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Help FCNL Honor the Promises to Native Americans

2009-12-17T07:24:00.000-08:00

Friends Committee on National Legislation

A Quaker Lobby in the Public Interest

Dear Wildam Bultasov,

Program Assistant Inez Steigerwald
lobbies on Native American issues.
Donate today!

Please enjoy these two pieces of good news for the holidays:

Legislative Victory Within Reach: After nearly a decade of lobbying by Native American groups, FCNL, and other allies, Congress is on the verge of passing legislation to improve health care service in Indian country.

Judicial Victory: Also, the federal government has agreed to pay Indian Trust Account holders part of the money long denied them.

FCNL has worked on these two issues a long time, so you may already know something about the Indian Health Care Improvement Act and the Indian Trust Fund case.

Here's more good news: a matching gift will double your donation to FCNL. I hope you will make a donation of $20, $50, $100, or $500 to continue FCNL's Native American policy work in the next year. Right now, your donation will be worth twice as much because of a generous matching grant from a visionary couple that supports FCNL's work.

The effort to improve health care in Indian country is one of the best illustrations of how your contributions help our work. In the mid-1970s, FCNL played a key role in enacting the Indian Health Care Improvement Act (IHCIA). That legislation modernized and improved health care for American Indians and Alaskan Natives. Last year, we joined the strong and successful lobby effort led by Native American groups to reauthorize this critical program. It had not been updated since the 1990s. The Senate approved the new bill.

Our work in this victory was so important that the National Congress of American Indians, a national group representing many of the tribes in Washington, awarded FCNL its prestigious Public Sector Leadership Award.

Regrettably, reauthorization of the IHCIA didn't pass in the House last year. This year we expect that the final health insurance reform bill will include the IHCIA.

FCNL's steady, consistent work is what your donations help make possible. Thanks to your support, FCNL is the only non-Native religious organization with full time staff devoted to Native American issues.

Will you consider making a donation of $20, $50, $100, or $500 to continue this work in the next year? Remember every dollar you give now will be worth double, because of that matching gift.

The federal government's mismanagement of individual Indian Trust funds is one of the greatest scandals of the last century. For more than a century, the federal government has failed to adequately manage or account for huge amounts of money that was owed to Native Americans for the use of their land.

How much money was at stake? No one knows for sure. It could be as much as $150 billion. While the federal government delayed, stalled, defied court orders, and refused settlements as little as $27 billion, many of the trust fund account holders were dying. Justice delayed is justice denied.

Just a few weeks ago, the case was settled for about $3.4 billion. "This is a bittersweet victory at best, but it will mean a great deal to the tens of thousands of impoverished Indians entitled to share in its financial fruits," said Elouise Cobell, the Native American who originally sued the government.

FCNL's public education work and lobbying helped open the door to settlement of the Cobell case. Yet much more can and should be done to encourage the government to Honor the Promises to Native Americans.

Please use our secure online donation form to donate $20, $50, $100, or $500 to support this work. Your contribution will help us mobilize federal policy to support tribes to develop green energy on tribal lands, to vastly improve the public safety of Indians, and to increase funding for improved health, education and housing.

Thank you,

Joe Volk
Executive Secretary

P.S. You can find more information on FCNL's Native American issues work on our website.

This email was sent to: raveereckl.adiposity@blogger.com
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About Europe Travel: Rome at Night | The Greek Mainland

2009-12-17T07:22:00.000-08:00

	Europe Travel

In the Spotlight | More Topics | Top Picks | Rome Christmas |

	from James Martin We're just back from a visit to Rome and Naples during this holiday season. Despite the signs of a bleak Christmas sales season, both cities were lively with Christmas activities, especially along the Via San Gregorio Armeno in Naples, where the traditional presepe (nativity scene) figures are produced. Look for pictures and stories coming up in the next few weeks.

In the Spotlight

Rome at Night
What happens in Rome on a drizzly night during the holiday season? Well, folks are still on the streets looking over the Roman monuments, tasting mortadella, and peering at presepi in ancient churches. Catch a short tour of Rome on a December night, fresh off the memory card.

		More Topics
		Christmas in Europe Buying the Right Rail Pass Top Carry-On Bags Photo of the Week: Naples Presepe Figurine Christmas Traditions in Portugal Off Season Travel Tips European Photo Gallery

Exploring the Greek Mainland
They tell me that tomorrow's high temperature here in Northern Tuscany will be -1 degree C. So I'm thinking that planning a trip to Greece might be just the ticket for those of us stuck in colder climates.

Rome: Testaccio Tales
If a better day for walking and exploring Rome was ever created, I was not aware of it. The day was crisp, brilliant, and the air crystal clear... Read more

Sponsored Links

Top Picks - Restaurant Menu Translation Guides - European Food Guidebooks from your Europe Travel Guide

There are two types of menu translation books here, the Marling Menu Master Series, which starts with typical menu items in the native language sorted by course, and tells you what they are in English. They are thin, easy to take to dinner, and include a lot of translations. The World Food Series from Lonely Planet are more detailed books about the history, regional cuisine, food customs and wine. They're handy to bring shopping with you. The dictionary isn't as complete as Marling, however.

1) World Food France
For food and wine aficionados, World Food France can almost stand on its own as a travel guide. Detailed info on the wine regions of France, shopping areas, a culinary dictionary, plus pictures and recipes just in case you want to try things out when you get home.

2) Marling Menu Master for France
This rather dated version (but how long has French cuisine been around?) has been criticized for its use of "entree" in the American sense, as the main course. The entree is, of course, the entrance to the meal in France, the appetizer. A thin quarter inch thick, easy to take with you to that French restaurant you always wanted to try.

3) World Food Spain
I used this guide a lot on my trip to Spain. It was not only useful for normal shopping and restaurant menu translations, but it let me in on the local, regional foods I might try, as well as the best foods that Spain had to offer--like the best Spanish cured Ham (Iberico de Bellota).

Roman Christmas Traditions

Christmas in Rome, Italy
This year Martha and I have devoted considerable time and energy finding out about all the Christmas traditions that make up the holiday season in Italy. Here's Martha's updated resource on the Roman side of Christmas

Feeling Under the Weather?

Evaluating Your Cold Symptoms
How to tell when a runny nose is just a cold, and when it might be turning into something more serious and require a visit to the doctor. More>

Europe Travel Ads


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About Video Game Cheats: Dragon Age Origins Steam Version Cheats Update

2009-12-17T07:20:00.001-08:00

	Video Game Cheats

In the Spotlight | More Topics |

	from Jason Rybka Quick note about the Dragon Age: Origins cheats... you should be able to activate the codes even on the Steam version of the game. The cheat page has been updated with crystal clear instructions.

In the Spotlight

Dragon Age: Origins Cheats (Steam/Retail/SR)
The codes work on all versions, special thanks to John and all the other that sent in their recommendations, see the codes here... Read more

		More Topics
		Older Cheat Codes Top Cheats Basic Gaming Tips FAQ / Glossary Cheat Devices Oblivion Cheats Football Video Games 101

X-Men: Wolverine's Rage Cheats - Gameboy Color
Cheats, codes, and secrets for X-Men: Wolverine's Rage on the Nintendo Gameboy Color handheld video game system.All Power UpsNotes: At the main menu hold down the Left Trigger and press.Cheat... Read more

X-Men: Mutant Academy Cheats - Gameboy Color
Cheats, codes, and secrets for X-Men: Mutant Academy on the Nintendo Gameboy Color handheld video game system.PhoenixNotes: Press A at the title screen. A message will confirm correct code entry.Cheat... Read more

Sponsored Links

Feeling Under the Weather?

Evaluating Your Cold Symptoms
How to tell when a runny nose is just a cold, and when it might be turning into something more serious and require a visit to the doctor. More>

Video Game Cheats Ads


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Search About
Sign up for more free newsletters on favorite topics. You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to the About Video Game Cheats newsletter as raveereckl.adiposity@BLOGGER.COM. If you wish to change or remove your email address, please visit: http://www.about.com/nl/usgs.htm?nl=vgstrategies&e=raveereckl.adiposity@BLOGGER.COM About respects your privacy. Our Privacy Policy. Our Contact Information. 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2008 About, Inc.

The Latest from Boing Boing

2009-12-17T05:52:00.001-08:00

The Latest from Boing Boing

Great Firewall of Australia will nationally block sites appearing on a secret, unaccountable list
Free holiday sampler: PDF with chapters from a dozen new books
Leaked secret EU-Canada copyright agreement - EU screws Canada
Steampunk menorah
Rapist ex-lawmaker claims copyright on his name, threatens legal action against anyone who uses it without permission
Hardcore hip-hop Xmas
Fundraiser to help Jeanne and Spider Robinson beat cancer
Photos from Copenhagen protests
Steorn's Orbo free energy system on display
Area rug inspired by the moon's surface
What more do you need to know?
RIP, Roy E Disney
The best unpopular books of the Aughts
Major record labels gang up and screw over indie record store
Morbid Anatomy's Joanna Ebenstein on TV
Mathematical mockery in Wonderland
Why are the Alps getting taller?
Fantastically strange cake sculptures
Brain on the Sistine Chapel?
Saving Pete Hawley's terrific illustrations from the incinerator
Bacteria-powered micromachines
Excellent 1948 British cartoon: Charley in New Town
Progress report on liberating America's video archives
Bed gun rack
Photos of rotting, abandoned water park at Walt Disney World
The Year Before the Flood: Idelber's Accident
How shellfish saved the human race
The Boing Boing 20, pt. 2: the best indie and iPhone games of 2009
Farewell!
Danish police abuse climate-change demonstrators

Great Firewall of Australia will nationally block sites appearing on a secret, unaccountable list

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:54 AM PST

Electronic Frontiers Australia have posted their authoritative condemnation of the Australian government's plan to impose mandatory, national filtering on the Australian Internet (like the filters used in Iran, Syria, China, and other repressive regimes). EFA points out that this national censorship plan will do little to curb child pornography and crime (because people who seek out that sort of thing can always get around filters), but it will give unaccountable government bureaucrats the power to secretly and arbitrarily hide information from Australians.

An announcement on Tuesday confirms it: next year, all Australian ISPs will be required to filter access to a government-supplied blacklist containing "refused classification" (RC) web content. That would include nasty stuff like child pornography, but also a broader range of content: fetishy sex, instruction in crime (such as euthanasia), any computer game not suitable for under 18s. The list will be partly generated by complaints from the public, and may include lists imported from overseas police departments.
While this is sold as a kid-friendly measure, to "improve safety of the internet for families", it's clearly nothing of the sort. A few thousand URLs hardly constitutes a national net nanny. The list would almost be laughable if it was not only mandatory but secret - unlike censorship decisions made in other media, blocked URLs will remain secret and expressly excluded from freedom of information requests. Just as worrying is the fact that once this list is in, a conga-line of special interests will be approaching the government to have their pet peeves added to the list. It's not much of a stretch to imagine AFACT (Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft) clamouring to have bittorrent trackers added, and several parliamentarians are on record calling for a ban on pro-anorexia sites and pornography in general.

Filtering coming to Australia in 2010 (Thanks, Gwen!)

(Image: The Worst Part of Censorship is ###### a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from kogakure's photostream)

Previously:

Free holiday sampler: PDF with chapters from a dozen new books

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:46 AM PST

JC Hutchins -- he of the boundless energy! -- has assembled a free "holiday sampler" of excerpts from great new books, handily bundled together in a handsome PDF, well suited to loading onto your device or printing out for your Xmas holiday. In it are excerpts from recent books by some of my favorite authors, including Cherie Priest, Seth Godin, and Scott Sigler (as well as an excerpt from my latest novel, Makers.

In The Nick of Time holiday sampler (PDF)

JC's page on the project with full contents and links

(Thanks, JC!

Leaked secret EU-Canada copyright agreement - EU screws Canada

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:35 PM PST

Leaks have emerged from another secret copyright treaty, this one between the EU and Canada. The EU is really screwing Canada with this one, demanding longer copyright terms, more liability for ISPs (which means that it gets harder and more expensive to host anything from a message board to a video), laws against breaking copyright protection (even for a legal purpose, like getting your own files back), and a royalty on the sale of used copyrighted goods (so you'd have to track down and pay the rightsholder when you resold a painting or other copyrighted work).

And all this while Minister Tony Clement has been conducting a consultation with Canadians on what they think Canada's copyright laws should be -- at the same time, Canada's government has been sneakily negotiating two secret copyright treaties that would tie Parliament's hands and throw away Canadians' own Made-in-Canada copyright rules.

While the leaked document may only represent the European position, there is little doubt that there will enormous pressure on Canadian negotiators to cave on the IP provision in return for "gains" in other areas. The net result is that when combined with the ACTA requirements, Canadian copyright law reform may cease to become Canadian. Instead, the rules will be dictated by secretive agreements as the U.S. and Europe tag team to pressure Canada into dramatic changes far beyond those even proposed in Bills C-60 or C-61.

Beyond ACTA: Proposed EU - Canada Trade Agreement Intellectual Property Chapter Leaks

Previously:

Steampunk menorah

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:20 PM PST

My pal Roger Wood, the mad clock sculptor of Klockwerks.com, really puts the "Ch" back in "Channukah" with this steampunk menorah.

(via Cribcandy)

Previously:

Rapist ex-lawmaker claims copyright on his name, threatens legal action against anyone who uses it without permission

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:16 PM PST

Former South Dakota State Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt -- presently serving time for raping his two foster daughters -- is sending bizarre "copyright notices" from prison to news agencies and outlets that use his name in print or online, claiming a "common law copyright" on his name and demanding $500,000 for any unauthorized use.

Proving, at least, that knowing the law is no prerequisite for serving in high office.

A letter and an accompanying document labeled ''Common Law Copyright Notice'' said former state Rep. Ted Alvin Klaudt is reserving a common-law copyright of a trade name or trademark for his name. It said no one can use his name without his consent, and anyone who does would owe him $500,000...
The letter and copyright notice Klaudt sent to The Associated Press carried a postmark of Dec. 11 from Mobridge, a city near his ranch. The notice was signed July 13, 2008, and notarized in Bon Homme County, the location of the Springfield prison. It also included a seal indicating it was filed with the register of deeds in Corson County, where the family ranch is located, on July 31, 2008.
The letter said anyone seeking to use Klaudt's name would have to file a written request 20 days in advance. It also said he would pursue charges and other legal action against anyone who violated the notice.

Ex-Lawmaker Convicted of Rape: Name Is Copyrighted (via /.)

Previously:

Hardcore hip-hop Xmas

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:09 PM PST

djBC writes, "As you probably know from the steady stream of Holiday mashup albums I've been compiling over the past 5 years, I dig Christmas music, and I keep remixing it. In this case I took the Big D and The Kids Table Christmas paean to Red Sox, victory, drinking, heavy Boston accents and holiday merriment in general, cut it into a hip-hop beat and enlisted rapper Black Element to bust rhymes. Anyway- I finally did it! I made a Christmas single! AND video! Woo! I hope people get a kick out of it and it ends up on some holiday mixes right next to 'White Christmas.' Or something. Directed by Craig Shannon of Imagavision Films.

Wicked Hip-Hop Christmas

The original Big D and The Kids Table video for 'Wicked Hardcore Christmas' (2004)

(Thanks, djBC!)

Previously:

Fundraiser to help Jeanne and Spider Robinson beat cancer

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:05 PM PST

Tony from the StarShipSofa sf podcast sez, "In the spirit of 'paying it forward', StarShipSofa is rallying the SF/F community around Spider and Jeanne Robinson. Throughout the month of December, the online audio magazine will be releasing an original series written by Lawrence Santoro. While listeners can hear 'Lord Dickens' Declaration' for free on StarShipSofa, one can elect to purchase the ebook with art by Skeet Scienski. All proceeds will be donated to Spider and Jeanne in an effort to support her as she battles cancer. Diagnosed with a rare biliary cancer, the treatments have eaten away at the Robinson's finances as doctors aggressively fight the disease from spreading. This ebook will only be available for purchase through December 31st and is priced at 2.99 GBP, with an option to donate more (in increments of 10, 20, 50, & 100 GPB). Any fan of the Robinson's can attest to their strength, but we hope that through this time of strife, the SF/F community can help them survive through the worst. Thank you for standing with the Robinson's in their time of need."

Aural Delights No 113 Lawrence Santoro Pt 3 (Thanks, Tony!)

Previously:

Photos from Copenhagen protests

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:00 PM PST

Treehugger photographer Matt McDermott happened to be in the right place when the massive climate demonstrations in Copenhagen broke out, and the site has a great gallery of shots of the action.

Whose Summit? Our Summit! Bella Center Erupts in Protest

Previously:

Steorn's Orbo free energy system on display

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 02:38 PM PST

Steorn, developers of free-energy gadget called Orbo, have managed to survive for six years without having successfully demonstrated the technology in public. It must be some kind of record. But yesterday, an Orbo was installed at the Waterways Ireland Visitor Centre, and you can see a live video stream of the Orbo chugging away.

According to Steorn CEO Sean McCarthy, the Orbo is able to "gain energy from magnets with no apparent source."

Here's more about it, from Steorn's "What is Orbo Technology" page:

Orbo is a technology that creates energy from magnetic interactions. Orbo provides free, clean and constant energy at the point of use.
Orbo is a platform technology that can be engineered to power anything from a phone, to a fridge to a car.
Orbo technology is controversial - science tells us that energy can not be created - yet Orbo does this. Orbo is an over unity technology - it provides more energy out than is put in.
Orbo is a result of many man years of technological development using a "Victorian Science" approach. It is a technology that has been derived phenomologically, through test, implementation and retest.

Three cheers for "Victorian Science," but I don't believe the Orbo can make more energy than it uses. It sure is fun following Steorn's attempts to achieve the impossible, though. If any Boing Boing readers in Dublin have witness the live demo, please share your thoughts in the comments.

UPDATE: the blog called Steorn's Orbo has a good post about why this demo is useless:

Orbo 2009 is similar in its basic design, but the outer ring of magnets are now electromagnets rather than permanent magnets, and these electromagnets are fed by a battery. That battery, it is claimed, is constantly recharged by a small electrical generator attached to the spinning Orbo. The net result, says Sean McCarthy, is that the Orbo produces some three times the energy it uses. The energy that isn't cycled back to the battery is dissipated as heat. Sean's claim may be true — the Orbo may be generating three times the energy it is using, right in front of our eyes. Or, it may not be; there's no way to tell without being an experienced engineer and hooking the rig up to a lot of complex testing equipment. Because there's a battery in the loop, there's just no telling how much energy, if any, Orbo is actually generating. So Steorn may have what they claim. Or they may be lying about it as part of a scam. Or they may honestly believe they have it, but be wrong. There's still no way to tell.

In other words, this Orbo sounds like it's a plain old motor.

Previously:

Area rug inspired by the moon's surface

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:42 PM PST

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the lunar landing this year, designer Martin Mostböck made this area rug inspired by the moon's surface.

Artist's web site [via Dezeen]

What more do you need to know?

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:27 PM PST

The Wall Street Journal goes square-dancing.

RIP, Roy E Disney

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:12 PM PST

RIP, Roy E Disney, nephew of Walt, son of Roy Sr, at 79, from cancer. Thanks for kicking out Eisner and bringing the company's emphasis back to the Parks.

The younger Disney, born in 1930, worked for the company as a writer and producer. But his most important influence was as a Disney shareholder who led two investor revolts.
In 1984 he led a successful campaign to oust Walt Disney's son-in-law from the company. Nearly 20 years later, he launched another successful shareholder revolt against Michael Eisner.

Roy E. Disney dies (Thanks to everyone who sent this in)

(Image: File:Roy_E._Disney.jpg, GNU FDL, Wikimedia Commons)

Previously:

The best unpopular books of the Aughts

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:11 PM PST

There are 172,000 books published every year in the US, and another 206,000 in the UK. Suffice to say, they do not all become best-sellers. But just because a book isn't popular, doesn't mean it didn't deserve your attention. The Guardian staff is trying to give unloved tomes a second chance by naming their favorite books of the past decade that no one but themselves read. It's a great concept, and a couple of these have caught my eye, including:

War Reporting for Cowards by Chris Ayres, published in 2005, is one of the funniest books I have ever been involved with - it's about the author's hapless time as an embedded reporter with the US Marines in Iraq. I think the reason it did not take off as it should was to do with the gap between commissioning it in 2003 and it being written and published two years later: by then the war had got so unpopular with the public that every book about it, brilliantly entertaining or not, was struggling. I hope in time it will become recognised as a classic.

The Guardian: The Decade's Best Unread Books

Major record labels gang up and screw over indie record store

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:05 PM PST

A small indie record store owner in Ottawa, Canada, has plead guilty to a charge of copyright infringement for importing rare CDs from abroad. Apparently, these discs (which are themselves licensed, as far as I can tell) aren't licensed for sale in Canada, and Canadian law (apparently) bans this kind of parallel importation.

But none of these CDs are actually available in Canada. And no one orders rare, expensive imports unless he's already got the artist's entire catalog. And, of course, the record labels that went after this record store owner (whose whole purpose in life is to sell their CDs) are presently being sued for $60 billion in copyright damages for ripping off artists, and have admitted to $50 million in liability already.

"I can't believe I'm standing here right now," Nolan said outside court. "I've never bought a pirated item in my life."
Prosecutor Rob Zsigo said in an agreed statement of facts that the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA), acting as experts for the RCMP, concluded that 294 discs -- including live concerts, imports and CDs without UPC codes -- violated Canadian copyright law...
Nolan said the 100 CDs represent a tiny fraction of the hundreds of thousands of recordings in his collection and that the discs at issue are mostly imports.
An example is a recording of 1950s singer Gale Storm. Big labels don't press them but seniors still want to buy them so he orders them from import distributers [sic], Nolan said.
"I have to have the things the bigger chains don't have," Nolan said. "It's kept my business alive.
"I feel like the RCMP has robbed me."

CD seller pleads guilty to breaking copyright law

Previously:

Morbid Anatomy's Joanna Ebenstein on TV

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 11:56 AM PST

My friend Joanna Ebenstein who who runs the engrossing (sorry!) Morbid Anatomy blog was featured on a "Weird New York" episode of the "Toni On! New York" television show. The host took a tour of the Morbid Anatomy Library and saw some of Joanna's favorite curiosities.

Mathematical mockery in Wonderland

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 11:17 AM PST

The original story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is missing what have become some of the book's most iconic characters and scenes: the Cheshire Cat, the Mad Hatter's tea party, the Knave of Hearts' trial, and several other great moments. Why did Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) add them later? According to Alice scholar Melanie Bayley, Dodgson, a mathematician by day, created the scenes to make fun of edgy math ideas floating around at the time. From New Scientist:

Outgunned in the specialist press, Dodgson took his mathematics to his fiction. Using a technique familiar from Euclid's proofs, reductio ad absurdum, he picked apart the "semi-logic" of the new abstract mathematics, mocking its weakness by taking these premises to their logical conclusions, with mad results. The outcome is Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
Take the chapter "Advice from a caterpillar", for example. By this point, Alice has fallen down a rabbit hole and eaten a cake that has shrunk her to a height of just 3 inches. Enter the Caterpillar, smoking a hookah pipe, who shows Alice a mushroom that can restore her to her proper size. The snag, of course, is that one side of the mushroom stretches her neck, while another shrinks her torso. She must eat exactly the right balance to regain her proper size and proportions.
While some have argued that this scene, with its hookah and "magic mushroom", is about drugs, I believe it's actually about what Dodgson saw as the absurdity of symbolic algebra, which severed the link between algebra, arithmetic and his beloved geometry...
The madness of Wonderland, I believe, reflects Dodgson's views on the dangers of this new symbolic algebra. Alice has moved from a rational world to a land where even numbers behave erratically.

"Alice's adventures in algebra: Wonderland solved"

Previously:

Navigation/geometry textbook based on Alice in Wonderland - Boing ...

Why are the Alps getting taller?

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 11:56 AM PST

Here's a conundrum: The African and European plates of the Earth's crust are no longer pushing into each other, but the Alps (created by the collision of those plates) are growing by about .05 in. per year. At first glance, those facts might make you question plate tectonics. But the real explanation is even weirder.

The Alps grow because they swim in the Earths mantle. Mountains like the Matterhorn or the Zugspitze lose one meter of stone every 1000-2000 years, Sauer reports. Like a melting iceberg slowly rises out of the water to adjust to the loss of weight, the alps rise according to their weight loss due to erosion. Sauer explains, that this was a hypothesis for years, but that it is proven now, because German scientists from the Research Center for Geoscience in Potsdam developed a new method to measure the erosion.

Original story is in German at Neue Zürcher Zeitung.
English summary from the Knight Science Journalism Tracker

Image courtesy Flickr user toprural, via CC

Fantastically strange cake sculptures

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:26 AM PST

Amazing artists Korin Faught and Savanna Snow sent me photos from Korin's birthday party where they celebrated with the magnificent Jesus cake, above left. It was baked in Los Angeles by their pal Jana Danae Groller who, I've since discovered, makes some of the most insane cakes I've ever seen. For example, look at that Siamese Cat Head cake above right. Just look at it. Jana*s Fun Cakes

Brain on the Sistine Chapel?

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:19 AM PST

Just a coincidence?

Saving Pete Hawley's terrific illustrations from the incinerator

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:07 AM PST

Why are these kids so darn happy? Have they been sharing the nitrous oxide balloon with their clown friend? Of course not. They are happy because this gorgeous piece of art by Pete Hawley, along with many more of his feverishly giddy original illustartions for the Merrill Publishing company, were saved from the incinerator, thanks to the diligent efforts of Jean Woodcock.

The full story appears in print edition of Illustration Magazine #22 (thanks for the subscription, David!).

Leif Peng has a couple of excerpts and more of Hawley's work on his blog.

Pete Hawley and the Merrill Company

Bacteria-powered micromachines

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 09:56 AM PST

The gears above are just 380 microns across, or about four times thicker than a human hair. They're being turned by bacteria that are bumping into the spokes. Scientists at Argonne National Laboratory developed the bacteria-powered gears in an effort to develop "hybrid biomechanical systems." The speed at which the gears turn can be controlled by changing the amount of oxygen in the solution. From an Argonne National Lab press release:

The microgears with slanted spokes, produced in collaboration with Northwestern University, are placed in the solution along with common aerobic bacteria, Bacillus subtilis. Andrey Sokolov of Princeton University and Igor Aronson from Argonne, along with Bartosz A. Grzybowski and Mario M. Apodaca from Northwestern University, discovered that the bacteria appear to swim around the solution randomly, but occasionally the organisms will collide with the spokes of the gear and begin turning it in a definite direction.
A few hundred bacteria are working together in order to turn the gear. When multiple gears are placed in the solution with the spokes connected like in a clock, the bacteria will begin turning both gears in opposite directions and it will cause the gears to rotate in synchrony for a long time.

"Argonne Scientists Use Bacteria to Power Simple Machines"

Excellent 1948 British cartoon: Charley in New Town

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 09:45 AM PST

The design in this eight minute British cartoon, "Charley in New Town," is excellent.

'New Town' is an entry in a Central Office of Information-sponsored animated series featuring the everyman character Charley, and promotes an escape from grimy, smoggy towns and arduous commutes to work. With the highly distinctive animation style of husband-and-wife team Halas and Batchelor, this short aims to explain the rationale behind the planning of the new towns, with their enticing offer of green open spaces and a type of housing to suit everyone.
Building skywards - Manhattan-style - is quickly ruled out for us Brits; "Don't be silly, I'd never get me pram up there" pipes up a member of the unseen chorus of unhappy city-dwellers. But considering the urban sprawl now devouring the south-east of England, perhaps skyscrapers were the way to go after all.

"Poor little blighters." (Via Shane Glines)

Progress report on liberating America's video archives

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:11 AM PST

You'll remember that I've been urging people to go watch the public domain videos that rogue archivist Carl Malamud has been liberating from the US government and putting on YouTube, so that he could demonstrate the pent-up desire to watch these things and get the Feds to stop sitting on them. Now Carl has given his testimony and he reports:

Thanks to everybody for viewing the public domain videos I posted from the National Archives. NARA officials informed me that total revenue from the Amazon deal back to NARA over the last two years has been $3,273.66. I read their contract (link to pdf) and my back-of-the-envelope calculations say total DVD says can't be more than 11,000 units and are more likely well under 5,000 units.
In less than a week, we did 14,664 views on just 46 videos, and I'm pretty sure if we put all 1,899 videos on-line for a while, the number of views would go up by a couple of decimal places!
For those interested in the background on this as well as other NARA issues (like the $531 million computer system they're buying that the vendor has 15 patents on!!), I've posted my testimony on the subject.
Congress's official page for the hearing is here. My testimony in pdf and on scribd.
Perhaps relevant to the National Archives was Monday's announcement by the President of France that of his $50 billion stimulus package, he is devoting $1.1 billion to scanning the French National Library. My oral remarks to the Committee will suggest that we face a unique opportunity, in the midst of a great depression, to use Recovery.Gov to create enduring public works for the digital age.

National Archives and Record Administration (Thanks, Carl!)

Previously:

Bed gun rack

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 09:59 AM PST

The Back Up is a gun rack for, er, your bed. (Thanks, David Steinberg!)

Photos of rotting, abandoned water park at Walt Disney World

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 09:27 AM PST

Here's a gigantic gallery of the abandoned River Country water park at Walt Disney World, which has been shuttered for years (I last remember playing there in about 1987). The park was supposed to be kind of rustic and homey, and now the faux-weathered appearance has been augmented by actual slime-filled pools and rotting infrastructure. It's simulation become reality!

River Country

(May run out of bandwidth, try Coral cache mirror) (Thanks, Walter!)

The Year Before the Flood: Idelber's Accident

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 08:01 AM PST

(Boing Boing guestblogger Ned Sublette is a writer, historian, photographer, and singer-songwriter who lives in New York City.)

Excerpt from The Year Before The Flood

To hear me reading this excerpt (in a shout, as I tend to do in clubs) at Joe's Pub, click here. Oh, and if you want to get on my e-mail list, send an e-mail saying "subscribe" to ned.sublette at gmail.com

Fully conscious and quite annoyed, Idelber was lying on the sidewalk on Magazine Street, bleeding from a long window-glass cut on the side of his head. It looked dramatic, but he wasn't badly hurt.

You can easily get creamed driving across Magazine. You have to creep way out into the street until you can see around the parked cars. Then you have to look both ways and go! In the time it took Idelber to look left and right and turn onto the street, an SUV came barrelling down the road from behind the phalanx of parked cars, outside his field of vision. It was going at least fifty when it made impact over Idelber's left front tire. Had he started out from the intersection a half-second earlier, he would probably have been dead.

As I got there, Idelber was being strapped onto a stretcher, and was asking them not to immobilize his head until he could have a cigarette. He had asked bystanders to come tell us about the accident not because he needed help but because he was concerned we'd think he was a jerk for pulling a no-show at dinner. I went through his glove compartment and scooped up all his insurance and personal info and jammed it into a bag. I called Chris, who raced over. The police said that since Idelber had a head injury he had to go to [cue ominous music] . . .

Charity Hospital! [Sound of screams in the background.]

Founded in 1736 (though not at the same location) with a bequest of ten thousand francs from a French sailor, Charity was the oldest continuously operating hospital in the United States. In 2004, Charity was the only place a lot of people in New Orleans could go for medical attention, and it was famous for its combat-hardened medical staff. It got the head wounds and the Saturday night gang-war casualties. A couple of years before, there had been a gunfight in the emergency room.

Chris went in the ambulance while I stayed with Idelber's car until it was towed. About an hour later, they called to say they were bailing from Charity, and they'd be waiting outside for me to pick them up. No one at Charity had looked at Idelber, who was perfectly able to walk and had had it with waiting around in what he called, possibly being hyperbolic, the hip-hop version of Dante's Inferno. As Idelber waited, someone came in with an eye torn out. Then someone arrived who'd been shot in the stomach, and then someone who'd been shot in the leg. But the one that sent Idelber out of there was the man who came running in, covered in blood, holding his detached penis in his hand and shouting, "My woman just chopped it off!"

Idelber was basically fine, though his head needed stitching up. We went to another emergency room, Touro. I sent Chris home and waited it out under the fluorescent glare in the orange plastic bucket seats while Idelber kept slipping out to smoke cigarettes, his head still bleeding somewhat.

Most of the people in the waiting room at Touro seemed to be there for emergency liposuction. They looked like eyes and mouths set in blobs of fat. I wasn't sure which ones were patients and which ones were waiting, though I figured the enormous teenage girl who went out and came back with a bucket of fried chicken was not a patient. Yet.

Idelber and I would have had plenty of time to go out for fried chicken. Since he wasn't bleeding to death, it took a couple of hours for the doctor at Touro to see him. When he did, he took a quick look and gave Idelber the choice of having the wound closed up with stitches or staples. But, he pointed out, the injection of anesthetic along such a long cut before the stitching would be about as painful as the staples. With the staples, no anesthetic, but it's quick.

"If it were me?" he said, "I'd choose the staples."

He was pretty much telling Idelber which to choose. Well, OK, said Idelber without realizing that what the doctor was really saying was that staples hurt like a motherfucker, but they were quicker and easier for him to do.

I had never seen this procedure. I thought, staples, well, that's some kind of technical term. No, the guy pulled out a stapler. Not a puny little office stapler, either. A big one.

If you are ever given this choice, don't choose the staples.

Previously
The Year Before The Flood: an introduction.
The Year Before The Flood: "Getting to town"

How shellfish saved the human race

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 07:56 AM PST

A couple hundred thousand years ago, the planet became a much colder and drier place. In Africa, deserts expanded, species were wiped out and the human race was in deep trouble.

See, humans today may look pretty different from one another but, genetically speaking, there's not much diversity at all within our species. In fact, chimpanzees, which look pretty much the same from one individual to the next, are much more genetically diverse than we are. To scientists, that suggests that humans have come through a genetic bottleneck--a point where our numbers shrunk dramatically, and a relatively small population had to rebuild the species. For about 20 years, genetic anthropologists have been comparing the genes of modern human populations. Over time, they've used bigger and bigger samples, and better and better analysis, to hone in on when our bottleneck likely happened, and how many humans managed to slip through it.

Turns out, somewhere between 130,000 to 190,000 years ago, the human species was reduced to less than 1000 breeding individuals--just a few thousand people in total. Ancient, naturally driven climate change pushed our species to the brink, said Curtis Marean, Ph.D., a professor with the Institute of Human Origins and the School of Human Evolution and Social Change at Arizona State University.

What saved us? According to Marean, the answer may be "shellfish".

"They're a great source of protein," he said. "And shellfish are immune to colder ocean temperatures. In fact, when the water gets colder, those populations go up."

Marean used climate models to pinpoint locations in Africa where human hunter-gatherers could have hunkered down during a long glacial period that dried out the continent and expanded deserts. Of the four-to-six possible locations, he focused in on an area along the coast of South Africa.

"That area has a super high diversity of below-ground tuberous plants, which have high carb loads. People are excellent foragers for them. You need a digging stick and there wouldn't be a lot of animal competitors," he said. "And the tuberous plants are adapted to arid environments."

His team eventually found a site, dating to 164,000 years ago, that shows evidence of humans eating shellfish, working with natural pigments and creating technologically sophisticated tools. He thinks this could be the remnants of the humans of the bottleneck--ancestors of everyone alive today.

Other researchers have theorized that eating shellfish was actually the driver that allowed humans to develop the big brains we enjoy today, because shellfish are high in the Omega 3 fatty acids that the brain needs to function. But Marean thinks the big brain came first. You can't just walk down to the beach and score yourself some sweet shellfish action (at least, not enough to sustain a society) without being pretty bright. Ancient humans would have had to be able to do some pretty complex thinking about concepts like time, Marean said. They would have to be able to make connections between unrelated things, like phases of the moon, tides and when shellfish were most plentiful. And they'd have to be able to communicate all that to other people.

From Marean's perspective, big brains enabled a small group of humans to make the switch to a shellfish diet--an adaptation that allowed them to survive a climactic upheaval that wiped out most of their peers.

Naturally, this all begs the question, "Could humans adapt to and survive modern, anthropogenic climate change as well?" Again, Marean thinks the answer lies in our food supply.

"These people were hunter-gatherers, and beauty of a hunting and gathering economy is that it's very flexible. If you use 80 plants and 14 animals, and you lose 10 plants and two animals, you can just shift your resources. When you commit yourself to agriculture that has very narrow environmental parameters, and your whole population is dependent on that, slight changes in the environment can have catastrophic effects," he said. "I'd say we have the cultural and technological ability to make a change and adapt. But we need to get busy."

This story was inspired by Curtis Marean's lecture at the 2008 Nobel Conference at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minn. You can watch Dr. Marean's lecture online.

Image courtesy Flickr user avlxyz, via CC

The Boing Boing 20, pt. 2: the best indie and iPhone games of 2009

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 04:27 PM PST

It may seem arbitrary lumping the indies and the iPhone together for the second half of this feature on the best games of 2009 (which previously ran down the best retail console and handheld games of 2009), but this year more than ever the lines between the two blurred, as the App Store continued to evolve into a marketplace second only to the web where a one-person team has as equal a chance for success as the biggest publishers in the business. Granted, that chance still continues to be "slim", and most recently the tides have been turning slightly to top-seller lists reading more like those you'd find on the DS and PSP, but nearly all the iPhone games on this list earned critical praise and top slots in the charts with marketing staff and budgets approaching zero. Still, I wish this list could be longer. Even moreso than the first half of this feature, where the best games left off the list were the ones that were called out as the year's finest nearly everywhere else, the selections that didn't make the cut here were still at the top of their game. Releases like the Bit.Trip games, LostWinds: Winter of the Melodias, Bonsai Barber, Words With Friends and reams of other iPhone games (as I've been continuing to cover weekly), and especially Spelunky (which technically is a late 2008 release, though it didn't progress to truly sublime until a few months later) all deserve their high praise. So then below, the best web, PC, Mac, and iPhone games -- freeware, commercial, and uniquely otherwise -- that sprang from the best of the indie community this year.

Canabalt [AdamAtomic, web/iPhone, App Store link]

Canabalt will probably be the least obscure name on this list, not least for its repeat coverage here in recent months, and in the frequent high-score updates you'll have no doubt spotted in your friends' twitter feeds.

Adam 'Atomic' Saltsman's one-button game was one of the truest "sensations" this year: launched in late August as a knocked-out five-day experiment which took instant storm, leading to fast lessons in social add-on integration and an equally fast but even more compulsive iPhone port, culminating in this week's release of a newly enhanced version, adding more obstacles and more of composer Danny Baranowsky's music, and formalizing an official leaderboard for the game.

And the success of Canabalt simply as a well-designed game was just part of the story: just as interesting was how in that span of time the community truly made the game its own, spawning not one but two fan-made Twitter-scraping leaderboards. Also worth note was Saltsman's decision to not succumb to the 99 cent pressures of the App Store, a move he expounded on at length here, and hopefully one that helps inspire other iPhone developers to move the device toward a more sustainable economy.

Previously:

Captain Forever/Successor [Farbs, web]

You'll be forgiven if Captain Forever's willfully obscure homepage layout led to some blank stares, but it's all in the name of maintaining the underlying 80s-star-pilot narrative that literally binds you (via your webcam) to the seat of your ship.

It's this retro aesthetic and anachronistic faux-command-line inconvenience that helped make Forever a year-topper for many indie devs themselves, but even moreso the way developer Farbs has given his players a window into a so-far limitless universe and asked only that they create something beautiful and deadly.

And its clear that he has no intention of letting Forever slip quietly off the edge of that universe: taking smart cues from the MMO sphere and other online successes like Valve's ever-evolving Team Fortress 2, Farbs is building up his Captain as a brand, charging a project wide 'supporter fee' (which gets you early access to new versions of the game, like the recently upgraded Successor) rather than a per-copy asking price, allowing him to monetize development as he steers the ship in newer and more complex directions.

It's an incredibly strong indie-career starter from someone who less than nine months ago made the leap from full time gainful employment (announcing the departure to his employer, you'll recall, via a version of Super Mario Bros), and one of the projects I'm most anxious to see where it's headed next.

Drop7 [area/code, iPhone, App Store link]

You've either never played Drop7 or the mere mention of its name sends nic-fit twinges through your spine. There is, I've found, no middle ground. One of the year's first best games, Drop7's lethal addictiveness spread throughout the year, aided by late Spring Facebook integration, and since that time I haven't met a single person who didn't follow up "yeah, I've played it," with lengthy praise/condemnation for how much they've played it.

Many games lay claim over the 'minutes to learn/lifetime to master' claim, but Drop7 actually deserves it -- its balance of strategy and randomness is what gives it its compulsive charm, even after a daunting first few minutes struggling with its wholly original numerical premise.

If you haven't played it yet (and if you lack an iPhone, its original incarnation as a web-based TV series tie-in is still available), by all means go, but go warned.

Eliss [Steph Thirion, iPhone, App Store link]

Eliss, like Drop7 and Canabalt, is another name I've been tirelessly repeating throughout the year, and it's rightfully earned its place as one of the App Store's best for perfectly encompassing what it means to be an iPhone game.

It did that as one of the device's first true multi-touch games, and by seemingly effortlessly giving us a sense of style -- in its entirely original graphical/musical aesthetic -- that, especially at the time, was leagues above the App Store's standard fare of pastel-shaded and casual-focused design.

For as much as the iPhone has earned a reputation as a present from the future dropped in our hands (a feeling I know I still get navigating any foreign city with it constantly at my side), Eliss should be its ubiquitous Minesweeper: a curious concoction of accessible play and alien origin, unlike any other game and baffling precisely because of its uniqueness, and destined to be the standard of tomorrow.

Glum Buster [CosMind, PC]

Developer Justin 'CosMind' Leingang's labor of love (slaved on for years during off hours while creating similarly overlooked and forward thinking games like the DS's wifi-signal-collector Treasure World) still hasn't quite earned the reputation it deserves but stands as one of the year's best surrealist short stories.

As I've said before, part of that could be in its staunch refusal to speak in the language that game players have grown accustom to: entering its world means learning how to communicate all over again, even if its goals and navigation feel like standard platforming fare.

But that's precisely what gives it its magic, and a thrill of exploration that comes not just from the sights you'll see, but the way you'll interact with its inhabitants. It's an adventure into weird worlds, and its an experience that still begs for more careful attention.

Machinarium [Amanita, PC/Mac]

Long-time followers of Amanita's work wouldn't have been surprised that Machinarium ended up as one of the year's best: studio founder Jakub Dvorský has proved and re-proved himself as a creator that sees -- and constructs -- realities unlike any other, via his original cult hit Samorost, its commercial sequel, and a set of other short-form commissioned side projects.

What was surprising is in how much more rich its interactions were: gone were the simple pixel-hunt-and-click-to-move-on tasks of his earlier games, Machinarium dove even deeper into adventure gaming history and came back up with an even more complex and rewarding set of puzzles that took us into the bizarre order of its rusted steam-bot world.

One of the few developers left keeping the point and click torch lit, Amanita -- in an ideal world -- gave a new generation a taste of what it was that lends warm nostalgia to our own pasts.

Previously:

Rolando 2 [Hand Circus, iPhone, App Store link]

Hand Circus's followup to its landmark original -- one of the first iPhone games that caused the wider industry to sit up and take notice of the device as a true competitor -- stands a bit at odds with the rest of the games on this list, if only for how blindingly polished it feels next to the scrappy, experimental set aside it.

And that's certainly not without good reason: publisher ngmoco was surely dead set on giving the indie dev the time and resources it needed to deliver a game that looked and felt like it could stand next to those on handheld gaming's more established hardware, and on all counts it did.

For every part that felt slightly safer than its prequel, that formula felt doubly refined. It was smarter, flashier, and hit all the right notes that should have made it the iPhone's signature mascot platformer franchise, its Mario or Sonic -- should the studio continue to go down that natural path.

Saira [Nifflas, PC]

And then, from nowhere, came Saira. Making a surprise touchdown on PC just days ago (after originally being teased as a potential WiiWare game from the same team that are working on the console's gorgeously serene bedtime-story platformer NightSky), it didn't take long to recognize that it was going to leave a mark on the year longer than the year's last few weeks would otherwise allow it.

Part of that was simply the developer's legacy: Sweden's Nicklas 'Nifflas' Nygren is among the highest regarded indie dev within the community for his work on the Knytt series, a freeware franchise of tiny (by pixel count) worlds that are as stunningly expressive and atmospheric as they are austere (think: the lonely landscapes of Ico and Shadow of the Colossus creator Fumito Ueda).

And unlike the more physics-based puzzling of NightSky (Knytt's true chronological successor, but still maddeningly yet unavailable), Saira stays very close to Knytt's formula of exploiting the basic joys of exploration, and ups the ante considerably by connecting all those worlds via starships (with, wonderfully and unexpectedly, an onboard-playable pinball machine) and by introducing a photo mechanic that sees you hunting for clues in the landscape itself that are later used to unlock planetary defense mechanisms and allow you deeper into its twisting caverns.

With everyone still caught off guard and dazed by its sudden appearance, it's a game you should be hearing much more about in the coming weeks, as the holidays settle and everyone returns with reports on how it was the best way they spent their 2009 Christmas vacation.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor [Tiger Style, iPhone, App Store link]

Like Eliss, Spider is the perfect example of the type of game that should be dominating the App Store: a brilliantly crafted mix of arcade overtones tooled specifically for the device (its flick-jump alone remains one of the year's best character control schemes), a beautifully vintage children's book style that instantly set it apart, and, at its core, a mature story that reclined quietly and let players ask all the questions of it rather than imposing itself on you.

Happily, it did enjoy the chart-topping success it deserved for a time, lending a sliver of hope that iPhone development does reward more than the lowest common denominator, and is always patiently waiting for something smarter to come along -- a sentiment that hopefully will be stirred again when the Tiger Style team release their upcoming 'Director's Cut' update and move on to whatever love letters they've got squirreled away in the dark corners of their future.

Windosill [Vectorpark, PC/Mac/web]

And finally, Windosill shares an important trait with a number of other entries on this list: it let us explore the make-up of a world entirely unlike our own and entirely representative of its sole creator, here multimedia/interactive artist Patrick 'Vectorpark' Smith.

Unlike those other surrealities, though, Windosill is made up of some manner of mathematical magic that lends a truly remarkable tangibility to its unearthly toy-box components. Even its most bizarre creations move as they "should", react believably to our prods and pokes, and, at their best, seem so alive and driven by a spirit of their own that it feels unfathomable that they're the product of code alone.

All of these are, of course, Vectorpark hallmarks, and have earned him his reputation over the past several years, but Windosill was important for promoting his work beyond the usual interactive/Flash appreciators and into the wider gaming sphere -- so much so that the game landed Smith his debut on no less a mass-market service than Valve's Steam, momentum that we can only hope will be carried through into the new year.

Farewell!

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 09:54 PM PST

My guestblogging experience here has been wonderful, thank you all! I've learned a lot, made some neat connections, and gotten many pointers for learning more and doing more about things I'm interested in. This pleases me greatly.

I tried to pursue what Cory has called "That feeling of trepidation, of being slightly out of control, of taking a risk, of not knowing whether you are going to crash and burn." I hope that this showed, and that the results were enjoyable to you. I think that if you're not continuously checking your sanity, testing if you're correct or deluded about how your efforts might bounce off of the real world, then you're limiting yourself.

Here it goes, one last post into the ether-- watch it bounce: boing, boing, boing, boing, boing...

Fondly,
Paul

Danish police abuse climate-change demonstrators

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 04:38 AM PST

Zoran sez, "Earlier this week (12th Dec), a massive, peaceful protest of 100,000 people -- the largest demonstration for climate justice in world history -- was met with a heavy-handed response by the Danish police. Thousands of riot police swarmed the march route, blocked off streets surrounding large groups of protestors, and arrested almost 1,000 people. Arrestees were cuffed and forced to sit in rows for hours, as the temperatures dipped below freezing; numerous people urinated on themselves after being denied use of toilets."

Of course, these protests are being motivated by frustration at the incredibly weak results of the COP-15 negotiations. Last week, a closed-room group of delegates from Global North countries shocked Global South delegates and climate justice activists by pushing for a secretly-negotiated "deal" that would allow global temperatures to be allowed to rise by another 2 degrees Celsius - over the vehement protests of delegates from Africa and small island countries, argue that any increase larger than 1 degree will devastate and - in some instances - literally flood them. Then, in the past two days, the negotiations on a deal on REDD (reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation) - which are being touted as the "success" of Copenhagen - have degenerated into an incredibly weak potential deal, in which immediate targets for deforestation limits would be dropped and no financial commitments from Global North countries would be made. These failings on the part of negotiators from the Global North have been met with protests - both planned and spontaneous - by youth activists as well as delegates from the Global South.

Crackdown in Copenhagen (Thanks, Zoran!)

Previously:

CrunchGear

2009-12-17T05:41:00.001-08:00

CrunchGear

CrunchDeals: 25% off Skagen watches
The Nook gets Pandora, web browser, Facebook apps
Get Ready For The Google Branded Chrome OS Netbook
Are U.S. Drones Really Being Watched With a Simple “Satellite Internet Downloader?”
Shaimus finally releases a music video for “Like a Fool”
Report: Sharp and Philips agree on LCD TV deal
Daily Crunch: Mouth to Mouth Edition
WTFComcast: Best Blog Ever?
Twitter App for the Zune HD: It works, but it’s buggy and censors tweets
Review: Viewsonic PJD2121 Projector
iPhone leapfrogs WinMo market share
Bag Week: The Vega & Corsair from Chrome Bags
Review and giveaway: SteelSeries Siberia v2 surround-sound headset
A Great Deal On A Handgun. Woot!
Reminder: Seattle meet-up tonight, 6:30, at Cyclops
A bit of C&C4: Tiberian Twilight gameplay
Here’s the latest Alice In Wonderland trailer in HD
Zero Punctuation on Demon’s Souls: it’s too hard!
FTC accuses Intel of ‘strengthening its monopoly,” slaps it with a lawsuit
Nerd Alert: Calculator shaped like a gamepad

CrunchDeals: 25% off Skagen watches

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:25 AM PST

Our friends at Skagen have offered our readers 25% off their watches from now until December 31 which means you can order even after Christmas and pretend the order was held up at the post office.

Pop over here to order and then enter the discount code F09WATCHREV-25. Easy as pie.

The Nook gets Pandora, web browser, Facebook apps

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 03:08 AM PST

In the proud tradition of the CueCat the street is finding its own use for the Nook, adding Facebook, Pandora, and Browser apps to the ereader. Nookdevs have already rooted the Android-powered ebook and programmers have succeeded in installing multiple apps that have been ported to the version of the OS running on the Nook.

What does this mean? Not much, yet. However, it’s fun to watch this thing get torn up and made into something more than the sum of its parts. The images of the hacked Nooks, above, are pretty blurry but there are also screen caps from the “color” portion of the screen that show a formal Facebook app running on the device.

Has anyone nooked up their Nook yet? We’d love to hear your experiences.

via Eng

Get Ready For The Google Branded Chrome OS Netbook

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 02:20 AM PST

Most of the tech world now considers it a given that Google will be selling its own unlocked phone, called the Nexus One, to customers directly early in 2010. A few stragglers are still debating the finer points of the difference between Google working with handset manufacturers and carriers on a good Android experience v. them dictating the hardware specs and selling it directly to users. While they work that out for themselves we're off to the next story - the Google Chrome OS Netbook (although we think Google has a few surprises left around the Nexus One, too). Google has said from the beginning that they plan on working with select manufacturers to ensure a good Chrome OS experience for users when devices first hit the market next year. From an early FAQ: "The Google Chrome OS team is currently working with a number of technology companies to design and build devices that deliver an extraordinary end user experience. Among others, these companies include Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba." Most people assume that "working with" around Chrome OS means the same thing as "working with" around Android - lots of meetings to make sure the devices and software work together as well as possible. But sometimes those pesky hardware guys just don't do things quite right. And when you're competing against Apple, everything most definitely needs to be quite right. That may explain why Google has, according to multiple sources, been talking to at least one hardware manufacturer about building a netbook for Google directly. As in Google gave the company a RFP with quite detailed technical specifications and has begun discussions on building it.

Are U.S. Drones Really Being Watched With a Simple “Satellite Internet Downloader?”

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 01:25 AM PST

Either the WSJ hasn’t taken their anti-crazy pills or there is something severely wrong with the military industrial complex. I’m betting on both.

The story says, essentially, that insurgents in Iraq are “taking control” of our pilotless drones with a $25 piece of software called SkyGrabber. By “take control” the WSJ means “download video feeds from” and by “software” I mean essentially a satellite network snooper.

Now I’m not a rocket scientist, but it looks like what is happening here is that Iraqis are pointing their satellite dishes into the air and watching for downloads. This would be approximately equivalent to packet or token sniffing that, if I’m not mistaken, is popular with teen l33t haX0rz.

See, all of the “*Grabber” programs – there’s also a LAN program – sniff packets on the Internet and intercept downloads. If you were on my LAN downloading a copy of the Spiderman over an unencrypted connection, I would, in theory, be able to watch this and grab the download alongside you. The same, in theory, can be said of satellite connections apparently used by the freaking US military. This suggests either they’re storing video on MegaUpload or that the US military has a plaintext, uncoded FTP server set up in NORAD for the quick and dirty uploading of images from Predator Drones… you now, because the IT staff wanted to rock some Quake 2 instead of using quantum-encrypted connections for matters of national security.

Declan McCullagh notes that:

This apparent security breach, which had been known in military and intelligence circles to be possible, arose because the Predator unmanned aerial vehicles do not use encryption in the final link to their operators on the ground. (By contrast, every time you log on to a bank or credit card Web site, or make a phone call on most modern cellular networks, your communications are protected by encryption technology.)

This suggests that the final link between the drone and the operator is between a satellite flying around in space and that that final link is unencrypted for reasons unfathomable to anyone with even cursory knowledge of network communications. Maybe they wanted to save on bandwidth costs?

We’ll follow this but I’m kind of flabbergasted.

Shaimus finally releases a music video for “Like a Fool”

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 01:04 AM PST

Look. It’s 1 AM, I’ve had a few too many White Russians, and something out on the street outside of my apartment keeps making a horrible buzzing noise. Don’t bother me with that “WHY IS THIS ON A GADGET BLOG?” nonsense.

If you’ve ever played Rock Band 2, you’ve heard Shaimus’ Like A Fool – at least, you should have. It’s the best song on the damned game. Anyway, they released a music video for it earlier today, roughly 19 years after they should have. It’s after the jump. If you’re up at 1 AM for no sensible reason like yours truly, grab some headphones and rock the hell out.

Report: Sharp and Philips agree on LCD TV deal

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 01:02 AM PST

The consolidation process in the TV business continues and now even becomes international. Just last month, Sharp inked a “historical” joint venture deal with former rival Sony, agreeing to supply LED backlights to Sony for their LCD TVs (which happened this month).

And now Japan’s biggest business publication, the Nikkei, has learned that Sharp now plans to deliver LCD TV panels to Dutch electronics giant Philips. Starting as early as next year, the panels will be shipped from Sharp’s plant in Sakai, Osaka, to Philips factories in South America and Poland.

The Sakai plant began operating just in October this year. Sharp’s factory in Poland will first turn the panels into semi-finished products and then deliver them to Philips’ plant in the same country. In South America, Sharp panels will be shipped to Philips factories in Brazil.

According to the Nikkei, Sharp aims at optimizing use of their new plant through the cooperation, while Philips tries to cut production costs for their TVs and wants to reach break even in that segment next year.

Research company Display Search says Sharp is currently the world’s fifth biggest LCD maker, while Philips is the number six.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Daily Crunch: Mouth to Mouth Edition

Posted: 17 Dec 2009 12:00 AM PST

Here's the latest Alice In Wonderland trailer in HD
Nerd Alert: Calculator shaped like a gamepad
Thursday Giveaway: A Nooka Accessory Selection
Lockface: USB drive that uses face recognition to verify users
Bag Week: The Vega & Corsair from Chrome Bags

WTFComcast: Best Blog Ever?

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:03 PM PST

A few weeks back, for the first time in the history of mankind, someone actually paid attention to the description snippets that accompany Comcast’s On Demand videos. Within seconds, it was clear: whoever was writing the descriptions was bat shit insane.

And with that, WTFComcast, a blog which highlights the oddest of Comcast’s oddities, was born. Go ahead, delete your RSS feed. WTFComcast is the only blog you need to read. Oh, and CrunchGear. And MobileCrunch.

[Via this Reddit thread]

Twitter App for the Zune HD: It works, but it’s buggy and censors tweets

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 08:12 PM PST

Oh now this is exciting. Microsoft released a Twitter application for the Zune HD a few moments ago, and I’ve been tasked with testing it out for your edification. Spoiler: it works, it’s buggy, and I can’t see the sense in using it.

Installation was not easy. Oh, sure, loading up the Zune software and navigating to the appropriate section was simple enough, and syncing the application was as expected, but my Zune HD wouldn’t connect to the Internet for whatever reason. An error message popped up saying “Disconnect your Zune HD from the computer before trying to connect to a wireless network.” To that effect, at least. (Strike one.)

Well, Mr. Zune software, I’m holding the device in one hand and the USB cable in another. The Zune, in fact, is disconnected from my PC. This is not how to get on my good side, especially as I was interrupted watching Samoa Joe vs. CM Punk I to test you out.

Moving on.

Once the Zune HD stopped freaking out, I was greeted by a simple username and password screen. You log in there.

Up top there’s four icons: a little man which gives you your timeline; an @ symbol that threw up the error “Oops, something went wrong. We can’t load this data due to an external error. Please try again shortly.” (Strike two.) It loads all the tweets that mention your name; a heart icon that I don’t know what it does because it says “Unfortunately, there is nothing to display here.” (Strike three.); and then a mail icon for all your DMs.

Along the bottom there’s icons for writing a tweet, searching tweets, and for fiddling with the application’s settings.

Let’s see what happens when I try to send a tweet.

Well, the tweet went out, but once again I ran into the “external error” happened. (Strike four.) (External to what, by the way?)

On twitter.com, all my tweets read “from Zune HD,” which links to zune.net.

Usability: limited. I can’t type for beans using the Zune HD’s onscreen display, but that could well be a function of me exclusively using the device as a music player and I’m not used to it. T9 tries to help you out but it can only help so much.

I don’t understand the point of the app either, other than to say, “See, we have a Twitter app!” But since the Zune HD only connects to the Internet via Wi-Fi, how is it any more useful to use the clearly glitch Zune app to tweet when you can, I don’t know, use a real computer or one of those iPhone or BlackBerry or Android apps? It doesn’t make any sense to me.

Oh, and it censors tweets. (The tweet in the main photo up there is supposed to read: Bret Hart is coming back to WWE according to dave meltzer fuck yes!) No bad words to be found on the app, and there’s no setting to uncensor tweets. Why? How many little kids use Twitter (on a Zune HD, no less) that Microsoft had to go out of its way to censor tweets? Dumb.

In conclusion: it’s buggy and there are far more practical ways of accessing Twitter.

Review: Viewsonic PJD2121 Projector

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 06:00 PM PST

Short Version: The PJD2121 is a portable projector mainly intended for the business user. The display is bright, the colors crisp, and the contrast is high enough that you don’t need to be in a room with blackout curtains to use it. The price is pretty reasonable, too.

Features:

Off-to-Go tech allows you to shut it down and go
Short throw gives you a 60 inch screen from 4 feet
Only weighs 1.4 pounds
Supports HD inputs
MSRP: $415

Pros:

Vibrant, crisp display; works well in low light
Small and portable
Short throw makes is easy to find a place to put it

Cons:

No speakers
Fan noise can be distracting
Price of replacement lamps can be high

Review: While Viewsonic is mainly known for their LCD monitors and displays, they’ve actually been in the projector business for quite some time. The PJD2121 is one of their most recent entries into the portable projector market. I’m very impressed with it: it’s bright, colorful, and works great at short distances. I tried it for PC and console gaming and had no issues with it. It worked best with my Xbox360, and playing Dirt 2 on a 60-inch display was almost a religious experience.

I can definitely see this as an excellent product for a business traveler as well. The display is sharp, clear, and the 1800:1 contrast makes it work well even in a fairly bright environment. Text and graphics all display in vibrant color, and the contrast between text and the background is crisp and easy to read. I was slightly disappointed by the fact that the PJD2121 doesn’t have integrated speakers, but realistically it’s more intended for a business setting then for a gamer like myself.

Be aware that the connections are limited to SVGA 15-pin and component. No HDMI or composite devices need apply. This makes it a great projector for gaming and plugging into your laptop for a sales meeting, but not so great for a home theater setup.

Specs:

Native Resolution: SVGA (800×600)
Projection System: DLP
Brightness: 400 ANSI Lumens
Contrast Ratio: 1800:1
Weight: 1.4 lbs
Aspect Ratio: 4:3 native, 16:9 Selectable
Image Size: 35 to 150 inch
Throw Ratio: 1.0:1
Connectivity: 15-pin HD D-sub and RCA Component

The Viewsonic PJD2121 is a great little projector for $419. The bright colors make it great for watching movies, playing games, or showing that spreadsheet to a client. The projector itself is warrantied for a period of three years, but you should expect to replace the lamp after roughly 2000 hours. A replacement lamp has an MSRP of $456, however a quick search shows that you’ll be able to pick one up for about $150.

Product page: Viewsonic PJD2121

iPhone leapfrogs WinMo market share

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 05:21 PM PST

Oh my. This can't be what Redmond had planned. But I guess they should have spent more time revising their platform during the years and years they dominated the smartphone field. Now, with the triple threat of consumer-accessible Blackberry devices, cheap iPhones, and legions of Android handsets, it seems that even WinMo 7 may be too little, too late. iPhone users now outnumber WinMo users, according to a recent ComScore survey.

Bag Week: The Vega & Corsair from Chrome Bags

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 03:52 PM PST

I put up a hand-on of these two bags a few months ago, but I have to repost it. Not only in the spirit of Bag Week, mainly because I’ve found after using both bags over the last few months, my initial conclusion was dead on: These bags are rad.

Features:

Cordura outer shell with a 18oz weatherproof tarp liner behind
Seatbelt webbing strap
Technically utility bags so no padding to protect your computer
Made in the US and guaranteed for life
Both have an $80 MSRP

Pros

Lightweight but still durable
Tarp liner makes them very weatherproof
The Vega is a perfect size for an 11-inch notebook

Cons

Straps get bunched up on the buckle

So what makes these bags so good? Well, for one, they are extremely well made with quality material. The Cordura fabric seems like it will last forever. The straps are lightweight, but also wide enough that they shouldn’t dig into your shoulder even when loaded down.

What I like the best about both of them is that they are lined with a rubber material which should keep the bag’s contents safe from weather. Now, the bags aren’t sealed up as the top is held on with just two straps, but I wouldn’t expect rain or snow to seep through this layer.

Neither bag is very large. Don’t expect to put more than two text books in either. The Vega is really more of a man purse than anything else. It could probably hold your Franklin Covey planner, Kindle DX, and a magazine alright, but don’t expect anything else to fit comfortable. The Corsair is a tad larger, but not much.

Chrome markets these as utility bags and not notebook bags. That’s doesn’t mean you could use them as such. Just be careful. The bags do not have any type of padding. I found that a 13-inch iBook fit in the Vega and the Corsair held a 15.6-inch Asus just fine. I would recommend some sort of notebook sleeve though.

As with any quality item, these come with a price – a high one. But if you need a solid, weather-resistant utility bag, you probably will not mind spending $80 on the Corsair or Vega. I wouldn’t.

Wizbang

2009-12-17T02:10:00.001-08:00

Wizbang

Milbloggers Supporting C.J. Grisham
Russia Throws Fuel on the Climategate Fire
Senseless dunderpate or improvident lackwit?
Democrat Chaos and Comedy
Obamacare bill near collapse?
The Christmas Sweater
"They have been spouting the same nonsense for more than a decade"

Milbloggers Supporting C.J. Grisham

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 09:36 PM PST

Yesterday there was a protest in support of Army Master Sgt. C.J. Grisham in which some milblogs went silent for the day, and some for a longer period. Melissa Clothier...

Russia Throws Fuel on the Climategate Fire

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 05:59 PM PST

I don't have a wealth of comments on this as details are still sketchy but if this is true it will be big news. The Institute of Economic Analysis (out...

Senseless dunderpate or improvident lackwit?

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 04:46 PM PST

Ahoy hoy, mateys. Sorry I haven't been around much lately, I've been swinging my hammer - and not the one between my legs. The new house was a bit of...

Democrat Chaos and Comedy

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:52 PM PST

By promising everything to everybody the President is rapidly finding himself in the favor of nobody . The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) backed out of an event with other...

Obamacare bill near collapse?

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 01:35 PM PST

My headline is admittedly misleading, as it is difficult to pin down what is meant by Obamacare. As of now it includes no public option and no Medicare buy-in. The...

The Christmas Sweater

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:04 AM PST

I recently read The Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck. It is a wonderful children's book with beautiful illustrations. The book is based on a heart breaking personal story Beck tells...

"They have been spouting the same nonsense for more than a decade"

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 03:28 AM PST

Yet another credentialed heretic speaks against the Gore-acle: I am a scientist, not a climatologist, so I don't dabble in climatology. My speciality is the epidemiology of mosquito-borne diseases. As the...

About Adventure Travel: Winter Solstice Parties in December - and June!

2009-12-16T12:21:00.000-08:00

	Adventure Travel

In the Spotlight | More Topics |

	from Lois Friedland The shortest day of the year here in the US is approaching. But this Monday, December 21, isn't the only winter solstice. In the Southern Hemisphere, the winter solstice in late June is a time for parades. The Galapagos Islands are nature's laboratory - one UNESCO has placed on its endangered list. See why these islands off Ecuador's coast are on the "must visit" list for so many travelers.

In the Spotlight

Winter Solstice Celebrations in December - and June!
About.com's guide to Ireland speculates:"The nights had become noticeably longer for weeks, the days murkier, the sun styling low on the horizon. You can just imagine cavemen muttering to each other 'If this carries on, we'll have to invent fire to see anything at all!'" Did you know there are winter solstice celebrations....in June?

		More Topics
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I'm sitting in a giant bathtub and the water is sloshing around me. My toys are floating in the distance - they are the volcanic peaks called the Galapagos Islands. Join me and the unusual animals....

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Where can you find a medieval castle that blends Islamic, Roman and Christian influences? All streets in this city climb to this medieval castle, which stands on the highest part of a rocky outcrop overlooking....

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VentureBeat

2009-12-16T11:21:00.001-08:00

VentureBeat

The future of the music album? Check out RjDj’s Little Boots app
Thumbplay sees executive shuffle as it prepares to launch music app
Zynga and DST talk about their big funding deal in social games
Intel accused of antitrust violations by FTC
Keeping hackers away from your customer data
Foursquare rival Rummble acquires wi-fi finder Total Hotspots
Social investment startup kaChing raises $7.5M to disrupt mutual fund industry
Frosmo launches tournament game portal on Facebook
Social game maker Zynga raises $180M from Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies
Venture capitalists say industry will shrink, slowly
RockYou explains how a hacker stole 32 million passwords — and what it’s doing about it
Biofuel companies still on shaky ground despite wins with airlines
Insider trading charges against Broadcom executives dismissed
Fat Spaniel wins $4.6M, points to growth in home solar generation
Professor claims Square took his credit card reading technology

The future of the music album? Check out RjDj’s Little Boots app

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 11:01 AM PST

In an age when tracks can be copied or streamed at virtually no cost, what extras can musicians add to make a living?

A London- and New York-based startup called RjDj is experimenting with one answer. RjDj is taking albums from electronic artists like Little Boots and Air and creating reactive music experiences from them through iPhone apps. RjDj launched one this week with Little Boots, a British electropop artist who made her name by posting YouTube videos of herself playing experimental instruments like the Tenori-On.

What’s reactive music? It’s a type of music that’s different every single time you play it. The phone’s microphone picks up sounds from your environment while the accelerometer takes in the movement of your phone. RjDj’s app can incorporate both into the track, making each time you play a song entirely unique. The startup launched its own free app last year that offers an ever-changing variety of tracks and effects.

With the Little Boots collaboration, RjDj tooks three tracks from her already released album and turned them into a $2.99 app where you can apply effects to each song. One track focuses on accelerometer movement and sounds more agitated depending on how fast you’re walking or how much you’re shaking the phone. Another takes in sounds from your environment, like chatter from people around you in a cafe, and infuses them into the song. The effects range from being almost indetectable on some tracks to being completely transformative on others.

In the same way that sites like YouTube and social networks have handed people the tools to create experiences rather than passively consume them, RjDj is trying to allow music fans to influence the tracks they’re listening to. Fans can share unique instances of the generative Little Boots track and upload them to RJDJ’s site.

The company has also done its own take on headphone parties, where attendees listen to RjDj tracks while a person dubbed the “reality jockey” plays with different effects.

Although RjDj is working with well-known electronic artists to create apps, the company doesn’t see them as their only business model. RjDj is pioneering the use of PD (or PureData), a graphical programming language, and applying it to music composition to create reactive sound tracks. Composing music with PD looks like the rather intimidating flowchart to the right. RJDJ is working on software with a more consumer-friendly user interface that may be released next spring. (If you’re interested, here’s a tutorial on how to hack RjDj’s software with PD.)

The company is the brainchild of Last.fm co-founder Michael Breidenbruecker and boasts funding from former Last.fm chairman Stefan Glaenzer and Seedcamp founder Saul Klein.

At this point, RjDj caters to more of a niche community, but its thinking may contain several hints about the future direction of the music industry.

Thumbplay sees executive shuffle as it prepares to launch music app

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:47 AM PST

Thumbplay, a provider of mobile content like wallpapers and ringtones, announced some changes at the top today — chief executive Are Traasdahl has been appointed chairman, while chief marketing officer Evan Schwartz has been promoted to CEO.

This doesn’t look like too much of a shake-up, since Traasdahl and Schwartz were founded New York-based Thumbplay together. Traasdahl says the change was made with the company’s increased focus on music in mind, particularly with the launch of the Thumbplay Music App next year. With Schwartz managing the day-to-day operation of the company, Traasdahl said he can spend more time working on “more and bigger deals with more and bigger companies.”

The company’s music app will allow users to pay a flat rate to access an unlimited number of music tracks, starting on computers and smartphones, then eventually moving to other devices like game consoles and stereos. A private beta test of the service will launch at the Consumer Electronics Show next month.

The mobile landscape is increasingly dominated by smartphones and native applications, so it makes sense for Thumbplay to start eyeing new markets. At the same time, it has been a bad month for music startups, with investors getting a weak return on Apple’s acquisition of Lala, and MySpace buying and apparently dismantling Imeem. But Traasdahl and Schwartz sound upbeat, arguing that the emergence of media-ready smartphones makes this the right time to launch their ambitious music service. They also say Thumbplay’s experience with paid services gives it an advantage.

“If you look at the other music services that have struggled, most of them tried to build a service around the free product, and they had consumer uptake that made it very, very hard to build a business model,” Traasdahl says. “We have five years of experience in driving paid subscribers.”

Thumbplay has raised $40 million in funding and says it is profitable.

Zynga and DST talk about their big funding deal in social games

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 10:37 AM PST

Mark Pincus is at the center of the social gaming explosion. The chief executive of Zynga has the most popular games on Facebook, and he just raised $180 million from Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies. Since early 2007, Zynga has ridden Facebook’s success and created the most popular games on the social network, from FarmVille to Cafe World.

Yuri Milner is chief executive of DST, which has invested in Facebook and a number of other gaming, social network and Internet companies in recent years. We talked with them about the deal this morning.

VB: What was the timing on this deal?

YM: We first met a few months ago. We had discussions and it really accelerated in the last couple of months.

VB: The valuation of Zynga is quite high. How did you come to an agreement on the value of the company?

YM: I don’t think we can comment on the exact number. High or low is a relative thing.

VB: Can you explain from your point of view, why Zynga is a valuable company?

YM: We have obviously done our due diligence. We have looked at our own forecasts and the company’s forecasts. We feel very comfortable with the deal we have. That is supported by other participants in the investor consortium. We put a price on certain intangibles, like the quality of the team, the leadership position in the sector, and obviously the amazing growth of the business. From the time we started talking to the point where the deal was signed, the company grew up a few dozen percentage points on all fronts. That was quite a spectacular growth we have seen. All those things factor in the valuation.

VB: Mark, does this put off a need for an initial public offering? Did you prefer to do this instead of going down the IPO road for now?

MP: Dean, you and I have had good conversations going back over a year now on how social gaming is evolving. I really liked a story you wrote a year ago on how the space was promising but didn’t want to get ahead of itself. The approach we have taken with building the company and trying to be a participant in social gaming becoming an industry was to work really hard on the product front and the infrastructure and the growth. We did not want to let the media and buzz get ahead of itself. We did not want the company to get ahead of itself on the financing front. What we have done is along the way tried to partner with high-quality, smart investors who added to the DNA of the company and supported our long term vision and shared it. All the investors have done it before in their own way. The leaders have nothing to prove. Whether it is Kleiner Perkins or Marc Andreessen or DST. There are groups that are ready to go for it and they want to see us go for it. That has been important to have that foundation. With regard to an IPO, it didn’t feel like that was going to accelerate our next four quarters of product and people growth. There are things about being public that can hamper a team’s ability to execute before they are ready for it. This route was a no brainer.

YM: We basically subscribe to view that an IPO has to be business-driven and not liquidity-driven. We have seen some companies go public just because certain employees and investors want to cash in on the success of the company. There are other ways to provide this liquidity without the distraction of the IPO process. [Employees are able to sell some of their vested shares in this deal]. Only when a company is ready to go public and needs some kind of currency to do M&A or is otherwise ready, then it makes sense. This transaction is similar to the prior Facebook transaction we did that had the same logic.

VB: Mark, what was good for you about choosing DST as such a big investor here?

MP: When we met DST and got to know how they are made up, and how they are approaching the market, we saw them as really a unique kind of investor and partner that we had not found in the market. They are a perfect kind of investor for us because they are not a fund. They don’t have money with a time frame on it [where investors have to cash out soon]. And they act as participants in the market. The fact that they had been actively involved in running consumer web companies in Russia meant they came in with this empathy for what it means to go after the consumer business. At every point, even before we were officially partners, I felt comfortable talking about all the realities of the business. Nothing surprised them. One example was when we went through the controversy on the offers. We decided to do what was right and take all offers down until we could guarantee the quality of them. They applauded it and said that was exactly right and it increased their conviction that we were long-term focused. They were not nervous that we were removing near-term revenues.

VB: Can you guide us on some numbers? The New York Times story had details. They said revenues would be over $250 million and they estimated the valuation at $1.5 billion to $3 billion.

MP: They came up with that on their own. We did not guide them in any way. We happily remain private on any financial figures.

VB: You seem very close to Facebook now, not only with a common investor but a common board member with Marc Andreessen. Is that intentional or coincidental?

MP: I wouldn’t call it intentional or coincidental. It’s logical. We didn’t seek out Marc or DST. We met them and found them to be kindred spirits. Those parties are big believes in Facebook because they believe in social media. They saw casual content as the next logical extension of their investment thesis. I think the analogy is the cable TV business, where you saw companies invest first in the cable networks and then the channels on them.

VB: Yuri, how do you get comfortable with the changes in the social gaming market? There seemed to be plenty to get nervous about, like the offer scandal, and the flip side of what we just talked about, the dependence on Facebook? Facebook can make changes that can make a lot of impact on Zynga. How do you get comfortable with these unknowns?

YM: We have made a few investments prior to this one that provided to us significant comfort. Some were made in Russia. We invested in four gaming companies in Russia in the last three years. We saw the emergence of the gaming companies in the Russian-speaking world. We invested in five social networks prior to investing in Facebook. On the other hand, we have seen certain trends. Russia is in the middle of the East and the West. The Ural mountains are the border between Europe and Asia. We sit on border and see what has gone on with both sides. We saw the emergence of micropayments and virtual goods models in China a few years ago. This business model came to Russia two years ago. We saw it in the U.S. in the last couple of years. We saw the trends early on and felt it was a natural thing for us to make this investment, having done these investments in the last couple of years.

VB: Electronic Arts bought Playfish [for as much as $400 million]. Did that figure into your thinking on this investment, Mark?

MP: Not really. We were in conversations with dst prior to knowing about the EA-Playfish transaction. This made sense for us. We would have liked it to be in the running to acquire or merge with Playfish. If our timing were different and we would have done this deal a quarter earlier, we might have been in a better position there.

VB: Mark, how do you describe Zynga’s success? You have ridden the coattails of Facebook better than anyone else has. What are some of the most critical moves you made?

MP: We were the first company to believe in the social gaming opportunity and go after it with our poker game in July, 2007. Everybody else was focused on viral apps like pokes and other things that spread more virally. We were always interested in just the gaming opportunity. By the time we saw it was real and had a sustainable revenue stream, we were the first to start investing deeply in it. We were profitable when we raised our first round of venture money in the fall of 2007. It was the same when we we raised our second round in June 2008. We did a $30 million-plus round then so we have this big capital base we could expand with. We are the biggest macro bet on social gaming on the web and that is continuing.

Within it, we have had some good ideas. We have tried to innovate against the experience. I also think a key to our success is being ruthless about killing marginal games and moving our best people to best opportunities. We moved to franchise concept and studio concept by Q2 of last year and with that we were the first to move to running the game as a service. Before that it was fire and forget for the whole game industry. Even in social gaming, you can look at why did our Mafia Wars beat Mob Wars. Mafia Wars came out nine months later. We had 40 people on it. We would add features four or five times a week. Others competing with us were more cottage businesses and didn’t invest as much. Look at FarmTown. Something happens around 3 million daily active users. You hit ceilings. You have to be a real company with customer support, deal with fraud and payments, and all of those things force you to decide if you will double down and make an investment for the long term. Your management hassle goes up and you have a lot of employees. At the beginning, we knew who we wanted to be as a long-term company. There was no question we would be a long-term company.

Intel accused of antitrust violations by FTC

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 07:27 AM PST

Intel settled its long-running feud with Advanced Micro Devices, but now it faces a new antitrust complaint from the Federal Trade Commission.

The FTC sued the world’s biggest chip maker today, accusing it of using its dominant market position to stifle competition and strengthen its monopoly for the past decade. The complaint covers not only the market for microprocessors, but also graphics chips.

The complaint alleges that Intel blocked rivals from selling their chips by cutting off access to the market. The move shows that, under the Obama administration, antitrust enforcement is going to be aggressive.

“Intel has engaged in a deliberate campaign to hamstring competitive threats to its monopoly,” Richard A. Feinstein, director of the agency's Bureau of Competition, said in a statement. “It's been running roughshod over the principles of fair play and the laws protecting competition on the merits.”

The commission is seeking to stop Intel from competing unfairly by using threats, bundled prices, or other offers to encourage exclusive deals or manipulate prices. Intel has long maintained that it has done nothing wrong and that consumers haven’t suffered, but in its settlement with AMD it agreed not to do a number of things that AMD had complained about. Intel also paid AMD a total of $1.25 billion as part of the settlement.

Intel has been fined $1.45 billion by the FTC, it has dealt with regulator complaints in South Korea and Japan, and the New York attorney general also filed an antitrust suit against it last month. The FTC case not only applies to Intel’s dealings in microprocessors, but also in chip set markets that have affected graphics chip maker Nvidia.

The FTC said that Intel used exclusive or restrictive dealings to force HP, IBM, Dell and others to buy chips from Intel and limit their purchases from competitors. The FTC did not specify an amount of monetary damages, though it could seek to force Intel to disgorge any ill-gotten profits in court.

In one new allegation, the FTC said, “Intel secretly redesigned key software, known as a compiler, in a way that deliberately stunted the performance of competitors' CPU chips. Intel told its customers and the public that software performed better on Intel CPUs than on competitors' CPUs, but the company deceived them by failing to disclose that these differences were due largely or entirely to Intel's compiler design.”

Regarding the graphics chip market, the FTC said, “Having succeeded in slowing adoption of competing CPU [central processing units] chips over the past decade until it could catch up to competitors like Advanced Micro Devices, Intel allegedly once again finds itself falling behind the competition – this time in the critical market for graphics processing units, commonly known as GPUs, as well as some other related markets. These products have lessened the need for CPUs, and therefore pose a threat to Intel's monopoly power.

Intel has responded to this competitive challenge by embarking on a similar anticompetitive strategy, which aims to preserve its CPU monopoly by smothering potential competition from GPU chips such as those made by Nvidia, the FTC complaint charges. As part of this latest campaign, Intel misled and deceived potential competitors in order to protect its monopoly. The complaint alleges that there also is a dangerous probability that Intel's unfair methods of competition could allow it to extend its monopoly into the GPU chip markets.”

“We applaud today's action by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission,” Nvidia said in a statement. “We are particularly pleased to see scrutiny being placed on Intel's behavior toward GPUs, which have become an increasingly important part of the PC industry. We are reviewing the FTC's filing and expect to release a comment later today.”

The FTC filed the complaint under section 5 of the Sherman Antitrust Act, a relatively little used part of antitrust law. The FTC last sued Intel for antitrust violations in 1998, but the parties settled that case on the eve of trial. Intel called the complaint “misguided” in a statement.

Intel senior vice president and general counsel Doug Melamed added, “This case could have, and should have, been settled. Settlement talks had progressed very far but stalled when the FTC insisted on unprecedented remedies – including the restrictions on lawful price competition and enforcement of intellectual property rights set forth in the complaint — that would make it impossible for Intel to conduct business. The FTC’s rush to file this case will cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars to litigate issues that the FTC has not fully investigated. It is the normal practice of antitrust enforcement agencies to investigate the facts before filing suit. The Commission did not do that in this case.”In a call with reporters, Feinstein said, “I’d like to think that monopolists are aware of our ability to take them on. I think this is a signal to monopolists that the FTC is alive and well and vigorous.”

Feinstein denied that the FTC didn’t fully investigate the graphics chip part of the case, even though it involves recent events.

Keeping hackers away from your customer data

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 06:00 AM PST

(Editor's note: Chris Drake is CEO and founder of FireHost, Inc., a secure Web hosting company. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)

Many entrepreneurs have preconceptions about their place in the cyber crime world – usually wrong ones.

Some feel that if large organizations like Sears can easily fall prey to hackers, there's really nothing they can do to protect their own small business. Other think their company is too small to hold value for cyber criminals, making them safe from attack, as it wouldn't be worth the hacker's time.

The truth is: Security measures in place at most small- and medium-sized businesses are “easy pickings” for hackers, and there is a booming community of C2C (criminal to criminal) interactions focused solely on stealing customer data from SMBs that conduct business online.

The same way you work every day to develop new, enticing products and easier ways for your customers to shop, cyber theft “shop owners” fuel this underground economy (valued at more than $276 million) by devising faster, easier and more effective methods to steal your company’s data.

Preventing data leakage takes an ongoing, concerted effort, so it’s important that you take proactive control over your immediate environment. Here’s how:

Only run software you need. Thoroughly review all third-party applications before introducing them to your environment. Only install third-party applications if they are absolutely necessary. Remove all inactive programs at once. Paring down your list of installed programs alleviates your susceptibility to any known or future security threats they may pose.

Stop ignoring those updates. Install every software update, and do it quickly. Addressing security vulnerabilities is a top priority of software patches – so don’t get versions behind.

S = More Secure. Traditional FTP connections are insecure. Look for "SSH" and "SFTP" connections as they are in an encrypted format and are the minimum standard for eCommerce Web site administration.

Manage change. Terminate access credentials for former website administrators and employees immediately after (and sometimes before) they exit the company. Open logins create an extremely popular data leakage point. Implementing strict, consistent, change management protocols will reduce the chances your website is compromised by a password breach.

Check configurations and permissions. Regularly check that server configurations and file permissions are set correctly, and that there are no open permissions on directories.

Cheaply outsourced labor could cost you. Do you really want to outsource your livelihood to the lowest bidder? Websites require ongoing maintenance, bug fixes and enhancements – and working closely with a local developer that you can meet in person might be the best solution in the long run.

Hire a hacker. Hire a hacker to try and penetrate your environment to find its vulnerabilities. I'm serious.

Achieve PCI Compliance if you conduct eCommerce. The payment Card Industry has devised a succinct list of requirements to which every organization must adhere if they accept credit cards as a form of payment.

Vulnerability audits. Have professionals perform regular vulnerability audits. We recommend monthly or quarterly (at minimum). Vulnerability audits can identify weak logins, data leakage from forms, SQL injection vulnerabilities, DDoS activity, spam relaying, order manipulation, admin control panel tampering and more.

Hackers pose a real threat to entrepreneurs – and they find value in stealing customer records, even from the "one-man shops" out there. Give these preventative measures the same priority as the way your site looks and works. After all, an ounce of prevention…well, you know the saying.

Photo by gutter via Flicker

Foursquare rival Rummble acquires wi-fi finder Total Hotspots

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 04:38 AM PST

Rummble, the U.K.’s answer to the location-based services craze, has bought wi-fi finder Total Hotspots.

It’s largely a talent acquisition: Total Hotspots managing director Alex Housley becomes Rummble’s vice president of business. The two companies partnered earlier this year to bring Total Hotspots’ database of Wi-Fi access points to the Rummble community.

Total Hotspots is the profitable startup behind an iPhone app that tells users where the nearest paid and free hotspots are around the world. Rummble is lowering Total Hotspots’ price in the iPhone app store from £2.99 to £0.59 over Christmas.

London-based Rummble is part of the wave of startups developing location-based social networks through mobile apps. There are others including Foursquare, which has about 150,000 users, and Gowalla, which raised $8.4 million in a second round of financing announced last week.

Housley says Rummble’s unique value is in its hyper-targeted personal recommendations. The app doesn’t give ratings that are the same across the board for all users, like you might see on review site Yelp. Your tastes differ from other people’s preferences, so Rummble studies your likes and dislikes when you check into different places and can suggest places based on what people with a similar profile prefer.

Social investment startup kaChing raises $7.5M to disrupt mutual fund industry

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 12:01 AM PST

kaChing, a company that´s aiming to disrupt the mutual fund industry, raised $7.5 million in its first venture-backed round of financing, led by DAG Ventures.

kaChing is part of a young cohort of startups that are trying to democratize the fund management industry, by allowing individual investors to copy the trades of other skilled investors instead of turning to professionally-run funds that can charge around 3 percent in fees.

The Palo Alto-based startup recently opened up its site to anyone wanting to become an investor that others can follow, provided they share access to their real brokerage accounts and are active on the site for more than a year.

For example, if you´ve found an investor with an approach you respect, you can invest at least $3,000 and have allocations in that portfolio match the investor’s moves. The manager will charge you a fee from between 0.25 to 3 percent, and kaChing will take a quarter of that. (The average fee tends to be around 1.25 percent.)

The holdings of these investors, dubbed "geniuses", are public. kaChing signs legal agreements with them to ensure they follow the company's policies and don't front run (or improperly jump ahead of customer orders). There is also a message board for an investor's followers to ask them questions about why they shorted or bought a specific stock.

The new investment comes on top of an earlier angel round with big names like Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz, OpenTable CEO Jeff Jordan and Mike Volpi of Index Ventures. kaChing´s competitors include Covestor, a London- and New York-based startup that has a larger minimum investment and is targeting more professional managers.

Frosmo launches tournament game portal on Facebook

Posted: 16 Dec 2009 12:01 AM PST

There are huge numbers of games on Facebook, but Helsinki startup Frosmo, hopes it can grab some attention amid all the noise by doing something a bit different. The company will provide a tournament and prize-based social gaming service on Facebook.

The company, started in 2008, makes infrastructure for staging tournaments in casual games. It has created a white-label service that is used by 30 partners, including major portals in Eastern Europe, Asia, and the Middle East. Now the company will do the same under its own brand name on Facebook.

The company’s app will be like a game portal embedded within Facebook, said Mikael Gummerus, chief executive of Frosmo, in an interview. Players will be able to play 70 Flash-based games on the portal. Those games have been created by independent developers who are looking to monetize their games. Tournaments generate revenue, and Frosmo shares that with the games’ developers. Depending on the region, Frosmo gives away money or prizes to tournament winners.

Frosmo holds the 70 games together by infusing them with a meta game, where you level up and progress through ages, from the Stone Age to the modern age. Players have to work together to make progress.

“We create a social game around the games,” Gummerus said.

Players can watch their overall Frosmo rank increase as they play more games and share experiences with friends. Gamers can play the Frosmo-based games by logging into their favorite Internet portals, on Frosmo.com using Facebook Connect, or through the new Facebook app, which goes live today.

Frosmo gamers can team up and interact with each other while they play. They can progress through the ranks as a team, and the team rises in rank based on how well the gamers play. Frosmo has its own virtual currency, known as Frollars, which players can win in the tournaments or purchase with real money. Users can also upgrade to premium accounts.

The company signed up its first white-label commercial service partner, MTV 3 Finland, in May 2008. It also provides tournament services for China.com, which has 10 million unique monthly visitors; Yahoo Middle East (formerly Maktoob) with 15 million visitors; Sanook.com, Thailand’s largest Internet portal with 5 million visitors; and Ekolay, a Turkish site with 3 million visitors. Frosmo’s service now has 3 million gamers worldwide, and the company is betting it can grow to 15 million gamers by the end of 2010.

Frosmo has 25 employees, and it competes with the likes of Zynga, Playfish and a host of casual game sites. Its investors include Riistos Silasmaa, a member of Nokia’s board. It raised 1.4 million euros from the Finnish government and has also raised two rounds of angel money.

Before founding Frosmo, Gummerus was managing director of E-Sports Nordic. But he spun Frosmo out of that company once he saw its potential. Rivals include Mind Jolt, which has 14 million unique monthly visitors.

Social game maker Zynga raises $180M from Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 10:09 PM PST

The Russians are coming. First, Russian investor Digital Sky Technologies bought a $200 million stake in Facebook. Now that same investor has invested $180 million in Zynga, the fast-growing social game company.

The New York Times first reported the news, but it has since been confirmed by Zynga.

The investment no doubt gives Zynga a stratospheric valuation, and it shows that global investors are closely watching the social gaming industry that is profiting from giving away games for free and collecting payments for virtual goods purchases.

It also shows how much clout the company has accumulated in just a couple of years on riding the social gaming craze on Facebook. Other investors include Tiger Global, a New York hedge fund, and venture firms Institutional Venture Partners and Andreessen Horowitz.

How could Zynga be worth so much money? Consider that FarmVille, a Facebook game launched in June, now has 72.9 million monthly active users. Facebook makes money from the ads wrapped around the game. And Zynga makes money whenever impatient players decide they need to buy something like a tractor to make more progress in the game. This so-called virtual goods business model took off in 2009, generating revenues for Zynga that are rumored to be about $250 million. The company has 712 full-time and part-time employees and it’s profitable.

And that’s probably how the Russians did their math and came up with a valuation. The New York Times cited finance experts who figure the value could be anywhere from $1.5 billion to $3 billion. Besides FarmVille, Zynga has a bunch of other popular games: Cafe World, Mafia Wars, FishVille, YoVille, and Texas HoldEm Poker. All of Zynga’s users add up to 232 million monthly active users, a figure that is growing every week.

By comparison, Playfish, the No. 2 company on Facebook, has 59 million users. And Electronic Arts just bought them for as much as $400 million. EA bought Playfish because it didn’t succeed at breaking into the Facebook game market, where companies tweak their code almost every week, treating games as a service to feed the wants of users.

As with Facebook, DST is buying shares not only from the company, but from employees as well, allowing them to cash out of their holdings in Zynga before the company has any kind of initial public offering. There’s some interesting details on this employee stock purchase plan on Inside Social Games, though some of the information was incorrect.

Previously, Zynga raised around $55 million from investors including Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, Union Square Ventures, Foundry Group and Avalon Ventures. Those investors did not invest in this latest round.

This deal will likely allow Zynga to keep growing fast while putting off its IPO for a time.

"The opportunity every quarter is proving to be bigger than we imagined and we always thought it was prudent to keep adding to the capital of the company as we grow," said Mark Pincus, Zynga's founder and chief executive, to the New York Times.

Venture capitalists say industry will shrink, slowly

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 09:00 PM PST

The chorus declaring that the venture capital industry is shrinking now includes 90 percent of VCs, according to the National Venture Capital Association’s annual survey, Venture View 2010.

That’s, uh, pretty overwhelming. Things are a little more divided when it comes to the size of the contraction, but even then, 58 percent of respondents agreed that the industry will shrink 16 – 30 percent. That doesn’t necessarily mean we will see big layoffs — 63 percent of respondents said the number of investment professionals at their firm will stay the same. Instead, NVCA President Mark Heesen predicts that it will be a gradual process, as fewer firms raise funds, and as those funds shrink (87 percent predicted that venture funds raised next year will be smaller). That means fewer firms, and smaller ones.

Not that it’s all doom and gloom. VCs see hope, for example, in an improving market for exits, especially acquisitions, with 91 percent predicting that there will be more acquisitions next year. They also predicted a small increase in initial public offerings, with 43.3 percent estimating that between 20 and 29 venture-backed companies will go public.

“The IPO market for VC-backed companies will finally reopen in the US, and several IPOs will reach $1 billion market capitalizations or more,” said Pascal Levensohn of Levensohn Venture Partners (some respondents let NVCA quote their answers).

And if you’re a startup, VCs see some good news too. Venture capital investments will increase slightly next year, according to 44 percent of respondents, and 49 percent said their firm will invest in more companies. The biggest predicted investment increase is in cleantech, and the smallest is in software.

325 United States-based VCs participated in the survey.

RockYou explains how a hacker stole 32 million passwords — and what it’s doing about it

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 06:08 PM PST

Social app maker RockYou confirmed today that it is notifying millions of its users that their usernames and passwords may have been compromised by a hacker who broke into the company’s older applications known as widgets.

In an exclusive interview, RockYou chief technology officer Jia Shen said the company was notified of the SQL injection attack against RockYou.com last week by officials at security firm Imperva. Shen said RockYou shut down the site for its legacy applications — such as slide show widgets — and secured them.

That process took about a day. Then the company began poring through its databases to find any evidence of attack. Shen said the company doesn’t know exactly what the hacker did in the attack. The company is in contact with law enforcement but isn’t saying more.

“But we are assuming the worst,” Shen said. “We checked the activity and it looked like it had been going on a couple of days before we were warned.”

In fact, a hacker posted some of the passwords and usernames that were allegedly stolen. Shen confirmed that those were legitimate passwords from RockYou’s databases, but he does not know exactly how many were stolen. Shen emphasized that RockYou’s current Facebook applications and its ad network were not attacked and are not vulnerable to the same kind of attack. The widgets were RockYou’s main business before it switched to becoming a Facebook app developer.

“We worked on our widgets for a long time and the code base predates the Facebook platform,” Shen said. “We are taking a lot of flak. But I want to make it clear that nothing outside of the RockYou widgets were impacted.”

Nevertheless, Shen said the impact could be serious. For instance, if users keep the same usernames and passwords for every site they use, including their online bank accounts, they could be vulnerable to identity theft.

One user told us some time ago that RockYou was vulnerable to attack, as were other sites. Shen said he did not get warnings about the risk of an SQL injection attack against the widgets before.

“We started off as a small company and today we have a different engineering structure,” he said. “But shame on us. If you make a mistake, then people can get in and it is a big hole.”

Shen acknowledged that the passwords and usernames were stored in a database that was not encrypted, another no-no when it comes to security. That is why the hacker was able to get access to the passwords. The company has begun notifying users but has not finished yet because the process takes a long time. Shen acknowledged the company did not say anything publicly for 10 days, but he said they were busy notifying users and partners during that time.

The company is telling users to change their passwords on the RockYou site and on any other sites where they’ve used the same username or password.

“Locking down everything is complete,” Shen said. “Our security approach in the future will have to be deeper.”

Biofuel companies still on shaky ground despite wins with airlines

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 04:22 PM PST

When it comes to biofuel adoption, the airlines are way ahead of the automakers. In August, synthetic fuel maker Rentech signed a deal to produce 1.5 million gallons of diesel made from sewer sludge to power ground equipment for eight airlines at LAX. Today, that same company and competitor AltAir landed preliminary contracts to supply 15 airlines with renewable fuels.

But even deals of this size aren’t enough to give biofuel companies the financial boost they need for the industry to explode. Today, Rentech also reported that its fourth-quarter losses are going to be higher than anticipated due to the tight economy. Even though it supports its biofuel operations by selling fertilizer and industrial chemicals, it still lost $6.4 million in the third quarter, more than the $2.9 million it lost during the same period in 2008. Revenue also fell 67 percent to $24.7 million.

This is all to say that biofuel, despite its unique advantages — namely that it is a drop-in alternative that could be used in existing cars and planes — is still far from rivaling petroleum-based fuels. Airlines deciding to convert to biodiesel is a good sign for the environment, but until the automotive segment of the business gets its act together, companies like Rentech, LS9, Synthetic Genomics, Coskata, Fulcrum Bioenergy and others may be in for a rough time.

The memorandums of understanding signed today by Rentech and AltAir could supply more than 100 million gallons of biodiesel over the next decade to big name airlines such as American, Delta, JetBlue, United Airlines, U.S. Airways, Hawaiian Airlines and AirTran.

Rentech derives most of its biofuels from sewage sludge funneled to it by EnerTech Environmental, while AltAir relies on camelia oil, one of the newly-emerging feedstocks we have yet to hear much about. Municipal waste, algae, switchgrass and wood waste are the most commonly used for these purposes right now.

Rentech plans to produce the bulk of this product at its planned Natchez facility in Mississippi. That site alone is anticipated to turn out 400 million gallons of fuels and chemicals every year, in addition to 120 megawatts of electricity. The project is costing the company $4 – $4.5 billion, so it must have a lot of confidence in where the market is headed. AltAir, on the other hand, will produce its fuels in Anacortes, Wash. at a plant slated to be up and running by 2012.

As a public company, Rentech is somewhat of a different animal from the many venture-backed firms looking to do the same thing. Particularly in this economic environment, investors are more hesitant to back capital intensive companies that have little to no hope of a near-term exist. If any sector fits that description, it would be biofuels.

Refineries are pricey and, as of yet, there’s not a huge market for the fuels being churned out — although the airline deals are a positive sign. Some of the smaller players in the space could find themselves in trouble, or, if they’re lucky, as acquisition bait for fuel giants like Chevron looking to go green.

Insider trading charges against Broadcom executives dismissed

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 03:48 PM PST

In a courtroom shocker, Broadcom founder Henry Nicholas and the company’s former chief financial officer won a legal victory as a federal judge found that prosecutors had intimidated witnesses.

U.S. District Court judge Cormac Carney dismissed stock-option backdating charges against the former chief executive Henry Nicholas and CFO William Ruehle. The case was scheduled to go to trial in February and had been in the works for years, but Carney said that the government prosecutors “threatened and intimidated three witnesses.” To submit this case to a jury would be a “mockery of justice,” the judge said.

I happened to go to the Broadcom analyst meeting today, where conversation focused on the announcement. But the company’s current management had no involvement in the case.

“The people of Broadcom long ago put behind us the events, some as old as 10 years, that led to these cases,” current chief executive Scott A. McGregor said in a statement. “Still, today's events are important for Broadcom because they remove an issue that, for some observers, may have partially obscured Broadcom's tremendous business successes.”

Carney scheduled a hearing for February to decide whether to proceed with a separate trial against Nicholas over narcotics-related charges. That case became famous because of leaks of the alleged excesses of Nicholas. Prosecutors claimed he regularly hired prostitutes and had parties where illegal drugs were abundant. There was a reported incident where the pilot on Nicholas’ private jet had to wear a gas mask because there was so much marijuana smoke on the plane.

Irvine, Calif.-based Broadcom restated its earnings as a result of the case, reducing earnings from 1998 to 2005 by $2.2 billion for underreported compensation expenses. It was the largest backdating restatement, according to Bloomberg.

The judge said that one prosecutor leaked information about former Broadcom Chairman Henry Samueli’s grand jury testimony to newspapers to force him to plead guilty. The prosecutor also tried to influence the testimony of a former general console after the judge had granted him immunity. The judge said the prosecutor also caused the former head of human resources at Broadcom, Nancy Tullos, to lose her job at a different company as part of an effort to get her to cooperate with the investigation. Tullos, who pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice, was a key witness for the government.

Judge Carney foreshadowed his concerns about the prosecution earlier. On Dec. 9, he set aside the guilt plea of Samueli, who was the co-founder of the company with Nicholas. It seemed like the prosecution had a huge case against Nicholas, who might have been a rarity as a billionaire in jail. The drug case is still a big threat for Nicholas, but I’m very surprised this case would be dismissed in this way.

Fat Spaniel wins $4.6M, points to growth in home solar generation

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 03:37 PM PST

As renewable sources of energy like wind and solar power start to gain more momentum, measurement and analysis startup Fat Spaniel may start to see bigger business. Based in San Jose, the company monitors exactly how much power is being generated by renewable systems — and now it’s raised $4.6 million in debt financing to continue meeting demand, according to a filing with the SEC.

Fat Spaniel’s software communicates with renewable energy hardware like solar panels and wind turbines. In the future, its technology could eventually be integrated with smart metering infrastructure to keep even closer tabs on how alternative energy is being consumed.

Already, the company has forged a partnership with energy management company Tendril to give utilities all the information they need about the renewable energy their customers are both using and producing. This could grant it greater entree into the smart grid space.

For now, Fat Spaniel has yet to substantially tap the growing residential solar and wind markets. It only just announced the co-development of software and device geared toward homes with Tendril at the end of October — so the concept is young yet. This will likely prove to be a ripe area for growth for the company.

Just yesterday, SunRun — a company that installs rooftop solar panels on homes for a minimal fee before charging for the electricity generated — scored $90 million to convert even more traditional utility customers to solar. If it and its competitors like Solar City are successful in their marketing and public education campaigns, measuring the amount of solar energy produced by these panels will become critical. And that’s where Fat Spaniel comes in.

Before it started eyeing the residential market, Fat Spaniel concentrated on providing its software to large commercial clients like Wal-Mart and other big box stores. Increasingly conscious of their environmental footprints from a financial and marketing standpoint, a lot of these stores are converting to renewable sources of energy and enrolling in demand response programs to increase energy efficiency during peak demand periods. Fat Spaniel’s offerings help them with both.

Fat Spaniel last raised $18 million in a second round of funding in January of last year. It is backed by Applied Ventures, Chrysalix Energy, Element Partners, Ignition Partners, and PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund.

Professor claims Square took his credit card reading technology

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 03:32 PM PST

Square, a new company that makes a small device to let anyone make a credit card payment from their mobile phone, has probably stirred up more excitement than any other startup launching in recent months.

But Bob Morley, an associate professor of electrical engineering at Washington University in St. Louis, says there’s a big hitch: He built Square’s credit card reading technology and has filed a patent for it, so the San Francisco company doesn’t own a key part of its tech. He came up with the concept, designed it, and assembled the first working prototype for it, he says.

Square has generated buzz not just because it was co-founded by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey. The concept of Square’s small device, which hooks up to your phone’s audio jack and allows anyone to swipe credit cards for payment is pretty audacious. It comes at a time when all kinds of financial and technology companies are seeking to crack the problem of mobile payments, and Square’s idea seems brain-dead obvious in hindsight. Just as we saw in the case of Facebook, there are often more fathers — or at least claimed fathers — to potential success than originally realized.

I emailed Square for comment earlier this afternoon, but haven’t heard back yet. If I do, I’ll update this post, but for now all I have is Morley’s story.

Here’s Morley’s version of what happened. He said he’s been a longtime friend of Square co-founder and chairman Jim McKelvey’s family through Wash U. (McKelvey’s father was on the faculty, and McKelvey himself was an engineering student there.) Morley had been researching magnetic fingerprinting as a way to protect against credit card fraud, so when McKelvey had his well-known “Eureka!” moment of wanting a simple, portable credit card reader for selling his glass art, Morley decided to build a prototype device. (An early prototype is pictured below.)

Plenty of others have contributed to the technology, Morley acknowledges — he says he didn’t design the iPhone app that controls the device, and much of the device’s mechanical design comes from McKelvey. But the technology for scanning the card’s magnetic stripe and converting it into an audio signal? Morley says he built that, and filed a patent for it in June. (Patents usually aren’t published until 18 months after filing, but for what it’s worth Morley showed me an email receipt confirming that the patent had been filed.)

Morley planned to assign the patent to Square in exchange for ownership shares in the company, but Morley says the two sides couldn’t come to an agreement, and the negotiations broke off in October. Since then, Square has said they aren’t using Morley’s technology, he said, but he’s skeptical that that’s actually the case.

So what happens next? Well, Square is free to move forward since the patent hasn’t been granted. Morley says he’d like to return to the negotiating table. If that doesn’t happen Morley says he’s interested in licensing the technology to other companies — which might eventually be trouble for Square.

As noted earlier, an outsider claiming credit for a company’s success is a familiar story, and Square certainly has the potential to become a very big deal — it’s reportedly valued at $40 million already, and it seems to have found a graceful solution to the mobile payments problem. (In comparison, Intuit has, for example, a mobile credit card reader, but you must either enter the credit card number or buy a separate device that’s bulkier than Square’s.)

Morley doesn’t deny that he wants a share of Square’s success.

“There’s no animosity,” he says. “They’ve got a company that they’re moving along, and I hope it does well. I’ve my cards to play: I’ve got my patent application in, and I’m going to see what I can get for it.”

Morley says businesses interested in his technology can contact his representative Bruce Baebler at bruce_b@newvistapartners.com.

About Today: Gifts That Give Back

2009-12-16T10:13:00.000-08:00

	Today

In the Spotlight | More Topics |

	from Jen Hubley Last year, I gave people donations to charity instead of presents. Some people really seemed to like the idea. Others clearly wished that I would do my do-gooding on my own time, and get them a real gift. So this year, although I want to keep the holiday spirit alive by giving back, I'm trying to mix it up a bit.

In the Spotlight

Gifts Without Guilt
Want to give a gift that gives back, but still give your friends and family something to open? This is your list. I might need to buy a Zambi the Baby Elephant for myself. (Don't worry: It's a doll. I know I'm not zoned for elephants.)

		More Topics
		H1N1 Vaccine for Children Recalled Cold & Flu 8 Ways to Avoid Holiday Debt this Year Credit / Debt Management Rock Hall of Fame Inductees Announced Classic Rock Teen Drug Use Down (Media Doesn't Believe It) Teen Advice Evangelist Oral Roberts Dies at 91 Christianity Year-End Tax Tips Tax Planning: U.S. Follow Us on Twitter! About.com

What Does "Fair Trade" Mean?
Last-minute gift shopping is stressful enough. Throw in the whole planet-friendly aspect, and you can drive yourself crazy and wind up chucking bamboo bowls and recycled candle holders around the tchochke shop.

How to Give to Charity
Whether you give to charity on behalf of someone else, or just in the spirit of the season, you want to make sure that your donation is being used wisely. Here's how to find out.

Sponsored Links

Feeling Under the Weather?

Evaluating Your Cold Symptoms
How to tell when a runny nose is just a cold, and when it might be turning into something more serious and require a visit to the doctor. More>

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Young Single Adult Gems

2009-12-16T10:05:00.001-08:00

Young Single Adult Gems

The Safe Harbor

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 11:00 PM PST

"Love. Healing. Help. Hope. The power of Christ to counter all troubles in all times—including the end of times. That is the safe harbor God wants for us in personal or public days of despair."

Jeffrey R. Holland, "Safety for the Soul," Ensign, Nov. 2009, 88

Topics: Gospel of Jesus Christ

About Beauty: Flattering Cuts by Body Shape, Smokey Eyes & More

2009-12-16T09:29:00.001-08:00

	Beauty

In the Spotlight | More Topics |

	from Julyne Derrick This week I show off the best cuts for every body shape, then find out how to get smokey eyes for your holiday party and find out what gifts teen girls would go ga-ga for.

In the Spotlight

Most Flattering Haircuts for Body Shapes
Wondering what cut looks best on women with hips or women with no hips (aka the "boyish figure")? What about super tall, Amazonian women like myself?... Read more

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		Face: Concealer, Foundation, Powders & More Nails Skin Problems Skincare Basics -- Facials, Regimens, Makeup & More Lips: Lipstick, lip gloss & lip balm Dry Skin Fixes I Swear By Short Hair Photo Galleries

Holiday Gifts for Teens
I love buying gifts for teen girls. Not teen boys. Gifts for boys always leave me lost in the gaming aisle of an electronics store. But girly girls love anything makeup-related. Here are my picks... Read more

How to Get Smokey Eyes
Smokey eyes have been a big style for quite awhile and there's no sign this particular trend is dying. Here we show you step-by-step instructions on how to get the perfect smokey eye... Read more

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Feeling Under the Weather?

Evaluating Your Cold Symptoms
How to tell when a runny nose is just a cold, and when it might be turning into something more serious and require a visit to the doctor. More>

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About Top 40: Top 40 Pop Albums of the 2000s

2009-12-16T08:24:00.001-08:00

	Top 40

In the Spotlight | More Topics |

	from Bill Lamb

In the Spotlight

Top 40 Pop Albums of the 2000s
These collections are the best of the best in pop albums for the past decade. Artistic quality, influence, and sales all figured in the selection of these 40 great... Read more

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		The Latest On All Major Pop Music Awards Pop and Top 40 Concert Tours and Tickets Top 40 and Pop Music Trivia and Quizzes Top 40 and Pop Music Online Resources What's Hot on This Week's Pop Music Charts Top 100 Songs of the 2000s Top 100 Christmas Songs

US Pop Music Charts This Week - Repeats at the Top
It's repeat week at the top of the pop charts this week, and the ruler of the album chart has sold over a million copies in just two weeks. ... Read more

Vevo Launches - Is It the Future of Music Video?
Well, when it does work...meaning it doesn't freeze 15 times in a three minute song, there are things to like about Vevo, the new music video service launched as a... Read more

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Feeling Under the Weather?

Evaluating Your Cold Symptoms
How to tell when a runny nose is just a cold, and when it might be turning into something more serious and require a visit to the doctor. More>

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Sign up for more free newsletters on favorite topics. You are receiving this newsletter because you subscribed to the About Top 40 newsletter as raveereckl.adiposity@BLOGGER.COM. If you wish to change or remove your email address, please visit: http://www.about.com/nl/usgs.htm?nl=top40&e=raveereckl.adiposity@BLOGGER.COM About respects your privacy. Our Privacy Policy. Our Contact Information. 249 West 17th Street New York, NY, 10011 © 2008 About, Inc.