Did you get what you wanted for the Holidays??

This is the best deal I've seen yet on the 10" Galaxy Tab. This Costco only had 3 of them left!

Always read the comments : DailyTech - HP Slashes webOS Staff, Moves Mobile OS Closer to the Grave

http://www.dailytech.com/HP+Slashes+webOS+Staff+Moves+Mobile+OS+Closer+to+the+Grave/article22783.htm

I always read article comments, some of them are gems. Check out the one below. Thanks buckwally.

" Leo Apotheker and the Kobayashi Maru Test By buckwally on 9/20/2011 1:00:45 PM , Rating: 2

The Kobayashi Maru is a famous test in the fictional universe of Star Trek. It is a Starfleet training exercise designed to test the character of cadets in the command track at Starfleet Academy. The mission is to rescue the civilian vessel Kobayashi Maru, a disabled ship, on the wrong side of the Klingon Neutral Zone. The approaching cadet crew must decide whether or not to attempt rescue of the Kobayashi Maru crew –endangering their own ship and lives, and possibly starting a war – or leave the Kobayashi Maru to certain destruction. "there is no correct resolution, it is a test of character."

Stardate: Last October. Cadet Leo Apotheker, former exec from the lawsuit riddled SAP takes over the Starship HP, which has spent $2B on a phone and tablet bid to take on Apple with the avowed goal of becoming #2 in the i-market. You do a big show to launch the Touchpad and Pre, but fail to take the market in 2 months. The Klingons (Apple) have fallen in behind the Romulans (Droid) and have you surrounded, cut off, and are ready to eat your customers. His response? Separate the Saucer section (HP's PC Group), ram it into the Kobayashi Maru (the webOS/Touchpad), and run for the border with the main body of the ship. Oh yeah, and blow $10B (x4-16 its value) on Autonomy in a bid to become #2 behind SAP, as a smokescreen.

Character test: FAIL. and we the customer will not soon forget it. "

Here's the Sexual Harassment Letter That Got Mark Hurd Fired - Arik Hesseldahl - News - AllThingsD

http://allthingsd.com/20111229/uncomfortable-dance-heres-the-sexual-harassment-letter-that-got-mark-hurd-fired/

I have one more question. OK, two. How can the HP board have found that the below was NOT sexual Harassment? And talking about the EDS purchase was OK too? In other words, everything Hurd did was okie dokie except for falsifying expense reports ?

""She continually had to put you off,make excuses,scurry away or simply leave," the letter read. "Oftentimes,you would be irritated and angry and on a few occasions,you were so angry when she put you off,she expected to get fired."

Yet Hurd would always engage her again,the letter recounted. But,by 2009,the letter said,it was clear his patience was wearing thin.

He tried another tack,offering her money,asking if there was anything she needed. Hurd confessed that he felt he could spend the rest of his life with her,but would have to see "how the chemistry in bed was."

She told him,the letter said,that she wasn't interested in dating a married man. At this point in the letter,a lengthy passage was redacted. Sources familiar with the matter said the sections deal with the state of Hurd's marriage at that time.

Hurd,the letter read,persisted,offering Fisher more HP events and a $100,000 a year job. "With [Hurd's] obvious growing irritation with her put-offs,these opportunities never came to pass," the letter said.

Finally,at an October 2009 meeting in Boise,Hurd allegedly grabbed Fisher and kissed her. Fisher said she wasn't feeling well and wriggled free.

"You were angry," the letter said about Hurd. "It was becoming clear. She knew that if she did not have sex with you soon,her job was over,which is exactly what occurred. All your advances were unwelcome,awkward, and were never reciprocated in any way.""

NYT: Letter That Led to Downfall of Mark Hurd...

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/business/note-that-led-to-downfall-of-hewlett-chief-surfaces.xml

Does nobody get it? It doesn't matter whether they consummated the relationship. Stating (implying) that continued employment is contingent on having sex with you is illegal. Sexual Harassment 101. Every HP employee has to take that online course.

" (after the settlement Ms. Fisher also stated that she and Mr. Hurd never had sexual relations)"

So tawdry : Former HP CEO Hurd Tried to Cajole Fisher Into Sex, Letter Says

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2011/12/29/bloomberg_articlesLWZUY00YHQ0X.DTL

Girlfriends in every city! Sheryl Crow at his beck and call! A Million bucks in the bank! I don't know, is this a more sophisticated approach than a picture of him in his underwear? Or dirty talk about a cigar? Does this kind of cretinous behavior really get these guys women? Or do they get the girl due to their position power, despite their poor behavior?

Tawdry and embarrassing... But it doesn't quite add up. According to earlier statements from Hurd, the two frequently met for dinner by themselves - one of the reasons he was fired was for lying about there being multiple dinner guests when it was just the two of them. I find it very hard to believe that a woman as brazenly pursued as she says she was, would have allowed this very uncomfortable environment to go on for several years. And let this lecherous old coot into her hotel room? More than once? She cannot possibly be that stupid, unless this was entrapment. And, why wait so long to press charges? This happened in 07/08. But she presses charges in 2010? As if she wasn't sure whether his behavior was unacceptable and/or illegal, and needed time to sort it out?

And she even says Allred's letter was full of inaccuracies? What was this all about then? Was she just golddigging, hoping some embarrassing details would force him to handover a few mil rather than see this go public? She has said before that she didn't intend to get him fired. Perhaps Allred talked her into a little blackmail action, to set her up for retirement. Perhaps she didn't count on him turning the letter over to HP Legal. Perhaps HE thought HP Legal would just quietly take care of this little blackmail attempt. Perhaps he didn't realize how many enemies he had inside HP that were just waiting for an excuse to take him down...

"According to Allred's letter,Hurd,who is married with two daughters,made sexual advances toward Fisher during dinners and other meetings. During an October 2007 visit to her hotel room at the Ritz Carlton in Atlanta,Hurd twice touched Fisher's breast and asked her to stay in his room for the night,the letter said. Two months later in a hotel room in St. Louis,he embraced her and quickly kissed her on the lips.

At another meeting,Hurd told Fisher he had girlfriends in New York and San Francisco, according to the letter. He also told her that many women were "crazy about" him,including singer Sheryl Crow,the document said. Jay Cooper,a lawyer at Greenberg Traurig LLP who represents Crow,said he'd never heard her name in connection with Hurd.

During a meeting in Madrid in March 2008,Hurd walked Fisher to an ATM and showed her his checking account balance of more than $1 million to impress her,the document said."

The Year in Pictures: Part I - The Big Picture - Boston.com

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2011/12/the_year_in_pictures_part.html

36 amazing pictures.

Over Steve Jobs' dead body... Literally!

Apple may launch 'iPad mini' in Q3
BGR: THE THREE BIGGEST LETTERS IN TECH | DECEMBER 16, 2011
http://pulse.me/s/44zFq

Apple is reportedly working on a smaller version of its popular iPad tablet that will launch in the third quarter next year. Citing sources in Apple's parts supply chain, DigiTimes on Friday claimed that a new iPad with a 7.85-inch display will enter production at the end of the second quarter. LG Display and AU Optronics will supply the panels, according to the site's report. DigiTimes suggests that Apple, which previously stated that a 7-inch display was too small for a tablet, will build the smaller slate to "cope with increasing market competition including the 7-inch Kindle Fire from Amazon and the launch of large-size smartphones from handset vendors." 

. read more

Kindle Fire vs. Nook Tablet: How to choose | Android Atlas - CNET News

http://m.cnet.com/Article.rbml?nid=57330571&cid=latest&bid=251&webref=reviews.cnet.com/kindle-fire-vs-nook-tablet-how-to-choose/8301-19736_7-57330571-251.html%3f

This makes it sound like the Nook Tablet is superior to the Fire. Just got one for Nana last night!

" Hardware compromises: There is nothing we love about the Kindle Fire's design. The screen isn't quite as pretty as the Nook Tablet, there are no hardware controls for volume, the power button is awkwardly placed, and the whole thing looks like a chunky version of 2010's Samsung Galaxy Tab. Under the hood, you have half the RAM of the Nook Tablet,half the storage, no integrated microphone, and no memory expansion.

That said, at $199, we're just happy to see that the Kindle Fire doesn't fall apart in your hand. The $50 savings over the Nook Tablet may be worth it for some.

Needs persistent Web access: The cloud is great--if you've always got access to it. When you're out of range, you can still enjoy your locally stored content, but many of the Kindle Fire's best features are unavailable without a connection to the Internet."

Drunk octopus wants to fight you (spotted in the wild)

Jon Stewart Goes Off on Jerry Sandusky

Bhttp://m.gawker.com/5859949/jon-stewart-goes-off-on-jerry-sandusky

If there was any doubt in my mind about Jerry Sandusky, this eliminated it. Also, check out the comments.

"In an unbearable phone interview with Bob Costas on last night's Rock Center, accused Penn State child rapist Jerry Sandusky kinda-sorta denied being sexually attracted to young boys. On tonight's Daily Show, an indignant Jon Stewart unloaded on Sandusky: "You can't even bring yourself to lie emphatically!""

And

" 'Mary Amendola (the woman who bore Sandusky's lawyer's child at age 16) is apparently unconvinced. When Costas asked the lawyer if he would leave his children alone with Sandusky, Amendola said "yes, without hesitation."

"OMG," Mary Amendola wrote on her Facebook page, "did Joe just say that he would allow my kids to be alone with Jerry Sandusky?"'"

Ever Wonder Where That Plane Flying Over Your Head Is Going?

http://m.gizmodo.com/5861031/ever-wonder-where-that-plane-flying-over-your-head-is-going

I havent been able to get Wolfram Alpha to tell me anything useful yet, but this looks interesting :

" It's an awesome—and supremely nerdy—new feature that the computational search engine Wolfram Alpha has cooked up: it will poll your geoIP location and tell you what planes are overhead. And that the mobile apps take advantage of the feature actually makes it somewhat usable IRL.

If you run a search for "planes overhead," it will return a list of any and all planes your eyeballs can spot, the flight number, where they're positioned in the sky and how many miles up they are. In the browser version, the flight version is hyperlinked, showing you its flight path. Sadly, in the mobile version, you have to manually search the flight number. And it may take some of the fun out of your whimsical ruminations, but whatever. Knowledge is power."

Review: Kindle Fire a worthwhile bargain - CNN.com

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/11/18/tech/gaming-gadgets/kindle-fire-review/index.html

Based on the above review and others that ive read, the Fire is a great choice if reading is your primary interest.

Great for
- Kindle ebooks
- reading content of all kinds (magazines, news, blogs, websites) - anything accessible thru a web browser
- email, Facebook
- music (thru Amazon music service)
- movies (another Amazon service)

These Android services make the Fire superior to the Nook.

But, the downsides are (and the Nook shares these)
- small battery
- poky performance
- fewer apps
- no cut/paste (i use this extensively while blogging, also cut/pasting UPS shipping numbers from emails to UPS  websites)
- no gps for google maps
- no accelerometer, gyro for fancy games
- no cameras
- no mic (no skype)
- no 3G service; Wifi only

" But the Kindle's battery loses a charger much faster than the iPad. I was able to surf the Web and play videos for several hours, but I found myself frequently searching for a charger after that.

That Amazon skimped on some of the components becomes evident when swiping through menus, switching the screen's orientation or playing games, which can all be jerky at times. The split-second delays are even present when turning pages on a Kindle e-book, which should be the pride of an Amazon device. The lack of a microphone means no Skype or other Internet telephony programs."

Speaking of octopii...

Brilliantly Sarcastic Responses To Completely Well-Meaning Signs | Happy Place

Inside the mind of the octopus

 Inside the mind of the octopus | Orion Magazine

"It seemed to Warburton that some of the octopuses were purposely uncooperative. To run the T-maze, the pre-veterinary student had to scoop an animal from its tank with a net and transfer it to a bucket. With bucket firmly covered, octopus and researcher would take the elevator down to the room with the maze. Some octopuses did not like being removed from their tanks. They would hide. They would squeeze into a corner where they couldn't be pried out. They would hold on to some object with their arms and not let go.
Some would let themselves be captured, only to use the net as a trampoline. They'd leap off the mesh and onto the floor—and then run for it. Yes, run. "You'd chase them under the tank, back and forth, like you were chasing a cat," Warburton said. "It's so weird!"
Octopuses in captivity actually escape their watery enclosures with alarming frequency. While on the move, they have been discovered on carpets, along bookshelves, in a teapot, and inside the aquarium tanks of other fish—upon whom they have usually been dining.
Even though the Middlebury octopuses were disaster prone, Warburton liked certain individuals very much. Some, she said, "would lift their arms out of the water like dogs jump up to greet you." Though in their research papers the students refer to each octopus by a number, the students named them all. One of the joubini was such a problem they named her The Bitch. "Catching her for the maze always took twenty minutes," Warburton said. "She'd grip onto something and not let go. Once she got stuck in a filter and we couldn't get her out. It was awful!" "

The rise and fall of the Columbia House record club

 The rise and fall of the Columbia House record club — and how we learned to steal music - Music Features


"The patron saint of the records-club schemers would probably be Joseph Parvin. In 2000, the 60-year-old was prosecuted for having received, between 1993 and 1998, nearly 27,000 CDs, using over 2000 fake accounts and 16 P.O. boxes. All told, he bilked Columbia House (and rival BMG) out of $425,000 of product, selling them at flea markets. For anyone who was paying attention when his arrest made headlines at the time, it was kind of like finding out that Paul Bunyan is real — someone actually was able to cheat the system the way everyone dreams of."

The decline of Elephants

 An Elephant Crackup? - New York Times

Article from 2006

"These were not isolated incidents. All across Africa, India and parts of Southeast Asia, from within and around whatever patches and corridors of their natural habitat remain, elephants have been striking out, destroying villages and crops, attacking and killing human beings. In fact, these attacks have become so commonplace that a new statistical category, known as Human-Elephant Conflict, or H.E.C., was created by elephant researchers in the mid-1990's to monitor the problem. In the Indian state of Jharkhand near the western border of Bangladesh, 300 people were killed by elephants between 2000 and 2004. In the past 12 years, elephants have killed 605 people in Assam, a state in northeastern India, 239 of them since 2001; 265 elephants have died in that same period, the majority of them as a result of retaliation by angry villagers, who have used everything from poison-tipped arrows to laced food to exact their revenge. In Africa, reports of human-elephant conflicts appear almost daily, from Zambia to Tanzania, from Uganda to Sierra Leone, where 300 villagers evacuated their homes last year because of unprovoked elephant attacks."

Foxconn chairman signs letter of intent for 'intelligent robot kingdom,' we cower in fear -- Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2011/11/06/foxconn-chairman-signs-letter-of-intent-for-intelligent-robot-k/

Not only will Foxconn employ robots, they will build them. Video below is an introduction to the ABB robot.

http://www.abb.com/cawp/abbzh254/fcfbdad9a72cfe08c1257862006bcfbf.aspx

Steve Jobs Declared Thermonuclear War Against Android

http://www.gottabemobile.com/2011/10/20/biography-reveals-steve-jobs-declare-thermonuclear-war-against-android/

"Isaacson's book 'Steve Jobs' reveals that Jobs views Android as a 'stolen product' that amounted to 'grand theft.' Jobs engaged in a shouting match with Google co-founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 2008 over Google's release and push behind Android.

In the book, Jobs revealed, "I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong. I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this." "

Here’s the secret to Amazon’s, B&N’s tablet strategy | Mobile Technology News

http://gigaom.com/mobile/amazon-barnes-noble-tablet-strategy/

"Even from a strict hardware perspective, Barnes & Noble has out-maneuvered the traditional computer makers when it comes to tablets. If the leaked Nook Tablet specs are accurate, the $249 device has a dual-core processor, 16 GB of memory with an SD card expansion port, a 7-inch display with 1024 x 600 resolution and an expected battery life of 8 hours. Compared to Samsung's new Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, now available on Amazon for $399, it's nearly a mirror image of specifications, yet costs $150 less.

Another lesson learned for the traditional hardware makers: You can sell your hardware at cost, or a loss, if you can sell content to make up the difference."

What a difference a year makes: National Weather Service - NWS San Diego

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/sgx/display_special_product_versions.php?sid=SGX&pil=AFD

"WHAT A DIFFERENCE A YEAR MAKES. ON THIS DATE LAST YEAR...SAN DIEGO BROKE THE ALL TIME HIGH TEMPERATURE RECORD FOR NOVEMBER WITH A TEMPERATURE OF 100 DEGREES...THE ONLY TIME 100 HAS BEEN REACHED DURING ANY NOVEMBER. TODAY SAN DIEGO IS FLIRTING WITH THE LOWEST MAXIMUM TEMPERATURE RECORD FOR THIS Date. "

Steve Jobs - brilliant nut job

http://m.yahoo.com/w/news_america/11-most-startling-revelations-steve-jobs-185102154.html

"He Was Attracted to Brilliant Women and Drove Them Crazy

In the mid 80's, around the time he was ousted from Apple, he met a computer consultant named Tina Redse and later described her as "the first woman I truly loved."

They lived together for years, through swings of intense passion and severe emotional detachment. After one epic fight, she scrawled the words "neglect is a form of abuse" on the wall of their apartment. After rejecting his marriage proposal in 1989, Redse told Isaacson that she eventually decided he suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder. "Expecting him to be nicer or less self-centered was like expecting a blind man to see," she said.

He met Laurene Powell during a lecture at Stanford, and on a whim, blew off a dinner with a team from Apple, took her out for vegan food and they were together--in one way or another--ever since. After proposing to her on the first day of 1990, Jobs didn't mention it again for months. Even after she'd gotten pregnant with their son, Reed, Jobs remained so detached that Powell moved out. He tried to reunite with Redse and asked a number of friends who was prettier, Tina or Laurene? Who should he marry?"

Here's the picture of the tablet user

I know we are geeks ourselves but this is going too far.

Seen at Disneyland. A 10" tablet is not a digital camera. It is too big and ungainly and much more likely to be dropped. I don't know who to slap first, the consumer or the manufacturer. I guess it is smaller than a VHS recorder...

We saw someone else in line today with an iPad... Playing solitaire. Because Disneyland is just a little too much like a sensory deprivation chamber, i guess. Dada just reminded me that that guy was only in line for ice cream!

Motorola RAZR vs Samsung Galaxy SII

Hey, they're on different carriers in the US, (Razr on Verizon and SII on ATT) , but still an interesting review.

Here's a website I think you'll like: Motorola RAZR vs Samsung Galaxy S II - Pocket-lint

"As ever, there are wins on both sides but, on paper, the RAZR looks to be a better handset. The screen is more impressive, the battery lasts longer and it's nicer in the hand and pocket. In a more strict, match play kind of approach, the result might not be the same, but the odd loss by 0.3 megapixels or 16GB probably isn't worth getting your knickers in a twist about. Really the only place where the RAZR is seriously lacking is with the lower-end graphics."

 from my HP TouchPad

Kayaker has close encounter with blue whale near Redondo Beach [VIDEO] - latimes.com

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2011/10/kayaker-has-close-encounter-with-whale-near-redondo-beach.html

Amazing video, but I think he got a little too close to the whale.

Social Navigation And Traffic App Waze Raises $30M From Kleiner Perkins And Li Ka-shing - TechCrunch

http://m.techcrunch.com/2011/10/18/social-navigation-and-traffic-app-waze-raises-30m-from-kleiner-perkins-and-li-ka-shing/

"Founded in 2009,Waze offers free apps for the iPhone,Android,Windows Phone 7,BlackBerry and other mobile platforms,that include turn-by-turn navigation for drivers,and at the same time,uses that user data to build out its own maps. If there are issues on the road,such as major traffic jams,all of that information comes in through the apps and can be sent to other drivers.

The apps rely on crowdsourced data,from driver-created maps,to citizen traffic reports, to community-curated points of interest. On average,Waze users are reporting a traffic jam every 4.2 second,and an accident every 44 seconds. With millions of users,that's a massive amount of data."

"US Newspapers" app

News junkies will like this Android App. Fast to load, and covers many local papers.

The phones my hubby is looking at - Nexus Prime, Droid Razr, HTC Vigor

Summary

Razr: too ugly to love

Vigor: almost but not quite as good as the...

Prime: one phone to rule them all and in the darkness bind them. 1024x720 Super AMO LED Screen! 4g! 1700mAhr battery! Ice Cream Sandwich!

 Compare phones: Google Nexus Prime, Motorola DROID RAZR, HTC Vigor

Brier Dudley's Blog | Gartner: iPad holding lead over Android, Win8 late | Seattle Times Newspaper

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/technologybrierdudleysblog/2016284954_gartner_ipad_holding_lead_over.html

" The firm poured cold water on the prime challengers, saying Android tablets are selling slower than expected because of their shortcomings and Windows 8 tablets are too late to win over consumers.

Global tablet sales are on fire. Gartner predicted 63.6 million tablets will be sold this year, up 261 percent from the 17.6 million sold last year.

Apple's share of the Web tablet market will fall about 10 percent this year, to 73 percent, but it will continue to hold more than 50 percent of the market share until 2014, the firm said."

Steve Jobs in Four Easy Steps - IEEE Spectrum

http://spectrum.ieee.org/computing/hardware/steve-jobs-in-four-easy-steps/

"Jobs denied what is perhaps the most closely held article of faith of the information age: that openness and the wisdom of crowds are essential for successful technological systems. Under his leadership, Apple produced "closed" systems—devices whose basic functions could not be altered—and consumers loved them. "It's not the consumer's job to know what they want," Jobs once famously said."

ComScore: Android extends lead over Apple, holds 44 percent of smartphone market -- Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2011/10/06/comscore-android-extends-lead-over-apple-holds-44-percent-of-s

"Android remains in firm control of the smartphone platform market,commanding 43.7 percent,followed by Apple (27.3 percent) and RIM (19.7 percent). In fact, Google extended its share by nearly two points over last month's figures,while Apple's iOS grew by just 0.3 points,but further distanced itself from RIM,which now sits 7.6 points behind."

Roller Coaster Cat

Near Tragedy on Roller Coaster.. :)
http://i.imgur.com/mfwII.jpg

Shared using #RageReader for Android http://bit.ly/rreader

Kindle Fire, on fire!

http://www.slashgear.com/kindle-fire-tablet-sales-hit-250000-over-five-days-04185487/

"According to some leaked sales data, the total number of Amazon Kindle Fire tablets sold since being launched 5 days ago is hovering just over 250,000 units. Sales may have slowed down a bit since it was last estimated to have reached almost 100,000 units on its very first day, but it's nonetheless impressive, considering how other tablet rivals have fared.

The Kindle Fire may not have turned out to be the ulimate iPad-killer given the great disparity in specs and price point, but analysts still consider it to be a lot more competitive than expected. In comparison, Apple's iPad 2 sold 2.5 million units in its first month, which is about 80,000 units a day. Amazon's Kindle Fire is looking at about 50,000 units a day right now and that's not too shabby, especially when you consider that the Motorola XOOM is rumored to have sold only 100,000 units after a month and a half, while the BlackBerry PlayBook, which the Kindle Fire is modeled after, only sold 500,000 units total in its first quarter. But again, pricing is surely a huge factor and Amazon's known to be aggressive with that. The $199 price tag for the Kindle Fire is believed to be about $10 below the actual cost of each unit.

Sales of Amazon's Kindle Touch e-reader, however, have not been as impressive. According to the same source that leaked the sales data for the Kindle Fire, the WiFi and 3G e-reader has only sold 32,000 units in the five days since it launched."

thinking-the-unthinkable-is-oracle-considering-buying-hp?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericsavitz/2011/08/22/thinking-the-unthinkable-is-oracle-considering-buying-hp/

"A hostile Oracle bid for HP would pit Larry and his sidekick Mark Hurd, the former CEO of HP, against HP CEO – and former SAP co-CEO – Leo Apotheker, along with HP Chairman Ray Lane, who himself was once the #2 man at Oracle, and left when it became clear that Ellison had no plans to step down from the top job. Meanwhile, HP is furious with Oracle from its announcement earlier this year that it will no longer develop software for the Itanium server processor that HP had developed with Intel. These two companies do not like each other, and it is hard to imagine they could work out friendly terms. This is a smack down I'd pay money to see."

photography buffs should check out this site...

this dude got the skillz.

http://kristinandkayla.blogspot.com/

mobile patent wars

all roads lead to apple...

http://blog.thomsonreuters.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/0817_POST-1_Mobile-Patents.jpg

NYT: Voting to Hire a Chief Without Meeting Him

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/09/22/business/voting-to-hire-a-chief-without-meeting-him.xml

"However hasty the process, board members felt they had little choice. "I believe the search committee did a good job. They worked hard. There were very few choices," one participant said. " So many people they called said they weren't interested. People didn't want to follow in Mark's footsteps. But Mr. Apotheker was a mistake. We all made it. Sometimes you make a mistake."
.

She’ll Stick to Apotheker’s HP Strategies

http://mobile.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-22/hewlett-packard-says-meg-whitman-will-succeed-apotheker-as-chief-executive.html

"Whitman defended her record at the helm of EBay.

"I have run a large company -- not obviously as large as HP, but I have run a very large company," she said. "While I don't have years of experience in an enterprise business, I bought a lot of software. I was one of the largest enterprise customers in Silicon Valley."

"That's like saying, 'I've bought an iPhone, so I can run Apple Inc. (AAPL)" said Whitmore at Deutsche Bank."
.

China Creates "Infinite Hero Bacon" by Cloning Invincible Earthquake Pig

http://m.gizmodo.com/5841491/china-unlocks-infinite-hero-bacon-achievement-by-cloning-invincible-earthquake-pig

"After the massive earthquake struck and killed tens of thousands of people in Sichaun and neighboring Shaanxi and Gansu on May 12, 2008, Zhu Jianqiang survived against all odds under the rubble by eating charcoal and drinking rain water. His harrowing tale was embraced as a natural coping mechanism for the devastated citizenry, and now his genetic superstuff will be kept alive for generations to come."

One more reason I love my Atrix

I can has a screenshot app without having to root my phone!

Thank you Edward Kim and "Screenshot It".

I find the ability to take screenshots incredibly useful.  Used it all the time on my Samsung Galaxy Tab then went thru a series of devices that did not allow it. :(

One day I will have the guts to root my phone, but that day is not today.

http://www.androidguys.com/2011/04/06/screenshot-grabs-atrixs-screen-root-required/

New Android apps I love

Parcels - tracks your incoming packages and days to delivery in one list. Just choose the carrier and paste in the tracking number. Let's you name your packages too.

Pocket Auctions - mobile ebay app, makes it easy to search items, and manage buying and selling. It reminded me yesterday that I had a win that apparently has not shipped yet. Much better than viewing the mobile site on my phone.

QuickPic - replacement for Gallery, which under Motorola Blur is a hot mess, only one directory for sdcard pix with no option to create more. Blur's Gallery doesn't allow changing the sort order so I always had to scroll, scroll, scroll to the other end of the Gallery.
QuickPic makes it easy to move files into new directories, AND sorts in descending time order so newest pix are in front. Apparently replicates Gallery functionality found on other phones.

Lol Sites - easy viewing of Lol Cats, Lol Dogs, People of Walmart, EpicWin, Failblog, etc. Cannot tell you how much time i have wasted on this.

RageReader - if you read Reddit you have run across these, cartoons using a standard set of cartoon faces representing happy, stupid, perplexed, smug, and of course rage emotions. Immature, profane, and an acquired taste. But it's amazing how many situations can be represented by about 5 emotions. Have wasted even more time here. Makes want to post these faces to Facebook as comments.

Perhaps the size of the GM Volt?

http://m.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/sep/10/power-substation-seems-less-formidable-than-it/

"Officials with the state's largest public utility said that the worker was switching off a series capacitor, a piece of equipment the size of a small car, at the substation. The capacitor was having trouble earlier in the day."
.

My husband is a "Trolldad" - Trolldad | Know Your Meme

http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/trolldad

I spend way too much time browsing Reddit and RageReader

Trolling at the airport gone wrong... :)
http://i.imgur.com/hz4Co.png

Shared using #RageReader for Android http://bit.ly/rreader

How Apple has found success in China, and why it's just the beginning. - TNW AppleTNW Apple

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2011/09/05/how-apple-has-found-success-in-china-and-why-its-just-the-beginning/

" Together, the iPhone and iPad accounted for 60.98% of Apple's revenue in the last four quarters.

Numbers like these are why Apple is so hot to get the iPhone launched in a big way in China. Although the companyhas been selling the iPhone officially on China Unicom since 2009, Unicom is the smallest of the three major Chinese carriers.

Of course, when we saysmall, we're talking about 180 million subscribers, more thanAT&T or Verizon in the US. That's how big the potential market for the iPhone is in China.

The big fish is reallyChina Mobile, the 616 million-subscriber juggernaut that is China's largest mobile carrier. That's why it's not surprising that then-COO Tim Cook was seen visiting China Mobile in June. Apple wants to get this deal made.

Even more evidence came in the form of China Mobile's chairman Wang Jianzhou stating during an earnings call last month that then-CEO Steve Jobs had met with him several times already about the deal."

Bets on smashing success in Las Vegas - Economy - NZ Herald Mobile

http://m.nzherald.co.nz/economy/news/article.php?c_id=34&objectid=10749289

"Ed Mumm started Dig This after renting and operating an excavator for two days while building a house in Colorado.

"I thought to myself: 'If I'm having this much fun, imagine the number of people who don't get to do this stuff who would love to do this'," he said."

Bill Gates... Fer real this time

Palm's patent portfolio

http://www.businessinsider.com/hps-2000-webos-patents-and-how-they-could-reshape-everything-2011-8

" Now remember, Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobile, mostly to get their hands on the 17,000 patents that Motorla held. Now, if you just price HP's patents at the same price, you come out with $1.48 billion. HP paid $1.7 billion for Palm. So that gets you pretty close to even.

But this VP told me that these patents are almost ALL for modern smartphones, while the Motorola patents included a lot of old stuff that isn't relevant anymore. So, this patent portfolio could get a premium of, say, 2x what the Motorola patents did. That gets you up close to $3 billion."

Business Insider

http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-is-the-carcass-of-palm-worth-2011-8

" right now!

Apple led a consortium to buy Nortel's patents for $4.5 billion. Google paid $12.5 billion for Motorola, largely based on the strength of its patent portfolio. Interdigital's market cap has spiked on rumors that its selling itself for its patents. Kodak's stock is spiking now that it wants to sell its patents.

The big question is how good are Palm's patents?

It was in the smartphone game from day one, so we would assume it has a pretty strong portfolio. It's the only smartphone company Apple hasn't sued, which suggests to us it's a pretty strong portfolio. Alternatively, Apple might not care about Palm, so it didn't bother.

But, when Palm was up for sale a year and a half ago, it ultimately ended up selling for just $1.2 billion to HP. At the time, Apple was interested in buying it for its IP, probably offering $600 million.

With the little patent valuation bubble going on right now, you'd have to think it would be willing to pay a little more."

Bill Gates (from Rage Reader)

All Things D: HP kept executives in the dark about webOS decision -- Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/21/all-things-d-hp-kept-executives-in-the-dark-about-webos-decisio/

"All Things D reported yesterday that key executives -- specifically Todd Bradley of the currently-in-limbo Personal Systems Group and former Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein --weren't informed of the move until Sunday night."

HP will 'discontinue operations for webOS devices', may spin off Personal Systems Group -- Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2011/08/18/hp-will-discontinue-operations-for-webos-devices/

Timeline:
4.28.10 - HP buys Palm
4.28.10 - HP: 'We're doubling down on webOS,' Palm: 'That was the whole point'
7.1.10 - HP / Palm buyout officially complete -- get ready for webOS printers
2.9.11 - RIP,Palm: 1992 - 2011
2.9.11 - HP's 9.7-inch TouchPad: webOS 3.0 tablet with 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon, coming this summer
2.9.11 - HP Pre 3: 1.4GHz Qualcomm CPU, 3.6-inch WVGA,coming this summer (video)
3.9.11 - WebOS will be on 'every HP PC' shipping next year,says CEO 6.29.11 - HP confirms it's in talks about licensing webOS,Samsung tipped as a possibility
7.11.11 - HP's Stephen DeWitt to lead webOS global business unit,Jon Rubinstein stepping aside
8.18.11 - HP unveils 64GB TouchPad, spurns America (and freedom)

Rubenstein: Out of the Frying Pan (Palm) and into the Fire (PSG)

http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20110711006653/en/HP-Drive-Innovation-Scale-Growth-webOS

July 11: "To support this next phase of growth, HP has appointed Stephen DeWitt as senior vice president and general manager of its webOS global business unit. Jon Rubinstein, the visionary behind webOS, will assume a product innovation role within the Personal Systems Group (PSG) at HP."

http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/238482/death_of_hp_touchpad_changes_the_tablet_landscape.html

Aug 18: "WebOS could have been a contender. WebOS should have been a contender. HP had the financial resources, marketing muscle, and corporate presence to develop and promote WebOS and take the reins from RIM as the de facto mobile OS for business. Instead, it launched a half-baked tablet, scrambled around for seven weeks with no coherent marketing vision, and threw in the towel without even putting up a decent fight."

http://www.pcworld.com/article/238465/tablets_are_here_for_good_just_not_at_hp_companys_ceo_says.html

Aug 18: "HP's desktop and notebook revenue dropped 4 percent since last year's third-quarter report, and while the PSG division remains profitable, falling revenue and shrinking margins--coupled with the failure of HP's attempt to break into the tablet arms race--have likely soured the company on sinking any more resources into a division whose end is likely nigh.

Before HP made its stunning announcement, new sales figures showed that HP had slipped behind Apple in sales of laptops and tablets. During the quarter, Apple shipped 13.6 million units, 10 million of them iPads. That meant that Apple sold more iPads than HP did laptops (the company shipped 9.7 million notebooks in the period)."

Google buys Motorola so it can name itself "Motor-oogle" or "Google-rola"

http://www.eetimes.com/electronics-news/4218793/Google-s-Moto-bid--It-s-all-about-the-patents

"The big blow came last month when a consortium including Apple, Microsoft and Research in Motion acquired for $4.5 billion about 6,000 Nortel patents, many of them said to be fundamental wireless patents. Google quickly bought 1,000 patents from IBM, but it clearly thought the move was not enough.

With the Nortel patents, competitors could levy patent licensing fees of as much as $15 per Android handset, Drummond said in his blog. Press reports suggested Microsoft stood to make more on the sale of Android handsets than on its one Windows Mobile 7 software.

Google is paying an estimated 63 percent premium for Motorola, making it the biggest proposed acquisition of it history to date. Google even agreed to pay a whopping $2.5 billion fee if it walks away from the deal, according to the New York Times.

The all-cash deal uses about a quarter of Google's cash reserves. "

HP Touchpad sales low

http://allthingsd.com/20110816/ouchpad-best-buy-sitting-on-a-pile-of-unsold-hp-tablets/ 

"A second person who has seen Best Buy's TouchPad sales figures confirmed the results as "consistent with what I've seen," and went so far as to say that 25,000 sold might be "charitable." This source suggested that the 25,000-unit sales number may not account for units that consumers return to stores for a refund.

Best Buy, sources tell us, is so unhappy that it has told HP it is unwilling to pay for all the TouchPads taking up expensive space in its stores and warehouses, and wants HP to take them back. HP, for its part, is pleading with Best Buy to be patient. We're also told that a senior HP executive, possibly executive VP Todd Bradley, is slated to travel to Minneapolis soon to discuss the matter with Best Buy executives." 

Time to switch phones again

I finally gave up on the Palm Pre for corporate email. I really tried hard to make it work but eventually I just stopped using the phone altogether.

The phone wouldn't autoconnect to known wifi networks. What's worse, Half the time I found WiFi had turned itself off.

And, The phone couldn't stay connected to the outlook server even with a good wifi connection . My inbox was never up to date. I'd have to re-login to outlook to force a sync. Messages would get stuck in the outbox for days and there was no option to resend.  It was infuriating to find emails hadn't been sent when i thought they had been.

It all became a vicious cycle when my growing disuse of the phone meant it was more likely for the battery to be dead when i pulled it out.

So I was missing meetings and not responding to emails very fast. Not good.

So... In desperation I got a used Motorola Atrix off ebay. I wanted it for the fingerprint sensor, because y'all know how much I hate the 4 digit PIN.

The fingerprint sensor works pretty well, although half the time it takes more than one swipe. But it double-buzzes you when the swipe fails, so at least you can get into the phone without having to look at the screen.

And - since I'm using it without a sim card - it autoconnects to known wifi networks with no intervention, which is awesome because there's 4 different networks available to it between the home and work networks. So it's got connectivity as often as it possibly can. Thank you Motorola! The Pre could never do that.

Never loses contact with with exchange, never leaves mail in the outbox. Email just. plain. works.

Other advantages of the Atrix :

Better screen. The QHD screen, even tho its the much maligned pentile LED type , has higher contrast, more resolution, and less reflectivity outdoors than the HTC Inspire 's.

WWAN radio: speaker, mic, voice quality rock solid as I would expect from Motorola. Atrix calls were crap.

Music speaker: kicks ass. Great fidelity and loud. So loud I don't even need to plug into the cassette adapter in the car. As good as my old Blackberry 's, which was way ahead of its time.

Fast: opens apps and browser pages faster than any other device i've ever used.

Downsides :

4" screen seems really small after the Inspire 's humongous 4.3" display. Makes the keyboard smaller too.

Camera is just poor, and there's no excuse for this. Noisy sensor, terrible in low light, not sharp, low contrast, dull colors. Certainly the worst Android camera i've ever used (and I've used the Samsung Galaxy Tab, dell streak, htc inspire, htc incredible). Dudn't matter that it's 5MP. It's like going back to the Blackberry Bold's camera and that was only 2MP. 2009 called, they want their camera back.

Plus... After 6 months it just seemed like time for a new phone. :-)
.

Exclusive: Operation Shady RAT—Unprecedented Cyber-espionage Campaign and Intellectual-Property Bonanza

http://m.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2011/09/operation-shady-rat-201109

"The evolution of Shady rat's activity provides more circumstantial evidence of Chinese involvement in the hacks. The operation targeted a broad range of public-and private-sector organizations in almost every country in Southeast Asia—but none in China. And most of Shady rat's targets are known to be of interest to the People's Republic."

Reasons to love living in Japan « Notes From Tokyo

http://notesfromtokyo.com/2010/11/reasons-to-love-living-in-japan/

"61. The mind your own business mentality. If you're bleeding from the eyeballs in the middle of the road, this mentality can prove to be fatal. But if its 6:30 in the morning and you're obviously just coming home after a long night of partying dressed in sequins and spandex, stuck on a crowded train smelling of cigarettes and booze, the fact that everyone around ignores you because they don't want to embarrass you is actually kind of comforting. Japanese people are trained to strictly mind their own business, which is why in Tokyo there are so many weirdos that can get away with almost anything. In fact, it seems the stranger your behavior, the more people pretend you aren't there."

Trouble on the China Express - WSJ.com

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424053111904800304576474373989319028.html

""When a country is corrupt to the point that a single lightning strike can cause a train crash, the passing of a truck can collapse a bridge, and drinking a few bags of milk powder can cause kidney stones, none of us are exempted," wrote one Chinese Internet user after Saturday's accident. "China today is a train traveling through a lightning storm. None of us are spectators; all of us are passengers." "

Chinese netizens outraged over response to fatal bullet train crash - CNN.com

http://www.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/07/25/china.train.accident.outrage/

"By the time the railway ministry held its first press conference more than 24 hours after the collision, the public had seen not just reports of passengers trapped inside dark trains or images of a mangled car dangling off the bridge --but also bulldozers crushing mangled cars that had fallen to the ground and burying the wreckage on site. "How can we cover up an accident that the whole world already knew about?" said a defiant railway ministry spokesman Wang Yongping. "They told me they buried the car to facilitate the rescue effort --and I believe this explanation."

Wang was terse when reporters asked him to explain the fact that a toddler girl was being pulled out of the wreckage alive 20 hours after the accident --and long after authorities declared no more signs of life in the trains..

"That was a miracle," he said."

Suspect's 'manifesto' plots 'civil war'

He used the Unabomber's manifesto and did a search and replace, replacing "black people" with "muslims".

Suspect's 'manifesto' plots 'civil war'
http://bit.ly/qO1niv

Before and after pictures - Japan 3 months after the quake.

Unbelieveable. The devastation is still as chilling as when we first saw the pictures.

Japan: three months after the quake - The Big Picture - Boston.com

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad

The Real Estalker: Goldie Hawn Bailing on Broad Beach

http://realestalker.blogspot.com/2011/07/goldie-hawn-bailing-on-broad-beach.html

Love this site.

"Just like an epic mansion appearing in the pages of Architectural Digest sometimes signals that it will soon hit the market, a Buddha statue in the entrance hall or by the pool is a strong signal that a home is owned by a celebrity or someone else involved in the entertainment and glamour-puss professions. Anyhoodles poodles, getting back to the matter at hand..."

Are you talking about me, princess teri? The one with a Buddha in the front yard? Why yes, I do work in a glamour-puss profession. How do I know? Well, I work with a bunch of guys and Just yesterday someone complimented me on the feather in my hair! And we had a conversation about shoes! And interior decorating! And we've been noting the colors of each other's shirts. I'm not lyin'! It's all just TOO much.

The Engadget Interview: HP's Stephen DeWitt -- Engadget

http://www.engadget.com/2011/07/12/the-engadget-interview-hps-stephen-dewitt

"I think that the future of computing is going to be about maintaining your state, about taking everything that matters to you, your content, your apps, and holding your state against any screen you look at. That's the future of computing. In order to get from where we are today, the devices, the technology, the platform, the developer community, all of the global ramifications to that, you're not going to do this in a federated model, you're going to have to do this with a well-orchestrated, global community that can drive this. I think that's as big an opportunity and forward pass as anywhere in the industry, and that's why I'm fired up to do it."

APOD: 2007 February 5 - Comet Between Fireworks and Lightning - StumbleUpon

Fireworks, a comet, and lightning... Amazing digital composition.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1tYZHZ/apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap070205.html

Is Google's Hangouts its Killer App?

 Is Google's Hangouts Its Killer App? - NYTimes.com

"Shortly before bed, I lingered online, checking my various social networking sites when I noticed several friends were in a video chat session on Google+. I put on some pants and clicked my way into the room with six other people….and didn't leave until nearly 3 in the morning. We spent several hours cracking jokes, making fun of each other's snacks and welcoming other friends who noticed our group online and dropped in to say hello. At one point, we found YouTube videos with lyrics and turned the chat into an impromptu karaoke room. A few of our other friends dropped into say hello before making their way offline and heading to bed. One friend, Lindsey, said she's been hanging out with different groups of friends since 10PM and later told me she didn't sign off until close to 5 in the morning."

-- Sent from my HP TouchPad

Google+ is Awesome. Facebook Maimed, Twitter Mortally Wounded? | Singularity Hub

http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/06/google-is-awesome-facebook-maimed-twitter-mortally-wounded/

"Clearly Google+ has a long way to go to compete with the Facebook incumbent. And yet Google+ has quite a bit of mojo of its own that Facebook does not have. In the coming year we will see Facebook copy many of Google+´s innovations, while Google+ will likely roll out every single one of the missing components just mentioned. One year from now, we will likely have two social networks that are similar in many ways, and if Google+ proves compelling enough it might even close the user gap significantly.

Yet Google+ has a secret weapon that even the mighty Facebook will be hard pressed to combat over the long run. That secret weapon is everything that Google has that is not Google+. A formidable armada of Google products including Gmail, Picasa, Calendar, Docs, Maps, Search, News, Youtube, Chrome Web Browser, Blogger, Translation, Android, and more stands at the ready to assist and join Google+ in the battle for the future of social networking. These products are best in class, extremely difficult to replicate, and are used by more than a billion people across the planet. As these products are seamlessly integrated with Google+, we are about to witness an incredible two way explosion of value and utility. Google´s products will gain all of the powerful attributes that social networks deliver –virality, discovery, crowdsourcing, sharing, "liking", and so much more. Meanwhile, Google+ will be given a steroid boost of products that deliver content, tools, and capabilities to its hungry hordes of social minions."
.

It's Steve Jobs world, and we just live in it.

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/30/nielsen-androids-growth-curve-flattened-in-2011-while-the-iphones-got-a-boost/

"Apple is now driving smartphone growth ".

Android tablet makers shifting focus back to cell phones, report claims

Ipad: 25million sold
Gtab: 2million
PlayBook : 500,000
Xoom: 250,000

But... 500,000 android device activations per day... Obviously not tablets...

http://m.bgr.com/2011/06/17/android-tablet-makers-shifting-focus-back-to-cell-phones-report-claims/

"Thus far only Samsung has been able to make a real dent in Apple's stronghold on this new market, capturing a 10% share with its Galaxy Tab Android-powered tablet. While 250,000 XOOM tablets shipped in two months and 500,000 PlayBooks shipped last quarter are respectable figures, it's hard to call those products a success when Apple has sold 25 million iPads in just 14 months. As a result, companies that planned to attack the tablet market aggressively may now be pulling back some of that investment to focus on another new market: supersized smartphones."
.

iPad 2 vs. Motorola Xoom vs. HP TouchPad vs. BlackBerry PlayBook: the tale of the tape -- Engadget

Nice little comparison table.

http://www.engadget.com/2011/03/02/ipad-2-vs-motorola-xoom-vs-hp-touchpad-vs-blackberry-playbook/

Tablet apps

Apple iPad apps: 100,000
Android tablet apps: 1350.
HP Palm touchpad apps: 300

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2011/06/30/apple-ipad-apps-100000-android-tablet-apps-1300/

How many cardinals does it take to teach a Pope to tweet?

"product placement of the highest order " - lol

How many cardinals does it take to teach a Pope to tweet?
FORTUNE TECH | JUNE 29, 2011

Pope Benedict XVI sits at an iPad to launch -- via Twitter -- a Vatican news portal Product placement of the highest order. ... read more

Pool Party: Google Has Their Own Secret Photo-Sharing App Too — Built By Slide

This looks like fun. Anything with party in the name sounds like fun. Signed up for the beta. Maybe they will give priority to famous bloggers.

Pool Party: Google Has Their Own Secret Photo-Sharing App Too — Built By Slide
TECHCRUNCH | JUNE 30, 2011

Back in March, we first exposed Disco, a group messaging app that the Slide team within Google had built. And that's not all ... read more

Quantcast - Audience Measurement

Top websites, by traffic.  Google still number one.  facebook number two.

http://www.quantcast.com/top-sites-1

LA's J. Paul Getty Museum partners with Google to 'Goggles-enable' its entire permanent collection

LA's J. Paul Getty Museum partners with Google to 'Goggles-enable' its entire permanent collection
http://pulse.me/s/q3Qj

Los Angeles area art fans: you've now got your own personal curator right in your pocket.

Jorte Calendar app | Android Central

http://m.androidcentral.com/android-central-editors-app-picks-june-25-2011

I just downloaded Jorte myself and I love it. Syncs great with Google calendar. See review below.

"If you're discouraged by the lack of customizations for Sense's calendar, or by the rough-and-tumble appearance of Motoblur's, you have to give Jorte a try. Of all the personal organizers that swamp the Android Market, I'll deem Jorte my favorite. Sure, calendars are pretty straight forward and standard, but Jorte's customizations are unmatched.orte gives you the choice of just about any size widget you can think of, and with different themes, color options, and styles to choose from, you can match your widget to the rest of your UI, eliminating the sore thumb that is your phone's standard offering. Choose which of your personal calendars to display, which holidays to include, and even which day to start the week with. Jorte also comes with an easy-to-use scheduler and to-do list, and it supports importing these elements as well. If you choose to create them on the app, you can export as a CSV file to your computer or other devices. Even if you're happy with your phone's standard calendar (though, I doubt you are), give Jorte a shot. It's free, it's useful, and it's pretty. Case closed."

Why I can't read Scott Adams anymore

Interview with Salon.com Writer MaryElizabeth Williams
DILBERT.COM BLOG | JUNE 22, 2011
http://pulse.me/s/kNO4

I've read Scott Adams for a long time and have always been disturbed by his juvenile attitudes towards women, and relations between men and women. Everyone has a right to their opinions, but I can't stomach his. I also don't think he realizes or cares that these opinions are losing him readership. Hiding behind "I'm just kidding" or attacking his critics, rather than intelligently defending himself, just reinforces that he knows what he is saying is indefensible. But what does it matter? Look at the website traffic! Mission accomplished.
.

Sobering: Fukushima: It's much worse than you think

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/features/2011/06/201161664828302638.html

"Japan's Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters finally admitted earlier this month that reactors 1, 2, and 3 at the Fukushima plant experienced full meltdowns. TEPCO announced that the accident probably released more radioactive material into the environment than Chernobyl, making it the worst nuclear accident on record.

Meanwhile, a nuclear waste advisor to the Japanese government reported that about 966 square kilometres near the power station -an area roughly 17 times the size of Manhattan -is now likely uninhabitable.

In the US, physician Janette Sherman MD and epidemiologist Joseph Mangano published an essay shedding light on a 35 per cent spike in infant mortality in northwest cities that occurred after the Fukushima meltdown, and may well be the result of fallout from the stricken nuclear plant. The eight cities included in the report are San Jose, Berkeley, San Francisco, Sacramento, Santa Cruz, Portland, Seattle, and Boise, and the time frame of the report included the ten weeks immediately following the disaster. "There is and should be concern about younger people being exposed, and the Japanese government will be giving out radiation monitors to children," Dr MV Ramana, a physicist with the Programme on Science and Global Security at Princeton University who specialises in issues of nuclear safety, told Al Jazeera. Dr Ramana explained that he believes the primary radiation threat continues to be mostly for residents living within 50km of the plant, but added: "There are going to be areas outside of the Japanese government's 20km mandatory evacuation zone where radiation is higher. So that could mean evacuation zones in those areas as well."

Gundersen points out that far more radiation has been released than has been reported. "They recalculated the amount of radiation released, but the news is really not talking about this," he said. "The new calculations show that within the first week of the accident, they released 2.3 times as much radiation as they thought they released in the first 80 days.""
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Hazardous materials, 1. Concrete, 0

A box of hazmat liquids (drano, ammonia, bug spray, etc) leaked thru the cardboard box onto the concrete floor.  It actually dissolved the top surface of the concrete. This is what it looks like, one $100 pressure washer later.

Pressure washers are cooooool! I used it to lift the black moss off the front stoop. You have to get just the right fan width in the spray, and the right distance from the ground. Then you can just slowly and evenly sweep back and forth to lift off all manner of surface contaminants.  I love my pressure washer. The trick is to turn the hose on as far as it will go, so it can feed the motor.

Phone update

The phone never recovered. That ATT returns store is huge. They are obviously expecting lots of returns. They didn't question my excuse that "the kids played with it and the screen stopped working". They transferred all my files in 10 min. The new Inspire looks brand new.

They sold me on insurance tho - and the program is different than before - 5 bucks/mo to get a no-questions-asked replacement for $100. Sounds like a good deal to me.

3 days without my phone almost killed me!

So why do some apps store their data NOT on the SD card? Screw u Poweramp for storing the playlists in memory. Now I have to recreate them. Gah. 
.

Shakeup at HP

"The company thanks Pete and Randy for their efforts and wishes them the best in their next endeavors." kThxBye.
.

truth be told

my phone took a bath in the toilet.  it's not yet working again.  i shook it out,took off the covers and took out the battery.  it's spent 2 days immersed in uncooked rice.  i put it in the oven at 170degC for 4 hours last night.  everything seems to work except the touchscreen layer.  i'm assuming in day or two it will dry out.  i've dropped 3 blackberries in water and they all recovered eventually.  of course they were all very brief submerges  - well less than 10 seconds.  i dont buy insurance because it is a bad deal.  it's expensive and the deductible is high. 

i may try to return it under warranty since the water sensitive stickers did not get wet.

in the meantime i'm shopping for a backup phone.  every girl needs a backup phone.  i can get a samsung fascinate for around $200 on ebay.  this model had issues with gps although you can find individuals who claim theirs works great.  i really want the fascinate for the fantastic super amoled display.  the latest samsung phone, the charge (verizon) / infuse (at&t), also appears to have gps issues according to the interwebs.  the charge on verizon has BLAZING internet speeds (see post below).  whereas my little 3.5G htc inspire gets maybe 3Mbps down and 1.3Mbps up.  woo hoo!! (sarcasm on)

not so fast

uh oh, this samsung "charge" smartphone still seems to have gps problem:

http://androidforums.com/samsung-droid-charge/344428-gps-problem.html

sob

17Mbps downlink speed?

17?

Mbps?

but...but...but... I need a world phone...don't i?

http://phandroid.com/2011/05/02/samsung-droid-charge-review/

Wolverton: A look at HP's new Veer smartphone - San Jose Mercury News

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_18148545?nclick_check=1

"The Veer also trails the competition by not including a front-facing camera, so you can't use it to do video chats as you can the iPhone 4 and many of the latest Android devices. It has only 8 gigabytes of storage, which is half or less than what you'll find on most recent smartphones, and it's not expandable. It also lacks a gyroscope, which is useful for games and augmented reality apps, and doesn't have a near-field communications antenna, which allows a mobile phone to be used like a credit card. Beyond its hardware, the Veer suffers from the same critical problem as earlier webOS devices: a dearth of apps. While you can find "Angry Birds" and "Pandora," you won't find Netflix's (NFLX) movie player, Amazon's Kindle e-book reader, the popular iPhone game "Pocket God," and many other top apps.

But it's basically the same phone as the Pre that Palm introduced two years ago, only smaller. That wasn't good enough then. And given how much better competing phones have gotten since, it's not nearly good enough now."
.

On Memorial Day, a SEAL's family remembers

On Memorial Day, a SEAL's family remembers http://usat.me/47699514

Online digital scrapbooking

So far I've found 3 online digital scrapbooking sites that are non-Apple  They all run under Flash, so you dont have to download any software, and they store all your data in the cloud.  Ultimately I want to scrap on an Android tablet with a touch interface because I think it would be fun and fast.  But the world doesn't seem to have caught up to me yet.

- Coolibah - iOS only, Android on the way.
- Tapnscrap - iOS only.
- ScrapHD - bought by Michaels and expected to relaunch in 2011.  Unavailable right now.
- HowFastTimeFlies - now part of MyPublisher.  I tried it but it's not anywhere near as flexible as Mixbook.  It seems to be mostly ploppers and the most you can change is the colorway of the plopper.  You can't add or delete elements. You have to use the pages the way they come.  So to put a whole book together, you need a lot of ploppers to keep the pages from all looking identical.   At first glance they seemed to only have a few dozen.
- Scrapblog - bought by Mixbook.  This is the one I like the best.  It has a nice collection of elements with a lot of variety.  You get a lot of control over how things look - transparency, drop shadow, reflection, border, shape cutouts; also you can change brightness/contrast/saturation of pictures.  It automatically sizes pictures up to the frame you drop them in (HowFastTimeFlies plops it in at 1:1 and forces you to resize them manually).  You can add or delete elements too.  They provide both ploppers, and backgrounds & templates to create your own pages.  They also support 2-page spreads.  It's easy to navigate around the book, and insert pages wherever you need to.  Moving layouts from one page to another is very easy, just drag and drop.  This is going to make resequencing very easy.  Also, there are lots and lots of template variations, for up to 6 pictures on a page.  And unfortunately, it doesn't look like you can import your own elements - you are locked into their elements.  All you can add is your pictures.

Attached is a 2 page spread I did last night.  It was so much fun I stayed up until 2:30am scrapping!  Now, back to scrapbooking!!

Business Cat: http://memebase.com/category/business-cat-2/page/1

Cats and the workplace, its comedy gold I tell you. I'm wiping the tears from my eyes.
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Challenge Accepted - LMAO

http://memebase.com/category/challenge-accepted-2/

Part of the fine family of icanhazcheeseburger sites.

Love this stuff. It's so stupid.
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Velocirapture

http://imgur.com/gallery/8o87u

The iPad has completely revolutionized...

http://www.someecards.com/usercards/viewcard/37d8cb9cd57b9e0eb29e7cfc56d34d6c

If Church Signs Were Honest About The Rapture | someecards.com

http://www.someecards.com/2011/05/19/if-church-signs-were-honest-about-the-rapture

NSFB -
Not safe for believers
.

HP's unlikely hero | TheStreet

http://www.thestreet.mobi/story/11126378/2/leo-apotheker-hps-unlikely-hero.html

""There is a common perception that HP is mainly a commodity PC and printing vendor due to the fact that approximately 53% of its total revenue in calendar year 2010 was derived from its computing and printing units," said Brian Marshall, an analyst at Gleacher & Company. "However, many fail to recognize that the company's operating profits are generated in a much different manner." Marshall points out that more than 63% of the company's operating profit comes from enterprise-focused, recurring revenue-type businesses such as services, networking and software. Services alone accounted for a massive 38% of HP's total operating profit in 2010, he added."
.

HP Veer 4G review -- Engadget

http://m.engadget.com/default/article.do?artUrl=http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/13/hp-veer-4g-review/&category=classic&postPage=1

"there is Palm's proprietary magnetic charge / sync port. This requires a special USB cable to use, unfortunately, though you do get that fancy MagSafe effect, and the port does double duty by hosting the included headphone adapter --because there's no dedicated 3.5mm headphone jack. It's a chore to carry around an easily misplaced little nicknack like the adapter, but it does work here, and the magnets are strong enough to hold up the Veer by your headphone cables (not that we recommend anything of the sort). It's also a little annoying the way the software pauses your music whenever you connect or disconnect the adapter since it seems wholly arbitrary --when you attach it, the phone rapidly transfers from speaker to headphones, then puts a sudden halt to the tune three seconds later."
.

Dilbert blog: Osama's Productivity

http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/osamas_productivity/

Link is NSFW

"The marijuana at the compound explains a lot too. When we see pictures of other terrorist leaders, they always look angry. Every time we see a picture of Osama, he's just chillin' with his homeys. Here he is asking for some curly fries."

Basic Instructions - Basic Instructions - How to Understand Men's Fashion

http://basicinstructions.net/basic-instructions/2011/5/8/how-to-understand-mens-fashion.html

I've always thought my husband was weird but I keep finding that this weirdness is in fact characteristic of all men.

There's A New Kind Of Oreo, And It's Coming For Your Face - The Consumerist

http://consumerist.com/2011/05/theres-a-new-kind-of-oreo-and-its-coming-for-your-face.html

"we're willing to pay extra for more decadence and more calories if you will give us a staycacation in our mouth."

Five Reasons why Google's Linux Chromebook is a Windows killer

https://www.readability.com/mobile/articles/20kda2iv

"Put it all together, and I think Microsoft's Steve Ballmer did far more than blow a few billion on Skype, I think he wasted his time on a side-issue while Google came straight at Microsoft's strongest stranglehold on the industry: the business desktop.

Should Microsoft worry? Yeah, I think so. They've got Apple making in-roads on the business desktop front with tablets and smartphones, may other companies, like HP, are also going after the business desktop with tablets, and now Google has finally thrown down the gauntlet on the business desktop.."
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How Credit Card Data Is Stolen and Sold - NYTimes.com

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/card-data-is-stolen-and-sold/?partner=rss&emc=rss

OMG! The bottom fell out of the stolen credit card market!

"Hackers who claim they are responsible for the Sony breach wrote on underground forums last week that they had access to over 2.2 million credit cards. If these millions of new stolen cards were sold online, the price could fall to well below the standard rate to as low as $1 or $2 each."

I'm not laughing, as someone tried to hijack one of my credit cards last week.
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Osama Bin Laden's Hideout Compound

http://maps.google.com/?source=friendlink&q=Osama+Bin+Laden's+Hideout+Compound&cid=9294138184493326603

Still enjoying the reviews of this Rustic Hideaway
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NYT: Wal-Mart Changes a Measuring S

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/business/08gret.xml

"But Mr. Flickinger said Wal-Mart's pay packages seemed especially unfortunate in light of the company's decision late last year to end its longtime profit-sharing programs for lower-level workers. This arrangement was created by Sam Walton, the company's founder, and was a source of considerable pride to him. "Profit-sharing has pretty much been the carrot that's kept Wal-Mart headed forward," Mr. Walton wrote in his 1992 autobiography, "Sam Walton: Made in America." Last year, before Wal-Mart eliminated that profit-sharing program, it said it paid roughly $1.1 billion in profit-sharing and 401(k) matches to employees. In the future, it will offer only the 401(k) match.

"Taking away profit-sharing was the ultimate Ebenezer Scrooge story of the last holiday season," Mr. Flickinger said. "Ebenezer makes all the money, and all the poor Cratchits working in the Wal-Mart stores become poorer and poorer."

At least one Wal-Mart shareholder has expressed concern that the company's directors are awarding bonuses to executives despite lagging performance. "As the union that represents retail workers we are troubled that these bonus payouts come when front-line Wal-Mart associates are getting wages and benefits cut, and seeing their hours reduced," says John Marshall, senior analyst in the capital stewardship program of the United Food and Commercial Workers. "Wal-Mart's serious understaffing is part of the reason same-store sales continue to decline, which ultimately hurts the stock price." "

NYT: There's No Data Sheriff on the

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2011/05/08/weekinreview/08bilton.xml

"In underground online forums last week, hackers said Sony's servers were severely outdated and infiltrating them was relatively easy."

Seth's Blog: Don't Shave That Yak!

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2005/03/dont_shave_that.html

This is a little like "perfection is the enemy of good enough".

NYT: What Happened to Air France Fl

http://mobile.nytimes.com/article?a=784520

"A few days later, in Paris, I stopped by the office of Alain Bouillard, the lead crash investigator for the B.E.A. After studying thousands of pieces of wreckage, Bouillard came to the same conclusion as Sarmento about the plane's landing. Many of the items recovered, like meal carts, were found with their contents compressed from the bottom, and pieces of the plane's underbelly were flattened as if struck from below. "There is a high probability that the aircraft landed in one piece," Bouillard told me. "We are reasonably certain." "
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Seal Dogs

http://www.thedaily.com/page/2011/05/05/050511-news-seal-dog-1-5/

Titanium teeth. Ear radio. Bullet proof vest with infrared camera. Able to leap out of helicopters and planes. Are these doggies for real?

Osama bin Laden | The Economist

http://www.economist.com/node/18648254

"The difference between pure Muslims and Americans, he said, was that Americans loved life, whereas Muslims loved death."

CRTC sets target of 5Mbps broadband for all Canadians by 2015 -- Engadget

http://m.engadget.com/default/article.do?artUrl=http://www.engadget.com/2011/05/04/crtc-sets-target-of-5mbps-broadband-for-all-canadians-by-2015/&category=classic&postPage=1

Desk Phone Dock review

Desk Phone Dock review
ENGADGET | APRIL 29, 2011
http://pulsene.ws/1szpR

With every passing day, more people are ditching their landlines in favor of using their cellular phones as a combination ... read more

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http://www.pulsene.ws

Microsoft's talking paper clip is back

Hey, check this out from CNN:
Microsoft's talking paper clip is back
http://bit.ly/m8zmot

Ask Engadget: best Android smartphone with a physical keyboard?

I think my next phone is going to have to have a physical keyboard. I type too fast, and too much.

Ask Engadget: best Android smartphone with a physical keyboard?
ENGADGET | APRIL 14, 2011
http://pulsene.ws/1jFu5

We know you've got questions, and if you're brave enough to ask the world for answers, here's the outlet to do so. This ... read more

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