About myspace

Google Alphabets

2010-03-23T06:47:00.000+02:00

Well remember those days when you would say A for apple, B for bat and so on. Those days seem to have left far behind. Presenting the generation next – Google alphabets. The alphabets are based on the searches in the international edition of Google. Enjoy!

Well I thought it would still be A for apple. You know the one with i. Let’s see what more surprises are in store.

Bad luck for Bank of America.

Cricket isn’t even in the top ten list.

Another indication that the people are turning erudite. Disney manages to just get into the top ten.

Indeed, it deserves the position.

Oh, even a moron could’ve predicted that.

Again no surprise. It is followed by Google maps, Google earth and Google.com.

Still hot eh!

Now that’s a bit of surprise. No “Incredible” India, no ipod in the top ten list. Movies rock.

Again, that’s totally new for me. Seems like a low-fare airline. Yeah with recession hanging around, it shouldn’t be a surprise for many. But then, jobs should have topped the list.

It proves recession hasn’t hit the retail sector much.

Home improvement is a never ending task. Lowe’s on a roll.

Social networking is fun. No surprise here. Everyone needs a bit of space even if it’s virtual.

Movies are immortal.

The popularity hasn’t been hit even when offices are shut around the globe. Olympics gets the second spot and Oprah holds on to the tenth spot.

Avatar’s popularity must have helped this online radio major. The list also includes my favourite Pizza Hut. Paypal and Pirate Bay too find their name on the list. Notable miss: Playstation.

With every site providing options for status updates, quotes are more in demand. Well, a witty saying proves nothing.

What more can you expect when people are more keen in selling their homes. Rotten Tomatoes just manages to get into the top ten list.

Another low-cost airline. And this is even more popular. So popular that in 2009 it has transported more passengers than any other airline in the world. Skype gets the third position and the super glamour Super Bowl has to satisfy with the sixth position. Sony doesn’t finds a place in the top ten.

This has to be the mother of all heart breaks. Tiger Woods and Twitter falls short and comes second and third respectively. Now who’s gonna tweet that?

In the age of super fast communication systems, the company has managed to stay on. There are two of my favourites in the list – urban dictionary and utorrent.

If it is the largest telecommunications operator, it is quite natural to be on the top of this list. Victoria Secret is second. vlc is there and the notable exception is Virgin.

Need I say anything about it. Wikipedia comes third.

Microsoft got one more reason to cheer about. Notable misses: Xerox and xe.

Youtube dislodges Yahoo! from the popularity list. Yellow Pages manages to hold on to the fourth position.

Yet another real estate site finds the top position. Zune sneaks in. And surprise surprise, Zoe Saldana is at ninth. It’s always rewarding to work with James Cameron.

[Via http://arjunjk.wordpress.com]

MetsBlog.com – News: Adam Rubin going to ESPN New York

The Relationship with Your Manager

2010-03-23T01:48:00.000+02:00

Building a relationship with your manager can be tough sometimes, but remember these simple rules and the relationship you have with your superiors will certainly have the potential to be successful.

We all want to succeed

We like people who help us succeed. You will build trust and credibility with your manager when you prove that your goal is to help them succeed. This doesn’t mean you are a “yes sir” person, always agreeing (more on this below), but rather that your focus is on their success, which is ultimately your organizations success. When they look good, you’ll look good and you’ll reach your departments objectives as well, developing a reputation of someone who delivers results.

Feed them the right information

I mentioned not being a “yes sir”. You role is to be a subject matter expert. It doesn’t matter what the subject is, only that in your role it’s your primary focus. As such, you have an obligation to ensure that your manager understands what’s important in detail. I’ve always worked with the understanding that I’ll make sure my manager has all the information, and I’ll fight for what I think is right. Until they make a decision, I’ll work hard to defend my position as the subject matter expert. But here’s the key; when your manager makes a decision, forget your opinion because it’s gone and over with. Never tell people down the road that you thought it was a bad choice, or were fighting for another choice. Remember, we’re going for trust and credibility, not undermining authority. Show your manager that you have the guts to fight for what you think is right, and the fortitude to stand at his side even though he went a different direction.

Market them and your company

Never tell people that you don’t like working for them, their stupid or you hate working for them. Remember, you’re trying to help them succeed, not run them into the ground. If you talk about them in a negative light, or even bad mouth the company you work for, it’s time to leave and find something new because you’ve torn down the foundation to your career success. Be an advocate for your organization, your boss and your situation. If you can’t, update your resume and find somewhere you can.

You don’t need to be close friends with your employer (although that can be nice), but you definitely need to be on the same page, working towards the same goal and objectives. If you’re fighting against them rather than with them, you will do damage to your reputation, be worthless to your company and be your own biggest roadblock to success.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Subscribe today, and connect with me on Twitter and let’s talk about your experiences.

[Via http://matthew-schmitt.com]

6 Subtle Ways The News Media Disguises Bullshit As Fact

Internet Convergence vs. Divergence

2010-03-20T09:39:00.000+02:00

Facebook and Twitter are challenging the very foundation of our internet experience. From the days of dial-up, the Internet has been the most prolific catalog of human experience in recorded history. Services like Google and Yahoo have made millions of dollars organizing all of that data for us to search, but social networks like Facebook and MySpace, coupled with the emergence of real-time information provided by Twitter have irreversibly altered the landscape of the Internet.

Many consider email the advent of the social web and modern email clients like Gmail and Yahoo! Mail are more easily compared to social networks, but at its heart, email is just a messaging service. It might deliver messages in the blink of an eye instead of taking days or weeks, but in the end it’s just a digital form of mail. Chat rooms are another form of early social communication, but real identities were very rarely ever linked to this communication and nascent chat rooms more or less resembled the wild west of creepsters and registered sex offenders.

The true advent of widely accepted social interaction on the web are instant messenger services where you communicated with people you knew and who knew you in real-time chat windows. It was the beginning of real conversations on the web. Instant messaging served as proof of concept that people desired to use the internet as a social medium.

Direct instant messaging services like AIM were essentially the real-time expression of an email correspondence. You can think of Twitter in the same frame of real-time expression of an already established form of social media communication, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

MySpace and eventually Facebook upped the anty when they allowed users to create profiles that they could customize to reflect their individuality and connect to other profiles that reflected their real life group of friends and family. If instant messaging gave us a voice to communicate digitally, then social networks gave us a presence on the Internet that reflected our personality in the real world.

I’d also argue that MySpace’s fall from grace could be partly blamed to the nature of user-expression in their profiles. Many people immediately reference the customizable profile elements as a primary draw for creating a MySpace profile, but after a while the aesthetic of the MySpace community became very confused and to be frank, ugly. Not to discount the importance of individuality, but connections are usually formed because of commonalities and feelings of familiarity/trust. The aesthetic of MySpace, I believe, created a subliminal trust barrier because it emphasized our differences instead of what naturally draws us together. Facebook on the other hand has standard profiles that allow users to just control the information that they share. Even MySpace’s name emphasizes individuality over community. MySpace. Not YourSpace or OurSpace. MySpace.

Facebook’s introduction to the market and it’s origin as an elite-college social network gave it an incubation period that was healthy for the development of it’s culture. While most see students as crazy, reckless and impulsive (which they usually are), I’d argue they are the most aware of and in-tune with social influences that permeate their circles. Being a college student is tough. A completely new set of people in your life forces you to connect with a new set of friends and communities for you to express yourself. As young adults gain more independence to explore and own their self-expression, they also become very aware of how they are perceived and this gives them an incentive to actively control that perception. This isn’t just true of college students. Teens and even kids in grade school are highly aware of social status, what’s cool and what isn’t. This aspect of student culture transfered to the early iterations of Facebook as students on the network were highly aware that their profile could easily be the first impression they make on a number of people. When you don’t know whether your crush or your arch-enemy is reading up on your activities, interests and groups, you tend to self-censor a little more carefully. This leads to profiles that are a little tamer, but ultimately more inviting to connection with a wider net of people because there are fewer outlier/alienating elements included in profiles. The profiles also more closely reflect the real-life expression of our identity because most of us are very proficient at controlling our perceptions through self-censorship.

Fast forward to 2010 and social networks have begun to dominate discussion in the advertising world and among thought-leaders developing tomorrow’s business models. The founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, is one of those thought-leaders. He sees Facebook and the social web overtaking search engines as the primary portal through which people interface with the web. I won’t argue with this point. I do believe as the social web will continue to develop and deepen digital relationships, that social networks will become our homepage and primary reason for going online, but I also believe that search engines and the information-web have a unique role independent of the social-web.

Those who argue that the internet experience is converging into one portal that people will use both socially and to seek information seem to ignore the fact that digital technology, in almost every instance, begins to mimic our real life experience. If our real life were 100% social and all of the information we learned was through our friends and family, then I’d jump right on the bandwagon for a one-portal interface solution to the internet. This is not the case though. We seek information from sources outside our social sphere and interact with the world in many ways that have nothing to do with our friends. Sure, we seek the opinion of our peers on subjects, but many people prefer to develop their own perspective before letting others influence their opinion. How is that possible if social networks and the influence of our peers is interwoven with all of our internet experience?

In the end, I don’t see the information-web and social-web experiences converging into a single solution for all your internet needs. Facebook and other social networking services like Twitter and Foursquare have a long way to go before they have maximized their online potential because they’re only starting to integrate themselves tangibly into our real life experiences. The power of digital word-of-mouth is only starting to be felt because consumers are still acclimating to the idea of expressing opinions online. The rise of blogging, Twitter, status updates and viral content online is helping drive this expression to the mainstream. As opinion expression spreads through the culture of the internet and more people become comfortable with sharing their thoughts online, businesses will be forced to listen and encourage this feedback because it will provide them invaluable data on their customers that they’ve never really had access to before. From a research perspective, think of social media as the largest representative sample in the history of research.

Personal expression is extremely important to the growth and integration of the Internet as a ubiquitous aspect of our everyday lives, but the web as a source of independent information and cataloging will always be a part of our user-experience. A converged Internet would be like living in a world without libraries or bookstores where you could only borrow buy books based on your friend’s interests and literary purchase history. There is no winner in this war between social and independent portal experiences because the “battle” is just a narrative that has been developed based on too narrow of a perspective. The user-experience will eventually converge in it’s ubiquity, but diverge in the expression of that ubiquity, ultimately reflecting the very complexity of those who created the experience.

Jackson Pollock's Convergence

[Via http://thedigitalanalyst.com]

Fox News -- the store! (pic) -- The Live Feed | THR

What if websites were...

2010-03-20T01:58:00.000+02:00

So I found a collection of “what if websites were…” images. Most of them are 9gag.com. Be sure to share them and let me know which ones you like the most

If browser were people… What if browser were women?

[Via http://sarcasticblogger.wordpress.com]

Microsoft Contemplating 360 USB Storage? News

Rise Up!

2010-03-18T09:38:00.000+02:00

Our new Myspace design for Cypress Hill has just been launched! This was an incredibly fun project to work on, mainly because I had great assets to work with. I would like to give a special props/thanks to Mr. Frank Maddocks for kicking so much ass on the cover art for “Rise Up”, which is set to hit stores on…… Wait, I’ll give you ONE guess as to the release date… Thats right, international “Smoke a Lot of Weed Day”. SHOCKER! Circa Survive also has a new album coming out on that very same day that I am very excited to hear called “Blue Sky Noise”. (**shinfo)

Anyways, snag both of these great CD’s on April 20th, unless you, for some reason, happen to be too lazy on that particular day. You know what, fuck it, just buy em on Wednesday.

Til then, you can preview a few tracks on Cypress Hill’s BRAND SPANKIN NEW MYSPACE!

[Via http://sidelongmedia.wordpress.com]

Hitwise: People get their news from Facebook and Google — not ...

something's got to give ...

2010-03-16T17:36:00.000+02:00

You hear enough women say that women these days – can do it all. I woke up this morning questioning the validity of these statements and the percentage of mothers who have deluded themselves in believing into such overused cliché.

When I was working full-time; I was always worrying about my kids and spent three-quarters of my day feeling very guilty about leaving them to other people. I always felt like I was missing out on seeing them, getting to know them and knowing them completely. It was like a burden I carried all day at work. I didn’t function well and probably got away with just using 2% of my brain if any. I’ve always put my job second and that was fine with me because I knew that if my kids grew up without a sense of direction – then I’ve messed up in a big way and at that point I know the damage would be irrevocable.

Growing up, my mother worked 18-hour days. I always thought she was insane! My father on the other hand; had a 9-5 job and tried very hard to keep order in our home. It was tough; but as my sister and I grew older; we learned to adapt and do things for ourselves. I probably spent a good amount of my teenage years convincing myself that I was fine, that our life was ok and that I didn’t miss out on anything special. My sister and I certainly didn’t have everything but we’ve managed to get decent grades at school; rarely got ourselves in trouble and stayed away from the wrong type of friends. All of that, without my parents pushing us to do better in school or giving us lectures about how to pick the right friends. They were pretty easy-going as far as parents goes. Majority of my friend’s parents also worked; not the kind of long hours my parents did but they dealt with the same things as I did. It was the norm for me and looking back; I have no regrets or anger towards my parents because they weren’t there for my volleyball games or award ceremonies. They did the best they could and if I couldn’t remember any instances when they were present for me – then so be it. I don’t love and respect them any less.

Now that I am a mother of four, I’ve been trying to examine my life a little closer. I’ve been out of the workforce for 1.5 years; mainly because of my health and secondly because I’ve lost my ability to jungle work and family without hyperventilating on the freeway. Not having an income is devastating for someone who has worked all her life. Some days, I feel like I have nothing. There are still house payments and car payments to make and often times I feel like I have nothing to contribute. Despite of all the things that I do; like housework, homework, yard work and any work related things you could think of that involves 4 kids and a home – it doesn’t hide the fact that I bring in zero dollars in this household. There are days when this realization is hard to take.

Life at home has its own share of joy. Yes, I am one of those weird mothers who enjoy cleaning and doing the same chores over and over. What can I say? I’m a glutton for punishment. It took probably a good year for me to get used to living a life without a schedule. Anything goes in this household! In spite of all the preconceived ideas of any working mother contemplating on being a stay-at-home mom; I will be the first to tell you that it’s been absolutely rewarding. The rewards that I have gotten at the end of the day pales in comparison to taking home a paycheck. I kid around about leaving my kids behind to my husband if we ever get a divorce but my kids had been an absolute joy to have around. When my husband is out-of-town; I try to savor their undivided attention. We’ve had some really fun moments on our own and those are just my memories and not my husbands.

So I think, that’s where my point lies. When you are not around – someone else is creating all of these wonderful memories with your children. That in itself is a painful lesson. Your kids will love you the same, whether you are there or not. There will be disappointments but in the long run – they tend to forget! Kids these days are resilient and they just move on. I think stay-at-home mothers get a bad rap. Don’t you notice that it’s often the most important jobs that command the least respect?

What I do know is that I made the right choice for me. If you are a working mother, I have nothing against you. It is a choice and a that choice is yours to make. My mother may have some regrets on her own but I don’t want the same regrets someday. I’d be the first person to admit that I’ve made too many compromises in my life. Now that I am a little bit older and perhaps a tiny bit wiser; I don’t want to lose sight of what is important to me in the end.

Though I enjoyed working and talking to adults; nothing beats an afternoon nap with my 4-year old or hearing her belt out some original tunes. I don’t think we should have it all; I think life would be too easy if we did. I think we all have to suffer some, sacrifice some and come to realize that the time we have with our children is something we could never take back. So once in a while, put down the camera or your work laptop and don’t log into Facebook/MySpace or Friendster. Instead, spend some quality time with your kids. You will thank yourself in the end …

[Via http://mykaos.wordpress.com]

Pretty interpreter makes news

is newscorp the death of myspace

2010-03-14T17:52:00.000+02:00

rumours abound that myspace employees are leaving by the truckload, especially talented and knowledgable ones.

after 2 ceo’s in 1 year, and what looks like a corporate mess with 2 co-presidents and a CEO – all the signs show that this is a flailing ship. none of the clear, decisive actions that one would expect from a company in rapid growth – rather political games and no new product innovations abound.

so it appears that the additional management layers added by newscorp arent adding. not that it is anything new, often corporate management structures arent there to help the business grow and be great, they are there to help the corporate bean counters count beans more easily.

check out the article about myspace nearing rock bottom here and the one regarding the leadership mess here

[Via http://nevoda.wordpress.com]

Terry, the masked man, is back at practice | Dallas Mavericks Blog ...

Peter Cox - New Album "The S1 Sessions" Out On 22nd March 2010

2010-03-14T01:02:00.000+02:00

Peter Cox, lead singer of 80’s pop band Go West, will release his fourth solo album titled “The S1 Sessions” on Monday 22nd of March 2010!

Peter has very kindly let fans preview some tracks from his new album – check them out!

http://www.peter-cox.org/DiscoTheS1Sessions.html

The “S1 Sessions” album will be released from most online stores. For more information on Peter Cox and Go West regarding tours, album releases, videos etc. , please see links below!

LINKS:

Peter Cox Official Website:

http://www.peter-cox.org/

Go West Official Website:

http://www.gowest.org.uk/

[Via http://knightgrooves.wordpress.com]

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 3/13 - Arrowhead Pride

Is the glass half full? Part II

2010-03-13T17:49:00.000+02:00

While I’ve covered some of the ways that new communication services like various uses of the Internet, or cell phones have made daily communication with our friends and families easier – there are a few more ways I’d like to share with you.

Another interesting aspect of this convenient communication is video chatting. I have friends that use Skype to video-chat with friends and family all around the world. Friends whose husbands are stationed in other countries and can’t chat on cell phones very often have used video chatting. Sometimes I can iChat with my best friend when he’s on a late shift in the middle of the night, and keep him company on breaks. We’ve used videophones at my house to talk to my grandma and Uncle, so they can see us while we’re chatting. Who would have thought that eventually we’d be able to see our loved ones while we talked to them thousands of miles away. This seems to be really convenient when people want to share excitement over awesome events happening in their lives, as well. I’ve watched people be able to use their laptops in airports, cafes, or libraries to chat online with friends or family. In locations like these where it may be hard to have a conversation out loud on the phone because it could be distracting to those around us, using Internet services to communicate is very convenient because it doesn’t disturb the surrounding customers, and people can still have conversations they want. It’s really nice when I’ve wanted to take a study break in the library, or the coffee shop and want to talk to someone for a few minutes without bothering the rest of my group.

Other positive aspects of new communication technology include how reliable and easy it is to use. The great thing about these new communication technology services is that there are multiple ways to reach someone through them. Perhaps you have friends that don’t sign into certain accounts very often, but they do use others. So, if your friend never uses MySpace and doesn’t respond to the message you left them there, you might have better luck with their Facebook account, or Twitter. Some people use separate e-mail addresses for work, and personal use. Most social media and communication services on the Internet have pretty simple interfaces. I have seen people who don’t use computers very often, set up their own Facebook or AIM accounts with little assistance. Most cell phones now have the ability to use instant messengers, or even e-mails on the phone, toot! Because of the easiness of using these services the barrier is a little bit lower (if people can afford to pay the cell phone bill, or have accessibility to the Internet). I have seen young people and old people a like use these services, with ease and enjoyment. When I first started using Facebook the only other people I communicated with through the service, were other college students. Over the years the scope of Facebook has changed. My mom even has her own Facebook account now, and has been able to use it to get in touch with old high school friends, family friends around the country and even just another way to talk with me when I’m up here at school.

Another press release from Pew Internet & American Life Project about connectedness and cell phone use and online experiences, noted support of these communication technologies: “Overall, respondents in this survey see much upside and little downside in the way new technologies have affected the quality of their communications with others” (2008). The article also expressed how helpful cell phones were for families to touch base with one another, and “coordinate family life on the fly during their busy lives” (2008). One more important idea the article addresses is the social activity of people using the Internet for communication. Some worry that this harms social interaction away from the computer, or decreases it, but the article explained: “Internet users socialize just as frequently as non-users. Indeed, even intense internet users (i.e. those who go online from home several times a day) are no less likely to socialize with friends than those who go online less frequently and those who do not go online at all” (2008). This seems to be a really positive result of communication technology, despite some people’s worries. It’s good to know that it doesn’t change the likeliness of actual face-to-face interaction among people.

That sure sounds like a lot of positive advantages created through the use of new communication technology to interact with our friends and family! Of course, wherever there is a positive, someone can find a negative. Coming up soon: what are the negative aspects of communication technology? Is the glass really half empty? You decide after reading my next entry!

Reference:

Fox, S. (2008, December 24). The new connectedness. Retrieved from: http://www.pewinternet.org/Commentary/2008/December/The-New-Connectedness.aspx

[Via http://newcomm.wordpress.com]

News Ticker: The Clash, Ray Charles, Amy Winehouse, Metallica ...

Exclusive: Fox Becomes a Hen? ‘CAIR’ and Imbalance? News Corporation Falls Under Saudi Control

2010-03-13T01:25:00.000+02:00

Fair and Balanced Your Ass!

March 12, 2010

Paul Williams, PhD

Former prominent guests on Fox News, including Walid Shoebat, contend that the News Corporation has surrendered its “fair and balanced” coverage of Islam and events in the Middle East for a fistful of Saudi cash. Their contention is based on a series of recent developments within the media giant. The first development was the news that Rupert Murdoch, CEO of News Corporation, invested $70 million in the Rotana Group, an enterprise owned by Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah. The Rotana Group operates a host of TV channels throughout the Middle East and is a leading producer of Arabic movies. Next came Mr. Murdoch’s decision to make Abu Dhabi, the headquarters of the News Corporation’s global media operations in the Middle East. On Monday, the Fox Business Network announced that it will dispatch a full-time correspondent to the Middle East in order to inform Americans of the unique business opportunities in such places as Syria, a country that provides shelter for Hamas, the Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah and support the insurgents in Iraq. Who are you going to trust now, Infidel? In the wake of this announcement, Fox news commentators – including Glenn Beck, Charles Krauthammer, A.B. Stoddard and Bill Kristol – condemned Geert Wilders, a well-respected Dutch dignitary and critic of radical Islam, as a “fascist” and a “demagogue.” Mr. Krauthammer said that Mr. Wilders, who is the leading candidate for Prime Minister in The Netherlands, doesn’t know the difference between Islam and Islamism, a distinction known only to Mr. Krauthammer. While Mr. Beck labeled Mr. Wilders as a “fascist,” Ms. Stoddard expressed her agreement with Krauthammer and added that “if people like this (Mr. Wilders) are elected to lead Holland it will suffer the consequences. What caused this denunciation? Mr. Wilders produced a short documentary on Islam in Holland called Fitna in which he argued that “there is no such thing as ‘moderate Islam’” and that the Prophet Muhammad would “. . . in these days be hunted down as a terrorist.” Complete Story:

[Via http://dancingczars.wordpress.com]

Breaking: Reyes to start year on DL

information overload: is the internet making "keeping it real" passe

2010-03-11T17:37:00.000+02:00

i think about and analyze EVERYTHING. probably too much, at times. as much as i love technology, and i’ve been at the cutting edge of it since i was born due to my tech savvy, computer entrepreneur father, bottom line: this technology boom freaks me out.

we were one of the first families in town to have dial-up internet. my dad owned his own computer business on the main street of my town, and previously worked out of an office in our basement. there are photos of me at the age of one, sitting at his computer desk pretending to do work. i was literally born into this stuff.

i didn’t use AOL instant messenger until 7th grade, i didn’t join myspace or facebook until my senior year of high school, and i didn’t have a cell phone until i was 15. all of these social media/networking tools were a way for me to keep in touch with friends and family. i didn’t see the harm in them until my younger cousins, five to seven years younger than me, began to join these sites. for this age group, these sites became a place where they could say or do whatever they darn well pleased, and believe me, they did not know better to think before they typed. myspace became a platform for harassment, or a place to try and steal someone’s boyfriend by spreading nasty rumors. this was not what myspace was to me, but it’s what it turned into for the younger generation.

i see kids who cannot be older than 10 with cell phones. as i can see the benefit of cell phones for safety and security reasons, i still think that they come with too much responsibility and freedom for a young child. all of these “sexting” scandals, and the circulation of inappropriate pictures by impressionable and naive young kids leaves me completely terrified.

these social media sites that younger kids use – specifically facebook and myspace – can provide outlets for kids to be whoever they want to be. great? no, not really. say that Jessica, a hypothetical 13 year old girl, has been getting picked on at school. well, now she can use the internet to portray herself however she wants, possibly as someone who she really isn’t, just so she can gain some credibility or fit in better with the kids at school. THIS IS WAY TOO MUCH PRESSURE. the awkward older adolescent years/teen years are already hard enough.

i always thought that if i was an artist instead of an art historian i would work on a project to see how people, more specifically the adolescent/teen age, use the internet to create a persona. hiding behind the distance of the virtual world, do they feel free or constrained? what is there to gain, to lose by engaging in these practices?

i never thought i’d say it, but i truly do think that there is such a thing as technology overload, and that it can be dangerous. it makes the concept of genuine, real human interaction a thing of the past.

kids are glued to their phones, texting friends literally 24/7. people are becoming more and more socially awkward and less and less personal.

these thoughts come to me when i realize that i am at the age where marriage and babies are in my future. with all of these constant pressures and the technology overload, how will i raise my kids? my generation is going to have to tame this monster we’ve created once we collectively realize that this is not the environment to be exposing our children to, unless we all want socially awkward, distant children who only know how to speak/write in shorthand and constantly need instant gratification. ::shudder::

[Via http://erinalyssa.wordpress.com]

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 3/10 - Arrowhead Pride

MySpace's New Strategy - LATimes.com Article

2010-03-11T01:54:00.000+02:00

Interesting MySpace article in the LATimes.com today.

Some highlights:

“Facebook’s online clout is giving it an edge among major brand advertisers. Market researcher eMarketer projects that worldwide ad spending with Facebook will reach $605 million this year, up nearly 39% from last year.If that happens, Facebook will surpass MySpace, which will see revenue drop 21% to $385 million, eMarketer projects.”

“We need to be a platform for self expression that is clearly differentiated from the competition”

“The online social network … will use information that users volunteer on the site … to recommend movie trailers, recently released songs and video games to them.”

Yikes … I knew MySpace was imploding but I didn’t know things were this bad. According to this article, FB is effectively 2x MySpace in terms of visits and time spent and analysts are projecting a 21% decrease in topline revenue for the once dominant social networking site. Worst of all, I’m not sure I understand this new strategy of “entertainment + creative expression”.

For one, MySpace, to my knowledge, owns little to no actual entertainment content, so its value is principally as a distribution platform for content. Last time I checked – the platform with the most users (and the one that is growing) is the one who wins. Additionally, part of the revised MySpace strategy appears to be around leveraging behavioral targeting to support a CPA/Affiliate-model based on driving sales of movie tickets, music, video games, etc. The problem is that the high-value users with purchasing power and disposable income left MySpace a long time ago—and 13 year old kids in Middle America don’t have credit cards.

Ultimately, if you’re a content owner/producer, why would you choose MySpace as a distribution partner over the other options you have? Unless they’re offering you very favorable economic terms, you probably wouldn’t.

As far as creative expression … I dunno. Isn’t FB’s standard (clean) UI part of the reason why users fled MySpace in the first place? Does anybody really want to look at ANY web page that has white text on a yellow background, repeating tile gifs, plays horrendous music on load and takes 17 minutes to fully render?

But playing armchair quarterback is a coward’s pursuit. What should MySpace have done and more importantly, what should they do going forward?

The article suggests that the execs think ‘mission creep’ was the problem. From my view, more precisely, this was about pursuing the wrong mission. It would seem reasonable that in a highly competitive space, with extremely fickle and transient users, the company’s efforts should have been directed towards increasing switching costs while providing high-utility. It seems to me that there was a great opportunity to innovate on product and create social interaction-driven versions of old internet tools like messenger, chat, email, and audio/video/media players. The power and usefulness of such products would have leveraged MySpace’s greatest asset – its HUGE lead in # of users – and made it more difficult for competitors to encroach.

Bottom line: it was just too easy for users to leave MySpace.

Going forward requires some more thought. Look out for Part II.

In the meantime - take the “Will MySpace Survive” poll

View This Poll

survey

[Via http://credisdead.wordpress.com]

Hanabi Festival returns to Virtual Console News | Wii | Eurogamer

Thomas Jefferson’s Other Declaration

2010-03-09T17:17:00.000+02:00

by Derek Sheriff

The Tenth Amendment Center

March 9, 2010

As we fight on against the deplorable agenda of the current administration, the Tenth Amendment to the Constitution is becoming one of our most important tools. In our Founding Father’s wisdom they created, “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” With that declaration, over 30 states are in the process or have completed the process of nullification. Simply stated, any state can take back any power they have allowed the federal government to usurp. It is currently being used to add additional amendments to state constitutions, to nullify any federal control over gun laws, obeying the EPA on carbon emissions, as well as, mandating that their citizens not be placed nor fined for non-participation in the currently debated health care-denial plan. Random thoughts while observing the passing parade, J.C.

Most Americans know that Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of “The Declaration of Independence”, the most important of all our founding documents.

Yet few of them have even heard of another document that I would say might be the second most important declaration he ever wrote: The Kentucky Resolutions of 1798. He drafted them secretly while he was serving as vice president. It was written in response to the hated Alien and Sedition Acts which were passed under the Adams administration during an undeclared war with France.

The acts authorized the president to deport any resident alien considered dangerous to the peace and safety of the United States, to apprehend and deport resident aliens if their home countries were at war with the United States, and criminalized any speech which might defame Congress, the President, or bring either of them into contempt or disrepute. You could compare it to the Patriot Act, but really it was much worse. Either way, The Alien and Sedition Acts were probably Thomas Jefferson’s worst nightmare.

Some people are surprised to learn that in response to these acts, Jefferson did not hold up the First Amendment in protest. Rather he invoked the Tenth Amendment, which states that:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

In 1798 Thomas Jefferson secretly drafted another declaration few people know about…

Essentially, he argued that by passing and enforcing the Alien and Sedition Acts, the federal government had over stepped its bounds and was exercising powers which belonged to the states.

In other words, the Alien and Sedition Acts were acts of usurpation.

James Madison corresponded with Jefferson about these issues, (they suspected that their mail was being secretly opened and read by the way). As a result of their correspondence, James Madison penned another series of resolutions against the Alien and Sedition Acts, which were passed by the Virginia legislature in 1798 and 1799.

As important as these resolutions were in objecting to the unconstitutional Alien and Sedition Acts, their lasting importance was due to the the fact that they were strong statements in defense of federalism, the sovereignty of the people of the several states, and the authority of state governments to check or resist the tyrannical proclivities of the federal government.

Jefferson began the Kentucky Resolutions by explaining the exact nature of the relationship between the new federal, or general government and the states that predated it:

“Resolved, That the several States composing, the United States of America, are not united on the principle of unlimited submission to their general government; but that, by a compact under the style and title of a Constitution for the United States, and of amendments thereto, they constituted a general government for special purposes — delegated to that government certain definite powers, reserving, each State to itself, the residuary mass of right to their own self-government; and that whensoever the general government assumes undelegated powers, its acts are unauthoritative, void, and of no force: that to this compact each State acceded as a State, and is an integral part, its co-States forming, as to itself, the other party: that the government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the Constitution, the measure of its powers; but that, as in all other cases of compact among powers having no common judge, each party has an equal right to judge for itself, as well of infractions as of the mode and measure of redress.” Complete Story:

[Via http://dancingczars.wordpress.com]

Mediagazer: Techmeme Launches Memetracker for Media News

This Weeks COUNTDOWN - Is Your Band Included?

2010-03-06T17:09:00.000+02:00

COUNTDOWN – This weeks countdown starts NOW!!!!:

PRIDE SHALL FALL – myspace.com/prideshallfall – 1,233 LISTENS with 2 songs,

DENNIS SHEPHERD GROUP – myspace.com/dennisshepherdgroup – 78 LISTENS with 3 songs,

FROM THE ASHES OF MY SINS – myspace.com/fromtheashesofmysins – 1,786 LISTENS with 7 songs

Is your Band/Group incl…uded? If NOT why NOT? You don’t need FREE Promotion?

[Via http://themuzikmachine.wordpress.com]

Steam News

Trivium en Facebook, Twitter, MySpace y YouTube

2010-03-06T01:05:00.000+02:00

Las redes sociales se “prestan” para muchas confusiones y farsas, así que para que no anden agregando perfiles falsos, acá les dejo la lista de donde pueden hallar a la banda, al igual que a sus integrantes:

Trivium Oficial:

MySpace | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

Matt Heafy:

Facebook | Twitter

Corey Beaulieu:

Facebook | MySpace

Paolo Gregoletto:

Facebook | Twitter | YouTube

MySpace | MySpace Lil’ P

Nick Augusto:

Facebook

De igual manera, les dejo los espacios donde pueden encontrar a Trivium México. ¡Espero nos agreguen en todos para que así el mundo se entere que los mexicanos también somos super fans de la banda!

Twitter | Facebook | MySpace | WordPress

[Via http://triviummexico.wordpress.com]

Eric Alterman: Think Again: On TV News, "Right" Makes Right

Societal Change: The Internet

2010-03-04T09:12:00.000+02:00

OK, it barely raised a corner of my lip in a sort of quarter-smile. But I struggled so hard to find a nice picture for today, so please forgive.

Allow me a brief diversion from low-minded politics to consider a development in society that is really intriguing me.

The internet, to people like me (and I pity them), is one of life’s essentials. I say that without any hint of sarcasm, even though my definition of “essential” doesn’t match the dictionary. Even to people less like me (lucky them) they still find the internet the most important aspect of their daily lives.

Last year when I moved house, I was without the internet for a month. And yet, I wasn’t. In my desperation to keep in touch with the modern world, I dragged myself to the local library, where my thirst for communicativity (NB: made up word) was satiated.

I could have tried living without it. It would have been difficult, and maybe going cold turkey would have weaned me off it. But in any event, I didn’t. I couldn’t. It was just too difficult.

To me, the internet is the simplest and thus the best form of communication. To people who’ve never used it, they will never understand. But introduce them to e-mail, to social networks, to news websites, to blogs, to discussion forums, and to on-demand media the like of which the world has never seen, and something changes.

The world does indeed become a smaller place.

Once people have conquered their initial fear factor of technology, and, hopefully, have avoided falling victim to viruses, scams and other nasties, as well as realised it is largely safe to ignore Carol Vorderman style “Interweb” paranoia, the whole social nexus of one’s life can be transformed. Not overnight, but given time, and given more confidence, attitudes change.

This is where we’re at now.

The past few years have seen the social networking revolution kick into action. It really began with MySpace, though there were previous attempts before that. Very few people were on social networks back then though. I remember being one of the early adopters to that particular site, and that was no fun. What is the point of a social network that isn’t very social?

To truly work, to become the phonebook of the internet, the place via which everyone could be in touch with everyone else, there would need to be a site that reached critical mass. And, preferably, just one. No one can be bothered maintaining several different social networking profiles. Life is complicated enough already.

Enter Facebook. By design or by sheer good fortune, they did it. They passed the point where you can now basically say “everyone is on Facebook” even if it’s nowhere near true. By that, though, you mean that for those of us who have entered the digital world, we are on Facebook, and though we may not like it, each of us engages with it to some degree.

This is a long way away from e-mail, newsgroups and mailing lists, back at the dawn of the internet. Now everyone can have their own “presence” that serves as your own place on the web, available 24/7. It is your digital home, where people can find you and occasionally send you endless invitations to become fans of various silly things, like the incredibly catchy Nuclear Waste Disposal.

Facebook is not the end, though. It will need to change again and again to stay top dog. But by becoming the place at which “everyone” is registered, they become a self-perpetuating institution. No one will want to move away to any upstart network for the fear that, in doing so, there will actually be no one else on the rival website to talk to.

The direction of travel on the internet has always been towards more communication, more interactivity, more personality, more customisation, less privacy, fewer inhibitions and more openness and more freedom. It is both a libertarian’s dream and a nightmare. The public and private spheres made irrelevant and all rolled into one.

That is changing the way we think about each other, and think about friends, and, in some respects testing the absolute limits of our human capacity to be social creatures.

More on that next time. Whenever that may be.

[Via http://futilitymonster.wordpress.com]

Dem Source: Massa Won't Run (Updatedx2)

Single or Unemployed?

2010-03-04T01:53:00.000+02:00

The commonalities between dating and the search for employment have been referenced time and time again. This past week I attended an Etiquette Dinner arranged by Skidmore College. The Board of Alumni attended as experts in the field of the Dos & Don’ts of networking. While I enjoyed the conversation and truly appreciated the opportunity to make new connections, my real take away included an increased interest in the similarities among pursuing the beginning of an emotional relationship and the hopes of gainful employment. The following is an analysis detailing this fascinating relationship.

Intrigue

- The origination of all relationships between two individuals is sparked by an initial intrigue instilled in one party by a unique characteristic, be it physical or emotional, of the other.

- Similarly, the aspiration to secure employment at a specific firm can precipitate after hearing about a unique organization that specializes in a field with corresponding interests of the individual.

Introduction

- Whether a man is intimidated by the prospect of rejection from a woman, or a woman doesn’t know how to approach a love interest of hers without being intimidating, introducing oneself has become more and more complicated with the advent of online social networks. In both instances, relationships and employment, we must decide how best to approach the other party to achieve the most favorable results.

- The following is a chart comparing only a sampling of the various tools now available to initiate contact:

Relationship Facebook MySpace Text Call Social Event Introduction Employment LinkedIn Twitter Email Call Network Connection

Meeting

- First dates, job interviews and project proposals all face similar threats of failure at the initial meeting. What do you order? Can you handle eating a sandwich without staining your freshly dry-cleaned shirt? Should you finish all the food on your plate? Should you salt your food? I could digress, but the idea will remain the same: parties in attendance, the guy and girl, the unemployed and potential employer, are in attendance for future benefits.

Follow Up

- This is where most of us drop the ball. Once again we are faced with various options, all with accompanying underlying meanings. How much time in between the first meeting and a thank you note? Are both parties being sincere? The beginning of an emotional relationship can be confusing, while at the same time, quite exciting. However, there will always come that point in time where an open and honest talk will be required in hopes of bringing both individuals’ true intentions out into the open.

- The truth is also the same between an organization and a prospective hire. Throughout negotiations there is, unfortunately, sometimes some dishonesty and stretching of the truth. The company can state that they do not have the funds to take on another employee, while the truth may actually be that the candidate does not fit the right requirements. Likewise, the applicant may attempt to create a sense of urgency pertaining to offers from competing firms (see Media Jobs Daily advice on this faux pas).

Relationship Develops

- All relationships are continuously progressing or regressing. They are, at no time, stagnant. Growth at a company is necessary to retain the employees’ interests and boss’s recognition of his subordinates work. Change in the type of work assigned, new projects and increased workload will serve to stimulate workers and achieve greater productivity. The common goal among all employees is to eventually improve their stance on the corporate ladder and to maximize remuneration. Each employee presumably contributes to the firm’s growth, while the organization supports and encourages individual growth.

- A couple is very similar. Both parties involved facilitate their partner’s success. A relationship should only be maintained if the lives of the man and woman are better together than if they were to be separated.

Goals

- Overall, the ultimate goal of employment and relationships is growth. While the specifics differ with the individual, everyone strives to achieve growth in education, wealth, love and above all, happiness. All of these are achieved easiest with the help of others.

[Via http://keithepetri.wordpress.com]

Atari unveils Test Drive Unlimited 2 News | Eurogamer

Music sales are up... sort of

2010-03-02T17:37:00.000+02:00

Image courtesy PCWorld

Digital sales are up and ready to eclipse physical sales. Sounds great, but unfortunately the digital uptick isn’t enough to overcome the overall downward slide in music sales that’s been happening over time. The pool of buyers is shrinking overall. All this according to the IFPI (a London-based record label organization), and and market researchers NPD Group. Internet radio sites like Pandora (which I love btw) encourage music downloads, while ad-supported sites like MySpace and Lala apparently discourage buying (why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?). You can read the whole article on the LA Times entertainment blog.

What does this mean for indie artists? I think Internet radio sites are a great way to promote music… I’ve been listening to Pandora daily for the past two weeks and have discovered so many amazing artists I’ve never heard of it’s making my head spin. As far as sites like MySpace where you can listen for free with no prompting to buy… Personally I don’t see it as a huge problem. The MySpace page is an avenue to expose and promote, and has never really been a big sales boon to artists. It’s not meant for that and anyone hoping to sell tons off their MySpace page will probably be disappointed. But the profile is great to give people a snapshot of who you are, and serves as a portal for media and industry types looking for new music or who may want to learn more about you before an interview/review or proceeding with a business deal.

What do you think indie artists can do to encourage downloads and sales?

Courtesy LA Times. Click for the full story

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/entertainmentnewsbuzz/2010/02/music-bi-back-to-playing-the-blues.html

[Via http://marketmymusic.wordpress.com]

Sex scenes almost cut from GOWIII News | PS3 | Eurogamer

TweetDeck Upgrade (?)

2010-02-27T01:43:00.000+02:00

It seemed absolutely necessary, since TweetDeck wouldn’t shut the hell up in making sure I “upgraded” my version of TweetDeck from version 0.32.2 to the, so-called…”much improved” version of 0.32.5. OH MY GOD! This seems absolutely mandatory!!!! SHIT. IM BEHIND!!!!! Good Lord…help me!

Okay, so now that I’ve spewed all that evident irony, let’s show you a screenshot of what TweetDeck looked like before I did the “upgrade”:

My TweetDeck feed, where I can see updates on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace and update all three of the third party sites from one application.

Obsolete, huh? Now let’s take a look at TweetDeck, this time after I did the “upgrade”. OH BOY!!!

Wait a minute…something’s not right here. I can’t figure it out.

……

Hmmm.....did the upgrade work?

OH WAIT! It looks the EXACT SAME!!! Point being, TweetDeck needs to stop doing all these micro-upgrades. Agreed?

[Via http://twtylertalk.wordpress.com]

In other news - Beyond The Commons - Macleans.ca

Top tips on how an artist should network online

2010-02-25T17:18:00.000+02:00

Social networking bridges the gap between you and your fans, and can also be a great way of getting your name out of your bedroom and into the industry. Here are some top tips for utilising networking sites to your absolute advantage.

1. Remember to Tweet! Twitter is short but sweet, whether it’s for a new song, upcoming gig, or just what you had for lunch, your fans will know in just 140 words.

2.The events function in Facebook is quick and easy. Let your fans know where and when you’re playing with minimal effort – an update will automatically appear on their homepage.

3. MySpace is great for giving your fans a sneak peak of your tracks, but remember it is far more valuable to have your own website.

4. Post videos on YouTube of you playing live, but be selective – only post your best performances. Backstage videos also go down well.

Stay tuned to the blog as I’ll be looking at each of these in more detail, starting with Twitter next week…

[Via http://puresolo.wordpress.com]

iTunes 10 Billion Songs contest near goal, $10k prize offered ...

Timeline: Social networking sites...

2010-02-25T09:14:00.000+02:00

Social networking sites are slowly taking over the world! OK, so maybe it’s not necessary to be quite so dramatic, but it’s definitely worth realising just how influential web creations such as facebook and myspace are in this day and age.

Ask any teenager, around the world how they communicate with friends who they no longer live nearby… you might think they would say the telephone, howvever, I believe you’d be mistaken. The internet is the fastest, cheapest and easiest way for, not only today’s teens, but people of all generations, to communicate with eachother. My boyfriend’s gran has facebook for crying out loud!

The development of the social networking site is an interesting process, and this timeline depicts some of the most influential events in the history of social networking:

2002- Friendster is launched by coputer programmers, Jonathan Abrams and Cris Emmanuel. Over 90% of Friendster’s traffic comes from Asia (Wikipedia.com)

2003- August: Myspace.com is launched following the basic idea of friendster’s social networking template. It was set up by eUniverse employees, using their 20 million existing users to get myspace up and running.

2004- Mark Zukerberg launched “Thefacebook”, from his university dorm, originally located at thefacebook.com.

Myspace makes the transition from a virtual storage site (at YourZ.com) to a social networking site in its own name.

2005- January: Bebo (an acronym for “Blog early, blog often“) is founded by Michael and Xochi Birch. July: Bebo undergoes a major relaunch. According to ecosultancy.com, in August 2009, Bebo had around 8 million users in the UK alone.

September: Facebook.com was launched as a high school version.

2006- September: Facebook was opened to anyone over the age of 13 who had a valid email address. The social networking site now has around 350 million users worldwide, and around 20 million in the UK (from ecosultancy.com, 2009).

Twitter is launched. The ‘microblogging’ service allows users to ‘tweet’ 140 words for friends and subscribers to their profile to read.

2008- March: Bebo is bought by AOL for £417m.

December: Myspace.com had around 125 million users (according to techcrunch.com, 2009)

2010- February: Google launches Google Buzz in a bid to topple Facebook and Twitter. Only time will tell how successful their plan is.

[Via http://vgreenfield.wordpress.com]

Brown: UK games industry best in Europe News | Eurogamer

The end of a trend.

2010-02-23T09:56:00.000+02:00

Here’s something that you’ll never say again in public, unless you want to lose your “coolness” image forever…”Hey, check out my MYSPACE PAGE!” It’s over. I mean, it’s been over for years…but now, I mean, it’s officially over. In the past few weeks, news has officially surfaced that even Tom has relinquished his coveted first friend image, not checking in to his account since…Christmas! Sure, the decline of Myspace has been crumbling for years now, but seems like it was just yesterday when the perennial “first friend of myspace” achieved urban rockstar status with his dork-like image on cups, magnets, key chains, whatever. Many theories have been posted, blogged about, and commented online as to the demise of myspace, but one missing link may stand out more than the rest…myspace became too one dimensional. Facebook interfaced the business side and the casual side of our lives more effectively. Linkedin and other business networking sprung up and further split the market share by catering to the business class. Now dozens of new biz networking sites are grabbing hits by folks looking to stay connected in this lousy economy. No, you’ll never get back all those hours you spent tricking out your myspace page, but, at least you can wear the t-shirt and, uh, be cool again.

[Via http://careysword.wordpress.com]

Trail Blazers: Jazz has Blazers number; news, notes and links ...

The Art of Kenzie Allen

2010-02-23T01:30:00.000+02:00

After writing Friday’s post, Do You Wanna Date My Avatar?, I had no idea how I would top it. I mean, what could possibly be better than Felicia Day in cosplay? It almost seemed unfair of me to do a piece on another artist so close to that entry. But then I was reminded of Kenzie Allen’s (@cerena) incredible artwork when I saw this super sweet tweet appear in my twitter client and had to share it with you.

Kenzie reached out to us after seeing a post that Shawn Decker wrote on his blog after I reviewed his fantastic book, My Pet Virus and subsequently met with him at a local coffee shop. When I checked out Kenzie’s Twitter profile, I noticed she had a deviantART page so I clicked on the link and was blown away by what I found.

As you can see from the above picture, Kenzie has a style that is really all her own. I love her bold color choices and thick lines. But what strikes me the most about every one of her pieces is her character’s expressions. Here’s a great example:

Is it just me or do you wonder what she’s thinking? Kenzie really knows how to pull you in.

I’ve included a couple more images of Kenzie’s work below. If you’d like to check out more of what she’s doing be sure to visit her on deviantART, Myspace, or tumblr. You can also watch her draw on UStream! Bob Ross would be very proud.

Would you like Kenzie to create a portrait of you? If so, be sure to click here to read about some of the options she offers. Her pricing is really reasonable and, according to her deviantART page, your money goes to help her “get some ramen” I’d say that’s a pretty good cause.

Hope this finds you feeling healthy!

-Mason

[Via http://atris.wordpress.com]

Make Something Unreal winners unveiled News | PC | Eurogamer

Political Twitter Bird

2010-02-21T16:17:00.000+02:00

Alright, so besides grinding away at some writing lately, I did two things of importance: I went to a Republican dinner party as a guest of one of Maine’s gubernatorial candidates, and I signed up for Twitter. Now, I suspect you’re wondering what the connection could be, but fear not for I shall tell you! Bruce Poliquin has decided to use social media to spread the word about his campaign, including using Facebook, Twitter, and Twitpic. Although his usage of Facebook is a little lacking, he uses Twitter and Twitpic on an almost-daily basis.

Twitter is like the status updates of Facebook except it can be in any person (not just third person in order to make sense) and it really has no other features. Gubernatorial candidate Bruce has 436 followers on Twitter, which is actually a decent number of people for this particular social networking client. A friend of mine and the person who turned me on to candidate Poliquin, Kendra, is in the book business – writing, publishing, etc. – and has a whopping 2,661 followers! As far as Twitter is concerned, she’s famous, and Twitter still isn’t as mainstream as websites like Facebook and (though it’s on its way out) MySpace. I had previously refused to use Twitter for moral reasons up until I realized just how powerful of a social utility it can be. Now, I don’t pretend to be famous, but if people making that sort of difference in the world (i.e. running for political office or writing books), why can’t I use Twitter to my advantage as well?

So, I signed up for an account and was immediately at a loss. After getting some of the basics down, I found a few friends to follow and some cool people from other countries like Japan who post a lot of neat pictures on Twitpic. All in all, I’m not really a twitter bird, nor am I keen on using the service. As interesting as following new people is, Twitter, I think, is a social networking tool for people who have more important things to say than I do. I concede that much, and until I have more important things to say I will probably keep my twittering to a minimum.

[Via http://goingfishing11.wordpress.com]

Our New 'News Tab' Module | News

Love 2.0

2010-02-21T01:10:00.000+02:00

The Perfect Mate

We are now a decade into the millennium and our constant access to technology, in particular the Internet has encouraged a hi-tech, low-touch society. There seems to be more social networking than true social interaction. So how does one discover love in the time of iPhone, Facebook and MySpace? Latherio Boyd, relationship coach and author of The Man’s Guide to Finding the Perfect Mate, says that we have to be willing to take risks in order to meet a potential mate. He encourages women to go out so that they can ‘be seen’. Further, he reminds women that the man is not going to come knocking at your door. He stresses that women should see relationships as an investment. Latherio advises the men that they should know their value and what they have to offer in a relationship. He believes that finding the perfect mate is like finding a missing puzzle piece. Several pieces may fit, but there is one that fits with ease so that the picture is complete.

[Via http://dialmyheart.wordpress.com]

Joy Ride still due out this year News | Xbox 360 | Eurogamer

The dangers of social networking

2010-02-20T01:05:00.000+02:00

All those web 2.0 tools — blogging, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (well, maybe not anymore), LinkedIn, Google Buzz (the new kid on the block), et.al. — are fun and somewhat addictive, but there are serious privacy dangers lurking in all that sharing.

Dangers as obvious as putting plenty of data out there for cybercriminals to harvest for phishing attempts and identity theft, not quite as obvious danger in putting discrete bits of corporate information out there in multiple locations that put together become useful to competitors, and even dangers as vanilla as broadcasting when you are home and not for local criminals seriously casing your home for a break-in.

That ought to be food for social networking thought.

From the link:

Pervasive social networking may herald the future’s most critical insider threat: cyber-chattiness.Individuals are simply revealing too much about their professional lives online. It might be possible, for example, to cross reference a Facebook post about a “big project that isn’t looking good” with other posts and piece together sensitive corporate information. And while a LinkedIn request for a job recommendation reveals a job seeker, two or more seekers in the same division could reveal company upheaval.

The threat from chatty insiders isn’t new, but a perfect storm might be brewing. Consider the following:

- People are broadcasting more of their lives online than ever before. More than 55 million status updates are posted every day on Facebook alone.

- A new batch of “Open Source Intelligence” tools now exist to help map out people’s lives and relationships.

- Lots of personal and business data online makes it easy for a hacker to personalize phishing attacks and in some cases, automate the personalization process. Tools and frameworks now exist to gather enough information about you online to custom craft emails that are very credible.

- Setting policies to stop employees from using these social networking sites at work doesn’t stop them from talking about work when online at home.

We are now starting to see some privacy stretch marks on the social networking bubble. Consider the case of Robert Morgan. Earlier this year Robert, a researcher at Microsoft (MSFT), updated his LinkedIn profile with details about his work on Windows 8 and its new 128-bit architecture. The problem was that Microsoft had never disclosed it was working on a 128-bit version of Windows (let alone working on Windows 8 or 9). This was a direct disclosure snafu made worse by the fact that anyone with an Internet connection could see it.

[Via http://davidkirkpatrick.wordpress.com]

AMERICAblog News: Was Mitt really attacked? Famous rapper, his ...

Day Two of the Warfield Smith Stand-Off

2010-02-18T08:53:00.000+02:00

So I found myself in another predicament today. I was on the computer, as usual, and couldn’t find anything to do! Seriously. I checked my email, I checked my social networks, I spied on people and even started looking up people from my distant past (!?)– I’m in an internet rut, I tell you! I find myself going in circles, looking at the same sites and totally uninterested in looking up anything new. What is there to look? No one messages me or comments on my social sites. I only have two that I actively update, you know the dreaded top two of the net: myspace and facebook. Myspace, for me, though has become more of an automaton site. I don’t really post too much personal crap there. I may post a poem or two and other eventful going-on of my life, like book releases or public readings and stuff of that nature, but I wouldn’t expect to get to know the real me on there. The closest you’ll get to personal interests, aside from what I actually do with my life, is the music I like, and in this day and age that isn’t very telling. Oh, I long for that age old, concaved day when you used to be able to judge and read a person by the content of their music player. It was simpler in those days. Hicks listened to country music, black people listened to hip-hop and rap, vandals listened to punk, queers and yuppies listened to new wave, stoners listened to psychedilic and folk music, greasers listened to rock and roll and heavy metal, Mexicans listened to tejano. Well, no more. I can’t even define myself! Of course you realize that’s just a bunch of bullshit. I’m quite happy that people are undefinable. That’s the way it should be, you know. So, I guess my point is, you couldn’t even get much info on me based on what I listen to. So, yes, myspace. But even then, how do you know that I’m not one of those people who just friends people at random, unconcerned with who it is I am connecting to, but happy to see the friend meter sky-rocket? Well, I’m not, but considering that I am using myspace as more of a place to network and, you know, make it easier for people to find me and keep up with my work and art, sooner or later there’s no telling who will friend me. Why just the other day an anarchist tried to friend me, and even though the account isn’t personal anymore, it’s fastly becoming more of a “for the fans” (bullshit-what fans!?) type area, I refused to friend him! Ha! What the hell do I want an anarchist for a friend? I mean come on, I can appreciate the aesthetics of “anarchy.” I quite agree with no government, but that is a rather shallow view of anarchy. No government. But if you think about it, that means you can’t leave your house! You can’t leave your family unless you’ve trained them well in self-defense and self-preservation! Someone could squat on you! They could take your things and your wife! There would be no rule of law! And you know

I dislike everything Darwin stands for and think his “strongest survive” theory is just bullshit when applied to humans

because we’re human! Not animals, and we have the ability to think, but more importantly, to make choices! So how do you qualify that, Darwin?! You can’t. That brute that squats on your house when there is no rule of law has the choice of whether or not he’s gonna kill you, and so the strongest surviving just cannot apply to humans. But, since his theory is so popular and what is forced down our throats by the “educational” system installed by the elite class of our species, that is what we believe, and so the brute will not even qualify the thought of being human, and thusly put no value into being able to make a choice, because after all, he was taught only the strongest survive and so is totally validated in killing you and stealing your wife. Do you understand why I fundamentally disagree with anarchy and Darwinism? So anyway, I refused the anarchists advances. Plus, in this day and age, the government would probably just as soon as pin me down as a terrorist for associating with the likes. Ha!

Facebook is a different story, altogether. I post a lot of things on there, including my opinions, things that amuse me and random thoughts or quotes. I am much friendlier and open on that site. I think I like it only because you can see everything you’ve posted and kind of keep track of what you’re thinking or doing better than you can on any blog on myspace. Plus, you need a facebook account to snoop around, so that is something I also find comforting. I was trying to post a picture though on one of my friend’s wall, but it wouldn’t post, so I’m gonna post it here because it’s funny as hell. Some of you may have seen this. Tell me if you haven’t! Ha ha! I remember when I first saw that, I was like, “Yes! That is is funny!”

See the doody?

Isn’t it crazy how self-portraits have become so popular with the advent of digital cameras and personal social networking spaces? I mean it was bound to happen, no complaint, and I do so myself as well from time to time (primarily because I have no one to take a picture of me!). But this picture is just damn funny! I wonder if it’s genuine– you know or a set up.

Anyway, I’m sure I’ve either made you laugh or just grossed you out now. This is what happens when I have nothing to do. Being in an internet rut is terrible. Pretty sad I can’t even find anything else to do with my time. Find a job? Well, I did that yesterday, if you really must know. I was scowering the net for people who are hiring right now. Isn’t it terrible how everywhere you go for work they require you to fill out an internet application? It’s like they don’t want to see you face-to-face anymore. I hate it! I liked actually walking into the store and greeting someone and showing them that I took the time and effort to come out, to show them I’m actually interested in visiting the store, or whatever. Not anymore. I mean, internet sign ups are convenient, you know, if you can’t walk or something, but really– if you ask me, it’s the stores that have gotten lazier. I mean I guess we’re helping the enviroment by not wasting paper on applications, but it also makes it easier for the job not to respond to you. I’m only applying for jobs that require paper applications and in-person consultations from now on! It’s mainly retail that requires internet membership to hire on anyway. I don’t like retail. In case you’re getting any clue, I’ll help you out: I don’t like work at all. It’s so unnatural to me. I mean, I don’t mind producing things, but it has to be something for me and my family. Like in the old days. People used to milk cows to survive, for crying out loud! And plant their own gardens! They didn’t have to go to Whole Foods to get top-line veggies! And that means they didn’t have to pay and that means that the work they did was for themselves! I was so born out of century– either that or I’ve awoken and I remember that lifetime and that’s why it’s hard for me to assimilate into my present existence. Make sense? Think about it, that may be your problem, too. Hotchacha!

[Via http://orphanedideaz.wordpress.com]

Platform Computing on Federal News Radio | insideHPC.com

Some new Zomby fo yo ass.

2010-02-18T01:39:00.000+02:00

English dub-steppin’ muthafucka Zomby has dropped three new tracks on his Myspace. Along with ‘Float’, my personal favorite off of 2008’s Where Were U In ‘92?, he has posted ‘Galapagos’, a Caribbean-influenced steel drum piece, ‘Balloon People’, a shiny dance floor number replete with Nintendo synths and some tribal shouting, and ‘Operator’, a tight little dubstep with the same dark tone and pulsing samples that we’ve come to expect from him. Not sure what this means in terms of a new album, but it certainly can’t hurt, can it?

[Via http://ishouldgiveup.wordpress.com]

A Daily Dose of Architecture: Breaking News! Barbie NOT an Architect!

(MY) Internet History/Mess

2010-02-16T17:45:00.000+02:00

After exploring my Myspace account that I will not post a link to because it is THAT embarrassing, I have lost all hope of deleting my profile.

I cringed while trying to remember my internet passwords from middle and high school. Talk about painful. AND messy.

As a tip for myself, and everyone else in the world for that matter, I suggest keeping a very detailed log of all accounts opened and used on the web.

Let me count some of the accounts I’ve had in the past…

Past email accounts:

Hotmail (torig88@hotmail.com)

Yahoo (torigarcia88@yahoo.com)

Gmail (victoria.aleece@gmail.com)

Past Social media/blog accounts:

HI-5…is that what it was called?
Myspace
Facebook
Twitter
Flickr
WordPress
LiveJournal

[Via http://victorialeece.wordpress.com]

And in other news ... the Brits are back, and so is Erykah Badu ...

All Your Favorite Social Networks In One Place — Social XP!

2010-02-16T09:45:00.000+02:00

How many browser tabs do you have open right now? My guess is between five and ten. Do you have social networking sites such as MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook open? Don’t you feel disorganized with all those tabs open? Why don’t you close all those tabs right now? I just finished designing a website that allows you to access all those sites in one place. It includes Google Buzz, Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Flickr, Wikipedia, Techmeme, and Digg. That list is subject to change as requests come in.

Here’s how the site works: It is a series of 8 IFRAMEs that each contain the iPhone optimized version of one of the sites above. This compresses them so they all fit comfortably on one page. This is NOT an iPhone site! This is just using the iPhone versions of these sites on a desktop.

Yes, improvements are on the way and YOUR HELP can make this site better. You can always email me your suggestions.

Here is a screenshot:

Pretty sick, right? To use Buzz on SXP, you have to be signed into your Google account on another tab.

Please check out the site. I like it, and I plan to start using it.

If you like it, tweet it. That’s how people get exposed to these apps—through their friends.

Click here to visit Social XP!

Please, PLEASE leave your feedback in the comments section!

[Via http://unitedtechguys.wordpress.com]

Arrowheadlines: Chiefs News 2/13 - Arrowhead Pride

Another Myspace Person Jumps Ship The Myspace Ship and Boards The Facebook Ship

2010-02-14T17:33:00.000+02:00

Source: TechCrunch

Monica Keller, a MySpace Group Architect who has played a key role in advancing MySpace’s initiatives in activity streams and openness, is leaving the company to join Facebook. Keller announced the news in a blog post this evening. She will be joining Facebook as an Open Source and Web Standards Program Manager, where she’ll be joining a team that includes David Recordon and Luke Shepard. MySpace confirmed that Keller had left the company but declined to comment further.

[Via http://aprilsimsinternetmarketing.wordpress.com]

Lloyd I. Sederer, MD: The Good News About The 'Bad' News About ...

NEW SONG - Alibi

2010-02-13T17:20:00.000+02:00

We promised you more new material, so here’s more of the sample series for you.

Alibi was test driven around the Manchester venues at christmas time, it went down a storm and has been described as ‘Firefly’s evil Brother on Valium’

We’re going to be announcing the firest of our live dates for 2010 in the coming days, top stuff! in the meantime please head to the MS link below to listen to ‘Alibi’

http://www.myspace.com/the66uk

the 66 x

[Via http://the66online.com]

Rock Band sales sting Viacom | News

Social Media Marketing Strategy

2010-02-13T01:26:00.000+02:00

How many times per day do you check your stream in Twitter, or your DM’s for that matter, only to find so many zero value tweets by people promising money for doing nothing with Twitter or other social media tools? A Waste of time in that you had to read and now delete it. But in the end, social media has opened the door to empower your online marketing strategy. It makes no difference if you’re marketing yourself and your brand, or a product or service.

The key to making money on Twitter, or any social media outlet is clear for anyone engaged in this amazing technology. Bringing the people together with the service provider or company for the amazing low price of…..free.

If you’re trying to market a service or product, the role that will be most successful is the middle man. Here is the customer who wants to make a purchase, and there is the company selling an item. Social media is the tool that can bring the two together. You can connect the two via a large network that focused on your pipeline of consumers. It’s not having 100,000 random followers on Twitter hoping to “shotgun” your message to all of them and then get some customers. It’s having a network of people with like interests and needs, providing them a channel to a solution and being engaged on a daily basis.

If you’re marketing your own brand, these social media tools become the way you put those specific skills on display to a market. The key to success here is a group of followers that are a consumer base that applies to your niche skill. A list of followers who are from your desired market improve your odds of success in marketing your personal brand (which hopefully is refined to catch their attention). Building credibility and constantly being engaged with these folks in LinkedIn groups, Twitter conversations, Facebook groups and so on, put your name on the map within your niche network.

We’ll be deleting those pesky DM’s from our Twitter inboxes and ignoring (and unfollowing!) from our tweet streams for a long time, but this high level approach to marketing will lead to success in executing your social media strategy.

Matthew Schmitt

[Via http://matthew-schmitt.com]

Friday Morning News and Views « The Confluence

Todays Fad: Creativity

2010-02-11T17:52:00.000+02:00

It’s become ever more apparent that the idea to which all inovation is built, is become a sort of cliche, consider how the word is used these days. Social networks are often describe as create endeavors, but the reality is that they are just copies of ideas and forms of expression that already existed. These days what we consider art, is more like a photocopy than a creative expression. Popular music is more often then not, a throw back to another time, most notable the 80’s with the re-emergence of ‘New Wave’.

Taking a look at what could be called the new ‘creative outlets’ like YouTube and 4Chan, we see nothing but repeats of repeats, a mash-up is nothing more then a copy of something that was creative in days gone by. For how long can pictures of cats with words (lolcats) be impressive, it’s already bland to me.

Facebook is another example of modern expression, best put it is anti-individuality and counter-creative. Every page is exactly the same, if you’ve seen one profile, you have seen them all, aside from a few words and a picture or two.

Crowd the cloud, dissidents and radicals are being marginalized more and more with this new method of information gathering and distribution. The crowd or cloud is a perfect example of mind-space control, driving out opinions that differ from the normal is nothing more then normal these days, not to say that was the case before, just that the Internet created an opportunity that never existed before, but is already being taken away.

So whats the point? Most likely that this whole entry lacks creativity, but more importantly that we are all losing our sense of creativity, or at least our expression of it. The world is embarking on a journey into a new dark-ages, the people of tomorrow will look back and say we ‘were a photocopy culture.’

[Via http://fadnet.wordpress.com]

FDA To Take Closer Look At Medical Radiation, Devices - Kaiser ...

Owen Van Natta Out as MySpace CEO

2010-02-11T01:12:00.000+02:00

Owen Van Natta, the former Facebook executive who was picked to revive MySpace last April, is stepping down, News Corp (s NWS) just announced. He’ll be replaced by two of his hires, Mike Jones and Jason Hirschhorn, who now each share the title of co-president, reporting to News Corp digital CEO Jon Miller.

Circumstances around the shake-up aren’t clear yet. Miller was quoted in a press release as basically saying that Van Natta’s personal and professional priorities weren’t in alignment with MySpace. One thing is clear: Running MySpace, and trying to bring it back to relevance, is a tough job.

[Via http://gigaom.com]

News to know: Server wars; Windows 7; GMail; China hacker arrests ...

The Low Anthem - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin [Album]

2010-02-09T01:24:00.000+02:00

Originally published at Sonic Dice, July 2009.

It’s hard to not be drawn into The Low Anthem’s world through the sheer atmosphere of this album. Although an extremely modern album in many ways, it also harks back through the United States’ short history more effectively than many museums or monuments could. Perhaps that’s due to the pessimistic view of the future Oh My God, Charlie Darwin offers us, which is frequently characterised with apocalyptic disaster, of breakup and breakdown. Connotations already ping around like kernels of corn heated in a pot over an open fire from the title alone. It suggests God-fearing horror in the face of advancing ideas, but also of modernity and wry irony; typically American, in other words. And upon listening to the record, Americana is what you get; it smacks you in the face like a well-struck baseball. But as already discussed, the past is what the band turn to most of the time. This is a world of state lines, of confederacy, of hearing you in the whine. Hotdogs, sports-entertainment and Barrack are not included. The financial turmoil and eroding of previously-impervious economic edifices however may well be a suitable backdrop.

The Low Anthem are built upon a chamber music aesthetic of three musicians, all purring accordions and clarinets, with some effective modern twists strictly in appropriate and unobtrusive places. This is a record that could easily have been made fifty years ago or more, sounding soulful in a gospel manner, but also sounding fresh and contemporary; certainly no mean feat. This oldie-worldy feel of the band’s approach is echoed by the artwork – “Hand silkscreened in Providence, RI” a sticker proudly proclaims – and in opener Charlie Darwin’s subject matter. There is a certain feeling of ecclesiastical hopelessness in Ben Knox-Miller’s lyrics; “Oh my God, the water’s cold and shapeless. Oh my God, it’s all around”. The keening backing vocals and upright bass are beautifully baroque in their arrangements, and a distinctive sound is revealed early on.

Oh My God, Charlie Darwin plays with the idea of modernity in many insightful and interesting ways. It comes across as a rumination upon the condition of modernity and what it means to such a young country as the United States. To the Ghosts who Write History Books (aside from its fantastic title) begins with the lyric, “To them ghosts who write history books, to the ghosts who write songs”, by implication casting the band themselves as ghosts. This is fascinating considering the themes and subject matters covered; opener Charlie Darwin for example begins speaking of the Mayflower, hailing back to the very inception of the present day United States of America. Songwriters are indeed ghosts, inhabiting any temporal period they choose to, and The Low Anthem consciously position themselves throughout America’s history and geography. As an entity, the record sounds very American, which is in no way a negative point when the sound is this emotive and at times wistful. Most songs – including Tom Waits cover Home I’ll Never Be – incorporate the names of states and cities in their lyrics, making the album feel like the soundtrack to an epic journey; perhaps a road trip. In a covered wagon.

As already hinted at, the album’s lyrics deal with some weighty issues, and extensively ponders the current state of society through songs about both its birth and demise. It may seem like all this will simply lead to ennui, but there is hope in here if you search for it, as on Ticket Taker. But this isn’t a chink of light in a dark room sort of optimism; it’s much more ethereal and innate than that. The American Dream of betterment – the seemingly-certain knowledge that the individual can succeed and that ‘things will be OK’ – is brought to bear upon the album’s atmosphere. What this recalls is a sort of Cormac McCarthy-esque hope-against-hope, of carrying the fire. Yes things are bad, but somehow the odds will be overcome. Therefore, it’s possible to categorise the overall sound of the album as apocalyptic blues. Knox-Miller’s off-rhythm line at the start of the second verse, “I keep a stock of women should society collapse” is an emphatic highlight, and also demonstrates the apparently-inevitable continuation of mankind. The crackly, lo-fi quality of Ticket Taker supports such a characterisation, and draws the ‘recorded in a shack and sounds like it’ Bon Iver comparison.

After a sedate, minimalist opening, a clutch of more raucous tracks reveal vocalist Ben Knox-Miller’s range, which is at least equal to his band’s musicianship. The Horizon is a Beltway sports the record’s most memorable chorus, and is also probably the most accessible song. Suddenly forgoing the heart-wrenching crooning of the opening tracks, the singer unleashes a gravelly drawl on top of a banjo-led, Springsteen-ish defiant stomp. This is great stuff, a change of pace continued with the Kerouac-penned Home I’ll Never Be, reinforcing the associations with a great American road trip. On Cage the Songbird a desolate, almost funereal atmosphere replaces the defiant whisky-drinkin’ hoedown with a pleasant, natural-sounding reverb on all instruments and voice, ushering in some compositions which are far less dense and busy. Cage the Songbird’s themes of confinement counterpoint the rollicking American Dream freedom of the previous songs, which is followed by (Don’t) Tremble’s gentle acquiescence. The foot-stamping, harmonica-howling blues feel morphs into something straightforward, intimate-sounding and relatable.

To address some of Oh My God, Charlie Darwin’s flaws, the album loses momentum somewhat towards its mid-section. After a strong opening, a quiet, uncomplicated middle stretch culminates in Music Box, which to be brutally honest is a bit pointless. After the fairly sparse (Don’t) Tremble, this instrumental track provides an interlude that the album doesn’t really need. Devoid both of Knox-Miller’s profound musings and his band’s beautifully constructed blues material, it spoils a flow already interrupted by the slightly-but-noticeably weaker (Don’t) Tremble. Similarly, the more traditional American rock of Champion Angel finds its powerful impact lessened and not enhanced by its unassuming forebear. The Low Anthem here get back to more uptempo material, but its crowd-pleasing, singalong style possibly lacks the depth and charm of other tracks. It’s up to the listener whether or not they allow the band this noisy, giddy thrill in which little musically interesting happens. Although more of the satisfying 12-bar rock ‘n’ roll bass licks that are occasionally dabbled with would’ve been welcome, I personally forgive Champion Angel’s rudimentary thrash.

It’s only on OMGCD that a gospel influence truly reveals itself. The track in question is quite simply brilliant; uplifting in its swampy, mud-splattered rootsiness and lack of complexity. Its choral, communal sound nicely sums up an evocative work. This track is also without doubt the perfect length, a finely-judged, masterfully-delivered piece of wonderfully understated work. The journey upon which The Low Anthem conduct the listener is a circular one, as with most voyages. We’re whirled through the past by Charlie Darwin, Home I’ll Never Be and OMGCD, before To Ohio (Reprise) brings us bang up to date. Again the band play with the conventions of modernity, sequencing the oldest-sounding track OMGCD, just before closer To Ohio (Reprise). Precise percussion which may be courtesy of a drum machine and the synthesized-sounding organ stabs lend the reprise a modern feel, recalling Heart-era Stars. It’s a complete surprise, proving that the band don’t just exist in an ‘American Gothic’-style world of sepia photographs and Appalachian cabins.

With The Low Anthem’s wheezing keys, picked guitars and mournful horns driving, the listener is taken on a journey that is both trans-American and trans-temporal. In conclusion, we may have strayed near the wrong side of the tracks once or twice, but it’s been engaging and evocative. Whether or not you’re a fan of American music, Oh My God, Charlie Darwin comes thoroughly recommended.

9 out of 10.

Sonic Dice score: 5 out of 6.

To Ohio on Spotify

Ben Knox-Miller’s throaty purr is just perfect in this achingly spare lament. Beautifully reprised later on, To Ohio is one of the album’s many highlights.

Nonesuch Records

The Low Anthem on Myspace

The Low Anthem on Last.fm

[Via http://noschoollikeoldschool.wordpress.com]

Reforms at leading news magazine believed to be political

Will someone please launch My Social Stuff

2010-02-07T17:28:00.000+02:00

Now that everything is electronic and all apps and services are internet-based (Gmail, Facebook, Twitter, Dropbox, Flickr, YouTube, Google Docs and what not) I feel more certain than ever that I won’t lose my “stuff”. I guess most of my e-stuff from the 90s is gone by now. I probably had some of it on some 3.5″ back-up disks or old computers, but now – it’s gone. Disappeared. Disparu.

It got me thinking the other day when I was looking for an old Facebook wall chat- it wasn’t old old, just a couple of months – and I realized it was almost impossible to find. Whose wall was it on? Was it mine? Who was in it? Anyway, it took me well over half an hour to locate it scrolling through 40-50 pages (the one shown here is another one I decided to keep). It was really good, it made me laugh all over again and I decided I wanted to keep it. But then I found that the only way to really keep it, was to screen-shoot it and save it in my Dropbox. Now, how old-fashioned is that? And what if, in 5 years time, I want to find something from today… I would take me weeks to find it.

It begs the question: How far back do Facebook, MySpace, Twitter et al keep their records?

It also begs the plea: Can someone please launch the service “My Social Stuff”! What I want is something like this: When I read a wall chat I want a little icon next to it that I can hit and it’ll save that chat to my social stuff. The same thing with pictures, tweets, links – basically everything from social cyberspace that I want to keep.

In My Social Stuff I want a powerful Google type search engine, so I can find everything. Folksonomy so I (and my friends) can tag a chat “wedding speech” or “joke” for later reference.

Above all I want a virtual time capsule where I can keep and safeguard all my social stuff for many many years.

[Via http://olekassow.wordpress.com]

Windows Phone 7 To Get Zune HD Makeover? » Podcasting News

Blogging is for old people, Pew report finds

2010-02-06T17:31:00.000+02:00

Here is a good weekend article around youth online behaviours well worth a reading. The SF Chronichle article points out that Twitter has failed to catch up among the young, Myspace invites for blogging in contraru to Facebook that is more of a staus/ short message socializing forum. Well worth reading to indicate some youth trends. Questions that I get from this is how to reach the youth with businessmodels, enabling profits, advertising etc. Also, if the lifecycles of products are as shorts as a few years, what happens with existing, but declining businesses?

Gerbsman Partners are able to provide leadership in this questions, please contact us for more information.

“Teenagers and young adults spent less time blogging during the past three years as social networks like Facebook became more popular, according to a Pew Research Center study released Wednesday.

Still, one social network, Twitter, has failed to catch on with the vast majority of younger teenagers, according to the Pew study of social media and mobile Internet use among teens and young adults.

The study conducted by the Washington, D.C., nonprofit think tank was designed to gauge the online habits of America’s “millennial generation,” a demographic group that is considered a bellwether of the nation’s future technology trends.

The results indicate blogging has become so 2006, when 28 percent of the two groups studied, teens 12 to 17 and young adults 18 to 29, actively blogged.

By the fall of 2009, that percentage dropped off to only 14 percent of teens and 15 percent of young adults as blogging “lost its luster for many young users,” said Amanda Lenhart, one of the report’s authors.

Lenhart said one reason for the shift might have come from the rapid ascent of Facebook over MySpace to the top of the social media charts in the past year. The MySpace format encourages members to blog, while Facebook instead features short status updates, she said.

Palo Alto’s Facebook was used by 73 percent of young adults, compared with 48 percent for MySpace and 14 percent for the professional network LinkedIn, based in Mountain View.

About 52 percent of those surveyed had memberships in more than one social network, up from 42 percent in 2008.

Meanwhile, only 40 percent of adults age 30 and older used social media sites in 2009, although among that group, blogging activities increased to 11 percent from 7 percent three years earlier.

Twitter usage, however, showed the opposite trend. Only 8 percent of online teens said they had ever used the San Francisco microblogging service, a result that reflects previous research that indicated Twitter – unlike other online technologies – is not being driven by younger audiences. Teens clearly preferred sending text messages – 66 percent – to tweeting.

The Pew study found 19 percent of the adults polled used Twitter or similar services to post or view online status updates, although Lenhart noted the questions posed to that group were not the same asked of the younger group, so the results might not be exactly comparable.

The study also found:

– 59 percent of young adults owned a video game console like a Microsoft Xbox or Sony PlayStation, and 22 percent owned a portable gaming device like a Sony PSP or Nintendo DS. The percentages were even greater for teens – 80 percent had a game console and 51 percent owned a portable.

– Almost 4 in 5 teenagers, 79 percent, owned an iPod or MP3 player.

– Of teens, 62 percent went online to get news of current events or politics.

– More young adults, 66 percent, owned a laptop computer than a desktop, 53 percent.

And 81 percent of young adults who went online did so wirelessly, compared with 63 percent of adults age 30 to 49 and 34 percent of adults 50 and older.

“Young adults have really created this detached, mobile lifestyle,” Lenhart said.

For the study, 2,253 adults age 18 and older and 800 teenagers age 12 to 17 were interviewed last summer.

Previous Pew results released from the same research found that 15 percent of teens sent or received sexually suggestive messages, called “sexting,” and that 1 in 3 teens have sent text messages while driving.”

Phase E

2010-02-06T01:49:00.000+02:00

These guys sent me a Friend request VIA myspace… I listened for once, instead of pressing ignore.. and I am a R&B woman, so I like this song..

I also like (find decent) the songs called

Baby Girl

Breathless

She put it on me

Visist their myspace @ http://www.myspace.com/phasee

I think that they should CHILL out on the voice tool (forgot what it’s called).. but it’s still okay.

[Via http://tiffsarlacmusicupdates.wordpress.com]

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Great news: Fiorina's campaign promising ...

Studies Show: The Internet is Depressing

2010-02-04T09:38:00.000+02:00

This leaves me with an unsettling feeling especially because it’s a known fact that when you have a blog, you are going to spend a good amount of your time on the internet. I rarely read newspapers now since all of the news I need to read is online! I guess I can’t say I didn’t see this coming. After all, look at what everyone is doing these days. We are absolutely consumed by Twitter, Facebook, blogs, downloading music, watching free television and movies online. There’s very little that we cannot do without it.

Researches have recently discovered that spending copious amounts of time on the internet can lead to depression.

(deep breath in) Processing that thought…

“Researchers questioned 1,319 people, ages 16 to 51, and discovered a high correlation between amount of time spent online and depression. In fact, among what the researchers characterized as “internet addicts,” the “average depression score was more than five times higher than that of non-addicted users.”

What is the main reason behind this study? Spending so much time on the internet is a substitute for an actual social life, which we all know is pretty much required to have a normal life. Your computer cannot be your best friend. Another reason is because it is used as an outlet to escape from normal life and the problems in it.

I don’t know what their definition is for an internet addict exactly, but speaking for myself, I would say that I spend more time on the internet than the average person. If not the internet, then definitely the computer. If you need some advice on cutting back, my answer would be to get rid of accounts that you no longer use anymore and that you just don’t care about. I recently deleted my Myspace and Last.Fm. I only kept them for so long (even w/o using them) so that I could one day look back on them and see what sort of things/phases I went through. Turns out, I would never really do that.

Source

[Via http://itsyowyow.com]

Behemoth's next is BattleBlock Theater News | Xbox 360 | Eurogamer

Virus Alert! Fake AntiVirus Software

2010-02-04T01:33:00.000+02:00

It came upon me without warning. I was on Myspace, adding a friend when I got an alert off my taskbar stating that my computer has been infected and giving me an option to remove it. I thought it was my own anti-virus software but when I clicked, “yes”, it sent me to a website to purchase a different anti-virus software. I could do nothing after this. Error messages popped up like crazy and my internet browsing was disabled. Luckily, I had another laptop available and I did some research. It turns out that I WAS infected and that the virus was this fake antivirus software trying to scam and fustrate people into buying its program. I found out that people were being infected off of Myspace and Facebook, just as I had. Most importantly I found a solution that did not require wiping out my hard drive or paying big bucks for computer repair. You can find it here at, Malware Removal Tips. It gives you step by step easy instructions on getting rid of this really annoying virus.

[Via http://queerfresno.com]

News Ticker: Glastonbury, Santana, Joanna Newsom, NBA All-Star ...

LSD on YouTube, finally!

2010-02-02T01:13:00.000+02:00

I made video that you can watch while you’re waiting for the real deal, since this is just a… Ah, check it out HERE! I know it sucks that I can’t put the videos straight up on at this page, but what’s really the diffrence? The video is still watchable. I know you all (like the three diffrent people who visit this place) were expecting something diffrent, but this is all I can give you at the moment. Another funny thing is that someone else actually uploaded one of my track on YouTube and you can view this HERE. I’ve already thanked the person who uploaded it, I thought it was cool.

I’m working on the new album and I got one track done today, I can’t give you any snippets or anything yet but I’d say the track is just fine. A couple of other tracks have been made before this one. I won’t give them to you right now anyway, but you could check out my myspace if you didn’t do that the last time you visited, there’s a track there named Kasta Macka wich is going to be on the next album. The LSD Myspace.

I’m not angry with the Sony Vegas film making program anymore since I got it to work today, and that’s why I made the YouTube upload, I had to try it out. You can expect more slideshow movies in a short while and I’ll be sure to link em here so they’re easier to find. They’ll hopefully have a better quality slideshow and better sound quality then too.

See you around! Thanks for reading.

[Via http://sankystile.wordpress.com]

» Polar News & Notes: January 2010 News Roundup » Beyond Penguins ...

Tv!!!!

2010-01-30T17:19:00.000+02:00

Hi, all you bloggers its me again Greco, and this post is about Tv!!!…. Oh yeah i would just like 2 say that i forgot to mention some things on my post about Internet, i cant believe that i forgot to mention myspace and facebook, wow huge dealers and thingys in the internet some people prefer to have both and some just one, i have both cuz some of my friends have myspace and some of them have facebook, so i think its best to have both so that i can be in touch with all of my friends… Oh yeah back to the subject we were on: TV!!!!!.. So many people watch different things depending on their age, u know i watch nick, i dont really like disney channel its so sucky and fake acting except for some people, but its stupid 2, ok another thing I watch is Lost, its freakin awsome, its dramatic yet funny its funny yet weird, its amazing i love it, another thing i like is CSI: Miami… its the only good one, well that 1 and the new york one, but dude its awsome….. MadTv….. Oh yeah, mad tv, thats awsome, Bobby lee is so freakin halarious, u can c vids of him on youtube, theyre so cooooooollllll…. If i forget anything cool or something, or you just want to tell me wat you watch on tv then email me at disconectedemoblood@gmail.com or grecokassem@hotmail.com, or comment which is much easier but if you wan to write something personal dont worry i wont tell anyone, plz write me, im ok with people of every kind…… So ok….. byeeeeee, til next time bloggers : ) or maybe not cuz im sad that i wont write anymore 4 this blog :’-(

[Via http://randomness4ever.wordpress.com]

Metro 2033 arriving in March News | Eurogamer

Hear 3 tracks from SADE'S new album!

2010-01-28T09:41:00.000+02:00

Yes, you read that right!

When we said that the all-new Sade website and Twitter would bring you the news first, we meant it!

Overnight, the Twitter feed has announced that 3 cuts from Sade’s upcoming album Soldier of Love have now been released online!!!!

1.To hear Moon and the Sky, go to Sade’s MySpace page here:

http://www.myspace.com/sade

2. To hear Skin, go to BET.com here

http://www.bet.com/music/newreleases/818427/Sade

3. To hear In Another Time, go to the Ellen Degerees show site here:

http://ellen.warnerbros.com/2010/01/an_exclusive_worldwide_premier.php

Brilliant, beautiful, amazing… Less than two weeks until the album is released worldwide. based on this, we cannot wait to hear the rest of the record!

[Via http://soulfoodpr.wordpress.com]

John Atlas: ACORN Is Back in the News, but the News Still Gets it ...

A dream about this blog

2010-01-28T01:51:00.000+02:00

It seemed so real. If only…

I don’t remember what lead up to it, but I found myself looking at the Vancouver Sun (or maybe it was the Province?). There was a small article about me and my blog, talking about how I’m “calm” and “charming” and how the third entry of my blog, which was supposed to be a poem of some sort, was very emotional and that people should go to my blog and read my stuff.

There was someone else there with me, and I remember telling that person, “This article would explain the large jump in views over those days a while ago!” I was really happy, to say the least. Not only had someone actually noticed my blog and my writing, but they had taken the time to write about it and advise others to go and check it out. Wow.

Then there was something about London Drugs and this guy who I was holding hands with in a truck was at some boat house and I had to be quiet because I was in a house too and there was a bad guy sleeping. But then I woke up and for a minute, thought the part about my blog was real… and then, I realized I don’t read the paper other than for the music and movie reviews and then became disappointed.

Getting exposure has always been hard for me, and I’m not really sure why. I think it’s a combination of things: that I don’t have zillions of friends on facebook/myspace; I’m not very extroverted or social compared to other people; I have a small network of close friends that I talk to (as opposed to ones I consider as acquaintances); I don’t really do anything that gets me noticed, etc. I don’t feel like I stand out in a crowd. I do, however, feel like once you get to know me, I stand out because of all the creative stuff I do and dedicate my time to, but if you saw me on the street, I’m just another guy.

On every site I join, I always seem to be less popular than others; youtube, facebook (my music profile), myspace… how do these people do it? For youtube, it’s having the right videos. For facebook and myspace, it’s a bit harder. Sure, you can have a million fans, but of those fans, who actually cares and likes your music? I am told my music is good but obviously being good is not enough to get more people interested; a while back, I was reading about Adam what’s-his-face, the guy behind Owl City, about how he started up a myspace page around the same time I did. He didn’t tell anyone about it but apparently, his music was so good, the word spread about him and soon, he was up to a few hundred thousand plays. He then got a record deal, made an album, released a single… why can’t that happen with me?

I struggle with making people care about what I do, more than most people, it seems. I’m really sure either what I can do; sure, I can talk to more people and tell them about my music/writing/screenplays. I guess that would be a start.

Perhaps I just don’t have very good luck. Perhaps I’m simply not lucky enough. Perhaps my type of music just doesn’t appeal to people or perhaps I’m not as good as my friends tell me and the reality is that people don’t like to become fans of crappy musicians. Perhaps I will never be super popular, as well-known as I want to be (ugh, how depressing…).

But I’ll keep trying. As long as there’s someone listening.

Aaron

[Via http://aaronchanwriting.wordpress.com]

Hot Air » Blog Archive » Great news: Noted deficit hawk to ...

Jessica Chavez Photography

2010-01-26T17:48:00.000+02:00

Contact Jessica Chavez Photography:

Website:

http://www.jessicachavezphotography.net/

Twitter:

http://twitter.com/chavezfotos

Myspace:

www.myspace.com/jessicachavezphotography

Facebook:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Jessica-Chavez-Photography/255382342651

Email:

jessicachavezphotography@gmail.com

[Via http://jessicachavez.wordpress.com]

Apple Q1 2010: 21 million iPods, 8.7 million iPhones sold ...

My Den at Authors Den

2010-01-23T17:03:00.000+02:00

By Andrew Hayett

Hiya! Wow, this week went quite fast. I can’t believe how quickly time is passing lately. Just this week, I got my own Facebook account. (To see my profile and find out about how you can win a copy of my debut novel, click here). And this week, I also got an account at Writer’s Den.

Writer’s Den is a large (probably the largest of its kind) online community where authors and readers connect with each other. It is not like Facebook or MySpace, but it provides authors with their own bio page, as well as list their current works. ‘Dulcet’ is already listed as an unpublished work. But it will be published soon.

As of this time, I haven’t found either Stephenie Meyer, J.K. Rowling, or Nicholas Sparks (my three favorite novelists) on AuthorsDen. Their works are great and it would be awesome if they were there, too.

If you are an avid reader, then you can get a free Reader account at Authors Den. If you are a writer, then a free Author account would be better for you. You cannot get an Author account unless you have a work that will be published within the year.

I’ve got this account just for extra exposure. It can come in very handy, especially since I am currently promoting my debut novel. However, since Facebook and MySpace are much larger online communities, I might consider canceling my AD account. That’s a probability, I still haven’t decided. I’ll see what happens.

[Via http://andrewhayett.wordpress.com]

BREAKING NEWS REQUIRES ALL CAPS - Breaking News - Gizmodo

krik? krak!

2010-01-23T01:39:00.000+02:00

Haiti.

The country that is on finally on the world’s radar, finally getting the attention it deserves, and the help it so desperately needs. Unfortunately, it was due to two devastating earthquakes. As tragic as that is, there’s no other way anyone would care about Haiti right now if it wasn’t for the earthquake.

Think about what most people knew about Haiti before this week.

-it’s a country

-might have heard something about voodoo

-apparently wyclef jean is from Haiti

Before January 2009, all I really knew about Haiti was that it was a country and its vague location. Then I took a class called Spirit and Story, taught by the amazing Lara Vesta. In Spirit and Story we read Krik? Krak! by Edwidge Danticat. It is one of the most amazing books I’ve read, one of the hardest for me to read, one of the most brave pieces of writing I’ve read, and a book that touched me forever in my heart and soul. That book changed our class. It moved us to raise $500 to by a cow for someone in Haiti through Heifer International. It moved us to create a Wikipedia page dedicated to the American companies that operate sweatshops in Haiti (apparently our sources weren’t up to snuff or we didn’t link them right so the page is gone now). It moved us to go to www.freerice.com and spend a good portion of our class pooling our knowledge to find the right definition. It moved us to create a Myspace page all about Haiti. It moved us to make a video:

At the end of the class I wrote this:

Like I said in class and in my journal, these stories were the hardest for me to read. Tracks was not easy for me to read, but I have been exposed to the tragedy of what happened and still happens to American Indians. But Haiti? I was in the dark about a country 720 miles from the United States’ east coast. I had never learned about Haiti so every part of these stories struck a chord deep in my mind, my soul, the essence of who I am. That sounds like fancy language but I am not sure how else to express it. Every night I read I could not help but cry. The power of Danitcat’s words, the power of the stories, the lies, the truth she tells, it shifted my entire world. They touched every single person in our classroom. Every single person wanted to do something, anything to help. And it is because of that that I challenge the mother who believes “Writers don’t leave any mark in the world” (Danticat 221). Because of one woman’s words, twenty-four separate people were moved to act, to raise money to buy a cow, to put knowledge where there was none before, to increase awareness and inform people ignorant of Haiti.

My heart hurts for Haiti. The outpouring of support is inspiring and I only hope it continues. Here are some links:

UNICEF: http://www.unicefusa.org/?gclid=CP6KscqGqJ8CFQZfagodrxkI0w

Red Cross: http://www.redcross.org/

Donation by Text: http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/HaitiEarthquake/haiti-earthquake-donations-haiti-relief-efforts-text-message/story?id=9551199

California Nurses Association: http://www.calnurse.org/

[Via http://belleringer.wordpress.com]

John Edwards Latest News

Digital DVD Photo Slideshow Software to make photo Slideshow DVD for Apple TV,Apple iPod, Zune

2010-01-21T09:06:00.000+02:00

Digital DVD Photo Slideshow Software for TV/DVD, Apple iPod, Apple iPhone,Zune, Sony PSP, PDA, MPEG, Website,YouTube,MySpace,Facebook,blog and more!

Digital DVD Photo Slideshow Professionalis a photo slideshow DVD maker that you can use to create dynamic photo slideshow DVD or video with your digital photographs. It allows you to create entertaining photograph slideshows watched on TV or Apple TV, create SWF Flash slideshow for posting to website, generate MPEG video files for mobile devices such as Apple iPod, Zune, Sony PSP, PDA, Apple iPhone and other mobile phone, build photo slideshow video for uploading to YouTube, MySpace and Facebook. Within a few minutes of work, you’ll have an eye-catching photo slideshow for TV or Apple TV (with DVD, SVCD, VCD 2.0 output), for Apple iPod, Apple iPhone,Zune, PSP, PDA, mobile phone (MPEG, MPEG-4, 3GP MP4), for MySpace, YouTube (FLV, Web Album as output formats) and Facebook.

DVD Photo Slideshow,The best Photos to DVD slideshow software

DVD Photo Slideshow is the best DVD Photo Slideshow Software to create DVDs from your photo collection. Watch your pictures on any home DVD player. Share your digital pictures on a DVD with friends or family. DVD Photo Slideshow animates your images to make a video DVD Slideshow. You can add optional soundtracks and comments to your pictures using DVD subtitles. The result is attractive and vibrant. The product is very easy to use and burn with almost all DVD writer.

The transitions and animations of your pictures are completely automatic and will enhance the experience of sharing your best memories. You can watch the results on a regular TV,Apple TV,computer using a DVD Player. A copy of your original photo files can be stored in the DVD disc which lets you keep trace of your digital pictures without quality loss using a computer.

Perfect photo slideshow DVD tool for viewing, storing and sharing your photos

With DVD Photo Slideshow, thousands of photographs from holidays, landscapes, wedding or family parties can now be enjoyed on TV, computer or website as high resolution DVD slideshow, Flash slideshow, MPEG encoded slideshow. The program’s simplified three-step workflow enables users of all levels to build custom photo slide shows, design on-screen menus, and burn discs for sharing at home, generate MPEG video or Web slideshow.

DVD Photo Slideshow gives photography lovers or photo collectors a new and easy way to view, store and share their pictures from digital camera, scanner or Internet. With just a few clicks, you can use DVD Photo Slideshow to view and edit photo, create and organize your photo album, add background music, burn your photo album on blank DVD+R/RW, DVD-R/RW, CD-R or CD-RW disc or just generate Flash photo slideshow or MPEG/MPEG-4 encoded slideshow. After that, you can show your creative works on TV, PC, website, YouTune, MySpace,Facebook and blog. DVD Photo Slideshow can also archive your original photo files in DVD or CD disc so that you can print or process them in the future.

Click hereto start making photo slideshow on DVD disc>and show slideshow on TV.

Create photo video CD or DVD that play back on your TV with DVD player. Generate MPEG video files for PC viewing. Generate MPEG-4 format files for mobile devices such as Apple iPod, Sony PSP, cellular phone and PDA. Build photo slideshow video ready for upload to your YouTube, MySpace. Create SWF Flash slideshow, perfect for e-mailing or posting online to your website. DVD Photo Slideshow does it all!

More Features of DVD Photo Slideshow include:

1.Create and burn your photo slide show DVD or CD with clicks

DVD Photo Slideshow enables you conveniently create your own digital photo album. After the preview of your slide show created, you can easily burn them onto a blank DVD or CD disc that can be enjoyed both on your PC and TV with a DVD or VCD player. Within a few minutes of work, you’ll have an eye-catching slide show with DVD, SVCD, VCD 2.0, MPEG, MP4, FLV, SWF Flash as output formats.

2.Watch and share your photographs on TV, PC, mobile device, website, YouTube ,MySpace,Facebook

DVD Photo Slideshow can quickly and easily produce professional-looking photo slide show DVD disc or MPEG video files and share digital photo albums on home big screen TV, computer, website, iPod, PSP, YouTube, MySpace,Facebook and blog.

3.Save and organize your photo, picture and image

With this photo program, you can easily archive hundreds of your favorite high-resolution photo onto a DVD or CD disc that is accessible by your PC. You can share your archived DVD or CD discs with friends, family, clients or colleagues! For more information about how to make photo DVD or VCD with DVD Photo Slideshow, please visit this helpful 1,2,3 How-To make digital slideshow DVD with photograph slideshow DVD software.

[Via http://dvdphotoslideshow.wordpress.com]

News to know: Apple Tablet; IBM; IE6; Microsoft-HP; Google-China ...

Myspacing...

2010-01-19T17:37:00.000+02:00

I’m supposed to be reviewing albums for Bearded but I’ve been distracted by Myspace and the lure of new music that I don’t know much about. Never put too much info on your profile, make sure your profile pic is of inanimate objects, preferably topiary – it’s so hip to be incognito. But yes, make sure the music is luscious and dreamy.

Bands for your pleasure:

New Yoga
Haunted Houses
Silver Haunches
Okinawa Lifestyle (from Tbilisi, Georgia no doubt)

[Via http://missronai.wordpress.com]

Former Clemson Star Gaines Adams Dies - Sports News Story - WYFF ...

Off and running...

2010-01-19T01:40:00.000+02:00

Big changes for me as 2009 ended and 2010 began. A whole lot of factors and forces combined to create a perfect storm. And my life got more simple. And I let some things go. I found new levels of knowledge, found new teachers, new mindsets, new horizons, and new ways to think about life and career and living in balance and love.

Life really can be tremendously abundant and flowing when we let go and both believe and take some action. There’s absolutely nothing that can’t be accomplished. And it’s so much easier when I let the naysayers and doubters go. And find people who live in love and openness and faith.

I’t s really cool to not have to hide pieces of myself. I used to be lots of different people. One with friends, another with family, a third with coworkers and clients. But not anymore. I’m me. Stevie Ray. Poetic web developer. Dancer, singer, lover of God. If you want to know what I know or believe, it’s very easy to find. I’m on facebook and twitter and myspace and lots of other places. I expose my expressions, my poetry, my heart, my silly dance, whatever. If you’re not comfortable with that, it’s perfectly cool with me. Don’t try and change me and I won’t try and change you; best we just go our separate ways.

If, on the other hand, you enjoy the me you see, we should talk. See what we can build together. I love new projects. I love inspiring and helping people. And I love life.

Stylin’,

Stevie Ray

[Via http://stylindesign.wordpress.com]

Tiger Woods Accident Taiwan News Animation English Subtitles « The ...

Three FsihVille Tips For Mega Fast Leveling in FishVille

2010-01-17T09:29:00.000+02:00

Three FishVille Tips For Mega Fast Leveling in FishVille

It can be difficult to determine where your priorities should lie, when you first begin playing the Facebook game FishVille. You may feel like you are drowning in decisions (haha) and barely keeping your head above water, as there are so many things to keep track of.

You will soon get the hang of things and you will want to come up with a good strategy for the long run. You will be able to advance into new levels quickly at first, but as you progress in the game, this will become increasingly more difficult. In addition, you will obviously want to move up, that way you can have access to the special types of fish and other items that are only available in the higher levels. However, if you have been frustrated by the difficulty of leveling up quickly in FishVille, here are a few tips that will help to alleviate some of that frustration.

Pimp Out and Decorate Your Tank

Once you have established a significant cash flow, you can start to spend some money sprucing up your tanks and adding some decorations to them. This not only makes them more attractive, but can actually help you to reach new levels quicker. This is because each time you buy a decoration; you will receive a bonus of experience points. These bonuses will vary in size depending on the cost of the particular item, but even the small bonuses will add up quickly.

Give A Little Love And Help Your Neighbors

Each time you visit a neighbor, you will be able to perform some chore to help them with the maintenance of their tank, and you will receive a small coin and experience bonus for your hard work. Just like the small bonuses for buying decorations, these can add up really fast, especially if you have a lot of neighbors to visit. You will be able to get the bonuses from each of your neighbors once a day, so make sure to visit each of your neighbors as often as you can.

Reevaluate Your Fish Options

When you first start out playing FishVille it is natural to choose to raise the fish that give you the highest possible coin totals, either in terms of the percentage return on your initial investment, or in terms of the straight size of the sum you can sell each fish for.

Once you have reached some of the higher levels however and have a significant reserve of coins build up, it’s a good idea to reevaluate the types of fish you’re choosing to raise.

Shifting your focus at this point in the game to fish that give you more experience instead of greater coin bonuses, is a solid FishVille strategy. Because any fish that you have raised will sell for more that you had originally paid for it, you will still be increasing your coin totals while at the same time, you will be able to level up more quickly.

If you can successfully employ these three strategies, you will be well on your way to success in FishVille and start moving up to the higher levels!

FishVille Secrets Cheat Guide gives you all the information you need to swim up the levels with ease. Imagine being able to play FishVille with all the answers, you need at your fingertips. That is what FishVille Secrets is doing for thousands of players. No more searching the internet for answers, and wondering if you have setup your FishVille game to get the most points and coins.

Get the advantage that others have in the FishVille game today and look at my review of FishVille Secrets today. Maybe it is just what you need. Visit http://newgameguides.com/fishville-game-a-review-of-fishville-secret-cheat-guide/ today.

[Via http://newcheatguides.wordpress.com]

Phoenix Wright heads WiiWare update News | Wii | Eurogamer

"Race You" Premieres!!

2010-01-17T01:34:00.000+02:00

The music video we created for band Elizabeth and the Catapult’s song “Race You” premieres on Yahoo on January 25th!!!

We are very excited to see this video go live!

BE SURE TO CHECK IT OUT ON YAHOO – JAN. 25th!!!!

Also, check out production stills from the shoot on our flickr page!

[Via http://foundationcontent.wordpress.com]

Dallas Cowboys Blog | Sports News | News for Dallas, Texas ...

I'm With COCO!

2010-01-16T09:28:00.000+02:00

I can’t believe what I have read so outraged have I become that I am sending out this emergency weekend update.

They are trying to take Conan O’Brien off the air trying to take the Tonight Show from him when he just got it! Conan packed up his family and crew and moved from New York to L.A. and now because Leno is crapping out on his show and he’s crying for his old show back, so the studio exec’s are shoving their collective heads straight up their asses and allowing this to happen. Well if you think this is complete crap and think Conan should keep the Tonight Show then get on your twitter, get on your Facebook, get on your MySpace, get on whatever social network service you use and change your status to: I’M WITH COCO!

I'M WITH COCO!

[Via http://amadeuskong.wordpress.com]

Bob Cesca's Awesome Blog! Go!: Good News, Bad News

My Vinyl Teddy "the Teddy Bear" Pendergrass

2010-01-16T01:36:00.000+02:00

I don’t know about where you live if you live in a city in the U.S.A., but here in Hootyville I didn’t hear any radio stations doing a tribute to Teddy Pendergrass when word came that he passed away on January 13th. That is damn shame,but what you get when you have cold corporations running the radio of the day.

The first time I heard Teddy Pendergrass was back when the late, great radio programmer Frankie Crocker played a record by Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes called “I Miss You” on the first Black FM music station in New York City, WLIB-FM in 1972. They would play the whole eight minute version where the AM stations would only play “part 1″ and the Teddy’ Bear’s voice was the most powerful on this then new group. My favorite on that first album on Philadelphia International Records however, was (and still is) “Yesterday I Had The Blues”. That was the first time that Teddy really brought it emotionally, and shined distinctively on a song with his “cryin’” and pleading style. The other hit from the album was “If You Don’t Know Me By Now” (whose intrumental track sound very similar to The Eagle’s “Take It To The Limit, by the way), and again Teddy carried the tune and painted the lyrical picture.

Around 1973 WLIB FM became WBLS FM, and Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes second album, “Black & Blue” hit the streets preceeded by the single “The Love I Lost, part 1″. Back then many “soul” records had a “part one” and the flip side of the 45rpm record would be “part 2″ – a trend started by James Brown and Polydor Records I think. What was hip about that was that it created anticipation for the album (lp or long-playing 331/3) to come out so that you could hear the whole song without the interruption of having to physically turn the record over. I remember this especially benefiting this group on this particular song and once again Teddy Pendergrass was given more of a lead role and he ran with it. It also was the beginning of the “Disco” era, so when I as a “baby DJ” gleaned this, I would play it to fill the dance floor because of its really moving beat. The cover features the group clad in caberet-style tuxedo, and Teddy still tugging at your heart strings as he breaks it down. Another favorite on that album is the slow jam, ”Concentrate On Me”, where in their classic Gamble & Huff style, the formula was for Teddy to tell the story in-between magnificent chorouses by the rest of the group. I remember vintage radio personalities of the day like Crocker saying that Teddy was “taking you to church on that one…” Groups like these helped to form my notions about romance and unrequited love, and I still fall back on them during times of heartbreak (like in recent months).

1975 saw the group produce two great albums, “To Be True” and “Wake Up Everybody”. It also marked the first signs of a restless Teddy Bear; as I recall, he threatened to leave unless he received top billing, and so in a compromise of sorts they became Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes featuring Teddy Pendergrass. Teddy knew he made the sound of the group sell.

“To be True” spawned at least three hits: “Where Are All My Friends”,” To Be True”, and the biggest, most dancable one, “Bad Luck”. The group also intoduced a female to the sound for the first time in Sharon Paige who many of my classmates loved on the jazzy “Hope That We Can Be Together Soon”. Word was behind the scenes that she was included to vex Teddy a bit within his power-play. Lightening struck twice when later that year the second album dropped and Teddy led the way on a spirited cover of the Thelma Houston disco classic “Don’t Leave me This Way”. My personal fave on “Wake Up” is his work on “Tell The World How I Feel About’Cha Baby”, and the title track scored by touching a nerve within us all in a timeless way.

The next vinyl in my Teddy library, is simply entitled “Teddy Pendergrass” or “the white scarf album” as my mentor, the late Sonny Taylor called it. As the title suggests, he was now a solo act after a final dispute with Harold Melvin, who replaced him with someone I remember only as “Ebo” as introduced at Madison Square Garden’s old “Felt Forum” (now the Paramount). He was still written by Gamble and Huff, and the material and tempos were as good as every for “Pender-bender” which was another of the nicknames we gave him. It featured the hit “You Can’t Hide From Yourself”, the introspective “The Whole Town’s Laughing At Me” and a serious smash in “I Don’t Love You Anymore” among others. My notes scribbled on the back of the jacket give this album five stars back in March of 1977. Personal fave here: “The More I Get, The More I Want” ( he’d sing “ah-yeah” between verses). As I listen to the music Teddy left behind, it becomes apparent that he made the right moves with his career, and his timing was excellent for a good while.

There are two vinyls was never able to add to this collection, “T.P” and “Life Is A Song Worth Singing”. They were released sometime between 1977 and 1980 and included two of my faaavorite numbers, “Love TKO” and “Close The Door”. ”TKO” was so hot that even with the record company connections of a young DJ, I could not secure anything but a 45rpm of it until Teddy’s Greatest Hits came out in 1984.

Two years later, in 1979 (a great year for Disco and Soul music) his next solo album, “Teddy” or the red album was clearly a sexier effort. “Come Go With Me” and “Turn Off The Lights” led it off and were massive romantic hits which still sound sensual today. Later that same year “Teddy Live! Coast To Coast” , a double vinyl album hit just in time for Christmas on December 12th. If it had come out today, it definitly would have included a video, but in those days a full length poster of Pendergrass did just fine. During those performances, one In Philadelphia and the others in Los Angeles, he included a medly of his hits with The Blue Notes and by now the women in the audience were throwing articles of their underwear at him in adoration.

Little did he or we know that tradegy would strike and almost silence Teddy three years later when he had a Roy Campanella-style auto accident on night that left him paralysed from the waste down. There were several scandalous rumors surrounding that even which I’ll not go into here.

Teddy Pendergrass rose like the Pheonix though; the next vinyl in my collection, “This One’s For You” (1982) was a homage to his fans after he pulled through the medical procedures that followed his accident. Maybe the first track on there says it best about how he felt at the time, ” I Can’t Win For Losing”.

By 1984 Teddy had signed with Elektra/Asylum Records and subsquently sang the next three and final of my vinyls for that record company. The three now only photographed him from the chest-up; no more cowboy hats and suggestive gyration photos. “Love Language” featured the sexy, “You’re My Choice Tonight” which I played on New York City radio along with more introspective selections such as “In My Time”. 1985’s “Workin’ It Back” had eight five-star songs on it, including “Let Me Be Closer”, co-written by the legendary Linda Creed, and “Love Emergency”, co written by Womack & Womack. For the first time, Teddy’s star began to fade around this point, in my opinion.

The last and most recentl vinyl in my Teddy Bear den is 1988’s spirited “Joy” , which was produced by Teddy for Teddy Bear Productions, Inc. (see, he listened to us!) The first two songs are the stalwarts here as well: the title track and one of the best songs he ever sang after the crash, “2 A.M” which decribes the end of a party and alludes to taking home and to a more intimate level. The accident humbled Pendergrass as it probably would any of us, and his subsequent work showed it even though his voice never lost all of it’s sex appeal nor he the ability to orally interpret lyrics to evoke real feelings.

I just heard the end notes of Teddy fading off from a tribute to Teddy Pendergrass on the radio tonight, two nights later – on the PBS station! Bigg Upps to them and their warm teddy-bear selves.

[Via http://achilliad.wordpress.com]

Perez Hilton: Our Big News!!!!!!!

My lecturer told me...

2010-01-12T17:31:00.000+02:00

…that each year, the standard of university students is dropping. Why is this? Yes, I’m still studying Susan Jacoby but maybe she has a point that technology proliferation is dumbing us down. The main difference between my university education, and my sister’s education, back in 2001, is that my peers have much more ‘distraction’ in the world. Ana did not have MySpace, Facebook or a mobile phone to entertain her.

I promise I will move away from this subject as soon as my deadline passes hah.

[Via http://theblogforpeoplewhohatetoread.wordpress.com]

News From Across The Pond: Lily Allen does interiors, Kate ...

Swift Years at Shaika, Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal Friday nights

2010-01-10T17:12:00.000+02:00

Upcoming Swift Years’ Gigs

Great music – mix of Irish, Hungarian with a blue grass flavour – frenetic mandolin playing, beautiful bass and zingalinging electric guitar picking and oft off-beat songs add to a flavourful evening of music a la Swift Years.

Patrick Hutchinson, Swift Years

Bob Cussens and Suzanne Ungar, Swift Years

[Via http://favefolks.wordpress.com]

Lost News: New Promos, Disney Attraction & Premiere Delay ...

Editors- In This Light and On This Evening

2010-01-10T01:18:00.000+02:00

Review

Editors- In This Light and On This Evening

This might be painful… I don’t know if Editors sold their guitars for keyboards and in that act lost most of their sound that I loved about this band but that is what happened. In This Light and On this Evening is boring, bland and misses the mark. It has very little of the Editors old writing style about philosophy and life. Most of the songs seem to be speaking to some women who is not doing well and it’s the job for Editors to tell her how she’s messed up. It’s an album that makes me sad but not really feel any sadness. Feeling is what makes a band like the Editors work and it’s just not there. Also, the rushing distorted guitar that makes Editors music drive is not around and now we have a hollow space where most of these song lay. There are a few minutes where I’m thinking it could rock, but not really. Vocally it’s not reaching me either and his voice has less inflection and, does every song have to mention God or his lack of belief? This album, I’m sorry to say is a big disappointment and I was really interested and excited to see a new albums of theirs. The first song put me to sleep and the rest never woke me up. I can still say that I have not given up on this band for my appreciation for their first two: The Back Room and An End Has A Start, for they do kick my ass in emotion and intelligence, but In This Light and On This Evening gives me very few reasons to listen to this album again. Maybe I will somehow “get it”, but probably not. Well, now I’m depressed, but not from the albums feeling or lyrics but more about from how this album turned out. Try again please.

2/10 Replays

http://www.myspace.com/editorsmusic

http://www.editorsofficial.com/

[Via http://mymusicnotyours.wordpress.com]

» Obama Nazifies Christmas - Blogger News Network

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/index.htm

2010-01-07T17:50:00.000+02:00

Answering of the questions about our universe forum

http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/seuforum/index.htm

Pensive mentioned below the little serving as an example of my research result and see answering of the questions about our universe forum.

Our Place in Space:

Where are we in the universe? Answer of the question: Everything is past for us around the space and we all are in different locations of the past from any location of universe. That is to say; inside the universe, the environment situation of today’s our home planet is present before us but the same time outside the home planet is the past of all. In or under the circumstances: Own place is middle or center point, position of our home planet is center in the universe. From your location; you are a middle point in the universe and from my location; my brain is Centre of the Universe.

The Big Bang:

The Big Bang is the universe’s earliest known event. What powered the Big Bang…and what came before it? Answer of the question: At the time of beginning of the creation a part of the power of the nature became divisible as a result of the big bang. That is to say; Nature came before it and reflected power of the nature is the result of big bang.

Black Holes:

They are nature’s strangest creations. What happens to space and time at the edge of a Black Hole? Answer of the question: Everything of the world of matter including the present visible unit is the result of evolution. In or under the circumstances: space-time and physics at the edge of a black hole is the result of absolute zero.

Dark Energy:

A mysterious new form of energy seems to make up most of the universe. What in the world is it? Answering of the questions: see into- www.universalrule.info

More information, including images and other multimedia, can be found at:

http://www.youtube.com/my_videos?pi=0&ps=20&sf=added&sa=0&dm=1

As I see it through that universe forum and information is Beyond Einstein, also encouraging the spirit of discovery and sharing of fundamental knowledge about the Universe and our place in its midst.

[Via http://shahidurrahmansikder.wordpress.com]

thejetsblog.com » News: Schotty Not Interested in Leaving Jets

Finally... I am done!

2010-01-07T01:40:00.000+02:00

Talk about a tumultuous couple of days! I am so sore it’s not funny! I have finally finished repairing my van. I can’t believe it took so damned much to change the spark plugs on that thing! I mean, usually, vans are a pain in the ass, but, this was 10 times worse!

I am just checking in really quick, I am spent. I had hoped to have been done last night so that I could return to the gym tonight, that obviously didn’t happen. I plan on making my return tomorrow. I have some minor tweaking and finishing to do on the van tomorrow, but then i am free to go to the gym. I honestly feel like I have had one hell of a work out already. I mean I have contorted my body into positions I haven’t in years, I have stood at length and been on my knees for extended periods of time (no smart-ass comments please). I am going to sleep well tonight, in fact, I am going to go to bed early too!

I hope the new year is going well for all of you so far. I promise we will start with the weight loss related updates, as well as some really good political and social commentary tomorrow… One word… PROFILING!

Take care until then,

Kenny

<—— Back to Kenny Is Losing It – Home

[Via http://kennyislosingit.wordpress.com]

AMERICAblog News: "I don't know": Michael Steele on whether GOP is ...

Local Fios Advertising Starting At $2/spot & a Free Bonus

2010-01-05T17:25:00.000+02:00

The Money-Maker Commercial Deal W/FREE BONUS-

1- 30 second commercial produced by tampa bay multimedia

-Run your commercial on verizion fios starting $2/spot (pricing depends on channels and timeslots*subject to change* )For current channels/rates contact us !

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- you’ll choose the When & Where your commercials will air. Tell us your target audience. Details like this will be explored in our pre-production consultation.

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- Our TV Ads run on a basis. We’ll run your ad based on your monthly budget. Simply pay as you go. No long term contract.

THE FREE BONUS

- we will post your commercial on 2 Internet video/social sites for FREE with All of our production packages. Why? So you wont have to!!! Friends/family and clients will be able to access the commercial as they wish. Great for the word of mouth exposure. ”Oh you didn’t catch the commercial on TV? Just go here…”

The combination of television advertising & Internet video marketing as a supplement (for free!) Will drive your ROI potential “off the charts”.

All Commercials undergo a free consultation. During which we will learn all about YOU and we’ll discuss which package best suits your needs! How about over lunch?

Here’s a sample of our economy package commercial

For More examples Click here

For More information please contact us

Here’s our youtube channel

- John Gaston President & CEO

Tampa Bay Multimedia Inc.

4705 Alt US 19

Palm Harbor, FL

Cell-727-480-0215

Studio-727-945-7577

JohnG@TampaBayMultimedia.com

www.TampaBayMultimedia.com

William Thompson, CEO

TV Inc.

4705 Alt US 19

Palm Harbor, FL

800-326-5661

bill@tvinc.com

www.tvinc.com

[Via http://tampabaymultimedia.wordpress.com]

Business – European Economy – Yahoo! News

An eye on 2010...after the NY hangover

2010-01-05T01:11:00.000+02:00

Now we have got over the NY hangover successfully, I thought I would take a look at 2010…and this should be a really interesting year as the spectre of the GFC lifts and confidence returns.

Rather than add to the cacophony surrounding the expected announcement by Apple of their own tablet solution (see my post on Oct 22nd), I thought I would highlight some even more interesting things I have heard, read or think could well be just around the corner in 2010:

Stronger competitors start taking greater iphone share; Google’s own android phone and Blackberry and SONY Ericsson new product launches. Not sure we will see Nokia fight back with a truly decent product until 2011.
Keep an eye on the British election and party/politician use of social media platforms to motivate voters (and what party manages this the best and who reaps any fall out)
Greater integration and distribution of AR platforms
Increased consumer/SME understanding and use of the ‘cloud’
War of Netbooks (highly portable PC’s using Atom processors) vs. smartbooks (larger, more powerful mobile phones using ARM processors)
Increased talk about 3D TV – will early adopters buy into this with the glasses. Focus should be on getting glassless solutions down to a reasonable cost and deliver a headache free experience!
Increased video on demand options
Manufacturers clamour to develop and market the primary in-home entertainment system. SONY Playstation and Xbox beefing up VOD and app store offering and their will be increased web integrated HD TV solutions
I wonder if Apple itunes are looking to roll out a subscription based content streaming offering, following their purchase of lala.com in US
Facebook passing half a billion members and further ramping up revenue driving initiatives/inventory. Myspace launching new initiatives to reverse member free fall
Gear up of 4G mobile services in Europe and US, with downlink data speeds that can hit 100 megabits per second – about ten times quicker than the fastest 3G networks.
News International roll out ‘Freemium’ model (free content with extra paid for sections) to solve pay for content challenge. A prediction, but I wouldn’t be surprised.
Social network platforms are better and more seamlessly integrated into brand campaigns
Google Wave rolled out to wider users and business community
If Oracle’s acquisition of Sun is finally approved this month, it could lead to some very interesting B2B developments.
Interesting to see what Skype does over the next year in the mobile to PC voice/data space, following ebay selling a majority stake to the original investors in 2009.
Increased online brand presence of FMCG companies, to attempt to build stronger loyalty

And some possibly further fetched thoughts; Google buying Twitter and News Int only allow BING to serve it’s news content, blocking Google using it’s content. Not entirely convinced about this, but who knows. We have seen stranger things happen!

What do you think?

[Via http://digispeak.wordpress.com]

Stocks in the News: NVS, ACL, CHK, TOT, TWC - DailyFinance

In this decade, what changed us the most? Terrorism, Social Networking or Mobile?

2009-12-31T01:14:00.000+02:00

When I reflect upon this decade which started with a dotcom bust followed by a terrorist attack that changed all of our lives, I wonder what is one thing that changed us the most this decade. So, I came up with this list of 5 candidates and my conclusion. I invite you to come up with your list and reasoning.

No. 5 – Rise of China and India – China with its low cost manufacturing impacted the whole world in various ways and changed not just the face of China but many other countries. Y2K started India on a path to providing software outsourcing and made India a force to reckon with in software business.

No. 4 – Ecommerce – With well publicized failures like webvan and pets.com, Ecommerce finally became mainstream with Amazon leading the pack and brick and mortar merchants like Walmart fighting that battle.

No. 3 – Social Networking – Friendster may have been an early leader of the social networking phenomena but Facebook now is the new king of this hill and that changed all of our lives in many ways. Twitter, Linkedin, Myspace remain distant challengers.

No. 2 – Terrorism – The decade started and ended with terrorist attacks in the US and terrorism continued its attack on other countries including UK and India.

No. 1 – Mobile Computing/Phone – If there is one thing that impacted us all worldwide the most and changed our lives this decade, mobile phone will take that honor this decade.

What do you think and Why? Share your opinions here.

R. Paul Singh

[Via http://mobilepov.wordpress.com]

ABC News Obtains Photos of Flight 253 Explosives Swen into ...

Sleigh Bells

2009-12-29T17:18:00.000+02:00

Just in time for the end of the holiday season, the appropriately named Sleigh Bells will give you some jingle and just a wee bit of jangle to boot. Actually did I say a wee bit? Make that a lot of jangle…and screaming female vocals…And a floor stomping bass drum…AND one hell of a great vibe!

Infinity-Guitars

Their live show looks like it’s full of energy- so much bass it sounds like the microphone is being eaten away. Hopefully hitting these shores soon and a definite gig for earplugs!

[Via http://tenacioustimothy.wordpress.com]

Dallas Cowboys Blog | Sports News | News for Dallas, Texas ...

The three C’s of Virtual Goods for Social Media Games

2009-12-29T08:00:00.000+02:00

I remember a monthly subscription to Everquest being under 10 dollars a month when I used to play in 1999. Fortunately, I won’t be taking you on a trip down Nostalgia Lane (I wouldn’t do that to you), but it is good example of a very successful MMO. Everquest is also a good example of a classic MMO that is keeping up with current gaming trends by offering players virtual goods for a price via micro transactions.

Everquest has always been a subscription based game. Even a decade and 16 expansions later, it still has a monthly subscription payment plan. In December 2008, Sony introduced Station Cash. With this special currency you can purchase items from the Station Shop. This trend was adapted from the most free-to-play games that rely on the sale of virtual goods entirely. Of course, there are some exceptions now with MMOs like Turbine’s Dungeons and Dragons Online being free-to-play with an option to upgrade to a full monthly subscription and offering a cash shop as well.

I think what we are seeing is that there are many different types of players out there who want diverse payment options to customize their gaming experience. Gamers want options and the more options the better. But not useless or meaningless options, gamers usually pick up on those pretty fast.

So what do gamers want from a game that offers virtual goods –or better, what are we willing to pay for?

I think we’re looking for the 3 C’s convenience, collections, and customization. I know there are more and many are being thought up daily. With the evolution of how we play multi-player and social games, the more we are able to share and come together to play games, the more items and things we will need to satisfy our emotions. We want to brag, look cool, and share our achievements. We want to socialize, using games as a medium, through which we can identify with others.

• Convenience items are items which make the game faster and more efficient. They are items such as: health potions, XP elixirs and J-boots (these are boots that help you run faster for you non-EQ nerds out there). No longer are the days that you need to grind hours and hours stockpiling these items, you can buy them now from a cash shop. While you can still grind hours and hours stockpiling them, you have an option. I’m not sure if you can buy J-boots with Station Cash or not, but it wouldn’t be a bad idea. A good way to sell an item like that would be to make the boots you can buy 50% faster run speed and the boots you have to work for maybe 75%. This always gives your players a reason to keep playing and keep striving for something better. It also allows the people who are short on time but not cash a way to catch up in the game without feeling left out.

• Collections items: My Little Ponies, sticker books, baseball cards, coins, stuffed animals, He-Man (with the awesome Battle Cat, I had that one). I’m sure as a kid you had at least one of these collections or something similar. There is something weird built into our hunter-gather nature makes a fully completed sticker book a necessity. Same thing goes for gamers. We want to unlock, collect, horde, and gather everything. We want the rarest of items and the shiniest of shiny objects. The last piece of a huge jigsaw puzzle is the best piece to put down -it’s a sense of completion. There are many things in games that can be considered collectibles including achievements to having every piece of a Santa suit. Turning these into virtual goods could be as simple as giving gamers the option to buy them after the item is no longer being offered for whatever reason.

• The last C, and probably my favorite, is customization. As virtual worlds grow, so do the amount of players packed into them (hopefully). We don’t want to look like everyone else. Gamers want cool pets, fun clothes, different colored hair, crazy mounts, and unique looking weapons. Male or female, there is something to be said about showing up to a party in the same suit or dress as everyone else. Gamers will pay to be different. Xbox Live just added avatar pets and robot toys that people can buy for $5. We’ll try to stomach being homogeneous for as long as we can, but before long we are hooked and we want to be a special snowflake.

Potions- increase your speed, health, or even experience gain!

The 4th C is Charity. It’s not listed in the 3 C’s, but it might become as common place as other virtual goods soon. How can a portion of money made from virtual goods actually go to a good cause? I want to talk about that more next time.

I want to wish everyone have a safe and wonderful holiday! Thanks for reading.

Melissa Loy

[Via http://merscom.wordpress.com]

AMERICAblog News: In Iran, as government shoots protesters ...

A Gift For Tomorrow

2009-12-24T17:35:00.000+02:00

By Andrew Hayett

First, I want to thank those readers who have taken the time to come by this blog. They may not be very many, but I am still thankful to all of you. You, my readers, are the icing to this cake. A blog cannot possibly exist without at least a few faithful readers. You are the lifeblood of this blog.

As a token of my gratitude, I will let you have another inside look at my book. Tomorrow, I will let you have another taste. I wish I was giving you a full-fledged book trailer, but that’s unfortunately something I haven’t managed yet. A book trailer, if I make one, is still a few months to go. I will try to have one made. I hazard a guess that I might have one ready by late February.

So, make sure to come by tomorrow for another nice insider look into ‘Dulcet’. I believe you will like it. Meanwhile, you can connect with me at www.myspace.com/red-phoenix2009.

[Via http://andrewhayett.wordpress.com]

Apple telling developers to ready big-screen apps (Updated ...

News Years Resolution: Make Money Online with Social Networks (Part II)

2009-12-20T17:43:00.000+02:00

In part 1 of this article I discussed how you can identify your target niche, create your social networking site, and market the site to start building your own social networking online business. In this article I will discuss how you can manage, monetize, and incorporate you business from any browser anywhere in the world.

Manage Your Business

If you think of your social networking site as just a website to hangout and share pictures then you have a nice hobby, not an actual business. Like any business, you will have some management responsibilities that will need to be done.

Engage your members: You will need to add value to the site by posting newsletters, responding to forums, add interesting photos, highlighting active members. You will also need to deal with the abusers of the site by warning, blocking or deleting these members. You should host contest, provide reward programs, and find advocates on the site. The more you engage users, the more they will feel a part of something live and keep coming back.

Provide more value: In addition to engaging members you should find ways to provide more value to this audience. The audience is niche and you should have some knowledge of the needs of the industry or the audience in general. What kind of content or articles can you provide that they cannot find anywhere else? How can you provide opportunities for them to gain recognition or financial value from the site? How can you create opportunities for them to use the site to help make their business successful? How do you add value to their personal life? What’s in it for them?

Track site visitors with Analytics: The best way to do this is to get a few lines of code from Google Analytics (google.com/analytics) and add to your site. This will show you how many visitors you have daily, where they came from, which page they visited etc. You will be able to see which marketing activities yield the best results and focus more on the message or source of the article that is providing the most visits.

Manage your Reputation: Among other things, Reputation Management includes the ability to see what people are saying about you online. Google has a free service called Google Alerts (google.com/alerts). With this service you can see each time Google index content with a specific keyword. This is important because you can tell Google to notify you by email each time they index new content with your website name in it. So each time there is a blog, forum, article or other content posted online by anyone that includes your website name Google will send you an email so that you will be aware of it and can take any necessary action. Additionally, this is a way to see what your competitors or others in your industry are saying or doing.

Monetize your Site

There are different ways you can go about doing this. It really will depend on your site, the amount of members you have, and the focus of your site. However, here are some ways you can monetize your site.

Advertising: This is the most common ways. You can sell advertising to the specific industry you are targeting for your social network. Once you have created a membership base you will be able to sell ads to businesses who want to sell their products or services to that membership base.

Membership Fees: Sites with a clear and specific value may be able to monetize via membership fees. With this you will be able to charge a monthly or yearly fee for access to the site or for access to premium content or features of the site.

Online Store: You can sell relevant product to your site members. If your site targets university students you may be able to sell books, laptops or other products they may find useful. If your site targets parents, you may be able to sell children toys, clothes, or products.

Sell Services: You may also be able to sell services that are relevant to your audience. A site that targets small businesses and entrepreneurs may be able to sell accounting and legal services. You do not have to perform the services yourself. You may be able to partner with service providers and use the site as the means to finding customers in need of these services.

To learn more details about monetizing your website please read my other blog How to Make Money Online like Myspace and Facebook.

Incorporate your Business and Open a Bank Account

Once you are able to monetize the site you should create a business structure with a business bank account to collect and protect revenue, and to minimize personal and business liability.

By having a business entity and a bank account, you will be able to create merchant accounts and collect payments from credit cards, debit cards, Visa, Master Card, Amex etc. You will also be able to write off business expenses to reduce your tax liabilities and separate your personal assets from your business expenses – therefore reducing the chance of personal risks.

1 – To start your business online:

Get your Employer Id Number (EIN) from the IRS. This is done completely online and can be done in a few minutes. Your EIN will be needed to start your business bank account and online merchant account

http://www.irs.gov/businesses/small/article/0,,id=102767,00.html?portlet=4

2 – Register your business with your State

To do this you will need to go to the ‘secretary of state division of corporations’ website for your state. On this site they will have an online form or pdf to allow you to register with your state. For instance, if your state if Florida, search for ‘Florida secretary of state division of corporations’

3 – Create your Bank Account online

Most banks today allow you to create an account online without ever having to go to the bank. I don’t remember the last time I have had to go to a bank for any reason except to sign a couple documents here and there. Go to your bank’s website and find the link to open your account online. You should be able to manage and monitor your financial transactions from your bank’s website.

4 – Create your Merchant Account

You will need a merchant account to collect funds online. Some social networking site includes the ability to collect payment via different payment sources. However, you will still need to create the merchant account yourself that is needed for you to collect the funds.

Vendors: Paypal.com, authorize.net, paysimple.com

Summary

Once you have created your social networking business you are now on the path to participate in one of the most active and high growth areas in business. There are no real overnight successes and you will need to work at this business as you would any other business venture. But you will now be able to start pursuing your dream of building your own online social networking business.

To learn more about creating and monetizing your own social networking site please visit www.rsitez.com.

About the author

Rohan Hall is the Founder/CEO of rSitez, Inc. (www.rsitez.com), a technology firm that helps entrepreneurs create unique revenue-based social networking sites. He is the author of Stop Working, a book that teaches entrepreneurs how to use technology, globalization, and networks to build a global business. He has developed technologies for a wide range of entrepreneurs and Fortune500 clients including HP, Corning, Oracle, Honda and various others.

[Via http://socialshakers.com]

PlayStation Home hits 10 million users // News

Mother Updates Twitter As Son Lies Dying

2009-12-19T17:06:00.000+02:00

Well…what can one say.I can only pray that she can live with her stupidity.

A mother posted updates on Twitter as rescue workers tried to save her dying son.

One of the tweets Shellie Ross posted on Twitter as medics fought to save her son

Shellie Ross sent out a message on Twitter asking her followers “please pray like never before, my 2 yr old fell in the pool” as paramedics tried to revive her son Bryson after he was found floating face down in a swimming pool.

Five hours later, when her son was pronounced dead, she went back on to the Twitter site to update her 5,000 followers, posting “Remembering my million dollar baby”.

Moments later, she posted a photo of her son on the site, but her use of Twitter as her son lay dying has provoked outrage among the blogging community in the US.

Police in Florida said they were aware of the ‘tweets’ and would be looking into them as part of their investigation into the drowning.

“I didn’t tweet-by-tweet the accident.”

Shellie Ross defends her Twitter posts

Many were shocked that she chose to use the social networking site to reveal something so deeply personal.

“The first thing I thought when I saw the tweet was that it was very sad,” said online poster Madison McGraw.

“But then I thought, ‘Who would tweet that her son just drowned?’ I couldn’t believe it.”

Mrs Ross, who is married to a US airman and used the tweet name of “Military-Mom”, sent out a message at 5.22pm on Monday which read:”Fog is rolling in thick scared the birds back in the coop.”

She and her 11-year-old son had been cleaning out a chicken coup while Bryson played in the garden.

Twitter row mum Shellie Ross

A minute later police in Mirrett Island, Florida, said they received an emergency call from Mrs Ross’s 11-year-old son saying that his brother was floating unconscious in their pool.

Police spokesman Lt Bruce Barnett said Mrs Ross had asked her older son to turn off a hose inside the pool enclosure but the gate behind him did not close properly.

“When Ross finished cleaning she went inside and was looking for the two-year-old, who she thought was with her 11-year-old, and wasn’t able to find him and started to panic,” he said. “That’s when she found him floating.”

Lt Barnett said Mrs Ross said her son was in the water for “maybe five minutes” and performed CPR on her son before paramedics arrived.

Mrs Ross defended her use of Twitter. “Nobody has a right to question” why she tweeted, she said, adding: “I didn’t tweet-by-tweet the accident.”

The messages and photos were later removed from the website and Mrs Ross has now made her Twitter account private.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/America-Shellie-Ross-Tweets-On-Twitter-As-Paramedics-Battle-To-Save-Dying-Son-In-Florida/Article/200912315503667?DCMP=EMC-news_OBU

[Via http://ramanan50.wordpress.com]

Take-Two's Stock Rises On Icahn News, But Analysts Split On Long ...

Courtney Moves On From MySpace

2009-12-19T09:43:00.000+02:00

For a while, Courtney Love was writing a MySpace blog. But, then, she realized that was so 2005 and decided to upgrade her social networking set up. So, she wrote this post in July:

whoops there gores the nerighbourhood

so it is true and my space is eating it?

yeah i am having my mgmt send me to facebook when oa sked them they asked for my ssn its not MY ssn but still it as mighty rude so i helf a sign up saying 666 66 6666 with a timne clock on it on the pic and sent it flipping em off so i could be ne on facebook

whooo look what happens with unfiltered fucking comments, gross, did yoi even bother to read whsat i wrote your so stuck up your own asses, some of you

its hysterical thats exactly how theyt fuck my kid becuse tards like you make it seem like itrs easy, ” oh shes a bitch lets pretend we re respected lawyers in teh NYC SUPREME COURT”

x16 in one day, and lien her KID for 169 ,000 x 16.

if it was just me id have been gone long ago but im staying around for the sho mothefuckers say what youw ant until the mgmt gets ona nd filters its noce to know you retarcs are stillout there, wow,. im impressed, so are a bunch of asshole bankers,

notice thetrillions in infrastructure dying under YOUR feet, yeah well talk to Weitzmana nd Azoff about that talk to her greedy and STUPID king rat of a trust fund my employees have illegally and via perjury turned it aroudn so my kid will be fucked and in a bank owned by lawyers who have fucked her this isnt even about ME forget ME …

goign to twit and facebook, so au revoir have at it,

i cannot believe your still that little fraction of you so stuck up your own asses thatyoud let 74 year old men be less intrigueing than your courtneyloveis a bitch comments

i miss myhusband every day and its sick when peopel say that shit,

these wealth managers and cpaa and bankers and lawyers count on you lw iqd inliers thats for sure,

but noones trying to tell you i need or want my kids money, they do, so shut the fuck up

supreme court?

SUPREME COURT? im so apoplcetic as an AMERICAN right now that wietzman is so deluded that he can in his psychoiss go the nyc ny state supreme court and lien my CHILD<

let alone me.

so shut it til you get it,

btw that perfume was roja dove and it was a gift and its 3000 pounds a bottle , its sickening, but its fabulous.

——————————————————-

Is there a deeper meaning here? Yes, there is. Let me translate for you:

Wowzers! Things Change So Quickly These Days! It's Hard For A Girl To Keep Up!

I've always loved being on MySpace but I've come to realize it's sorta outdated. And I'm not the kind of girl to wear last year's fashions!

I asked some friends for help to set up a Facebook account – because everyone says it's so nifty! But, they wanted a lot of personal information I was not comfortable with sharing. A lady always has to have some secrets and you can't be too careful these days!

I have to say I'm kerfunkled by some of the comments on my blog lately. I think, perhaps, it's time to have screened comments. People can sometimes be big old meanies!

That said, I'm going to put up a strong front and not let it get me down. You know what they say: When you work with turkeys fly like an eagle!

On to other things. It's been a hard week. Some of my employees have had issues and I don't know what I'm going to do about that. And, there's been a little bit of legal trouble. And, I really miss my husband. Sometimes it's hard to be a grown up!

The worst part is that people seem to think I want Frances Bean's money. I really don't. I'm trying to protect her like any good mother would! Oh well, I have faith in America's legal system and I'm sure this is all just a misunderstanding that will get sorted out down the line.

Anyway, soon I'll be on Twitter and Facebook! I hope I make some groovy new friends!

There is some good news. I got a present! It's a really beautiful bottle of perfume. I thought it was somewhat too expensive of a gift, but it smells so nice I couldn't say no! Thanks – you know who you are!

Toodles!

[Via http://courtneylovetranslated.wordpress.com]

Joe Trippi Joins Fox News

Love and Sex, Part 1

2009-12-17T17:46:00.000+02:00

I have often referred to the word sex as the biggest three letter word in the entire English language. It is all around us, none of us can get here without it and the human family would not continue were it not for it. Yet so many of us act as though “it” doesn’t exist.

Schools have taken to giving out condoms; children are continuing to experiment with their sexuality in ever increasing and some very dangerous ways. Hip hop culture is now filled with overtly sexual messages being ingested by children and young adults who are victimized daily as a result of a culture that has lost its soul. And yet some parents remain unable to have frank discussions with our children about it.

Meanwhile in the so called mainstream, there is a fascination with celebrities, and the salacious details of their sexual escapades. What they did and who they did it with becomes headline grabbing news. In a world filled with hunger, poverty, war and strife, who Tiger Woods had sex with becomes the topic of every discussion.

It’s been said that women use sex to get love, while men will use love to get sex. Let’s look at this statement. Why would a young woman of today, in light of sexually transmitted diseases, unwanted pregnancies, and failed relationships, risk herself and future? The answer is love. The blogosphere is filled with sites that deal with love and sex and their relationship.

When we speak of love it is a word whose definitions seems to be constantly changing. Minister Farrakhan once said that most of what is called love in this world is in fact need, under an alias called love. In a community filled with single family homes, among a people chasing things, there is not enough real love. Our children venture out of homes looking for something their soul is yearning for, sadly as parents many of us did not receive what we are now unable to give. The Bible tells us that love is many things, has many forms, and comes in all shapes, sizes and colors. We are told that love is kind and love is patient, to name a few. Many songs have been sung, many poems written and even more said about this seemingly elusive love. We all know within our human hearts that what the world needs now more than ever is love, in all her definitions, languages, and forms.

For the purpose of this post, we examine the way love is used in relationships. Men who themselves have not known love or having misunderstood the love they knew, encounter women, who find themselves often looking for love in all the wrong places. It was mentioned to me that at a recent event, the incomparable Susan Taylor remarked “hurt people, hurt people.” While this statement appears simple, it is very profound.

How can we who have never known love, turn around and give love? No wonder most of our relationships are devoid of substance; our young people now meet on MySpace and Facebook, while texting and sexting are now acceptable forms of communication.

Meanwhile, nature’s forces within us draw us into close contact with each other, only long enough to satisfy nature’s call. From these encounters come offspring who are themselves now a part of a cycle. Young girls with no fathers, hoping for a love that seems to have eluded their mothers. These would be daddy’s little girls, but in the absence of a true father, comes a hurt young boy, trying to figure out how to become the man.

Bro Richard

[Via http://atnestasplace.wordpress.com]

Vanguard News Online

Tribute to Sunny Gavaskar by CNN.

2009-12-15T17:37:00.000+02:00

Sunil Gavaskar: Cricket (India)

Gavaskar batted in an era when the dangerous West Indian pace quartet was at peak ferocity. He didn’t wear the protective helmets of today, he didn’t have modern day umpires ruling a no ball for more than one bouncer per over. His opening partners changed dozens of times throughout his career, but the captain always held up his end. He was the first man to cross the unthinkable milestone of 10,000 runs in test cricket and surpassed Sir Don’s record for test centuries. He did it all seemingly without breaking a sweat and smiling, always, all the way to the commentary booth where he now sits. Sachin Tendulkar, by his own admission, grew up idolizing Gavaskar, and would undoubtedly rate him higher than himself.

http://www.cnngo.com/explorations/none/asias-greatest-sports-heroes-437912?pks=ggl%20SunilGavaskar

[Via http://ramanan50.wordpress.com]

News Ticker: Coachella, Bamboozle, Buju Banton, Snoop Dogg ...

Music on the Internet

2009-12-15T09:25:00.000+02:00

Bootleg tapes, CD-Rs and P2P. All frightening adversaries that threatened to take down the music industry at one point or another by taking the legs out from under CD sales. Record companies did everything to stop the pursuit of free music from banning tape recorders from shows during the 80s to which punk bands responded by handing out blank tapes. CD-Rs and P2P services are still around and record companies and the RIAA are throwing around million dollar lawsuits pretty much monthly against both the services and even against individuals using those services. But, regardless of what record companies tried to do, they all inevitably affected the industry in one way or another. CD sales are now down to only accounting for a 1/3 of musicians’ overall income with merchandise, touring and other forms of revenue making up the other 2/3s. As a result, bands have taken to the internet to release free content in order to attract consumers rather than relying on cracking the top 20 in Billboard sales.

Jesse von Doom works at CASH Music, a non-profit organization that offers artists the tools to release content ranging from single tracks to full albums to even concerts for free online. The site has worked with bands like Portugal. the Man and Earl Greyhound to release both live performances and an entire EP for free online in order to promote their music. In an email exchange, I asked him about what it’s like to distribute music for free.

Me: How do you go about getting the content on your site? Do bands approach you to distribute their content or do you ask them?

Jesse von Doom: How we get content: we work with artists we know, or artists who have been invited. The content is always theirs, and it’s always coupled with specific goals on their end.

Me: Your site is about offering free content to the consumer. How do you see offering things like free album streams and full live concerts helping artists?

JvD: How free content benefits artists: exposure and data collection. Free content has been around for years in the form of radio and MTV, neither of which pay performance royalties. Thankfully that’s changing, but it’s still vital that artists get their music out in some way that can make people excited and willing to purchase. Sometimes the benefit is simply giving a taste and hoping that people buy a full release. In other cases it has more to do with collecting data like email and location, enabling an artist to better market their live show. There are other benefits to free as well, such as building rapid popularity and cashing in on sync licensing (music for TV and film.)

Me: Do you feel like offering all this free content cheapens the idea of music or is just the next logical step how people digest music?

JvD: Free cheapening music: well music pre-dates capitalism and will be around long after the last penny has lost its luster. So no I don’t think the price cheapens the art. I do think that giving too much away can be detrimental for an artist if they don’t have a plan. It’s a very valid practice, but as an artist you have to know where your revenue is coming from and plan for that.

Me: Ultimately, what do you feel your site offers as an open-source website and where do you want your site to go in the future?

JvD: The future: Ultimately CASH is looking to become an established foundation benefitting artists and the music industry as a whole. There’s a bit of a social obligation to keep music alive because it’s more than simple commerce… it’s culture as well.

Perception

The idea of giving away free music on the internet goes beyond simply bands giving content away. In this new era of the internet where instant gratification is only a few clicks away, people expect that they are going to be given some form of content for free. Michael Porch, a 21-year-old junior, says “I expect there should be some way to hear their music for free before buying it.” With sites like Myspace and Facebook allowing consumers to sample bands’ music for free, people now no longer have to rely on their local record store or even radio station for recommendations.

Free Streaming/Downloads

Now sites like Grooveshark and Lala (Which was recently purchased by iTunes) allow users to stream any track they want for free for a limited time. Also, bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails have released entire albums where people could choose their own price. The albums were a large breakthrough in the industry, creating a different standard for how people digest their music. Radiohead reported about 1.2 million downloads in the first week, with around $10 million dollars in revenue. “I think the option to pay is a pretty good deal,” said Porch, “I remember I downloaded the one Saul Williams album off his website and I remember at the time I didn’t have any money. I had no way of paying online so I downloaded it, but I know my other friend donated like $10 because he liked the album.”

Piracy

However, these are all remedies for a much larger problem. As mentioned before, piracy is a large problem in the music industry. In 2007, the Institute for Policy Innovation reported that $12.5 billion dollars are lost annually due to piracy. Joe Lamberti, a 20-year-old junior, estimated that about 50% of his music library is through actually purchasing an album. “It used to be way more, but CDs are definitely not something I invest money in. All in high school, I would buy CDs, but now I don’t have money, so I just download them. And I feel bad, because I feel like I’m kind of obligated to buy albums of bands I really like because I always have in the past,” he says.

Now sites like Grooveshark and Lala using ad-based revenue to give users the ability to stream music whenever they want in order to combat these long-running problems. Lala.com offers a service where users can spend only $0.10 in order to stream a song whenever they want. And now with Apple acquiring the site, cloud hosted streaming could move into the mainstream if Apple decides to us Lala’s service on iTunes.

Whether Radiohead’s solution orApple’s solution proves right, ultimately they are both solutions to a billion dollar problem.

(By the way, this would be my final project.)

[Via http://thebrokengstring.wordpress.com]

SCEA consolidates QA group // News

2010's Means INTERNET TV By Satellite And Cable Replacing TV!! Technologies: According To TIMEFRAMES, A Revolution Is Scheduled For Next Year In The Movie Industry And The Audiovisual In The United States And Worldwide!

2009-12-13T02:29:00.000+02:00

2010’s Means INTERNET TV By Satellite And Cable Replacing TV!! Technologies: According To TIMEFRAMES, A Revolution Is Scheduled For Next Year In The Movie Industry And The Audiovisual In The United States And Worldwide!

It will be something new, something specially new, THE WEB TV with The DVD and For the First Time The INTERNET To be A part Of The Mass Media Market. The Web Was Until Now A Way to Communicate Emails and To Share Community Sites, Only with The Pleiades of Commercial Sites Including The best Search Engines And Bank Guichets.

There was not enough Synergies Between Sites And Life, Mass MEDIA And REALITY, Reality Meaning The INTERNET!

Megan FOX, A HOLLYWOOD Beauty Who Represents Perfectly For TIMEFRAMES The Upcoming Generation Of The Mass Products That Will Replace Our Televisions And Regular Theaters In The Next TEN Years.

The MASS MEDIA Refused Until Now The WEB (internet), Harassing To Some Extend This Culture And This Part of Our Communication In The United States And Worldwide, By Refusing To Open Their Doors To The Leaders Of This Community That Represents The Future Of Our Country.

Why? They didn’t Understand That We Cannot Build The XXIst Century If We Don’t accept Definitely The New Technologies, And First The INTERACTIVE TELEVISION That We Have To Comnmercialize In 2010 And Later, A Mix of TV And Web Features. It Can Be Done Now If Majors And Others Planify The NEW STEP Permanently.

The DVD Market And The Comeback Of The VHS Format Will Create The NEW STEP Of The HOME Entertainment In The United States. The Theaters Are A Place Of Debate After and Before The Screening Of The TIMEFRAMES Generation. The TIMEFRAMES Universe Of Corporate Development Is A PATRIOTIC One With A Feature Film Industry That Will Make:

- The United States Prevails In Afghanistan, Erasing The Terrorism And The Talibans Definitely, And

- The American Economy Wins Worldwide, Thanks To The Movie Industry, The TV Satellite And Cable Network And The New Technologies Of Communication With, First, The Interactive Television, Mixing Internet And Interactity On Large Flat Screens connected To The Cinema And The Video Programs That The Television Companies Will Diffuse As The Channels of The Future, Today, Everyday and Forever Beginning Soon, If THEY ACCEPT To stop to stop The Progress as They are Too much Conservative and In a Waiting Game. The Japanese & American Technology is Ready And The US Industry Too: We Can Make It!! It’s A Revolution, It happens everytime Our Civilization Is Ready to Build A Better World with More Success For Everybody. Before It was For the mass diffusion Of The Radio, Then The Television, Now The INTERNET TV, The WEB TELEVISION!!!

My Upcoming Wedding With Blake Lively, I Want It Free! It's Not A Commercial Project, It is A Private One, A Symbol Of The 2010's: NO MORE FAKE COUPLES In Hollywood, Thanks To TIMEFRAMES And The Nation! 2010 Will Be The Year Of LovE On EartH And I Will Call My Program Manager To Schedule It In 2010! Programmation Work: Next Week, Before Xmas And Just After It Will Be The Celebration Of The New Year In Los Angeles, California And In Las Vegas With My Entourage To Prepare The Rock'n Roll Of The Future!

My Upcoming Wedding With Blake Lively, I Want It Free! It’s Not A Commercial Project, It is A Private One, A Symbol Of The 2010’s: NO MORE FAKE COUPLES In Hollywood, Thanks To TIMEFRAMES And The Nation! 2010 Will Be The Year Of LovE On EartH And I Will Call My Program Manager To Schedule It In 2010! Programmation Work: Next Week, Before Xmas And Just After It Will Be The Celebration Of The New Year In Los Angeles, California And In Las Vegas With My Entourage To Prepare The Rock’n Roll Of The Future!

[Via http://fredvidal.wordpress.com]

In White Folks News: Child Star Possibly Facing Prison Time for ...

Mista Wish feat. Mr. 773-Walk Like A Mummy

2009-12-12T09:03:00.000+02:00

Mista Wish is an up and coming hip hop artist out of Chicago, Illinois. You can purchase his MP3 album “Married to the Game” by clicking here or you can go to the Arifaze Music Mutiny and get the MP3 album. This video features D-Dubb aka Mr. 773 titled “Walk Like A Mummy”.

[Via http://arifaze.wordpress.com]

New Borderlands DLC detailed News | Xbox 360 | Eurogamer

FOX News Poll: Is Obama Corrupt?

2009-12-12T01:25:00.000+02:00

Odd question and true answer.

The fair and balanced folks at FOX asked respondents in a poll a pretty interesting question. Post Tools

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Most of the questions in the FOX News poll released yesterday are pretty normal. Many gauge general approval and disapproval of Obama, key members of his staff, and the administration’s general policies. And then there’s a a few odd-ball questions such as, “Have you ever crashed a party?” (20 percent of Dems have, compared to 16% of Republicans and 17% of independents.)

But no question elicits more head-scratching than the seventeeth: “What do you think President Obama would like to do with the extra bank bailout money — save it for an emergency, spend it on government programs that might help him politically in 2010 and 2012, or return it to taxpayers?”

In all truth, I had to read this woozy a few times over to get what, exactly, they were trying to skew in respondents’ answers. But it’s now clear that FOX essentially gave people the following three options:

A) Will Obama save extra bank bailout money for an emergency?

B) Will Obama spend extra bank bailout money to help himself politically?

C) Will Obama return the extra bank bailout money to taxpayers?

It’s not so hard to see which one of the three options isn’t like the other. The screwy one — option B — is openly leading, suggesting Obama would spend the money on government programs only to grow his own electoral capital. In other words, the only reason he would spend the money on public programs is because he is corrupt.

More people in every category — Democrats, Republicans, independents — picked B.

[Via http://ramanan50.wordpress.com]

Dallas Cowboys Blog | Sports News | News for Dallas, Texas ...

Tiger Handler Mauled At Celebrity Dinner

2009-12-10T17:15:00.000+02:00

An animal trainer has had his hand amputated and suffered serious head and chest injuries after being attacked by three tigers at a celebrity circus event.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/UK-News/Trainer-Left-Fighting-For-His-Life-After-Tiger-Attack-At-A-Circus-Dinner-In-Hamburg-Germany/Article/200912215496998?lpos=UK_News_News_Your_Way_Region_0&lid=NewsYourWay_ARTICLE_15496998_Trainer_Left_Fighting_For_His_Life_After_Tiger_Attack_At_A_Circus_Dinner_In_Hamburg_Germany

[Via http://ramanan50.wordpress.com]

Charles Warner: The Dallas Morning News Is On the Right Track

Star in Your Own Christmass Video!

2009-12-10T01:16:00.000+02:00

How would you look on a dancing Santa? Let’s find out!

FIND OUT HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN PERSONALIZED VIDEO AT:

http://mediamusic.110mb.com/star

You’ll find:

- Many videos and photos to put Your Face in.

- Ability to share your video/photo with friends via email, MySpace, Facebook and more…

- Includes convenient search box, default browser search, and relevant search results in response to misspelled or incorrectly formatted browser address requests.

[Via http://christmassvideo.wordpress.com]

Mouth Of The Potomac - NY Daily News

Why Gamers and Everyone Else Should Play Social Games

2009-12-08T08:00:00.000+02:00

Virtual crops are getting a lot of love

What is it about these super-cute, easy to play, addictive computer games that is bringing in more and more casual gamers every day? With Zynga’s Farmville reaching over 69 million players, it’s hard to ignore the incredible popularity of social games and applications. To put that number into perspective, Blizzard’s World of Warcraft in December of 2008 had about 11.5 million players. Social gaming is becoming a huge part of the user experience on Facebook and Myspace. As a long-time gamer, it’s one of the main reason’s I log onto Facebook a few times (or more) a day.

Everybody’s doing it –and if not, you should probably send them an invite

When comparing more traditional, multiplayer games and social games, it’s easy to see where social gaming differentiates itself. One of the most influential differences would be that social games accessed through a social network can run on most computers that have a web browser. It’s bringing more traditional gamers together with their friends and family who may not have a lot of experience with other video games. Social games are making it possible for more people to play games.

Another major difference would be social networks like Facebook already have an enormous, established user base. This makes it extremely easy for you and your friends to get into a game fast and start having fun. Lastly, social games are free to try without investing a lot of time in a download or a demo version. As a social gamer with little time and so many choices on which games to play, accessibility is important.

Socially awkward? Don’t worry–finding a game you enjoy is easy!

It’s easy to become overwhelmed with making a decision on which social game to play. When you log into Facebook, you might notice your friends have posted events from games they’re playing. If you haven’t tried out any social games, a good place to start is by playing one that your friends are playing so you can ask for help and score some free items from them. In social games, they probably will gain items or points from having you join.

While some of the more popular games like Mafia Wars and Pet Society have more players than Fish Life, you’ll want to find and play a game that’s fun for you. I have not noticed a limit on how many social game applications you can add, so my suggestion would be to try out a handful of them and see what you like the best. I try a lot of different games out knowing that I’ll probably find a great game in there somewhere.

I use Facebook’s search tool to find social games. If I am looking for a game with pets, I type in pets and it brings up a list of games. Then I just add the application and start playing. I couldn’t think of a faster and more enjoyable way to get involved in social gaming.

I’d like to read your comments on why you like social games. Let me know which games you’re playing!

Melissa Loy

[Via http://merscom.wordpress.com]

The Dallas Morning News pulls down the wall

Google: Don't Even Think About Beating Us in Search

2009-12-08T01:03:00.000+02:00

For months, many people have been saying that Google wouldn’t be able to compete with the rising pack of startups (and behemoths like Microsoft’s Bing) providing results that include tweets from Twitter, status updates from Facebook, and other real-time information.

Today, Google essentially quashed those claims. The search giant said it will be providing real-time search that draws not only on Twitter (with which it announced an earlier deal to get data feeds), Facebook and MySpace (with which it announced agreements today to index public updates) but also other Web sources. And it’s providing those results among the main search results, not just in a specialized section like Bing.

As many others have reported, Google’s demo at its big search event today was impressive. Items posted just seconds ago showed up on various searches, scrolling out on the screen in real time. (Apologies for not providing real-time liveblogging on the event at the Computer History Museum this morning; my netbook simply wouldn’t connect to the WiFi there.) Here’s a first look provided by Google:

Google’s real-time search isn’t perfect yet. As John Borthwick (backer of many real-time startups, including Twitter), noted in a tweet today, the user interface is messy. In fact, I believe Google VP Marissa Mayer said it’s likely the interface for real-time search will evolve.

Although real-time search is quite important, Danny Sullivan rightly notes that it’s probably not the key battleground in search for the next few years. That would be personalized search, which uses people’s location, previous searches, and other factors to provide search results tailored to each person’s inferred interests or intentions. Google thrust that into the forefront Friday by making personalized results the default.

Real-time results aren’ t only new feature Google announced today; in fact, others could prove more important as well. The company extended its voice search, which allows spoken phrases in English and Mandarin to produce search results, to Japanese. And it introduced an experimental service in its Google Labs called Google Goggles that lets you snap a photo of something and produce results based on matching with some 1 billion images in its index.

All this underscores a clear theme I heard when I wrote a recent story about Google’s continuing efforts to improve search. Google search leaders sounded supremely confident about their ability to stay ahead of rivals–so confident that it gave me pause and made me wonder if they were becoming overconfident. That’s still possible, but even if you might wish for more potent competitors, as many people do, it’s clear that Google is ceding little ground in its effort to stay on top in search.

Amit Singhal, a Google Fellow in charge of the core search ranking team, sought to cement that leadership when he said today, “Light can travel around the world in 1/10th of a second, and we won’t rest until the speed of light is the only barrier to getting good search results to you.” In other words, catch us if you can.

[Via http://robhof.com]

Modern Warfare 2 holds UK top spot // News

Missoula Public Library pt. 1

2009-12-06T09:10:00.000+02:00

Missoula Public Library is Plugged In!

Besides an official website, it’s own blog, and a Twitter feed, Missoula Public Library has two main web presences and one secondary. The blog, Twitter feed, Missoula Public Library MySpace page, and Facebook fan page are all linked directly from the library’s official homepage and are easy to find. First, I’ll be covering MySpace.

The Missoula Public Library MySpace page is pretty classy-looking in muted purple, grey, and light green with mostly white text. Unfortunately, it also uses some dark green text, which is difficult to read against the rest of the color scheme. It describes the library as a 99-year-old single female (Zodiac sign Aries) librarian interested in making friends with all of Missoula’s readers and connects to the library catalog, library card sign-up, some recommended reading lists, and film showings. While it appears to update its internal MySpace blog only infrequently, it does have over 1100 friends listed, ranging from “Missoula” to local artists, writers to the American Library Association to everyday people. They give the physical address of the library as well as opening hours and photos of library events and changes.

While I am not a MySpace user, I believe that MPL’s site is simple enough that anyone who uses a computer regularly should be able to navigate it. Since they have opted to keep the layout uncluttered and fairly direct, there are not too many flashy distractions to make things confusing. There are three additions besides the main page – a blog, a photo album with pictures of librarians and library activities, and one outside application. That is a cute little widget that it has enabled called “Shelfari,” with some of the library’s newer acquisitions displayed on a virtual book shelf. The book cover images link to reviews and synopses of the books. The blog, as I mentioned before, is only rarely updated (about once or twice a month, usually), as the library’s Blogspot.com blog is used much more frequently. Unfortunately, the Blogspot blog does not appear to be linked to the MySpace page, though the links are listed together on the library homepage. To fill in that gap, their Twitter feed runs through the MySpace page to keep it active.

In addition to their main MySpace page, Missoula Public Library has a sort of partner profile for “Cheap Date Night,” one of their monthly film showings. Cheap Date Night, a 29-year-old male is a Gemini with over 100 friends. It’s the library’s popular movies showing, which happens on the third Friday of every month and offers free popcorn as well as free entrance to the movies. The site is minimal and of simple design, with a blog post for each month’s movie appearing shortly after the previous month’s show. While it does provide a way to follow the Cheap Date showings, I don’t know how much that is utilized.

TheInfoBabe offers an interesting opinion piece on why libraries should get and use web 2.0 tools and keep them up to date at Ridiculously Digitally Ubiquitous!

[Via http://bigskyt.wordpress.com]

Prep Blog: News and notes from prep football playoffs, and a look ...

Social-Networking Etiquette 101

2009-12-06T01:22:00.000+02:00

It’s been nearly a decade since I’ve felt the urge to write explicitly about etiquette. The last time was a humor piece for The Declaration (a UVA student pub.) about cell phones, which at the time were just becoming ubiquitous on campus. Probably the rant was motivated by jealousy – I didn’t get a cell till sometime in mid-2002 – but I still get pissed when people spend more time dealing with a machine than people in the room.

I resisted the cell phone craze, but have since experimented with most of the social-networking sites, at least since Myspace got big (personal account deleted). For the time being, I have narrowed it down to Facebook and Twitter, the yin and yang of social-networking.

These sites are constantly evolving, so it’s hard to pin down many rules of etiquette, but I feel the need to try. Polite people make things less awkward. With that in mind, what follows is a modernized lesson in basic correspondence etiquette, whether you need it or not. Thankfully, most of my friends don’t.

Use the formal form (Mrs., Mr., Ms. + surname) and formal conventions (space between address and body of message) when addressing someone for the first time in email, text, Facebook, whatever. This assumes you haven’t met in real life, in which case use discretion – addressing a doctor as Dr. might be smart, for example. After that, use their first name (assuming they give it to you) so as not to appear an overly formal person (unless you want to be perceived that way). If you exchange many messages with a person, you may address them or not.
When contacting someone for the first time, personalize your message (i.e., you’re adding a “friend” you’ve never met). Avoid too much flattery and ambiguous or sarcastic statements. I’m sometimes guilty of the latter.
Practice the golden rule when discerning what is appropriate to post, but realize people are different, and also practice forgiveness. Avoid going online under the influence, unless you are cooler and sexier that way.
The first time you untag a friend’s photo, delete his comment or post, or similar action, send a message of lighthearted apology, explaining this was done for reasons of image control, which is acceptable. Only apologize once (a hip friend turned me on to the fact I apologize too much). Feel free to unfriend people whose interactions constantly offend.
Use basic common sense.

I spend more time on Facebook, but one thing I like about Twitter is the concept of “following” someone (how one builds a network there). On Facebook this action is called “adding a friend.”

I know and respect an intelligent and very tech-savvy man who only adds friends on FB if they are a person he has met and would be pleasantly surprised to see at the grocery store.

I, on the opposite extreme, have added complete strangers, even when they have been mildly rude and not accompanied their friend request with a personalized message. I assume they are people whose names I forgot, fans, and/or online stalkers. I have blocked one person on Facebook and never heard from him again. He is dead to me in the cold, ethereal void of the internet, and I am well-armed and fearless here at my physical address, which I definitely do not post anywhere unsecure (i.e., Facebook). I don’t have my email address there, anymore. The internet is a strange mix of paranoia and openness. Maybe that’s just me.

Twitter is the polite alternative to Facebook because it eliminates the ambiguity surrounding different definitions of an online friend. It’s harder to offend people on Twitter by not accepting a friend request or saying the wrong thing on someone’s page. Following someone means you hope they will lead you with information and direction. This accurately describes most any online relationship. Neither is it a bad description of what I expect from those I know and love in all forms of life.

[Via http://brianvanreet.com]

Obama Says No to Creating Jobs through Legalizing Drugs, Gambling ...

Why e-mail has become the new snail mail

2009-12-05T17:48:00.000+02:00

Compared with text messages and instant messaging, e-mail is an incredibly slow and inefficient method of communication

I was struck, the other day, by an uncharacteristic desire to socialise and decided to invite a few friends over for dinner. But three days after sending out an e-mail invitation, only half the prospective guests have replied. And while there might be a number of banal explanations for this — the poor souls in question may be away, they may not like me as much as I like them, they may have heard about that unfortunate dinner party in 2002 when I drank so much that I threw up between courses and was in bed before pudding could be served — I think there’s a profound explanation for the silence. E-mail is no longer a useful method of communication.

And one of the many surprising things about this development is that it has absolutely nothing to do with spam, the thing that, some years ago, many people thought would result in the death of e-mail.

Unsolicited messages are still, of course, an issue — according to one estimate, three quarters of all e-mails are spam — but filters do a brilliant job, achieving a success rate of 99.5 to 99.9 per cent — and of the thousands of e-mails I get each month, no more than two or three are ever offering “80 per cent off Codeine, Hydrocodone, Vicodin, Xanex or Valium” or “increased performance guaranteed” or “pills for a larger Pen1s!”.

The other surprising thing about the decreasing usefulness of e-mail is that it is actually being crippled, in part, by solicited messages. It has, in short, become a victim of its own success.

In surveys of business users, the biggest complaint about e-mail is that there is too much of it, with people too often using electronic messages as a way of demonstrating that they are working, and endless, enervating chains of messages with people offering mindless opinions on inconsequential corporate developments clogging inboxes across the country. But personal e-mail is becoming just as cumbersome.

The other day I was complaining to a friend and colleague about the ever-increasing volume of e-mails, saying that I replied to very urgent ones as I got them, made a mental note to reply to moderately urgent messages by the end of the day (but often forgot to do so) but in general managed to respond to messages only once a week or once a fortnight, during marathon, guilt-fuelled e-mailing sessions.

And he responded with the news that he’d given up on e-mail entirely. If you want a response from him, you have to get him by telephone, or text message, which brings us to yet another surprising thing about e-mail in 2009: it has become the new snail mail.

This may sound peculiar to people who are still mourning the demise of the letter, and the opportunities it provided for considered reflection, contemplation, fancy handwriting and the use of silver fountain pens and exclusively milled, watermarked, personalised writing paper from Smythson of Bond Street, but e-mail, compared with text messages, and instant messaging, is an incredibly slow and inefficient method of communication.

How inefficient and slow? Well consider these facts from a recent study: as few as one in five of e-mail messages are ever opened; whereas more than 95 percent of text messages are opened; the average time for a recipient to view an e-mail message is 6.4 hours; whereas the average time for the recipient to view a text message is 14 minutes.

And then, on top of this, there’s the effect of social networking. And it seems to me that there are three main ways in which sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace are killing e-mail, the first being that they reduce the need for sending out many e-mails in the first place.

If you know from Facebook, or Twitter, or for that matter from someone’s status on gmail or Skype, that they are on holiday in Africa or on a book deadline or have relatives staying over, there’s no need to an e-mail a dinner invitation.

Second, sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace allow you to message lots of people at the same time much more efficiently than e-mail, reducing the need for targeted, specific, involved e-mails.

Planning things by Facebook is particularly easy: set up an event, invite everyone you want to by clicking on their names, and then they can respond by clicking on “attending”, “maybe attending” or “not attending”. No need for tiresome explanations.

Third, social networking sites encourage brevity of communication, and are much easier to use on the move than e-mail and are therefore more suited to the way we use the internet now: instead of logging in and out, checking messages periodically, we’re always connected via computers or mobile phones.

In addition, Twitter gets rid of the need for tiresome e-mail etiquette — there’s no need to worry about terms of address or signoffs and so on, because there’s no space — and makes e-mail feel as antiquated as sending out messages by carrier pigeon.

It is true, of course, that e-mail is still growing: according to a recent study, in the month of August this year, the number of e-mail users increased by 21 per cent. But social networking is growing faster: over the same period, the number of social network users grew by 31 per cent.

And if you think it is outlandish to suggest that e-mail use is peaking, ask yourself this question: when was the last time a teenager sent you an e-mail? You may have sent them one, but I bet you have to text or instant message them to instruct them to read it and to respond.

I was not at all surprised to read a report from Professor David Zeitly of the University of Kent at Canterbury, the social anthropologist, on the UK’s internet habits which found that e-mail is much more popular among older than younger segments of the UK population: apparently 86 per cent of 15 to 24-year-olds use e-mail compared with 98 per cent of people aged 65 or over. Meanwhile, only 51 per cent of Britons in their teens or early twenties say e-mail is their first choice of communication.

Of course, these figures show that e-mail is a long way from dying out. But it is beginning to fade, and I suspect it will slowly go the way of the letter, becoming less and less popular and eventually ending up as the preferred method of communication for business users, the elderly, the helplessly middle-aged, the hopelessly nostalgic, estate agents, solicitors and credit card companies

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/sathnam_sanghera/article6937890.ece

[Via http://virginonmedia.wordpress.com]

Новая рецензия: Крутая Джорджия

Hunger and Poverty in USA-Reuters.

2009-12-03T17:15:00.000+02:00

The other side of US.

Story:

Call it a paradox of plenty. In the world’s wealthiest country, home to more obese people than anywhere else on earth, almost 50 million Americans struggled to feed themselves and their children in 2008. That’s one in six of the population. Millions went hungry, at least some of the time. Things are bound to get worse.

This the bleak picture drawn from an annual survey on “household food security” compiled by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and released in mid-November. It showed the highest level of food insecurity since the government started the survey, in 1995, and provided a graphic illustration of the effect of sharply rising unemployment.

This year’s picture will be even bleaker – the unemployment rate more than doubled from the beginning of 2008 to now, at 10.2 percent the highest in a quarter century. It is still climbing, and for many the distance between losing a job and lack of food security is very short.

In keeping with the American predilection for euphemisms, the word “hunger” does not appear in the report which classes food security into several categories, from “marginal” and “low” to “very low.”

Marginal food security means, in the lexicon of the USDA, “anxiety over food shortages or shortage of food in the house.” The second category, low, means “reduced quality, variety or desirability of diet,” but not necessarily less food.

The most severe category, “very low,” used to be labeled “food insecurity with hunger” and is defined as “disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.” That applied to around 17 million people, up from 12 million in 2007. Black and Hispanic families and single-parent households are the most affected.

It is not the kind of hunger — think African famines, skeletal babies with distended bellies — that brought world leaders to a U.N. food summit in Rome this month to boost aid from rich countries for agricultural development in the Third World. The U.S. is a land of plenty, so much so that a study by the University of Arizona a few years ago found that the average household wastes about 14 percent of their food purchases.

Food is so abundant that overeating is more of a problem, numerically and in terms of public health, than under-nutrition. The Food Research and Action Center, a Washington-based advocacy group, makes the point that “poverty can make people more vulnerable to hunger as well as obesity,” one of the reasons being that food high in calories is cheaper than healthy food. For many Americans, hunger and obesity are two sides of the same poverty coin.

(International health statistics put the United States at the top of the obesity league. Two-thirds of Americans are overweight and a third of these are obese.)

INEQUALITY OF THIRD WORLD PROPORTIONS

Vicki Escarra, head of Feeding America, a hunger relief charity that runs 200 food banks in the U.S., has likened the growing difficulties of those on the lower rungs of the socio-economic ladder to conditions in the Third World. She is right in more ways than one.

The USDA report reflects inequality of Third World proportions. While the Great Recession has culled the ranks of American millionaires — by 22 percent according to a September study by the Boston Consulting Group — the gap between rich and poor is not shrinking.

Last year, according to a report by the census bureau, the wealthiest 10 percent of Americans made 11.4 times more than those living on the poverty line. The year before, the ratio was 11.2. At the far end of the economic scale, America’s six largest bank holdings have set aside $112 billion in salaries and bonuses during the first nine months of the year. By year’s end, bonuses might exceed the almost $164 billion paid in 2007, before the credit bubble banks had helped to inflate burst and millions of Americans lost their jobs and savings.

Banks and other financial institutions were rescued by a $700 billion infusion of taxpayer money and news of the bonuses coincided with reports that U.S. wages were at a 19-year low. Which helps explain growing anger among a public long famous for lacking the resentment of the rich that is common in other parts of the world.

After all, a bedrock belief in America held that this is the land of unlimited opportunities where every citizen has an equal chance to succeed and become rich. That requires an assumption that the system is fair. How many Americans still believe that? Last summer, a pair of political scientists, Benjamin Page and Lawrence Jacobs, published a study whose findings included that just 28 percent thought the present distribution of wealth is fair.

More evidence that the gap between myth and reality is shrinking comes from the American Human Development project, a research group which found that “social mobility is now less fluid in the United States than in other affluent nations…a poor child born in Germany, France, Canada or one of the Nordic countries has a better chance to join the middle class in adulthood than an American child born into similar circumstances.”

A better chance to avoid food insecurity, too.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2009/11/24/a-paradox-of-plenty-hunger-in-america/

[Via http://ramanan50.wordpress.com]

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green News Report -- December 1 ...

MySpace Music launches in the UK

2009-12-02T21:59:00.000+02:00

MySpace has launched a UK version of MySpace Music in a bid to compete directly with streaming sites like Spotify and Last Fm.

The site, which helped launch the careers of Lily Allen and Kate Nash, claims it has “the most comprehensive catalogue” on the internet.

Teaming up with Apple iTunes it will enable DRM-free MP3 downloading.

It will offer free streaming access to entire back catalogues of artists on both major and independent labels.

MySpace Music, which has 13 million UK accounts, is known as a platform for up-and-coming bands.

Speaking to BBC 6 Music, Courtney Holt, president of MySpace Music, described the new look MySpace as a “social music discovery service”.

“We provide streaming audio, video, a comprehensive suite of artist tools, original content and programming all wrapped up together in one nice package,” he explained.

We believe this is going to be great for MySpace in the UK Courtney Holt,

President of MySpace Music

Like Spotify, occasional adverts will appear on-screen, but unlike the other free service, the adverts will not interrupt the music which is being streamed.

Holt explained why it has taken some time for the innovations to take place: “Part of it was the need to evolve the tools and we’ve done a really good job at that, creating a great user experience.”

Kasabian played an intimate gig in London on 2 December to mark the launch of the site, which is run by a subsidiary of News Corporation after its owner was bought out in 2005 for more than £300 million.

Artists will be able to publish playlists to her fans and friends of what is influencing them. Celebrities Britney Spears, Lady GaGa, Katie Price and the Vatican have offered up their playlists.

Ms Holt has high hopes for MySpace Music in the UK, adding: “MySpace Music is the number one music site in America and since we have launched in Australia and New Zealand we have seen double the engagement than pre, so we believe this is going to be great for MySpace in the UK.”

[Via http://iamnotarapperispit.wordpress.com]

EA targets 40 game releases for 2010 // News

Lets Throw a New guy into the mix...

2009-12-01T09:15:00.000+02:00

Lets call him R. I met him the same way I did D, through schooling.

A classmate and I always giggled at him. He’s very socially awkward, moreso than most men are. He doesn’t quite know when to stop talking about things that people visibly don’t care about. For instance, the reason the samurais would win in a battle versus a ninja. (I said ninja…guess what he said?)…This discussion went on for the whole 3 hours we were sitting in class. Eventhrough a movie and then during the break, when I was attempting to go to the restroom, but didn’t want to just walk away in the middle of a conversation…because I’m “nice.”

Another issue with him is that we thought that because of his looks, he was starved for attention…Don’t get me wrong..he’s not bad looking at all…actually quite attractive, its his personality that makes him undesirable. Anyways, one day my classmate and I sit down and are waiting for class to begin when he comes up and sits next to me. He’s flirting and I’m not exactly turning his efforts down. Then he brazenly makes a move. I was actually dreading this part.

“so uh, give me your number and I can take you out tonight.”

Essentially I said “no”, but lets just put this conversation on hold and break down the reasons WHY I rejected his intense little heart.

1) Don’t tell me to do anything. especially if it involves me giving you personal information.

2) What makes you think I’m free tonight? Do you honestly think I’m so desperate for a date that would drop all my previous engagements to go out with you?

3) atleast he could have said something clever like, “What has 142 teeth and holds back the incredible hulk? My zipper…” jeesh!

So back to the story. When I told him , “ahhh no thanks.” he said, “oh thats fine anyways, whatever.” and got up…then sat next to my classmate and did the same…When she told him she was dating someone his response was:

“So?! What boyfriend don’t know won’t hurt him…”

Fastforward three months. I’m coming down with the flu and am congested as a motherfucker. After class one day he corners me and uses a group project to get my number….stupid, sick me thought, “meh, innocent enough I guess.” WRONG.

For the next two weeks all I recieve are random text messages from R. Eventually they begin to get later and later in the evening until 6 months later he’s calling at 3 am and texting me even later. So one day, out at the bar I decide to engage him. This would prove to be a BIG mistake on my part.

For the next three days he keeps incessantly texting me asking me where I want to put his…well…his “incredible hulk.” Then when I’ve had enough I tell him (via text message):

“O.M.G. YOU MUST THINK MY VAGINA IS THE SIZE OF A BLACK HOLE BIG ENOUGH TO SWALLOW THE SUN!”….THAT got him to ease up and back off….

up until a couple days ago. when he started messaging me via myspace. WTF. MYSPACE?! REALLY? can’t we atleast pretend we are adults and conversate thru Facebook, Twitter or Skype?!

[Via http://giastjames.wordpress.com]

No change for top three best-sellers in UK // News

Bob Keane Passed Away: 1922 - 2009 (La Bamba)

2009-12-01T01:43:00.000+02:00

I found out today that my close friend’s father, Bob Keane, died this past Saturday. I was in shock at the news and really felt that I should ask that everyone keep her family in your thoughts and prayers. Some of you might know him as the guy who discovered Ritchie Valence (“La Bamba”), I knew him as a great family friend who will be missed by those who knew him.

If you are not familiar with his music please visit his myspace page: www.myspace.com/bobkeane

Thank you

[Via http://winnielubega.wordpress.com]

News Ticker: Chris Brown, Gorillaz, Ronnie James Dio, Al Alberts ...

Another 11.. Embracing Change

2009-11-29T08:53:00.000+02:00

Tomorrow marks the last time we’ll encounter 11-11-11 for a while. What’s incredible is we had TWO in one year, let alone one month (the previous was a few weeks ago on November 11th)! For those of you who aren’t as familiar with 11-11, I’d google it – someone else can fill ya in. Try Steve Pavlina, he does a great job at being straight to the point. Or you can check out my post 11-11-11.

So since 11-11-11 is wrapping around again, tomorrow, I revamped my blog. It was more ’subconscious’ than anything, then I realized the perfect timing. Since 11 is a great number for manifesting it makes perfect sense that I would reconfigure things.

Over the past month, I’ve been wanting to manifest a dotcom for my baby, but just haven’t felt right about doing it without extensive research — I mean, it’s a serious investment.

I have another small business where I produce and sell my own artwork but never could I imagine doing a site for it, besides myspace. It’s not something that I would find fulfillment engaging in hourly, or even daily!

Consciously Birthing is a completely different: Although it’s in its infancy, I provide for its well-being and growth daily (if not hourly). CB provides me an outlet in which I can teach. Continuously, I’m put to the test of employing my intuitive, empathic nature (Higher Self) which provides me with a sense of personal success. Not to mention, networking is incredibly fun and informative instead of painstakingly dreadful. And most importantly, I’m growing.

Realizing how motivated I am to keep Consciously Birthing a successful entity in my cypher pushes me to further create just what it is I truly desire!

And what is it that I desire?

I desire for Consciously Birthing to be a place of diverse, educational tools for the everyday person; Spiritual, Physical, Emotional, Mental, Psychological, Financial, Vibrational healing. I desire for my Healing Arts services to consist purely of Intuitive Wellbeing Counseling — Psychic Divination, One on One Coaching, Akashic Readings & Thought Vibration HealingTM.

Well, what about the ‘Birthing’?

Consciously Birthing is absolutely more than pregnancy and birth. I first originated the idea based on my passion for the misunderstood beauty but as the concept of Consciously Birthing itself grew, I realized my interests span much further than just conceiving and birthing naturally. I realized I wasn’t sent here to be only a labouring servant — there’s entirely too much available to us to limit ourselves.

However, upon completing my certification for Birth Doula (early 2011) things could appear different. My bigger vision is to incorporate Conscious Conception, Pregnancy, Birth and Parenting into the whole; because it just wouldn’t be “Consciously Birthing” without starting at the beginning – so to speak, but I feel the need to solidify a jump-off point in order to soar.

With hopes of providing ALL who wish to participate in the “J11 Experience” the certainty they’re receiving adequate, professional insight, developing and honing my Intuitive skills will allow me to provide all my clients with expansive, thorough healings. And I just don’t want to take away from that right now.

We’re here to change our minds, tweak our goals and fine tune our plans. Or else things would get stale and grow mold LOL. Be sure to stay tuned. The dotcom will offer a shoppe which can be previewed at ELEmentals with lots of great music, links and referrals, like my guys Jana Groscost Matthews and Jason Matthews.

Enjoy round 2 of 11’s… Make it Manifest!

Truly Gracious for Your Support,

Jessica Eleven

Consciously Birthing

I am an Intuitive Wellbeing Counselor. If you wish to discuss your personal situation and gain insight towards your brighter future I’d love to assist you - from a completely unbiased, non-judgemental perspective!

Light the path on your journey – Healing begins with you!

[Via http://consciouslybirthing.wordpress.com]

Friday Morning News and Views « The Confluence

Afghans Offer Jobs to Taliban Rank and File if They Defect

2009-11-28T17:28:00.000+02:00

Why not appoint murderers as Homicide Chief? Skewered logic ,which will screw up Afghanistan further.

Story:

JALALABAD, Afghanistan — The American-backed campaign to persuade legions of Taliban gunmen to stop fighting got under way here recently, in an ornate palace filled with Afghan tribal leaders and one very large former warlord leading the way.

Enlarge This Image

Majid/Getty Images

Guns laid down by former Taliban fighters lined a wall at a reconciliation meeting. Many were promised paid work.

The New York Times

“O.K., I want you guys to go out there and persuade the Taliban to sit down and talk,” Gul Agha Shirzai, the governor of Nangarhar Province, told a group of 25 tribal leaders from four eastern provinces. In a previous incarnation, Mr. Shirzai was the American-picked governor of Kandahar Province after the Taliban fell in 2001.

“Do whatever you have to do,” the rotund Mr. Shirzai told the assembled elders. “I’ll back you up.”

After about two hours of talking, Mr. Shirzai and the tribal elders rose, left for their respective provinces and promised to start turning the enemy.

The meeting is part of a battlefield push to lure local fighters and commanders away from the Taliban by offering them jobs in development projects that Afghan tribal leaders help select, paid by the American military and the Afghan government.

By enlisting the tribal leaders to help choose the development projects, the Americans also hope to help strengthen both the Afghan government and the Pashtun tribal networks.

These efforts are focusing on rank-and-file Taliban; while there are some efforts under way to negotiate with the leaders of the main insurgent groups, neither American nor Afghan officials have much faith that those talks will succeed soon.

Afghanistan has a long history of fighters switching sides — sometimes more than once. Still, efforts so far to persuade large numbers of Taliban fighters to give up have been less than a complete success. To date, about 9,000 insurgents have turned in their weapons and agreed to abide by the Afghan Constitution, said Muhammad Akram Khapalwak, the chief administrator for the Peace and Reconciliation Commission in Kabul.

But in an impoverished country ruined by 30 years of war, tribal leaders said that many more insurgents would happily put down their guns if there was something more worthwhile to do.

“Most of the Taliban in my area are young men who need jobs,” said Hajji Fazul Rahim, a leader of the Abdulrahimzai tribe, which spans three eastern provinces. “We just need to make them busy. If we give them work, we can weaken the Taliban.”

In the Jalalabad program, tribal elders would reach out to Taliban commanders to press them to change sides. The commanders and their fighters then would be offered jobs created by local development programs.

The Pashtuns, who form the core of the Taliban, make up a largely tribal society, with families connected to one another by kinship and led by groups of elders. Over the years, the Pashtun tribes have been substantially weakened, with elders singled out by three groups: Taliban fighters, the rebels who fought the former Soviet Union and the soldiers of the former Soviet Union itself. The decimation of the tribes has left Afghan society largely atomized.

Afghan and American officials hope that the plan to make peace with groups of Taliban fighters will complement an American-led effort to set up anti-Taliban militias in many parts of the country: the Pashtun tribes will help fight the Taliban, and they will make deals with the Taliban. And, by so doing, Afghan tribal society can be reinvigorated.

“We’re trying to put pressure on the leaders, and at the same time peel away their young fighters,” said an American military official in Kabul involved in the reconciliation effort. “This is not about handing bags of money to an insurgent.”

The Afghan reconciliation plan is intended to duplicate the Awakening movement in Iraq, where Sunni tribal leaders, many of them insurgents, agreed to stop fighting and in many cases were paid to do so. The Awakening contributed to the remarkable decline in violence in Iraq.

In the autumn of 2001, during the opening phase of the American-led war in Afghanistan, dozens of warlords fighting for the Taliban agreed to defect to the American-backed rebels. As in Iraq, the defectors were often enticed by cash, sometimes handed out by American Army Special Forces officers.

At a ceremony earlier this month in Kabul, about 70 insurgents laid down their guns before the commissioners and agreed to accept the Afghan Constitution. Some of the men had fought for the Taliban, some for Hezb-i-Islami, another insurgent group. The fighters’ motives ranged from disillusion to exhaustion.

“How long should we fight the government? How many more years?” said Molawi Fazullah, a Taliban lieutenant who surrendered with nine others. “Our leaders misled us, and we destroyed our country.”

Like many fighters who gave up at the ceremony, he shrouded his face with a scarf and sunglasses, for fear of being identified by his erstwhile comrades.

The Americans say they have no plans to give cash to local Taliban commanders. They say they would rather give them jobs.

In a defense appropriations bill recently approved by Congress, lawmakers set aside $1.3 billion for a program known by its acronym, CERP, a discretionary fund for American officers. Ordinarily, CERP money is used for development projects, but the language in the bill says officers can use the money to support the “reintegration into Afghan society” of those who have given up fighting.

For all the efforts under way to entice Taliban fighters to change sides, there will always be the old-fashioned approach: deadly force. American commanders also want to squeeze them; such is the rationale behind Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal’s request for tens of thousands of additional American troops.

Indeed, sometimes force alone does the trick. On Oct. 9, American Special Forces soldiers killed Ghulam Yahia, an insurgent commander believed responsible for, among other things, sending several suicide bombers into the western city of Herat. Mr. Yahia had changed sides himself in the past: earlier in the decade, he was Herat’s mayor.

When the Americans killed Mr. Yahia, in a mountain village called Bedak, 120 of his fighters defected to the Afghan government. Others went into hiding. Abdul Wahab, a former lieutenant of Mr. Yahia’s who led the defectors, said that the Afghan government had so far done nothing to protect them or offer them jobs. But he said he was glad he had made the jump anyway.

“We are tired of war,” he said. “We don’t want it anymore.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/28/world/asia/28militias.html?_r=1&th&emc=th

[Via http://ramanan50.wordpress.com]

A movie site updated, new style! - YAXS - XOOPS News :: XOOPS CMS ...

Vita Chambers

2009-11-28T00:59:00.000+02:00

As far as I’m concerned, the best thing about yesterday’s Lions-Packers game was the halftime show.

Motown Records celebrated its 5oth anniversary with a tribute show at Ford Field. Up-and-coming artists signed to the modern incarnation of the label, Universal-Motown, performed a medley of classic hits released in the brand’s heyday (the 1960s).

The first performer on stage captivated me so much that I literally tuned out the rest of the show. Performing the 1963 Martha Reeves and the Vandellas hit “Heat Wave,” 15 year-old Vita Chambers made my jaw drop with her beauty and her voice. A native of Barbados, Chambers seems to be virtually unknown at this point (she doesn’t even have her own Wikipedia entry yet); in my quest to learn more about her, all I could find were links to MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter.

I’ve definitely got to check Chambers’ music out. Being signed to Motown, I would expect it to be of some quality, rather than in the vein of Rihanna and a few other contemporary bubblegum pop artists whose songs have little (if any) substance.

[Via http://truefunksoldier.wordpress.com]

Perez Hilton: Ed Begley, Jr. Freaks Out On Fox News!

A warning shot in the bathroom mirror

2009-11-26T17:27:00.000+02:00

Self-portrait.

Also posted on: AltDiva, deviantART, Flickr, LiveJournal and MySpace

Buy prints from: deviantART and Fotki

and you, you bitch

with your prison guard keys

you followed me home

and you spat demands

in my face

stop! fall! lie! (lie)

silent. still. (still)

breaktheunfuckingbreakable

so i shot myself

in the head

in the heart

in the mirror

lips worn pale

drinking your poison

the taste of us both

on a sliver of ice

in the head

in the heart

in the mirror

and all i can think is

i am so out of focus

i am so out of focus

[Via http://rockstarvanity.wordpress.com]

Microsoft - News Corp. deal could face legal challenges ...

genius = penis

2009-11-26T01:30:00.000+02:00

Izz a troo evidence of male's wurld domination: penis rulez!

gambar: Epic Fails

Ini merupakan salah satu bukti nyata dominasi kaum pria: setiap lelaki dan banci adalah seorang jenius. Wahai para gadis, cewek, perempuan, wanita, ahwat, makcik, tante, nyonya…maaf…enggak peduli berapapun skor IQ yang kalian miliki tetap saja kalian tidak kompeten untuk dibilang sebagai jenius. BWAHAHAHAA….

[Via http://lolkontol.wordpress.com]

Free vs. fettered news: The battle lines form -- DailyFinance

How the Brain Filters out Distracting Thoughts to Focus on a Single Bit of Information

2009-11-24T17:35:00.000+02:00

Difference between Mind and Matter is one of degree ,not of kind.While mind vibrates at a higher rate, matter vibrates at a lower frequency.

Lower frequencies are associated with past experiences, higher frequencies are linked to present and Ultra high frequencies with the future.

Consciousness is a stream that is Universal.Individual variations are due to limitations of Space and Time.Mind can relate to and transcend Time and Space with proper discipline.

The exposition of this thought will take too much space;separate blog follows.

What the current studies attempt to prove and proved partially have already been practiced in Hinduism.

ScienceDaily (Nov. 23, 2009) — The human brain is bombarded with all kinds of information, from the memory of last night’s delicious dinner to the instructions from your boss at your morning meeting. But how do you “tune in” to just one thought or idea and ignore all the rest of what is going on around you, until it comes time to think of something else?

Researchers at the Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience and Centre for the Biology of Memory at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) have discovered a mechanism that the brain uses to filter out distracting thoughts to focus on a single bit of information. Their results are reported in 19 November issue of Nature.

Think of your brain like a radio: You’re turning the knob to find your favourite station, but the knob jams, and you’re stuck listening to something that’s in between stations. It’s a frustrating combination that makes it quite hard to get an update on swine flu while a Michael Jackson song wavers in and out. Staying on the right frequency is the only way to really hear what you’re after. In much the same way, the brain’s nerve cells are able to “tune in” to the right station to get exactly the information they need, says researcher Laura Colgin, who was the paper’s first author. “Just like radio stations play songs and news on different frequencies, the brain uses different frequencies of waves to send different kinds of information,” she says.

Gamma waves as information carriers

Colgin and her colleagues measured brain waves in rats, in three different parts of the hippocampus, which is a key memory center in the brain. While listening in on the rat brain wave transmissions, the researchers started to realize that there might be something more to a specific sub-set of brain waves, called gamma waves. Researchers have thought these waves are linked to the formation of consciousness, but no one really knew why their frequency differed so much from one region to another and from one moment to the next.

Information is carried on top of gamma waves, just like songs are carried by radio waves. These “carrier waves” transmit information from one brain region to another. “We found that there are slow gamma waves and fast gamma waves coming from different brain areas, just like radio stations transmit on different frequencies,” she says.

You really can “be on the same wavelength”

“You know how when you feel like you really connect with someone, you say you are on the same wavelength? When brain cells want to connect with each other, they synchronize their activity,” Colgin explains. “The cells literally tune into each other’s wavelength. We investigated how gamma waves in particular were involved in communication across cell groups in the hippocampus. What we found could be described as a radio-like system inside the brain. The lower frequencies are used to transmit memories of past experiences, and the higher frequencies are used to convey what is happening where you are right now.”

If you think of the example of the jammed radio, the way to hear what you want out of the messy signals would be to listen really hard for the latest news while trying to filter out the unwanted music. The hippocampus does this more efficiently. It simply tunes in to the right frequency to get the station it wants. As the cells tune into the station they’re after, they are actually able to filter out the other station at the same time, because its signal is being transmitted on a different frequency.

The switch

“The cells can rapidly switch their activity to tune in to the slow waves or the fast waves,” Colgin says, “but it seems as though they cannot listen to both at the exact same time. This is like when you are listening to your radio and you tune in to a frequency that is midway between two stations- you can’t understand anything- it’s just noise.” In this way, the brain cells can distinguish between an internal world of memories and a person’s current experiences. If the messages were carried on the same frequency, our perceptions of the world might be completely confused. “Your current perceptions of a place would get mixed up with your memories of how the place used to be,” Colgin says.

The cells that tune into different wavelengths work like a switch, or rather, like zapping between radio stations that are already programmed into your radio. The cells can switch back and forth between different channels several times per second. The switch allows the cells to attend to one piece at a time, sorting out what’s on your mind from what’s happening and where you are at any point in time. The researchers believe this is an underlying principle for how information is handled throughout the brain.

“This switch mechanism points to superfast routing as a general mode of information handling in the brain,” says Edvard Moser, Kavli Institute for Systems Neuroscience director. “The classical view has been that signaling inside the brain is hardwired, subject to changes caused by modification of connections between neurons. Our results suggest that the brain is a lot more flexible. Among the thousands of inputs to a given brain cell, the cell can choose to listen to some and ignore the rest and the selection of inputs is changing all the time. We believe that the gamma switch is a general principle of the brain, employed throughout the brain to enhance interregional communication.”

Can a switch malfunction explain schizophrenia?

People who are schizophrenic have problems keeping these brain signals straight. They cannot tell, for example, if they are listening to voices from people who are present or if the voices are from the memory of a movie they have seen. “We cannot tell for sure if it is this switch that is malfunctioning, but we do know that gamma waves are abnormal in schizophrenic patients,” Colgin says. “Schizophrenics’ perceptions of the world around them are mixed up, like a radio stuck between stations.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091120000140.htm

[Via http://ramanan50.wordpress.com]

ZAGG debuts ZAGGskins for iPod, iPhone | iLounge News

As muitas sonoridades do Paraná

2009-11-24T01:34:00.000+02:00

O Paraná tem tudo para ser uma grande fonte de boas bandas. Está entre a desejada São Paulo e o Rio Grande do Sul, formador de grandes bandas. O Paraná abriga vários estilos musicais, como vamos mostrar a seguir:

Bonde do Rolê

Criada em 2005, na cidade de Curitiba, capital do estado, a banda Bonde do Rolê surgiu após colocar várias músicas no site MySpace, com músicas fortemente relacionadas com o funk carioca. Logo, a banda fez muito sucesso no Brasil e em outros países com as músicas “Solta o Frango” e “Melô do Tabaco”.

O grande reconhecimento da banda formado por Ana Bernardino, Rodrigo Gorky, Pedro D’Eyrot e Laura Taylor, foi quando a banda foi citada pelo jornal americano “New York Times”. Além disso, foi eleita pela revista especializada em música “Rolling Stones”, como um das Dez bandas para se ligar no mundo inteiro.

A banda tem apenas um álbum lançado. “With Lasers”, de 2006, e quatro singles.

MySpace da banda

Hevo 84

Criada em 2005, na cidade de Paranguá, litoral do estado, a banda Hevo 84, é considerada Emocore, com batidas eletrônicas.

Assim como a maioria das bandas nacionais desta década, usou o MySpace e o YouTube para poder promover as músicas.

Em busca de maior espaço no cenário musical, a banda se instalou em São Paulo, para o lançamento do disco “Dias de Fuga”, que mesmo independente, já vendo milhares de cópias. Um das músicas do álbum, “Passos Escuros”, faz parte da trilha sonora na novela Malhação.

A banda é composta por: Renne Fernandes (Vocal), Fernando Cunha (Guitarra), Rodrigo Suspiro (Baixo) e Victor Hugo (Bateria).

Mais informações sobre a Hevo84, você encontra no Site Oficial e no MySpace do banda.

No Milk Today

Criada em dezembro de 1993, a banda de punk rock de Curitiba, tem influências de bandas estrangeiras do cenário punk, como Sex Pistols, The Misfits e Ramones.

A banda é muito conhecida, tanto que já dividiu o palco com Ratos de Porão, The Misfits, Inocentes, Marky Ramone, entre outros.

A banda é composta por Maurício Singer, Rodrigo Meister, Jahyr Neto e Maurício Cabelo.

Mais informações, no MySpace da banda.

Copacabana Club

Criada em 2007, na cidade de Curitiba, e mistura vários estilos musicais, como o indie rock, com punk, bossa nova e sons eletrônicos, seguindo uma tendência criada pelo Cansei de Ser Sexy e também muito atuante na banda The Ting Tings. Detalhe: todas as músicas são em inglês.

A banda foi idealizada por Alec Ventura após cinco anos em Londres. Ele se juntou com Lulli Frank(ex-integrante), Tile Douglas, Caca V e Claudinha Bukowski. Após um show em São Paulo, a banda virou sucesso no MySpace e foi convidada para entrar no projeto Levi’s Music, que apoia novas bandas. O Copacabana Club tem músicas como vinhetas de canais como a MTV e a FOX.

A banda atualmente é formada por Alec Ventura (guitarra e vocal), Caca V (vocal), Claudinha Burowski (bateria), Tile Douglas (baixo) e Rafael Martins (guitarra). A banda tem um EP lançado, em 2008, entitulado King Of The Night.

Anmod

Formada em 2005, a banda é discidente do Fornication, nada de death metal conhecida no Sul do país. Desde 1996, ano de formação, o Fornication lançou dois discos “Descendants of Degenerated Race” e “Regurgitated Guts”.

Em 2004, a banda chegou a fazer uma turnê de 3 meses pela Europa. Nove países (Alemanha, França, Holanda, Austria, Italia, Belgica, Eslovenia, Hungria e República Tcheca) foram visitados pela turnê que teve o nome de “Unleashing Wrath Over Europe Tour 2004″.

Em 2005, três integrantes do Fornication (Hernan Oliveira, Johnny R.R. e Gerson Watanabe) saíram da banda para formar o Anmod, que tem um disco, o “Monstrosity Per Defectum“ lançado, em 2008. Por serem os mesmos integrantes, a sonoridade pesada do Fornication se manteve no Anmod.

Conheça um pouco mais, no Site Oficial da banda.

[Via http://rondasonora.wordpress.com]

Yahoo Enhances News “Shortcut” « ResourceShelf

Noise Zone en Myspace

2009-11-22T17:02:00.000+02:00

Os informo que he creado un Myspace para dar a conocer a Noise Zone en la red y para que los grupos puedan promocionarse tanto aquí como en Myspace. Todos aquellos que tengáis un grupo y queráis daros a conocer podéis agregarnos y enviarnos un tema vuestro para que lo pongamos aquí. Sólo aceptamos temas cuyos derechos sean de los propios grupos (por ejemplo, Licencia Creative Commons. No queremos rollos con SGAE y compañía). Además de poner un tema de vuestro grupo, también podéis enviarnos vuestras noticias (historia, conciertos, cds, etc…).

Esperamos poder ayudar a todos los grupos que se esfuerzan en hacer lo que les gusta y no tienen medios para darse a conocer.

Podéis verlo en http://www.myspace.com/noisezonerock

[Via http://noisezone.wordpress.com]

Walt Disney vs. the news industry: How bad management is killing ...

As Afghans Resist Taliban, U.S. Spurs Rise of Militias-NYT.

2009-11-22T01:41:00.000+02:00

Sounds encouraging.But national feelings being what they are,if US continues to meddle in Afghanisthan’s affairs,the same militia that is taking up arms against Taliban,shall take it up against US as well and that would be far more dangerous as this group will be fighting for National Soveignity.Better US leaves the place and provide military hard ware and advice if the people requested for it.

Story:

ACHIN, Afghanistan — American and Afghan officials have begun helping a number of anti-Taliban militias that have independently taken up arms against insurgents in several parts of Afghanistan, prompting hopes of a large-scale tribal rebellion against the Taliban.

Leaders of anti-Taliban militias in Kunduz Province met with the Afghan government’s intelligence chief in Kunduz this month.

Members of the Afghan National Police, above, passed an abandoned Russian Army vehicle on a patrol near a village in Kunduz Province.

The emergence of the militias, which took some leaders in Kabul by surprise, has so encouraged the American and Afghan officials that they are planning to spur the growth of similar armed groups across the Taliban heartland in the southern and eastern parts of the country.

The American and Afghan officials say they are hoping the plan, called the Community Defense Initiative, will bring together thousands of gunmen to protect their neighborhoods from Taliban insurgents. Already there are hundreds of Afghans who are acting on their own against the Taliban, officials say.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/22/world/asia/22militias.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=a1

The endeavor represents one of the most ambitious — and one of the riskiest — plans for regaining the initiative against the Taliban, who are fighting more vigorously than at any time since 2001.

[Via http://ramanan50.wordpress.com]

Climategate: how the MSM reported the greatest scandal in modern ...

How Would You Improve The Internet?

2009-11-19T09:15:00.000+02:00

In recent news, the country of Sweden crashed: Apparently it is possible to cause every single address in a domain to go down (in this case, .se), by making a simple script error during routine maintenance…whodathunk? I shudder to think what may happen when routine maintenance on the .com domain takes place…

In another bit of “wish I’d never done that” news, Tim Berners-Lee just admitted that the forward slashes in the Web’s URL design protocol were both unnecessary and – in his words – a mistake. With this in mind, I thought it might be fun to wander around the Web, and the Internet as a whole, just to see what we could find, by way of unfortunate stories we may have forgotten, or never even known about…things that “seemed like a good idea at the time”. We’re getting closer to the end of the year, when all those retrospectives come out, and I thought this would be as good a time as any to think back, only not just over the past year, but further. After all, it’s the history we forget that we so often tend to repeat…

Do you remember GeoCities? If you thought they died a long time ago, you might be surprised to hear that Yahoo, who acquired them back when people thought dot-coms would never bomb, recently (as in October 26th, 2009) announced GeoCities was closing its doors. Talk about limping along…

Then there are the ISPs. I was a Mindspringer for the longest time, one of the first evangelists for the brand (until Earthlink purchased them). Along with the likes of Prodigy (still shuffling along, believe it or not, as owner AT&T tries to find someone stupid enough to buy something worth nothing), AOL (reinventing itself every day, yet still deriving the largest measure of its revenue from good old (and I mean old!) dial-up subscriptions), and Netzero (reduced to net zero, as they try to find new ways to also rejigger the fact that they are still a dial-up ISP), Mindspring was a pioneer doomed to be eclipsed by telcos who learned from their mistakes.

When we think back to the search engines, the list is long: Webcrawler, AltaVista (technically still around), Lycos…heck, I’m just scraping the tip of the iceberg, and have already lost interest. Did you know that AltaVista had a chance to buy Google’s search technology way back when, and passed? Whoops. Google, contrary to its current well-deserved reputation, was not innovative at all when it first opened for business. It was efficient and analytical. Its algorithms reinvented web search, based on the ideas of its predecessors, good and bad alike. Some people call that reinventing the wheel, but they at least have not rested on their laurels.

Many websites that burned brightly for only a short while were decried as unsustainable business models (remember Pets.com, Webvan, eToys, Kibu, and Kozmo?), and yet their model has since been adapted and proven successful (Petedge, Upco, Fosters &Smith, Amazon, Barbie.com, Tesco, to name but a few comparable online ventures that seem to have “made it”). Timing is all, it would indeed seem, or at least kinda crucial.

For some, it was all about effective marketing and brand awareness…or the lack thereof: Akimbo.com failed because they could not manage to communicate their value proposition to their target market, among other “challenges”; Hulu succeeded (where Joost, Veoh, Vimeo, and others have not – to varying degrees) because they realized their brand strength was tied to the apron strings of their partners. OK, it certainly didn’t hurt that the networks who own the content it distributes also own Hulu!..

In other cases, interactive success came as a result of reinvention: the transition (or should I say ‘desertion”?) from Microsoft Live Search to today’s “Bing” *might* finally establish MSFT as a competitor to Google, in much the same way as Firefox is to the Redmond giant’s own browser…well, without the Open Source stuff!

Now,who uses RSS? I’m sure it some value, but not yet for me. I subscribe to several feeds, and all I do is trash the avalanche of junk in my inbox each morning. Until people learn to self police their content (be it RSS feeds, Tweets, or Facebook Mafia War activities), the internet is going to continue to burn through ideas like flames across the Verdugo mountains. There is too much information online, and we want tools that will filter and control the flood of data, not simply fractionalize it. After all, half of infinity is still infinity.

Some companies have good ideas, easily replicable by larger or later-in-the-game interests. Kiko developed a web based calendar, which seems like a great idea, unless you factor that it was not sufficiently proprietary of a business model to prevent Google from developing its own Google Calendar app.; and HotorNot.com and Friendster were arguably ripped off by what is known today as Facebook (originally Facemash). Several companies are in the process of trying to beat TVguide.com at its own game (something that seems – at first glance – to be a good idea, given that the TVGuide.com site is not so great). However, couchville.com was there first, and since departed. Branding is worth a lot these days, in a very cluttered marketplace and, unless you are a captive subscriber (using ATT/Yahoo TV portal, for instance), or an early adopter (of which there are far fewer than those of us on the East and West Coasts might believe).

Some ideas are not so much failures as temporary successes, taking advantage of loopholes in the law or in best practices. P2P is one prime example, with different offerings coming and going (or continuing to exist despite obviously supporting illegal practices), but there are others, such as Yak4ever, the site that allows you to make free international calls, albeit through a slightly cumbersome process. Google Voice is another offering that seems destined to either succumb to the counterattacks of the powerful telco lobbies, or force a reinvention of telco laws.

Where such ongoing “could go either way” projects as MySpace.com, Friendster (it’s still trying to make a go of it, my friends, and doing quite well in the Asia Pacific regions!), Kiva (currently under attack by folks who’d like to see it go the way of govWorks.com. Did you read the recent NYT article?), Project Natal, and James Cameron’s “Avatar” (had to throw that one in there!) end up is anybody’s guess. That’s where you come in: What failures and unforeseen successes do you recall? What is coming down the pike that you feel may completely reinvent interactive content production, storage, distribution, and/or consumption? Are you working on something that will make the Internet an even more robust tool and platform for communications, community and content? What does the Internet mean to you, beyond the conventional Web and email? What internet ventures do you feel will still be with us by the end of 2010?

History shows that much of what we praise today will be gone tomorrow.

I met a traveller from an antique land

Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk, a shatter’d visage lies, whose frown

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamp’d on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them and the heart that fed.

And on the pedestal these words appear:

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,

The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Ozymandias, by Percy Shelley (1818)

Organizing for America | Cloe Axelson's Blog: Morning News

Climate Change: A Really, Really Big Thing That’s Really, Really Hard That Makes Everybody Mad

2009-11-19T01:30:00.000+02:00

Noted with interest: Mashable item on MySpace Music Charts.

Unrelated to music, via Bloomberg:

Lawmakers are growing weary of tackling a procession of sweeping measures, said Senator Claire McCaskill. The Obama administration is pushing to overhaul the U.S. health-care system, revamp regulation of the banking system and develop new proposals to replace jobs lost during the worst recession since the Great Depression.

“I don’t think anyone’s excited about doing another really, really, big thing that’s really, really hard that makes everybody mad,” McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, told reporters yesterday. “Climate fits that category.”

I let out an “Oh my God!” when I read that one. Lady next to me in the cafeteria turned around to see if I was alright.

Generally, I try not to get too worked up when I read quotes from politicians in the media. Maybe the remark got twisted around in the writing/editing process, and everybody says dumb things now and then.

But that one is pretty disappointing. I’m sure it’s tough being a Senator, but “really, really hard” doesn’t seem to me reason enough to avoid confronting serious problems.

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green News Report -- November 17 ...

Imeem Buyout Could Push MySpace Closer to "Freemium"

2009-11-17T17:23:00.000+02:00

Consolidation appears imminent in the free streaming music sector, as MySpace is on the verge of acquiring social music site Imeem. A source with knowledge of the situation confirmed that negotiations are in process, but no deal is set. If it happens, the buy would be MySpace’s second fire-sale acquisition this year, following its mid-summer deal for iLike at a bargain-basement price. Imeem’s valuation, once reportedly above $200 million, was said to have fallen below $10 million at the time of a recapitalization round earlier this year.

The proposed deal would unite two companies that share the same problem: Rights holders demand royalties for song streams at rates higher than advertising alone can offset. Imeem has been a money drain to its stakeholders, but it does have several assets that could prove valuable to MySpace, which may be mulling a move toward a “freemium” model. Its sales, engineering and leadership teams hold significant value. Imeem acquired Snocap, the music-selling widget provider founded by Napster creator Shawn Fanning and seen on many MySpace artist pages, in early 2008, and launched an iPhone app in May 2009.

Although no company has reached profitability providing free ad-supported music streams, Imeem was optimistic about reaching that point next year. The company had renegotiated its royalty rates with at least some of the major labels, reduced its headcount and other expenses, and accepted a round of funding worth about $6 million in spring 2009. But key investor Sequoia Capital bailed out of the recap round, and was largely washed out along with other stakeholders.

What’s more, its brand name is known as a music destination, in contrast with MySpace’s reputation as a broader social network. Imeem is also said to be developing a new user interface, the better to compete with Spotify, and if MySpace is planning to launch a paid service, it could incorporate parts of Imeem’s existing but little-used VIP service. Imeem has put those pieces in place already; for MySpace it’s a chance to buy rather than build them.

Imeem began exploring a sale more than a year ago, retaining Montgomery & Co. to evaluate strategic options, but no buyer emerged. Since that time, the free streaming model has fallen on hard times, and may soon be a thing of the past. If the current deal produces an exit disappointing to Imeem’s stakeholders, at least it will have produced something better than bankruptcy — which would be a small victory.

autosport.com - F1 News: Dennis hails new Mercedes agreement

Myspace = Mesquite, TX

2009-11-17T01:22:00.000+02:00

A funny thing happened on the way to Facebook… we killed Myspace. I went there the other day and it was bleak. I mean, really bleak. The first thing I thought was, “Wow, this reminds me of Mesquite, TX (my hometown).” I even tweeted it, which isn’t shocking because I tweet everything.

Oh, you don’t know Mesquite, TX? Here are some highlights – Town East Mall, Mesquite Rodeo (the audience sums it up well), Galloway Street (where we used to cruise on Saturday’s) and, of course, Hooters on Restaurant Row (wait… what the fuck is happening here?!?!).

All of these things have something in common, I lived in them for a long period of time. Myspace started for me, actually, while living at Bea and Guav’s in Jersey. Ray basically forced me to join. Mesquite started for me around the second grade when we moved from Pleasant Grove (A grove less pleasant than Mesquite, by the by).

Since moving to San Francisco, I hadn’t been back to Mesquite in about 3 years. My parents moved when I came to SF, as did everyone else. When I did return it was different. Seriously, everyone had moved on (well, except a few people who were only there for a free place to stay, or because they worked at their parents house). Sure, the C Store was still was there, there was still construction on LBJ and Poteet was still elite and the pride of Mesquite, but, it wasn’t the same. Honestly, it won’t ever be the same again.

The same goes for Myspace. It still has the most music, the most whores and movie trailers, but, it’s missing something. Unlike Mesquite, though. there is a chance to rejuvenate the site.

Here are my 5 ways to fix Myspace.

5) Authorization – It’s time to finally weed out the pervs, or at least weed them down. The best thing Facebook did was make you put in a phone number. You’d think that eliminates 90% of the future rapists, right?

4) Myspace Adult – Everyone (dudes) liked Myspace because it was a basically a free hookup site. Take advantage of that. Allow nude photos and shit with age verification for a small cost. You’re telling me chicks wouldn’t post that shit? Basically, start a new Adult Friend Finder.

3) Eliminate html for dummies. Why does Twitter work so well? It’s quick, it’s easy and it’s nice. I can get on Twitter 10 times during a work day and spend less than 3 minutes total. Bosses like that. It makes me feel like I can be more productive. When you log into Myspace it takes 40 minutes to load all the damn glitter auto-comments.

2) Fix the app immediately. The Myspace iPhone app is shit. Complete shit. You can’t stay on it for more than 2 minutes before it crashes. Try viewing a photo? Forget it… crash.

1) Weekly videos of Tom and Tila banging. Who’s not watching that??

Edward Said and Barack Obama: A Letter from Gaza - Salem-News.Com

Weekly Rewind / November 9-13

2009-11-15T17:43:00.000+02:00

Houston moves from 16th to 5th on Milken’s best performing city list.
China is very close to restricting debt on property purchases.
Houston’s commercial real estate sales down 84% from this time last year. Is this a buying signal or is there more room to run?
Two Japanese banks are merging to create the country’s fifth largest bank.
Recession’s impact on the Houston office market.
The NAIC has approved a plan to develop a new credit rating model.
Green Building projects expected to skyrocket. 8 million jobs within 4 years-per projections.
According to the Fed, banks are continuing the practice of extending and pretending.
Bargain buys are reducing rental rates on the east and west coast.
Is Singapore about to make the same mistakes the rest of the world made in regards to a real estate bubble?
Net investment chart of commercial real estate (2001-Current). This shoe has already dropped.
On a separate note, REITs helped surge the stock market to its 52 week highs earlier in the week.
Alvin TX’s north side is to get a $50 million Christus Health Hospital.
Believe it or not: Commercial mortgage restructuring guidelines are getting results.
HBJ reports Houston consumer spending slowing. But optimism abounds.
Of the 386 housing permits (projected new homes) in Sugar Land, 369 are from the Telfair Development.
Chase is hiring 1200 mortgage loan officers to increase its capacity by 60% by the end of 2010.
Tough couple weeks for the small business lender.
Peak Demand or Peak Consumption? Read the Oil Drum’s take.
This just in: Banks are actually having success selling their toxic assets.
Houston home sales up 10% from last quarter. Median remains $160,000.
Retail might be hurting, but its getting a big boost from institutional investors.
Marq*E Center on I-10 & Silber to undergo a renovation to make it more retail friendly. Interesting note: the Fed Reserve was involved.
The Tenants Rights Act is adding liabilities from landlords.
Texas’ electricity rates: Largest increase in prices over last 8 years…anywhere in the US.
Sam Zell: Pending doom for CRE is a myth.
Texas Employers can expect a tax hit for the jobless.
No CRE to buy? Try looking north of the border, eh?
Commercial Real Estate lending still tight. Demand up, Supply Down since July.
Britan’s Lloyd’s is scrambling to recover $1.1 billion after the collapse of Kenmore Property Group.
Houston Downtown Tower purchased. Aaaahh, some good news.
Myspace.com losing $1 million a month due to office vacancy.

~Llenrock & Lowery Blogs

Stocks in the news: Walt Disney, J.C. Penney, Abercrombie & Fitch ...