only acting CEO, and if it were simply that Sulake wanted to turn the clock back it would not have also lost CTO Markus Halttunen, an eight-year veteran, also appears to have departed, along with other staff who go back more than a decade. These changes are perhaps not a surprise, as the company was cutting a huge percentage of jobs, but it does show that the axe is falling on new staff and old.
The thing is, a shakeup may be the only way to try and save this situation — because all of Habbo’s problems are of its own making. Its woeful moderation allowed sexual predators to roam free around a site intended for kids and teens, and the product failed to change as the online world altered radically over the past few years. It may look at 2012 as its annus horribilis, but right now the question must be whether 2013 can really be any better.
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It's hard to believe I have been blogging for more than 7 years. Michael Wozniak, my hallmate during my freshman year at Georgia Tech, had gotten me into Gentoo Linux the year prior and told he was playing with WordPress 1.2. Compared to the MediaWiki site I was running at the time that piqued my curiosity and I began blogging on WordPress on my G4 Mac Mini that summer. I immediately fell in love with it and began learning CSS and PHP to tweak the theme1.
Eventually I found my thing – writing technical guides, product reviews and tech editorials. I still remember the feeling when I noticed one of my articles got picked up by Lifehacker. Then digg. Then 5 other sites. 20,000 uniques in 4 hours. I wrote a follow up to that article. Same thing. And another follow up. I received enough traffic that month in 2005 to kill the hard drive in my dorm-hosted Mac.
Unfortunately, I haven't blogged as much in recent past; my waking hours spent worrying about startup issues than crafting new content. Things I would have blogged about in the past are now published as tweets.
When the time arises, I thoroughly enjoy writing long-form articles and with that in mind I wanted to design a better experience for consuming them.
Note: This article got rather long (15,000 words), so I split it up into a few posts. This one is about design. The next part(s) covering development in great detail will be posted this week.
Mobile
My last redesign in 2010 was not built with mobile in mind. It was more of a lets-get-this-new-Jekyll-thing-working project than a planned website overhaul. Visiting on an iPhone meant the typical double-tap-to-zoom fiasco.
Having seen my traffic breakdown go from 3% iPhone and 2% iPad in 2011 to 7% iPhone and 4% iPad in 2012 I knew it was time to focus on the mobile experience throw mobile visitors a proverbial bone. iPad visitors in particular spent more time on site than desktop or iPhone visitors. Approximately 132,000 people read this site on a mobile device in 2012. Damn.
The new responsive & retina-friendly PaulStamatiou.com.
These numbers are only going to grow. It helps that proliferation of LTE networks and devices means the fastest Internet connection people have will likely be on their smartphone, not their home connection. That's crazy.
Picture Perfect
Many of my posts and reviews are filled with my own photos. My blog actually got me into photography. I first purchased a DSLR to take better pictures for articles and product reviews. In the last 3 years I have fallen in love photography. But most of my shots were getting published on Instagram. It made me feel a bit bad that I don't often share many of my photos on my blog.
Some of my Instagrams
I was in that exact mindset when I was flying back from New York after hanging out with the Rap Genius guys. They don't have an office, instead they have a few baller (to use their vernacular) penthouses in Brooklyn. I took this panorama on their deck with my iPhone which I then post-processed with Snapseed.
Click see my new photo page
I liked this photo so much that I was vexed I couldn't share it with my Instagram followers. I began pondering about a clean way of sharing it on my blog.
The Retina Revolution
If I was going to touch my site, it would need to be Retina friendly. I'll be referring to Retina as the device agnostic term HiDPI from here on out. What does that mean? Every icon, background or image used should look crisp on HiDPI displays. The most pressing area for that is on mobile devices as there aren't yet that many HiDPI desktops and laptops out yet. As much as people love the Retina MacBook Pros, that's not even a single percentage of anyone's web traffic yet.
Don't expect to have a HiDPI 27-inch display just yet. The first 4K (3,840 x 2,160) big displays are shipping and they are expensive.. around $5,500. But in 2-3 years? That'll be another story entirely; HiDPI displays will be standard on most high-end desktops2.
If responsive web design was the fad of the web design/development community for the last few years, the next one is going to be HiDPI support. With HTTP 2.0 (with SPDY forming the starting point) slated to drop in 20143 it will be perfect timing to combat the larger filesizes needed for HiDPI image assets. As I'll discuss in the second part of this post, there are some development challenges associated with this.
Design
Late night Photoshopping & trance. Very similar to The Coding Zone.
I wanted to completely rethink my site, not just a add new coat of candy paint. I planned to rewrite copy on all static pages, reorganize content as necessary and generally simplify things. This would also give me a good excuse to start using more semantic HTML5 tags.
My design process was a little different from how I mentioned it in my ridiculously popular Crash Course: Design for Startups. I usually start with some inspiration-wrangling, a few ideas about direction and lots of sketching before any Photoshop or code. I couldn't exactly whip out a big sketch pad in lovely last-minute seat 37B so I worked in Photoshop for most of my 6 hour flight back to SF (until they started playing How I Met Your Mother).
If you need to use something like Readability or Safari Reader to read my articles, I've failed as a designer.
I began thinking single column. The content should be the star of the show. No sidebars or extraneous post metadata that gets in the way of reading. If you need to use something like Readability or Safari Reader to read my articles, I've failed as a designer. And lets not forget the impetus behind this rethinking; I wanted to be able to publish large photos – within posts that extend beyond the narrow copy and also on individual photo pages. Bandwidth and latency be damned, I want to show dozens of 1000px+ wide photos at a time.
Planning Mobile First RWD
The premise behind Mobile First Responsive Web Design4 is that you should trim your site to only the essentials, establish the priority or question the necessity of all elements and focus on mobile before adding complexity for larger/desktop versions of the site. This is going to sound ridicu-cheesy, but this is a way of thinking and it applies to every aspect of your site planning. Even down to writing mobile first CSS to keep things lightweight and simple and conditionally load extra stylesheets and content for larger devices (that are also likely to have faster connections) as necessary.
Categorizing your site into pieces and setting priority before even pondering aesthetics stems from Dan Brown's page description diagrams back in the early 2000s.
The page description diagram, by demonstrating priorities and providing a context for the content and functionality, gives visual designers the information they need to create an effective layout.
It's a great little exercise when embarking on a redesign. Given that this site only has a few pages and then blog posts, it wasn't really needed. For the sake of teaching, I'll elaborate a bit. You generally start with three columns from high to low priority page elements. You list out each element and you can optionally provide a description of it and a simple wireframe of that element.
High
Medium
Low
Archives/Posts
RSS/Subscribe
Contact
Photos
"Bits" (asides) posts
Search
About
Comments
"Stuff I Use" page
@Stammy
FB/Twitter share
Post metadata, date
Some of this organization was by personal preference and some was metrics-driven. Take the post date for example. I have some articles dating back 7 years and I don't want to advertise that the content may be outdated5, so I place less importance on that and display the publish date after the post. For the most part my articles are evergreen and more of my content is becoming less product reviews and more editorial.
I've also found that time on site increases when users don't see the post date immediately. The majority of my visitors come from Google SERPs and they'll leave without reading if the first thing they see is that the content is more than a year or two old. Increasing time on site also tends to decrease bounce rate for these Googlers. After reading the post they are likely to open up a few other articles I link to or just browse around for another pageview. It's important that I do whatever I can to capture that first time visitor.
If someone won't share a post because I don't have a Twitter button in 10 places on the page, then I'm writing pretty crappy content.
An example of priority based on personal preference is my decision to place low importance on Facebook and Twitter sharing functionality. I like to believe that if the content is good enough, people will share it on their own accord. I also didn't want to load Facebook and Twitter javascript. This gives me a mental test before publishing.. is this content really good enough to publish?
I could simplified things more by merging my "bits" (smaller posts) into the main posts section. Bits had their own RSS feed and index page. It was another navigation element; another forced decision upon visitors to visit another page. Bits now appear styled differently inline with the rest of the posts.
But I messed up. When I first did this page description diagram I prioritized search functionality as high. My first header designs as I'll show below had a huge search bar next to the main navigation as if it was one of the most important elements on the site. I looked into my Google CSE analytics ‐ search was rarely used; less than 10 queries a day on average. Only 8,500 on-site searches in the last 3 years. I since relegated search to low priority on this diagram.
Where to begin with visual design?
After that basic IA and planning was out of the way, I had a good idea of what to include in the header. I was going to distill it down to the essentials. There would be such little difference between the mobile version and larger responsive versions that I wouldn't really need to plan the responsive designs. The focus is on the content at all times, not just on mobile, so there's no need for me to do any content choreography and adjust layouts between responsive designs. No sidebars to hide or move, et cetera.
Some designers start with a blank slate of copy and begin with typography and layout, while others begin with the site header and navigation. I began with the header. I tend to start my designs on an extreme with the intention of toning it down later as necessary. As a tiny example of that, I made the avatar and header text much larger than I was comfortable with. If you only ever design within your comfort zone, you won't come across unexpected ideas that you may end up loving. That's how the folks at Lamborghini design 2 too — starting with the most absurd and extreme lines that come to mind.
I've ridden in a Ferrari 458 and thought that was insane. The Aventador hits 60 quicker, in just 2.8s.
I previously had a terse Twitter-like bio on the top of my homepage and decided to further reduce that into a subtitle. As for having my avatar there, I wanted to put a face to the content, much like people have become accustomed to seeing a face next to every tweet.
Below you can see some early versions of the header that I was left with by the time the flight was ready to land. The one on the left was the first stab. It felt like there were too many menu items and the search just didn't line up. The middle version was my attempt to distill navigation into the most important elements, posts and photos. I wasn't happy with the visual hierarchy there either and it made search look too important. In the third iteration I began playing with icons to minimize space used by navigation. I was trying to line it up under the avatar, but I had too many menu items and it just looked weird.
Some early iterations of the blog header and navigation.
Around this point that I dug into my metrics to find out that search wasn't used much. I initially opted for icon-only navigation with tipsy-style tooltips, but felt it violated Rams' "as little design as possible" principle, in addition to being cumbersome (having to hover over each icon first to see what they meant).
Some hours of tinkering later I ended up with my current design with only three main navigation elements. In between Photoshop iterations, I would constantly sketch UI on paper to refine my ideas. Just drawing any tangentially-related solution that came to mind helps organize my thoughts.
I've made it a habit over the past year to constantly take screenshots of my designs in progress. Either of Photoshop work or in-browser tweaks with Chrome dev tools. Over the course of this blog design I ended up with 67 screenshots. It's nice to be able to go back and trace your thought process over again. Danny Hertz from Twitter had an interesting idea about how to automate this with Selenium, but I digress.
I've started using LayerVault to help me with this. It's like GitHub for PSDs and you can visually flip through your PSD revisions.
LayerVault showing a revision. I keep my palette in big blocks on the top of the PSD for easy picking.
The Sandboxed Cover Photo
Going along with my wanton lust for big photos, I also designed a second header to be displayed for particular posts and pages that have a cover photo defined in Jekyll's YAML front matter. I built it (and incorporated some slick parallax scrolling) but decided not to use it. I'm not quite sold on it yet. Back to the sketch pad.
Example of a page with a cover photo. Still a work in progress.
I've got the blues
At this point, the design was coming together and needed to focus on typography, make a simple footer and some button styles.I created a muted blue shade button style to use throughout the site.
Article publish date, share UI and related links
As we all know you should never use black so I chose a fairly muted color palette of desaturated blue shades. For one, blue is awesome and two cooler colors recede and since the content is the centerpiece here I want it to stand out. My main copy is a subtle warm gray, as warmer colors come to the foreground.
Not all displays are alike
I wanted to get some feedback on a PSD so I showed it to my friend Anand on my MacBook Air. I quickly realized that I could barely see parts of the design! The colors were way too light. I had been designing the whole time on a 27-inch Apple display and a 24-inch Dell display that made them seem like they had adequate contrast. Not so on any Apple laptop I tested it with.
Enter WCAG 2.0. Yes, another W3C acronym! The Web Content Accessibility Guidelines cover various aspects of website accessibility, including contrast minimums. There is actually a rating system for contrast! It takes text size, color and background color into account to come up with an AA or AAA level.
No need to worry, Lea Verou came up with a handy tool called contrast ratio. Punch in your color and background color to see if it has adequate contrast. But if you have to ask yourself if there's enough contrast, there probably isn't. I still need to darken the color of my footer links, they're a bit light.
Serifs.. on the web?!?
I decided to go with the lovely serif Adelle for article headings and text. It's the first time I've really used a serif on the web.
Trying to decide between 6 different Typekit typefaces. Chrome extension: WhatFont
I've grown up being told that you shouldn't use serif typefaces on the web—the serifs themselves6 on certain curvy typefaces don't lend well to being displayed with a grid of pixels unless the particular font has been properly hinted (unlikely). Well, my official stance is this all matters less when you're dealing with HiDPI displays so I'm going for it.
If you want good type on Retina displays, stop discussing hinting et al. Just search for faces that happen to look good. Like the old days.
Up until this point, the homepage mockup in Photoshop just had an article excerpt, a list of recent posts and then a few photos. I thought it would be interesting to show more information about the photos on hover.
First idea was to display photo title and camera metadata on hover. (Aston)
After I was satiated with hover style, I quickly coded it up ghetto-style directly in Chrome dev tools to see how the interaction felt. I'm glad I made a prototype first because I quickly realized that hovering over each photo and then displaying a full-width overlay was jarring and abrupt to the user.
It could also be inadvertantly triggered while scrolling down the page and it was unexpected. It taking up too much space and you couldn't see the photo while reading the title. Not to mention how would I make this mobile web friendly? I wanted to have it always display on mobile but that wouldn't work if it hid the image.
Then I thought about having it only appear on the bottom section of the image on hover.
Second iteration for photo hover metadata
That almost worked but then there was the case of longer photo titles wrapping and looking unpleasant. I decided to forget the image hover stuff and instead vertically stack the photo metadata and put it below the image in its own photo layout. Again, I quickly marked it up to see what the experience was like in the browser. It worked, but I had another problem now.
Having the same large site header and navigation took too much attention away from the photo itself.
A few photo layout iterations.
I kept removing and de-emphasizing elements until it was clear the focus was on the photo. This brings up a tradeoff with usability though. This breaks the user's expectation of a consistent and familiar header navigation that they are familiar with on all other pages of this blog. I decided that was an acceptable tradeoff when the user is moving into a photo viewing mode. I added left/right arrows that display on the image on hover, and bind the left/right cursor keys so visitors can browse other photos easily. Since photo pages are not long, there was a simplified footer with all the necessary navigation to get back to the homepage.
</design>
It was a bit challenging for me to explain how I approached the design of this blog. It's one thing to explain the finished product but it's another to explain all the iterations in between and how you got from one to the next. It's a lot of fiddling, having a few rules of thumb and constantly questioning yourself about those designs.
Subtletly, something I also mentioned in my design crash course, is one of those rules of thumb for me. I very, very often find myself thinking "can I make that lighter?", "can I remove this line?" and so on.
If there are any visual garnishings, such as a button block sheen or inner white glow on a menu bar background, that don't serve a functional purpose (like grouping sets of elements together for Gestalt Law of Proximity), it can and likely should be de-emphasized by changing color, reducing opacity or removing it altogether.
I spent a few hours per day over the course of about a week and 19 PSDs coming up with this before doing any real coding aside from prototypes to test certain design decisions. The design of this blog is still a work in progress and I'm sure I'll be changing things in the near future.
Share this post :) Part 2 coming soon
What's your design process like? Have you worked on a mobile first or responsive site yet? Let me know in the comments below or shoot me a tweet.
Note: This post is part of a series documenting the design and development of this blog. The next part(s) covering development in great detail will be posted this coming week.
1 Several redesigns later I ended up making and releasing my own theme, 281, that ended up becoming an option on WordPress.com.
5 I know this is a controversial issue. Some people despise sites that don't list publish date adjacent to the title. But as a site owner, it benefits me to put it after the post.
6 By my use of "serif" here I don't mean the typeface but the small lines shooting off the edges of letters.
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It's surprisingly useful, because it turns your iPad into a remote for the cable box. The remote it comes with is the usual piece of junk. Mine is worse than usual because about half the keys don't work. So to get to channel 48, I have to enter 5 then a 0 and click the downarrow twice. I've learned how to find the most important channels this way, but I can't believe I'm actually willing to do this.
Then I got the iPad app, and have set up my favorites, and I can just click on the name of the channel I want to go to and the iPad sends a message to TWC's mainframe in the cloud, which then sends a message to my set top box to switch to the channel I just clicked on. It all happens in an instant. Pretty cool.
But last night it stopped working. I get a tune error message at the top of the screen when I try to switch to any channel. Here's a screen shot of the error on my iPod. Same app.
Really sucks. I'm putting this out there in case anyone else is having problems or knows what box I have to kick to get this working. I have already recycled the power on everything in sight.
You know how I say there's room for something between a tweet and a blog post?
Like this one. A simple idea worth a few words, but not too many.
I like watching Knicks games on MSG because one of the guys calling the plays is an ex-NBA superstar, and a really smart guy, who takes his job very seriously -- Walt Frazier.
His narrative, I realized watching the game last night, is what goes through the mind of a player on the court. And because he's so smart and cares so much, it's quite a narrative. He loves the sport, and he loves the players, and he loves great basketball. And while the nature of the job isn't to be overly critical, if you listen carefully you can hear what he doesn't like. In a word, lackadaisical play, a term he uses more than he should. :-)
What Clyde doesn't like:
1. Cross-court passing.
2. If you don't play D.
3. Lazy players.
But it's all good. Thanks Clyde for making it real.
"They're still paying homage to JR for his antics."
This is the best piece you'll read all day, maybe all year.
When people are near death they start telling the truth. I know this from experience. I got to hang out with my father for a full week when he was in hospice in the week before he died. He was never a big truth-teller. He used to say "Don't truth me and I won't truth you." But that week was different. He had a bunch of things he wanted to get off his chest. He didn't go so far as to forgive anyone, or say things that would make him vulnerable or embarassed. A lifetime of holding back on these things doesn't break in a week, no matter how close you are to death. And it wasn't his fault. He grew up into a world that told men that they had to be strong. And any emotion other than anger would scare the people around him. That such a person would grow a hard impenetrable shell is no surprise.
I've had the near-death experience myself, twice -- once when I was very young, and once a little over ten years ago. I suppose it's a reason some people find me hard to accept. But it's also the reason, I think, that the people who love me, do. If I presented an image of who they want to see, or who I think they want to see, then it's the image they love, not the person. Now that does not mean you should tell people what you think all the time in every context. But you can change, and apologize and forgive, at any time, without asking anyone's permission, and without fear of offending. Even if you come in a package that most people don't associate with change, regret or forgiveness.
Don't miss the opportunity to clean house and have a great rest of your life, even if you haven't narrowly escaped death.
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Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) vowed on Sunday that Republicans would force significant spending cuts in exchange for raising the debt ceiling even if President Barack Obama had to be "dragged kicking and screaming."
"What we're saying is that the biggest problem facing the country is our excessive spending," McConnell told NBC's David Gregory. "We've watched the government explode over the last four years. We've dealt with the revenue issue, and now the question is will the president lead? Why should we have to be bringing him to the table?"
Gregory pointed out that trillions of dollars in spending cuts had been part of last year's Budget Control Act and Republicans had refused to accept significant cuts in entitlement programs as a part of a larger deals offered by Democrats going back to debt ceiling negotiations in 2011.
"You can re-litigate the past if you want to," McConnell laughed. "I wish the president would lead us on the discussion rather than putting himself in the position of having to be dragged kicking and screaming to discuss the single biggest issue facing our future. You know, until we adjust the entitlements so that they meet the demographics of our country, we can't ever solve this problem. The time to solve it is now."
"The president proposed significant entitlement cuts, Simpson-Bowles said he did it, though they would have like him to have gone farther," Gregory observed. "But Republicans would not agree on revenues going back to last summer... You can't say he's been dragged kicking and screaming when he has proposed those entitlement cuts."
"No, he has not!" McConnell shot back. "He hasn't embraced any significant proposal here in public to deal with significant entitlement changes."
The Kentucky Republican also insisted that any additional revenue through tax reform would be off the table going forward.
"That's over," he explained. "I'm in favor of doing tax reform but I think tax reform ought to be revenue neutral as it was back during the Reagan years. We've resolved this issue."
I remember many, many years ago when my dad decided to buy an old house for the rental income. The house itself was built at the turn of the last century and had originally been the servants quarters for a much larger house down the street. It was a charming little cottage, but required a lot of renovation before my dad could lease it out. But the one thing that my dad didn't count on was his largest expense: lead paint removal. The entire house, inside and out, was painted using lead paint. The contractor warned my dad that this 50 year old paint job could be killing us as we stood there, with lead dust flaking off the walls and into our lungs. That was all it took for my dad to remove my brother and I from the site and to sigh that his investment didn't seem as smart as it did at first.
The biggest source of lead in the postwar era, it turns out, wasn't paint. It was leaded gasoline. And if you chart the rise and fall of atmospheric lead caused by the rise and fall of leaded gasoline consumption, you get a pretty simple upside-down U: Lead emissions from tailpipes rose steadily from the early '40s through the early '70s, nearly quadrupling over that period. Then, as unleaded gasoline began to replace leaded gasoline, emissions plummeted.
Intriguingly, violent crime rates followed the same upside-down U pattern. The only thing different was the time period: Crime rates rose dramatically in the '60s through the '80s, and then began dropping steadily starting in the early '90s. The two curves looked eerily identical, but were offset by about 20 years.
So Nevin dove in further, digging up detailed data on lead emissions and crime rates to see if the similarity of the curves was as good as it seemed. It turned out to be even better: In a 2000 paper (PDF) he concluded that if you add a lag time of 23 years, lead emissions from automobiles explain 90 percent of the variation in violent crime in America. Toddlers who ingested high levels of lead in the '40s and '50s really were more likely to become violent criminals in the '60s, '70s, and '80s.
And with that we have our molecule: tetraethyl lead, the gasoline additive invented by General Motors in the 1920s to prevent knocking and pinging in high-performance engines. As auto sales boomed after World War II, and drivers in powerful new cars increasingly asked service station attendants to "fill 'er up with ethyl," they were unwittingly creating a crime wave two decades
Amazingly simple and yet compelling evidence. Rick Nevin has written a similar piece showing the same correlations in other countries. Per Drum, Nevin forecasts:
The USA violent crime rate is now down about 50% from its peak in 1991, and I expect that the violent crime rate in Western Europe will be down by about 50% from its peak over the next 20 years, with the largest part of that decline over the next ten years.
Eastern Europe will follow the same trend, but will take a few years longer because they left gasoline lead levels quite high through the end of the Soviet era.
Crime will also plummet over the next 10 to 20 years in Latin America, where leaded gasoline use and air lead levels fell sharply from around 1990 through the mid-1990s.
It would be interesting if we took a far more holistic approach to these issues, looking at environmental issues as much as punitive measures.
This posting includes an audio/video/photo media file: Download Now
(Daniel Ellsberg debates Bill Kristol on C-SPAN, Mar 28, 2003)
Now that all of the neocons are worked up over the possibility that former Sen. Chuck Hagel might be nominated to be our next Sec. of Defense, it seems there's a little dust up going on between documentary film maker Michael Moore and Iraq war cheerleader, Bloody Bill Kristol.
I just sent this to Bill Kristol, the editor of the Weekly Standard magazine and one of the most influential advocates of our invasion of Iraq. He posted something this morning about my post where I found an old quote from Chuck Hagel about how the Iraq War is all about the oil. I'll let you know when Bill gets back to me. (If you don't know much about Bill, you can find a good introduction here about his pre-war debate with Daniel Ellsberg.)
Dear Bill,
Thanks for your post mentioning me! I didn't realize you visited my website so early on Saturday mornings. Man, I wish we had cleaned up after the party last night.
Anyway, I see you're mad that back in 2007 former Sen. Chuck Hagel said that we were obviously "fighting for oil" in Iraq. You explain this was "vulgar and disgusting" and "could be the straw that breaks the back of Hagel's chances" to be Obama's next Defense Secretary.
Since you feel so strongly about this, I wanted to make sure you heard about four other prominent people who've said the same thing. (I should have mentioned them yesterday with the Chuck Hagel stuff, I apologize.)
• "I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil." – Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, in his 2007 memoir. (Read about it here. Greenspan then lamely tried to walk this back, when he found out just how politically inconvenient it was…while admitting a Bush White House official told him "unfortunately, we can't talk about oil.")
• "Of course we should go to war for oil. It's like saying, you're going to war just for oxygen, just for food. We need oil. That's a good reason to go to war." – Ann Coulter, author, April 11, 2011. (Watch her say that here at 37:30.)
• "Of course it's about oil, it's very much about oil, and we can't really deny that. From the standpoint of a solider who's now fought in the middle east for six years – my son-in-law's fought there for four years, my daughter's been over there, my son has served the nation – my family has been fighting for a long time." – Gen. John Abizaid, former commander of CENTCOM, October 13, 2007. (Watch Abizaid say this here.)
• "We're not in the middle east to bring sweetness and light to the whole world. That's nonsense. We're in the middle east because we and our European friends and our European non-friends depend on something that comes from the middle east, namely oil." – Midge Decter, author, May 21, 2004. (Listen here, at 35:55.)
I like to think the best about people. I know all you're looking for is an open, honest debate about Chuck Hagel's qualifications – with absolutely no smears or bullying. And because you feel that way, I'm sure you'll want to update what you wrote about Hagel with these quotes, and explain that Alan Greenspan and Ann Coulter and John Abizaid and Midge Decter are vulgar and disgusting and far-left too. Read on...
In case he forgot, Michael reminds him that Midge was a founding Neocon and that Kristol was with her on the broadcast where she made that remark. You've gotta love it.
What Rumsfeld's having become an American sex symbol seems to say about American culture today is that the assault on men leveled by the women's movement, having poisoned the normally delicate relations between men and women and thereby left a generation of younger women with a load of anxiety they are only now beginning to throw off, is happily almost over. It's hard to overestimate the significance of the term "stud" being applied to a man who has reached the age of 70 and will not too long from now be celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary.
She also seemed to think he might precipitously lose his precious bodily fluids at any moment:
He works standing up at a tall writing table, as if energy, or perhaps determination, might begin to leak away from too much sitting down.
I suppose it's possible that Midge was so addled by Rumsfeld's oozing testosterone that she didn't know what she was saying about oil back in 2004. But what do you suppose was Alan Greenspan's excuse?
As Eric Alterman has written, he's the "journalist" of "perpetual wrongness" (as well as an "apparatchik" of the first order and a "right-wing holy warrior"). And for that, he's perpetually hired or published: Fox News, the Washington Post op-ed page, Time Magazine, and most recently, the New York Times where, in his very first column, he made a goof that had to be corrected at the bottom of column two (and where, with his usual perspicacity when it comes to the future, he predicted an Obama victory in the New Hampshire primary). Liberal websites devote time to listing his many mistakes and mis-predictions. In a roiling mass of neocons, right-wingers, and liberal war hawks, he's certainly been in fierce competition for the title of "wrongest" of all when it came to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. ("Iraq's always been very secular") I hardly have to spell out the name of He Who Strides Amongst Us, the editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard. But, okay, for the one person on the planet who doesn't know -- it's Bill Kristol. The notorious Mr. Kristol, the man whose crystal ball never works.
But isn't it the essence of American punditry that serial mistakes don't matter and no one is ever held to account (as in this primary season) for ridiculous predictions that add up to nothing? As New York Times editorial page editor Andy Rosenthal put it after his paper signed Kristol to a one-year contract, "The idea that The New York Times is giving voice to a guy who is a serious, respected conservative intellectual -- and somehow that's a bad thing How intolerant is that?"
How intolerant indeed! Since no one in the mainstream is accountable for anything they've written, the management of the Times can exhibit remarkable tolerance for error in its gesture to the neocon right by hiring a man who's essentially never right. His has been a remarkable winning record when it comes to being right(-wing) by doing wrong. Former Saturday Night Live contributor Jonathan Schwarz pays homage to that record in what follows. Tom
The Lost Kristol Tapes What the New York Times Bought By Jonathan Schwarz
Imagine that there were a Beatles record only a few people knew existed. And imagine you got the chance to listen to it, and as you did, your excitement grew, note by note. You realized it wasn't merely as good as Rubber Soul, or Revolver, or Sgt. Pepper's. It was much, much better. And now, imagine how badly you'd want to tell other Beatles fans all about it.
That's how I feel for my fellow William Kristol fans. You loved it when Bill said invading Iraq was going to have "terrifically good effects throughout the Middle East"? You have the original recording of him explaining the war would make us "respected around the world" and his classic statement that there's "almost no evidence" of Iraq experiencing Sunni-Shia conflict? Well, I've got something that will blow your mind!
I'm talking about Kristol's two-hour appearance on C-Span's Washington Journal on March 28, 2003, just nine days after the President launched his invasion of Iraq. No one remembers it today. You can't even fish it out of LexisNexis. It's not there. Yet it's a masterpiece, a double album of smarm, horrifying ignorance, and bald-faced deceit. While you've heard him play those instruments before, he never again reached such heights. It's a performance for the history books -- particularly that chapter about how the American Empire collapsed.
At the time Kristol was merely the son of prominent neoconservative Irving Kristol, former chief of staff to Vice President Dan Quayle (aka "Quayle's brain"), the editor of Rupert Murdoch's Weekly Standard, and a frequent Fox News commentator. He hadn't yet added New York Times columnist to his resumé. Opposite Kristol on the segment was Daniel Ellsberg, famed for leaking the Pentagon Papers in the Vietnam era. Their discussion jumped back and forth across 40 years of U.S.-Iraqi relations, and is easiest to understand if rearranged chronologically.
So, sit back, relax, and let me play a little of it for you.
Lots more there with transcript and description of the clip above.
In yet another day in upside-down land at Fox "news" good old Mike Huckabee, just after going on a rant about the so-called "fiscal cliff" deal and how that irresponsible government spending was going to destroy our country, brought in wingnut Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI) to heap praise on him for supporting a bill that freezes Congressional salaries and to pretend that he and his fellow obstructionist Republicans have actually been governing responsibly.
Of course, Huckabee and Duffy's ideas about what constitutes wasteful spending is probably a little different than what most of the readers here would feel is wasteful. They were complaining about how we can't afford the unemployment insurance extension, stimulus spending to get us out of the recession and needing to do something about "entitlements," or in other words, all of our New Deal social safety net programs.
So more austerity for you Americans or your grand children are doomed! I'm not sure if it's humanly possible to have a much more substance free debate on the topics these two were talking about here, but I am sure if it's out there to be found, it will either be on Fox or right-wing radio somewhere.
We've got some of the most irresponsible hostage takers running one of the three branches of our government right now and this clown is going to paint them as though they've got one iota of concern about our economy, the welfare of our citizens other than the wealthiest among us or the real work of actually governing this country and negotiating with someone in good faith. They're ready to burn the place down if they don't get their way and the two of them are pretending like the only thing that would happen if they refuse to let the government pay its bills is a government shut down, when everyone knows the consequences would actually be much more dire.
Former NRA President Marion Hammer, promising a fight from NRA on any attempt to regulate guns, January 2, 2012,
Since the Sandy Hook shooting rocked us to our core, there have been at least an addition 489 gun deaths (at the time of this writing). That's approximately 20 deaths a day. That's a horrifying statistic and one that the NRA feels completely comfortable in writing off as collateral damage. And for too long, those inside the Beltway felt compelled to allow.
But it looks like there may be a little daylight breaking through those clouds. The Obama administration is clearly floating a trial balloon about initiating some sensible gun safety regulations:
The White House is weighing a far broader and more comprehensive approach to curbing the nation's gun violence than simply reinstating an expired ban on assault weapons and high-capacity ammunition, according to multiple people involved in the administration's discussions.
A working group led by Vice President Biden is seriously considering measures backed by key law enforcement leaders that would require universal background checks for firearm buyers, track the movement and sale of weapons through a national database, strengthen mental health checks, and stiffen penalties for carrying guns near schools or giving them to minors, the sources said.
As should be readily apparent from the clip above, this is no easy fight, so kudos for even going there. Especially when you consider how much fearmongering over "Obama is gonna take yer guns!" there already has been with no evidence to support it.
But frankly, I had to jump through more hoops and prove myself more responsible to adopt a dog from a rescue organization than I would have to go through to buy a gun at Walmart. That's a ridiculous discrepancy. And anyone that wants to argue against that doesn't have a leg to stand on.
The White House needs our support right now to help them feel comfortable in pursuing this line. Please, please, please call the White House and encourage them and call your congresscritters to let them know you support this as well. No other parent should have to spend the holidays like the Sandy Hook parents did.
Four people were discovered dead Saturday inside a suburban Denver home following a barricade hostage situation, which drew in a team of 40 officers. One woman reportedly escaped the townhome, although it is unclear whether or not she sustained injuries. Officials first arrived on the scene close to 3 a.m. Saturday following reports that shots had been fired inside the home. The "armed and dangerous" man is reported to be among the deceased. The identities of the victims have yet to be released.
A SWAT team arrived in the area after a standoff took place between the gunman and police officers. Authorities said the gunman then shot at SWAT team members.
Police were initially unsure how many people were barricaded inside the home. Officers later confirmed that three people were found dead inside the home when SWAT moved in and shot the gunman.
Authorities said a fifth person managed to get out of the house. The identities of the victims and the suspect have not been released.
Tear gas was deployed into the home, according to police scanner traffic.
Police had evacuated several neighborhoods in the area for safety reasons.
Just last summer, a mass shooting occurred inside of the Century movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, during a midnight screening of the film "The Dark Knight Rises." A gunman, dressed in tactical clothing, set off tear gas grenades and shot into the audience with multiple firearms, killing 12 people and injuring 58 others. James Eagan Holmes, the lone suspect, was arrested outside of the theater just moments later.
What's really frightening is that there apparently are people out there who take this guy seriously rather than being viewed as some insane carnival barker who ought to be run out of town on a rail: Fischer: Fiscal Cliff Legislation is 'Demonic':
Bryan Fischer is not at all pleased with the legislation passed last night by the House of Representatives in an effort to avoid the "fiscal cliff, "declaring that it is a violation of the Ten Commandments' prohibition on covetousness, meaning that the Democratic Party is driven by a "Satanic" ideology and the resulting legislation is "demonic."
So much for that talk about it being harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than that camel going through the eye of a needle. Those greedy poor people out there are the evil ones for coveting what that rich man has by wanting him to pay his fair share of taxes.
There was no word from Fischer as to why Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) would help craft a "demonic" fiscal agreement -- or for that matter, why 125 congressional Republicans voted for it.
Digby: Government at all levels has shed almost 700,000 jobs since Obama took office. Under Reagan and Bush? Not so much.
Gizmodo: The Library of Congress unveils an archive of every public tweet ever. Sort of.
Fablog: Hand-cuffing marriage equality in Illinois.
Forbes: Ohio hospital just the latest to bilk Medicare for unnecessary cardiac procedures.
Speaking of which, your quote of the day: "As a physician, I can attest that nothing has had a greater negative effect on the delivery of health care than the federal government's intrusion into medicine through Medicare." (Rep. Tom Price, R-GA, July 30, 2009)
Guest blogging Mike's Blog Round Up for the last time this week is Jon Perr from Perrspectives. Send your tips, recommendations, comments and angst to mbru AT crooksandliars DOT com.
EM Forster is one of my favorite authors. His motto, expressed first in the book Howard's End and later used as the epitaph on his headstone, was "Only connect". What a beautifully simple, yet profound concept. In Howard's End, Forster explores the impermeability of the class system: the self-centered oligarchal Wilcox family vs. the free-spirited intellectual but naive Schlegels vs. the aspiring lower class Leonard Bast and his wife. The Wilcoxes will do anything to keep the status quo, even as it destroys those who have little to begin with. The Schlegels mean well and try to bridge the distance between the classes, but ultimately are ineffectual and left with dealing with the ramifications of their good intentions. And poor Mr. Bast, despite being recognized as a man of integrity and having promise by his social betters, pays the ultimate price for daring to want to do better in his life. Forster bares the hypocrisy of the social and economic elite living lives of dishonor, deceit and with little empathy while ignoring the plight of those struggling, even as they actively make their struggle harder.
Those themes of Edwardian England's class struggles still resonate in Obama's America of the 21st century. And the answer is the same: only connect. Chinless McConnell is on a bunch of shows today. How much different would his politics be if he attempted to connect outside his class, his race, his gender, his party, his own special interests? Would Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson still be so intent on cutting Social Security if they connected with the seniors it would seriously impact?
All I ask is that we only connect; that we try to understand the world from points of view not our own, that we try to base our decisions and choices with the knowledge of how it impacts others. Only connect.
ABC's "This Week" -- Sens. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.; Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D.; Reps. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, and Tom Cotton, R-Ark. Roundtable: ABC News' George Will; Fox News anchor Greta Van Susteren; PBS' "Washington Week" moderator and managing editor Gwen Ifill; University of California, Berkeley professor and former Clinton Labor Secretary Robert Reich; and ABC's Chief White House Correspondent Jonathan Karl.
NBC's "Meet the Press" -- McConnell; Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, leaders of President Barack Obama's now-defunct deficit commission. Roundtable: Freshman Senator from Maine Angus King (I-ME), former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA), Chair of the House Democratic Caucus Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-CA), former head of HP and Vice Chair of the NRSC Carly Fiorina, and Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne.
CBS' "Face the Nation" -- McConnell; Reps. Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., Incoming Senators Jeff Flake, R-Ariz., and Chris Murphy, D-Conn; former Rep. Rick Nolan, D-Minn., and Rep. Matt Salmon, R-Ariz., plus Rep. Mike Kelly, R-Penn. Economics panel: The New York Times' David Sanger and TIME's Rana Foroohar.
MSNBC's "UP with Chris Hayes" -- Steve Ellis, Vice President of Taxpayers for Common Sense, Rep. Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Fran O'Connor, Sayreville, NJ resident, Ben Jealous, NAACP President and CEO, Esther Armah, Host of "Wake Up Call" on WBAI-FM, Tio Hardiman, Director of Ceasefire Illinois.
MSNBC's "Melissa Harris-Perry" -- Karen Finney, MSNBC political analyst, columnist for The Hill and former DNC Communications Chair, John Rowley, Democratic strategist, media consultant and President of Fletcher, Rowley Media, Mayor Kasim Reed (D-Atlanta), Kevin Drum, Political blogger for Mother Jones, Howard Dean, fmr. Governor of Vermont (D), Jennifer Sacheck, Associate Professor of Nutrition at Tufts University.
CNN's "State of the Union" -- Sens. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., and Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.; Rep. Richard Hudson, R-N.C. Freshman Senator Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND) and Congressman Richard Hudson (R-NC); Roundtable: Neera Tanden from the Center for American Progress, right-leaning economist Stephen Moore, CNN Senior Congressional Correspondent Dana Bash, and Jackie Calmes of the New York Times.
CNN's "Fareed Zakaria GPS" -- Anne-Marie Slaughter, Richard Haas and Ian Bremmer; commentators Anatole Kaletsky and Lionel Barber and London School Economics Professor Fawaz Gerges,
CNN's "Reliable Sources" -- CNN's Dana Bash and Jonathan Weisman of The New York Times; Tim Carney of the Washington Examiner and Ana Marie Cox of The Guardian; former Al Jazeera English anchor Dave Marash; scholars Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institute and Norman Ornstein of American Enterprise Institute.
"Fox News Sunday" -- Reps. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and Jim Jordan, R-Ohio; Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas. Panel: Brit Hume, Fox News Senior Political Analyst, Nina Easton, FORTUNE's Washington columnist & senior editor, Fox News Contributor, Bill Kristol, The Weekly Standard/Fox News Contributor, Charles Lane, Editorial Writer for The Washington Post.
Happy Saturday night, folks! It's Blue Gal from The Professional Left Podcast, bringing you this week's podcast round up. Be aware that these podcasts are likely to be available on i-Tunes and Stitcher Radio, and may not be safe for work.
Unitasker Wednesday: Jalapeno Corer The Jalapeno Corer does the exact same thing as a paring knife, and it gets rid of the best part of the jalapeno — the spicy delicious seeds!
2011
January 2011 resolutions and a plan of action I am ready for a year of 100 percent success, and monthly resolutions with daily schedules will be my plan of action to make that happen.
An article in published in Science on Thursday, securely locked behind a paywall, paints a mixed picture of science in the age of social media. In “Science, New Media, and the Public,” Dominique Brossard and Dietram A. Scheufele urge action so that science will be judged on its merits as it moves through the Web. That’s a worthy goal, and it’s an excellent article. Still, I read it with a sense that something was askew. I think ultimately it’s something like an old vs. new media disconnect.
The authors begin by noting research that suggests that “online science sources may be helping to narrow knowledge gaps” across educational levels[1]. But all is not rosy. Scientists are going to have “to rethink the interface between the science community and the public.” They point to three reasons.
First, the rise of online media has reduced the amount of time and space given to science coverage by traditional media [2].
Second, the algorithmic prioritizing of stories takes editorial control out of the hands of humans who might make better decisions. The authors point to research that “shows that there are often clear discrepancies between what people search for online, which specific areas are suggested to them by search engines, and what people ultimately find.” The results provided by search engines “may all be linked in a self-reinforcing informational spiral…”[3] This leads them to ask an important question:
Is the World Wide Web opening up a new world of easily accessible scientific information to lay audiences with just a few clicks? Or are we moving toward an online science communication environment in which knowledge gain and opinion formation are increasingly shaped by how search engines present results, direct traffic, and ultimately narrow our informational choices? Critical discussions about these developments have mostly been restricted to the political arena…
Third, we are debating science differently because the Web is social. As an example they point to the fact that “science stories usually…are embedded in a host of cues about their accuracy, importance, or popularity,” from tweets to Facebook “Likes.” “Such cues may add meaning beyond what the author of the original story intended to convey.” The authors cite a recent conference [4] where the tone of online comments turned out to affect how people took the content. For example, an uncivil tone “polarized the views….”
They conclude by saying that we’re just beginning to understand how these Web-based “audience-media interactions” work, but that the opportunity and risk are great, so more research is greatly needed:
Without applied research on how to best communicate science online, we risk creating a future where the dynamics of online communication systems have a stronger impact on public views about science than the specific research that we as scientists are trying to communicate.
I agree with so much of this article, including its call for action, yet it felt odd to me that scientists will be surprised to learn that the Web does not convey scientific information in a balanced and impartial way. You only are surprised by this if you think that the Web is a medium. A medium is that through which content passes. A good medium doesn’t corrupt the content; it conveys signal with a minimum of noise.
But unlike any medium since speech, the Web isn’t a passive channel for the transmission of messages. Messages only move through the Web because we, the people on the Web, find them interesting. For example, I’m moving (infinitesimally, granted) this article by Brossard and Scheufele through the Web because I think some of my friends and readers will find it interesting. If someone who reads this post then tweets about it or about the original article, it will have moved a bit further, but only because someone cared about it. In short, we are the medium, and we don’t move stuff that we think is uninteresting and unimportant. We may move something because it’s so wrong, because we have a clever comment to make about it, or even because we misunderstand it, but without our insertion of ourselves in the form of our interests, it is inert.
So, the “dynamics of online communication systems” are indeed going to have “a stronger impact on public views about science” than the scientific research itself does because those dynamics are what let the research have any impact beyond the scientific community. If scientific research is going to reach beyond those who have a professional interest in it, it necessarily will be tagged with “meaning beyond what the author of the original story intended to convey.” Those meanings are what we make of the message we’re conveying. And what we make of knowledge is the energy that propels it through the new system.
We therefore cannot hope to peel the peer-to-peer commentary from research as it circulates broadly on the Net, not that the Brossard and Scheufele article suggests that. Perhaps the best we can do is educate our children better, and encourage more scientists to dive into the social froth as the place where their research is having its broadest effect.
Notes, copied straight from the article:
[1] M. A. Cacciatore, D. A. Scheufele, E. A. Corley, Public Underst. Sci.; 10.1177/0963662512447606 (2012).
[2] C. Russell, in Science and the Media, D. Kennedy, G. Overholser, Eds. (American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Cambridge, MA, 2010), pp. 13–43
[3] P. Ladwig et al., Mater. Today 13, 52 (2010)
[4] P. Ladwig, A. Anderson, abstract, Annual Conference of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, St. Louis, MO, August 2011; www.aejmc. com/home/2011/06/ctec-2011-abstracts
If you read the piece on pickpockets in the New Yorker last week (and if not, I encourage you to), you've got to check out this video they made of Apollo Robbins taking all sorts of stuff from Adam Green, who plays the bewildered NYer writer part perfectly. Way better than the YT video I embedded last week.
On Friday, Windows Phone users supposedly found themselves unable to access Google Maps. But Google said it made no sudden change on its end to cause this. What happened? It seems likely many people simple noticed for the first time long-standing redirection that Google had in place for those not...
Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.
Deciding to take the plunge and return to education can be difficult. In a time of economic hardship, where any job – no matter how unfulfilling – is seen as a blessing, how are you meant to risk everything for your education? Especially for those of us with families or other dependents to support, the idea of losing income is enough to make us put our own education plans on hold for the good of our household.
But there are ways to get round concerns about losing income, or studying and working at the same time. While a full-time university degree might not necessarily be the most financially viable option, there are other ways to develop your education. One of these ways is by learning at home.
Choosing to study from home can be a rewarding experience, and one that enables you to continue with your job as well as improving your education. In many cases, taking part in home learning and choosing from a wide range of courses, whether vocational or otherwise, can increase career and employment prospects quite dramatically. From evening and part time courses, to a bachelor's degree or other higher education qualification, home learning can adapt to your needs and ensure that no one has to miss out.
However, there are some key things to remember before embarking on a home learning course. Many people begin part time or home-led education without fully realizing the impact it can have on their free time and home life. As most home learning courses require you to work independently, unlike a university degree or many other education courses, it's essential that you understand how much time home learning can take up, and the personal motivation you need to succeed. Adjusting from work to education or vice versa can be quite tricky, and balancing the two can be very tricky indeed.
However, there are some simple ways to ensure you are making the most of the opportunities home learning provides.
One of the best ways to make the most of a home learning course is to plan in the time where you work on the course very strictly. Creating a workable timetable for yourself, that fits in around your regular employment, other hobbies and family commitments will mean that you're more likely to stick with your home learning course and make the most of it.
Similarly, if you feel your motivation levels are a little low, ensure you invest in a home learning course that has some elements of group tutoring or access to student forums. Talking to fellow students in a similar position as yourself will help you to motivate yourself to do well, as well as ensuring you don't go stir crazy!
Collectively, you and your colleagues may have created stress in the workplace without knowing it.
You may even have “enjoyed” doing it, but the end result is creating what I personally consider the number one cause of office stress. This stress is created because of bad habits, picking on other people's flaws, mistakes, and negative qualities.
This stress can be eliminated if you know the result is detrimental to a young career builder like you. It creates office politics and it takes you off your focus of building career success for yourself.
Who are these people and why do they do it? And what are the results of these actions?
Let's see who these people are and why do they create stress in the workplace.
1. The Insecure False Expert
Typically, two or more persons get together and they start a conversation about someone. I would take a guess it’s usually to pick on a particular person's flaws, mistakes, or negative traits. The reason people do this is because somehow out of some weird logic, they conclude the person picked on is less competent. The people who started the conversation become the expert on character because they think they are somehow better and more competent.
People do this because they are insecure. By picking on other's flaws, somehow makes them feel they are right or better. Is this correct? No. Does it work? No. But people continue to do it while creating unnecessary stress in the workplace for themselves.
The result is that people start to lose trust for each other. The person thinks, "If so and so can pick on someone else's flaws like this, I wonder what does he/she say about me behind my back."
2. The Angry Politician
Another group of people typically get into complaining and picking on others because they are angry with someone else. Sometimes the anger could have legitimate reasons but the way they tackle it creates stress for themselves and others.
Why? Because instead of discussing the issue with the party involved, they would rather rally people on their side. As if their story needed to be heard. They are out to persuade others to be on their side. They seem to think, the more people on my side the more “right” I am.
It’s a feeble attempt at persuading others that they are right. Instead of spending time asking themselves what they have done wrong and how to move on positively - they prefer to rally people behind their “cause.” They create stress at work by constantly hounding people to listen to them.
This results in factions within the company. People start to take sides and unnecessary stress in the workplace is created. Instead of focusing on the solution they have just created more problems.
3. The Jealous Lover
This group of people wants attention for themselves. You will see this especially when the office is celebrating certain achievement by others. When others are getting the limelight, they start to show their true colors. They start to badmouth others about how the success is not justified, about how that person is just lucky. These people think if they start to bad mouth others, other people will think they are better.
It’s a weak attempt to get people to trust, appreciate and respect them. They feel that once they badmouth others they will get the glory. "If my boss looks at the person's weakness then he will notice my strength," goes on in their head.
What would the person who is picked on do in this case if they find out? Typically, you get retaliation. People seek revenge when they feel they are wronged. The person picking on others would have to stay guarded. Again, unnecessary stress in the workplace is created.
As a career builder newbie, remind yourself not be sucked into these forms of incessant complains. More importantly, do not become one of the workplace creators of stress. Stay focused on the positive and upgrade your skills and knowledge. It’s energy better directed and better used.
Writing up your resume? Many word processing programs offer the option to check spelling and grammar in your text. This can be a terrific time-saver to help eliminate many common errors in cover letters and resumes. As long as we don't see the red or green zigzag markings under words, the document is good to go, right?
Think again!
Spelling and grammar checks through software can never replace a human set of eyes that review for syntax and other errors in a document. That's why an extra set of eyes, or the help of a professional to proofread your cover letters and resumes, are especially critical.
Employers can dismiss a candidate's application and resume for many reasons. One common reason is lack of a professional cover letter and/or resume. If your documents contain spelling or grammatical errors, or improper use of words, it can cost you an opportunity to an interview and, potentially, a job. Employers view linguistic mistakes in documents and e-mail, for that matter, as unprofessional. Don't leave a poor first impression.
Avoid making mistakes that can be easily corrected on your cover letter and resume by carefully proofreading the documents several times before submitting them. While spelling and grammar check through software can help, you are on your own when it comes to syntax – the relationship between words that determine their order in sentences. Another tricky area is homonyms – words that may sound or spell the same. A software program will not know the difference between homonyms, so watch out for these common errors:
Affect – Effect
These two words can trip up even the best of writers. Pronounced almost the same, the difference is in the first letter. Make sure you know the difference between this set of homonyms.
Examples:
“My business networking efforts directly affect the company's performance for the quarter."
"The effect of my networking efforts helped the company raise double the amount of funds over the previous year."
Discreet – Discrete
When spoken, the listener interprets which words a speaker means. However, in writing, you must make the correct word choices. Make sure you know the difference between this set of homonyms.
Examples:
"We are discreet in the manner in which we handle confidential documents."
"The company has a discrete method for identifying sales leads."
Its – It's
These three letters put together can form one word or two words simply by the break of an apostrophe. The two words have separate meanings, but we can easily make a mistake by misplacing the apostrophe. Make sure you know the difference between this set of homonyms.
Examples:
"Increased its department size by 50 percent."
"It is [or It's] the first product of its kind to enter the market."
Than – Then
One word is used to express "difference" and the other word can mean "followed by," but they both sound the same. Take care in your writing to distinguish which is the proper word to use. Make sure you know the difference between this set of homonyms.
Examples:
“Increased sales by more than 50 percent in the second year of the product's launch."
"Started in an entry level position and then advanced to a managerial position in two years."
Their – There – They're
The words all sound the same, don't they? But we all know they do not mean the same. It is easy to get caught up in typing the incorrect word as we process our thoughts and set them free for our fingers to do the typing. Make sure you know the difference between this set of homonyms.
Examples:
"Secured their standing on the market by… "
"There are 100 employees at the company."
"They are [or they're] the top three marketers of… "
Verses – Versus
Unless you are a song writer or literary writer, you are not likely to use the word "verses," but it can easily get mixed up in the mist of things when you mean to write "versus." Make sure you know the difference between this set of homonyms.
Examples:
"I wrote the first verse to the song."
"My project lead to savings of 60 percent, versus the potential loss of… "
Your – You're
Distractions can be the cause of mistakes where we use the word "your" instead of "you're." The two words sound the same but the latter refers to two words – "you are." Make sure you know the difference between this set of homonyms.
Examples:
"I am interested in your job posting on… "
"You are [or you're] going to see a link below to my writing samples.
There are a number of other homonyms to watch out for when proofreading your documents to submit to an employer, such as "principal" or "principle" and "incite" or "insight." Your ability to write a professional and error-free cover letter and resume is part of the basis for an employer to want to follow up with you. Even if you have the specific qualifications to meet what the employer is looking for, poor proofreading of your documents can cost you.
Dear J.T. & Dale: I had a great job interview for a job I’d love to get. I then got an e-mail from them asking for a reference from my current employer. While all my previous evaluations have been satisfactory, I recently received a spotty review. If I let this potential new employer contact my current employer, the response may include negative comments. Also, it could seriously jeopardize my relationship with my current employer. What can an existing employer tell a potential one? - Anne
DALE: ”No, no, no.” That, Anne, is your response to the request. It’s wrong for an employer to put you in this bind, and you don’t want to work for the jerks who’d do that to you.
J.T.: I understand why you’d feel that way, but this may well be a great opportunity that she doesn’t want to blow off based on what might be just bureaucratic hiring procedures.
DALE: If the new company merely wants to verify employment, like creditors often do, then no problem. Or, if you’re right and this is just HR bureaucracy, then those great new bosses should stand up for Anne and get the requirement waived.
J.T.: You may be overreacting. Let’s back up and answer Anne’s question about what they can say. Most employers will only give out dates of employment, your salary and (when it’s a past employer) whether you are eligible for rehire. They limit themselves to these facts because offering opinions about you, ones that limit your future opportunities, might result in a lawsuit. That’s not to say that your company might not be honest and say that you got a less-than-satisfactory grade on your last review, but honestly, I don’t think they will.
So, here’s how I’d proceed: Tell the new company they need to make you an offer in writing, contingent upon the reference check. That way, you can go in and be the one to explain it to your employer and ask them to be fair in the reference.
DALE: Whoa. That’s like telling your husband that you want a divorce and then asking him to sing at your upcoming wedding. So, you’re going to get two answers from us, Anne. Here’s what I’d do: Gently decline the request, explaining that you are a valuable employee who will be missed and that you don’t want to jeopardize that relationship until you definitely have a new job. They’ll respect you for that, and if they don’t, you don’t want to work there.
Feel free to send questions to J.T. and Dale at adv...@jtanddale.com or write to them in care of King Features Syndicate, 300 W. 57th Street, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10019.
Weekends are a great time to step away from the pressures of work, spend some quality time with your family and loved ones, and recover physically and mentally from the previous work week.
As the weekend comes to a close and Monday morning nears the horizon, consider these three ideas for getting your week off to a fabulous start:
Arrive 30 Minutes Earlier Monday Morning
Close your door and forward your office phone. Use this time to plan your week:
Review your calendar for last week, this week and next week.
Review your project list.
Review your “to-do” lists.
Review your annual goals — business and personal.
Review your inbox (paper inbox).
Review your e-mail inbox and key folders (but try to refrain from beginning the process of responding to e-mails during your planning time).
As part of your weekly planning, identity the top three goals you’d like to achieve this coming week – what are the three MOST IMPORTANT tasks or projects you need to accomplish?
For each of these top three goals, what is the very next action you need to do (or delegate to someone else)?
Schedule And Protect Time Blocks
Schedule blocks of time on your calendar to work on tasks associated with your top three goals. Time blocks of 60 to 90 minutes generally work best. Ideally time blocks should be uninterrupted time behind closed doors in your office whenever possible (or away from your office).
Entering the work week with clarity on your goals, a clear plan of action, and sufficient time scheduled to work on them feels good and will almost always have a positive impact on your productivity and results for the week.
Hit the ground running on Mondays… get a positive start on your work week.
It’s an AMAZING lesson on how to build a real-world passionate evangelism program. It’ll change your entire outlook and your entire business.
I’m assigning it to our entire company as required reading. It’s short, but it took me a while to read, because every page gave me a new idea for an action item.
Here’s how important I think it is for you to read this book: For the first 100 people who buy Brains on Fire and send a receipt to edi...@gaspedal.com, I’ll mail you a free copy of my book, Word of Mouth Marketing. No strings attached. U.S. mailing addresses only. Just do it.
While the Mac wasn't the first Apple computer, for many people it represents Apple's design and corporate philosophy the best. By creating the first personal computer that could literally be used by anyone, Apple and the Mac set the standard for generations of computer owners.
In this, the last of our TUAW Best of 2012 Awards posts, we'll look at all of the best software and hardware products for Mac as nominated and voted for by TUAW readers. Be sure to check out our TUAW Best of 2012 iPhone and iPad winners as well.
Best Mac Game App of 2012
Rovio hits the trifecta, with Angry Birds Star Wars ($4.99) winning the Best Game of 2012 for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Picking up 52 percent of the total vote, the irritated avians handily beat out runner-up Sid Meier's Civilization V: Campaign Edition ($39.99).
Best Mac Music App of 2012
In a landslide, Apple's iTunes 11 (free) won the Best Mac Music App honors with a whopping 81 percent of reader votes. Apparently, the redesign of the Mac's default music app resonated with readers, who were overwhelming in their support of the app.
The app that lets you "soundtrack your life," Spotify (free) was the runner-up in the Mac music app category, grabbing a respectable 11 percent of the vote.
Best Mac Photo App of 2012
Apple's pro photo app, Aperture ($79.99) brought home the trophy in the photo app category for Macs. Third-party apps didn't fare too well this year, as the runner-up was another Apple app: iPhoto '11 ($14.99, included as part of iLife '11 on all new Macs).
Best Mac Productivity App of 2012
When TUAW readers reach for an app that's going to help them become more productive, they go for Alfred (free). This app won in 2011 as the best Mac utility -- this year, it moved to the productivity category and handily wiped out competition like runner-up Evernote (free). Congratulations to the Running With Crayons development team on making a great app even better in 2012.
Best Mac Social Networking App of 2012
The winner in the Mac social networking app category was a surprise. Sure, everyone uses Twitter and Facebook, but a lot of our readers apparently also love their Jabber, MSN Messenger, AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, and IRC, because the big winner with almost half of the total votes was Adium (free).
Runner-up in the social networking category was the official Twitter app (free). Tweetbot for Mac had a large number of votes this year and may possibly surpass the official app in 2013 voting.
Best Mac Utility App of 2012
As votes were being tallied for the Mac categories in TUAW Best of 2012 voting, I wondered if AgileBits would pull in another win for 1Password ($49.99). After all, it had won in both the iPad and iPhone utility app categories. Sure enough, 1Password remains a favorite of TUAW readers as almost 60 percent of those voting selected the app as their favorite Mac utility.
The next most popular utility app as voted by TUAW readers was MacPaw's CleanMyMac ($29.95 for lifetime license). The app cleans out caches and logs, completely removes apps, and pulls out those internationalization files that can eat up hard disk space.
Best Mac Video App of 2012
Aperture won our Best Mac Photo App of 2012 award, and Apple's Pro software teams continued the family tradition in the video app category. Final Cut Pro X ($299.99) trashed the competition with almost 43 percent of all reader votes.
Runner-up in this category was Handbrake (free), a widely-used and loved open source video transcoder. If you've ever wanted to convert a DVD to a digital format for viewing on your Mac, iPhone or iPad, Handbrake is the way to go.
Best Mac Accessory of 2012
There was no contest in the Mac accessory category: the winner, the Apple TV ($99) was the overwhelming favorite with almost 90 percent of the vote. It's almost worth saying that if you own a Mac, iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, you need an Apple TV as well.
The runner-up for best Mac accessory of 2012 was a fitness device. Fitbit ($59.95 for the Fitbit Zip, $99.95 for the Fitbit One) is a great way to keep track of just how active you are during the day and how well you sleep (Fitbit One only) during the night.
Best Mac Peripheral of 2012
LaCie has been in the Mac peripheral business for many years, and the company pays attention to details when designing its storage products. This year's best Mac peripheral is the company's mobile Thunderbolt drive, the Little Big Disk ($349.99 to $999.00, available in both HD and SSD varieties).
An Apple product made it into the runner-up position. The Magic Trackpad ($69) is a favorite of many Mac desktop computer users, providing multi-touch gesture support for Mac OS X.
And that, dear readers, is the last of the TUAW Best of 2012. As before, we thank you for your participation both in nominating your favorite devices and software during the past year, and for supporting those choices with your votes.
For the past two years, TUAW readers have done the Apple world a service by nominating and then voting for the cream of the crop when it comes to software and hardware products. The TUAW Best of 2012 awards for iPhone have already been announced; now it's time to look at the winners in the iPad categories.
The envelopes, please...
Best iPad Game App of 2012
May the birds be with you. For the second time in the TUAW Best of 2012 voting, Angry Birds Star Wars has walked away with top honors (the first was for Best iPhone Game App of 2012). This time, it's the iPad version; Rovio's Angry Birds Star Wars HD ($2.99) grabbed almost 54 percent of the votes tallied, while Plants vs. Zombies HD ($0.99) pulled into the runner-up position with 14 percent of all the gamer votes.
Best iPad Music App of 2012
Congratulations to the winner of the TUAW Best of 2012 Music App -- Algoriddim djay (on sale for $9.99). The app, which lets iPad owners and professional disc jockeys spin tunes on virtual turntables, pulled in almost 30 percent of all of the votes in this category. Internet radio app Pandora Radio (free) is the runner-up, with about 22 percent of the vote.
Best iPad Photo App of 2012
It's great to see deserving apps grab TUAW Best of 2012 awards, and one that I've personally been a fan of is Occipital's 360 Panorama ($0.99, universal). This app, which takes amazing panorama shots simply by waving an iPad (or iPhone) up and down while turning around, pulled in almost one-third of the votes for the best iPad photo app. The runner-up was Apple's own iPhoto ($4.99) app, a surprisingly good universal photo editing and organization application.
Best iPad Productivity App of 2012
Of the three iPad productivity apps that were in the final voting for the Best of 2012 award, one stood out as the walk-away winner with 44 percent of votes tallied -- Dropbox (free). The app also won in this category in the iPhone voting, showing that the app has universal appeal -- no pun intended.
There was a tie for the runner-up spot between perennial favorite Evernote (free) and a surprise entry -- Cooking Planit HD ($4.99). Both apps grabbed 28 percent of the vote from TUAW readers.
Best iPad Social Networking App of 2012
Love 'em or hate 'em, almost everybody uses Facebook (free). The app was the walkaway winner of this category both for iPad and iPhone with almost 59 percent of the vote, and solid improvements in the app during 2012 point to a bright future for Facebook on iOS devices. The runner-up is the Twitter app that beat the official Twitter app -- Tweetbot for Twitter (iPad edition, $2.99).
Best iPad Utility App of 2012
If you checked out the results of the TUAW Best of 2012 voting for iPhone earlier today, you'll know that AgileBits' 1Password won the big prize. Well, the iPad version of 1Password ($7.99) solidly won the top honors for Best iPad Utility App of 2012 with 53 percent of all readers voting for the password manager.
The runner-up wasn't a surprise to me, as I prefer Google's Chrome Browser for iPad (free) to Mobile Safari. 24 percent of voters chose Chrome as their pick.
Best iPad Video App of 2012
Congratulations to Apple's iMovie for iOS team, as iMovie ($4.99, universal) was the favorite of TUAW readers. Our readers apparently like to watch movies as much as they like to make them, as Netflix (free) was the runner-up in the video app category.
Best iPad Case of 2012
iPad cases are a very personal choice for most people, with functionality and style often battling it out. When new iPad owners see the variety of choices in the Apple Store, many of them reach instinctively for the Apple iPad Smart Case ($49). It's a relatively low-cost and functional iPad case offering both protection and a stand. When it comes to style, though, the Twelve South BookBook for iPad ($79.99) took the votes and almost ran away with the win -- there was a razor-thin margin of nine votes between the category winner and the runner-up.
Best iPad Accessory of 2012
Apple came in as both the winner and runner-up in the best iPad accessory category. This year's favorite iPad accessory according to TUAW readers was the Apple Wireless Keyboard ($69), garnering about 45 percent of all the votes. Close behind with 36 percent of the votes was the Apple TV ($99), considered by many to be the only way to easily beam content from your iPad to an HDTV.
And that wraps up our TUAW Best of 2012 iPad awards. Coming up tomorrow will the the final set of categories, the awards for Mac. Thanks to all of the TUAW readers who took the time and effort to nominate and vote for their favorite products.
Ayer empezamos este especial y hoy continuamos con su segunda parte. Ya sabéis, estamos eligiendo diez juegazos de Android a precios muy atractivos para estas Navidades y aquí llega la segunda remesa de seleccionados. Tenemos de todo: aventura, acción, rol, espíritu retro, súper héroes… usuarios de Android: ¿os lo vais a perder?
Blood and Glory: Legend
¿Que los usuarios de Android no tienen un ‘Infinity Blade’? No pasa nada, los de iOS no tienen la saga ‘Blood & Glory’. En esencia viene a ser una propuesta muy semejante a la de Epic pero esta vez ambientada en la antigua Roma, en la arena de gladiadores.
Allí viviremos combates épicos y disfrutaremos de un apartado gráfico bastante potente mientras utilizamos mecánicas de juego muy semejantes a las que popularizó ‘Infinity Blade’. Vale, el juego no será un dechado de originalidad pero es gratuito y tiene unos valores de producción muy elevados.
¿Algo en contra? Evidentemente el juego está pensado para ser freemium y eso quiere decir que tendremos que mejorar a nuestro combatiente. Ganando combates o directamente comprando monedas con las que aumentar nuestro arsenal. Los precios de los elementos pueden ser un poco disparatados como para obtenerlos gratis dedicándole un tiempo coherente al juego, pero vamos, ‘Infinity Blade 2’ sufre de lo mismo y además vale casi 5 euros cuando no está de rebajas así que…
‘The Bard’s Tale’ es un juegazo y punto. Una aventura de rol a la antigua usanza pero con un apartado gráfico que hasta hace poco hubiese sido impensable en un dispositivo móvil. Estamos hablando de un juego de rol de más de 30 horas de duración, con más de 50 enemigos diferentes, con escenarios enormes y personajes cargados de humor, acidez y cafrería.
Pero es que además la versión de Android viene con añadidos como el soporte para un montón de gamepads así que será posible conectar el mando de la XBox 360 o incluso el Wii Classic Controller si es necesario. El juego ahora mismo está con una rebaja aplicada del 50% y su precio es de 2,28 euros. Vamos, que si en lugar de tomar dos cafés con George Clooney en vuestra Nespresso los dedicáis a esto seguro que salís ganando. Y además os garantizáis buenas carcajadas y una sátira sobre los clichés que tanto abundan en los juegos de rol.
Vaya clasicazo amigos. Sería rico si no hubiese malgastado aquella pequeña fortuna en monedas de 100 pesetas en el salón recreativo de mi barrio dándole caña al ‘Metal Slug’ como si no hubiese un mañana. El juego en sí no tiene mucho misterio, ya sabéis de qué va esto. Se trata de disparar a todo lo que se mueva y si tenéis tiempo rescatar a algunos pobres prisioneros atrapados.
Pero lo importante es disparar, claro. El juego ahora mismo está rebajado a tan sólo 1,79 euros así que si os gusta la acción desenfrenada de este clásico de SNK yo no me lo pensaría demasiado. Por cierto, parece que la última actualización a corregido algunos cuelgues importantes y ha mejorado el rendimiento general del juego. Se lo merece, es una pequeña joyita para los amantes del gatillo fácil. Por cierto, tenéis disponible también el ‘Metal Slug 3’ al mismo precio y durante tiempo limitado.
Lo recomendamos para iOS y lo volvemos a recomendar para dispositivos Android. El juego de Marvel es excelente en muchos sentidos y encontrarlo por 0,76 euros es una auténtica ganga. ¿De qué va? Pues de atollinar a enemigos utilizando la fuerza de Hulk mientras utilizamos unas mecánicas de juego muy similares a las de ‘Infinity Blade’.
El apartado gráfico de ‘Avengers Initiative’ es de lo mejorcito que se puede encontrar y la historia, sin ser de Pulitzer, está lo suficientemente entretenida como para mantenernos un rato pegados a la pantalla. Y eso que este tipo de juegos no tienen su fuerte en la historia claro, pero la mano de Marvel se nota y se agradece.
Por cierto, el juego funciona sólo en los dispositivos Android señalados en sus especificaciones así que si el vuestro no está en esa lista ni penséis en comprarlo, ni arrancará. De ahí muchos comentarios y valoraciones negativas. Pero si podéis disfrutarlo ni lo dudéis, por menos de lo que cuesta un café os lleváis uno de los juegos móviles de este año.
‘Sword & Sorcery’ es uno de los títulos obligados si tienes un dispositivo Android. Ya tiene un tiempo, aunque se ha actualizado hace un par de días aportando diversas mejoras de compatibilidad, pero es uno de esos juegos especiales que emanan cierta magia inexplicable. Una aventura gráfica con toques de acción (muy especiales) cuidada al máximo.
Su apartado gráfico y su brillante banda sonora (imposible jugarlo en “mute”) no os dejarán indiferentes. Ahora mismo está a un precio bastante irresistible por tan sólo 1,49 euros así que si tenéis ganas de acompañar al monje guerrero en su aventura ya estáis tardando. Por cierto, bastante importante, está sólo en inglés y aunque a estas alturas de la película no debería de ser un problema quizá algunas expresiones sí son demasiado rebuscadas u os exigirán un punto más de conocimiento que el habitual “my uncle is rich”.
Yo de vosotros, aunque tengáis problemillas con el inglés, no me lo pensaría demasiado. Y así repasáis mientras jugáis.
El catálogo de juegos Android es como mínimo igual de extenso que el de iOS y ofrece alternativas y ofertas a tener muy en cuenta. Eso sí, como consejo intentad tener claras las especificaciones de vuestro teléfono para que la compatibilidad esté fuera de toda duda. No todos los juegos Android funcionan en todos los dispositivos Android así que andad con ojo.
Los comentarios de la comunidad en este caso son esenciales y os sacarán de más de una duda. Dentro de unos días volveremos con otro especial de juegos pero esta vez para dispositivos Windows Phone, que aunque todavía son pocos los que han optado por la plataforma de Microsoft están en constante crecimiento. Y su catálogo de juegos también.
De momento recordad que si lo que buscáis son juegos de iOS aquí y aquí encontraréis alguna que otra recomendación interesante. Y si tenéis más juegos que compartir con la comunidad, los comentarios se inventaron para eso.
Seguro que muchos de vosotros os habréis encontrado con un ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’ bajo el árbol esta mañana. Tenéis un buen puñado de horas por delante sumando todos sus modos de juegos, pero si lo que queréis es disfrutar al máximo con su modo multijugador y no conocéis la saga, aquí tenéis una pequeña guía para principiantes.
Ante todo hay que dejar bien clara una cosa. No hay una regla básica para conseguir partidas perfectas, depende de muchos factores entre los que se encuentran tu experiencia con el juego, también de los grupos a los que te enfrentes o, simplemente, si tienes o no un día de suerte.
No soy ningún experto en el juego, pero sí lo conozco lo suficientemente bien como para poder dar algunos consejos a aquellos que os iniciéis en el multijugador de la saga por primera vez. El más útil de todos: paciencia, he visto cómo novatos empezaban una tarde con partidas de una baja y treinta muertes y han acabado igualando sus bajas y muertes en cuestión de unas horas. ‘Black Ops II’ es como esa canción que no te acaba de encantar pero tras escucharla varias veces te acaba enganchando. No es que el juego mejore o empeore, es que empiezas a cogerle el punto y con ello llega la diversión.
Consejos útiles
No estás obligado a seguirlos al pie de la letra, ni muchísimo menos, pero aquí hay algunos consejos que podrían ayudarte a la hora de matar más y morir menos. No son verdades absolutas, así que pruébalos y adáptalos a tu estilo de juego.
Ajusta el brillo de la pantalla: al iniciar el juego y controlar el brillo te recomiendan mantener un nivel óptimo enfocado principalmente al modo campaña, pero si quieres evitar sustos en zonas oscuras mientras estás en el multijugador, te recomiendo que lo subas un poco hasta que encuentres un nivel óptimo.
Más sensibilidad, más velocidad de reacción: si pruebas a subir la sensibilidad al máximo nivel creerás que es casi imposible moverte o apuntar, pero sin embargo si habrás visto que en algunas ocasiones los enemigos reaccionan antes que tú al girar. Hazlo poco a poco, empieza jugando con el nivel más bajo en el que te encuentres cómodo y a partir de ahí ves subiéndolo de uno en uno. No tardarás en cogerle el truco a los más altos y, créeme, se nota.
El mapa es tu mejor aliado: he visto a jugadores olvidarse por completo del mapa y acabar con una bala en la cabeza por no tenerlo en cuenta. Puede salvarte de muchas muertes y proporcionarte numerosas bajas, más aún cuando algún compañero lanza un UAV y puedes ver a los enemigos campando a sus anchas por zonas concretas. Úsalo y adelántate a sus movimientos antes de que ellos hagan lo propio contigo.
Controla el escenario: algunos escenarios son más grandes de lo que en las primeras partidas podrías creer, y no tardarás mucho en descubrir zonas o recovecos que tus enemigos pueden usar a su favor. Juega a tu ritmo, pero intenta poner especial atención a la estructura de los mapas, te ayudará a ser más rápido al desplazarte y a evitar ataques de camperos.
Evita enfrentamientos directos: si estás empezando a jugar, ir a lo loco es la peor idea de todas. Ten en cuenta que los escenarios están especialmente diseñados para que haya dos o tres zonas en las que se potencien los enfrentamientos directos entre facciones, no te metas en medio o acabarás muerto en cuestión de segundos, intenta flanquear esos tiroteos para coger a tus enemigos desprevenidos.
Agáchate, pero no abuses de ello: sé que parece difícil estar atento a moverte, disparar y encima intentar esquivar los disparos enemigos, pero la técnica de echarte al suelo cuando te encuentras con alguien de cara puede ser de gran ayuda. Mejora la estabilidad y coges por sorpresa al enemigo, pero no abuses de ello o además de ganarte unos cuantos gritos conseguirás que se aprendan tu táctica y será más fácil matarte.
Partidas para principiantes: antes de empezar a subir niveles contra otros jugadores intenta darle una oportunidad a las partidas mixtas de entrenamiento. En ellas encontrarás grupos con otros usuarios y bots del juego, para que puedas hacerte con el control y sea más fácil llevar a algunos enemigos a la tumba.
¿Cómo subir de nivel más rápido?
Aunque como en todo lo anteriormente mencionado no hay una regla básica para conseguir subir de nivel más rápido en ‘Call of Duty: Black Ops II’, hay algunos elementos del juego que puedes aprovechar para intentar sacar más partido a tus horas de juego. Aquí tienes algunas de las cosas que me han ayudado a subir de nivel y prestigio casi sin darme cuenta.
No te olvides de los desafíos: los desafíos están para algo más que alargar la vida del juego y ofrecerte imágenes para decorar tu tarjeta de jugador, son una fuente de puntos muy importante y cada uno de los objetos, armas y rachas del juego tienen varios desafíos que te ayudarán a sumar puntos adicionales mientras juegas.
Baja confirmada: en este modo consigues 50 puntos por cada baja conseguida y 100 por cada chapa enemiga recogida, así que con un par de muertes puedes plantarte en las primeras rachas y, a partir de ahí seguir sumando. Recoger chapas de compañeros caídos te dará 25 puntos, exactamente los mismos que si un compañero recoge una de las chapas de tus bajas. Sobre todo, intenta ser un buen jugador, no seas un ratero, si tienes a un compañero detrás que te ha salvado el culo de una muerte segura, no le quites su chapa.
Sombrero negro: puede parecer un objeto inútil, pero si continuamente te comes todas las claymore y bouncing betty que colocan tus enemigos por el escenario, el sombrero negro sumado a la ventaja Ingeniero (que muestra equipamiento enemigo marcado en rojo, incluso a través de las paredes) puede ser una buena solución. Además te permitirá robar paquetes, destruir rachas enemigas a distancia y sumar 50 puntos por cada elemento táctico pirateado y 150 por cada racha enemiga destruida. Intenta combinarlo con la ventaja Manos Ágiles para usarlo más rápido.
Rachas de bajas: las rachas de bajas de pocos puntos pueden ser muy golosas para aquellos que no consigáis muchas muertes seguidas, pero los 25 puntos de la explosión de un coche radiocontrol o un cazador pueden convertirse en muchos más usando helicópteros, torretas o incluso el Guardián. Como decía con la sensibilidad, poco a poco ves subiendo de rachas y verás como acaban siendo de gran ayuda.
Prestigio de arma: puede parecer un engorro prestigiar el arma y perder todos los accesorios que has desbloqueado hasta entonces, pero si no lo haces y quieres seguir jugando con ese arma estarás dejando por el camino una buena cantidad de puntos. Además te servirá para aprender a salir de tu zona de comodidad, obligándote a usar otros accesorios que, tal vez, te serían de más ayuda que los que llevas normalmente.
Juega con amigos: la coordinación del juego con amigos también puede ser de gran ayuda, ya no sólo en Baja Confirmada evitando que te quiten las chapas, sobre todo en otros modos como Demolición o Dominio en los que la colaboración es casi primordial para salir airosos. Siempre puedes probar a entablar conversación con el grupo con el que te haya tocado jugador, pero pronto verás que aquellos que van por libre no van a arriesgar sus rachas por salvarte el culo. Eso, con amigos, normalmente, no pasa.
Las mejores clases
La clase perfecta no existe, deja de buscarla. Si bien es cierto que hay armas más fáciles de controlar que otras, a la larga la práctica te dice que con cualquiera puedes conseguir buenas partidas. Además depende mucho de otros factores, como por ejemplo el grupo contra el que estés jugando, el mapa o el modo de juego. Pruébalas todas y aprende a controlar la que más te guste. Pese a ello, si quieres algunos ejemplos, estos tres pueden funcionar muy bien hasta que consigas controlar y mejorar tu propio estilo de juego.
Estilo Rambo: una clase simple y básica para ir a saco y sin contemplaciones. Como arma principal una Type 25, con buena mezcla de cadencia y daño, y una ayuda en forma de mira de punto rojo y empuñadura para tener controlada la precisión en todo momento. Ojo con dejar apretado el gatillo cuando estemos disparando a larga distancia, es mucho mejor usar ráfagas cortas. La combinación de ventaja Manos Ágiles y pistola es para esos momentos en los que tengamos un enemigo delante y nos quedemos sin munición. Cambiamos de arma lo más rápido posible y disparamos las últimas balas que acabarán con él. Si sois de gatillo fácil tal vez sería mejor probar con una pistola de cadencia más alta.
Por último tenemos semtex para cuando nos encontremos con un grupo numeroso o algún campero tocando las narices, Línea Dura para que esas rachas de bajas que tanto cuestan salir lleguen un poco antes y la combinación que antes comentábamos de sombrero negro y ventaja Ingeniero para evitar sustos con los dispositivos tácticos y de paso rascar unos cuantos puntos.
Ninja: Correr, matar y desaparecer de la zona antes de que los enemigos se den cuenta de que te has llevado a dos o tres de su equipo por delante. La clave está en los subfusiles, sin duda alguna las mejores armas del juego si comparamos sus pros y sus contras. Personalmente me quedo con MP7 o MSMC, pero ya sabéis, probad el resto y decidid qué os conviene. Para ir rápido y no complicarnos demasiado la vida le ponemos silenciador (que evitará que aparezcamos en el mapa enemigo al disparar) y puntero láser, ideal para mantener la precisión desde lejos sin necesidad de apuntar.
Nos olvidamos del arma secundaria y el equipo táctico y letal para centrarnos en ser lo más rápidos posibles e ir bordeando el escenario. Para ello usamos las tarjetas especiales de doble ventaja 1 y 3 y añadimos Peso Ligero, Fantasma, Sangre Fría, Destreza y Condicionamiento Extremo. Es una clase un tanto suicida, por lo que es muy recomendable tener la sensibilidad lo más alta posible, pero agradeceréis esa mezcla cuando veáis que, tras morir, os plantáis de nuevo en la acción en un abrir y cerrar de ojos.
Aprendiz de francotirador: nunca he sido un gran crack de los quickshot con el francotirador, así que para los enfrentamientos directos o zonas más estrechas prefiero tener la potencia de una buena escopeta para ir más cómodo. Usamos dos armas principales usando la tarjeta de Exceso de Medios, en primer lugar colocamos el francotirador, a escoger entre DSR 50 o SVU-AS dependiendo de la puntería que tengas, y le añadimos el zoom personalizable y CPU Balística para que la precisión de los disparos aumente.
El caso de la escopeta no admite derecho a réplica, R870 MCS es una maravilla que, controlada con mira láser es realmente cómoda para llevarte a enemigos por delante con un único disparo. Aquí las ventajas y equipo letal o táctico funciona a gusto de cada uno, lo único inamovible es la ventaja de Manos Ligeras, para cambiar entre la primera y la segunda arma lo más rápido posible. Peso Ligero viene bien para desaparecer lo más rápido posible de zonas de conflicto y atacar desde la distancia, pero también para moverte alrededor de los enemigos sin apuntar y atacar con la escopeta. La betty es básica para controlar los flanqueos de enemigos.
Y hasta aquí llega el especial, espero que estos consejos os sirvan para arañar algunas muertes más y morir menos a manos de vuestros enemigos. Ahora os invito a los fans del juego a que compartáis con los novatos vuestra experiencia y les ofrezcáis vuestros trucos y consejos para mejorar.
The next time you see someone on Twitter point to an argument and gleefully announce, “Fight! Fight!” and you retweet that, think about the net you are encouraging and creating. You’re breeding only more of the same.
Oh, we’ve all done it. At least I’ll confess that I’ve done it. I’ve been in fights online I’m ashamed of. Like kids left alone by the substitute teacher, we — many of us — exercised our sudden freedom by shooting spitballs around the room. Have we gotten that out of our systems yet? Isn’t it time to stop and ask what kind of net and society we’re creating here?
I’ve been the object of potshots from a cadre of young curmudgeons who attack me instead of my ideas. We give it a haughty name — the ad hominem attack — but it’s just a kind of would-be assassination, sniping at the person to shut off the idea. I’ve watched these attacks be retweeted as reward, over and over again. Some might say that’s what I get for being public. Hell, I wrote a book about being public. But I hope personal attack isn’t the price one has to pay for sharing thoughts. What chill does that put on public discussion?
I was waiting for another example of a “Fight! Fight!” tweet to write about this choice we have. But then today I read about something far, far worse in singer Amanda Palmer’s blog. She, too, was getting ready to write about being the object of hate online — something we briefly talked about in a conversation regarding social media a few weeks ago. But then Amanda searched and found the tragic, wasteful story of a girl who couldn’t take the abuse she’d received online and off and finally killed herself. That’s only partly a story about the internet. But it’s very much a story about damaged humanity. Go read Amanda’s post now and watch the video there if you can bear to. Especially read the comments: heartfelt stories from more victims of attacks who, thank God, are here to tell their tales and share their lessons.
In the U.K., people are being arrested for posting hate online — “malicious telecommunications,” it’s called, as if the “tele” makes it worse. In France, a government minister is demanding that Twitter help censor, outlaw, and arrest the creators of hate online. I side with Glenn Greenwald on this: Nothing could be more dangerous. “Criminalizing ideas doesn’t make them go away any more than sticking your head in the sand makes unpleasant things disappear,” says Greenwald.
Yes, this is not a trend that can be delegated to government and wished away with legislation or prosecution. Or to put it another way: This is not government’s problem.
This is our problem. Your problem. My problem. Every time we link to, laugh at, and retweet — and retweet and retweet and retweet — personal attacks on people, we only invite more of the same. And every time we do *not* call out someone and scold them for their uncivil behavior, we condone that behavior and invite more of it. Thus we build the net — and the society — we deserve.
Again, I’ll not claim purity myself. I’ve ridiculed people rather than ideas and I’m ashamed for my part in that.
And mind you, I won’t suggest for a moment that we should not attack ideas and argue about them and fight over them with passion and concern. We must argue strenuously about difficult topics like guns and taxes and war. That is deliberative democracy. That process and freedom we must protect.
But when argument over an idea turns to attack against a person, then it crosses the line. When disliking a person becomes public ridicule of that person, it is hate. Dealing with that isn’t the responsibility of government. It is our responsibility.
The next time you see a tweet ridiculing a person or linking to someone who does, please respond with a challenge: “Is this the world you want to encourage? What does this accomplish? What does this create?” A week or so ago, I finally did that myself — “Really?” I asked a Twitter fight announcer. “Is this what you want to encourage? Aren’t you ashamed?” — and I was only sorry I had not done it before.
It would be self-serving and trivial to point to personal examples of attacks that spread. Indeed, it is self-serving — and ultimately only food to the trolls — to respond yourself to attacks on you; that gives the attackers just what they want. But that should not stop me from giving support to others who are attacked by those who think that scoring snark shots will only get them attention (because to date, it does). The next time I see an attack on a person, I need to call it out. I’d ask you to do the same.
We are building the norms of our new net society. It can go either way; there’s nothing, absolutely nothing to say that technology will lead to a better or worse world. It only provides us choices and the opportunity to show our own nature in what we choose. Will you support the fights, the attacks, the hate? Or will you stand up for the victims and against the bullies and trolls and their cheering mobs who gleefully tweet, “Fight! Fight!”?
Please read Amanda’s post and the comments from her supporters — Gaga would call them her little monsters — and take their stories to heart. Whose side are you on? Which net and society will you build?
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In business, we often look to social media as another venue through which to achieve our business goals. It’s a marketing goldmine – at least that’s what the experts are telling us. Sites like Facebook and Twitter are the websites and apps that the people, our potential customers, are visiting, so putting out our marketing messages on these venues makes absolute sense.
The problem with that premise is that people aren’t going to those sites to receive marketing. One can argue that the same is true for television and they would be right. Television is an extremely effective advertising platform for many despite the fact that most people don’t like seeing advertisements. The real difference is choice. On television, radio, and other venues, we have the choice to change the channel but normally we sit through and watch the marketing in between our shows because we don’t want to miss it when it comes back on. On social media, the messages are chosen. Those who are posting content that doesn’t appeal can be easily unfollowed. In the case of Facebook, they can be blocked, removed from the news feed, unfollowed, and even reported as spam.
It’s a paradox. How does a business achieve their goals on social media while maintaining a connection with the audience that prevents them from blocking us? There are several answers to this question and many different strategies that can work, but one of the easiest and most underutilized is simply posting the things that we and our audience enjoy.
In the example above, the city in which a car dealership resided had their local team playing for their playoff lives. Sunday was the day that would determine whether it was time to pack it up for the season or continue on into the playoffs. The post itself, a simple message, was put on Facebook the day before the game and promoted through Facebook ads. The results were very strong. It had over 100 likes, a handful of comments, and dozens of shares, the majority of which were done by locals to the area since the Facebook ads were extremely geo-targeted.
How will this help them sell more cars? First, it expresses the dealership’s personality. They love their local team. It’s not a marketing ploy – the owners and most of the employees are strong supporters of their football team. Second, it’s a shared love – many of their customers and potential customers are fans. These two things are great from a PR and branding perspective but they don’t answer the question of how this directly helps them sell more.
That answer is the algorithmic response. When a piece of content resonates and is widely liked and shared by the target audience, it dramatically improves the ability for the marketing messages that follow to be seen by the same people and their friends. Facebook’s and Google+’s algorithms are designed to reward businesses and individuals who post popular content with more visibility. By working in the truly likable things within a business’ market area into the overall social media mix, the marketing messages will see more exposure. One strategically placed and properly promoted “fun” or “inspiring” message followed by one or two marketing messages will have a dramatically higher reach than a flurry of marketing messages that are not set up by the fun pieces.
The easiest way to find the right content is to look inwards. What do you know? What do you like? What do you enjoy that your audience will enjoy as well? For local businesses, it’s best to stay laser focused; don’t jump on a movie’s buzz bandwagon, for example, but stay in the realm of your business’ expertise and/or the local area’s interest.
As with so many pieces of advice that I’ve been giving lately, the moral of the story is that if you “keep it real” and deliver authentic messages that resonate within you, there’s a good chance they’ll resonate with your audience as well.
Here’s a quick, rather low-quality teaser clip from Nicolas Winding Refn‘s new film, Only God Forgives. The twenty seconds or so of footage shows star Ryan Gosling and co-star Kristen Scott Thomas in their roles in Refn’s Thai-set revenge film. Just what is going on here? Difficult to tell, exactly, but even this brief look shows the same blend of cool command and potential violence that characterized Refn and Gosling’s last outing, Drive.
See the footage below; it probably won’t stay online for long.
Only God Forgives doesn’t have a release date yet, but we’ll most likely see it premiere at Cannes, and then hit the US in the months that follow.
Julian (Gosling) lives in exile in Bangkok where he runs a Thai boxing club as a front for the family's drugs smuggling operation. When Julian's brother Billy is killed their mother, Jenna (Kristen Scott Thomas), arrives in the city. She wants revenge and forces Julian to find the killer. Julian's contacts in the criminal underworld lead him directly to The Angel of Vengeance, a retired police officer who knows everything and who is both Judge and Punisher. Jenna demands that Julian kill The Angel of Vengeance, an act that will cost him dearly.
MAC Cosmetics has announced the return of its Candy Yum-Yum lipstick. The lipstick defeated Moxie and Rocker Red to become MAC's most requested lipstick. MAC revealed in a tweet that Candy Yum-Yum is back in U.S. store now and will arrive internationally in February. The lipstick costs $15 and can found here on maccosmetics.com.
Louis Vuitton has announced the opening of its winter resort store in Gstaad, Switzerland. The resort is located on the picturesque promenade in the middle of the village. Louis Vuitton also released this feature, which features Swiss blogger Kayture on a fantastical journey to the store. Take a look:
The New York Times' Melissa Clark demonstrates how to make a modern version of the classic Cinnamon Rolls. It certainly takes a while -- the yeast dough must rise twice, after all. But the recipe is fairly straight forward. Melissa was inspired to tweak the classic recipe by a visit to Ikea before Christmas. The scent of cinnamon buns was in the air. She added cardamom to the recipe, and substituted brown sugar for white in the filling and the topping. So the rolls have a brown butter and sugar glaze instead of the traditional white frosting. Take a look:
You can see Melissa's recipe for Butterscotch Glazed Cinnamon Rolls here.
The New York Timesreports that a small plane carrying Vittorio Missoni, 58, the co-owner of the Missoni fashion empire, is missing off the coast of Venezuela. The plane carried four people, including Vittorio, his wife Maurizia Castiglioni and two friends left the luxury island result of Los Roques. Contact with the plan was lost shortly after takeoff. The trip from Los Roques to Caracas normally take only half an hour. The plane has been missing since yesterday.
Venezuela's interior minister, Nestor Reverol, went on television last to discuss the missing plane. He said the plane was a BN2 Islander. It took off from the resort. Contact was lost with the plane when it was just 10 nautical miles south of Los Roques.
The Venezuelan Coast Guard has been searching by sea and air, but so far they cannot find the plane or its passengers. Members of the Missoni family are flying from Italy to Venezuela and are absolutely distraught according to local news reports.
Vittorio Missoni runs the fashion label, along with this brother Luca and sister Angela. Angela is the chief fashion designer of the house their parents founded.
Williams-Sonoma is already getting ready for Valentine's Day with the launch of its Valentine Gummy Hearts. The soft and chewy hearts are cinnamon flavored. These gummy hearts could also be used as decoration for Valentine's cakes, cupcakes and other treats. The gummy hearts cost $9.95 for an 11 oz. bag.
Firebox has 3D dinosaur cookie cutters available for pre-order. Each set of cookie cutters makes three cookies that are assembled together to make the whole dinosaur cookie. The dinos available include Triceratops, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and T-Rex. The cookies cost $13 and can be found here.
If you prefer 2D dinosaur cookie cutters, then Foose Cookie Cutters has several tin dinosaur cookie cutters available here for $2.29 to $2.95 each. They include a trycerotops, spinosaurus, camptosaurus, pterodactyl, apatasaurus and more. Foose also sells a set of 7 for $14.95.
Alison Sweeney talked about the new season of Biggest Loser on the Today Show. The reality series will let children participate for the first time this season. Alison explains that the children are not competing or weighing in. Alison says Jillian Michaels also returns this season and she is "more Jillian than ever." Take a look:
Actor Patrick Dempsey's investor group, Global Baristas, outbid Starbucks to acquire Tully's Coffee. The L.A. Timesreports that Global Baristas bid $9.15 million for Tully's. Dempsey referred to Starbucks as the "green monster" in a tweet.
We met the green monster, looked her in the eye, and...SHE BLINKED!We got it!Thank you Seattle!
The U.S. Bankruptcy court will hold a hearing to review the bid on Friday, January 11, 2013.
Dempsey told the AP that he plans to be very involved in building the company. He says, "I feel a tremendous responsibility to this company and to my employees and to building this company up and to stabilizing it. I don't think we have to worry about growth. We just have to worry about quality control and customer service." Take a look:
Macy's has announced several store closings and planned store openings. Macy's calls them "normal-course adjustments" to its portfolio of stores in a release. The closings and openings will leave Macy's with a total of 798 stores.
Store Closings
Paseo Colorado, Pasadena, CA
Belmont, MA
Downtown Honolulu, HI
Downtown St. Paul, MN
Downtown Houston, TX
Store Openings
Mall of Victor Valley, Victorville, CA - spring 2013
You know what they say as a man grows up – he might not be playing with little green army men made out of plastic any more, but would have moved on to big boys' toys. Some of these could be rather expensive, while others are affordable, such as the $89.99 Doctor Who Tardis Play Tent. You can be sure that the little ones in your home too, would not be able to resist playing with this, but you can kindly ask them to move out so that you can check out the 11th Doctor’s control room all by yourself. Not only that, since it is made out of sturdy canvas construction and stand at nearly 6 feet in height, there is plenty of space in there to hook up with other Doctor Who fans should you erect this at your backyard the next time you host a party in your home.
If you do not want to place the Doctor Who Play Tent outside of your four walls, place it right in your living room, it would not mind such a position, either. Entering it, you are able to use your imagination as to what goes on within the four canvas walls. Once done, just fold it back and it can be easily stashed away in the storeroom without taking up too much space. Of course, you might want to have some heart for the little ones and let them play in it from time to time, right?
When it comes to gaming peripherals, you know for sure that a company such as Razer is right there at the top of the list to be considered by gamers. I clearly remember how the original Razer Boomslang caught my attention back in the days when I was using a Logitech ball mouse, and boy was it a looker! Well, Razer has graduated to many different kinds of gaming peripherals since, and this time around, we are privy to the Razer Orbweaver mechanical gaming keypad which intends to offer you an edge in executing your in-game commands, so much so that you will always remain a step ahead of the competition.
Razer Orbweaver, in a nutshell, is a fully customizable mechanical gaming keypad that features adaptable ergonomics for maximum control, sporting tournament-grade controls which would definitely put any worries of it not being able to withstand the rigors of adrenaline pumping gaming for hours on end. The Razer Orbweaver will continue from where its predecessor, the Razer Nostromo, left off, as it allows gamers to gamers bind a virtually infinite number of controls to 20 mechanical keys as well as a programmable eight-way directional thumb-pad.
All it takes to trigger each key is a mere 50 grams of force, meaning commands are virtually executed as fast as your fingers are able to act, and in some cases, faster than the enemy can react, which might even draw claims that you are cheating, or that your gameplay when viewed later on, could almost border on the psychic.
The thumb-pad itself can be used for movement or as a modifier for endless combinations, and it would not be too hard to believe that gamers who have not given the Razer Orbweaver a go before would be loathe to part with it in the future. The asking price has been set at $129.99 for the Razer Orbweaver, making this a purchase that is not necessary, although it would be more than a welcome to any gaming peripheral arsenal.
The Los Angeles Dodgers are considering to launch a social media loyalty program for fans. Is Major League Baseball hitting a home run when it comes to social media?
The LA Dodgers fans would receive points for retweeting, replying, and helping the Dodgers gain followers, in exchange for prizes like tickets and merchandise.
MLB has stepped up their game social media wise in 2012. They got organized, by providing social media outlets for every team, and interacting with fans as they go.
What is their main goal? MLB.com's director of new media Andrew Patterson explains:
“Baseball is really a social conversation for us. There’s a game going on, but there’s a conversation happening too.”
And they are definitely putting this conversation to good use.
Statistics According to research done by Banyan Branch, a social media agency, the most popular Major League teams present on social media are the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox, two of the biggest East coast teams. The Yankees lead with over 6 million fans on Facebook, and 790,000 Twitter followers.
The Red Sox come in second with 3 million Facebook fans, and 340,000 Twitter followers. With over 27,000 tweets, however, the San Francisco Giants are most active on Twitter.
But what exactly is the league doing to interact with its fans?
MLB Fan Cave (2011/2012) MLB chose a team of 9 fans, out of 10,000 applicants, to be inhabitants of the Fan Cave. The Fan Cave is “located at 4th Street and Broadway in the heart of New York City’s Greenwich Village” and “is a first-of-its-kind space mixing baseball with music, popular culture, media, interactive technology and art.”
The Fan Cave hosted “fan events, concerts, MBL player and celebrity appearances.” The team of 9 so-called Cave Dwellers were tasked with watching every single game of the 2012 MLB season, and talking/writing about their experiences through videos, blogs, and social media.
MLB.tv(April, 2012) During its #MLBTVme promotion (MLB.tv is an American subscription based audio and video service which through two different service tiers allows users to hear and watch HD quality Major League Baseball games live via a high-speed Internet connection) on the official Twitter account of MLB, a number of trivia questions were tweeted.
Fans could tweet the correct answer, and were automatically entered into a sweepstakes to win prizes. The kicker is, the more fans tweeted using the hashtag, and the longer the hashtag was trending, the more prizes MLB gave away.
Also in April, MLB created Pinterest and Tumblr pages for every team connected to the League, and assigned real time correspondents to all its 30 ballparks, to do live correspondence on social media outlets.
Player Tweets (July, 2012) MLB made social media history when they allowed players to live post to social media during the All-Star Game. Players were given the opportunity to sit down with laptops or phones after they’d left the game, and post updates on Twitter and Facebook, all with consent of their league.
MLB executive vice president of business Tim Brosnan said:
"At the end of the day, the social media undertaking is about giving fans more access, giving them a deeper connection to what's going on during the event."
MLB Members Only (September, 2012) In September, MLB started tweeting using the hashtag #MLBMembersOnly. No one knew what it was about, but MLB tweeted a warning, telling people to follow the MLB Twitter account while they still could. The tweet was retweeted more than a 1000 times.
A short period later, the MLB account was set to private for 6 hours. The news of MLB’s private account went viral. Fans who were already following MLB were rewarded for their loyalty: MLB was giving away everything, from tickets to team merchandise. Fans were able to be part of something that was exclusive to them, not to anyone in the world.
Around this time, MLB also put their confidence into Instagram. MLB and every team in the League got their own official Instagram pages, posting behind-the-scenes footage and game shots, and Instagram got a place on the teams’ official websites. The MLB was the first professional sports league to have every single one of their teams on Instagram.
Pictober (October, 2012) Last October, MLB launched their first Instagram related effort. During baseball’s postseason, fans were encouraged to take photos of the ways they support their favorite teams, using Instagram. By adding a geolocation, and the hashtag of the name of your team, the photo was added to a map on MLB.com.
My opinion What does MLB do best on their social channels, you ask? I believe the answer to that question is fan engagement. They are willing to do anything for their fans, and reward them for their unlimited support.
They listen to the conversation fans are having, and actively play into what fans want and like. And that makes their efforts successful. I think every sports league should look at MLB as an example of what to do with their social media channels.
What About You? What do you think of MLB’s social media activities? Or The Los Angeles Dodgers social CRM approach? I would love to read your opinion in the comments below.
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There’s something I’ve been hoping to encounter over the years of writing about tech and gadgets that never seems to materialize: A hardware switch to disconnect my device from all outside communication. Call me paranoid, but airplane mode just isn’t good enough for me. Such a switch for wireless (or for the camera, or the microphone) seems to me an elementary protection against a number of potential dangers, and I doubt I’m the only one who would appreciate it.
It’s not that I think The Man is secretly tracking my phone at all times, even when I’m in airplane mode. If anything, He and the companies we all pay for data connections are doing so relatively openly! That’s expected now, and circumvented in other ways. It’s just a matter of trust in a number of parties’ honesty and competency.
You trust Apple or Google or whoever makes your phone or laptop to successfully shut off the wireless in your device when you ask it to. And that trust probably isn’t misplaced — failing to do so would have incurred the wrath of the FAA and any number of privacy and security organizations. In the same way, you also trust that when the LED isn’t lit, your camera isn’t active, and likewise the microphone.
But it isn’t much in the way of fantasy to imagine an emergency signal that wakes up a component, just as there are signals and techniques being patented to turn them off. If Apple is considering (and probably engineering) a means to shut down your camera so it can’t take pictures of copyrighted works, aren’t immediate extrapolations from that a legitimate concern?
So why not have a way to totally shut down components of a device? There’s no trust necessary if you yourself can see that the method of providing power to the wireless chip or camera module has been interrupted.
Not everyone cares, of course. But be honest: How many of you with discrete webcams have them pointed anywhere but at you right now? How many of you are always aware of the presence of the unblinking, cyclopean electronic eye above your laptop’s screen? Have you never considered how easy it might be to hijack the microphone or camera for a hacker or, for that matter, someone lawfully observing you using means graciously provided by the creator of the OS? Carrier IQ, anybody? FBI begging software companies for government backdoor privileges?
It’s not paranoia to have a chain lock as well as a deadbolt — redundancy is just a part of good security practices.
When you’re protecting your bank account, or your email, you don’t hesitate to ask for two-factor authentication. One would think that when setting up your daughter’s webcam or phone, you’d be able to take similarly thorough steps. Perhaps even with the pervasion of smartphones and other connected devices in our homes and on our persons, not enough people are aware of the fact that the only lock on their digital devices is one frequently exposed, indeed advertised, to the online world. To have a switch under your thumb that renders your device inaccessible to the physical phenomenon used to operate it is the ultimate protection. That people aren’t clamoring for it is honestly surprising to me.
Unfortunately, I doubt it will happen for a number of reasons. It’s troublesome for the user to have to worry about it, for one thing, and most would ignore it. It also undermines trust in the OS and its security — would you buy a lock from a guy who said “maybe you should get this one too, just in case”? And technically speaking, shutting off and restarting a component constantly (especially in system-on-a-chip architecture) is not trivial. It’s doubtful manufacturers will decide to isolate certain portions just so you can power them on and off at will (again, not a simple process).
Still, I can dream. I’ve always felt the need to exert control over my devices, and I am frustrated at every point along the frontier where my privileges as a user end. I have faith, at least, in people of like mind but more capable, to either provide such security measures as will satisfy those even more suspicious than myself, or to convince me of their superfluity.
Editor's note: Ross Rubin is principal analyst at Reticle Research and blogs at Techspressive. Each column will look at crowdfunded products that have either met or missed their funding goals. Follow him on Twitter @rossrubin.
Whether you rocked your New Year's Eve Gangnam Style, fed your Bieber fever, or just took in a traditional Auld Lang Syne, there was an opportunity to get that music out of your smartphone and share it with the rest of the party. And as long as that party wasn't larger than, say, a half-dozen people, any number of the more than dozen Bluetooth speakers on the market could help you with that task.
Indeed, despite being a poor vehicle through which to demonstrate audio quality, Kickstarter did its part in 2012 to fund a few such products. These included the stylish Hidden Radio in January, which raised nearly $1 million; Carbon Audio's silicone-encased, tablet-gripping Zooka in March; and the weather-resistant Turtle Shell from Outdoor Tech in October. With 2013 barely underway, though, three more Bluetooth speakers have set out not only to amplify tunes but crowdfunding's unceasing cry for financial support.
Backed: Boombot Rex. What happens when you take a bunch of hip San Francisco product designers and put them into a neon-lit studio from which they can call their tattoo-covered bros? Boombotix, a startuptopia where the world is nothing but tasty surfin', solderin' and spearphonin'. The hexagonal Boombox Rex has a similar perforated exterior to the Turtle Shell and is also ruggedized. But while some of the feedback on that earlier weather-resistant project have found its audio quality lacking, the Rex aims to achieve a rich sound by integrating two 36 mm drivers and a small woofer within its frame.
Deep bass requires deep pockets. The more than 1,100 backers eager to encourage the mostly healthy-living, product-development equivalent of The Real World — and perhaps pick up one of the $80 powerhouses — have contributed more than three times the compaign's $27,000 goal. And that’s with about six days left in the campaign. The Rex is due in March; that is, assuming the team can tear itself away from the lives you wish you had.
Backed: CoverPlay Mojo. The rectangular CoverPlay Mojo may not have as creative a shape as the Rex, but it squarely beats it in at least one dimension: thickness. The 7 mm speaker is such a natural accessory for svelte tablets that CoverPlay has designed a case that can hold both as a $30 accessory. Offering something like it as a stretch goal would have been a nice bonus for the campaign, but the Mojo held on to its own mojo by a margin nearly as slim as the speaker itself, reaching its $30,000 funding goal with less than a grand to spare. Instead, the company introduced a mid-priced reward tier in its last 10 days ($95 as opposed to the $105 previously offered), which helped it get over the edge. Austin Powers may have been able to claim his mojo in less than two hours, but backers are slated to get their Mojos in March.
Whacked: XyloBeats. The last time someone offered something as cute, wooden, and capable of remote audio as the cylindrical Xylobeats was at the end of Terry Fator's arm at The Mirage. The small "eco-friendly" XyloBeats are roughly as tall as their diameter and are available in six wood finishes. The top end of the rewards included a set of all six for $160.
But the campaign is in its final days with less than 20 percent of its goal reached. It's difficult to see where the XyloBeats campaign went wrong. The goal was not outlandish at $10,000, and the reward prices were downright cheap – not only by Kickstarter standards but even in comparison to the overall market for Bluetooth speakers. People may have been turned off by needing to add a second unit to achieve stereo, but that was also true for the pricier and more powerful wooden 1Q that raised nearly $200,000 last summer.
Fujifilm unveiled its latest camera today just ahead of the official start of CES, via a press release on its website. The new X100S is a successor to Fujifilm’s well-received X100, the fixed prime lens premium compact camera that won lots of accolades from critics, but was consistently dinged for sub-par autofocus performance. The X100S boasts faster autofocus, according to Fujifilm, thanks to phase detection tech on the new X-Trans CMOS II sensor it uses.
In fact, Fujifilm claims that the X100S can even claim the title of “the world’s fastest AF,” achieving a lock in as little as 0.08 seconds, depending on conditions. Other improvements also boost the overall speed with which a photographer using the X100S can start snapping pics; the EXR Processor II means the camera starts up in just 0.5 seconds, and can shoot at 0.5 second intervals with a shutter lag time of just 0.01 seconds. There’s Focus Peak Highlighting, which some users may recognize from Sony cameras, which overlays a border on the areas in the electronic viewfinder where the image is in focus, and a new digital split image feature which shows image side-by-side to aid in manual focusing, which Fujifilm says is very handy when shooting wide open, or at close-up subjects.
Another benefit of the new X-Trans II and EXR Processor II, both of which are upgrades over the previous versions included in the X100, is that these are said to be able to reduce noise by more than 30 percent versus the X100. The 16.3 megapixel X100 was said to be able to outshoot even some full-frame DSLR competitors in low-light when it arrived, and the X100S, which retains the same 16.3 megapixel resolution as the previous version, should be able to make similar claims based on these performance improvements. It can also manage burst mode at 6fps at full resolution.
The X100 was one of the most tempting cameras I’ve ever laid hands on as a photographer, but the AF limitations were what ultimately stopped me picking one up. Fujifilm doesn’t mention price or street date in its release for the X100S, but if the AF is as good as advertised, and it improves on already excellent low-light performance, this should be well worth whatever Fujifilm is asking, especially if it’s in the same ballpark as the X100. Hopefully we’ll get our chance to go hands-on this week at CES 2013.
Interesting things take time and money. 
My name is Angie, and I am honored to be guest posting on Org Junkie. I'm an avid reader of all types of helpful information, and known to friends and family as an "ideas person." I have enjoyed writing my entire life, and consider it my hobby. My other hobbies are water sports, and trying to squeeze in some exercise when I can. I am fortunate to have a wonderful husband, two spirited children, and a career that I love in academia. I started my website 
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After I was satiated with hover style, I quickly coded it up ghetto-style directly in Chrome dev tools to see how the interaction felt. I'm glad I made a prototype first because I quickly realized that hovering over each photo and then displaying a full-width overlay was jarring and abrupt to the user.
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