Common Sense Junction
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Common Sense Junction
Index, Summaries From Technology Sites

  1. MSI starts shipping two 12.1-inch, AMD-powered Wind12 U230 netbooks

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 8:37 pm MST

    It sure took 'em long enough -- just over four months if you're keeping score -- but MSI has finally shipped its next-generation netbook. The AMD-powered Wind12 U230 has left the docks today in two distinct flavors (the U230-033 and U230-040), with both touting Windows 7 Home Premium, a 12.1-inch WXGA (1,366 x 768) display, ATI's Radeon HD3200 graphics, 2GB of RAM, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, a 6-cell battery and a 1.3 megapixel camera. The duo also features three USB sockets, VGA / HDMI outputs, an Ethernet port, audio in / out, a 4-in-1 card reader and a chassis that weighs in at 3.3 pounds. As for the differences? The former ships with an AMD Athlon Neo MV-40 under the hood and a 250GB HDD, while the latter sports an Athlon X2 L335 CPU and a 320GB platter. Both are available for the taking right now at NewEgg, though it's on you to decide if the the second model is really worth the extra $50 over the $429.99 base price.

    Continue reading MSI starts shipping two 12.1-inch, AMD-powered Wind12 U230 netbooks

    MSI starts shipping two 12.1-inch, AMD-powered Wind12 U230 netbooks originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 22:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  2. Alexander McQueen's final collection

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 8:29 pm MST

    Many images here, all from his 2010 collection and released today. The iconic fashion designer's work incorporated fantasy and futurist themes familiar to Boing Boing readers. He died earlier this year....



  3. Dalai Lama Has a Posse

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 8:09 pm MST

    Wednesday March 10 is Tibetan Independence Day—and this year will also mark His Holiness the Dalai Lama's 75th birthday. In honor of both, Shepard Fairey collaborated with photographer Don Farber on this limited-edition, signed and numbered 18"x14" print, which goes on sale at this link Wednesday, March 10, at noon Eastern/9am Pacific. Net proceeds divided between Tibet House and LA Friends of Tibet. (thanks, Christal / Tibet Connection Radio)...



  4. Google Apps Marketplace: Instantly Connect Your App To 25 Million Users, Profit.

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 8:00 pm MST

    Business to business software can be a tough sell. Online B2B can be even a harder sell. While there is certainly money to be made, unless you're one of the big players, the likelihood you're going to succeed is pretty small. Starting today, Google is taking their roll as one of the big players and extending a platform to boost some smaller players. Tonight, Google has unveiled their Google Apps Marketplace. This is an app store for enterprise apps in the cloud. Using a set of APIs, these third-party apps can deeply integrate their products within Google Apps, which already some 25 million people are using. And that also includes over 2 million businesses ranging from startups, to small businesses, to Fortune 500 companies. For customers, this means a one-stop shop for a variety of applications that their business or organization can use. And it's extremely simple to get started with apps in the marketplace — it just takes 4 clicks, Google says (though that initial click will have to come from your domain admin to approve the use of the app). For developers, particularly small startup developers, it means instant access to more users than they can likely imagine. It also potentially means something more important: money.

  5. Web-Based Productivity Suite Zoho Finds A Place In The Google Apps Marketplace

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 7:59 pm MST

    Zoho, a web-based productivity suite that was called a "fake Office" by a Microsoft VP, is announcing a significant partnership with Google today. The startup will be a launch partner for Google's recently launched Google Apps Marketplace, which allows vendors to sell applications that compliment Google Apps. Here are our notes from the announcement. Zoho will be integrating two of its over 20 business applications - Zoho CRM and Zoho Projects with Google Apps. So starting today, Google Apps users will be able to add on-demand CRM app Zoho CRM and project management software Zoho Projects into Google Apps. While Zoho has previously rolled out the ability log-in to its applications via your Google Apps IDs, the two applications have been specially formatted for further immersion into Google Apps with App's extended APIs. IT admins will now have an option to add Zoho Apps to their domains through Google Apps Marketplace. Once the IT admin adds a Zoho application to their domain, all users within the domain will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation. main will have access to the Zoho Application through Google universal navigation.

  6. Socialwok Takes A Stroll In The Google Apps Marketplace

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 7:59 pm MST

    Tonight, Google launched its Google Apps Marketplace, an online storefront for Apps products and services. Here are our notes from the announcement. And of course, the marketplace is launching with a number of pilot partners (50 to be exact). One of those partners happens to be recently launched Socialwok, a product that ads a social layer to Gmail and other Google products. At last year's TechCrunch50 conference, Socialwok made a big splash, winning the award for best demopit startup and launching its enterprise-friendly, FriendFeed-like layer for Google Apps. The web-based application was praised for launching a social network that wrapped around the very unsocial Google Apps. And the startup just launched a gadget to allow users access all the features of Socialwok without leaving Gmail. Socialwok in the the Google Apps Marketplace allows organizations to use their existing Google Apps accounts to login into Socialwok and create a social network for their domains to share within Google Docs, Google Calendars, Google Spreadsheets and other Google objects in feeds. For example, with the Socialwok Gmail gadget, users can view, post and comment on various feeds in their organization right from Gmail.

  7. Razer and Sixense distribute SDK and FPS shooter utility through Steam

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 7:55 pm MST

    Surely you remember those Sixense motion controls that we caught lounging around at Razer's CES booth, right? Yeah. Today at the Game Developers Conference, both outfits have teamed up in order to distribute the Ultra-Precise Motion Controller SDK and FPS utility library via Steam, which should give devs the ability to create new games and port existing titles for use with the aforementioned sticks. We're told that these new tools will require "require virtually no knowledge of the inner workings of the controller," enabling coders to craft titles that take full advantage of the six degrees of freedom. Will this turn the PC into the next Wii? We kind of doubt it, but at least someone's looking out for non-console gamers who have a secret obsession with Nintendo's Wiimote.

    Continue reading Razer and Sixense distribute SDK and FPS shooter utility through Steam

    Razer and Sixense distribute SDK and FPS shooter utility through Steam originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  8. Adam Savage: my Blade Runner gun

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 7:46 pm MST

    I made my first Blade Runner pistol when I was 18, while living in Hell's Kitchen, NYC. I stared at the VHS version on pause and made sketches. Put it together from toys and model kit parts. It's lovely and terrible: (Years later the internet would teach me that the six dollar plastic gun I bought on Canal street in NYC and cannibalized for the grip was created by Edison Giacattoli, a legendary toy gun designer) I made a crazy accurate scratch-built when I was 30, from resin and bondo. I had great picture reference but shitty size reference, it was 20% too small. Fuck!...



  9. MetaLab Accuses Mozilla Of Plagiarizing Its Design (Updated)

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 7:39 pm MST

    Andrew Wilkinson of MetaLab has just written a blog post accusing Mozilla of plagiarizing the design of its FlightDeck editor. To make matters worse, Wilkinson says that MetaLab actually bid on creating the design for FlightDeck months ago, but was turned down by Mozilla. While Wilkinson is understandably upset, at this point,it looks like the plagiarized image is just a mockup on the Mozilla wiki — not the actual product (though it's obviously still in bad taste). We've reached out to Mozilla for a comment. You can see a screenshot comparison from Wilkinson's blog post below. Update: Here's a comment from Mozilla, stating that the copy-and-paste design was a proof of concept:

  10. Finding the Key to Subsidizing Solar Power

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 7:16 pm MST

    solar-spain-industry.jpg Photo via International Rivers The International Herald Tribune has an interesting (if embarrassingly headlined--in the print edition, they went all-out for an Icarus reference) look at the boom and bust of the Spanish solar industry today. Basically, in a rush to jumpstart a pioneering solar industry, the Spanish gov offered far too sweet a feed-in tariff for solar investors--a whopping 58 U...Read the full story on TreeHugger


  11. Google announces business app store for Google Apps

    → Webware.com | 9 Mar 2010 | 7:15 pm MST

    Software developers can cater to Google Apps customers through a new application store announced at Google's Campfire One event in Mountain View.

    Originally posted at Relevant Results



  12. Motorola CLIQ XT hands-on

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 7:10 pm MST

    We know you've barely recovered from our Devour review, but Moto just threw another Blur-ified phone in our laps this afternoon - the CLIQ XT. We've been playing around with the Android 1.5-based, Flash Lite-supported, multitouch-capable handset for the last couple of hours -- but before we grace you with our first impressions, just a fair warning: we don't yet know the price of the new T-Mobile Android handset, though Motorola did promise us that it will hit shelves this month. With that said, hit the break for a quick rundown of our early thoughts.

    Continue reading Motorola CLIQ XT hands-on

    Motorola CLIQ XT hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  13. Live: Google Apps Marketplace Launches At Google Campfire One

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 7:04 pm MST

    Tonight, Google is hosting one of their Campfire One events at their headquarters in Mountain View, CA. They're using the event to launch their new Google Apps Marketplace. This is the app store that business applications can use to reach the more than 25 million people and 2 million business that use Google Apps for their domains. Here are the links to our extended coverage on the Google Apps Marketplace: Below, find our live notes from the event.

  14. Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows Phone, full 3D is a go

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 6:50 pm MST

    Alright, we're going to be straight with you: you're not going to like this. See, Microsoft just showed us a pair of 3D games running on its ASUS Windows Phone prototype and built with its brand new XNA Game Studio 4.0, but wouldn't let us nab a single photo or video of the process. What we can tell you is that they exist, they work, and at least Microsoft tossed us some screenshots to wave in your face. The two titles are The Harvest (pictured), a good looking touch-controlled dungeon crawler with destructible environments, being developed by Luma Arcade; and Battle Punks, a less impressive one-on-one sword fighting Facebook game by Gravity Bear that's being ported over. We didn't get to see any full motion 3D camera moves, since Battle Punks is just composed of two characters duking it out, and The Harvest has a fixed camera and some pre-rendered elements, but there were indeed some real polygons being crunched before our eyes at a full resolution (no upscaling), alpha-rev, choppy framerate, and we were assured that full screen 3D was possible. We also got to see one of our first glimpses of universal notifications on Windows Phone: Achievement unlock notices (also pictured above) that slide down from the top of the screen in a black bar and then slide back, and can't be interacted with. Follow after the break for some more nerdy details, along with a video of VisualStudio in action, and screenshots of the two games are in the gallery below.

    Continue reading Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows Phone, full 3D is a go

    Microsoft shows off XNA games running on Windows Phone, full 3D is a go originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  15. Amazon Wields $25 Gift Certificates To Pacify Frustrated Comic Book Fans

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 6:36 pm MST

    Over the last few days, a strange situation has been brewing between Amazon and a sizable number of comic book fans. On March 7, Bleeding Cool broke the news of an apparent Amazon sale featuring high quality hardcover Marvel graphic novels at bargain-basement prices of $14.99, when their retail prices were more along the lines of $125. Alas, it turned out to be a pricing error. Amazon could have simply canceled the orders (which is common practice for online retailers), but instead, it tried to do right by its users and said it would honor some of the orders. Except it didn't actually have enough books in stock to do what it promised, leading to another wave of frustration from the comics fans. Now Amazon is looking to smooth things over with some $25 dollar gift certificates. The tale is a bit complicated. After word of the apparent sale began to spread, plenty of comics fans began to snatch up the books as quickly as they could, causing some of the graphic novels to climb toward the top of Amazon's best seller lists.

  16. SXSW Interactive: Because hell doesn’t have enough promotional stickers

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 6:34 pm MST

    Later this week, thousands of ironic t-shirts will be arriving in Austin for the 16th annual South By Southwest Interactive festival. At about this time, it's traditional for tech publications to publish handy guides to "surviving SXSWi" - packed with useful advice that's basically interchangeable with that for any other festival since the beginning of time. "Drink plenty of water!" "Prepare for some late nights!" "Plan ahead to make sure you don't miss anything!" "Pack sturdy shoes!" "Always use a condom!". Useful advice for SXSWi, certainly, but also applicable for Oktoberfest, Glastonbury, Woodstock and the ancient Roman festival of Lupercalia (although for the latter, replace 'shoes' with 'sandals' and 'condom' with 'sprig of silphium'). This year, though, I decided to use my experience of past SXSWi's to produce something more useful. A very specific and completely foolproof guide on surviving this year's event. And here it is... Tip One: Don't go to South by Southwest Interactive.

  17. Entelligence: Aiming high or another Mylo?

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 6:23 pm MST

    Entelligence is a column by technology strategist and author Michael Gartenberg, a man whose desire for a delicious cup of coffee and a quality New York bagel is dwarfed only by his passion for tech. In these articles, he'll explore where our industry is and where it's going -- on both micro and macro levels -- with the unique wit and insight only he can provide.

    We heard a rumor last week that Sony was working on new handhelds to compete with devices like the iPad. It sounds like a great idea: a PSP with integrated telephony and e-book functionality could perhaps give everyone in the market a run for their money. But I'm a little skeptical -- Sony's Clié line once defined state-of-the-art PDA, but the company ceded the market to Palm long before the PDA was eventually reborn as the smartphone. If Sony's seriously thinking about getting back to the handheld space, here's some lessons it might learn from its efforts back in the PDA day.

    1. Innovation is great but only when you really innovate. Sony led the market in innovation when it entered the PDA space. It offered the first Palm OS devices with removable storage, the first devices that could play back audio and video, and the first high-resolution color devices. All of these clearly drove the market forward. Then the innovations became less innovative and more "gadgetry." There were 3D interfaces for the launcher that were confusing and awkward. Some devices had Bluetooth support but not others. Devices like the NZ-90 (pictured above) added so many features into the mix that it was big, bloated, and nearly useless.* In short, the innovations became less compelling and eventually stood in the way of. I'm worried that Sony's meshing the type of functionality rumored to be its new device without any thought how it all has to work together.

    Continue reading Entelligence: Aiming high or another Mylo?

    Entelligence: Aiming high or another Mylo? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  18. Twitter Starts Routing All Links Through New Anti-Phishing Service

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 6:14 pm MST

    Twitter has just announced that it is launching a new anti-phishing feature that allows Twitter's Trust and Safety team to monitor all links submitted through the service for potentially malicious attacks. Part of the new feature will involve the use of Twitter's link shortener twt.tl, which may now start popping up in some of your emails and direct messages. At this point, it's not really clear which links are being converted to Twitter's twt.tl shortened links. We just ran a test at the TC office with two different links: one for an article on GigaOm, and another for a bit.ly link that pointed to a page on Google Buzz. The links I received on my Twitter client were both unchanged, but both were converted to twt.tl links in our Email notifications (obviously neither of them had malicious content).

  19. Does Android dream of DIY cushions?

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 5:44 pm MST

    With the estate of Philip K. Dick up in arms over the slightest commercial reference to his published works, we may come to regret the above headline. But it's worth the risk to bring more attention to this lovely, handcrafted Android pillow. Covered in fleece and filled with fluffy polyester for a texture that creator Craftsquatch describes as "firm yet springy," the cuddly 12-inch square, made-to-order cushion can be yours for $20 before shipping. If only it came with dessert.

    Does Android dream of DIY cushions? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Permalink Technabob  |  sourceCraftsquatch (Etsy)  | Email this | Comments

  20. Bad paintings of Barack Obama

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 5:21 pm MST

    If you're an epochal historical figure you are in some sense going to be all things to all people, and it stands to reason that some of those people will be painters, and of those, some quotient will be bad painters. Which is what makes badpaintingsofbarackobama.com not just a hoot but culturally inevitable. It's ultra-minimalist, as online galleries go -- just a bad painting of Obama per page, with a neat little drop shadow added to give the images an extra shot of hilarious self-importance. Some of them actually aren't bad (at least not to my untrained eye -- I don't know a lot about bad painting, but I know it when I see it); some are either goofy (like this one of Obama looking like Mr. Roarke from "Fantasy Island") or disturbing (like this one of Obama looking like The Rock). Some of them are actually sort of moving. Taken individually they're easy to dismiss. But click through the site for a while and something unexpected happens: Your image of Obama begins to lift and separate from the mire and chatter of the 24-hour news cycle, and you begin to see him again as (perhaps) you once did -- the repository of a whole lot of different, and different-looking, hopes....



  21. Future of Interrogation

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 5:21 pm MST

    Not only are torture techniques like waterboarding, sleep deprivation, and forced stress positions evil, they don't work very well for interrogation. Jacques Vallee talked about that on BB last year in his provocative essay, "Waterboarding's curious corollaries." This week's New Scientist also considers the efficacy of torture and "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment" (CIDT). On the heels of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, Obama established the High-Value Detainee Interrogation Group to study and practice "scientifically proven" techniques to interrogate without torture or CIDT, which are illegal. The idea that coercive interrogation works rests on an untested and largely unsupported framework, says Shane O'Mara, director of the Institute of Neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin, Ireland. On the face of it, the coercive model for interrogation seems like common sense: there is information that the interrogator wants to know and the subject holds but doesn't want to give up. The interrogator applies some pressure to break down the defences put up by the subject, who then spills the desired information. "You see this model repeatedly in movies and TV series such as 24," says O'Mara. Whether it really works like that is questionable, however. "Everything we know shows that the ability to accurately retrieve information is severely impaired under conditions of extreme stress," O'Mara says. Studies on soldiers, for instance, have shown that manipulating sleep, food and temperature produces severe effects on memory, even when people are willing to give up information. In a recent paper, O'Mara outlined the problem (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 13, p 497). Both torture and CIDT flood the brain with stress hormones such as cortisol and the catecholamines, with potentially profound effects. Three regions are especially affected: the hippocampus, which is important in retrieving long-term memories; the amygdala, which forms part of the fear network; and the frontal lobes. Disturbances of these regions are likely to kick in during coercive interrogation, particularly if such questioning continues for weeks or months. In addition, prolonged stress could also lead to the creation of false memories based on information and supposed facts presented by the interrogator. This phenomenon, known as confabulation in psychiatric jargon, is also found in people with frontal lobe disorders. "These people are not consciously making stuff up or trying to lie," says O'Mara. "But they have difficulty discriminating between genuine memories and those that don't bear any relationship to events they have experienced. Though the occurrence of confabulation in torture victims is more speculative, it's a marked possibility." "Beyond torture: the future of interrogation"...



  22. Picturetweeting bathroom scale

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 5:14 pm MST

    A delightful invention from Morten Skogly: "How about bathroom scale that takes a picture of you, from the worst and least flattering angle, and uploads it straight to the web through Twitter and twitpic? Yes, I know, it's a horrible idea! Which means it simply HAS to be made. So I did, or at least a working prototype!" Picturetweeting bathroom scale (Thanks, Laura!)...



  23. Palm's webOS PDK beta adds Pixi native development, PDK'd apps will hit the Catalog mid year

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 5:12 pm MST

    We just sat down with Palm here at GDC and fished out a few more details on the PDK beta front. Firstly, and most interestingly, Palm has confirmed that the PDK now works on all of its handsets (instead of just the Pre and Pre Plus), which means Pixi buyers can stop hating themselves pretty soon. Apparently the level of performance degradation should be comparable iPhone 3G vs. 3GS, which doesn't sound too horrible. This is functionality that wasn't available even to Palm's early PDK partners like EA and Gameloft, so we should be seeing versions of existing games make the jump to the Pixi when the time for PDK beta-developed apps to hit the Palm App Catalog. When will that time come, you ask? The "middle of the year," or "a few months," whichever sounds more promising to you. Palm's not saying whether this new era for the App Catalog (anyone being able to release PDK apps, and those apps working on the Pre and the Pixi) will accompany a full-on webOS update, but it seems logical to us.

    On a more technical front, we're told the PDK supports the Linux standard SDL (Simple DirectMedia Layer) to ease in porting and development (Unreal for Linux runs using SDL, for instance), and that developers could even build apps like an audio processor that rely on PDK components but don't show up in the UI at all, or OpenGL-empowered things that aren't necessarily games or in 3D. Also, existing developers have only been able to do "full screen" games that rely on PDK components alone, but the PDK beta lets you mix and match webOS UI with PDK elements. Currently there aren't many PDK games that use the extra Palm hardware like the QWERTY keyboard and the gesture area, but we're told that's all exposed to the developer, along with any other element of webOS that Mojo SDK users have access to. One notable plugin hangup is the fact that Flash only works in the browser, and can't be embedded into a regular webOS app, PDK or no -- though we have to assume this is something that's in the works.

    Palm's webOS PDK beta adds Pixi native development, PDK'd apps will hit the Catalog mid year originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  24. Who Will Lead The U.N. On Climate Change?

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 4:59 pm MST

    yvo_de_boer.jpg photo via Climate Changer A few weeks ago, UN Climate Chief Yvo de Boer stepped down from his post as the United Nations Climate Change Secretariat. Who replaces him figures to be a signal of where the UN is going on climate change. Developing countries have had a hard road to climb in the UN process and three stepped up recently to nominate a replacement for Boer. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger


  25. Glenn Beck advertiser sells "survival seeds" for apocalyptic agriculture

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 4:55 pm MST

    The Survival Seed Bank is advertising on Glenn Beck's television show. They offer "survival seeds" for growing your own "crisis garden" amid "emerging totalitarianism." As Media Matters points out, the brand identity meshes well with the host's apocalyptic visions of the future. "More valuable than silver or gold in a real meltdown," the website reads. They may quote WorldNetDaily as a news source, fine, but I really like the sound of the heirloom varieties they offer: Jacob's Cattle Bean, Yellow Dent Corn, and non-hybrid varieties of tomato and leafy greens. I'd eat that! "You'll have confidence knowing that you and your family will be able to eat if the Insiders trigger some huge meltdown," reads the promotional copy. Perhaps (and who are these "Insiders?"), but I'm not convinced $149 is such a great deal for a couple dozen packets of seeds and a little plant food, even if it's enough for "a full acre Crisis Garden." But hey, when the jackbooted Obama-thugs destroy all the grocery stores with their black helicopters, it does look like we may be going extreme vegan locavore for a while. Make sure to listen to the audio testimonials from happy customers. (via Baratunde)...



  26. Samsung NaviBot SR8845 / SR8855 vacuum cleaner hands-on

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 4:47 pm MST

    It didn't take long for these NaviBots to win our hearts -- we only spent about five intimate minutes watching them vacuuming the floor at Samsung's UK product launch event, but frankly, we fell hard upon first sight. On the left we have the SR8845 basic model going for £399 ($599), and the SR8855 at the rear is priced higher at £449 ($674) with its touch-sensitive buttons (instead of physical ones), on-board scheduler (instead of a countdown timer) and a pair of Virtual Guards -- boxes that create an infrared virtual fence to create a priority cleaning zone or to block the NaviBots -- instead of one. That said, both bots have the same vacuum performance, have visionary mapping, run for 90 minutes on a two-hour charge, and have anti-fall / anti-collision technology to boot. Say whatever you want about the prices and feel free to doubt the bots' sucking abilities, but hopefully the video after the break will at least leave you with a smile. Both will be in British shops at the end of April.

    Continue reading Samsung NaviBot SR8845 / SR8855 vacuum cleaner hands-on

    Samsung NaviBot SR8845 / SR8855 vacuum cleaner hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  27. Sex.com for sale

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 4:45 pm MST

    Sex.com will be sold at auction next week. Current owner Escom LLC reportedly paid $14 million for it a few years ago, but has since defaulted on loans. According to CNN, "The auction is set for March 18 in New York, and bidders are required to appear with a certified check for $1 million to participate."...



  28. Pre-Dinosaur Era Plant Specimens Brazenly Stolen

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 4:38 pm MST

    cycads primitive plant photo This photo, via The Telegraph, shows just how difficult it is to move one of the large, primitive cycads. Important specimens from one of the world´s oldest and rarest species of plant were stolen last weekend, covert ops style, from a botanical garden in South Africa. The species, cycads, is so old, in fact, that their broad ...Read the full story on TreeHugger


  29. Eternal optimist Verizon calls iPad launch 'an opportunity' to sell some data plans

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 4:23 pm MST

    That's the "glass is half full" attitude we like, Verizon -- always looking for a way to sign a few more of those lucrative data contracts, no matter the circumstances! Turns out Big Red is tipping off its staffers on how it can encourage customers to go with the WiFi-only version of the iPad and pair it up with a device like the MiFi rather than shelling out $130 more for integrated AT&T 3G and waiting a few extra weeks. As usual, Verizon's keen on playing up the anti-AT&T sentiment it's cultivated in its recent ad campaign by openly calling its biggest competitor's 3G network "overloaded," but we see one big hangup: 5GB of data on a Verizon MiFi is going to run you $60 a month, twice as much as AT&T will be charging for its dedicated, unlimited iPad plan. Then again, AT&T's own boss thinks WiFi's a bigger deal than 3G for this thing, so who knows -- maybe this is a zero-sum game for both of these guys.

    [Thanks, Mark]

    Eternal optimist Verizon calls iPad launch 'an opportunity' to sell some data plans originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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  30. Chilean earthquake so strong, it moved an entire city 10 feet

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 4:07 pm MST

    Researchers say the magnitude-8.8 earthquake that hit Chile was so strong, it moved the city of Concepcion 10 feet (or more!) to the west. The Chilean capital, Santiago, was bumped about 11 inches to the west-southwest. (via kristielustout)...



  31. brite-View LinkE pipes content to four Ethernet sources over existing powerline network

    → Engadget | 9 Mar 2010 | 3:59 pm MST

    The market is darn near flooded with HomePlug AV-compatible powerline solutions, but Zinnet has seen fit to one-up the networking mainstays by dishing out a product that serves not one, but four Ethernet-packin' devices simultaneously. Designed for use with its brite-View CinemaTube (but fully capable of working with game consoles, Blu-ray players and media streamers), this two-piece kit allows internet content to flow through your home's existing powerline network and hit up to four devices on the other end. Simply plug the solo port adapter into a wall socket beside your router or broadband modem, and the four port adapter in your home theater room (or den, for the simplistic among us). From there, you can connect your Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Roku set-top-box, Blu-ray player, CinemaTube deck or any other AV device that benefits from a wired internet connection; just like that, you've got a makeshift connection to four devices, and you'll never have to worry over WiFi dropouts again. All that's required to bring this joy into your life is $89.99 and a basic understanding of online checkout procedure, both of which we're sure you can handle.

    brite-View LinkE pipes content to four Ethernet sources over existing powerline network originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 17:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

    Permalink   |  sourcePR Newswire  | Email this | Comments

  32. Nitrogen's Impact on Public Health

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 3:50 pm MST

    grist the end is nitrate photo Image credit: Grist Imagine a hot summer day in a town surrounded by glistening pools of water. Now imagine that no one is swimming—that they can't because the water has been contaminated with a potentially dangerous, yet common, pollutant. For many, this terrible thought is a reality and the culprit is nitrate....Read the full story on TreeHugger


  33. Study says US doctors in hospitals only wash their hands about 30% of the time

    → Boing Boing | 9 Mar 2010 | 3:49 pm MST

    An upsetting stat tucked away in a NYT piece today: Doctors in American hospitals wash their hands only 30-40% of the time, according to national estimates. (via consumersunion)...



  34. A Good Climate Bill Will Be Strong, Not Easy

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 3:30 pm MST

    good strong climate bill photo Image credit: Good Passing a strong climate bill, Good tells us in a recent editorial, is a necessity. Such a bill, they write, must be defined by what is good for the country, not what is easy for the Senate to agree upon....Read the full story on TreeHugger


  35. Broadcast Video From Your Mobile

    → Wired: Gadgets | 9 Mar 2010 | 3:30 pm MST

    You're carrying around a video camera in your pocket (it's that thing attached to your mobile phone) so be prepared and learn how to start streaming video to the web at a moment's notice.




  36. SV Angel Partner Brian Pokorny Now CEO Of Dailybooth

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 3:17 pm MST

    SV Angel, the angel fund founded by super-angel Ron Conway, is losing one of its general partners to a portfolio company. Brian Pokorny is now the CEO of fast-growing Silicon Valley-based Dailybooth. Dailybooth, the runner up in the "best social app" and winner of the "time sink" categories at this year's Crunchies Awards, is "your life in pictures." Some 6 million monthly visitors share pictures and status updates with eachother. "It's a community for self expression," says Pokorny. A typical interaction: a users posts a photo, taken with their webcam, showing what they're eating, what they're feeling, or perhaps with friends in the background. Other user then respond via text or photos. Some strings go on for hundreds of responses. Here's an example.

  37. Life on the Endangered Species Waiting List

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 3:10 pm MST

    greater sage grouse photo The greater sage-grouse was deemed to be "warranted but precluded" by the U.S. Department of the Interior. Image credit: Wikimedia Commons Though it "warrants" protection under the Endangered Species Act, Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar said, the greater sage-grouse will not be added to the list at this time. Instead, it would join nearly 300 other species that have been "precluded"—essentially placed on a waiting list—while other priority species are considered. While the ruling was by no means a total loss for the grouse, it falls far ...Read the full story on TreeHugger


  38. Google’s Chief Economist: “Newspapers Have Never Made Much Money From News”

    → TechCrunch | 9 Mar 2010 | 3:09 pm MST

    Earlier today, Google chief economist Hal Varian gave a presentation to an FTC workshop on the changing economics of the newspaper industry. We all know that newspaper ad revenues have been falling off a cliff for years. Many media companies blame Google and are trying to put the genie back in the bottle with partial metered models for online news. Google is understandably on the defensive, trotting out Varian to paint an unemotional picture with as much data as he can muster. But the picture he paints is a dour one for print media. For instance, the chart above shows the decline of overall newspaper ad revenues. Newspapers have taken huge hits in classifieds advertising (in blue) and national brand advertising (in red). The online portion (green) is still too small to make much of a difference.

  39. Storyboard: Extreme-Test War Stories

    → Wired: Gadgets | 9 Mar 2010 | 2:46 pm MST

    From blasting body armor to testing the limits of a satellite tracker, the Wired magazine team talks about putting survival products through the real-world wringer.




  40. Just How Fast Is Cisco's New Router? Really Freaking Fast

    → Wired: Gadgets | 9 Mar 2010 | 2:39 pm MST

    Cisco's new CRS-3 router is capable of 322 terabits per second, the company says. That's fast enough to download the entire Library of Congress in about a second.




  41. Let's Not Forget: Even Without CO2, Coal Would Still Be Very Dirty

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 2:02 pm MST

    coal ash spill photo "Orthographic aerial photograph of Kingston Fossil Plant coal fly ash slurry spill, in Kingston, Tennessee, taken the day after the event." Photo: Public domain CO2 is Important, But Not the Only Thing David Roberts over at Grist has a great rebuttal of Thom Friedman's latest column in which he and investor...Read the full story on TreeHugger


  42. Today on Planet 100: Fallujah Birth Defects (Video)

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 12:45 pm MST

    Read the full story on TreeHugger


  43. Seal Is On The Menu in Canada's Parliamentary Restaurant

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 12:45 pm MST

    sealmeat.jpg During last year's seal hunt Brian posted about Canada's Governor General gutting a seal and eating its heart. Canada's Minister of Defence helped himself to a seal banquet as well. When it comes to seal, Solidarity Forever. But now they don't have to go to the Arctic for a traditional Inuit feast; they can just pop over to the Parliamentary Restaurant, where seal is the chic thing, the hot ticket item for those who want to show support for the seal hunt. ...Read the full story on TreeHugger


  44. Crunching the Numbers ($$$) on Bike Commuting

    → TreeHugger | 9 Mar 2010 | 12:45 pm MST

    carfree bicycle photo Photo: CarFree.us "I knew I was benefiting myself and the environment by commuting without a car, but to see the real impact is very amazing." If you want to get around faster than your feet can take you while doing as little harm as possible, the bicycle is your best option. An unnamed author has recently started documenting his experience with becoming a bicycle commuter, and the results are interesting (and hopefully encouraging enough that others will do the same!). In a recent post, he does a little math to see how much money his new green commuting habits are saving h...Read the full story on TreeHugger


  45. Foursquare unveils its SXSWi arsenal

    → Webware.com | 9 Mar 2010 | 12:37 pm MST

    In heated war with rival Gowalla for the geek seal of approval at the annual digital culture festival, Foursquare unveils new badges, new partners, and new promotions.

    Originally posted at The Social



  46. Apple's Secret iPhone Developer Agreement Goes Public

    → Wired: Gadgets | 9 Mar 2010 | 12:00 pm MST

    Previously secret, the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement has been acquired and published with the help of the Freedom of Information Act.




  47. In Chatroulette, the Web is closer to the real world

    → Webware.com | 9 Mar 2010 | 10:30 am MST

    Chatroulette is receiving a lot of criticism, but perhaps the media are identifying it as something it's not.


  48. Extent of ‘carbon outsourcing’ revealed

    → Climate Feedback | 9 Mar 2010 | 9:58 am MST

    Posted for Richard Van Noorden from The Great Beyond

    More than one-fifth of the carbon dioxide produced by China in 2004 was emitted to provide goods and services for non-Chinese consumers, mainly in western Europe, the United States and Japan.

    The statistic comes from the latest study to look at an alternative style of carbon accounting — one that assigns CO2 emissions to the consumers responsible for them. By contrast, inventories such as those reported under the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) simply tally the amount of gas each country produces.

    Ken Caldeira and Steve Davis, of the Carnegie Institution of Washington, in Stanford, California, published their findings this week in PNAS. The most comprehensive of its kind, the analysis takes trade figures from 113 countries across 57 industry sectors and finds that 23% of global CO2 emissions (or 6.2 billion tonnes of CO2) was traded internationally in 2004.

    “Instead of looking at carbon dioxide emissions only in terms of what is released inside our borders, we also looked at the amount of carbon dioxide released during the production of the things that we consume,” says Caldeira (press release). “Just like the electricity that you use in your home probably causes CO2 emissions at a coal-burning power plant somewhere else, we found that the products imported by the developed countries of western Europe, Japan, and the United States cause substantial emissions in other countries, especially China.”

    carbon outsource.jpg

    In some wealthy countries, including Britain and France, more than 30% of consumption-based emissions are imported; in the United States, the figure is 11%. Caldeira thinks that the UNFCCC’s production-based inventories should be supplemented with figures that track where the carbon is ultimately being consumed.

    Dieter Helm, an economist at the University of Oxford who has previously published papers showing that much of the UK's carbon footprint is produced overseas, says that the new study “highlights that Europe and the US are flattered by their CO2 production numbers”.

    “What the authors fail to conclude is that the Kyoto based approach is very badly flawed, and that at Copenhagen the European and US offers for production reductions did not reflect their full carbon footprint,” says Helm. “Such considerations also make the case for a border carbon tax very strongly.”

    Image: flow of emissions among major exporting and importing countries (megatons) / Steven Davis/Carnegie Institution for Science.



  49. Safe and Affordable Jetpack: Just $90,000

    → Wired: Gadgets | 9 Mar 2010 | 9:10 am MST

    For years, man has been trying to build a jetpack which would be safe and cheap enough to use by anyone other than Lee Majors on the title sequence of The Fall Guy. It turns out we’ve been doing it wrong. Instead of starting with a pack and adding on the jet, we should have torn the giant engines from a plane and strapped them to some poor schmuck.




  50. Amazon Is Building a Better Browser for Kindle

    → Wired: Software | 9 Mar 2010 | 8:25 am MST

    Browsing the web on one of Amazon’s Kindle e-readers is like taking a step backwards in time. It’s clunky and has only limited support for web standards, and bare-bones JavaScript capabilities. But now Amazon may be looking to add browser engineers to the Kindle team, according to job listings on the company’s website.




  51. Motorola's Backflip Will Make You Come Unhinged

    → Wired: Gadgets | 9 Mar 2010 | 6:00 am MST

    Despite some of forward-thinking hardware, Moto's Backflip is crippled by a horrid Android skin. And there's only so much one can do with 3.1 inches.




  52. Universities Hide Terrorists In Plain Sight

    → Common Sense Junction | 9 Mar 2010 | 5:41 am MST

    Remember all the security precautions our patriotic universities put in place after 9.11.01 to make sure terrorists couldn’t use student visas to hide on campus? Well….somehow, someway, something went awry. Eamonn Higgins has never earned a college degree in his own name, but prosecutors allege that for the past seven years the 46-year-old has been going [...]

  53. How to save and share ridiculously large files

    → Webware.com | 9 Mar 2010 | 5:00 am MST

    Want to transfer a really big file in your browser, but keep running into size limits? We break down a list of free and paid services that can lend a hand.

    Originally posted at Web Crawler



  54. UN Doomsday Treaty Aimed At Second Amendment

    → Common Sense Junction | 9 Mar 2010 | 4:04 am MST

    NRA News’ investigative reporter Ginny Simone takes a look at the global gun control goals of the United Nations. By pushing for a binding international treaty aimed at superseding the U.S. Constitution, the United Nations is committed to rendering Americans’ Second Amendment rights to own a firearm meaningless. Simone interviews past and current U.N. officials [...]

  55. Headlines and Summaries

    → Common Sense Junction | 9 Mar 2010 | 3:00 am MST

    • Robin of Berkeley: “Brain-Dead in Berkeley” • Robin of Berkeley: “Is Obama a Narcissist?” • Terminally ill sentenced to premature death in UK’s NHS” • Rights versus Wants~~~~~~ [Your Browser does not support frames or is currently configured not to display frames. However, you may use Site Map Pages to navigate this site.] -

  56. Turn an FM Transmitter Into a Micro Pirate Radio

    → Wired: Gadgets | 8 Mar 2010 | 6:00 pm MST

    Seize the airwaves to fight corporate radio's preprogrammed junk. It all starts with a soldering iron and a cheapo FM transmitter.




  57. Most Dangerous Object in the Office: Shocknife SK-2

    → Wired: Gadgets | 8 Mar 2010 | 6:00 pm MST

    There's no sharp point or edge, but the electrodes in the polycarbonate Shocknife deliver a stabbing 7,500 volts. Ouch. Kilo-ouch.




  58. A Closer Look at Sony's New Skin for Android Phones

    → Wired: Gadgets | 8 Mar 2010 | 5:45 pm MST

    Sony's new user interface is designed as a skin that will go on top of the Android operating system and aggregate social networking feeds. Take a closer look at it how it compares to Motorola's MotoBlur and the HTC Sense.




  59. Meet the Winners of Webmonkey's Google I/O Giveaway

    → Wired: Software | 8 Mar 2010 | 5:00 pm MST

    We're sending two talented monkeys to the Google I/O developer conference in May. We asked our readers to submit their web creations, and we picked the winners from the best of the submissions.




  60. 8-Bit NYC is the coolest map--ever

    → Webware.com | 8 Mar 2010 | 4:08 pm MST

    Map of New York City depicted in 8-bit gaming glory is a viable mapping tool too.

    Originally posted at The Digital Home



  61. HP's Windows 7 Slate Strikes at the iPad

    → Wired: Gadgets | 8 Mar 2010 | 2:42 pm MST

    HP is set to launch a new tablet that will strike back at Apple's iPad. The new HP slate is a sleek design, startling in its resemblance to the iPad but will offer Flash support.




  62. Dan Rather: Obama Couldn’t Sell Watermelons….

    → Common Sense Junction | 8 Mar 2010 | 2:36 pm MST

    Good thing a conservative didn’t say this: If you missed it: “…he’s a nice person. he’s very articulate. This is what’s been used against him, but he couldn’t sell watermelons if you gave him a state trooper to flag down the traffic…” Notice how Matthews glossed over the remark as though he didn’t hear it. BTW: If YouTube [...]

  63. Download Mosaic and Browse 1993's Web

    → Wired: Software | 8 Mar 2010 | 1:30 pm MST

    A few adventurous hackers have posted source code for NCSA Mosaic 2.7 on the web. If you're running a modern Linux distro, you can download the web's first proper browser and go back to the days before the gold rush.




  64. Google launches tool for searching public data

    → Webware.com | 8 Mar 2010 | 10:40 am MST

    Curious about unemployment trends in your state cross-referenced against salaries? Google Public Data Explorer could make it easier to create a visual representation.

    Originally posted at Relevant Results



  65. Gowalla debuts Travel Channel deal, Android app

    → Webware.com | 8 Mar 2010 | 10:30 am MST

    The location-based mobile networking app has launched its first non-iPhone app, and is making it clear that it's gunning for the same media partnerships that rival Foursquare is going for.

    Originally posted at The Social



  66. Citysearch's new service to better target local ads

    → Webware.com | 8 Mar 2010 | 9:43 am MST

    The local-business directory is combining its extensive ad network with SEO services from OrangeSoda.

    Originally posted at The Digital Home



  67. Modernity … Designing A Stop Sign

    → Common Sense Junction | 8 Mar 2010 | 5:47 am MST

    What if there were no stop signs, and a major corporation was charged with inventing one? They’d brief their agency and let them do it. Sorta. Welcome to corporate creativity, where groupthink and endless revisions help good ideas get executed.

  68. Want Someone to Blame? You Know Their Names

    → Common Sense Junction | 8 Mar 2010 | 5:07 am MST

    This article, published in 1995, is even more appropriate today…. By Charley Reese, Orlando Sentinel, 1995: Politicians, as I have often said, are the only people in the world who create problems and then campaign against them. Everything on the Republican contract [with America in 1995] is a problem created by Congress. Too much bureaucracy? Blame Congress. Too many [...]

  69. I’m Convinced, The Left Will Never Be Satisfied

    → Common Sense Junction | 7 Mar 2010 | 8:52 am MST

    Doug Ross: Morongate: Matthew Yglesias Proves, Once Again, He’s the Dumbest Blogger Alive (Unless Joe Biden Started a Blog When I Wasn’t Looking) Over at Thin Progress, the intellectually stunted Matthew Yglesias contends that “If The Founders Had Wanted a Supermajority Requirement for the Senate, They Could Have Put One in the Constitution”; although Yglesias doesn’t like [...]

  70. Think Federal Deficit Is Bad? Look At State And Local Crises

    → Common Sense Junction | 7 Mar 2010 | 6:39 am MST

    Via Mish’s Global Economic Trend Analysis: Missouri Budget Overstates Revenues By Up To $1 billion The Kansas City Star is reporting Nixon’s budget may have overestimated Missouri revenues by up to $1 billion *** Budget Battles In Washington The Olympian is reporting Republicans eye state workers’ pay *** Budget Gaps In Kansas The Kansas City Business Journal is reporting Parkinson adjusts Kansas budget [...]

  71. The Mysterious Politicians Of Birmingham

    → Common Sense Junction | 6 Mar 2010 | 7:12 am MST

    Thought I’d post the opening and link to this story because it has a mysterious element that required deep burial in the legacy media. Former Birmingham Mayor Larry Langford was sentenced Friday to 15 years in federal prison for taking some $235,000 in bribes in return for lucrative bond work. U.S. District Judge Scott Coogler imposed the [...]

  72. Cosponsors of 5 GREAT Immigration-Reduction Bills

    → Common Sense Junction | 6 Mar 2010 | 4:10 am MST

    NumbersUSA is closely monitoring 5 GREAT immigration reform bills that would lower overall immigration numbers. … Contact Representatives that are not listed. Thank the Members who ARE listed and ask them to sign up for the bills they haven’t yet cosponsored. Click on the link in each bill below to read more details. • Rep. Phil [...]

  73. Vlingo 2.0 for iPhone: E-mail, SMS dictation now cost

    → Webware.com | 5 Mar 2010 | 4:52 pm MST

    Vlingo is a voice app that's been around awhile in the mobile space, but a new version for iPhone is causing some uproar.

    Originally posted at iPhone Atlas



  74. This week's Google acquisition: DocVerse

    → Webware.com | 5 Mar 2010 | 1:07 pm MST

    Google's torrid acquisition pace continues with the purchase of DocVerse, a start-up that helps make Microsoft Office documents more collaborative, for a reported $25 million.

    Originally posted at Relevant Results



  75. Microsoft to Double Down on HTML5 With IE 9

    → Wired: Software | 3 Mar 2010 | 9:11 am MST

    With the latest releases of Opera, Google Chrome and Firefox continuing to push the boundaries of the web, the once-dominant Internet Explorer is looking less and less relevant every day.




  76. Climate Change in Quotes

    → Climate Feedback | 3 Mar 2010 | 7:57 am MST

    Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

    It’s been a busy week for climate change watchers. We had the British parliamentary hearing into climate-gate, the IPCC announced it was reviewing its procedures, American politician James Inhofe waded in with his own report, and then there was the usual plethora of yes-it-is, no-its-not back and forth.

    In case you missed any of it. Here’s the point/counter point.

    Parliamentary Engagement

    Written evidence from the Institute of Physics to the parliamentary inquiry is critical of the scientist at the centre of the affair – Phil Jones of the Climatic Research Unit (CRU). Some have taken it as casting doubt on global warming.

    “It reflected our belief that the open exchange of data, procedures and materials is fundamental to the scientific process. From the information already in the public domain it appears that these principles have been put at risk in the present case, and that this has undermined the trust that is placed in the scientific process.”

    The Institute of Physics clarifies its written evidence to the House of Commons hearing.

    “The institute statement says its submission was approved by its science board, a formal committee of experts that oversees its policy work. The Guardian has been unable to find a member of the board that supports the submission.”

    David Adam, The Guardian.

    IPCC: who reviews the reviewers?

    Rajendra Pachauri, IPCC chair, last week announced ‘an independent committee to review IPCC Procedures’.

    “The IPCC strives to ensure that its procedures for use of published material in the preparation of its assessment reports are followed in all respects. But we recognize the criticism that has been levelled at us and the need to respond.”

    Rajendra Pachauri.

    “In practice, what this means is that another UN-appointed panel of ‘experts’ will convene to review the failures of the original experts. This is less than reassuring. ... [T]he outcome of Mr. Pachauri’s inquiry has already been determined—the science will be found to be sound. Too bad for him that the IPCC is likely past the point where it can salvage its tattered reputation.”

    The Wall Street Journal is less than impressed.

    Inhofe Rides Again

    Senator James Inhofe has launched a report – and another attack on climate science.

    “In our view, the CRU documents and emails reveal, among other things, unethical and potentially illegal behaviour by some of the world’s pre-eminent climate scientists.”

    One of the more controversial claims in the ‘Consensus’ Exposed: The CRU Controversy’ report from Senator Inhofe’s office.

    “[W]hen Inhofe attempts to discredit respected scientists through innuendo and tries to intimidate them by threatening a criminal investigation, enough is enough. It is time to say, ‘Have you no sense of decency sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?’”



  77. The new world order

    → Climate Feedback | 1 Mar 2010 | 7:34 am MST

    Olive Heffernan
    globalwarring.jpg

    Cleo Paskal must be cursing the publishing gods. Had Paskal , author of Global Warring: How Environmental, Economic, and Political Crises Will Redraw the World Map, finished her book last fall – when 'climate security' was a buzzword in foreign policy circles - she'd have timed it perfectly, writes Keith Kloor in a review on Nature Reports Climate Change. All anyone wants to talk about these days is purloined emails, errors in the reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and the literary pursuits of its chair Rajendra Pachauri.

    But, notes Kloor, Paskal’s book is about much more than security experts talking up the threat posed by rising seas. Instead, the author - a London-based journalist and a scholar at the think tank Chatham House - presents a vision of a new world order, in which the United States and the European Union face off against China and Russia as climate change takes hold.

    Paskal argues convincingly that that short-sighted domestic and foreign policies are already eroding “the West's position in the global balance of power”. Writes Kloor:

    Exhibit A is the Arctic, where the US and EU are pushing for 'global governance' of the still-frozen Northwest Passage, a route expected to become a prized shipping channel to Asia and Europe with continued warming.

    Canada currently claims the Northwest Passage as part of its territorial waters, and this standoff could prod Canada to explore a strategic relationship with Russia, which has its own designs on the Arctic. Meanwhile, China is knocking at Canada's door, eager to purchase a slice of the country's abundant natural resources. In a 'stateless' Northwest Passage, Russia and China could end up being the big players, especially if they forge stronger economic ties to Canada, writes Kloor.

    Paskal goes on to argue that in just about every corner of the world, the United States being is outflanked by China, mainly because China's economic interests are integrated with its foreign policy — what Paskal refers to as 'nationalistic capitalism'. Market economies, by contrast, seek to maximize private profit, not to advance the state's agenda.

    Kloor’s full review of the book is freely accessible available here.



  78. Win a Free Ticket to Google I/O 2010

    → Wired: Software | 26 Feb 2010 | 2:00 pm MST

    Webmonkey is giving away two free passes to Google's upcoming I/O developer event. Read the full details and enter to win on our blog.




  79. Facebook Patents Social Network Feeds, Raising Innovation Worries

    → Wired: Software | 26 Feb 2010 | 12:40 pm MST

    Facebook's new patent on publishing streams of user activities has many worried for online innovation. But it could be worse.




  80. The climate machine

    → Climate Feedback | 26 Feb 2010 | 9:20 am MST

    Olive Heffernan

    Last November, I took a trip to Exeter to visit the UK Met Office. The purpose of my visit was to meet with Chris Jones, a climate modeller at the Met Office's climate-change branch, the Hadley Centre.

    Jones is one of a team of scientists who – over the past four years – have devoted much of their time developing and testing what is arguably the world’s most sophisticated climate model. Known as HADGEM2-ES (short for the Hadley Centre Global Environmental Model, version two, with an added Earth-system component), this labour of love is one of a new generation of models under development that reach far beyond their distant forebears, which represented just the physical elements of the climate, such as air, sunlight and water. ‘Earth system models’ include all that and much more: forests that can shrink or spread as conditions change; marine food webs that react as the oceans grow more acidic with carbon dioxide; and aerosol particles in the atmosphere that interact with greenhouse gases, enhancing or sapping their warming power.

    climate-machine.bmp

    Right now, HADGEM2-ES is gearing up for a major challenge. Over the coming months, it will run a series of climate simulations out to the year 2100 for the next report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), on the physical-science basis of climate change, due out in 2013.

    The scientists – such as Jones – who have developed HADGEM2-ES hope that by representing the earth system in greater complexity they will be to simulate the present-day climate with greater realism. This should, in theory, lead to more realistic projections for the future, but many of the climate modellers I spoke to were keen to point out that simulating the climate with more complex models may well lead to greater uncertainty about what the future holds. That’s because including sources of large feedbacks – such as forests that can expand or die or tundra that can release vast amounts of methane – adds a whole new suite of factors to which the climate can respond.

    So, it’s quite likely that the next IPCC report will have much larger error bars on its estimates of future temperature or precipitation, compared with AR4. Climatologist Jim Hurrell of the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder, Colorado, who is heading up development of the NCAR Earth-system model, had this to say:

    “It's very likely that the generation of models that will be assessed for the next IPCC report will have a wider spread of possible climate outcomes as we move into the future".

    So why include more complexity in the model, if it will produce results that are less useful for decision-making? Here, it’s worth remembering that for climatologists, models are not just tools that can give a glimpse of what the future holds; they are also an experimental playground – a replica world on which they can test their knowledge of the climate system. Without the ability to conduct global-scale experiments in the lab or in the field, models are the only tools they have. So while the results from more complex models may, in the short-term, be less informative for policy makers and the public, they will help scientists better understand what drives climate change and lead to better simulations in the long-term.



  81. Gmail Features Graduate From Labs to Big Leagues

    → Wired: Software | 25 Feb 2010 | 1:00 pm MST

    Google has taken the most popular features in Gmail Labs and made them part of Gmail proper. Other experimental features weren't so lucky.




  82. Met Office calls for improved global temperature record

    → Climate Feedback | 25 Feb 2010 | 7:35 am MST

    The UK Met Office has asked the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) to create a new state-of-the art dataset of global land surface air temperatures for improved climate diagnostics.

    Three independent temperature datasets are currently being maintained by the Met Office, NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, and by the US National Climatic Data Center. Each record is constructed on the basis of monthly average raw data from selected meteorological stations around the world, and all show similar magnitudes and rates of warming over the last century.

    But the datasets are not flawless (biases can occur, for example, when stations are being relocated, or when instrumentation is exchanged) and their monthly resolution is too coarse for studies of fine-scale climate features such as changes in daily temperature extremes.

    At a meeting in Antalya, Turkey, the WMO’s commission for climatology has endorsed the Met Office’s proposal of reanalyzing existing records and creating a refined global temperature dataset.

    “This initiative will not replace the current temperature datasets, but will augment existing records, and involve work across the international meteorological community. The proposed dataset will provide information as well as informing decisions on adapting to climate change, something existing datasets don’t provide,” the Met Office says in a statement.

    Any new dataset needs to be “open to scrutiny providing independent assessments of surface temperature”, it says.



  83. There's an app for that

    → Climate Feedback | 24 Feb 2010 | 11:20 am MST

    Alicia Newton

    iphone.JPG
    Skeptical Science has entered the entered the iPhone app fray with a handy guide to answering common questions about climate change. It's reviewed in the UK Guardian , and also, a bit less enthusiastically, in The Telegraph.
    The app lists common arguments put forward by those skeptical of climate change, and gives the counter-arguments based on sound science. Filed under headings such as 'It's not that bad', the app answers questions on topics ranging from the stability of ice sheets to errors in the IPCC's fourth assessment report. You can check out RealClimate's take, too. Free from iTunes, it's at the very least a guaranteed conversation piece.



  84. Sea level paper withdrawn on account of miscalculation

    → Climate Feedback | 24 Feb 2010 | 7:07 am MST

    Quirin Schiermeier
    nat%20geo%20retr.bmpScientists have last week retracted a study which, based on simulations of the past 22,000 years, had projected a 21st century global sea level rise between 7 and 82 centimetres. The authors say they no longer have confidence in the projections owing to serious mistakes in their model approach.

    The results, published last year in Nature Geoscience, had been roughly consistent with projections by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) which in its 2007 report gave a range of 18-59 centimetres sea level rise by 2100. However, some scientists caution that the IPCC numbers, which exclude the effect of changing Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, could prove too conservative.

    Mark Siddall and his co-authors (including Thomas Stocker, co-chair of the IPCC’s working group on the physical basis of climate change) had used an empirical model linking sea-level rise to changes in global mean temperature. They had their model move forward in discreet 100-year time-steps which, although sufficient for simulating the past, they later found too coarse for reliably projecting future changes.

    The study also failed to properly take into account uncertainties in temperature reconstructions of the last 2,000 years.

    It is unclear if the resulting projections over- or underestimate future sea level rise, says Siddall.

    The mistakes, he says, are too profound to be dealt with in a mere correction to the initial paper.

    The retracted paper has been “totally independent” from studies reviewed by the IPCC for its last report, and will not affect future work by the IPCC, he says.



  85. Google Will Ask Buzz's Early Adopters to Confirm Privacy Choices

    → Wired: Software | 22 Feb 2010 | 4:58 pm MST

    Google is set to ask early users of its new social networking service to make sure they really want to make their networks public. The move aims to give privacy-enhancing changes to those who signed on immediately.




  86. Use Free Web Tools to Build a Travel Itinerary

    → Wired: Software | 21 Feb 2010 | 10:00 pm MST

    Plan all the details for your next trip — every rental car pick-up, every dinner reservation and every sightseeing stop — using free resources on the web. Then, tie them all together for easy e-mailing.




  87. UN climate chief resigns

    → Climate Feedback | 18 Feb 2010 | 8:55 am MST

    Olive Heffernan

    UN climate chief Yvo de Boer announced today that he will step down on July 1 after nearly four years in the post.

    His resignation comes two months after a disappointing climate summit in Copenhagen, where nations failed to broker a deal on reducing greenhouse gas emissions from 2012. Instead, the climate talks, held in the Danish capital in December, produced the Copenhagen Accord, a voluntary agreement to limit warming to 2°C that does not specify how that goal will be achieved.

    At the end of the Copenhagen climate conference, de Boer was asked by the press whether he would step down. He responded that he had no intention of leaving his position before seeing a global climate deal in place and he would only step down if he thought that he had been responsible for the failure of the negotiations to make more progress.

    De Boer says that the failure of the Copenhagen talks was not a factor in his decision to resign, but as Julian Rush of Channel 4 News says, this seems rather hard to believe.

    Over the past four years, de Boer has put his heart and soul into trying to get the world to agree a climate deal. His tears in Bali were evidence of his frustration at the slow pace of the negotiations, as was the life ring he donned at a press conference in Copenhagen.

    For de Boer – who got nations to agree the Bali roadmap in 2007 – the outcome of Copenhagen must have been terribly disappointing. And the prospects for the next climate conferencen – scheduled for November in Cancun, Mexico – to deliver a treaty look equally grim.

    On leaving his position, de Boer will join the consultancy group KPMG as global advisor on climate and sustainability and work with a number of universities. "I believe the time is ripe for me to take on a new challenge, working on climate and sustainability with the private sector and academia," he said in a press statement.

    Responding to the news of de Boer's resignation, UK Energy and Climate Change Secretary Ed Miliband said “Yvo de Boer's patient work helped produce the Copenhagen Accord which contains commitments covering 80 percent of global emissions, something never previously achieved. We must quickly find a suitable successor, who can oversee the negotiations and reform the UNFCCC to ensure it is up to the massive task of dealing with what are some of the most complex negotiations ever."



  88. Gut reactions to carbon storage

    → Climate Feedback | 18 Feb 2010 | 6:39 am MST

    Richard Van Noorden

    How do you feel about the idea of burying carbon dioxide underground near you, to cut emissions of the greenhouse gas from power plants and other industrial facilities?

    While I was exploring the slow take-off of commercial Carbon Capture and Storage for a feature in Nature (subscription required) this week, the usual problems reared their heads: expense, technological uncertainty, insufficient regulation and so on.

    But perhaps most intriguing was the potential roadblock of public protest. What especially interested me was that people living in different areas had very different views on gas sequestration.

    In Barendrecht, the Netherlands, they’re threatening legal action against a pilot by Shell. In Greenville, Ohio, federal funding was not enough to see through a much-protested project to sequester carbon dioxide from an ethanol plant. In Texas, though, some people are ringing up the US Geological Survey to ask that carbon be buried under their land, I was told. One landowner in Mississippi didn’t want a geochemist’s team to do a geological survey of his land because he was afraid they’d find something that meant it couldn’t be a spot to inject carbon dioxide.

    And near L’Aquila, Italy, people live comfortably above leaky stores of carbon dioxide, simply ventilating out gas that leaks into their cellars. Familiarity breeds contempt?

    At current rates of progress, asking about your gut reaction to practical carbon storage is a purely hypothetical question. But the schedule that the International Energy Agency have set the industry is staggering. By 2050, the volume of liquid carbon dioxide that must be injected underground for permanent storage each year would be three times the annual amount of petroleum we currently use (85 million barrels).

    Mind you, it’s the same story for the IEA’s projections of uptake of solar, nuclear, and wind power. It’s just that the lack of progress for CCS is particularly harmful because the strategy has a limited lifetime. It’s supposed to be a temporary, bridge technology that we use until cleaner forms of energy become economically competitive.

    If you’re feeling sceptical about the scale of this energy transformation, join the club – Nature ran an analysis by Shell scientists on the physical limits to deploying new technology last December, which is worth a read (again subscription required).




  89. How a computer expert corrected the Met Office

    → Climate Feedback | 16 Feb 2010 | 11:12 am MST

    Cross-posted from Daniel Cressey on The Great Beyond

    Another day, another fault discovered in the climate change catechism? This time it’s not the usual suspects claiming a grand global conspiracy though. It’s a bit more interesting than that.

    At the heart of this story is professional computer programmer John Graham-Cumming, who decided to write some software to number crunch temperature data released by the UK’s Met Office.

    “I thought it would be a fun hobby project to use those records to reproduce the worrying charts that show the increase in global temperatures,” he wrote on his blog last week.

    “Because I was working with unfamiliar data I put special functions into my program to ensure that I wasn't making any mistakes. To my surprise these functions began reporting that there was something wrong with temperature data in Australia and New Zealand.”

    Once he told the Met Office, he writes, they admitted he was right

    The story has been picked up by the Times, which opines that “although the errors do not alter the bigger picture on climate change, they have been seized upon as a further sign that scientific institutions have not been sufficiently transparent”.

    For their part, the Met Office says it is grateful to the computer expert for catching their mistake and actually this shows how open they are already being. “We have put an exhaustive amount of information out there to show people exactly what we do,” says Peter Stott, head of climate monitoring and attribution at the Met Office, in the Times.

    Graham-Cumming is not a climate sceptic, he tells the Times, “but this does show why the raw data and not just the results should be available”.

    Read Graham-Cumming’s story in his own words on his blog, and in an edited version from The Times. Embedded below is a video he made last year showing a program written to analyze and visualize the Met Office data.




  90. What Buzzeth You About Google Buzz?

    → Wired: Software | 12 Feb 2010 | 3:00 pm MST

    Google's new social networking tool Buzz has the tech world buzzing over its features, potential usefulness and its threat to Facebook. Wired.com readers weigh on the best and worst of Buzz in this interactive widget.






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