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Kaine, DNC Blast McCain's 'How Many Houses?'
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/21/2008 5:23:00 AM
Filed under: Democrats, Republicans,
John McCain, 2008 President, Gaffes As
David Knowles reported earlier, John
McCain, in an interview Wednesday, was
unable to recall just how many houses he
owns, telling Politico, "I think - I'll have
my staff get to you...It's condominiums
where - I'll have them get to you." Coupled
with his remark at Saddleback that $5
million is the rich people's Mendoza Line,
it doesn't look good for Mac.
Now, the Democrats are piling on
McCain, who has been laying the elitism
charge on thick against his opponent. The
DNC came up with this catchy slogan: (
From TPM)"John McCain's Message to
Working Families: Money -- Don't Worry
About It -- You're Rich in Other Ways."
And Virginia Governor Tim Kaine, a
fading VP short-lister, pitched in with
this:"He couldn't count high enough
apparently to even know how many houses
he owns." That's really funny, Tim, if
you're Mr. Spock.
There is a silver lining. McCain
sometimes takes heat from the left about
McCain criticizing Bush's response to
Katrina, when McCain himself spent that
day cutting up Mac's birthday cake. In
light of these new comments, it appears
that McCain actually did want to help, and
intended to let struggling New Orleanders
Judge Lets MIT Students Share Their Research On Boston Subway Vulnerabilities
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 12:32:05 PM
While it took about a week and a half, a
judge has now lifted the gag order that had
eat the cake.
Although the DNC's response was pretty
clever, given the lameness of Kaine's
rejoinder. I think we should all pitch in and
help. It turns out that when John McCain
says, "What's happenin', Homes?" he
means it literally.
In response to the DNC's criticism,
Senator McCain responded indignantly,
"My friends, I resent the implication that I
am out of touch with the American
peasants."
McCain only owns so many houses
because he keeps buying the wrong ones,
based on faulty intelligence.
Senator McCain unveiled what he calls
"A Modest Energy Proposal," which calls
for all homes in the US to be heated by
lighting poor people on fire with flaming
hundred dollar bills, by the end of his first
term. This just in: Senator Obama's
remarks on this subject: ( Video) But the
fact of the matter is that John McCain is
offering more of the same. He said a while
back that he thought that we had made
great progress economically during the
years that George Bush has been in office.
Now, that raised some eyebrows. Great
progress economically. Who is he talking
to? And it turns out that you get a sense of
who he's talking to because some of you
saw the Saddleback Forum with Rick
Warren. He was asked, well, who do you
consider rich? And he thought about it for
a second, I don't know. Maybe if you make
$5 million. $5 million, then you're rich.
prevented some MIT students from sharing
a presentation about vulnerabilities in the
Boston subway system. The judge refused
to ban the students from talking about it for
a period of five months (which the MBTA
24/07/08 - 21/08/08
Which means, I guess, if you're only
making $3 million a year then you're
middle class. I guess that's what he meant.
His top economic adviser said the other
day that Americans should stop
complaining; they've become a nation of
whiners. That all these economic problems
everybody is talking about is just a mental
recession. And if you would just change
your mind, everything would be okay.
insisted it needed to fix the system). This is
definitely a win for free speech, though I'm
sure the debate over how and when to
disclose security vulnerabilities will
continue for a long, long time.
LibertyNewsprint.com U.S.
Somebody's been laid off, their plant's
closed and gone to Mexico or China,
change your mind. It's all good. Then,
yesterday, he was asked again, what do
you think about the economy? He says,
Well, I think the economy is
fundamentally strong; said the economy is
fundamentally strong. Now, this puzzled
me. I was confused as to what he meant.
But then there was another interview - this
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is yesterday, same day - where somebody
asked John McCain, how many houses do
you have? And he said, I'm not sure. I'll
have to check with my staff. True quote.
I'm not sure. I'll have to check with my
staff. So they asked his staff, and he said,
at least four. At least four. Now, think
about that. I guess if you think that being
rich means you've got to make $5 million
and if you don't know how many houses
you have, then it's not surprising that you
might think the economy was
fundamentally strong. But if you're like
me, and you've got one house, or you are
like the millions of people who are
struggling right now to keep up with their
mortgage so they don't lose their home,
you might have a different perspective.
And by the way, the answer is John
McCain has seven homes. So there's just a
fundamental gap of understanding between
John McCain's world and what people are
going through every single day here in
America. And you don't have to be - you
don't have to be a Nobel Prize Laureate
economist. You just have to have a little
bit of a sense of what ordinary people are
going through to understand that we can't
afford eight more years or four more years
or one more year of the same failed
economic policies that George Bush has
put in place.
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2 Politico* Business* Tech Tips*
Obama Camp Warm to 'The New Agenda'
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 5:28:00 PM
Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama,
2008 President As I reported Monday,
there's a new group of Hillary Clinton
supporters making news now by caling for
the dismissal, and more, of Chris
Matthews. For "The New Agenda," a post-
PUMA group of 30 power players,
Matthews is just the poster boy for their
initiative to shop a slate of women's issues
to whichever political party wants their
support.
The group had already received overtures
from the McCain campaign, but founding
member Caren Turner told me that she met
with a senior official in the Obama
campaign yesterday, with very
encouraging results."I met with a very high
ranking person in the Obama campaign
(and presented) a list of asks.
How will your administration deal with
the fact that only 17% of the US Congress
is made up of women, will you come up
with a corrective plan, and what will it be?
Under Federal law, 5% of small business
federal contracts should go to woman-
owned businesses, but we barely get 3.4%,
and we own 30% of the small businesses.
What will you do to correct that?
Professor Nancy Hopkins did a study
that showed that since the Iraq War started,
more women have died at the hands of
domestic violence (about 6,400) than
soldiers have died in Iraq (4142). What
will your administration do to remedy this
national disaster?
How will your administration correct the
rampant sexism on the airwaves, and
society at large? She also says she would
like to see these questions in the
Presidential debates.
Some skeptics, myself included,
wondered if this new group would give the
Obama campaign a fair shot, or align
themselves with the more pro-McCain
PUMA movement, and their political arm,
PUMAPAC.
Declutter Your Schedule to Find More Free Time [Overload]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 4:30:00 AM
Blogger Leo Babauta found more free
All indications are that the group's
support will go wherever the best deal is.
On meeting with the Obama
campaign:"The meeting went extremely,
extremely well. The first three things were
very easy, no problem, and that the other
two were excellent issues, but the solutions
were more complicated, and that the
campaign will get back to us. (with a plan)
The meeting went very well." On
PUMAPAC: We are not involved with
PUMAPAC. I don't know where they are
in terms of raising money, but I think they
were, let's say, overly optimistic about the
money they raised to retire Hillary's debt,
and that put question marks in some
people's mind as to whether we should
affiliate with them at all. So is it fair to say
you've stepped away from the "Just Say No
Deal" umbrella? That's exactly fair, in
other words they've taken the approach of
"Just say no deal," and we're saying,
time in his days by decluttering his
schedule and "designing" his life to include
important stuff and exclude the rest. Lots
of good, familiar advice here on managing
"We're gonna deal, deal with all of you."
We discussed McCain's own record of
misogyny. She hadn't heard the McCain
rape joke, or the campaign's non-denial
and "McCain being McCain" explanation,
but her attitude was, "You choose your
battles. Once we have more women in
power, those jokes will stop on their own"
In talks with all 3 of the founders of New
Agenda, none of them has bothered to
defend McCain's history of misogyny, but
I get the impression that while Matthews is
being taken for a pound of flesh, McCain
has something different to ante up.
I also asked if McCain's pro-life
comments at the Saddleback Forum gave
the group any pause, considering his prior
assurances that there would be no litmus
test. She echoed the other founders'
confidence that the Democrats in the
judiciary committee would stop any
extreme appointments."We're not just a
distractions, your to-do list, and
streamlining work to make more time for
leisure.
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bunch of walking ovaries. Once we get
more women into office, many of the
traditional issues that we've talked about
will fall into line."
"We're not dealing with Roe v Wade, pro-
choice, pro-life or anything like that, this is
more about power and money. This is not
about ovaries... This is focused on the
power and the money. Period." While I
might not agree 100% with this group's
methods, or even their exact priorities, the
idea that women's issues can be the subject
of a bidding war between two parties,
rather than the taken-for-granted province
of one, is an intriguing one. My bet is on
blue.
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Recession, housing seen
increasing budget
deficit for new president
By Joseph Lazzaro
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 8:28:00 AM
Filed under: Other issues, Bad news,
Federal Natl Mtge (FNM), Politics,
Housing, Recession Few would deny that
the new U.S. president, Democrat or
Republican, will face a plethora of
concerns and problems after reciting the
oath of office in January 2009.
One issue that sort of presents the
'problems panorama' in a snapshot has,
curiously, received light news coverage
lately -- is the U.S. budget deficit.
Time was, just a short decade ago, the
federal budget was in surplus. However, in
2001 a federal tax cut occurred. That fact,
combined with required spending for the
war on terror / Iraq War, and the absence
of a tax increase to pay for that increased
spending, has primarily led to a projected
$553 billion deficit for fiscal 2008, which
ends September 30, 2008, and a $403
billion deficit for fiscal 2009, which begins
October 1, 2008, according to
Congressional Budget Office
research(pdf).
Three factors that could balloon the
deficit
In the view of many, the existing deficit
is large -- but still manageable -- in the
context of a $2.9-3.0 trillion federal
budget. However, three factors could
markedly increase the budget deficit in the
immediate years ahead, and in doing so
add to the new president's woes, economist
Richard Felson told BloggingStocks.
First, there's the U.S. economy. If it falls
into a recession (if it hasn't already),
federal receipts (such as corporate and
individual income taxes) will decline from
current projected levels, and social
program costs will increase, "adding $20-
$50 billion to the deficit," Felson said.
Continue reading Recession, housing
seen increasing budget deficit for new
president Permalink| Email this| Comments
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
University Shields Obama Records from Obama Hits McCain on
Press Abramoff's Reed, Again
By Mark Impomeni (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/21/2008 2:30:00 AM
Filed under: Barack Obama, 2008
President, Scandal, Media The University
of Illinois at Chicago finds itself in the
middle of a growing controversy over the
records of the Chicago Annenberg
Challenge, which it maintains at its
Richard J. Daley Library. Sen. Barack
Obama served on the Annenberg board of
directors from 1995 until the project ended
in 2001, spending three years as its first
chairman. It was on the broad of the
Annenberg Challenge where Sen. Obama
served with the notorious former head of
the 1960's radical group, William Ayers.
The Annenberg Challenge was founded by
Ayers and was responsible for
administering a private grant of nearly $50
million to Chicago public schools.
Journalists researching Sen. Obama's
background as he prepares to accept the
Democratic Party's nomination for
president have been seeking to get a look
at the records. But the Daley library has
refused, after initially agreeing to make the
records public, claiming that the donor of
the material has not given permission for
the records to be viewed by the press. The
documents could shed more light on the
relationship between Obama and Ayers.
Obama is known to have visited Ayers'
home at least once, attending a fund raiser
there; and is believed to have gotten his
start in Chicago politics in part with Ayers'
blessing.
Asked yesterday about the controversy
over the records, Chicago Mayor Richard
Daley, son of the late mayor Richard J.
Olympic hangover? Not for China Mobile (CHL)
By Steven Halpern (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 5:48:00 AM
Filed under: International markets, China,
Newsletters, Stocks to Buy, China Mobile
Limited (CHL)
"Whenever anyone asks, 'Why invest in
China?' the answer is very simple: that's
where the money is, and it's where
Daley for whom the library is named,
dismissed concerns over Obama's ties to
Ayers, saying that Ayers' radical days are
behind him.
"Bill Ayers-I've said this-his father was a
great friend of my father. I'll be very frank.
Vietnam divided families, divided people.
It was a terrible time of our country.
People didn't know one another. Since
then...[Ayers] has been in the forefront of a
lot of education issues and helping us in
public schools and things like that.
People keep trying to align [Ayers] with
Barack Obama. It's really unfortunate.
exponential future economic growth is
also," says Jim Trippon.
The editor of The China Stock Digest
then asks, "Will China suffers an Oympic
hangover?" Here, he explains why that
should not happen and offers a look at
China Mobile(NYSE: CHL), which he
calls the "top dog" in the Chinese wireless
sector.
They're friends. So what? People do make
mistakes in the past. You move on. This is
a new century, a new time. He reflects
back and he's been making a strong
contribution to our community."
The Obama campaign has said in the past
that Obama and Ayers were "friendly,"
implying a past relationship. Daley's
comment indicates that the two remain
friends.
If the records indicate a deeper or an
ongoing relationship between Obama and
Ayers, it would be a major problem for the
Obama campaign. Ayers and the Weather
Underground are responsible for a spate of
terrorist bombings in the waning days of
the Vietnam War, including against the
U.S. Capitol and the Pentagon. Ayers was
never convicted in connection to the
bombings, his case was thrown out on an
evidence gathering technicality, and he has
never publicly repented for his alleged
actions. As recently as September 11,
2001, in an op-ed published by the New
York Times, Ayers said that he did not
regret setting the bombs. "I don't think we
did enough," he said.
The Obama campaign has said that it has
no control over the records or the
University of Illinois library that is keeping
them sealed. But Obama has based his
appeal on his superior judgment, and
questions about his relationship to an
unrepentant terrorist cast a dark cloud over
that judgment. Questions will persist until
the records can be reviewed. The Obama
campaign would do well to publicly call
for the records to be opened, and allow for
the press to report on their contents.
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"The Bank of China (BOC) conducted a
study of the effects of 12 Olympiads on
their host countries over the course of 60
years. They found that nine of the twelve
Olympic host countries suffered a decline
in GDP growth in the eight years after the
games.
"The key to a post Olympic slump is the
size of the economy. Smaller economies
By Liza Porteus Viana (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 11:40:00 AM
Filed under: Senate, Barack Obama, John
McCain, 2008 President Yesterday,
pundits took to the airwaves to say Barack
Obama has faltered a bit in his campaign,
was off his groove this week, and allowed
John McCain to catch up.
Today, the c onsensus seems to be that
the Democratic contender is finally
fighting back against McCain and the
GOP's attack dogs, not taking the hits lying
down.
Take, for instance, a new ad being
released by Obama's camp tomorrow.
Only to be shown in Atlanta, the TV ad
draws a connection between McCain's past
decision not to call Ralph Reed before his
Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and
Reed's involvement in an Atlanta
fundraiser for the Arizona senator this
week.
Here's the script:
"It was one of Washington's biggest
scandals. And the Republican power
broker Ralph Reed was in the middle of it.
In deep with convicted felon and lobbyist
Jack Abramoff.
"But when the Senate investigated, the
senator in charge never even called Reed
to testify....And that senator? John
like Korea suffered larger downturns after
the games, while larger economies like the
United States were not affected at all. In
smaller economies the enormous
investment dedicated to staging Olympic
games created an articial bubble which was
followed by a slump when Olympic
building booms came to an end.
"China has made one of the largest
Politico* Business* 3
McCain. And who's now raising money for
McCain's campaign? Ralph Reed. For 26
years in Washington, John McCain's
played the same old games. We just can't
afford more of the same."
McCain's Indian Affairs Committee two
years ago was looking into the scandal
surrounding Jack Abramoff, the
conservative lobbyist who pleaded guilty
in 2006 to conspiring to corrupt public
officials and cheating some Indian tribes
that he represented out of tens of millions
of dollars.
A 2006 Senate report found that
Abramoff arranged for Reed and his
companies to receive $5.3-million to rally
opposition among Christian groups to
gambling operations competing with those
of Abramoff's tribal clients. The decision
not to call Reed was based on the belief
that Indian tribes were not defrauded by
Reed directly.
One Republican insider t old The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution that any fraud Reed
committed was against the Christian
troops, for not telling them where the
money was coming from for their anti-
gambling operation. That wasn't the
business of the Indian Affairs Committee,
the insider said.
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investments ever in the Olympic Games
with some estimates of spending topping
$40 billion. But we don't believe the
capital city will go into a slump after the
games.
Continue reading Olympic hangover?
Not for China Mobile (CHL) Permalink|
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4 Politico* Tech*
Considering Lieberman
By Dave (Political Machine)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 1:27:00 PM
Filed under: John McCain, 2008
President, Veepstakes David Knowles
broached the subject earlier, and today's
news that Lieberman is on the convention
slate as the Zell Miller of 2008 and that
McCain is asking the base about a pro-
choice ticket heats up the speculation;
could McCain be about to pick Joe
Lieberman as VP?
I can see it happening, they have a good
working relationship, Joe is his own man
in the senate and so, famously, is John
McCain. The lefties would view him as a
traitor, but heck that ship has sailed already
hasn't it. The interesting consideration is
what effect it would have on the GOP
Base. Would they stick together and allow
John McCain to run on what could be a
unity moderate ticket? The political
analysts in McCain's employ are I'm sure
salivating over the opportunity to grab the
center and crowd Obama over to the
margins.
Again, the big question whether the base
would allow this or lash out in fury.
Speaking for myself, I'm OK with Joe
Lieberman, I don't need a VP pick to tell
me whether McCain will be a conservative
champion, eight years of his past history of
working against conservatives already tells
me everything I need to know. So it's not
as if I would see this as a stab in the back,
no it's the usual-for-McCain stab in the
front. And as far as picking a
Democrat/centrist, McCain could do far
worse.
Press Starting To Notice WiFi-In-The-Sky
Claims Not Being Supported In Reality
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 2:29:00 PM
Over the last year or so, a number of
airlines have announced that they (finally!
really!) will be installing internet access on
airplanes for customers to use. Some have
announce very aggressive rollouts, but Joe
Brancatelli over at Portfolio has noticed
that the rollouts all seem way behind
schedule-- and quotes an exec at American
I've had a lot of respect for Lieberman
going back to when he was the only
Democrat who dared to suggest that what
Bill Clinton did was ethically suspect and
that there should be a real price paid. And
then when he was picked as a VP for Al
Gore (as a Democrat, natch) he held
himself well especially during the
mudfight known as Florida 2000. The fact
that the Democrats are crowding him out
of the party says more about their small
tent ideas than about Lieberman. Diversity
of opinion is not welcome there.
The big difference here is that this pick
would not be as horrific for the base as if it
was viewed as a setup for a run for 2012 or
2016. As for example, picking Tom Ridge
would be viewed as a setup for a pro-
choice Republican the next time around.
That's what has the base flipping out. But
Airlines (one of the airlines who promised
an aggressive rollout) saying that there's
clearly something wrong with the
technology. Brancatelli tries to get Airgo,
one of the main providers of WiFi-in-the-
sky service to comment on the delays and:
"Aircell isn't talking and refused repeated
requests for an interview. Instead, its
public-relations agency referred me back
to its press releases, most of which said
Aircell would be operating by now." He
everyone knows that Lieberman would not
get the GOP nomination (they would just
pray that McCain stays healthy). So he
could be viewed as "safe" and considered
for his political assets that he brings to the
table. So we should end up with a size
medium flipout, about equal to the one
when everyone realized that McCain was
the nominee.
But all this is a moot point, McCain will
pick either former Ohio congressmen John
Kasich or Rob Portman, because (and
unless this is all a big head fake) the
announcement is in Dayton, OH and the
McCain team is focused on the Midwest.
You heard it here first.
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also notes that, despite public claims from
various airlines that they'll aggressively
wire up a bunch of airlines, those same
airlines either haven't submitted an
application to the FAA to wire up certain
aircraft, or only just submitted them. In
other words, despite public posturing, your
WiFi connection in the sky may take a bit
longer to arrive.
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Nader: Barack Should Be
Like JFK, Pick Hillary
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/21/2008 1:42:00 AM
Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Democrats,
Barack Obama, 2008 President, Ralph
Nader, Veepstakes Ralph Nader said,
yesterday, that he thinks Barack Obama
will select Hillary Clinton as his running
mate, and that the current shortlist double-
play combo of Biden to Kaine to Bayh is
just a "smokescreen." From UPI:"I don't
think he's that dumb," said Nader. "He just
has to swallow hard and do what JFK did"
in 1960 when he chose rival Lyndon
Baines Johnson.
Nader says his own sources lead him to
believe that the New York senator remains
in serious contention. Looks like Ralph
and I are smoking from the same pipe. As
the only 2 people in politics who still think
the Dream Ticket could happen, Ralph and
I stand to look like the biggest geniuses in
history. Or not.
Now, more than ever, Barack really
needs Hillary Clinton. The narrowing of
his lead over John McCain, although not
historically significant, is feeding a media
narrative that has him unable to close the
deal.
Naming Hillary Clinton will restore the
luster of the "Historical Campaign," which
has taken a beating over the course of a
hard-fought campaign. It will give Obama
a flubber-sized bounce. And it will give
him an awesome weapon to use against
John McCain.
As I said yesterday, the positive
campaign has served him well to this point,
forcing McCain to unload everything early,
but now Obama could use to put some
daylight between him and McCain.
Ralph, if we turn out to be right, look me
up in Denver next week. We can have a
drink and plan our next feat of intellectual
might.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper Politico* TV* 5

Hillary Forms 'Whip Team' to Police

Supporters
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/21/2008 3:20:00 AM

Filed under: Hillary Clinton, Democrats,

Barack Obama, Featured Stories, 2008
President, Conventions Hillary Clinton's
staff, headed by Craig Smith, is forming a
40 member "Whip Team" for the
Democratic National Convention in
Denver, to keep her most rabid supporters
in line during the roll call. From
Politico:"If people get down there on the
floor and want to start blowing kazoos and
making a scene we want to make sure
we've got people who stand in front of
them with Obama signs," said a person
involved in the planning.
"Is it typical for a losing candidate to
have their own whip team? No. But it's
also not usual for a losing candidate to get
18 million votes either," said the person.
Convention staffer Myron Kazoos refused
to comment.
My first thought was, if they're blowing
kazoos, what good are the signs going to
do? Are they sound-proof signs? (Actually,
my very first thought was, "Whip teams?
That sounds hot!")
My second thought was, "Will there be
poo cannons?"
My third thought was, "Please, let them
start playing kazoos!"
See, the grown-ups in this process have
moved on to try and enact the things that
Hillary fought for. A little "kazoo-certo"
would go a long way towards showing
who's serious about change and who isn't.
But, then again, these kinds of antics
would only reflect poorly on Hillary, and I
don't think anyone wants that. Except the
Republicans, maybe.
Big Brother 10: Live feeds report - August 20
By Jackie Schnoop (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 1:03:00 PM
Filed under: OpEd, Big Brother (US) It's
Wednesday in the Big Brother 10 house.
Recently that would mean the houseguests
gather in the living room at some point for
their appearance on The Late Late Show
A lot of die-hard Hillary fans are
convinced that there will be some kind of
intrigue at the convention, abetted by s
mewsmedia that knows better, but feeds on
conflict. For the past few weeks, as Clinton
and Obama have amicably planned out the
convention, the newsmedia have painted
every Clinton event as a huge concession
that had to be pried from Obama's jaws, as
if the Clintons aren't important enough to
the Democratic Party to warrant it on their
own.
The issue of the roll call has been cast by
PUMA as something Obama wanted to
prevent so that Hillary couldn't snatch the
nomination from under his nose.
The reality is, Hillary didn't want the roll
call, because she will undoubtedly get
with Craig Ferguson. Last week April
wore an Afro wig. She's been planning all
many fewer votes than her primary
delegate total. She wanted to save herself
the embarrassment, but her most zealous
supporters would have none of that. They
are convinced she's sending them secret
signals to soldier on, despite her pleas for
unity.
The press helped things along by reading
into her "catharsis" statement at a private
fundraiser, apparently in Vic Mackey's
back yard.
Hopefully, the "Whip Squad" will not be
called on to quell any disturbances, but just
in case, here's an example of the kind of
antics they can expect.
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kinds of things for this week's appearance.
I noticed that Ferguson is in reruns this
week. Too bad, so sad for April, huh?
For spoilers from the 24/7 live feeds,
read on past the jump!
Continue reading Big Brother 10: Live
feeds report - August 20
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McCain Not Sure How
Many Homes He Owns
By David Knowles (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/21/2008 12:41:00 AM
Filed under: John McCain, Breaking
News, Economy This is not the kind of
headline that a candidate for president
wants floating around in these tough
economic times. But there it is, via
Politico:
Sen. John McCain(R-Ariz.) said in an
interview Wednesday that he was
uncertain how many houses he and his
wife, Cindy, own.
"I think--I'll have my staff get to you,"
McCain told us in Las Cruces, N.M. "It's
condominiums where--I'll have them get to
you."
Ouch. As I wrote a couple days back. I'm
not a fan of stoking populist anger by
pointing out that a candidate is rich.
Wealth in itself doesn't necessarily mean a
person won't do great things for those less
fortunate. Take Michael Bloomberg as an
example of a guy who really does care
about the poor.
That said, the fact that McCain doesn't
know how many residences he owns, be
they condos or not, will not endear him to
the middle class voters who are struggling
in today's economy. And the "I'll have my
staff get to you," reeks of Thurston Howell
III like nobody's business. "Lovey, call up
the servants and ask them how many
fabulous homes we own!" I mean, really,
are there so many properties that McCain
couldn't have done the math in his head? If
you can't remember how many homes you
and your wife own, either you have too
many homes, or your memory is slipping.
The McCain campaign has often
portrayed Obama as an elitist in this
campaign. My hunch is that they'll stay
away from that line of attack for a while.
UPDATE: And just like that, the Obama
campaign is up with an ad:
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6 Politico* Business* Tech Tips*
Obama Campaign Plays Good Cop
By Tommy Christopher (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 11:56:00 AM
Filed under: Democrats, Barack Obama,
John McCain, Featured Stories The Obama
campaign held a press conference call
today to "discuss comments made by
Senator McCain, President Bush's biggest
supporter of the Iraq War, regarding his
own judgment on the war, and his
continued efforts to question Senator
Obama's patriotism."
This promised to be quite the exhibition
of firepower, since Obama's response so
far has been to say that Senator McCain
should stop doing that, and loves America.
Senator McCain's response is, invariably,
"Hey, thanks, Traitor!" Or words to that
effect.
Yesterday, Senator Obama struck an
even tougher posture, saying he would not
allow his patriotism to be questioned.
McCain's response was something like,
"Oh yeah? You and what army?"
Just Asking: McCain Vs. McCain
By David Knowles (Political
Machine)
Submitted at 8/21/2008 3:06:00 AM
Filed under: John McCain, Featured
Stories, Debates, Humor In the past 24-
hours, we've heard a bit of cognitive
dissonance from John McCain, especially
as it concerns the following two items:
1. Patriotism
Point
"I had the courage and the judgment to
say I would rather lose a political
campaign thtn lose a war. It seems to me
that Obama would rather lose a war in
order to win a political campaign."
Counterpoint
"He said I am questioning his patriotism.
Let me be clear: I am not questioning his
patriotism; I am questioning his
Google Minus Google Searches Everything But Knol,
Blogger, YouTube [Google]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 12:30:00 AM
When you don't want Google content
cluttering up your search results, the
I've been wondering for awhile about the
mixed messages that the Obama campaign
is sending to voters about McCain. So I
asked about it on today's conference call.
Specifically, I asked Dick Clarke (no, not
America's Oldest Teenager; the other one)
to explain how it is that, just on this one
call, they could accuse Senator McCain of
constantly lying to the American people,
judgment."
Analysis: How can you say that Obama
favors his personal ambition over the
national interest and still claim that you
aren't questioning his patriotism?
Google minus Google custom search
engine cuts out pages from Knol, Blogger,
and YouTube. [ via]
yet also assure us that he loves his country.
"That's the standard Republican
handbook,"Clarke replied. "...Loving your
country and lying to the American people
aren't mutually exclusive (for them)"
On another call last week, I noted that we
get a barrage of emails every day
explaining how the McCain campaign is
"misleading," or their ads are "false." So I
2. Lobbyists
Point
"Whenever there's a corrupt system, then
you're going to have these birds of prey
[lobbyists] descend on it to get their share
of the spoils."
Counterpoint
McCain's campaign is chock full of
lobbyists.
Analysis: What credibility does McCain
have on the lobbyist question when his
responses to the Georgian crisis were in
large part crafted by Randy Scheunemann,
a former Washington lobbyist for Georgia
itself?
View Poll
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
asked why they never actually call them
"liars."
The answer was a long monologue about
how the ad that I asked about was "false."
I have long been impressed with
Obama's ability to run such a positive
campaign, but you have to be able to hit
back. That's not the same as "going
negative."
How are you going to send out memo
after memo, explaining how John McCain
is in Big Oil's pocket, and is lying through
his teeth, yet insist that he loves his
country? You can't have it both ways,
especially when they're only having it one
way against you.
If Obama can't be the proverbial partner
to the "good cop," then he needs to
nominate a VP who can.
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Drilling for gains in
offshore drilling services
By Steven Halpern (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 7:28:00 AM
Filed under: International markets,
Newsletters, Commodities, Oil, Stocks to
Buy
"Our 'Forecasts Focus List' contains only
two energy stocks, both of which are in the
oil services sector: Oceaneering
International(NYSE: OII) and
Transocean(NYSE: RIG)," says blue chip
advisor Richard Moroney.
The editor of Dow Theory Forecasts
says, "While stocks in the equipment and
services group tend to move with oil prices
in the near term, their profits depend more
on exploration spending than on
commodity prices."
"Concerns about slowing demand for
crude oil and re?ned products both in the
U.S. and overseas have many investors
worried. But investors in the equipment
and services group should not panic.
"Most producers continue to spend
Explorer++ Improves On
Windows Explorer
[Featured Windows
Download]
By Gina Trapani (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 5:00:00 AM
Windows only: Alpha file manager
Explorer++ is a promising free alternative
to Windows Explorer that offers features it
sorely lacks, like tabbed browsing, secure
file deletion, file merging and splitting,
instant command line access, and keyboard
shortcuts. Explorer++ is still in alpha and
may not be ready for full-time use the way
Xplorer 2 is, but it's still a simple,
functional, and free app worth keeping an
eye on. If you're sick of Windows
Explorer's paucity of features, shareware
TotalCommander is our readers' pick for
best alternative file manager; you can also
power up Windows Explorer itself with
free add-ons. Explorer++ is a free
download for Windows only.
Explorer++[via gHacks]
aggressively. And U.S. crude-oil
inventories remain well below the average
for this time of year, with fewer than 20
days of supply in storage.
"Demand for offshore-drilling services
remains strong, giving Transocean
excellent growth potential. Consensus
estimates project per-share profits will rise
69% in 2008 and 15% in 2009.
Transocean, the world's largest offshore
drilling contractor, operates in every major
drilling region.
"A combination of tight global rig
supplies and the ongoing discovery of new
offshore reserves have driven rig lease
rates higher and kept Transocean's fleet
busy. The company's largest, most
expensive rigs are 95% sold out for 2009,
and the backlog is growing.
Continue reading Drilling for gains in
offshore drilling services Permalink| Email
this| Comments
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Gerstner leaves the Carlyle Chasing Value:
Group Considering Berkshire
By Tom Taulli (BloggingStocks)
Hathaway... again
Submitted at 8/20/2008 6:48:00 AM
Filed under: Management, Private equity,
International Business Machines (IBM),
American Express (AXP)
Private equity powerhouse, The Carlyle
Group, has more than 500 investment
professionals across 21 countries. Of
course, some of them are corporate
luminaries like Louis Gerstner.
Well, after being the chairman of Carlyle
since 2003, he is now departing-- his last
day will be September 30th. Although, he
will remain as a Senior Advisor to the
firm.
Gerstner has had a stellar career. In 1993,
he took the challenge of becoming IBM's
(NYSE: IBM) chairman. At the time, the
company was crumbling.
Despite not having much tech
experience, Gerstner set forth an ambitious
strategy that not only saved IBM but
returned the company to greatness. He
even wrote a book about his experience in
a book called Who Says Elephants Can't
Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise
Note to General Motors: employee
pricing won't work this time around
By Brian White (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 6:28:00 AM
Filed under: General Motors (GM),
Marketing and advertising General Motors
Corp.(NYSE: GM) is in such dire straights
that it said Tuesday it is bringing back
"employee pricing" to almost its entire
2008 auto lineup. We're not talking a few
Chevy models here, but all GM models
save a few truck ones. Like Doug
mentioned this morning, the automaker is
in a deep funk and it's doubtful that any
incentive like the previous employee
pricing ruse will help.
So, what's an alternative? If it costs the
through Dramatic Change, which is
definitely worth reading.
Before his tenure at IBM, Gerstner was
the CEO of RJR Nabisco, where he had to
deal with the debt-load from a mega
leveraged buyout (from KKR). He was
also the president of American
Express(NYSE: AXP) and a director of
management at McKinsey & Co., Inc.
While at Carlyle, Gerstner made a big
impact. He helped globalize the firm as
well as diversify the investment base. As
of now, Carlyle manages about $75 billion
in assets across 57 funds and controls a
portfolio that has aggregate revenues of
$87 billion.
Tom Taulli is the author of various
books, including The Complete M&A
Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to
Decoding Financial Statements. He also
operates MergerBook.com. Permalink|
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automaker more to have bloated, non-
moving inventory sitting on dealer lots,
how about forgoing the employee pricing
schtick and giving away slow-selling
models at cost? Not invoice, but cost?
Sounds audacious, but these are audacious
times in the auto industry. GM is even
giving away employee pricing on a handful
of 2009 models. That's great, but 2008
models need more extreme measures.
Customers, after all, don't exactly have the
best perception of U.S.-made cars this
year.
In general, employee pricing is 10% less
than the invoice price of a vehicle. GM
will need to cut deeper than that to reach
By Sheldon Liber (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 7:48:00 AM
Filed under: Berkshire Hathaway
(BRK.A), PetroChina Co Ltd ADR (PTR),
Comfort Zone Investing, Chasing Value,
Stocks to Buy Over the summer, my
twelve-year-old son proclaimed that he
was going to be the world's first
zillionaire! I had to explain to him that if
he achieved that lofty goal he would be the
only one because that is more capital than
exists today; unless he meant Zimbabwean
dollars. I suggested that long before he
owned the whole planet there might be a
few objections here and there.
This got me thinking about my pal
Warren, a frequent topic of conversation in
business and investment circles, and how
he amassed such a great fortune over the
past five decades.
He is a long way from owning the world
but he has started to expand his horizons to
the international scene. He has bought and
sold PetroChina(NYSE: PTR) for a tidy $4
out and get its glut out of dealer hands and
into the hands of customers. Nothing
speaks to the average American consumer
like a cheap price -- nothing. The
employee pricing incentive was very
popular in 2005 when it was offered to all
consumers, and it even caused the
competition to roll out similar pricing. This
time, GM needs to get innovative and
unveil a new, better concept if it's serious
about moving inventory -- even SUV
inventory. Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
billion dollar profit and he has been
hedging against the dollar for the last few
years with mixed results. He bought an
Israeli metal fabricator and he has splashed
about in Europe and Asia.
If you read Berkshire Hathaway's
(NYSE: BRK.B) annual reports you will
find the chairmans letters, where Buffett
discusses both his successes and his
failures. It is his failures and the fact that
he does not make the right call every time
that I wish to draw attention today.
BloggingStocks promotes much debate,
sometimes name calling, and sometimes
worse. However, it is important to
understand that even the best investors
make mistakes.
Continue reading Chasing Value:
Considering Berkshire Hathaway... again
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Closing Bell: Dow ends
higher; HPQ, NOVL, PAY
climb, EBAY, NVTL
decline
By Jon Ogg (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 9:12:00 AM
CLOSING page 8
Business* 7
BJ's Wholesale Club
(BJ) drops despite
strong earnings
By Brent Archer (BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 6:08:00 AM
Filed under: Major movement, Earnings
reports, Forecasts, Bad news, Options,
Technical Analysis BJ's Wholesale
Club(NYSE: BJ- option chain) shares are
falling today despite reporting second-
quarter profit that beat estimates and
announcing a share buyback. This is
possibly because discretionary item
spending slowed. If you think this stock
won't be rising too far in the coming
months, then it could be a good time to
look at a bearish hedged play on BJ or
similar companies like COST.
This morning, BJ opened at $38.60. So
far today the stock has hit a low of $37.11
and a high of $38.98. As of 12:45, BJ is
trading at $37.99, down $2.69 (-6.6%).
The chart for BJ looks neutral and S&P
gives BJ a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold
ranking.
For a bearish hedged play on this stock, I
would consider an October bear-call credit
spread above the $45 range. A bear-call
credit spread is an options position that
combines the purchase and sale of call
options to hedge risk in case the stock
doesn't do what you think but still leverage
nice returns. For this particular trade, we
will make a 7.5% return in two months as
long as BJ is below $45 at October
expiration. BJ's would have to rise by more
than 18% before we would start to lose
money.
BJ hasn't been above $45 at all in the
past year and has shown resistance around
$43 recently.
Brent Archer is an options analyst and
writer at Investors Observer. At
publication time, Brent neither owns nor
controls positions in BJ. Permalink| Email
this| Comments
8 Business* Biz Buzz TV*
CLOSING
continued from page 7
Filed under: After the bell, Hewlett-
Packard (HPQ), eBay (EBAY), Market
matters, Novell Inc (NOVL), VeriFone
Holdings (PAY), Oil Today started out as
though we were going to break the losing
streak. After a mixed trading day we
markets indeed ended up higher to gain
ground rather than posting a third day of
triple-digit losses. Oil started out higher
this morning, getting back over $116 per
barrel before coming back down slightly.
Below are today's unofficial closing bell
levels:
DJIA 11,482.33 (+69.78)
S&P500 1274.81 (+8.12)
NASDAQ 2,389.85 (+5.49)
10YR T-Note 3.799% (-0.043%)
52-Week Lows
Top Analyst Upgrades
Top Analyst Downgrades
Hewlett-Packard Co.(NYSE: HPQ) came
out with strong earnings last night and
guided inline to higher without the EDS
integration. Shares were up almost 6% at
$46.29 at the end of the day. This name
alone is probably responsible for more
cheers than any today as 32 million shares
changed hands.
Continue reading Closing Bell: Dow
ends higher; HPQ, NOVL, PAY climb,
EBAY, NVTL decline Permalink| Email
this| Comments
Rupert's Year
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 5:30:00 AM
Rupert Murdoch has had a pretty good
year, right? Riding high after his
successful takeover of Dow Jones and
launching the Fox Business Network?
Well, there was that revenue miss at Fox
Interactive, the parent of MySpace. And
shares of News Corp., like those of other
big media companies, have been battered
of late, sliding 36 percent over the last 12
months.
So it actually may not be that surprising
that Murdoch's compensation for 2008 fell
14 percent from a year ago, according to a
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
regulatory filing.
Still, that decline was largely the result
of an accounting change affecting his
retirement income (as if he will ever
retire).
And Murdoch, who warned earlier this
month of a "much more difficult economic
environment" for News Corp., will not be
wanting. He earned $27.5 million for the
year, including $17.5 million in cash
bonuses, up from $15.8 million in bonuses.
News Corp. ties its executive bonuses to
earnings-per-share growth, which was 25
percent in fiscal 2008. Peter Chernin,
News Corp. president, received $11.3
million.
Joseph Weisenthal on PaidContent.org
notes that another big winner at News
Corp. was Roger Ailes, who received a
cash bonus of $4.5 million, up from $3
million the previous year, and stock wards
of $9.1 million. For the launch of the Fox
Business Network last October, Ailes
received 333,333 Class A shares of News
Corp.
Is three his lucky number, or what?
Related Links
Saving TV
Zuckervision
Parsing News Corp: Let's Eliminate the
Middle-Man

Does Donald Trump Jr. share his dad's bad timing?

By Zac Bissonnette
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 7:08:00 AM
Filed under: India, Trump Entertainment
Resorts (TRMP) Last month I wrote about
the Clown Prince of Nepotism Donald
Trump Jr.'s grandiose announcement of
plans to raise $1 billion to invest in India's
booming real estate market.
Now BusinessWeek's HotProperty
column is expressing some skepticism.
After noting that Trump got the idea back
in November after speaking at a real estate
conference in Mumbai, Prashant Gopal
notes that"The market has changed quite a
bit since then. Inflation and interest rates
are climbing and shares of Indian builders,
home price appreciation, and demand for
land are slowing. [...] Of course, this might
be a good time to jump in and pick up land
at distressed-sale prices. But he will be
competing against established players."
Still: the fact that Trump Jr. appears to
"announcement" of a $1 billion fund struck
me as a more of grandiose publicity
ploy/plea for credibility from a reality TV
bit-player than a ground floor opportunity
to get in with real estate development's
next big star. I'll believe otherwise when
Trump announces he's raised the money,
and I won't be holding my breath. Read|
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have struck upon this idea at the height of
the market is indicative of something.
But I wouldn't worry too much: the

Most likely, you'll determine the fuel for the car
of the future
By Joseph Lazzaro
(BloggingStocks)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 8:08:00 AM
Filed under: Consumer experience,
Commodities, Oil Despite the onset of the
latest high energy price era, it goes without
saying that the car will remain the main
mode of transportation in the United States
as the 21st century progresses.
First mass-produced on a national scale
by Henry Ford, subsidized by the
construction and expansion of the public
interstate highway system after World War
II, and immortalized by such films as
George Lucas's American Graffit i (1973),
the car and car culture is intrinsic to
modern American life.
The car fuel alternatives
Cheap oil is not intrinsic, however, and
that's a major reason why the nation is
exploring car / vehicle fuel alternatives.
Many options exist, each with strengths /
weaknesses, and currently there's no clear
winner.
Hence, in a very real sense, your say in
the matter will play an important role in
determining what fuel most Americans
will use for car transportation in the
decades ahead.
Continue reading Most likely, you'll
determine the fuel for the car of the future
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Talk Talk: LL Cool J, Kevin Costner,
George Foreman
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 10:05:00 AM
Filed under: Late Night, TV Royalty,
Programming, Celebrities, Talk Show,
Reality-Free Here's who's on the late night
talk shows tonight.
• Charlie Rose: artist Francesco Clemente
• The Daily Show: Senator Mel Martinez
(repeat)
• The Colbert Report: Bing West (repeat)
• The Late Show with David Letterman: Ferguson: Jamie Denbo, Alfred Molina,
Kevin Costner, Bob Sarlatte, and Low vs. and Salman Rushdie (repeat)
Diamond (repeat) Note: Leno, O'Brien, and Daly are all pre
• Jimmy Kimmel Live: George Foreman -empted this week for the Olympics.
and Alanis Morissette (repeat) Permalink| Email this| | Comments
• Tavis Smiley: LL Cool J
• The Late, Late Show with Craig
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
NBC's Online Snub
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 9:30:00 AM
T he Beijing Olympics were supposed to
be a boon to NBC Universal. After shelling
out over $1 billion in broadcast rights and
production costs, the company announced
with much fanfare that it would air an
unprecedented 3,600 hours of Games
coverage this summer, utilizing eight
NBCU platforms including its cable
networks, the broadcast channel, and a
special website, NBCOlympics.com.
But it's been on that website, where
videos of lesser-known sports like
weightlifting, wrestling, and equestrian
events are streamed, that the media giant
has run into some technical difficulties.
The video player, which is required to do
anything more than view pictures or read
news stories, is not available for
installation on computers with firewalls.
Even if you can access the videos, many
clips are streamed without accompanying
commentary. Viewers are left staring at an
event apparatus, often before an athlete
appears, with no contextual information.
The most popular sports aren't streamed
on the Web until after they air on NBC, in
order to boost the network's prime-time
ratings. And the video quality is often
poor, with grainy resolution or jerky
images.
Most embarrassing, NBC's competitor
site Yahoo Sports, which has its own
dedicated Olympics website, has
announced that, for the first three days of
Colorizing technology highlights cancerous tissue
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 3:23:00 PM
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets In operating
rooms today, cancer surgeons are
essentially forced to operate without any
definitive way of determining whether or
not 100% of the diseased tissue has been
removed. Thanks to a radical invention by
researchers in Massachusetts, that huge
limitation could soon be a thing of the past.
A new system, dubbed FLARE
(Fluorescence-Assisted Resection and
the Olympic Games, its Olympics site
generated over 8 million unique users, 1.3
million more than NBC's site received,
according to comScore Media Metrix, a
company that measures internet use.
To be fair, those numbers only reflect
online viewers for the first three days of
the Olympics. Numbers for the second, full
week of the Olympics are due in a day or
two. But since Yahoo's site doesn't even
have videos of sporting events—just news
and analysis from Beijing—the comScore
numbers suggest that, at the beginning of
the Olympics anyway, viewers bypassed
NBC's site for Yahoo's, sacrificing
streamed events in the process.
As a result, NBC's TV audience for the
Olympics is overwhelming its online
audience. NBC's own TAMI, or Total
Audience Measurement Index, indicates
that internet users have never comprised
more than 8 percent of the total viewing
audience for any single day since the
Olympics started.
Still, NBC is proudly touting the 830.1
million page views, 56.1 million video
streams, and 38.9 million users that
NBCOlympics.com has so far garnered.
"These record numbers validate our
multiplatform strategy," says Gary Zenkel,
president of NBC Olympics. "They drive
viewers to share in the Olympic experience
on network television in record numbers.
And as a result of this unprecedented
digital effort, consumers have a destination
to watch thousands of hours of video and
relive the great moments of these
Exploration), involves a near-infrared
(NIR) imaging system, a video monitor,
and a computer. These tools are used to see
Olympics."
According to an NBC representative, the
five most popular videos streamed from
the site so far are all men's swimming or
women's gymnastics. Meanwhile, a Yahoo
spokesperson said that human-interest
stories—such as one about a Swedish
wrestler who sacrificed his bronze medal
in protest over his judging—have been
among the site's most popular.
For NBC, the news is better for TV
viewership. Through the first 10 days of
the Games, over 196 million people tuned
in, making these Olympics the fourth-most
-watched television event in U.S. history,
according to the network. On Saturday
evening alone, 40 million viewers watched
Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal.
But until NBC figures out how to make
its online-viewing experience more user-
friendly and tech savvy, the company's
television audience will probably continue
to trounce the online one.
That's one Olympic event we can call
right now.
POLL: How have you been viewing the
Olympics—online or on air? Take our poll
at the top of the page and let us know.
Related Links
NBCOlympics.com Videos: OK Traffic,
But Not Great
Please, NBC, Use Hulu for Olympics
Next Time!
NBC's Media Experiment Pays Off With
Phelps
special chemical dies (christened NIR
fluorophores) that are crafted to "target
specific structures such as cancer cells
when injected into patients." When these
dyes are exposed to NIR light, the cancer
cells light up, giving doctors an easy look
at what they have left to remove. The team
is gearing up to showcase the technology
at the American Chemical Society national
meeting in Philadelphia -- here's hoping it
can be put to good use in the very near
future. Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
The Gatorade Challenge
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 9:00:00 AM
W ith the world's attention focused on the
Olympic games and its sweaty, thirsty
athletes, this is prime time for sports
drinks.
It is also the moment that PepsiCo is
increasing its focus on the beverage that
defined the category, Gatorade. The
beverage and snack giant has reshuffled
the leadership the $5 billion brand, its
fourth largest, as it steps up an effort to
integrate its portfolio of beverages in North
America.
Gatorade still controls about 80 percent
of the "active thirst" market, but it has not
been the sales juggernaut it once was.
Like an Olympic athlete who dominated
every sport it entered, Gatorade has seen
hundreds of competitors in bottled water,
functional beverages, and energy drinks
draw customers that otherwise might have
bought Gatorade by default. Even
Gatorade's own water sub-brand, Propel,
took share that otherwise might have gone
to the sports drink.
"For basically three decades, sports
drinks were growing at a pace that no one
knew how large the category truly was,"
said P.J. Sinopoli, a PepsiCo
spokeswoman. "It still does not appear to
have maxed out by any stretch; however,
growth has slowed due to proliferation in
the broader, non-carb category."
Perhaps its most vexing rival has been
VitaminWater, acquired for $4.1 billion
from Glaceau in 2007 by archrival Coca-
Cola. Hipsters have been buying
VitaminWater by the case for its beauty
and focus-oriented benefit. Increasingly,
the brand began targeting athletes with
celebrity endorsements by the likes of
LeBron James and Kobe Bryant alongside
50 Cent and Kelly Clarkson. It didn't help
that in 2007, Coca-Cola's PowerAde and
private-label brands grabbed double-digit
percentage gains.
So PepsiCo has just installed David
Burwick as chief marketing officer for its
North American beverage business, adding
Gatorade to his oversight. Gatorade in June
hired rising Nike marketing star Sarah
Robb O'Hagan in a bid to stretch the
marketing limits of the brand, and she now
Biz Buzz Gadgets* 9
will report to Burwick. Gatorade's
president, Todd Magazine, will leave the
company, putting the unit directly under
PepsiCo Americas Beverages' chief
executive, Massimo D'Amore. Rich Beck,
now executive vice president of PepsiCo
Chicago, will become president, North
America functional beverages, with profit
and loss accountability for Gatorade.
"This is to manage our total portfolio of
brands in a more holistic way and to better
leverage the scale of our business," said
David DeCecco, a PepsiCo spokesman.
Gatorade was developed at the
University of Florida in 1965 to help the
electrolyte-depleted players on the football
team (the Gators, of course). PepsiCo
acquired Gatorade when it bought Quaker
Oats for $13.4 billion in 2000, after
outbidding Coca-Cola.
Since Indra Nooyi became chief
executive of PepsiCo in 2006, the
company has been in a constant state of
reorganization.
In October 2006 she split PepsiCo's
worldwide business into two units, a North
American unit and an international unit.
Then in December 2007, she further split
the company into three units, anchored by
PepsiCo Americas Beverages, PepsiCo
International, and PepsiCo Americas
Foods. It put D'Amore in charge of
beverages and John Compton in charge of
foods.
This year, the company has been making
a bigger advertising push for Gatorade,
including a head-scratching spot during the
Super Bowl that featured a dog drinking
Gatorade from a bowl.
The changes appear to be working so far.
For the four weeks ending July 13, Pepsi's
sports-drink volume grew 9.8 percent.
The recent changes mark the cultural end
of Gatorade, which had long held onto its
Quaker Oats culture even after PepsiCo
bought the brand.
It is "the continuation of the
Pepsification of Gatorade," said an
executive close to the company.
Related Links
Dr Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Stock
The Young Turk at Coke
Absolut Takeover
10 Biz Buzz Tech Tips*
See Dick Shop
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 6:30:00 AM
The days are dwindling in Lehman
Brothers' third quarter—another
backbreaking quarter by all accounts—and
the firm is considering several options to
try to ease the pain.
Relief could come in the sale of a stake
in its asset-management business,
Neuberger Berman. The business has been
valued roughly at $10 billion—about the
entire market value of Lehman itself—and
a gain of several billion dollars from a sale
of a significant stake could go a long way
toward shoring up the Wall Street firm's
balance sheet.
Yet the virtually public disclosure that
Neuberger Berman is on the block
(Lehman is not commenting, but reports
appear today in the Wall Street Journal,
New York Times, Financial Times, and
elsewhere after weeks of speculation and
weeks of reports by Charles Gasparino on
CNBC) also suggests that Lehman is
getting desperate. This view, says Peter
Eavis of the Wall Street Journal, is that the
third quarter "has turned ugly and the bank
is racing to get deals done before the
Fannie and Freddie in the Toaster
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/18/2008 1:00:00 PM
The fear is that shares of Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac will become worthless if
there is a government bailout. The way
things are going, the government may not
get a chance to act before the shares are at
zero.
For that fear flared up in a big way
today: Shares of the two mortgage giants
tumbled more than 22 percent, helping to
drag down the broader stock market.
Concerns that the two government-
created companies lack sufficient capital to
cover additional mortgage-related losses
have been pounding their stocks for
months. Fannie Mae is down more than 83
percent for the year, while its smaller
brother, Freddie Mac, is down about 86
period ends."
Eavis also notes that a sale may be
driven as much by Neuberger Berman as
by Lehman: "Top-level Neuberger
employees—having seen much of their
wealth wiped out by Lehman's plunging
share price and fed up with their healthy
firm being overshadowed by a sick
parent—may want an outside firm to take a
large stake."
A successful sale of a big stake would be
a big boost to Dick Fuld, the chief
executive of Lehman who has faced calls
for asset sales since the firm reported a loss
of $2.8 billion for the second quarter, its
first as a public company. Fuld has raised
$12 billion of new capital and shaken up
the management ranks, and has reportedly
tried to persuade big Asian investors to
take a stake in the firm. Today, an analyst
with J.P. Morgan Chase estimates that
Lehman will take $4 billion in write-downs
in the third quarter.
The New York Times reports that
Lehman has sent letters to a number of
private equity firms and other financial
institutions to test their interest in
Neuberger Berman. "The letter, a so-called
memorandum of understanding, did not put
percent.
Today's sell-off was apparently set off by
an article by Jonathan Laing in Barron's,
which contends that a recapitalization by
the government—which would wipe out
shareholders—looks increasingly
inevitable.
"An insider in the Bush administration
tells Barron's Fannie and Freddie are being
jawboned by the Treasury Department and
their new regulator, the Federal Housing
Finance Agency (F.H.F.A.), to raise more
equity," Laing writes. "But government
officials don't expect the agencies to
succeed. For one thing, only a "capital
raise" of $10 billion or more apiece would
have any credibility. Yet, what common-
stock investors would advance that kind of
money to entities that have market
capitalizations of $8.5 billion (Fannie) and
a value on the division," the Times said. "It
said that interested parties could bid for all
or some of the pieces but encouraged
bidders to make an offer for the whole
business."
Yves Smith on the Naked Capitalism
blog says the description of the letter is
curious.
"This gives the impression that Lehman is
price-shopping to get inputs as to whether
it should sell all or part of the operations or
not," she writes. "The reason I doubt this
interpretation is you don't circulate
'detailed' information to buyers casually."
Another curiosity, she says, is that no
Japanese banks, flush with cash (as seen by
Monday's deal for UnBanCal), are listed as
prospective buyers in any of the reports.
Neuberger was acquired by Lehman in
2003 for $2.6 billion. Since then, the
business has more than doubled; it
accounts for the bulk of Lehman's $277
billion of assets under management.
Related Links
High Anxiety
The Weakness of Marking Subprime
Bonds to Market
Buffett Buys Deal Debt
$4 billion (Freddie), especially as the
F.H.F.A. will use its new powers to boost
dramatically the regulatory capital the
G.S.E.'s must have in coming years?"
Financial stocks fell sharply today, and
the broad market indexes closed down 1.5
percent.
"The stock market has been able to
absorb a lot of bad news relatively well
over the last few weeks," Jim Paulsen of
Wells Capital Management told the Wall
Street Journal. "But on a day like this,
when you don't have new economic data
coming out, none of that matters. People
see the news and go back to focusing on
their worst nightmares."
There is a growing consensus that the
endgame for the two companies is near.
"We agree with the call for Treasury
intervention and think it is very, very likely
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Worst Is Yet to Come
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 6:30:00 AM
"T he worst is yet to come in the U.S.
We're not just going to see mid-sized
banks go under in the next few months,
we're going to see a whopper, we're going
to see a big one, one of the big investment
banks or big banks."
Harsh.
Those were the words of Kenneth
Rogoff, former chief economist of the
International Monetary Fund and current
economics professor at Harvard, spoken at
a conference in Singapore but heard all
around the world. More than one year into
this credit crisis, Rogoff's comments
sparked new fears that the end isn't in
sight.
Rogoff believes that Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac, whose shares were
pummeled yesterday on fears of a
government bailout, should have been
closed down a decade ago and will most
likely not be around in a few years. "They
need to be nationalized, the equity holders
should lose all their money. Probably we
to happen before the end of the third
quarter,'' Ajay Rajadhyaksha, the head of
fixed-income strategy for Barclays Capital,
told Bloomberg News. "Without
government help, we think there is very
little chance of Freddie completing a
significant capital raising.''
A rescue of Fannie and Freddie would be
necessary because of the crucial role the
two play in the housing market. They are
the two largest buyers of American
mortgages, and hold nearly half of all
mortgage-related debt, about $5 trillion.
Related Links
The Fannie and Freddie Trigger
The July Curse
Mortgage Brokers, RIP
need to guarantee the bonds, simply
because the U.S. has led everyone into
believing they would guarantee the bonds,''
he said.
Not surprisingly, Rogoff believes the
U.S. economy is already in a recession. He
predicts that housing market will continue
to fall and the economic slowdown will
last into the second half of 2009.
As if on cue, the Commerce Department
reported this morning that the growth of
new housing projects fell to its lowest
annual rate in 17 years during July.
Rogoff also criticized the Federal
Reserve for cutting interest rates as
aggressively as it did while the credit crisis
unfolded. He believes that will inevitably
lead to significant inflation in the U.S.
during the next few years.
Also as if on cue, the Labor Department
said wholesale inflation rose at the fastest
pace since 1981 during July.
Related Links
Plosser Crashes the Party
Recession Roll Call
Parsing the Global Recession
EASEUS Disk Copy Makes
a Fast Clone of Your Hard
Drive [Featured Windows
Download]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 4:00:00 AM
Windows only All platforms: Free boot
CD EASEUS Disk Copy copies any disk
or partition sector-by-sector for an exact
copy of the original. Disk Copy is a perfect
tool for upgrading your operating system
to a new, larger hard drive, or just making
a quick clone of a drive full of files. With
support for virtually any drive type or file
system and an easy-to-use interface, this
app is a fast, effective tool for quick drive
copying. I haven't cloned a full drive with
it, but according to reader Jason, it copies
files significantly faster than previously
mentioned HDClone. On the flip side, if
you're looking to hot image your hard
drive continuously, check out how to do
that with DriveImage XML. Disk Copy is
freeware, Windows only works anywhere
you can boot from a CD. Thanks Jason!
EASEUS Disk Copy
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
More than Car Trouble
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 9:00:00 PM
The withdrawal of General Motors as
sponsor of the Emmys and Oscars award
shows is just another sign of the decline of
once mighty Detroit. But for ABC, the
network airing those shows, it may be a
warning of a greater erosion in advertising
spending.
Since 2005, GM has cut its budget by
nearly 30 percent, according to market
research firm TNS Media Intelligence. On
July 15, the stumbling automakers
announced plans for further reductions due
to a weak U.S. economy, high fuel prices
and changes to consumer vehicle
preferences. Two out of three of those
catalysts broadly impact consumers’ and
marketers’ wallets—not just the buyers
and sellers of cars.
This fall and winter consumers already
strained by high fuel costs and inflation in
general, will have to contend with heating
bills, too. If retailers have a tough holiday
season, marketing budgets could get the
Reversal of Fortune
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 7:00:00 AM
F or evidence of just how ruthless this
summer has been in the global markets,
look no further than Harbinger Capital
Partners.
This year, the hedge fund run by Philip
Falcone has had nothing but stellar news to
report to shareholders. Thanks to bets
against subprime mortgages, returns for
2007 were 116 percent. Returns through
the end of June were 40 percent after
Harbinger cashed in on its short position in
Bear Stearns.
But now Harbinger shareholders are
being sorely reminded that what goes up
must inevitably come down.
Nearly two-thirds of the hedge fund's
gains in the first half of the year were
erased in July and the first two weeks in
August, reports James Mackintosh on the
Financial Times' Alphaville blog. The fund
hacksaw.
“Marketers are going to start looking at
their big investments out there especially
TV with the broadcast networks,” says
Steve Lanzano, chief operating officer of
media planning and buying company
MPG. “Unless things turn around in the
economy…it’s going to be a very tough
time in 2009 with the broadcast networks.”
This pessimism conflicts with news his
spring when it was widely reported that
advertisers committed an estimated $9.2
billion to the broadcast networks during
the upfronts, the annual pre-sale of
television ad space.
This figure was considered to be slightly
up from the year before.
But Lanzano notes that those dollars
were only commitments. He’s heard “on
the street” that advertisers aren’t following
through with their original plans. “Their
budgets are less than what they had on
hold,” he explains.
Leo Kivijarv, VP of research, at market
research company PQ Media, explains: “In
the 2001 recession, those that cut the
was stung by the sudden reversal of the
long-energy-short-financials trade that has
hurt so many hedge funds this summer.
But before you shed a tear for Falcone's
investors, it bears noting that the fund is
still up 14 percent year-to-date. That's
cause for envy among his peers. The global
index of funds tracked by Hedge Fund
Research is down 5.5 percent so far this
year.
Harbinger's performance during the past
six weeks underscores the tremendous
turbulence in the global markets, and it
doesn't bode well for those fund managers
less fortunate than Falcone during the first
half of this year.
Harbinger has had some high-profile hits
and misses so far this year. It waged war
with the New York Times Co. and
successfully pushed Arthur Sulzberger to
give it two seats on its expanded board. So
far, though, any change Harbinger hoped
to inspire has had little effect on
budgets lost market share. And they are
trying not to lose that market share. So
they are watching what their competitors
are doing, and so they are holding back.
And maybe if a competitor cuts budget,
they’ll cut their budget a little bit and then
they won’t. So everything is very last
minute.”
The result is a very difficult market to
predict. But it’s not looking good for
network television. Given the boost this
year from the Olympics and the
presidential elections as well as the
likelihood of a still weakened economy
next year, PQ Media and private equity
firm Veronis Suhler Stevenson predict a
6.8 percent drop in the amount marketers
will spend advertising on the broadcast
networks in 2009.
Related Links
Recession? Not in the Ad Biz
Zuckervision
Ad Revenue Isn't Shrinking. It's
Changing.
shareholders. Shares in the New York
Times Co. have steadily declined since the
proxy war ended in March, and it's now
being pressured to cut its dividend.
More recently, Harbinger took a 4.9
percent stake in Cablevision, the New
York-area cable company controlled by the
Dolan family. Since then, the company
announced plans to explore strategic
options for some of its divisions and plans
to begin paying shareholders a regular
dividend.
And earlier this week, Harbinger sought
approval to double its 15.6 percent stake in
the iron-ore company Cleveland-Cliffs in
order to prevent its proposed $8.1 billion
takeover of Alpha Natural Resources.
Related Links
Citi Under Siege
The Day of the Hunter
Hedge Fund Managers Not Earning
Their Keep
The Fannie and Freddie
Trigger
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 4:30:00 AM
What will it take for the government to
step in finally and bail out Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac?
The stock market has clearly indicated
that a bailout is inevitable, as the share
prices of the two mortgage giants continue
to slide toward zero. On Tuesday, Freddie
Mac had to pay an unusually rich premium
to sell $3 billion of five-year notes.
Dawn Kopecki of Bloomberg News
reports that the test may be the ability of
Fannie and Freddie to repay some $223
billion of bonds that come due by the end
of next month.
Fannie has about $120 billion of debt
that matures through September 30, while
Freddie has $103 billion, Bloomberg says.
Moshe Orenbuch, an analyst with Credit
Suisse in New York, told Bloomberg that
their ability to roll over the debt "is the
single-most-important factor to their ability
to remain liquid."
But the auction of Freddie Mac notes on
Tuesday showed that investors—Asian
investors in particular, who have
historically been the biggest buyers of
Fannie and Freddie securities—are
becoming more leery, making the rollover
of the debt far from certain.
The Across the Curve blog notes that
central banks and other investors are
QTAddressBar Brings Vista Explorer's
Address Bar to XP [Featured Windows
Download]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 7:00:00 AM
Windows only: Free Explorer add-on
QTAddressBar clones the functionality of
Vista's new address bar in Windows XP.
For folks unfamiliar with the new Vista
address bar, it provides a clickable
breadcrumb trail of every folder leading to
your current location. Clicking one of your
folders will take you directly to it, and
Biz Buzz Tech Tips* 11
worried about the uncertainty over whether
the Treasury Department has any intention
of using its new authority to pump billions
of dollars into the mortgage giants:
"Some are troubled by the recent
statements of Secretary Paulson that he is
not eager to use his new powers. Some
have extrapolated from his statements that
he is only prepared to exercise his powers
in an emergency. What constitutes an
emergency?"
And how expensive would a bailout be?
Joshua Rosner, an analyst at the
consulting and research firm Graham
Fisher, said on Tuesday that the two big
mortgage buyers would need to raise at
least $40 billion, but probably closer to
$100 billion, the New York Post reports.
But perhaps a bailout is not inevitable.
Or perhaps when it comes, it will not wipe
out preferred shareholders. The Accrued
Interest blog points out that preferred
shares of Fannie and Freddie rose sharply
in the last hour of trading on Tuesday:
"I couldn't find anyone who knew why,
but all the traders I talked to suggested it
had a certain 'The Dukes know something'
feel to it."
Related Links
When Bill Met Freddie
Angelo's Fannie Pack
The Myth of the Walk Aways
clicking the down arrow provides a drop-
down for moving to any folder within that
one. Brought to you by the same folks who
made previously mentioned QTTabBar,
this freeware Explorer add-on looks like
another nice stopgap between Vista and
XP. While you're at it, check out more
ways you can power up Windows Explorer
with free add-ons.
QTAddressBar[via Download Squad]
12 Biz Buzz Tech*
Piling On Goldman
(Portfolio.com: News and Markets)
Submitted at 8/18/2008 10:30:00 AM
Since the credit crisis began, Goldman
Sachs has been one of the safest bets in the
financial sector.
But it bears reminding that even the most
secure building in a war-torn city is
vulnerable to getting hit. And Goldman
investors are now hearing that reminder
loud and clear.
In the past week, one Wall Street analyst
after another has downgraded Goldman's
outlook for the quarter and the year. Its
shares are down 10 percent just in the past
week.
Today's 2 percent fall comes after the
analyst who covers Goldman for Fox-Pitt
cut his third-quarter estimate to $1.95 from
$3.26. This follows downgrades last week
by analysts at UBS, Oppenheimer,
Deutsche Bank, and others.
Nothing happened to spur the
downgrades except that all of the Wall
Street analysts seem to have concluded
simultaneously that the weakness in global
indexes is likely to impact Goldman more
than anyone previously thought.
While Goldman escaped much of the
turmoil following the collapse of the
mortgage market, it is more vulnerable
NTP Can't Leave Well Enough Alone Concerning RIM
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 2:24:00 AM
In one of the biggest travesties of the
patent system, over two years ago, RIM
agreed to pay NTP$612.5 million for
patent infringement, even though the
USPTO had been rejecting NTP's patents
on re-exam. The patents were highly
questionable: extremely broad patents
covering pretty basic concepts about
making email "wireless." Beyond
combining two existing ideas in a rather
obvious way, there was a fair amount of
than its peers to a collapse in global
equities. Many major indexes around the
world are down more than 20 percent.
But the shine hasn't completely tarnished
from Goldman's golden image. The firm is
raking in fees from some of the biggest
mergers so far this year, Dealbook notes.
It's set to take in $40 million for advising
Anheuser-Busch on its sale to InBev. It
already received $46 million for advising
Wrigley on its sale to Mars.
And, despite the recent analyst
downgrades and its slumping share price,
Goldman has still managed to outperform
its peers. In the past three months,
Goldman's shares have fallen less than
those of Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, J.P.
Morgan, and Lehman. Its share decline
matches Morgan Stanley's for the period.
Goldman's quarter ends this month, and
it will report earnings in mid-September.
Wall Street analysts were wise to readjust
their expectations for the bank, but it's not
time to rip the yellow jersey off Goldman
just yet.
Related Links
Job Security
Fed: Wall Street Needs More Time
The He Said, She Said Economy
prior art as well. Yet, under pressure from
both the judge and its own shareholders,
RIM decided it was worth paying out over
half a billion dollars rather than dealing
with the potential uncertainty of an
injunction forcing it to shut down its
service.
You would think that this would have
kept NTP happy. After all, NTP was
basically built out of the ashes of a
company that had failed in the
marketplace. It was unable to come up
with a product that anyone wanted. RIM,
on the other hand, had done the real
Amazon To Acquire AbeBooks, And
With It A Stake In Library Thing
By Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 8/1/2008 8:49:00 AM
Amazon has acquired twelve year old
Canadian company Abebooks(formerly the
Advanced Book Exchange), the companies
just announced. AbeBooks is an online
marketplace for books focusing on used,
rare and out of print titles for sale by
independent booksellers - it currently has
110 million books for sale from 13,500
sellers.
The company has been around since
1996 and fills a niche for Amazon in hard-
to-find or out-of-print books. Rather than
hold its own inventory, it acts as a digital
marketplace for established booksellers.
AbeBooks also owns 40 percent of
LibraryThing(a social app for keeping
track of your books and finding other like-
minded book lovers). Whereas Amazon is
an investor in Shelfari. Now Amazon will
own a piece of both of those competing
startups.
AbeBooks CEO Dr. Hannes Blum sent
an email out to its booksellers today
talking about the acquisition, saying the
company would continue to operate as a
stand-alone business. The email is below;
the press release is here.
Dear Booksellers,
AbeBooks has reached an agreement to
be acquired by Amazon.com, Inc. This is a
major landmark in the 12-year history of
innovation of figuring out what customers
actually wanted, and packaging it in an
appealing manner. All that was left at NTP
was a bunch of lawyers, who now had
$612.5 million for failing in the
marketplace.
But NTP won't stop. It's kept suing a
bunch of other companies. However, the
courts have put its latest lawsuits on hold
while the USPTO continues to review the
legitimacy of NTP's patents (why RIM
wasn't allowed the same consideration has
never been explained).
So now NTP is taking another strategy:
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
AbeBooks.
AbeBooks will continue to operate as a
stand-alone business with all aspects of
AbeBooks’ bookseller and customer
experience remaining intact. AbeBooks’
headquarters will remain in Victoria, BC,
Canada, and our European offices will
remain in Dusseldorf, Germany. We will
continue to support both our international
marketplaces and our domestic
marketplace here in Canada. I will
continue to lead AbeBooks.
We expect this change to allow
AbeBooks to expand its offerings and
introduce new features and services to
enhance the book buying and selling
experience. Amazon is committed to
further developing the AbeBooks brand
and building upon the success of the past
claiming that RIM unfairly influenced the
Patent Office's re-exam of its patents. Yes,
the company already won the lawsuit and
$612.5 million, but is still claiming that the
other side cheated. Of course, there's not
much "there" there in the accusations.
Basically, RIM had representatives who
tried to find out what was happening at the
USPTO and what the process was for the
re-exam. As various patent attorneys
outline towards the end of the article, it
doesn't appear that RIM did anything
wrong here, but NTP is doing whatever it
can to try to bloody RIM, even given the
12 years. This is not the first time
AbeBooks has changed hands since being
launched in 1996. Hubert Burda Media, a
German media company, took a majority
shareholding in 2003.
The bookselling community has been a
vital component in our success, and we are
grateful for your continuing support. We
will be happy to answer questions about
our new ownership and what the future
holds. A bookseller Roundtable will be
held on Thursday August 7th at 2:30pm
PDT/9:30pm GMT/7:30am AU where I
and the Director of Sales & Account
Management, Shaun Jamieson, will answer
any questions you might have. In addition,
the ‘Ask AbeBooks a question’ folder will
continue to be available for ongoing
questions from the seller community.
We realize this is important news for our
community, and we are confident that this
acquisition will greatly benefit AbeBooks’
sellers and provide us with many
opportunities for future growth.
For more details please see the official
release posted today.
Regards,
Dr. Hannes Blum
President and CEO
AbeBooks
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile
Gadgets and Applications, Delivered
Daily.
fact that it won the lawsuit. What we're
seeing here is a case of extreme rent-
seeking, where NTP will do pretty much
anything to try to keep milking its highly
questionable patents, diverting hundreds of
millions away from innovation and into the
pockets of folks who failed in the
marketplace.
Permalink| Comments| Email This Story
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Has Anyone At AT&T Ever Called AT&T Tech Support?
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 7:58:00 AM
While the FCC and certain broadband
companies like to insist that there's real
competition in the broadband market, right
here in the heart of Silicon Valley, there's
little evidence that this is true. If there
were real competition, they might take
customer service seriously. In the past few
days I've had two separate issues with
AT&T that suggests that the company
treats customer service as not just an after
thought, but something to effectively be
shunned. Given my long history in killing
off broadband providers who give me
service, perhaps it's only fair that they do
their best not to serve me, but these two
experiences seemed worth shining some
light on.
First, a quick history. That link above
goes through all the broadband providers I
went through (and killed off) in the 2001
time frame. After that, I ended up with
Comcast cable modem service until 2004.
In October of 2004, Comcast turned the
cable modem service to my house off
every day at 10am for no clear reason.
Every day I would call, and the response
would be: "Oh, this is scheduled
maintenance. Service will be back by
4pm." I would ask if I should expect the
service to go down the next day as well,
and be told that they had no idea.
Apparently, the "schedule" for scheduled
maintenance was a tightly held secret --
but it went on, every single day, for at least
the month of October. I moved in
November of that year, and swore off
Comcast after that experience. My only
other option was AT&T. I ordered AT&T
DSL and was promised it would be
installed within a week. A week came and
went, and I called AT&T. They told me the
order had been canceled because (despite
what the first person told me) DSL wasn't
actually available at my location (right in
the middle of Silicon Valley). Why they
didn't call to let me know of the
cancellation was not explained.
I asked why the first person had told me
service was available, and the woman told
me to hold one while she checked her other
computer. That computer told her that DSL
was available at my location, despite what
the first computer said. Apparently, AT&T
does not have a single map of DSL
availability, preferring to load a series of
different local availability maps on every
computer.
A year ago I moved again, and DSL has
been working more or less okay at the new
location. However, last Thursday it died in
the afternoon and was down until around
midnight. When it came back it was super
slow -- maxing out around 64 kbps. I
waited until Friday afternoon and decided I
should call to ask what's up. That's when I
discovered that AT&T makes it damn near
impossible to find a phone number. The
AT&T website has no phone numbers
listed at all. When I clicked on the
"contact" link, I was given a one-line form
to discuss what my problem was. When I
hit submit, I received a blank page. No
matter how many times I tried, I always
got the blank page. Eventually, and I don't
remember how, I got to an error page that
listed a bunch of phone numbers. I called
the one listed with "Residential: 1-877-737
-2478" since this is a residential account.
Thus began a rather insane process. After
waiting on hold, the call proceeded as
follows:
• Automated system demands I enter in
my account number and asks me to
describe my problem. It doesn't recognize
"slow internet" service, so I just say "can I
speak to an operator?" It asks me more
questions instead. Eventually (after a long
hold) it sends me to a live human being.
• AT&T Rep asks me for my account
number (despite having punched it in
already). She tells me she cannot find my
account. Then she asks where I'm located
(which, I would think would be obvious
from the area code of the account number).
She tells me she needs to put me on hold.
• Rather than putting me on hold, she
actually transfers me. I get an automated
system that demands I enter in my account
number and asks me to describe my
problem. It doesn't recognize "slow
internet" service, so I just say "can I speak
to an operator?" It asks me more questions
instead. Eventually (after a long hold) it
sends me to a live human being.
• The woman asks me (again!) for my
account number. Then she asks why I've
called her. She works in sales. Tells me she
needs to transfer me, but tells me in the
future to call 888.321.2375 for tech
support. She transfers me.
• I get an automated system that demands
I enter in my account number and asks me
to describe my problem. It doesn't
recognize "slow internet" service, so I just
say "can I speak to an operator?" It asks
me more questions instead. Eventually
(after a long hold) it sends me to a live
human being.
• The next woman asks me (again!) for
my account number. She tells me she
cannot find my account. Then she asks
where I'm located (which, I would think
would be obvious from the area code of the
account number). I say California, and she
says she doesn't serve California, only a
region of 9 southern states (hasn't it been
more than a year since AT&T & BellSouth
merged?). She transfers me -- after
personally promising me the next person I
speak to will be the correct person. She
also tells me that, contrary to the earlier
person (and the AT&T website) the real
number to call is: 800.310.2355.
• I get an automated system that demands
I enter in my account number and asks me
to describe my problem. It doesn't
recognize "slow internet" service, so I just
say "can I speak to an operator?" It asks
me more questions instead. Eventually
(after a long hold) it sends me to a live
human being.
• By the way, at this point, I've had the
"hold voice" repeatedly pitch me on
upgrading my service, mentioning that if I
do, I can get access to "AT&T's award-
winning customer service." I am getting
curious as to exactly what "award" this is.
• Before the next woman can say much
beyond hello, I explain the saga, and
mention that she is the 4th person I'm
speaking to and ask her please, if she is the
right person to help me fix my slow DSL
in California. She says she will try, and
(again!) asks for my account number. She
does some searches and then admits: she
really wants to help, but she's in billing,
not tech support. She promises to transfer
me (and kindly gives me a small credit on
my account). She also tells me that the
proper phone number to call in the future is
none of the above, but 877.722.3755.
• Unlike the last few people, she actually
says on the line and answers the same
exact questions in the automated system
for me. This is something of a consolation,
though I've gotten good at entering the
info.
• Finally, tech support! I give the guy my
account info (again!) and he logs into my
modem and he diagnoses: your connection
is slow. I could have told him that. Wait,
actually, I did tell him that. He doesn't
know what to do, but says that tech support
will call me back later. I thought he was
tech support, but whatever.
• An hour later, I get an automated call
from AT&T tech support, telling me to call
them back at (yes, a different number):
888.312.2450.
• I call back, and amazingly am put in
contact with a competent tech, who doesn't
treat me like an idiot, who even gets me
logged into the DSL modem myself,
explains the different system readings, and
notes that my modem seems to have
capped itself at 64kbps. He says it could be
a few different things, but the most likely
is a broken phone cable from the jack to
the modem. I switch the cables, and voila,
it's working again.
Total elapsed time since the first phone
call, about 3 hours, but only about 1.5
hours total on the phone. It was definitely a
bit of a hassle, but eventually I found
someone smart and competent, and I
figured that maybe I just had a bad
experience with AT&T. Little did I know.
By Monday evening, my Friday experience
would seem fast and simple.
I have some travel coming up, and was
realizing that I may not be in EVDO
coverage for some of it. So I thought it
might be good to make use of the AT&T
WiFi that's included as a part of my
account. It's supposed to work at
McDonalds, Starbucks, Barnes & Noble
and some other places as well. While I had
signed up and used the WiFi service a few
years ago, it's probably been at least two
years since I last tried. On Monday, I
figured I'd hit up a McDonalds at lunch
and test it out, to work out any "kinks" if
there were any. I honestly figured it would
be fine.
I got my chicken sandwich (sans mayo)
and sat down to login. Yippee. I even was
sitting next to an outlet, but quickly
discovered that the outlet had been turned
off (boo). Okay, so I get the (extremely
slow) proxy server that asks me to login. I
type in my login info, and it gives me a
message: "We're Sorry - Your Login Has
Been Rejected." Then it tells me to call:
888.888.7520 "for further assistance." So
here's how that call went:
Tech* 13
• Dial the number from my mobile phone.
It rings for a while and then says "I see
you're calling from..." and repeats back a
phone number I don't recognize, starting
with a 512 area code (which is Austin,
Texas). I'm in California on a California
mobile phone, so I have no idea where that
comes from. I say no.
• It asks for my account number. I'm not
at home, so I don't have my bill to read off
the account number. I don't have internet
access so I can't log in to get my account
number. The system tells me my only
options are to say my account number or to
say I'm trying to sign up for service. I say
"neither" a few times, and the system gets
impatient with me, and then demands I
answer from a specific list of problems
what my issue is. All of the issues have to
do with home DSL, not WiFi hotspots --
which seems odd, given that this is
supposedly the WiFi hotspot support
number.
• Finally, it transfers me to a human who
again asks my account info. I give it to her.
She cannot find my account. She puts me
on "hold" which again is actually a
transfer. I again go through the dance with
the automated call system -- which
demands I choose between giving my
account number or signing up for service,
followed by a list of service options that
have nothing to do with WiFi hotspots.
• After a while on hold, I get another
person, who also insists my account does
not exist. She transfers me to tech support
(or so she says).
• I go through the same pointless
questions, and speak to another person. I
explain the situation, noting that she's the
3rd person I spoke to. She explains that
she's not in tech support, but in customer
retention.
• I have now come to the conclusion that
AT&T's "call transfer" system is actually a
big roulette wheel that will dump you on
any random person with a phone. I doubt
most of them even work for AT&T.
• I am transferred again. The fourth
person I speak to, after going back and
forth, tells me that she does not handle
California customers (this sounds
familiar).
• I am transferred again. More messing
with the annoying automated system, and I
HAS page 14
14 Tech* Gadgets*
HAS
continued from page 13
eventually get a guy who tells me that he
cannot help me unless I can tell him my
account number. He insists that when he
looks up my user name, he gets a different
account owner and a different address than
the one I tell him. That's comforting.
• Rather than transferring me, he says he
can only give me the phone number to call
for billing, where I should see if they can
actually tell me my account info over the
phone. Phone number: 800.288.2020. I ask
him what number I should call after that to
get back to him once I have the account
number. He says to just ask to be
transferred to DSL tech support.
• I call the billing number, and speak to
my 6th person of the day. After a great
deal of effort, she finally reveals to me
what my account number is (thank you!).
She then, as requested, transfers me to
DSL tech support.
• My seventh customer support person of
the day, after I've been on hold and have
entered the proper account number, asks
me for my account number anyway -- and
then explains to me that DSL tech support
has nothing to do with WiFi hotspots, but
he will transfer me.
• My eighth customer support person tells
me that the WiFi access on my account
was canceled twice. Once last September
and once in January. Why twice when I
don't think I ever canceled it even once?
He has no clue.
• Well, can I sign up to have the service
included on my account? No. That's not his
department. He needs to transfer me to
customer support instead of tech support.
• Transferred again. On hold again. Enter
my info again. Now speaking to my 9th
AT&T rep. After explaining the situation, I
am told that it is impossible for them to
add WiFi hotspots to my account over the
phone. Instead, I need to (get this) sign up
via the web at home.
• I hang up, and notice another open WiFi
network -- so I login, and go to the website
he pointed me to: FreedomLink.com to
sign up. Once there, I am directed to a
Guitar Hero DS hack lets you shred on a full-size guitar
By Donald Melanson (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 1:53:00 PM
Filed under: Gaming
Like many others, Eric Ruckman found
that the DS controller add-on for Guitar
page where I am told: "AT&T Wi-Fi Basic
service is FREE and already included if
you subscribe to AT&T High Speed
Internet.... No ordering required! Simply
use your AT&T high-speed Internet
membership ID and password at any
AT&T Wi-Fi Basic hot spot."
• That seems to conflict with what the last
few folks told me, so I pick up the phone
again and call. After the same old process
of entering info and being put on hold, I
explain my situation to the 10th
representative I am speaking to. She says
she will get everything solved and puts me
on hold. Every five or 10 minutes she
comes back and says she's "getting the info
I need" and will be back soon.
• I begin to notice the batteries on both
my laptop and my cell phone are on their
last legs.
• After nearly half an hour on hold, the
woman comes back and tells me that she
has found the phone number I really need
to call. It's 877.722.3755 (the second time
I've heard this number!) but that when I
reach it, I need to ask for "Tier 2 support."
She promises that she will take care of this
part for me and will get me to the right
person.
• I mention to her that my batteries are
almost dead anyway, and she says "Isn't
that always how it is?" to which I respond:
"No. Normally, it does not take 2.5 hours
and 10 people to get me the info to log into
my account."
• Eventually, she gets me on the line with
another woman, and tells her I need Tier 2
support and then hangs up. This new
representative (the 11th I'm speaking to)
asks me to repeat the whole situation to see
if I really need Tier 2 support. I tell her my
batteries are dying, and I really need Tier 2
support, and I need it as fast as possible.
• She puts me on hold for 25 minutes --
where the hold message is pure silence,
punctuated ever 10 seconds by the most
annoying voice in the world commanding:
"PLEASE WAIT."
• She finally comes back, says: "I have
Hero: On Tour left a bit to be desired but,
unlike most folks, he didn't just go back to
playing on his console of choice -- he
actually went all out and pieced together a
full-size rig out of a PS2 Guitar Hero
controller. As you can see above, that
connected you to tier 2 support" and hangs
up. Except she hasn't connected me to Tier
2 support. She has transferred the call, so
I'm in another hold queue.
• Ten more minutes go by and someone
finally picks up. As he finishes saying
hello, the battery in my mobile phone dies
and the call is over.
This is now 4:10pm. I had arrived at the
restaurant at 1pm.• I drive home. I pick up
my home phone and call one more time.
After waiting on hold and inputting my
information, I speak to my 13th customer
rep of the day. He insists that the
information is wrong on my account, and
that I have the wrong username, though it's
the same username that I had used to log
into my AT&T account as I was speaking
to him (now that I'm on my home WiFi,
which since Friday, has been working
fine).
• He says that my username is actually
different, but he refuses to tell me what my
actual username is. Apparently, that's not
allowed. Instead, he has me dig out my last
AT&T bill, and buried on page 4 there is a
username which is different from my
regular username. He insists that this
username will allow me to log into the
WiFi hotspots
• I'm no longer at McDonalds so I cannot
test it, but perhaps I can now log into
WiFi. I will have to go back to McDonalds
later this week to try.
This is AT&T customer and tech support
at work. I am left wondering if anyone
who works at AT&T has ever called its
"award winning" customer service line to
get actual support. If there were actual
competition in the broadband market here
in the heart of Silicon Valley, I would
switch providers. But my choice now is to
go back to Comcast, who might kill service
every day for a month for unscheduled
scheduled maintenance or deal with
AT&T's roulette wheel of customer and
tech support.
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includes a special housing for the DS itself
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
GumGum Rethinks Its
Approach. Drops Flash
By Jason Kincaid (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 2:13:16 PM
Music and movies may grab the most
headlines when it comes to piracy, but
many content providers on the web are
also having trouble managing their images,
which are easy to crop, resize, and copy.
Some services, like Attributor, try to
monitor and track offending images, but
the ultimate solution may well lie in
removing the temptation in the first place
by offering cheap and easy to find legal
images.
Earlier this year, GumGum launched an
image licensing platform that was designed
to help publishers quickly locate and
license images. The site served as a content
hub, offering a searchable database of
images that could be licensed on a CPM
basis or for free alongside an ad.
Unfortunately, every one of GumGum’s
images was served as an embeddable Flash
widget, which made them both clunky and
annoying for publishers, as the images
couldn’t be resized or modified. The use of
Flash allowed GumGum to include their
ads with the images, and also made it
harder for people to rip them off (though
you could always just take a screenshot).
PicApp, a similar image search and
licensing platform, uses Flash as well and
suffers from the same issues.
Today GumGum has announced a new
approach to their licensing platform, and
this time, there won’t be any Flash
involved. To use the system, users need
only include a single line of JavaScript on
their page. From there, they can include
any image they want using a standard
HTML tag. The pricing models will be the
same: publishers can either pay a fee based
(it's still used for strumming), and even a
built-in FM transmitter with its own
screen, which lets him pump the audio
through his home sound system. Still not
impressed? Head on past the break to see it
in action.
on image impressions, or they can include
ads on top of their images. GumGum’s
new platform can detect licensed images
and overlays the ad on top of it, so there’s
no need to use a special widget.
Another key shift in GumGum’s new
approach is its decision to stop acting as an
image hub - you’ll no longer be able to
search through content catalogs to find an
image. Instead, GumGum says that it will
connect you directly with the content
providers, who typically offer their own
databases. By taking this approach,
GumGum is turning away from the typical
consumer and is becoming more of a B2B
solution for blogs and sites that frequently
rely on licensed images.
GumGum isn’t going to be able to stop
image piracy - there’s simply no way to get
around the “Print Screen” function without
including an annoying watermark. But
businesses who can’t afford to be caught
up with illegal content may well appreciate
GumGum’s new more flexible system,
provided the company can make good on
its arrangements with content providers.
The service has already landed some big
customers, including MTV Europe.
In conjunction with the launch of the
new platform, GumGum has annouced a
Series A funding round of a reported$1.2
million.
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Continue reading Guitar Hero DS hack
lets you shred on a full-size guitar Read|
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Fox Tries To Kill
Watchmen
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 10:52:05 AM
The movie version of DC Comics'
Watchmen is getting a lot of hype these
days, as the early buzz on the film is quite
strong. But, you may not get to see it at all.
That's because 20th Century Fox claims
that it owns the rights to Watchmen,
despite the fact that the movie was being
made by competitor Warner Brothers. Fox
had owned the movie rights to Watchmen
decades ago, but was unable to make a
movie out of it. However, the producer that
Fox had originally signed to do the project
eventually popped up at Warner Brothers
with the project. Fox claims it still owns
the rights and is suing Warner to stop the
release of the movie entirely. Most expect
that this will get settled long before the
movie's scheduled release in March of next
year -- but it will probably mean that Fox
gets some of the profits for doing
absolutely nothing.
To be honest, the whole concept of
selling off exclusive rights to a story idea
for a movie never made that much sense. If
multiple studios want to make multiple
movies out of the same concept, why
shouldn't that be allowed, letting the best
movie win in the marketplace? If the
original content creators feel strongly
about a vision, then they can sign up to
work with one particular studio to make
sure the movie is more true to life -- but it
shouldn't require "exclusive" rights. In
fact, we've already seen this in practice.
Technically, no one can copyright a true
news story -- so movie studios have no
exclusive rights to making a movie out of a
news story. Yet, they will often still buy
the rights-- without it being legally
necessary. There are a few reasons why: it
signals to others that you're making a
movie on the topic and it often comes with
ties to those close to the original story to
get them involved in the project. Why
aren't the same things done with
adaptations?
We've seen a few authors recognize this.
Jonathan Lethem freed up his latest book
for anyone to make a movie out of it -- so
long as they promised to put the movie into
the public domain five years after it was
completed. And then there's Paulo Coelho,
who freed up one of his books and told
fans to make their own movies about parts
of it -- which he would stitch together into
a larger movie. If Fox really wanted to
make a Watchmen movie, it should have
done so. It shouldn't now prevent someone
else from doing so -- or, even worse, get a
cut of the action for doing nothing.
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Skyfire Brings Full Browser
Experience To Nokia S60 Phones
(200 Private Beta Invites)
By Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 8/1/2008 7:39:02 AM
Throw out that WAP browser on your
cell phone. We are quickly approaching a
point where a full browser experience is
available on our mobile devices. And it is
not just the iPhone. A startup called
Skyfire is in some respect even further
along than Apple in bringing the entire
Web to your phone. Its mobile browser lets
you slide Web pages around and zoom in
like with the mobile version of Safari. But
it also supports Flash and Ajax sites. (It
does this by offloading most of the heavy
lifting to its servers rather than the mobile
client). That means you can watch
Youtube videos and go to Google Maps
right in the mobile browser instead of
having to download separate apps. In
contrast, the iPhone’s Safari browser still
does not support Flash and so to watch a a
video you have to launch the separate
Youtube app.
As it becomes possible to do more and
more inside the mobile browser itself, it
raises the question of whether that indeed
is the killer app for mobile Web phones.
For the most part, you still get a richer
experience by downloading a separate
single-purpose app to your phone. But
efforts like Skyfire’s point to a future
where that may no longer be necessary for
all but the most sophisticated apps and
games.
Skyfire launched on Windows Mobile,
but as of today it is also available in a
private beta for Nokia phones running
Symbian’s S60 operating system. The first
200 TechCrunch readers to sign up for the
beta here will get invites (enter invite code:
Tcrunch).
I just tried it on a Nokia N95, and
watching video in the browser looks great
as long as you are connected via WiFi. As
3G networks become a reality, that should
change (although I am supposedly on
AT&T’s 3G network in New York City,
and videos take so long to load that they
are basically unwatchable at this point).
And I still prefer the speed of the Safari
browser overall in terms of responsiveness.
But for other mobile platforms, Skyfire is
going to give mobile browsers like Opera’s
a run for their money. And if Apple ever
actually allows another browser on the
iPhone, it could add some much needed
competition there as well.
The company recently raised $13 million
in a series B round from Lightspeed,
Matrix, and Trinity. Below is a video demo
of Skyfire on Windows Mobile:
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Tech* 15
ABC/Disney Memo Shows
That Ripping Off Other TV
Programs Is Ok... For
ABC/Disney
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 3:43:00 AM
Of course, we all know that in the long
history of Disney, the company has made
much of its money by taking the content of
others and repurposing it in cute animated
stories. Yet, when it comes to anyone else
doing things with Disney's stories or
characters, its lawyers are rather vicious in
response. In fact, it's Disney's heavy
handed lobbying that has helped extend
copyright to ever longer terms, just to
avoid Mickey Mouse from entering the
public domain. Thus, it probably shouldn't
come as a surprise, that Disney continues
with this double standard in other parts of
its business. Reader Comboman sent in the
news that a leaked memo from Disney
subsidiary ABC suggests that producers
look for TV ideas from foreign shows,
where the idea can be used without having
to pay a license:"As I'm sure you're all
aware, foreign formats have increased in
popularity as the basis for US television
development and production. What is often
overlooked, or not fully appreciated, are
the complexities associated with
negotiating format deals, coupled with the
fact that often-times what is appealing in
the format may be nothing more than a
general underlying premise, which, in and
of itself, may be no reason to license the
underlying property." In other words, let's
see what we can copy. And, yet, if anyone
were to do that with a Disney/ABC
property, you can bet that the lawyers
would be all over it before you could get
very far. But, of course, don't be surprised.
It's simply the way Disney/ABC does
business: abusing intellectual property
laws is perfectly fine when done for its
own purposes -- but is the destroyer of
everything good when done to
Disney/ABC.
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16 Tech* TV* Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper

Tap Tap Revenge The Blurring Borders Of Music

Approaches 1 Million Users, And Advertising: P&G Starts A
Music Industry Takes Notice Record Label With Def Jam By Michael Masnick (Techdirt) apparently building its own studio to do
By Jason Kincaid (TechCrunch) the same thing. To some extent, it's no
Submitted at 8/19/2008 5:11:00 AM
Submitted at 7/31/2008 5:50:09 PM

Tapulous, the company behind Tap Tap

Revenge, has announced that the popular
iPhone app will hit 1 million installs some
time this weekend. The app is the second
we’ve heard from to hit the milestone
(Facebook reached it last week), and is
another testament to the extremely rapid
growth some applications have seen on
Apple’s newly launched App Store.
Tapulous CEO Bart Decrem says that the
application has been downloaded about
900 thousand times since its launch, and
expects to hit the 1 million user milestone
over the weekend. Tapulous’s iPhone
Twitter client Twinkle is significantly less
popular, with around 80,000 installs, but it
was released after Tap Tap Revenge.
Decrem notes that there is a total install
base of about 5-6 million iPhones and iPod
Touches running the 2.0 firmware (which
is compatible with the App Store). With
about 1 million downloads, this puts
Tapulous applications on around 20% of
all devices - a very impressive feat.
One of best features in the original
version of the game (which was only
available on hacked iPhones) was that
users could create tab sheets and play the
game with any song in their iPhone’s
library. Unfortunately, Apple prohibits any
developer from accessing the iPhone’s
library with a native application, so
Tapulous has been forced to come up with
a different way to introduce new content to
the game. For the time being they’re
offering free downloads of new songs
directly through the app, but these songs
have all been submitted to the company by
indie artists (impressively, 2.5 million
songs have been downloaded so far).
As it turns out, a number of record labels
have taken notice of Tap Tap Revenge’s
quickly growing install base, and are eager
to use it as a means of exposing users to
new music. Decrem says that the company
is in talks with both indie and more well
known artists to create a premium package
of songs, which will likely be released in
the App Store as a separate game for a
small fee. Subsequent packages will also
likely be released as their own independent
games, as Apple does not currently offer a
way for developers to sell new content
from within an application.
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For a while now, we've been pointing out
that people in both the advertising and
content businesses need to recognize that
they're both in the same business. All
advertising is content, and all content is
advertising -- whether intentional or not.
The latest example of this is pointed out by
reader lavi d, who points us to a clip from
NPR's All Things Considered about how
Procter & Gamble has teamed up with Def
Jam records to create a new record label:
Tag Records, which is connected to the
P&G product Tag Body Spray.
Rather than bringing on a big name star
to "endorse" its product, Tag Records has
signed a relative unknown, and is basically
promoting both this new musician, Q, and
the body spray at the same time. The music
doesn't necessarily directly promote the
body spray, but the promotions go hand in
hand, and there is no real border between
the content and the advertising. If the
content itself is good content, it doesn't
much matter. And, it appears that other
brands are following suit. The radio clip
notes that the energy drink Red Bull is
Blockbuster CEO Is Still Confused By
The Long Tail
By Kevin Donovan (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 6:32:00 AM
In 2004, Chris Anderson wrote his feature
article for Wired Magazine in which he
coined the term "the long tail" to describe
the business possibilities made possible by
digital distribution. Four years and one
best-selling book later, the CEO of
Blockbuster is still confused by the
concept that has been utilized by Netflix to
wreak havoc on his business model. Yet, in
a recent interview, the head of
Blockbuster, Jim Reyes, misses the entire
point of the long tail.
In response to a question regarding the
surprise that Def Jam would recognize this
as a direction to go in: we pointed out in
the past how a bunch of hip hop music
execs were way ahead of the curve in
recognizing new business models where
the music itself is part of the promotion for
something else.
And here, once again, we're seeing a
totally new business model for the music
business. Suddenly the success of the
musicians on these labels isn't as much
about selling music as it is in getting the
music out there to promote other products
as well. This doesn't mean (as I'm sure
some angry commenters will imply) that
all music will soon have some sort of
consumer packaged goods connection --
but it shows, once again, that new business
models emerge, and those business models
will ensure that plenty of good content
continues to show up. Because, if the
music put out by these record labels suck,
then it won't do much good for anyone: the
consumer goods they're connected to, the
musicians or the labels.
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small catalog of Movielink, Blockbuster's
digital download service, Reyes responded,
"When was the last time you watched
10,000 movies, you know? I don't care
how many movies are available to me. As
my personal taste as a customer, I want to
watch the new stuff so whether we have
10,000 movies or 200 movies it doesn't
matter if I don't want to see any of the
movies that we have." The point of the
long tail is not to ignore the hits, but to
make available more. While Reyes's
quixotic opinion may appease viewers with
very limited tastes, when distribution and
content creation is exceedingly cheap, it
makes no sense to limit content. In his
Rescue Me: Sweat
By Jonathan Toomey (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 6:23:00 AM
Filed under: OpEd, Rescue Me, Episode
Reviews, Reality-Free, Webisodes
( M9)"It's just the same as drinking
water... right?" - Mike
All these guys do is eat, sleep, drink, and
get laid. Occasionally, they fight fires.
Seeing as how they do it so infrequently, I
can't say that I'm surprised that Mike (still
the Probie in this episode) forgot to fill the
cooler with drinking water before going
out on a call. All Mike does is eat, sleep,
drink, get laid, and forget stuff.
Continue reading Rescue Me: Sweat
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
original article on the concept, Anderson
noted that one-fifth of Netflix rentals are
outside the top 3,000 movies. Clearly, a
sizable minority of movie-watchers want
to see films outside Movielink's inventory
that "is heavily weighted toward newer
releases and mainstream staple titles."
Kevin Donovan is an expert at the
Techdirt Insight Community. To get
insight and analysis from Kevin Donovan
and other experts on challenges your
company faces, click here.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
New Recommendation Tethering Briefly Comes
System = 40 Percent More To The iPhone, Tempers
Diggs Flare
By Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 1:28:27 PM
One month after launching its new
recommendation system, Digg is already
reporting positive results. Digg
recommends stories based on other
members with similar voting patterns and
interests. Chief scientist Anton Kast writes
on the Digg Blog:
- Digging activity is up significantly: the
total number of Diggs increased 40% after
launch.
- The Recommendation Engine is running
strong: at any given point in time, the
system is generating over 54 Million
Recommendations, with the average
Digger having nearly 200
Recommendations from an average of 34
“Diggers like you”.
- Friend activity/friends added is up 24%.
- Commenting is up 11% since launch.
Digg’s recommendation engine takes a
Last.fm approach to finding people’s
whose tastes overlap with yours and then
suggesting stories they’ve Dugg up but that
you’ve missed. It is collaborative filtering
for news.
As Digg becomes more mainstream, it
needs technologies such as this to bring it
back to its glory days when everybody was
interested in the same niche categories.
Social recommendations work best when
they are extracted from niche communities
who are obsessive about one or two topics.
The Reports of Usenet’s Death are Greatly Exaggerated
By John Biggs (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 8/1/2008 8:18:09 AM
Sascha at PCMag writes a charming little
piece on the death of Usenet as a method
of discourse and its eventual rebirth as a
repository for porn, spam, and pirated
warez. He recalls the days of “serious
conversations” on 8-bit Atari architecture
Digg started out as a haven for hardcore
techies, but has branched out.
The recommendation system is designed
to, in effect, help Diggers carve out their
own niche communities again. If you
happen to like tech industry news, you will
see stories from other like-minded Diggers.
If you prefer politics or sports, you’ll get
those stories. And if you like a
combination, the system will grab
recommendations from each appropriate
bucket.
At least, that is how it is supposed to
work in theory. The recommendations
seem decent. But I personally haven’t
noticed anything that really strikes home.
Over time, it should get better.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile
Gadgets and Applications, Delivered
Daily.
and the rise and fall of net.manners as
more and more n00bs came on to mess up
in-depth threads on symbolism in Bob
Dylan’s Street Legal.
Is Usenet dead, as Sascha posits? I don’t
think so. As long as there are folks who
thing a command line is better than a
mouse, the original text-only social
network will live on. Sure, ISPs will shut
By Jason Kincaid (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 8:13:24 PM
Macrumors reports that Apple’s App
Store was selling a tethering app
compatible with the iPhone (both 3G and
EDGE) for a brief period earlier this
evening. The $10 application, called
NetShare, was developed by Nullriver
software, and would be a godsend for
many iPhone owners. After going up
around 8PM EST to the elation of a lucky
few, the application was pulled down
around 20 minutes later.
Phone tethering allows users to access
the internet from their laptop computers
wherever they get service on their
cellphone carrier’s data network. The
feature is common on many phones with
high speed (namely 3G) data access, and
has been noticeably absent from iPhones.
While 3G is typically slower than most Wi
-Fi access points, having internet
connectivity on the go is a huge plus for
many people - enough so that many
carriers charge on the order of $30 a month
to enable it.
Users with jailbroken (hacked) iPhones
have been able to enable tethering to their
phones through a complicated process for
some time, but such tethering is prohibited
by AT&T’s terms of service. The release
of NetShare seemed to indicate (albeit
briefly) that AT&T had changed its mind
on the matter.
Now, users who try to download the
application are told that it is no longer
available in their country. So what
down access out of mislaid kiddie porn
fears but the real pros know where to go to
happened? The app may have snuck past
Apple’s approval process - but with
reported wait times of weeks (or months) it
seems unlikely that anything appears there
accidentally. Then again, Apple has been
dealing with a massive influx of new
applications - they may simply be
overwhelmed and are getting sloppy.
It is also possible that the app was
supposed to be limited to a few select
countries, and was accidentally posted on
the US store. Finally, AT&T may have
really changed its mind, but it seems
unlikely that they’d pass up the chance to
tack one more fee on our data plans.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because
it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
get their angst-filled, nit-picking, obsessive
fix.
In a way inconceivable in today’s Web-
fragmented marketplace, Usenet was
where you went to talk. Conceived back in
the idealistic, non-profit days of the
Internet, it was—well, it is, but it mostly
was—a series of bulletin boards called
“newsgroups” shared by thousands of
Tech* 17
Zango May Have Worked
Things Out With The FTC,
But What About The
MPAA?
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 12:49:05 AM
We've pointed out for years the various
questionable activities performed by
adware firm Zango (or one of its earlier
incarnations). The company has gone
through so many changes it's tough to
follow, but every time it insists that it has
somehow "cleaned up" its act, it doesn't
take long for researchers to find evidence
to the contrary. For a while, the company
was in hot water with the FTC for tricking
people into downloading its adware. It
eventually settled with the FTC, paying a
hefty fine. These days, once again, the
company insists that it's reinvented itself to
focus on the "casual gaming market."
However, that doesn't appear to be the
case. I recently saw a presentation from the
company where it didn't mention casual
gaming at all, but instead called itself a
"publisher" of content -- though it was
quite vague and evasive about just what
kind of content. Perhaps that's because it
doesn't want parties like the MPAA to
know. As Ben Edelman had noticed a few
months ago -- and now more and more
security researchers are finding, Zango's
software is being offered up by folks who
are promising fully pirated movies.
It makes you wonder if Zango recognizes
that dealing with the MPAA may be a lot
less pleasant than fighting the FTC. Of
course, maybe the MPAA recognizes that
when pirated movies come with intrusive
adware like Zango, it only gives pirated
movies a bad name.
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computers, which traded new messages
several times a day.
Read more…
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over
the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
18 Tech* Food*
Philip Rosedale Doesn’t See Browser
-Based Virtual Worlds As A Threat
to Second Life. Is He In Denial?
By Erick Schonfeld (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 3:38:03 PM
Recently, there’s been a growing wave of
startups and products appearing that are
bringing 3-D virtual worlds to the browser.
These include Vivaty, Google’s Lively
project, and the Electric Sheep Co.’s
WebFlock. And I’ve seen a few stealth
companies working the same vein.
None of these are as fully featured or
immersive as Second Life, which requires
a separate desktop client download. But it
may not matter because a good-enough
experience available via standard browsers
may eventually qwn Second Life. Linden
Lab, which operates Second Life, is
working with IBM and others to make
virtual worlds interoperable with each
NBC Launches On-Demand
Olympic Coverage In HD
By Jason Kincaid (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 4:39:14 PM
NBC has launched its online video hub
for the 2008 Olympics, which features free
on-demand video for over 20 sports. In
order to maximize quality, the videos are
available as downloads (you can start
watching before the download finishes)
and will be in “up to HD” quality.
Unfortunately, the video downloads will
only be available on Windows machines
running Windows Media Center - once
again Mac users are left in the cold, likely
because of DRM issues (and the fact that
Lenovo and Microsoft are sponsors).
While the Olympic ceremonies don’t
kick off until August 8, NBC has already
posted footage of Olympic trials. Once the
games begin, NBC expects to have the
footage available around 12 hours after
each competition (which shouldn’t be too
annoying given the time difference).
Microsoft is participating in the
partnership, so access to the videos will be
integrated into Media Center’s main panel.
other. Still, for the most part, they don’t
play nicely with the Web.
Last week I caught Linden Lab founder
Philip Rosedale on video at Fortune’s
Brainstorm conference in Half Moon Bay,
and asked him if Second Life is threatened
by browser-based virtual worlds. In the
video above, he argues that the browser is
not yet ready to deliver the type of
experience that you can get in Second Life.
He does acknowledge that virtual worlds
need to be opened up and standardized.
But he doesn’t see the browser as a viable
alternative to client-based virtual worlds
any time soon.
Is he right, or is he in denial?
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because
it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Users can also visit this TVTonic page,
and the content will be available directly
from NBCOlympics.com beginning next
week. You can read more about the service
at the TVTonic blog post here.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over
the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Entertainment Industry Again
Says Everyone Else Must
Protect Its Business Model
By Michael Masnick (Techdirt)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 9:25:00 AM
The Progress & Freedom Foundation is
hosting its annual tech policy conference in
Aspen, and given that it's PFF we're
talking about, it's chock full of
entertainment industry folks without any
input from anyone who questions the basic
premise that the entertainment industry
puts forth: that content creators need to
charge for each individual copy of their
works. Thus, it should come as no surprise
that a panel of entertainment industry
lobbyists fell into the usual routine of
insisting that everyone else -- mainly ISPs
-- be responsible for protecting the
entertainment industry's business model.
The reasoning seems to be the same as
Yahoo Turns Yelp, Yahoo Local and LinkedIn
SearchMonkey Apps On In Search
By Michael Arrington (TechCrunch)
Submitted at 7/31/2008 9:31:23 PM
Yahoo is making a number of changes to
its default search experience tonight to add
more structured data to results. Yelp,
Yahoo Local and LinkedIn SearchMonkey
widgets are being added to search results
automatically, eliminating the need for
users to go into the search gallery and add
them manually.
SearchMonkey is a key part of Yahoo’s
attempts to embrace the semantic web and
open standards in general.
With SearchMonkey, site owners create
“applications” for Yahoo search that can
Wax Beans with Mint
By Elise
Submitted at 8/14/2008 3:16:48 AM
Every weekend during the summer, if we
are lucky, there will be a good supply of
wax beans at the farmers market. These
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
always: the entertainment industry itself
has found it too difficult to come up with a
business model (even as those who have
escaped the traditional bounds of the
industry seem to be figuring it out on their
own), and thus others simply must be
responsible for propping up the business
model. If you put them all on a panel
together, of course, they're going to whine
and complain that others have to fix their
business model for them -- but that doesn't
mean it's true. There are plenty of business
models that they could embrace on their
own, requiring no assistance from others.
That they chose not to is their own mistake
-- not the fault of companies in a totally
separate industry.
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be installed by users in the same sense that
Facebook applications can be installed.
Each application modifies results for a
certain URL specification (for example, all
reference pages on Wikipedia or product
golden yellow (and sometimes purple)
Salmon Provencal
By Elise
Submitted at 7/30/2008 4:01:50 AM
From the recipe archive.
Here's a salmon dish made for summer.
Fresh tomatoes, fresh chopped herbs, a few
shallots, lemon juice, balsamic and olive
oil make a perfect sauce to accompany
baked salmon fillets.
Continue reading "Salmon Provencal" »
pages on Amazon). Modifications include
both changes to the basic elements of a
search result (the title and description) and
additions such as an image, deep links, and
key/value pairs.
Users can also add additional widgets via
the Yahoo Search Gallery.
Here’s the Yelp search result example
we used in our first post about
SearchMonkey:
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because
it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
versions of green beans are harvested
young, and are sweet and tender. Here is a
simple way to prepare them, with the
subtle flavor of a mint infusion.
Continue reading "Wax Beans with
Mint" »
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Microsoft enlists Seinfeld,
Gates to battle "Get a Mac"
ads
By Thomas Ricker (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 6:50:00 PM
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets Those Apple
"Get a Mac" ads have long been an
annoyance to Microsoft and to Bill Gates
in particular. No surprise as an
emboldened Apple with rising market
share has continued to ratchet up the
venomous quips like, "fear of switching is
the foundation of customer loyalty for
PCs," found in its latest TV ad. Now
Microsoft is fighting back.
Microsoft's new $300 million campaign
(one of Redmond's largest ever) is set to
launch with a $10 million assist from "key
celebrity pitchman" Jerry Seinfeld. Yes,
Bill Gates will appear as well -- the once
maligned, rich corporate nerd turned
adorable, rich humanitarian nerd. The
campaign is said to based on the idea of
"Windows, Not Walls," stressing the need
to "break down barriers that prevent people
and ideas from connecting." Something we
think open-sourcers might have a laugh at.
Anywho, the immediate goal of the
campaign is to reverse the negative public
perception of Vista and thus incorporates
FCC chairman dreams of free mobile internet for all
Americans
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 11:42:00 AM
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless Just
over a year ago, we were all making bitter
beer faces at FCC chairman Kevin Martin
for not going along with a delightful
sounding "free internet" plan. Now, it
seems the main man's tune has changed.
During a recent interview, Martin stated
that there was a "social obligation in
making sure everybody could participate in
elements of the Mojave Experiment. While
we have doubts about the latter, the
combination of Seinfeld's pithy
observations with a bit of that Bill Gates,
self deprecating humor seen in " Bill's Last
Day" could be a winning combination.
Whether that turns the boat of negative
public perception remains to be seen. Read|
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the next generation of broadband services
because, increasingly, that's what people
want." He's reportedly looking to attach a
Plano, TX gripes to FCC after
police radio signals disrupt
sprinklers
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 4:41:00 PM
Filed under: Misc. Gadgets We've seen
the boys and girls in blue disturb the peace
on occasion, but this is just downright
bizarre. It's bruited that the city of Plano,
Texas has complained to the FCC about a
powerful new police communications
system that's being testing in Cedar Hill,
DeSoto and Duncanville. The signals have
the ability to reach some 30 miles away,
and they're driving the radio-controlled
sprinklers that Plano uses at parks and road
medians absolutely crazy. The whole
ordeal has made for some pretty interesting
conversation amongst those involved, with
one Tim Smith, managing director of the
Southwest Regional Communications
free mobile broadband requirement to the
AWS-3 spectrum that's set to be auctioned
next year, which would require the winner
to allocate 25% for gratis access. 'Course,
we wouldn't get our hopes us for this to
actually go down like it surely is playing
out in your mind just now, but we won't
fault you for dreamin'.
[Via phonescoop] Read| Permalink| Email
this| Comments
Center, asserting: "Which comes first:
watering plants or protecting police and
fire?" If anyone catches grown men
fighting about this, do us a favor and send
in the video.
[Thanks, Travis] Read| Permalink| Email
this| Comments
So, That’s Why Google
Bought Russian Ad Company
Begun
By Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 5:50:42 AM
The 140 million dollars that Google
dished out for Russian contextual ad
company Begun now seems rather cheap,
given their fantastic financial results for
the first half of 2008.
As reported by Profy, Begun has had
25% higher profits in the first two quarters
of 2008 than in the entire 2007. Add to that
the 173.000 publishers (an increase of
30.000 over last year) in Begun’s roster
and it’s obvious that this company is on
track to completely corner the huge
Russian contextual advertising market.
In other words, Begun was ripe for
acquisition; it probably needed funds to be
able to sustain its quick growth, and on the
other hand it showed huge potential. The
question is, how do Microsoft, AOL and
others always manage to miss chances like
this one, while Google always seems to
snag them at the exactly right time?
Gadgets* Web 2.0 19
Radio Shack ad
confirms Xbox
360 price cuts?
By Joshua Topolsky (Engadget)
Filed under: Gaming
Submitted at 8/20/2008 5:16:00 PM
Check out the press release (in Russian)
here.
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The
Social Networking Blog:
Google Buys Russian Contextual Ad
Service Begun
Mozilla Financial Report Shows its
Increasing Importance to Google
Google Adds Picasa Images to Search
YouPorn Blocked by Google.de
Google Announces Financial Results;
Revenue Up 57 Percent
The Daily Poll: What’s Wrong at
Google?
Ien Cheng Switches FT With Google
20 Gadgets* TV* Food*
MSI Wind barebones desktop now
available to order
By Donald Melanson (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 10:59:00 AM
Filed under: Desktops
This one looks to have actually slipped
into availability a few days ago but, for
those that don't make visits to
Newegg.com part of their daily routine,
you may be interested to know that the
barebones version of MSI's Wind desktop
PC is now available to order for the low,
low price of $139.99. That'll get you the
ever-present 1.6GHz Atom processor,
Super Skank Wednesday: The
Demise of Rodeo
By Kristin Sample (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 5:03:00 AM
Filed under: Other Reality Shows, OpEd,
Super Skank Wednesday, Celebreality
Welcome to Super Skank Wednesday. This
is where I celebrate the awesomely skanky
people on the following shows: I Love
Money, Charm School, New York Goes to
Hollywood, and The Surreal Life.
Basically, I'll discuss the skankalicious
shows that make VH1 the network it is
today.
Today we'll talk about Rodeo who got
eliminated from I Love Money this past
Sunday. The name. The guns. The
bandanas she customized with a Bedazzler.
The barbeque sauce.
I'm sad she got kicked off. She certainly
could have used that money for some
psychiatric evaluations. Let's talk about her
along with Intel GMA 950 integrated
graphics, 8-channel audio, a generous six
USB ports, a 4-in-1 media card reader, a
CF card slot, and VGA output, but no hard
drive, RAM, or optical drive. Unlike the
forthcoming full-fledged Wind desktop,
this one also looks to only be available in
basic black, but it does at least come with a
stand that'll let you use it upright.
[Via Computer Monger] Read| Permalink|
Email this| Comments
demise after the jump. I'm doing another
picture book.
Continue reading Super Skank
Wednesday: The Demise of Rodeo
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Peek: the handheld that does e-mail,
and only e-mail
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 10:29:00 AM
Filed under: Cellphones
Ready for some excitement in the form
of watching a startup squirm as it waits for
its product to gain traction? Take a glance
at Peek, which is churning out a dedicated
handheld that handles e-mail, a few chain
forwards, and more e-mails when you're
done with that. At first glance, one may
consider such a one-trick-pony quite
ridiculous, but it's hard to say what will
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
end up catching on these days. The biggest
problem facing Peek is the pricing: it'll be
$99.95 up front when it lands in Target
next month, plus $19.95 per month to send
unlimited e-mails over T-Mobile's
network. Of course, if anyone figures out
how to load Opera Mini up here, the Bulls-
eye Shop won't be able to keep the shelves
stocked.
[Via Silicon Alley Insider] Read|
Permalink| Email this| Comments
RADIO
continued from page 19
According to our good, dear, beautiful
friends at Joystiq (and Radio Shack,
incidentally) the Xbox 360 family is going
to be seeing those rumored price cuts in the
very near future. Falling right in line with
that chatter we heard at the beginning of
the month, a leaked Radio Shack circular
seems to indicate that there will be
reductions across the board for the console,
with the 60GB version clocking in at $299,
the Elite running you a cool $399, and the
Arcade setup dropping to a totally
affordable $199 (we're looking at you,
potential Xbox LIVE opponents). Sure this
could all be some Photoshop wiz's idea of
a hilarious joke, but we're keeping the
fingers and toes crossed over here. Target
date for truth? September 7th -- so stay
tuned. Read| Permalink| Email this|
Comments
Zucchini Bread
By Elise
Submitted at 8/14/2008 8:38:49 PM
I still remember the first time I
encountered zucchini bread as a teenager. I
had a hard time getting my mind around
the concept. At the time, zucchini was
something my mom made me eat, and not
anything you would bake into something
sweet. Fortunately, the pathway into my
naturally resistant-to-new-foods teenage
mind had already been cut with carrot
cake. Heck, if you could get something
that good out of carrots, why not zucchini?
After one bite, I was sold forever. Grated
zucchini, mixed into the batter, brings
moisture and tender texture to what is
essentially a spice cake.
Continue reading "Zucchini Bread" »
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Intel's UrbanMax concept device
demonstrated on video
By Darren Murph (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 12:51:00 PM
Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops, Tablet
PCs
We're still having a tough time labeling
Intel's uniquely designed UrbanMax
concept, but according to a company
representative on hand at IDF, it was
designed primarily to be used as a touch
device. The gigantic touch panel machine
(slate PC?) includes an 11-inch (1,366 x
Potato Salad with Apples and Bacon
By Elise
Submitted at 8/1/2008 3:40:36 AM
Summer is the season for cookouts and
potato salad, isn't it? Our standard usually
768) display, a slide out QWERTY
keyboard, a minuscule optical mousing
device and Windows Vista behind the
scenes. Feel free to check out the video
waiting after the jump, and by the way, we
dare you to tell us this isn't totally an HTC
Advantage X7510 on steroids.
Continue reading Intel's UrbanMax
concept device demonstrated on video
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
includes pickle juice and hard boiled eggs.
Here's a completely different take on a
summer potato salad, seasoned with
mustard, bacon, and the taste that makes
you smile with surprise when you bite into
Fujitsu U2010 comes to
Japan as the LOOX U /
B50N, all tokidoki'd up
By Nilay Patel (Engadget)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 6:18:00 PM
Filed under: Laptops
Sure, we're getting Fujitsu's U2010
convertible UMPC Stateside pretty soon as
the LifeBook U820, but we're crazy
jealous that our friends in Japan are getting
this hot tokidoki version, labeled as the
LOOX U / B50N. Same kit underneath,
but we'd bet that exclusive limited-edition
skin will command a premium -- now if we
only had pricing info, we'd know whether
or not to get our clandestine grey-market
importers on the case. Anytime, Fujitsu.
[Via Pocketables and tokidoki] Read|
Permalink| Email this| Comments
it, chunks of apple. My friend Heidi H
Gadgets* Web 2.0 Food*
Firefox Plugin socialbrowse
Expands Commenting
Features (400 Invites)
By Kristen Nicole (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 8:01:37 AM
socialbrowse, the Firefox plugin that lets
you surf the Web in a link-sharing social
manner, has just re-released its service
with a couple of major new features. The
Y Combinator-backed startup as been in
private beta for some time, and will remain
in private beta for a little while longer, but
those users testing the service will be able
to access and utilize its new features (get
your invite below).
The new features revolve around the
social sharing capabilities that
socialbrowse has already laid out. The first
new feature supports in-page commenting,
which allows you to leave comments on a
link you’re visiting without having to leave
the page. Submitting a comment, just as
with a shared link, will broadcast your
content across the Web in real time.
Comment icons will also appear on pages
you visit so you and your friends will
immediately be able to see the connection
between your own activity and that of your
friends.
An interesting visual tool accompanies
the socialbrowse sidebar, offering a very
direct and internally circular view of the
Web as well as your own browsing
behavior. This of course can be turned into
immediate recommendations as well as
useful information regarding a particular
site that may be more difficult or time-
consuming to find otherwise via
standalone bookmarking sites. This
capability also ties in closely with
socialbrowse’s second major new upgrade,
the embedded icon expansion option.
Icons that display on pages as you surf
the Web, indicating comments and shared
links, can now be expanded when you
made this potato salad for a group of us
this week; it's based on a recipe she found
recently in the Boston Globe. Everyone
who ate it loved the apple, bacon, mustard,
potato combo.
21
hover over them, so you can get an at-a-
glance view of the details behind each
icon; who submitted the link, and what
friends have contributed to the comments
thread. Similar to the concept now being
employed by JS-Kit, the act of turning
comments into a more visual and social
component of Web surfing is a budding
function that can be leveraged for all sorts
of things.
While socialbrowse uses these comments
on a more internal basis and JS-Kit acts as
a centralizing factor for comments you
leave across the Web, they both result in a
useful capacity for direct and indirect
marketing and recommendations. JS-Kit
has already begun to expound upon its
features for the use of third-party sites like
evite, and Socialbrowse being the existing
community that it is can begin to leverage
its capabilities in different ways, which
will be interesting to observe as
Socialbrowse continues beta testing and
moves into a more public space.
socialbrowse is offering Mashable
readers 400 invites. Click here to get
yours.
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The
Social Networking Blog:
Web 2.0 Invites for July 1st, 2008
Web 2.0 Invites for July 4th, 2008
New RealPlayer Now Available for
Download
20+ Free Press Release Distribution Sites
Firefox 3 Beta 3, Now Available for
Download
Apple’s iPhone to Hit Stores June 29th?
Wordpress 2.3 Released
Continue reading "Potato Salad with
Apples and Bacon" »
22 Web 2.0
Old Media Deathrace 5000
By Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
(Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 1:36:37 AM
I know there’s a good portion of you that
are going to instantly groan at the headline,
either because it’s a territory that’s been
hashed out a number of times from a
number of different angles or because
you’re one of those folks who simply
doesn’t believe there are such thing as
“killer” technology (I’ve had that
conversation with a few folks recently).
But Duncan Riley put out an interesting,
if not provocative, editorial this evening
entitled “Television will be the first
traditional media medium to fall.”
Personally, I have always felt that radio
would be the first to falter, though in a
neck-and-neck race with newsprint, but
Duncan Riley puts some new stats to work
in support the prediction today:
The television switch off is real. In the
United States, 2.5 million viewers
switched off in the spring on 2008
compared to the same time in 2006.
Statistically this is only a small percentage
of the overall viewing audience, but among
those still watching television, the amount
of television they watch each day is
declining.
The decline in television viewing is
stronger among younger statistical groups.
In Europe, a 2005 study from the European
Interactive Advertising Association found
almost half of 15- to 24-year-olds are
watching less TV in favor of browsing the
web. A study reported in The Guardian in
2007 headlined with “Young networkers
turn off TV and log on to the web.” The
television switch off in the United States
among younger people has seen the
average age of a TV viewer increase to 50.
The stats are compelling, and certainly
point to an uncertain future for Old Media
television, particularly in the face of the
ever increasing volume of studies showing
that pretty soon we’ll be watching video
online more than we’ll be sleeping.
Duncan goes on to say that while
newsprint and radio have some harrowing
times ahead of them, they’ll survive. At
least, for now.
I’m not sure that I agree that TV is the
first to go, though. Certainly Duncan
makes a compelling case, and I’m not one
of those folks who thinks new technology
incapable of killing old technology (you
certainly don’t see a lot of eight-tracks for
sale these days, and photograph developing
is quickly becoming a thing of the past).
But we’re seeing a lot more rapid
detioration taking place in the music and
radio business than we’re seeing even in
newspaper and television. It’s an
interesting deathrace between the
industries, and it’s difficult to call a
‘winner’ to the finish line.
Newspaper death watch.
For instance, newspaper decline is
largely financial in nature. Certainly,
when you’re talking about business, that’s
the most important factor to measure a
media type’s life span. Is that what we’re
really talking about here, though? The
death of the media type or the changing of
the guard in terms of the dominant
companies behind them. In either event,
newsprint and text delivery of news is
increasingly being dominated by online
blogs and news portals. Circulation may be
technically up, but revenues for the
companies that resist the transition to
online delivery are most decidedly down.
Wise newspaper publications are
managing some sort of a transition to an
online revenue, but most companies that
have their base in serialized news in the
printed form still have problems adjusting
to the new formats that we in the blogging
business take for granted.
Duncan is very positive that newspapers
will always go the distance because of the
need for quality journalism. Unfortunately
(at least for the newspaper industry) I don’t
see this as a particularly convincing
argument. Quality journalism can and
does take place outside of newsprint, and
for a much greater profit. Some traditional
text journalism outfits may realize this and
make the transition. Most won’t.
Disclosure: I may be particularly
negative towards newspaper futures due to
the fact that in a previous life I consulted
for several newspapers in their New Media
efforts. In my experience they’re generally
not a very forward thinking bunch.
TV death and destruction.
As I said, Duncan makes a compelling
point for the impending doom of
television, and I’d go even further than he
in my prognostications of doom for the
media type. Again, like I said regarding the
newspaper business, when you’re talking
about the death of a media, you’re
potentially talking about two things: either
the media type itself or the industries
behind that media production.
In this situation I think it’s silly to say
we’ll stop watching video in our
livingrooms on television sets. Where the
video that plays on those sets comes from
is very likely to change very soon. Just
yesterday I talked about a very clear path
for Netflix and Roku to make a play for the
livingroom very soon, but they’re
obviously not the only ones competing for
eyeballs. TiVo, Apple, and a cadre of
other set-top device manufacturers are
working on taking real-estate in your
entertainment center.
Traditional television has something that
no set-top box solution has tackled or
mastered yet (aside from coverage of live
sporting events), and I’ve talked about it in
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
the past here in my editorials on the
subject: the “ veg-factor.”
To illustrate the veg-factor, think about
the type of media consumption you do in
the morning, while you’re getting the kids
ready for school, or fixing breakfast in the
morning while you’re getting ready for
work. Morning show format news-ish
programs are designed for this low-
engagement, veg-factor consumption.
They’re, in large part, designed to be
background noise that delivers some
entertainment and utility to your morning.
Likewise, in the evening, you come
home from work, you switch on the TV
and catch the local news or a Seinfeld re-
run, and leave the TV on through Wheel of
Fortune or whatever reality program du
jour is on this season. Most people won’t
even touch the remote until prime-time
starts. That’s the veg-factor in action.
Very simply, no one is doing this for the
set-top box experience. Until there is a one
-to-one equivalent for this, you won’t see a
complete replacement for television.
Radio apocalypse.
The radio business has been even more
dominated in recent years by mega-
conglomorates and mergers. With this has
come the ‘Clearchannel approach,’ that has
driven almost all radio towards a formula
for profit. Anecdotally, this was hashed out
recently in the comments of an editorial I
recently wrote about the impending doom
for radio at the hands of the iPhone’s on
demand music applications. Sean and I
talked about this the other day, and the
argument is compelling that radio is doing
a decent job of killing itself, and requires
no new technology to hasten its death.
But the fact remains that new
technologies like smartphones and other
pocket devices coupled with the impending
ubiquity of wireless Internet access makes
things look pretty bleak.
I say that, and I can almost hear Steven
Hodson’s voice cracking as he crankily
reminds me that impending ubiquity of
access is anything but certain (most likely
because he reminds me once a week on
Elite Tech News). He makes a compelling
case for it, but recent news like the coming
embedded “Internet Chips” from Intel as
VentureBeat reported on the other day
makes me think otherwise.
Here’s the thing that really makes radio’s
future look particularly bad compared to
the rest - the record labels. Talk radio is
very ably making the transition to
podcasting and other forms of online audio
entertainment media types, but the record
labels have very famously dug in their
heels and made it next to impossible for
broadcasters to adapt their business models
for the online environment using popular
music.
Given that, it isn’t surprising to see radio
clinging the hardest to their dying business
models. I predicted back in December that
we’d see an end to at least one major
record label this year, and I stick by that
assessment. Given that the mainstream
record labels are so integral to traditional
radio’s survival (and their demise is key to
online radio’s ascendence), I think it’s now
more than ever we should be looking to
traditional radio as the first to die off.
---
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Collective Media Acquires Personifi
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Firefox Extension
Specific Media Acquires AdViva
HubLove Contest: Your Clue Inside
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Why I Love Corporate Blogs (And You
Should Too)
By Don Reisinger (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 8:50:56 AM
It seems that everywhere I look, there’s
someone telling us why corporate blogs are
not only a waste of time if you’re looking
for something to read, but they offer no
value and should be taken down as soon as
possible.
The detractors claim corporate blogs lack
transparency, fail to adapt to the changing
times, and generally play the PR game
without ever admitting issues or entering
into a discussion with the reader.
I think that’s pure rubbish.
Sure, most of these corporate blogs play
the PR game and would rather tell you how
wonderful they are than how awful they’ve
performed over time, but who cares? Do
you really go to a corporate blog looking
for the company to bash itself? I seriously
doubt the shareholders would be too happy
with that.
Instead, corporate blogs provide me with
some insider knowledge into what’s really
going on behind the scenes at some of
these companies. And while some make
the complaint that transparency is an issue
and corporate blogs keep things guarded,
most corporate blog posts are actually
quite transparent if you read between the
lines.
Is the company trying to hide something
when it uses some clever language and
side steps some major issues? Is the
company saying something different than
it’s writing by including some innuendos?
These are the questions you need to ask
when you read a corporate blog and
generally, the answer is yes.
That said, not all corporate blogs are
created equal. Zillow has a great blog and
Garmin has done a fantastic job of adding
some personality to an otherwise vanilla
landscape. Twitter has a nicely informative
blog now that it’s trying to have a dialogue
with its users and explain its issues and
Google is easily one of the most
entertaining companies in the corporate
blogging space.
These blogs, much like countless others
from companies across vastly different
industries, may not offer something
compelling with each post and sometimes
they’re nothing more than an extension of
the PR team, but even the most self-
adulating blogs tend to offer some
entertaining and extremely informative
posts that not only act as the backbone for
news stories, but for shareholder
consumption as well.
Who can forget Palm CEO Ed Colligan’s
response to Engadget’s open letter? Who
else finds value in Garmin’s answers to
reader questions? How about Zillow’s
celebrity listings that show you how much
some of your favorite celebrities’ homes
are worth?
See, it’s not that I love corporate blogs
because they only talk about a company,
but I love corporate blogs because they
give a company some personality and they
offer you some insight (no matter how
guarded) into the people behind an
organization that seems so cold and
calculating.
Lest we forget, tech companies are
moneymaking machines. Sure, some may
not turn the kind of profit Microsoft does
and others don’t seem to have their finger
on the pulse of consumers like Apple, but
each is managed by individuals with
unique identities and something interesting
to say – if we’ll listen.
I don’t love corporate blogs because they
spread propaganda – that’s a guarantee that
you should be aware of before you head to
the site – or because they tend to gloss
over some of the less glowing facts. I love
corporate blogs because at the very least,
they provide a human element to
something that is devoid of emotion,
understanding, and personality.
On top of that, I love corporate blogs
because they’re the easiest way to file a
complaint and tell more than a recording or
a customer service agent that something is
wrong. In a matter of seconds, you can file
a complaint in the comments and if people
agree, they’ll jump on the bandwagon and
in one fell swoop, your singular issue
becomes a major problem and someone
will be forced to listen.
I understand that most people look at
corporate blogs as nothing more than
another propaganda machine, but I don’t.
Sure, they’re inundated with useless crap
from time to time, but I see them as more
than a place for a company to write things
about itself. Corporate blogs give you
clues about the organization’s culture, its
people, and why (right or wrong) most of
its employees believe in what they’re
doing.
And if you ask me, there’s nothing
wrong with that.
[Image credit: Wyetha Lipford(
attribution)]
---
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Blogging’s 10th Birthday: Your 10
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CoComment is The Best Web 2.0
Service Launched This Year
Streamfile Simplifies On-
Demand File Sharing (The
Startup Review)
By Paul Glazowski (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 10:10:48 AM
Editor’s Note: This post is part of an
ongoing series at Mashable - The Startup
Review, Sponsored by Sun Microsystems
Startup Essentials. If you would like to
have your startup considered for inclusion,
please see the details here.
STARTUP DETAILS:
Company Name: Streamfile
20-word Description: Streamfile is an
emerging startup with revolutionary
technology in the file transfer space.
CEO’s Pitch: Streamfile.com allows
anyone to “stream” files that are too big to
email without any additional need of
installed software other than a browser.
Streamfile is a hosted FTP replacement
solution that allows streaming
functionality. By streaming, we mean that
when an uploader sends a file,
downloaders are able to start the download
process immediately. This single
functionality enhancement actually allows
time savings of up to 90% (compared to a
traditional FTP server-to-client transfer).
It’s like P2P, but with a 24h answering
service. All of the file transfers have the
option to be encrypted with high-grade
AES 256-bit SSL encryption.
Mashable’s Take: Streamfile is
intriguing not only for its ability to rather
quickly broadcast files of up to 2GB in size
to specified email addresses, but its simple
construction as well. Everything is done
via the browser within an elegant and
sparse input menu. There is absolutely no
need to operate proprietary software. Just
browse for a file, provide one or more
email addresses (you can also specify
Web 2.0 23
whom the package is from), and begin
“streaming.”
At the backend, Streamfile operates as a
replacement to your traditional FTP
transfer service. As with some other
modern transmission options of today,
Streamfile allows for files to be
downloaded almost immediately after an
upload is begun. A similar option is
offered by Pando, yet that service requires
the use of proprietary software at either
end of an established link to function
properly. Streamfile can go without. And
the fact that it is able to maintain 256-bit
encryption if requested will please some
privacy seekers.
As it explains within its site copy,
Streamfile hosts data for a total of 24
hours. Which might irk some users,
particularly if a situation isn’t time-
sensitive and could ideally do with, say, a
week’s worth of server/network access.
The reason provided for this limit is quite
logical for a startup of its type to cite: “By
storing data for shorter time periods than
our competitors… we can maximize
performance and bandwidth to guarantee
superior door-to-door delivery speeds.”
For the time being, Streamfile, based in
Stockholm, Sweden, comes free of charge
for users. (Period ends August 31.) Its
stated profit model is business-to-business
file transfers (integration with corporate
websites is said to be possible). Such
subscriptions run 49€/month or more.
Sponsored By: Sun Startup Essentials
24 Web 2.0
Thanks to This Week’s Sponsors
By Tamar Weinberg (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 3:06:35 AM
Thanks to this week’s advertisers and
partners for helping us grow to be the #1
social news blog in the world. Advertise
with us and get noticed.
Help us to help you. Mashable is seeking
out site sponsors for our large diverse
audience — social media users, venture
capitalists, PR people, developers,
bloggers, and many more. You’ll receive
hundreds of thousands of views a day in
addition to weekly recognition to thank
you as our premium sponsors. Are you
interested? Contact us for more
information and to receive our brand new
media kit and rate card.
This week, our valued sponsors are
DEMOfall08, EdgeCast, IDrive, Clickatell,
and Userplane.
On September 7 through 9th, 2008, be
the first to see the most innovative,
marketing defining new technologies
unveiled for the very first time. Attend
DEMOfall 08 on September 7-9, 2008 in
San Diego. Mashable readers are invited to
attend for a special rate of only $2,395 – a
$600 savings off our regular rate. Click
here to learn more and register:
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EdgeCast Networks offers a superior,
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Social Networks and Applications are the
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Clickatell believes that using SMS to bind
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Business focused Online Backup service.
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features include automated critical data
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Userplane is the premier communication
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websites of any scale and audience. The
combination of instant and elegant with
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a must-have for thriving sites worldwide -
supporting millions of daily users.
Additionally, thanks to the following
partners for making Mashable happen:
Thanks to ConVerdge for implementing
our My Mashable social network and W3
MARKUP for the development and
maintenance of Mashable.com
We can get your name out there.
Contact us for more information on
supporting Mashable’s growth and
development. Alternatively, visit our
advertise section for more details about:
-Competitive direct ad sales
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CPM-based advertising is available
through our partner, Federated Media, but
contact us for information and unpublished
discounts.
---
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Twitter’s Communication
Classification (video)
By Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins
(Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/24/2008 7:42:19 PM
Last Friday, our resident cranky fart
Steven Hodson posited that Twitter wasn’t,
in fact, a status micro-blogging utility but
in fact a communictations tool most
closely resembling instant messaging.
Certainly when I’m attempting to explain
Twitter to newbies, that is the easiest way
to explain it, but quite a few of you
Mashable readers took exception to the
characterization. As of the time of this
writing, the debate still rages on with the
comment count in the triple digit range.
From Steven’s editorial:
It amazes me how anyone in all
seriousness can even consider the inane
twaddle that permeates the Internet from
services like Twitter as even coming close
to blogging or micro-blogging. Has anyone
really paid attention to what is being said
on Twitter these days – that is if you can
make it through the growing amount of
spam that is occurring. Sure micro-
blogging is a valid term when used to
describe things like tumblr or posterous but
not when used to describe Twitter.
On Mashable Conversations today, Sean
and I try to make sense of the debate and
put together what our take is on it. Sean
came into the discussion pretty squarely on
Steven’s side, but I was a bit unconvinced.
I’m one of those guys that views the act
of blogging, for almost all purposes, as a
form of conversation (even if it is
occasionally a conversation with yourself).
Thus conversation being a form of
communication, it isn’t a leap to classify
Twitter in the realm of conversational tool
(though I’ve always tended to view it more
as a lifestreaming tool).
Also on today’s program is another
exciting episode from the SummerMash
tour, this from the San Francisco tour stop
with a conversation with the FiltrBox
folks(who we had on Mashable
Conversations recently ourselves).
You can check it all out by downloading
the MP4, subscribing to our feed, or
watching the embed below.
Never Miss an Episode!
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast
here(video feed).
Get the Mashable Conversations podcast
here(audio feed).
---
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
And This is Why China is Four More SummerMashes,
Every Internet Company’s Eight More Chances to Win
Tickets to SXSWi in 2009!
Wet Dream
By Stan Schroeder (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 1:38:14 AM
According to the latest government data,
China now has 253 million Internet users,
due to recent sharp growth - 56 percent
from last year. The inevitable has
happened: China now has more Internet
users than the USA, which is at 223.1
million with 71% online penetration. The
fact that the Chinese government is
exercising very strict control and
censorship over internet use has
immensely slowed down the growth of
Internet use in this country, but when
you’ve got a population of over 1.3 billion,
even a relatively small fraction of it is
enough to become a global leader.
Yes, the really amazing thing is the fact
that the online penetration is China is mere
19.1 percent, way, way lower than the
USA and most European countries.
Financial facts are even more revealing:
total revenues for all of China’s internet
companies was $5.9 billion in 2007 while
in the U.S. online advertising revenues
alone in that same year were $21.2 billion.
For companies such as Google, Microsoft,
Yahoo and other giants, this means two
words: untapped potential.
Research firm BDA China Ltd. estimates
that China’s online population will keep
growing by 18 percent annually - a modest
estimation, considering that this growth
was 56% this year - and reach 490 million
by 2012. The US online market suddenly
seems small in comparison. Due to strict
Chinese government regulation of the
Fan Rant: 'Veronica Mars' -- The Movie?!?!
By Monika Bartyzel (Cinematical)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 2:02:00 PM
Filed under: RumorMonger
Veronica Mars is always struggling with
something. She tried to find the evil jerk
Internet, financially the Chinese market
will not catch up as fast as it could, but
with a little (inevitable) westernization and
a little globalization it’ll get there, and
every online firm will want a slice of the
pie. This one growing market might be
more important than most other world’s
markets put together.
---
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China Blocks RSS Feeds
China Becomes Largest Web Surfing
Country In The World
Yahoo China Launches a MySpace
Clone
who killed her best friend, Lily Kane. She
struggled through nightmares to figure out
who was responsible for the bus crash.
And then she went to college, where she
made lots more enemies as she solved a
whole slew of mysteries. She also
By Tamar Weinberg (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/25/2008 7:25:08 AM
Mashable is headed on its second leg of
the Summer Tour, beginning with Austin,
followed by Miami, Boston, and ending at
New York City. During each of these
SummerMashes, attendees have a chance
to score some sweet tickets to Austin’s
hottest interactive festival. That’s right, the
nice folks behind South by Southwest are
giving away two tickets per city to SXSWi
2009, which will be held from March 13-
17 next year.
Be sure to sign up for the events now if
you haven’t, because prices will go up (and
not down) for each individual
SummerMash. You could win tickets to
one of the best tech events of the year!
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The
Social Networking Blog:
FlashMashMeet @ Austin Airport
Concludes SXSWi
Chance to Win 1 of 4 tickets to Future of
Web Apps Miami
StubHub Ordered to Give User Info to
Mashable Rocks: Get Your Mac OS X Dashboard Widget
By Tamar Weinberg (Mashable!)
Submitted at 7/24/2008 6:35:31 PM
You know you want Mashable on your
desktop’s Dashboard — that way you can
ensure you never miss a post and see
articles real time as we post them!
Interested? Check out Mashable’s brand
new Mac OS X Dashboard widget made
by one of our dedicated readers, Joel Then.
Enjoy reading Mashable whenever you
pull up your Dashboard, and thank you to
Joel for the awesome unexpected
struggled to stay on the air.
Web 2.0 Movies* Food*
New England Patriots
Future of Web Apps Miami - Vote for 4
People to Win Tickets
Future of Web Apps Miami Mini-
Contest Winners
MySites Offers Free Tickets to
SummerMash Events
NFL and Ticketmaster to Take On
StubHub Next Season
Mashable treat!
---
Related Articles at Mashable! - The
Unlike Spaced, which certainly got more
buzz from the notable celebs who loved it,
it didn't even seem to help much that big-
wigs like Kevin Smith and Joss Whedon
adored Veronica. Both even had cameos
on the show -- as a convenience store clerk
25
Homemade Tomato
Juice
By Elise
Submitted at 8/11/2008 6:49:55 AM
For those of us who garden and grow
tomatoes, there often comes a point in the
summer tomato growing season in which
the bounty greatly exceeds one's ability to
consume it, in its regular tomato form. If
you find yourself in this position, and you
love tomato juice, V8, Bloody or Virgin
Marys, I highly recommend making your
own tomato juice. My dad announced the
other day that he was going to make some
tomato juice and I thought nothing of it.
But after one taste, wow. This is how V8
should taste.
Continue reading "Homemade Tomato
Juice" »
Social Networking Blog:
WidSets Officially Launches Completely
Revamped Site
Kuler Could Be Adobe’s First Apollo
Release
Universal Widget API Debuts
ReverbNation Widget Available in
Freewebs
Poptopus Pays When Your Song Gets
Played
Placely’s Public Beta Launches with
New Features
MuseStorm Launches Widget Tracking
and a fastidious car rental worker,
respectively.
Continue reading Fan Rant: 'Veronica
Mars' -- The Movie?!?!
Permalink| Email this| Comments
26 TV* Food*
Shows I've never seen: M
Squad coming to DVD
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 8:04:00 AM
Filed under: Other Drama Shows, TV on
DVD, Reality-Free It's great that recent
shows we love, whether it's Mad Men or
Seinfeld or The Sopranos, get released on
DVD so we can watch every episode again
any time that we want. But the true
greatness of the DVD technology is that
we get to see shows that we've never seen
before, because we were too young to
watch them when they first aired and
they're not rerun in syndication like I Love
Lucy or The Honeymooners.
The latest show to be released - and
getting the Complete Series treatment! - is
M Squad, a black and white detective
series from the late 50s that starred Lee
Marvin as a Chicago undercover cop. The
set will include 15 discs, 14 that will house
the episodes of the show and another disc
that will feature the show's music. What's
most interesting about this release is that at
first it was supposed to be only a Very
Best Of set, because the studio didn't have
all of the episodes. They sent out a plea to
Courtney B. Vance joins his wife on ER
By Kona Gallagher (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 5:28:00 AM
Filed under: ER, Casting, Reality-Free
Okay, I'm not a doctor (surprising, I
know), so maybe if you are a doctor, and
your most recent medical experience is
tsunami relief in Indonesia, maybe moving
to County General doesn't seem so bad.
Sure, it gets blown up occasionally, gunfire
breaks out often, and maybe you may get
taken hostage and/or stabbed by a crazy
patient or two. But here's my question:
Would you tell your spouse to work there
too?
Peach Cobbler
By Elise
Submitted at 8/19/2008 1:46:22 AM
Updated, from the recipe archive.
My friends know me well. They know if
they invite me over and I see that they
fans and collectors to see if they had a
copy of any missing episodes on
videotape, and the fans came through. So
now it's a Complete Series set and not just
a Very Best Of.
The set will be released on September
23.
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Apparently Angela Bassett would.
Bassett, who is joining the cast of ER as a
"troubled" new attending, is bringing her
husband along with her. Courtney B.
have bushels of fresh-picked peaches just
waiting for a home that I will offer my
own kitchen counter space to take some of
those gorgeous peaches off their hands.
Such sacrifice, yes, I know. ;-) (Thanks
Suzanne!)
Scrubs, Grey's Anatomy may be
banned in Italy
By Kona Gallagher (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 4:40:00 AM
Filed under: Industry, ER, House, Scrubs,
Grey's Anatomy, Reality-Free I used to be
a huge ER fan. Back in the good ol' Dr.
Doug Ross days, I wouldn't miss an
episode. It was the first medical drama that
I had ever really watched, and I paid
attention to it like I was watching an
educational video in med school.
This came in handy several years back
when I was on a flight to Scotland. It was a
long flight and I was trying to sleep when I
heard a commotion. A middle-aged man a
few rows ahead of me appeared to be
choking. However, it quickly became
apparent that he was having an allergic
reaction that was causing his throat to
close up. It was bad news all around, but
luckily, there had been an episode of ER
that dealt with a very similar situation. So
what did I do? I grabbed a pen, took it
apart, and jammed the tube into his throat,
opening his airway and saving his life.
True story.
Vance, who spent five seasons on NBC's
Law & Order: Criminal Intent as ADA
Ron Carver, is also joining the cast. Vance
will be playing another attending physician
an the on-screen husband of his real-life
wife on a recurring basis. While I'm sure
that the set of ER is a perfectly safe place
for Vance, I'm highly worried about the
fate of his character.
Continue reading Courtney B. Vance
joins his wife on ER
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Peaches, nectarines, and all manner of
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Okay, none of that actually happened --
because HOSPITAL SHOWS ARE NOT
REAL. Apparently, however, Italy doesn't
think its residents understand this.
Continue reading Scrubs, Grey's
Anatomy may be banned in Italy
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
stone fruit are glorious in summer. Here is
a simple and delicious peach cobbler
recipe that we've used for several years.
Feel free to experiment with the ratios and
the fruit. You can easily add in some
blueberries or nectarines. If your peaches
What's On Tonight: Great
American Dog,
Architecture School,
Dinner: Impossible
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 9:02:00 AM
Filed under: Programming, What To
Watch Tonight, Reality-Free
• NBC has the Olympics all night.
• At 8, CBS has a new Great American
Dog.
• ESPN has more Little League World
Series coverage at 8.
• At 9, Bravo has a new Project Runway,
followed by a new Shear Genius.
• Sci-Fi has a new Ghost Hunters
International at 9, then two new episodes
of Scare Tactics.
• Sundance has the series premiere of
Architecture School at 9, followed by the
series premiere of On The Road In
America.
• At 9:30, A&E has a new Dog The
Bounty Hunter, then two new episodes of
Criss Angel Mindfreak.
• At 10, Food Network has the season
premiere of Dinner: Impossible, with new
host Michael Symon.
Check your local TV listings for more.
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
aren't perfectly sweet to begin with, you
may need to add more sugar to the filling.
Continue reading "Peach Cobbler" »
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Warren Sapp joins the Inside the
NFL team
By Allison Waldman (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 6:01:00 AM
Filed under: Sports, Celebrities, Reality-
Free Will Warren Sapp get that slot on
Dancing with the Stars like he predicted?
We won't know till next Monday when
ABC makes the live announcement on
Good Morning America.
However, the former defensive lineman
for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and
Oakland Raiders has landed a new TV job.
Sapp is joining Inside the NFL on
Showtime, taking a seat beside fellow
former NFL players Cris Collinsworth and
Phil Simms, as well as CBS broadcaster
James Brown.
As a player, Sapp was a force to be
reckoned with, albeit as a run stopper in
the middle of the line. He also has a
reputation for being savvy and a big time
talker, a guy who has an opinion about
everything and anything. Hmm...smart and
Restored 'Godfather' and 'Godfather Part
II' Screen in NYC
By Christopher Campbell
(Cinematical)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 9:02:00 AM
Filed under: Classics, Drama, Paramount,
Tech Stuff, Exhibition, Home
Entertainment New York City's Film
Forum will be screening both The
Godfather and The Godfather Part II
during a special three week engagement
beginning September 12. And yes, it's a
big deal. The first two installments of
Francis Ford Coppola's trilogy are often
featured in repertory houses, sure, but Film
Forum's presentation is of newly restored
35mm prints, which were produced under
the direction of Coppola and
cinematographer Gordon Willis and the
supervision of film historian and master
preservationist Robert A. Harris. The
Godfather will run solo from September 12
through September 18, then The Goffather
Part II will run solo from September 19
loud. That will probably make him a real
asset on Inside the NFL. In fact, he might
have some of NBA commentator Charles
Barkley's charismatic appeal.
Continue reading Warren Sapp joins the
Inside the NFL team
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
through September 25, and finally, back-to
-back screenings will be featured from
September 26 through October 2 (the
double feature does, unfortunately, require
separate admissions). As far as I can tell,
neither of these digitally restored classics
What are the top moments in TV
history?
By Bob Sassone (TV Squad)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 7:04:00 AM
Filed under: Programming, Awards,
Emmys, Reality-Free We're used to
reading all of the lists that rank the best
and worst TV shows of all-time, now ABC
is getting even more specific than that.
What are the top moments in television
history?
You can vote for them at the ABC site
and your answers will be revealed on the
60th Primetime Emmy Awards, which will
be broadcast on Sunday, September 21.
There are two categories, comedy and
drama (sorry fans of game shows and
reality shows). No, you can't write in your
own vote, you have to pick from the
finalists that they've already chosen for
you, so right off the bat you know there's
includes new computer-generated
characters or backgrounds, and obviously
the guns are likely to still be guns rather
than walkie talkies.
If you can't make it to NYC for any of
these shows, Paramount is apparently also
releasing the restored films in other select
cities, including Los Angeles and San
Francisco. Or, you can check out the new
versions as part of " The Godfather, the
Coppola Restoration collection," which
also includes a remastered Godfather Part
III, on DVD or Blu-Ray beginning
September 26 23 (the DVDs may be
purchased in a 5-disc box set, which
includes two discs of special features, or
separately, in case you like to forget about
Part III; the Blu-Ray versions seem to be
only offered together in a 4-disc set).
Continue reading Restored 'Godfather'
and 'Godfather Part II' Screen in NYC
Read| Permalink| Email this| Comments
TV* Movies* 27
Fanboy Bites: New Harry
Potter Trailer and
Fassbender Wants
going to be a lot of "but what about..." and 'Inglorious Bastards'
"why did they include..." talk.
Continue reading What are the top By Erik Davis (Cinematical)
moments in TV history? Submitted at 8/20/2008 1:02:00 PM
Permalink| Email this| | Comments
Thomas Haden Church Gets
Dark and Dramatic with 'Don
McKay'
By Monika Bartyzel (Cinematical)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 12:02:00 PM
Filed under: Drama, Independent,
Casting, Cinematical Indie Once you get a
taste of Smart People, deal with Eddie
Murphy's Nowhereland, take on a
stalkerific Sandra Bullock, and then steal
Kate Hudson's work, it's time to get into
some dark drama.
Variety reports that Thomas Haden
Church has signed on to star in a new indie
film called Don McKay, with the likes of
Elisabeth Shue, Melissa Leo, M. Emmet
Walsh, and Keith David. Coming from
writer/director Jake Goldberger and
shielded by a Screen Actors Guild waiver,
the $5 million project just started Church says that it's a passion project
production in Boston. The film focuses on that he's been trying to develop with
a man who leaves his hometown after a Goldberger since Sideways. Aside from
the confusion that it should evoke from
tragedy forces him to do so. Twenty-five
years later, he comes back when he hears those into Canadian poetry, this sounds
like an interesting project -- especially with
that "his long-lost love is dying." Not
surprisingly, his return spins "a web of this cast.
confusion, deceit, and murder." Old secrets Permalink| Email this| Comments
never die in the movie world.
28 Movies*
FANBOY
continued from page 27
Filed under: Action, Casting,
RumorMonger, Celebrities and
Controversy, Fandom, Distribution, Family
Films, Newsstand, Harry Potter, Remakes
and Sequels
It's a lonely day in the neighborhood ....
Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:
I'm not sure whether Warner Bros. was
prepared for the ridiculous fanboy (and
girl) backlash that came with pushing the
film's release date back several months to
the middle of July, 2009, though it looks
like they've re-grouped, dusted themselves
off and are preparing to get that marketing
machine up and running again. Following
a statement from Warners chief Alan Horn
(included after the jump) comes word from
our friends at Bloghogwarts that Warner
Bros. has sent in a new trailer (marked at a
minute and a half) to the BBFC for
approval. Could this be the studio's version
of make-up sex? (PG rated make-up sex, of
course.) Only time will tell ...
Inglorious Bastards: These days, when it
comes to the cast of Quentin Tarantino's
How Many 'Death Race' Points
Do You Get for a Screenwriter?
By Monika Bartyzel (Cinematical)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 9:46:00 AM
Filed under: Celebrities and Controversy,
Remakes and Sequels
The upcoming Death Race remake may
look nothing like the original (nor have
any awesome point collections like the
original, which you can see above), but
maybe that's because it isn't actually based
on the classic cult movie?
The Hollywood Reporter posts that
writer Adam Stone is determined to stop
the release of Death Race, which is
scheduled to hit screens this Friday. He's
filed a copywright infringement lawsuit
WWII flick Inglorious Bastards, nothing is
set in stone (or badass, motherf**king
stone, as QT would say). Thus, we want to
be real careful about this latest news (via
Variety) that Michael Fassbender is "in
talks" to join the ensemble cast. Note that
he's "in talks", as were a few other guys
(Simon Pegg, David Krumholtz, though
the latter is still mentioned by the trade)
before they dropped out. Though they don't
say who he'd be playing, the German-
speaking actor would most likely take on
the role of badass motherf**king Nazi in
charge of total damage ... which sounds
about right to me. Fassbender, of course, is
best known for his role as Stelios in 300,
and is still set to appear opposite Abbie
Cornish in Wuthering Heights.
Continue reading Fanboy Bites: New
Harry Potter Trailer and Fassbender Wants
'Inglorious Bastards'
Permalink| Email this| Comments
claiming that the film is based on a script
he pitched to director Paul W. S. Anderson
and producer Jeremy Bolt. He thinks that a
copy of the script, Joust, was kept and
worked into what seems to be a Death
Race 2000 revamp -- one with at least 39
elements that are just like his refused
screenplay.
Is this why the film is darker, less
campy, and with a lot less reported civilian
casualties? Currently, Universal has
declined to comment and there's no word
on what damages Stone is seeking from the
lawsuit.
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Interview: Rainn Wilson
By Eric Kohn (Cinematical)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 8:02:00 AM
Filed under: Comedy, Casting, New
Releases, Fandom, DIY/Filmmaking,
Interviews
Above: Rainn Wilson lets his hair down
for The Rocker.
Fans of Rainn Wilson's offbeat, hilarious
and strangely endearing performance as
Dwight Schrute on NBC's The Office
might expect him to transition into film
work with straightforward comedy, and
The Rocker confirms that suspicion.
However, they might not realize the
serious professional motives behind his
choice. In the movie, directed by Peter
Cattaneo( The Full Grown Monty), Wilson
plays a grown-up dolt named Fish with a
scary fixation on classic rock. Abandoned
by the band Vesuvius in his teens -- before
they became a commercial phenomenon --
Fish spends the next twenty years working
deadbeat jobs and wishing things happened
differently. Naturally, he gets a second
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
chance: When the opportunity rolls around
to drum for his nephew's high school, Fish
goes for it. Ageism and slapstick humor
ensue.
While not exactly a classic, The Rocker
proves Wilson has the charisma to carry a
movie. The script could use some
polishing, but Wilson manages to play a
completely dysfunctional human being
without ever becoming an annoyance. It's a
testament to his skill as an actor with
calculated timing. The humor emerges
from the naturalism of his performances,
which make you believe in the outlandish
characters he portrays. In a conversation
with Cinematical recently, Wilson
elaborated on his particular strategies as
his career advances, reminisced about his
days as a New York theater actor, and shed
some light on a few upcoming projects.
Continue reading Interview: Rainn
Wilson
Permalink| Email this| Comments
'My Life in Ruins' Sets
May Release Date,
Opposite 'Star Trek'
By Erik Davis (Cinematical)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 1:32:00 PM
Filed under: Comedy, Drama, Romance,
Box Office, Distribution, Newsstand
Cinematical has just been informed that
Nia Vardalos' My Life in Ruins has
scheduled a May 8, 2009 release date,
which, so far, puts it opposite Star Trek as
the weekend's only other wide release. And
yes, we're told it will be a wide release,
and that a brand, spanky new trailer will
arrive soon (pay no attention to the one
leaked online earlier in the month).
Produced by Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson,
Ruins stars Nia Vardalos as she returns to
her Greek roots (and to the country itself)
as a tour guide who discovers her romantic
side while showing a ragtag group of
tourists around. Directed by Donald Petrie
( How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days), Richard
Dreyfuss and Rachel Dratch also star.
Fox Searchlight must have a good
feeling about this flick if they're throwing
it out right at the beginning of the summer
-- and opposite the giganto Star Trek--
though the film's low-key vibes and
romantic scenery will counter the
ridiculous Trekker fanboy-ish quite well.
Will My Life in Ruins bring Vardalos
some more big, fat Greek luck? We shall
see ...
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
400 Screens, 400 Blows -
The Fantastic Ford
By Jeffrey M. Anderson
(Cinematical)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 3:02:00 PM
Filed under: Columns, 400 Screens, 400
Blows
A couple of weeks ago I was in Safeway
and I spotted a cheap DVD, a double-bill
of The Fugitive(1993) and U.S.
Marshals(1998), and I impulsively bought
it. I already owned The Fugitive on
laserdisc (that old thing) and had seen it
many times, but I hadn't ever seen U.S.
Marshals. I know it's supposed to be awful,
but the cast of Tommy Lee Jones, Robert
Downey Jr. and Wesley Snipes suddenly
appealed to me. I decided to re-watch The
Fugitive before I settled down to the
sequel. I liked it as much as ever; it's a rare
example of everything in the Hollywood
machine coming together in the right way
at the right time and working perfectly. But
this time, something new struck me.
Last week I wrote a defense of Indiana
Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal
Skull(184 screens), which I determined has
been judged more by its hype than by the
actual content of the film. But I didn't get
much of a chance to talk about the film's
star, Harrison Ford, who is an integral part
of the film's success. I'll be the first to
admit that Ford is an exceedingly limited
actor. One of his failings is his seeming
lack of humor and spontaneity in certain
roles, exacerbated by the fact that, in
person, he comes across just as humorless
(though it could be that he merely
mistrusts journalists). But ironically, one
of his best attributes he shares with the
comic actor Jackie Chan: a reluctance to
enter into the action.
Continue reading 400 Screens, 400
Blows - The Fantastic Ford
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Box Office: This Bunny is a
Longshot in the Death Race
By Matt Bradshaw (Cinematical)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 11:02:00 AM
Filed under: Action, Comedy, Sci-Fi &
Fantasy, Box Office Predictions After four
weeks as the top movie in America, The
Dark Knight finally yielded the spot to the
action comedy Tropic Thunder despite the
threat of boycotts. Here's the top five:
1. Tropic Thunder:$25.8 million
2. The Dark Knight:$16.4 million
3. Star Wars: The Clone Wars:$14.6
million
4. Mirrors:$11.2 million
5. Pineapple Express:$9.8 million
Four more new releases this week. Will
any of them be able to knock Tropic
Thunder's, um, thunder? Let's see:
Death Race
What's It All About: Jason Statham stars
in this reimagining of Roger Corman's
Death Race 2000. In the not too distant
future prison inmates are given a chance
for freedom by taking part in a brutal cross
-country race that can have only one
survivor.
Why It Might Do Well: The summer
blockbuster season is on the wane, and
since this is the only action flick coming
out this week, Death Race may benefit
Viggo Has a Big Gun in 'Appaloosa'
By Elisabeth Rappe (Cinematical)
Submitted at 8/20/2008 10:32:00 AM
Filed under: Action, Drama, Romance,
Warner Brothers, Movie Marketing,
Images, Western
Cinematical has received a few new
photos from the upcoming Appaloosa, and
some additional production photos
surfaced over at CanMag. While this film
is playing at Toronto next month, it doesn't
seem to be attracting the buzz that The
Road is getting, which is a downright
shame. It has a stellar cast (can a
combination of Viggo Mortensen, Ed
from the public's need to see things blow
up. Also, Statham does have his admirers.
Why It Might Not Do Well: You can
only watch so many spectacular car
wrecks.
Number of Theaters: 2,400
Prediction:$15 million
Continue reading Box Office: This
Bunny is a Longshot in the Death Race
Permalink| Email this| Comments
Harris, and Jeremy Irons go wrong?) and it
looks like a good, hard Western in the style
of Unforgiven. Now, I have a bit of a
love/hate relationship with Westerns -- I
Movies* Tech Tips* 29
Hack Your Wii for
Homebrew Apps and
DVD Playback [Wii]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 2:00:00 AM
Despite the fact that it ships with a DVD
drive, for whatever godforsaken reason,
the Nintendo Wii doesn't support DVD
playback—until last week, that is, when a
homebrew hacker released a tool that
enables DVD playback on your Wii. The
best part? You don't have to crack open
your Wii or disturb your hardware in any
way to install it. Let's take a detailed look
at how to softmod your Wii with the
Twilight hack to run homebrew apps. Then
I'll show you how to install the Wii port of
the open source media player, mplayer, to
turn your Wii into a DVD (or should I say
WiiVD?) player. What You'll Need Since
we're going to be doing a softmod of your
Wii (i.e., we're not modifying any
hardware), you don't really need much to
accomplish this hack.
• Nintendo Wii
• An FAT16-Formatted SD Memory Card
(more on this below)
• The Legend of Zelda: Twilight
Princess($50)
live on the coyote infested prairie of
Colorado, and have grown up around the
history and myth of the Wild Wild West
my entire life. The genre can be pretty
yawn inducing for me, unless it's done
right. But this one is keeping my interest. I
loved the trailer, and I can't wait to see
Mortensen and Harris work together again
-- and under Harris' direction, no less.
Appaloosa opens October 3rd, 2008.
Gallery: Appaloosa
Permalink| Email this| Comments
30 Tech Tips*
HACK
continued from page 29
• The Wii Brew SD Installer(Windows)
• A Windows PC with an SD card reader
NOTE: I'm doing this all on a Windows
PC, but you can manually install the
Twilight Hack if you don't have access to a
Windows PC.
The secret sauce lies in the Twilight
Princess game. Essentially, we're going to
load a fake game into Twilight Princess
that exploits a buffer overflow and allows
you install homebrew software on your
Wii.
Sound complicated? Figuring it out may
have been, but the excellent Wii hackers
have made exploiting the Twilight hack is
a cinch.
Hacking Your Wii for Homebrew
To get started, plug your SD card into
your computer. It needs to be formatted as
a FAT16 filesystem, so find the SD card in
My Computer and format it by right-
clicking, selecting Format, and setting
FAT as your file system. (If you have
trouble formatting your SD card this way,
try out the SD Card Formatter.)
Now it's time to prepare the SD card with
the Twilight Hack. If you haven't already,
download the Wii Brew SD Installer.
When you've got it, make sure your SD
card is plugged in and run the installer.
The installer is fairly self-explanatory, but
I'll walk you through it.
Choose Your Install Location
This should match the location of the SD
card you just formatted above. Select the
Homebrew Features and Twilight Hack
Now you need to select the packages you
want to install on your SD card (and,
eventually, your Wii). I'd suggest selecting
the Homebrew Channel (in fact, you need
Best FTP Clients? [Hive Five Call For Contenders]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 9:00:00 AM
People have used FTP clients to upload,
download, and share files over the internet
for years, and though the FTP protocol
continues to age, it's still commonly used
all over the world. Once barebones, many
newer FTP clients boast a wide and
impressive range of features that are
helping to push FTP (and other, more
secure improvements like SFTP) into new
to if you want this to work), the Homebrew
Browser, and DVDX (you'll need this last
one for DVD playback). Make sure to
select the Twilight Hack that matches your
region. Hit Next and the Wii SD Installer
will copy all the necessary files to your SD
card.
Take Note of Your Twilight Princess
Disc
If you're in the U.S., your copy of
Twilight Princess is one of three different
versions. One of the versions of the disc
requires that you use a different save slot
when we load the game later on, so just
take note of the text on the inner circle of
the bottom of the Twilight Princess game
disc. (I needed TwilightHack2, for
example.)
Perform the Twilight Hack on Your Wii
By this point, your SD card is officially
prepared for your Wii. Unplug it from your
computer and move over to your Wii. Plug
it in and power up your Wii. At this point,
you'll need to erase your current Twilight
Princess saved game, copy the Twilight
hack to your Wii, and execute it in
Twilight Princess. (If you haven't played
the game and created a save slot, you
should do that before proceeding.) The
video below from the WiiBrew folks
details exactly how to do this.
NOTE: If the installation froze after you
loaded the saved game and talked to the
man, chances are you need to use the other
saved game.
You'll need to accept a disclaimer and go
through a few other screens to finish the
installation (just use the 1 button on your
Wiimote to accept). When it completes,
head back to the Wii menu. The glorious
heights of file sharing and transfer ease.
For this week's Hive Five, we want to hear
all about your favorite FTP client. On
Thursday we'll be back with a roundup of
the top five candidates, but for now, keep
reading for more details and to nominate
your favorite FTP client.
The Hive Five nomination round takes
place in the comments, where you post
your favorite tool for the job. We get
hundreds of comments, so to make your
nomination clear, please include it at the
new Wii Homebrew Channel awaits.
Turn Your Wii into a DVD Player
Now that you've got the Homebrew
Channel installed, setting up DVD support
is a breeze. Fire up your the Homebrew
Channel from the main Wii menu and you
should see the DVDx installer and
Homebrew Browser. Click on the DVDx
installer and run through the prompt. Hit A
to select Normal install unless you've
installed a modchip in your Wii. (If you're
following this guide, chances are you don't
have a modchip.) You've finished the first
step.
Now you need to shut off your Wii and
plug the SD card back into your computer,
because it's time to install mplayer, the app
that will play back DVDs on your Wii.
You can download it from the HackMii
web site at the bottom of this post.
(Mplayer appears to be available in the
Homebrew Browser, but it's not the
version that supports DVD playback, so
make sure you download it manually.)
After you've downloaded it, copy the
entire mplayer folder to the apps folder on
your SD card. Now just take the SD card
back to your Wii, plug it in, and run the
Homebrew Channel again. This time you
should see mplayer next to your other
installed apps, like below.
To play back a DVD, just fire up
mplayer, insert a DVD, and select the Play
DVD option in the mplayer menu. You'll
notice two Play DVD menu items, the
second of which reads Play DVD
(libdvdnav). The libdvdnav attempts to use
the built-in DVD menu, while the other
just plays the first title. Unfortunately
libdvdnav doesn't really work correctly
top of your comment like so: VOTE: FTP
Client Goes Here. If you don't follow this
format, we may not count your vote. To
prevent tampering with the results, votes
from first-time commenters may not be
counted. After you've made your
nomination, let us know what makes it
stand out from the competition.
About the Hive Five: The Hive Five
feature series asks readers to answer the
most frequently asked question we
get—"Which tool is the best?" Once a
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
with the Wiimote yet, but it looks to be on
its way.
It takes a few seconds for mplayer to
start playing the DVD, but once it does it
plays without a hitch (or at least it has in
all my experience). Thanks to YouTube,
here's what it looks like:
The Wiimote/Gamecube controller
playback shortcuts work as follows: A -
Pause
B - OSD
1/X - Toggle on screen menu
RIGHT - Seek 10s forward
LEFT - Seek 10s backward
UP - Seek 60s forward
DOWN - Seek 60s backward
+/R - Seek to the next chapter
-/L - Seek to the previous chapter
HOME/Z - Quit What Else? Once you've
got your Wii opened up to homebrew apps,
you've unlocked all kinds of potential,
including emulators for old-school gaming
consoles, different media players, and
other utilities. If you've already got the
Homebrew channel running on your Wii,
let's hear what homebrew apps you've been
using and loving in the comments. If the
very idea of hacking your Wii sends
shivers down your spine but you'd still like
to squeeze out more functionality, check
out how to use your Wii as a media center.
Adam Pash is a senior editor for
Lifehacker whose multitasking Wii has
cemented its spot next to his TV. His
special feature Hack Attack appears every
Tuesday on Lifehacker. Subscribe to the
Hack Attack RSS feed to get new
installments in your newsreader.
week we'll put out a call for contenders
looking for the best solution to a certain
problem, then YOU tell us your favorite
tools to get the job done. Every Thursday,
we'll report back with the top five
recommendations and give you a chance to
vote on which is best. For an example,
check out last week's Hive Five Best
Desktop Search Applications.
Gmail Superstars and
Quick Links Make a
Killer To-Do List [Gmail]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 6:00:00 AM
We've already shown you how to use
Gmail Superstars and Gmail Quick
Links—both exclusive features of
previously mentioned Gmail Labs—and
now reader Alex McRoberts details how he
uses the two excellent features to turn his
Gmail account into a killer to-do list
manager. Here's how he did it: I went to
the General settings (after enabling the two
features) and enabled the red, orange and
green stars (as well as keeping the original
yellow star).
Then I assigned each of the new colors
of stars to a few emails to test my search
(which would later be the basis of my
Quick Link): l:^ss_sr OR l:^ss_so OR
l:^ss_sg
This search shows an email which has
the "label" Superstar Star Red OR has the
"label" Superstar Star Orange OR has the
"label" Superstar Star Green.
Next I saved the Quick Link as "Todo
List." As for what the stars mean, I keep
things red if I still have to do it, orange if
it's in progress, and green if I need to keep
it in the pile for a while even though I'm
done with it. Then when I no longer need
it, I remove the star and the item is
subsequently removed from the list.
Sounds like a good system. I've been
using the green checkmark and red
exclamation point icons for a bit more
context in my Gmail-based to-dos, but I
am using a setup very similar to Alex's.
How about you? If you're using Gmail to
manage your to-dos, let's hear more about
your methods in the comments.
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper Tech Tips* Religion* Food* 31

More Solutions for Auto-Switching Coconut Cupcakes with Coconut

Cream Cheese Frosting
Linux Wallpaper [Linux] By Garrett McCord
By Kevin Purdy (Lifehacker) the downloads, and once you set the job, Wallpaper Tray's an attractive option. The Submitted at 8/11/2008 12:32:11 AM

Submitted at 8/19/2008 1:00:00 AM

Earlier this week, we showed you how to
auto-change desktop backgrounds in
Ubuntu using a small script and a
scheduling tool. Turns out a good number
of our commenters were already hip to
dynamic, time-tracking wallpaper, and
have found easier, more full-featured
means of keeping their desktops
fresh—and using some pretty cool
backgrounds as well. Let's take a look at
what else you can do to keep your Linux
desktop fresh without a lot of hassle.
Gnome Wallchanger
Martin Owens, author of the original
wallpaper-changing script I detailed, wrote
to let us know that he'd since built that
little function into a complete app with a
user interface, a great feature list, and
integrated scheduling through Linux's cron
tool. The really cool features are the ability
to auto-grab wallpaper from any RSS feed
(including Flickr), or set up searches
through deviantArt that auto-delivers fresh
wallpaper to your desktop. You decide
how often to rotate the wallpaper (minutes,
hours, days, months), and where to stash
there's no background app necessary to
run. Here's the single-screen setup:
You can grab Ubuntu-ready packages
from his Ubuntu Forums post, or add his
PPA repository list to your sources and
keep up to date.
Desktop Drapes
This one's more accessible to non-
Ubuntu users, and offers the same kind of
no-code convenience. Drapes pulls
wallpaper from your GNOME Appearance
panel and lists them according to how they
fit your resolution (perfect fit, 4:3,
widescreen, etc.), but it can also monitor
any other folder for new files. You check
one box to auto-start, and it offers hot-
switching by right-clicking its panel icon.
Drapes wouldn't let me change my
scheduling time—possibly because of the
cron job I've already set up—but otherwise
seems to be a straightforward switcher.
Drapes is available in many Linux
repositories. Thanks to twosox and many
others!
Wallpaper Tray
For those who like to keep their
wallpaper out of the main system settings,
or just have a lot of images to choose from,
app, which you manually add to your auto-
starting apps, can change wallpaper on a
timer and set scaling like its brethren, but
also lets you maintain multiple folders of
wallpapers, scanned at each startup. You
can switch backgrounds from the tray icon,
and there's even a search tool for finding
the specific image you want to change
to—nice to have after a downloading
binge. Wallpaper Tray is available in many
repositories, and as pre-packaged and
source downloads at its web site.
Neat idea: World Sunlight/Weather Map
as Wallpaper
Commenter Joelena once had a pretty
neat desktop setup: A real-time world
weather and sunlight map as a background,
updated through the powerful wget
command.
The auto-updating JPEG file is courtesy
of the OpenTopia world encyclopedia.
We've offered a guide to mastering wget,
but we're asking the crowd: What's the best
way to set this up?
Got any more desktop-switching tools or
neat background ideas to share? Let's hear
'em in the comments.
Please welcome guest author Garrett
McCord of Vanilla Garlic who shares his
recipe for some of the best cupcakes we've
ever had. ~Elise
Most coconut cupcakes are often a bit
too dense and flavorless in my opinion,
often presenting bland cake with a
avalanche of coconut plopped on top.
Tired of coconut cupcake posers, I decided
to develop a recipe that would really rally
in the flavor of coconut in a cupcake. This
one uses coconut milk in place of milk,
and butter instead of oil, and has shredded cupcake so each bite is just sweet and
exotic, leaving whispers of flavor behind.
coconut through and through giving it a
divine taste that puts other coconut It is, in my opinion, the ultimate coconut
cupcake recipe.
cupcakes to shame.
In light of that, the cupcake itself is Continue reading "Coconut Cupcakes
with Coconut Cream Cheese Frosting" »
surprisingly light in texture compared to
other coconut cupcakes. The coconut
cream cheese frosting enhances the

Warren takes job of getting religion

By dpulliam
Submitted at 8/19/2008 1:00:12 PM
Between the lines of the coverage of Rick
Warren’s forum with the two major
presidential candidates was a rather
significant development: A pastor, not a
member of the media, was asking the
questions and controlling the agenda of the
first major presidential contest in 2008.
Plenty has been said in the media about
Warren and how he arrived at this rather
significant moment in his life. What hasn’t
been said as much is that the church in a
sense replaced the media Saturday night.
The general sense I get from the
coverage of the event is that Warren was
somehow able to ask questions that
mainstream media types would be less
comfortable asking. I guess someone
somewhere decided that the public desired
these types of questions as opposed to the
questions asked by Wolf Blitzer. But is it
the public that has changed or is it the
media? Or is it the church? Or is it just
Warren?
No clear answer emerges from the
coverage I’ve surveyed, but there are some
clues.
Here is the San Diego Union-Tribune’s
relatively brief analysis of Warren, which
relies heavily on John Green, a senior
fellow in religion and American politics at
the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life:
LAKE FOREST — That Pastor Rick
Warren was able to put together the first
joint appearance of the presumptive 2008
presidential nominees cements his status as
one of the rising stars of the evangelical
movement.
“It’s very significant,” said John Green, a
senior fellow in religion and American
politics at the Pew Forum on Religion &
Public Life. “One of the hallmarks of the
2008 presidential campaign up to this point
has been the increased level of discussion
of faith and values.”
Voicing similar themes, The Los
Angeles Times writes that the event
demonstrates that Warren is “among the
most significant evangelists of his
generation.” We can quibble with the use
of the term “evangelists” in the lead, but
on a more significant note, when was the
last time a pastor of a church (yes, a very
big church) was able to command the
presence on a single night of the
Democratic and Republican candidates for
leader of the free world?
Warren’s local newspaper The Orange
County Register writes that Warren hoped
to use the forum to redefine politics.
Whether or not Warren is successful or not
at redefining politics, he certainly has
taken a major step in helping redefine
politics and its relationship with the media.
Whether or not we should give Warren
all the credit (or blame) for this is certainly
not a matter that can be decided today. But
I am hoping that there is some media
coverage out there that will discuss how
we got to this point and whether the
media’s ability (or inability) to understand
the vitally important subject of religion has
anything to do with it.
Photo of Pastor Rick Warren at
Saddleback Church used under a
Wikimedia Commons license.
Bookmark to:
32 Tech Tips* Religion* Food*
The Context-Configured Desktop
[Featured Desktop]
By Adam Pash (Lifehacker)
Submitted at 8/19/2008 8:00:00 AM
Reader math0ne flaunts his killer, totally
customized Windows desktop complete
with separate operating modes depending
on what he's doing. There's the focused
configuration(pictured above), the creation
configuration, and the research
configuration. The apps he uses vary based
Baked Stuffed Clams
By Elise
Submitted at 7/28/2008 2:42:14 PM
For most California girls, the idea of
"digging for clams" isn't really part of our
cultural makeup. But out in Rhode Island,
and the beaches south of Cape Cod,
digging in the sand for your dinner is
apparently a regular summertime activity.
My friend Alden (age 8) and her sister
on configuration, but favorites include
previously mentioned apps like Samurize,
foobar200, and Executor. He has detailed
descriptions and notes on each
configuration, so be sure to check them
out. While you're there, share your jaw-
dropping desktop in the Lifehacker Show
and Tell Flickr group.
The Focused Configuration[Flickr]
Piper (my goddaughter, age 5) took me
clam digging this weekend. It wasn't
exactly what I expected. Although we went
out in low tide, we still had to get chest
deep in the water to find a sandy spot to
scrape the bottom of with our toes. We
found about 6 empty shells or rocks for
every intact clam. We were out for more
than an hour, shoulders sunburned and toes
scraped, nearly stung by red jelly fish, and
Obama, Andrew, Ross and “ensoulment”
By tmatt
Submitted at 8/19/2008 2:43:08 AM
Since I am out here on the road, at times
far from wireless and my usual news-
media fixes, I am still playing catch-up on
the actual results of the Saddleback forum
(transcripts here and here) the other night.
We are all in the post-media-event
commentary stage now and, you regular
readers know, GetReligion tries to stay
away from editorials and commentary
pieces as much as possible. However, Rod
“friend of this blog” Dreher is onto
something with his post about an exchange
between Andrew Sullivan and his Atlantic
Monthly colleague Ross Douthat about
Sen. Barack Obama’s “pay grade” remark
in response to the pivotal question about
abortion.
I raise this issue here because this
exchange between Sullivan and Douthat —
who are both Catholics, but with very
different views on the teachings of their
church — focuses on a matter of fact, a
fact at the crossroads of theology and law
that really affects how journalists cover
this issue.
Watch the video clip at the top of this
post (by all means feel free to turn it off
before the very political, very pro-McCain
editing kicks in), then read Sullivan’s take:
Obama is being razzed by the usual
suspects for saying that the theological,
scientific and moral question of when
human life becomes a human person is
“above his paygrade.”. . . But even the
Vatican doesn’t claim to know that precise
managed to get a grand total of 9 clams (3
clams each). I know there are more
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
answer. From the lips of Ratzinger:
“The Magisterium has not expressly
committed itself to an affirmation of a
philosophical nature [as to the time of
ensoulment], but it constantly affirms the
moral condemnation of any kind of
procured abortion.”
So it’s above the Pope’s pay-grade as
well.
Thus, notes Douthat, Sullivan and others
defending Obama’s answer are arguing
that Pastor Rich Warren asked a
theological question, one that points
toward the eternal mystery of
“ensoulment” — which certainly is an
issue that the U.S. Supreme Court is not
going to be handling anytime soon. And
“ensoulment” would certainly be above the
“pay grade” of a layman in a very
congregational, very “low church” (in the
worship and church tradition sense)
denomination such as the United Church of
Christ.
But there’s a problem. Note the wording
of Warren’s question in the forum: “At
what point does a baby get human rights,
in your view?”
This is a legal and political question, one
that has affected debates on several
political issues, such as legislation on
“Partial-birth abortion” and other bills
trying to protect the lives of children who
are accidentally born alive during abortion
procedures. Obama certainly knows that
his critics differ with him on both of those
issues and want to see him defend his
political views on the record ( as MZ just
noted).
efficient ways to do this (as I'm sure some
of you will tell me), but at the end of the
day, it didn't matter. Hunting for clams was
just a great excuse to play in the warm sea
water on a beautiful sunny day.
Here's the recipe for stuffed clams (also
called "stuffies") that Alden and Piper's
mom Heidi made with our hard-earned
catch. Do you have a favorite recipe for
stuffed clams? Please let us know about it
Thus, Ross notes:
Obama tried to dodge by saying that
from a “theological perspective” or a
“scientific perspective” the issue is “above
his pay grade.” But Warren asked a more
narrow question, and one that any
politician who votes on abortion laws
should be able to answer. And of course, as
a supporter of Roe and Casey, Obama does
have an answer: He thinks that a baby
acquires rights when it’s born — well,
perhaps depending on how and why it
happens to be born — and lacks them at
every juncture before birth. He just didn’t
want to come out and say it.
This is a crucial issue in the coverage.
Let me stress, this has nothing to do with
whether one agrees or disagrees with
Obama on this issue. Please do not click
“comment” to argue about that. What I am
trying to underline is an actual question
linked to the facts in the news story, the
facts about the question that Warren asked
and why he asked it.
The question again: In politics, in law, in
legislation, in public life, when does a
baby get basic human rights?
Forget theology for a moment. This is a
political question, the way Warren asked it.
It should have been possible to give a
political answer. Right? If Obama gives a
political answer, then reporters can quote
that answer and people can debate those
views in a political context. There’s no
reason to pump up the theological fog in
this case.
Bookmark to:
in the comments. I've heard that they are
especially good with a little Portuguese
sausage mixed in the stuffing.
Continue reading "Baked Stuffed Clams"
»
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Obama: “folks are lying”
By Mollie
Submitted at 8/18/2008 1:01:37 PM
Yesterday I noted the importance of the
abortion issue to evangelicals at the
Saddleback Forum. It’s also important to
Catholics and other religious advocates of
pro-life policies — not that you have to be
religious to be pro-life, of course.
Obama has been working hard to appeal
to religious voters who, in large part due to
the abortion issue, have for decades been
reliable supporters of Republican nominees
for president. The campaign knows that
abortion is a big stumbling block and
Obama has been working to reach out to
pro-lifers, strategically and rhetorically.
It’s a delicate walk when you have a
perfect rating from NARAL Pro-Choice
America for the three years you’ve been in
the Senate (2008 ratings to come).
NARAL endorsed Obama over Hillary
Clinton, to give you an idea of how they
view his support of abortion rights.
In an interview with Relevant, a
Christian magazine, Obama said “mental
distress” should not qualify as a
justification for “late-term” abortions.
People wondered if this was a slight
moderation of Obama’s firm stance in
support of Roe v. Wade. Democratic base
groups that support abortion rights were
not pleased. He quickly clarified that he
supports mental health exceptions to any
ban on late-term abortions.
The media has been reporting heavily on
Obama’s outreach to pro-life religious
voters, such as his appearance at the
Saddleback Forum last night or his support
from pro-life Catholics such as Douglas
Kmiec. It’s a very worthy story and
significant in many ways.
But there’s an abortion-related Barack
Obama story I’ve been watching for
months, waiting to review how the
mainstream media will handle it.
Unbelievably, it’s been only lightly and
sporadically covered — and only at the
surface. I have a feeling that’s about to
change owing to some recent major
movement from the National Right to Life
Committee. You can get hints that it’s out
there, heck it was out there in a different
way in January, but there’s little direct or
current mainstream coverage . . . yet.
The issue is whether or not Obama voted
against a bill in the Illinois State
Legislature that would protect babies born
after failed abortion attempts. I would
point you to mainstream media coverage
but there isn’t much. To get up to speed on
the underlying issues, at least from the
perspective of the pro-life community,
your best bet is to read David Freddoso’s
article on National Review Online (where
my better half writes). National Review
Online is a conservative Web site and
Freddoso is an author of a book critical of
Obama, but the first part of the piece is just
reportage rather than analysis.
Basically the deal is that Jill Stanek, a
nurse at a United Church of Christ-
affiliated hospital in Illinois, was assisting
with an abortion of a child who was
deemed to have Down Syndrome. Despite
the induced labor abortion, the baby was
born alive. No one tried to save the baby.
The hospital dismissed Stanek’s concerns
and the Republican Attorney General
notified her that nothing illegal had
occurred. A bill was proposed to rectify the
apparently grey legal area. The bill would
have required babies born after failed
abortion attempts to be treated in the same
manner as any other baby born alive. A
federal version eventually passed the
Senate unanimously and was signed into
law. Reliable pro-choice legislators
Barbara Boxer and Hillary Clinton, for
instance, voted in favor of the federal Born
-Alive Infants Protection Act.
There is no dispute that Obama opposed
the bill in 2001, 2002 and 2003. However,
he says he opposed it because it contained
language that would somehow threaten
Roe V. Wade. He says he would have
supported the federal version. There is a
passing reference to the issue in this recent
religion-heavy CBS News report:
Most evangelicals remain strongly pro-
life, and they don’t like what they’re
hearing from the pro-choice presumptive
Democratic nominee. (Gay marriage, by
contrast, has faded as a key issue for young
evangelicals.) Recently, conservatives
have begun to focus on Obama’s
opposition as a state senator to the Born-
Alive Infant Protection Act, designed to
require care for infants who survive a rare
type of abortion.
Obama said he would have supported
similar federal legislation, which was
approved, had he been in Congress at the
time. His campaign this week sent an email
to reporters saying that Obama opposed the
state legislation because it included
language that could have been used to
challenge Roe v. Wade.
I love that even an email from Obama to
reporters doesn’t seem to elicit coverage
on this issue of major concern to
evangelicals. And during the Saddleback
extravaganza, no less. Sigh.
On the other hand, a commenter in the
previous post reports that a CNN reporter
tried to ask Obama about the Born-Alive
Infants Protection Act after the Saddleback
Forum and was told that his question was
“offensive.” So maybe reporters are trying
but getting shut down.
Well, e-mail from the Obama campaign
or no, the plot thickened late last week. It
is true that there were various versions of
the bill in each of the years that Obama
opposed them but the National Right to
Life Committee produced documentation,
including legislative documents and
contemporaneous media reports, showing
that the 2003 version included the
language that Obama says he would have
required in order to support the bill.
Therefore, the scoop of the day goes to
CBN Reporter David Brody who had a
fascinating interview with Obama after the
Saddleback Forum. It was a pretty friendly
interview but he actually asked — and got
an answer — about the issue:
Brody: Real quick, the Born Alive Infant
Protection Act. I gotta tell you that’s the
one thing I get a lot of emails about and
it’s just not just from Evangelicals, it about
Catholics, Protestants, main — they’re
trying to understand it because there was
some literature put out by the National
Right to Life Committee. And they’re
basically saying they felt like you
Religion* 33
misrepresented your position on that bill.
Obama: Let me clarify this right now.
Brody: Because it’s getting a lot of play.
Obama: Well and because they have not
been telling the truth. And I hate to say that
people are lying, but here’s a situation
where folks are lying. I have said
repeatedly that I would have been
completely in, fully in support of the
federal bill that everybody supported -
which was to say —that you should
provide assistance to any infant that was
born - even if it was as a consequence of
an induced abortion. That was not the bill
that was presented at the state level. What
that bill also was doing was trying to
undermine Roe vs. Wade. By the way, we
also had a bill, a law already in place in
Illinois that insured life saving treatment
was given to infants.
So for people to suggest that I and the
Illinois medical society, so Illinois doctors
were somehow in favor of withholding life
saving support from an infant born alive is
ridiculous. It defies commonsense and it
defies imagination and for people to keep
on pushing this is offensive and it’s an
example of the kind of politics that we
have to get beyond. It’s one thing for
people to disagree with me about the issue
of choice, it’s another thing for people to
out and out misrepresent my positions
repeatedly, even after they know that
they’re wrong. And that’s what’s been
happening.
The National Right to Life Committee
says the bill that Obama voted against
included this:
“(c) Nothing in this section shall be
construed to affirm, deny, expand, or
contract any legal status or legal right
applicable to any member of the species
homo sapiens at any point prior to being
‘born alive’ [Illinois: no quotes] as defined
in this section.”
Okay, so we’ve got fighting words here.
The National Right to Life Committee is
saying that Obama is lying about why he
opposed the infant protection bill. Obama
says they’re lying. It’s certainly true that
only one of them is telling the truth.
Certainly this is newsworthy. Certainly
some reporters might want to dig into the
documentation supplied by the NRLC and
any other documentation supplied by the
OBAMA: page 35
34 Religion*
Shameless promotion for a friend
By tmatt
Submitted at 8/21/2008 1:36:17 AM
The czar of all things Beliefnet, one Steve
Waldman, has donned his reporter hat once
again in order to pound out a timeline
describing who did what in the
negotiations that produced the Democratic
Party’s proposed platform statement on
abortion.
You can read it here and I urge you to do
so, especially journalists and
commentators who will be covering that
issue in the days ahead.
But before you read that story — an
expanded version of a Waldman piece for
The Wall Street Journal— I would like to
flash back more than a decade to one of the
most provocative pieces I have ever read
on this hottest of hot-button topics. It was
written by political scientist George
McKenna of the City University of New
York and ran in The Atlantic Monthly. The
title was rather cryptic, “ On Abortion: A
Lincolnian Position.” His goal was to chart
a moderate position on abortion, similar to
the stance that Lincoln originally took on
slavery. In other words, the goal is to say
that abortion is the law of the land, but
immoral.
What would that sound like? At one
point, McKenna writes this policy
statement for a politician who is trying to
be both pro-life and pro-choice. This is
long, but you’ll see why I have included it
when we return to Waldman’s piece at
Beliefnet:
With the reader’s indulgence. . . I will
play that politician, making the following
campaign statement:
“According to the Supreme Court, the
right to choose abortion is legally
protected. That does not change the fact
that abortion is morally wrong. It violates
the very first of the inalienable rights
guaranteed in the Declaration of
Independence — the right to life. Even
many who would protect and extend the
right to choose abortion admit that abortion
is wrong, and that killing 1.5 million
unborn children a year is, in the
understated words of one, ‘a bad thing.’
Yet, illogically, they denounce all attempts
to restrain it or even to speak out against it.
In this campaign I will speak out against it.
I will say what is in all our hearts: that
abortion is an evil that needs to be
restricted and discouraged. If elected, I will
not try to abolish an institution that the
Supreme Court has ruled to be
constitutionally protected, but I will do
everything in my power to arrest its further
spread and place it where the public can
rest in the belief that it is becoming
increasingly rare. I take very seriously the
imperative, often expressed by abortion
supporters, that abortion should be rare.
Therefore, if I am elected, I will seek to
end all public subsidies for abortion, for
abortion advocacy, and for experiments on
aborted children. I will support all
reasonable abortion restrictions that pass
muster with the Supreme Court, and I will
encourage those who provide alternatives
to abortion. Above all, I mean to treat it as
a wrong. I will use the forum provided by
my office to speak out against abortion and
related practices, such as euthanasia, that
violate or undermine the most fundamental
of the rights enshrined in this nation’s
founding charter.”
The position on abortion I have sketched
— permit, restrict, discourage — is
unequivocally pro-life even as it is
effectively pro-choice. It does not say “I
am personally opposed to abortion”; it says
abortion is evil. Yet in its own way it is pro
-choice. First, it does not demand an
immediate end to abortion. To extend
Lincoln’s oncological trope: it concludes
that all those who oppose abortion can do
right now is to contain the cancer, keep it
from metastasizing. It thus acknowledges
the present legal status of “choice” even as
it urges Americans to choose life. Second,
by supporting the quest for alternatives to
abortion, it widens the range of choices
available to women in crisis pregnancies.
Now, read Waldman’s report entitled
“The Real Story of the Democrats’
Abortion Plank & What It Reveals About
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Obama.” What you will discover is that the
debates within the Democratic Party began
with the awareness that there was no way
to make a single change in the nation’s
current legal regime on abortion. The pro-
lifers didn’t even try.
But here is the part that was most
interesting to me as a reporter (OK, and I
admit, as a pro-life Democrat) who has
covered this issue for several decades.
The party’s goal? To find language that
would appeal to pro-life liberals, yet not
offend Hillary Clinton supporters too
much. Thus, key fact No. 1:
The Obama campaign made a crucial
decision — not to have the abortion rights
and antiabortion forces meet. “It was a
cordial harmonious process in which
neither side talked directly to each other,”
said Michael Yaki, the platform director
who worked on crafting the abortion plank.
During July he held about a dozen face-to-
face meetings with groups in a conference
room at the Democratic National
Committee headquarters in Washington
but always made sure that pro-life and pro-
choice sides were not scheduled back-to-
back lest they bump into each other.
Fact No. 2, as I mentioned earlier:
At no point did the pro-lifers push hard
for legal restrictions on abortions,
including partial birth abortions. But they
did push for clear language casting the
Democratic Party as supporting a reduction
in the number of abortions and not merely
a reduction in the “need” for abortion.. .
.(E)mphasizing a reduction in the need was
backwards — making it sound like the real
goal was stopping unintended pregnancies
and abortions were a side effect.
Politically, the Obama campaign’s faith
outreach coordinators, Joshua Dubois and
Mark Linton argued that having some sort
of abortion reduction agenda would help
win religious voters — especially
moderate evangelicals and Catholics — in
swing battleground states.
But the pro-choice forces adamantly
insisted that the word “need” remain.
So there is interesting fact No. 3, the key
to the whole story. The proposed platform
language does not commit the party to
trying to decrease the number of abortions
in America. That would imply that there is
something wrong with abortion — the
crucial element of what McKenna called a
“Lincolnian approach” to the issue. After
all, if something is wrong, it would be
proper to restrict it and to try to decrease
its impact on a society.
Now, both sides get to claim victory.
And both sides will now watch, carefully,
to see if Sen. Barack Obama dares to use
moral language on this issue.
Waldman’s piece is must reading,
because this debate is not over. No way.
Meanwhile, it would be very interesting
to see a parallel piece on the behind-the-
scenes debates within Sen. John McCain’s
camp on his somewhat tense affirmations
of an anti-abortion position (and other life
issues). Methinks journalists would find
interesting facts in that timeline, too.
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Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
Missing that other half of the clubhouse
By dpulliam
Submitted at 8/17/2008 11:19:07 PM
An article’s headline sometimes gives
away the strength or weakness of a story.
This example, from an article in the Quad
City Times(Iowa) on the impact religion
has on organized sports, gave me little
hope that it would have much substance.
The choice of words — “Strong men,
stronger faith: Religion plays central role
in many local athletes’ lives” — states the
obvious. Of course religion plays a central
role in the lives of some athletes. So may
television or beer.
To my surprise, once I arrived at the
eighth paragraph of the very long lead, my
interest sparked:
Ten River Bandits follow Chambers into
a small equipment room. They sit in
folding chairs. On one end of the room is
2007 first-round draft pick Pete Kozma.
The other end has manager Steve Dillard.
All eyes are looking up to an older man
who does the team’s weekly chapel
service. He softly asks the players to bow
their heads in prayer.
The rest of the players stay in the
clubhouse watching the ballgame. For 15
minutes a week, the clubhouse is split into
two groups: One that shows its faith and
another that chooses not to.
What I expected to follow in this rather
lengthy article (just over 1,200 words) was
a serious discussion of how religion can
play a role — positive and negative — in
organized sports. Unfortunately, we only
get hints of the perspective that religion
can play a controversial role. At least for
some. However, they were apparently not
interviewed for this story or willing to be
quoted:
Raterink is one of the athletes who said
he believes religion is talked about more
often in the locker room than many would
think.
Raterink said he believes his gift from
God is football. He said he understands
people might not agree with his faith, but
that doesn’t bother him.
“Sure, everybody doesn’t agree on
religion, but that’s OK,” Raterink said.
“People might be a little taken aback, but I
see guys playing for more than wins and
losses.”
Allan Ross, the executive director at the
Jewish Federation of the Quad-Cities, said
he believes religion is being translated into
sports more than ever before.
“I think religion is being extended to the
playing field more than ever before,” he
said. “It’s gaining in popularity and will
continue. It doesn’t matter what athletes
believe in. Religion will give them more
inner strength to compete.”
A sidebar to this story examines the
challenges athletes face in expressing their
faith. According to this article, some fans
and athletes declined to speak on the
record “about their dislike of religious
athletes,” while others expressed the view
that religion has “nothing to do with
sports” and that they should stay separate.
The rest of the sidebar explains away this
point of view with quotes from a
Fellowship of Christian Athletes official
and the local baseball team’s manager.
Here is my sense of this story. Open
expression of religious faith is on the rise
in the Quad Cities for a variety of factors
that are reasonably explained in these
articles. This is a good story to tell.
However, there is another side of that story
in any American community. There are
those in the community who do not
appreciate the rise of religious faith in
sports. However, they do not want to talk
about it for one reason or another. That
factor is rather significant.
This is the side of the story I was hoping
to find when I read the paragraph about
Religion* 35
OBAMA:
continued from page 33
Obama campaign or independent sources
and shed some light on who is telling the
truth. A June story by CNN completely
accepted Obama’s version of events. That
New York Times story on Obama and
Catholics included Obama’s explanation.
How will subsequent stories on this topic
change, if at all, in light of the new
documentation?
The second image is a portion of one of
the documents the NRLC put out. The first
vote shows that Obama voted to amend the
bill to include the “neutrality language”
quoted above. The second vote shows
Obama’s vote to kill the amended bill in
committee.
Bookmark to:
how religion divided the baseball team’s
clubhouse. The issue often goes missing
when sports reporters look at religion.
Accusations of insincerity are easily
thrown at those who are openly religious.
Vague suggestions that there are those
frustrated when they see religion involved
in sports are also easy to make. Reporting
on this aspect is much more difficult but
must be done if journalists are going to
adequately cover the role of religion in
sports.
Photo of the Quad-Cities River Bandits
Modern Woodmen Park picturesquely
located on the bank of the Mississippi river
taken by the author of this post in the
summer of 2003.
Bookmark to:
36 Religion* Food*
Sermon after the soundbites
By tmatt
Submitted at 8/20/2008 1:11:09 AM
In news lingo, there is this thing called a
“follow” story and it is something that
modern, shrinking, distressed newsrooms
rarely have the time or resources to do.
Here’s the basic idea: So you have this
gigantic news event that attracts waves of
coverage. It’s all over the wires, on A1 in
the newspapers, gets live coverage on the
cable networks and the big event gets
mentioned for more than 60 seconds on the
major newscasts. If it’s really important,
the late-night comics weigh in and offer
their insights.
Then what happens? The herd moves on
to the next event.
The follow story assumes that the people
most involved in the event carry on with
what they were doing before and, in fact,
there may even be content in the events
that happen right after the media event.
Who knows, there may even be content in
these next, non-media-events that adds
insights to the very event that journalists
had decided was important.
So let me cut to the chase. If the
Saddleback forum took place on a
Saturday and it was led by a pastor, then it
is safe to ask this question: Is this minister
— the Rev. Rick Warren, in this case —
going to preach on Sunday? Might his
words from the pulpit have something to
add to the words offered in the media event
a few hours before that?
So what did he say on Sunday? The Los
Angeles Times is to be commended for
going over to Saddleback Church and
finding out. Who knows, the sermon might
even be as important as what happens on
Larry King Live.
What happened on Sunday morning?
Here’s the top of the story:
The morning after Pastor Rick Warren
interviewed both major presidential
candidates at his evangelical church in
Orange County, he delivered a Sunday
sermon urging his congregation to judge
Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain on
how their characters would affect their
decisions as leaders.
“Don’t just look at issues, look at
character,” Warren said to a crowd of
nearly 3,000 during one of two morning
sermons at Saddleback Church in Lake
Forest. “Look at the candidate and say,
‘Does he live with integrity, service with
humility, share with generosity, or not?’ “
Dressed in his usual bluejeans, Warren
delivered the sermon titled “The Kind of
Leadership America Needs” using Bible
passages about faith and compassion. He
did not speak of the differing views
expressed by Obama and McCain when
they appeared on the same stage Saturday,
saying simply that “they were very
different in personality, in philosophy, in
direction, in goals and in vision, and
there’s nothing wrong with that.”
And guess what happened then? The
Times story completely ignored the actual
content of the sermon.
Now, I have heard Warren preach once
or twice and he is, despite his reputation as
a megachurch preacher, a very
conventional man in terms of his use of
sermon texts. I would be shocked if the
biblical texts that he used didn’t offer
direct insights into what he was thinking.
The story tells us that he used “Bible
passages about faith and compassion.”
Well what, pray tell, were these passages?
Were they, perhaps, passages that Obama
often uses? Were they texts that pointed
toward any particular concerns?
In other words, this is a news story about
a sermon. What did the minister say in the
sermon? Might that be a significant part of
the report, in addition to all of the political
background? In a story about a sermon, the
basic facts include the biblical texts and
some quotes from the sermon. Can we
agree on that?
I have even heard ministers send
somewhat coded messages to their flocks,
using religious images and language that
flies over the heads of the reporters. I
wonder. Did that happen here? The people
in the church probably got the sermon. Did
the reporter?
Bookmark to:
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
As-You-Like-It Breakfast
Casserole
By Elise
Submitted at 8/8/2008 11:11:31 PM
On vacation, 5 o'clock pm, having too
much fun to realize that nothing has been
planned for dinner, fridge mostly empty,
remembering that uh oh, I'm the one in
charge of feeding my friend's children that
night. Oops! Open the refrigerator door,
see half a dozen eggs, half a carton of
milk, some cheddar cheese, leftover
sausage from biscuits and gravy the day
before, a little broccoli, a leftover ear of
corn (cooked). Open the freezer and see
half a loaf of sliced bread. Saved. Whew.
The kids will not have boxed Mac-n-
cheese for dinner.
Have you ever made a breakfast
casserole? The basic ingredients are eggs,
cheese, milk, and bread. It's the easiest
thing in the world to put together. We have
a sausage breakfast casserole on the site that's what I did - opened the fridge, put
that is one of my favorites. The great thing everything I could find into a casserole
about a breakfast casserole is that you can dish, and baked it. A few days later we
add almost anything you want to the base. cooked it again (this time Reilly, the 11-
Italian sausage is my all time favorite, but year old helped) so we could get some
bacon or ham will do too. Or make it photos. Do you have a favorite breakfast
veggie, with zucchini, broccoli, basil and casserole combo? If so, let us know about
onions. The first time I served this to the it in the comments.
kids they insisted that it had to go on the Continue reading "As-You-Like-It
website. The name they picked was "Open Breakfast Casserole" »
Fridge Breakfast Bake" because basically
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper Religion* 37

The business of death

By Mollie
Submitted at 8/21/2008 12:00:36 AM
Considering its ubiquity, death has to be
one of the most under-reported aspects of
the religion beat. Dying, death and funerals
are major topics in the life of every pastor
— but usually they only get covered when
they happen to someone famous.
So I was glad that Louisville Courier-
Journal religion reporter Pete Smith was
able to discuss the topic of funerals. His
hook is amazing:
A Nelson County funeral home director
is suing the Archdiocese of Louisville and
a Roman Catholic priest, whom he accuses
of undercutting his business by
implementing new rules on conducting
funerals at his parish.
Advertisement
The Rev. Jeffrey Leger, pastor of St.
Catherine Church in New Haven, put a
new policy into effect last month,
stipulating that funeral directors can no
longer solely plan funerals. Instead, they
must now plan them with Leger, who has
final say.
It’s the dirty little secret of church life
that some funeral directors are responsible
for exerting a great deal of power over
funeral services. Sometimes that’s a net
Word of God is proclaimed in order to
comfort those who grieve with hope in the
resurrected Christ — meddling from non-
members can wreak havoc. I say all this as
a descendant of successful funeral home
directors on one side of the family and the
daughter of a pastor on the other side of
enforces church law and liturgical
practices that limit such things as the types
of readings, music and eulogies at funeral
Masses.
Ron Rust, owner of the William R. Rust
Funeral Home in New Haven, said the
policy will interfere with his longstanding
policy pending his lawsuit seeking
damages. He claims a right to direct
funerals without constraints. One thing I
liked about Smith’s story is that he quoted
Leger’s theological defense before he got
into the specifics of what is forbidden:
In his letter to funeral homes, he said the
purpose of a funeral Mass is to “illumine
the mystery of Christian death in light of
the risen Christ,” and that everything must
focus on the Christian hope of resurrection.
Anything that could distract from that
should be avoided, he wrote, adding that
eulogies, recorded music and nonbiblical
readings such as poetry and letters are
forbidden except under limited
circumstances.
Such personalized features should take
place at the vigil service, typically held the
evening before the Mass at either the
church or the funeral home, he said.
Smith also checked with the Archdiocese
of Louisville to see if Leger was in
LA Times disses
accordance with church teaching. They
said he was. The article explains other
aspects of the funeral policy, permitting
religious liberty
Leger’s letter to speak for itself. It’s so
nice to have the column inches required to
(Updated)
explain some of the theology underpinning By Mark Stricherz
Christian burial. Others picked up on the
story, but didn’t give nearly enough space. Submitted at 8/19/2008 6:40:58 PM

blessing for the parties involved. Grieving
family members don’t always make the
best decisions about funerals. But for
churches, such as mine, that approach
funerals as worship services in which the
the family. I really like the way Smith just
laid the facts out in order to quickly get
into the meat of the story:
The new policy, which Leger outlined in
a 10-page letter to funeral directors, strictly
business of coordinating funerals that are
held at St. Catherine.
Rust claims intentional and wrongful
interferences and seeks a temporary
injunction halting implementation of the
Art is Bastiani’s Funeral of St. Jerome, You may have read read that the
via the World Gallery of Art. California State Supreme Court ruled that
Bookmark to:

Woody Allen: Living with a void

By Mark Stricherz
Submitted at 8/20/2008 10:25:37 PM
In her spiritual profile of filmmaker and
actor Woody Allen, Newsweek reporter
Jennie Yabroff begins her story this way:
Woody Allen cuts his banana into seven
slices each morning. Six slices, or eight,
and something bad might happen. “I know
it would be total coincidence if I didn’t
slice it into seven pieces, and my family
were killed in a fire,” he says. “I
understand that there could be no
correlation, but, you know, the guilt would
be too much for me to bear, so it’s easier
for me to cut the stupid banana.”
In the next paragraph, Yabroff contrasts
Allen’s personal behavior with the
existentialist, even nihilistic, themes of his
movies:
Despite the odd superstition (he also
avoids haircuts while shooting a movie),
Allen has devoted his career to making
films that consistently assert the
randomness of life. That they do so in a
variety of genres—comedy, drama,
suspense, satire, even, once, a
musical—only partially obscures the fact
that, in Allen’s eyes, they’re all tragedies,
since, as he says, “to live is to suffer.” If
there were a persistence-of-vision award
for life philosophy, Allen would be a shoo-
in.
The rest of the story is a variation on this
spiritual and philosophical conflict. Allen
makes movies to find meaning in life. Yet
Allen asserts that life has no meaning and
his films continually make that point.
Allen’s latest film finds pleasure in life,
albeit of the kind no traditionally religious
person would approve of. Yet he rejects
the possibility of happy endings, let alone
heaven and hell.
Yabroff juxtaposed those two themes
well. In doing so, she turned her story into
that rarest of specimens: a serious
examination of a major filmmaker’s
spiritual conflict. It is the sort of story that
only a great movie reviewer, such as Mick
LaSalle of the San Francisco Chronicle,
would write or run on the website
Metafilm.
Yabroff’s profile was not the deepest
examination of Allen’s existentialism. Is
he the type that affirms free will or
determinism? Given that Badem won an
Oscar award last year for playing an
existentialist character, the story would
have profited from broaching this issue.
But that is a quibble. Yabroff’s story got
religion in a major way.
Bookmark to:
38 Religion* Food*
TIMES
continued from page 37
religious doctors cannot refuse to
inseminate lesbian women artificially on
religious grounds. The decision came
down yesterday and has generated quite a
bit of buzz.
I wrote about the consideration of the
case two months ago. My criticism of a
Washington Post story on the topic was
that it failed to elaborate on the competing
claims: the defendants’ lawyer argued that
in terms of medical care, freedom of
religion is invoked most clearly in the
creation and termination of life, while the
plaintiffs’ lawyer contended that the
freedom of religious clause does not allow
doctors to refuse treatment to certain
classes of people.
Surely The Los Angeles Times, the
state’s paper of record, would add to our
understanding of this topic or, even better,
adjudicated the justices’ claims. Alas, it
did not. Reporter Maura Dolan gave
readers this explanation:
The state high court said the doctors’
A different battle of the Bible
By Mollie
Submitted at 8/18/2008 5:12:46 PM
With the real estate on airwaves and
newsprint getting harder to come by, most
religion stories that get published or
broadcast deal with politics or major social
drama. But some of my favorite stories are
the slice-of-life depictions of
congregational life. Unlike the impression
you may get from the media, it isn’t all
about fighting over doctrinal issues . . .
there are other fights, too!
For instance, my church’s softball team
and our rivalry with the dastardly First
Baptist softball team. Seriously, after
cheering on a few games of the Alexandria
Church Softball League, I’ve decided there
is nothing more fun than religiously based
sports cheers and taunts Or, take this
church battle in Wichita:
Let’s get ready to ruuuuumble. . .
religion style! In this corner, from the
downtown Wichita corner of Third and
Topeka, the house of worship that claims it
is the city’s first church: St. John’s
Episcopal Church.
And in the other corner, from Broadway,
constitutional rights to freedom of religion
did not trump the state antidiscrimination
law because the state has a compelling
interest in ensuring full and equal access to
medical care.
That is an all to brief explanation. On
what grounds did the justices accept the
plaintiffs’ claims rather than those of the
defendants’? Did the justices equate
homosexuals with women, as a majority of
them did in their gay-marriage ruling?
On this issue, readers need to be given
more than a one-sentence assertion. They
need an explanation of the rationale.
UPDATE: The Washington Post’s story
on the same topic was everything — well,
almost everything — the LAT’s was not: It
explained on what grounds the California
Supreme Court ruled in favor of the
plaintiffs. Consider the passage below
from reporter Ashley Surdin:
The court ruled that physicians’
constitutional right to the free exercise of
religion does not exempt businesses that
near Central, the one that claims it is the
city’s first church: First Presbyterian
Church.
Tonight, the two churches will settle
their “dispute” in what they’re calling the
First Annual First Church in Wichita Bible
Bowl.
Last year the Wichita Eagle quoted St.
John’s priest as saying her church was the
oldest in Wichita. Her friend, the pastor of
First Presbyterian, noted that her
Daily -Click and Print- Newspaper
serve the public from following state law
that prohibit discrimination on the basis of
sexual orientation.
That holds true, Justice Joyce L. Kennard
wrote in the 18-page decision, “even if
compliance poses an incidental conflict
with the defendants’ religious beliefs.”
If a doctor wants to refuse a service
because of religious beliefs, the court
found, he or she must refuse all patients, or
provide a doctor who can provide the
service to everyone.
That makes sense. If a doctor refuses to
perform artificial insemination on religious
grounds, he or she cannot single out
lesbian women. This does not address the
defendant’s chief claim in Surdin’s story
from two months ago — religious freedom
applies usually to termination and creation
of life. But hey, it is an explanation.
Bookmark to:
Grits with Corn and Onion Greens
By Elise
Submitted at 8/13/2008 3:17:40 PM
A dear friend of mine from Alabama
them are passionate about how they like
them - white corn, hominy grits, with
syrup for breakfast, etc. So, if you have a
particular way that you like your grits,
called me recently and demanded to know, please let us know about it in the
"why aren't there any grits on your site?!" comments.
Uh, because I'm not Southern and I don't By the way, according to NBC, Michael
know what the heck I'm talking about Phelps eats grits for breakfast, along with
when it comes to grits and I can't even try several fried egg sandwiches, an omelet,
to fake it with our readers? Well, not three slices of French toast, and a stack of
knowing what we are doing has never chocolate chip pancakes. Breakfast of
stopped us in the past, and my dear ole dad champions.
found a recipe for grits he couldn't pass up. Continue reading "Grits with Corn and
This was so good I made him make it Onion Greens" »
twice. What I have learned in researching
grits is that people who grew up eating
congregation also claims the title.
Rather than hard feelings, though, they
decided that there would be a First Church
in Wichita trophy and an annual Bible
competition to declare a winner. Questions
will be posed to pastors and laypeople.
The story had the perfect tone for the
playful rivalry between the two church’s.
Hopefully we’ll have a follow-up on who
won!
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