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hmm

A German court ruled Friday that Google Inc.'s subsidiary YouTube LLC must pay compensation after users uploaded several videos of performances by singer Sarah Brightman in violation of copyright laws.

The U.S. has plans for a manned visit to Mars by the mid-2030s. The ESA and Russia have sketched out a similar joint mission, and it is claimed that China's space program has the same objective. Apart from their destination, all these plans share something in common: extraordinary danger for the explorers. What happens if someone dies out there, months away from Earth?

Swedish ecologists Susanne Wiigh-Msak and Peter Msak are the inventors of an environmentally friendly alternative to cremation and burial, called Promession. The technique entails freezing a body, vibrating it into tiny pieces, and then freeze-drying the pieces, which can then be used as compost to grow a memorial shrub or tree.

When it comes to preventing traffic fatalities, are the country's leading authorities missing the point?

Scientists at the Center for Disease Control told the New York Times last week that the key to preventing traffic deaths is strong seat belt laws, speeding enforcement, car seat promotion, drunk driving prevention and restrictions for teenage drivers. Traffic collisions claim 40,000 lives annually in the United States.

A wheelchair user struggles to navigate a wide road. Research indicates that street design plays a significant role in the crash rates on our roads. Photo: Transportation for America

Urbanists like Phil Langdon, writing for the New Haven Safe Streets Coalition, wonder why perilous streets fail to warrant discussion, given the wealth of research linking specific road designs to traffic fatalities:

It seems strange that an epidemiologist at the CDC which recently has shown a strong interest in the effects of community design would not point out the role played by roadways that practically invite motorists to speed.

Planning consultant Peter Swift and others, in a study that was first presented to the Congress for New Urbanism in 1997, amplified in 2002, and amplified again in 2006, identified an important reason for serious traffic accidents: Many residential streets are too wide.

After studying the conditions under which nearly 20,000 accidents occurred over eight years in Longmont, Colorado, Swift and his co-authors came to an unambiguous conclusion: narrow streets are safer. They declared: Clear relationships are evident between accident frequency and street width. In the Longmont study, the difference between a typical 36-foot-wide residential street and a 24-foot-wide street was found to be a 487 percent increase in accident rates.

Additional research has linked suburban-style street patterns to increased traffic fatalities, as well, Langdon writes. The CDC's failure to mention these factors highlights the inconsistent signals from public health leaders when it comes to traffic deaths. While some CDC studies have mentioned the need to reduce driving, officials don't seem to be in the habit of promoting that message the same way they urge the public to buckle up or avoid driving drunk.

Elsewhere on the Network: Vote with Your feet Chicago wonders whether the Windy City has lost its momentum when it comes to promoting cycling; Missouri Bicycle and Pedestrian Federation celebrates the enormous turn out for an Open Streets event in Madison; and Crossroads explores how Transit Oriented Development could reduce residential segregation.

Harnessing the Power of HTML5 Web Sockets to Create Scalable Real-time Applications Web2.0 Expo SF 2010 Peter Lubbers, Brian Albers Kaazing 3:10pm Thursday, 05/06/2010 For More Info, Including PDF Slides, visit: www.web2expo.com Today, we enjoy what looks like a real-time web experience, but take a look under the hood and you'll quickly see that this real-time experience has an outrageously high price tagone you pay with network throughput and latency. The user-perceived real-time experience is often achieved by using an assortment of clever browser hacks and obscure techniques known as Comet or Reverse Ajax. The bottom line is that simulating bi-directional browser communication over HTTPwhich is half-duplex and request/response driven by natureis error-prone and complex. Complexity does not scale. HTML5 Web Sockets to the rescue! Defined in the Communications section of the HTML5 specification, HTML5 Web Sockets represent the next evolution of web communicationsa full-duplex, bidirectional communications channel that operates over a single socket. WebSockets provide not only a standard against which scalable real-time RIA applications can be built, but also a socket, native to the browser, that facilitates network programming from the browser with super-efficient bi-directional (full-duplex) communication over a single connection, eliminating many the problems that Comet and AJAX solutions are prone to and getting rid of the complexity. In this session, Brian and

Apple via Steve Jobs is saying that the terms of integration with Facebook were onerous' so it was dropped at the last moment.

We're hearing reports of people who had access to a Facebook Connect feature in Ping earlier, which didn't work, and has since been removed. So it looks like Apple really did pull Facebook support for Ping very late in the game. It's still even mentioned on the Ping promo page. (And, via Peter Kafka, here's a link to the Ping app on Facebook, which doesn't currently seem to work.)

This is exactly why the social web needs to be fully open. Right now you don't need to execute a terms of service to index the web, to publish HTML, to link to websites. But you DO need to agree to a terms of service to use Twitter, Facebook, etc.

If you want to use them at SCALE or have a serious application (like Apple) these companies want you to execute custom terms of service to prevent you from getting kicked off their platform at some point in the future.

You're basically a share cropper. You are making money while working on someone else's property. If they want to charge you EXCESSIVE rent you're either forced to pay it or you have to go out of business.

Not fun.

This is why protocols like Salmon, PuSH, OAuth. and Status.net are so important.

Hopefully in a few years we look back at this situation and laugh at how silly it was WAY back in 2010 when the social web was proprietary.

Growing Knowledge: the evolution of research showreel from Matthew Shaw on Vimeo.

TechStars is coming to New York City. The first program runs from 1/10/11 to 4/8/11. Applications are open now. The NY mentor list is stunning and includes the following:

Phin Barnes (First Round Capital), Alex Blum (KickApps), Matt Blumberg (Return Path), Brad Burnham (USV), Jeff Clavier, Dennis Crowley (FourSquare), Chris Dixon (Founder Collective), Roger Ehrenberg, Darren Herman (The Media Kitchen), Jennifer Hyman (Rent The Runway), Alex Iskold (Adaptive Blue), David Karp (Tumblr), Zach Klein (Boxee, Vimeo), Evan Korth (NYU/HackNY), Mike Lazerow (Buddy Media), Ben Lerer (ThrillList), Sam Lessin (Drop.io), Joey Levin (MindSpark, IAC), Howard Lindzon (StockTwits), Eric Litman (Medialets), John Maloney (Tumblr), Dave McClure, Hilary Mason (Bit.ly/HackNY), Jeremie Miller (Telehash), Howard Morgan (First Round Capital), Charlie O'Donnell (First Round Capital), Eric Paley (Founder Collective), Raphael Poplock (ESPN), Alex Rainert (FourSquare), Avner Ronen (Boxee), Naveen Selvadurai (FourSquare), Justin Shaffer (HotPotato), Tim Shey (NextNewNetworks), Andy Smith (Daily Burn), Rex Sorgatz (Kinda Sorta Media), Jon Steinberg (BuzzFeed), Vinicius Vacanti (YipIt), Albert Wenger (USV), Fred Wilson (USV)

David Cohen, who is relocating to NY for January to March of next year, and David Tisch (I'm encouraging him to change his name to just Tisch to save me the brain damage of which David) will be running the program. When we went about setting up the NY program, we evolved our funding model to be as inclusive of the local VC / angel community as we could. We've created a long term funding model, which I expect David Cohen will write about at some point, that we implemented in TechStars Seattle and will be rolling out to Boulder and Boston this year. As a result, the investors in TechStars NY include many local financial investors such as:

AOL Ventures, DFJ Gotham Ventures, FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital, Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Jove Ventures, Lerer Ventures, RRE Ventures, Social Leverage, Village Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, Peter Hershberg, Josh Stylman, David Tisch, Nate Westheimer, and Kal Vepuri.

When David first talked to me about his idea for TechStars in 2006, if you had asked me if we'd have Boulder, Boston, Seattle, and NY programs up and running by 2010 I would have chuckled (a real chuckle, not my evil laugh chuckle.) The Seattle program is crushing it already and I'm excited to go spend time up there. And I can't wait to see the NY program start cranking.

We've got a few other interesting pieces of TechStars news coming over the next month look out for them! And, if you are an entrepreneur interested in the TechStars NY program, apply now so you can come to TechStars for a Day on 11/20/10.

Ping, Apple's new social network, is the standout feature in iTunes 10, the most recent update to Apple's music management application. Within Ping, you can find and follow your favorite bands and your friends as well as recommend or leave notes about the music you listen to. Ping adds a new layer to iTunes - a social layer focused on discovery, not only of new tracks you'll want to buy (as is the obvious goal), but it also lets you discover news from artists you care about, including concert updates, photos, videos and more.

After spending some time with the social network, we rounded up what we believe are the ten most important things you need to know about Ping, as well as some of the possibly misunderstood features.

Is Ping for you? Read on to find out.

Sponsor

1. It's Not a Standalone Website or Mobile Application

Ping is only a feature within iTunes, in both the desktop application for Mac and PC and the mobile application for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The only thing you'll find at www.ping.com (besides a lot of new traffic from confused people looking for music news) are golf clubs and golf bags. That's not Apple's Ping.

2. You Don't Have to Use It

If the idea of yet another social network makes your skin crawl, have no fear - you can still update to iTunes 10 without being forced into the glamorous world of social sharing. Ping, available as an option on the left-side of iTunes, is turned off by default. If you want in, you have to push the big button that reads: "Turn on Ping."

3. Your Profile Information is Public

Although Ping offers different levels of privacy (more on that in #5) , your actual Ping profile information (name, hometown, gender, photo, etc.) is considered public information, at least according to the disclosure within iTunes. If you're in "Private" mode, your name and picture will appear next to any comments or reviews you post. That's not a major concern for most people, but it will be for some who aren't interested in establishing a public persona on the Internet. It doesn't appear that your gender, hometown or "About Me" information is disclosed anywhere when you're in "Private" mode, but we would still recommend caution before using it for crass or offensive commentary. You never know how public it could become in a future version of Ping.

4. You Can Hide Your Embarrassing Music Choices from Your Profile and Still Use Ping

Some people may avoid Ping because they're afraid of revealing to the world their secret obsession with '80's hair metal or Broadway show tunes, perhaps. But even if you decide to list yourself publicly on Ping, your "Music I Like" (music you like, rate, review or purchase) can be hidden from view. During setup, just click the 3rd bullet point "Don't display music that I like on my profile."

(Side note: Ping has mysteriously added Peter Frampton to my likes even though I've never bought, streamed or rated his music - I swear! I first assumed it was a bug, but then realized that Ping is tying in with the shared library on another computer in the house which is used by someone else, but often under my username, so we can share our purchases. Uh-oh!).

5. You Can Be Anti-Social and Still Use Ping

The privacy settings in Ping are incredibly simple: you're either public or private. If you choose to be "Public," you can allow others to follow you without approval, the same as Twitter, or you can manually review and approve friend requests, the same as Facebook. If you're "Private," no one can follow you. However, your name and photo will appear for some actions, such as when you comment or write reviews.

6. You're Going to Hate Ping's Recommendations

Ping is no Genius - that is, it doesn't tap into your own personal "genius" recommendations from iTunes when it suggests artists you should follow. Instead, Ping surfaces the most popular artists and bands instead. At launch time this includes artists like Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, U2 and Linkin Park. Not tying in iTunes' "Genius" feature with Ping is a huge miss on Apple's part. We hope they fix that soon.

7. Your Profile URL is Long and Weird

Want to invite a friend to check out your profile on Ping? Good luck with that. You can't simply give them a username or expect them to type in an easy to remember URL. Instead, a typical Ping profile URL (accessed by right-clicking on your name on your profile page), is a long, unwieldy Web address like http://c.itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZConnections.woa/wa/viewProfile?userId=12345678. Better invite them via email instead (see #8).

8. Finding and Inviting Friends is Harder Than It Should Be

There is a search feature for locating people using Ping, but there's a delay between adding a new account to Ping and it being available within the search index. What that means is if your friend just signed up with Ping, you may not be able to locate him or her by doing a search right away. (At least, that was our experience.) As noted above, you can invite people to join Ping via email, a hugely outdated method of building a social network friend list.

Ping also currently suggests you should "connect with Facebook," which is an error. Apple pulled Facebook support from Ping at the last minute due to "onerous terms that we could not agree to," according CEO Steve Jobs. Too bad Apple forgot to re-write the text suggesting Facebook Connect as an option. Oops!

9. Ping Doesn't Know About Your In-Library Ratings

Although for years you may have rated your music collection using iTunes' stars, Ping isn't aware of this activity nor does it allow you to import it into your profile. Instead, you "like" (click the thumbs up button) or "post" (add a note) using the new buttons that appear in iTunes to make your likes and dislikes known to your followers, assuming you have any.

10. Ping is Music-Only, For Now

At launch, Ping only works with music, not podcasts, videos or apps. You can only access the options to "like" and "post" when you're in the Music section of iTunes - you can't recommend any other types of media. That's incredibly sad, we think, especially given how the App Store alone now hosts some 250,000+ mobile applications. We would love to know which ones our friends are using, not to mention what shows and movies they like or what podcasts they recommend. If Ping takes off, there's a good chance these media types will be "likeable" in a future version of Ping...well, at least we hope that's the case.

Conclusion: Ping is Only OK

For now, Ping is only OK - and that's being generous. It's like seeing a project that's still being built. That's not to say that a social network within iTunes doesn't have potential. As Jobs noted on stage, iTunes has 160 million users. That's nothing to sniff at. But given that Ping doesn't allow you to import your Facebook friends, doesn't recommend artists you actually like and doesn't extend beyond music, it's somewhat of a non-starter for now. Fun to poke around in, sure, but not incredibly useful just yet.

Don't give up on Ping, though - the features it needs to be successful aren't beyond Apple's grasp. If updated, it could easily become the place to find and discover music and hopefully, more. It's not there today, but it's worth watching.

Journal Entry: reflecting the past few months, not doubting ability or faith in one's self, just reflecting.

Again, we rebuild. The past few months have been brutal. Our house suffered severe water damage, laptops stolen, and business lost due to it. It hurts. Bad. As always, we take the remnants of our lives and rebuild. It is something I've learned throughout my life. Do I pick up the pieces or walk away? The answer isn't always black and white. Today though I choose to rebuild, to seek refuge in hope, to a future that is sustainable and adaptable, I am tired. Tired of continuously having to rebuild, clinging to another hope of tomorrow but what are my options? It's been so long, risking everything, money, reputation, all for the dream. Maybe the dream isn't a destination but more a journey. Maybe it is similar to what the founding fathers said the pursuit of happiness. Maybe that's what it's all about, the pursuit of the dream. Maybe I search and yearn for the destination and I'm ignoring the wondrous experience of my own story unfolding. Maybe the beauty is in the details and not where you end up. For every place we arrive at is the beginning of a new story, a new destination. So, today, brick by brick, I lay the foundation of my future knowing full well that I may have to rebuild soon.

Photo Credit: Peter Kaminski

There are two factors that are almost prerequisite to project failure. These are:

1. The team does not communicate sufficient details on project status and issues.

2. Stakeholders do not pay sufficient attention to project status and issues (or the lack thereof).

This does not mean that a communicative team and responsive stakeholders guarantee success. There are too many other things that can go wrong. But it does buy you time to identify and correct for issues before they become catastrophic. In the worst case, stakeholders can determine that things are going from bad to worse and can chose to cut their loses by abending the project.

Ultimately, a combination of clear team communication and healthy attention from stakeholders is your best hedge against sudden and costly project failure.

...as far as I can tell, they in fact don't ever meet. You can't leverage your networks on Facebook and Twitter in Ping. It's another closed Apple system, another Apple universe in a gilded gift box.

It's not that Apple hates the web, it's just that Apple is better than the web. Apple doesn't need it. It seems Apple has it all figured out.

I am sure Ping will get traction because it'll be fun, and if it truly helps folks discover more music, so much the better for all (especially iTunes sales). But I've a sneaking suspicion that Ping will soon be about more than discovering music - it will also be about discovering Apps and other media like movies and TV. And while paid media is a sanitized and bounded universe, it's my fervent hope that Apps, over time, will not be - that they will be far more promiscuous. Breathless predictions aside, I simply can't imagine you will want your Apps to be recommended to you only by your Ping "friends." Likewise, when you find something cool, you'll want to share it on Twitter, and post it to Facebook (and maybe even other places too, places that are outside AppleLand.)

You've invested in your Facebook and Twitter relationships, why can't you use those to find and share good stuff inside AppleLand?

I hope Apple agrees, and will open Ping to the rest of the world. But I'm not going to predict it. I can predict this: If Apple doesn't open it up, Ping will never crack more than 10% of social networking share. But my, will that share be profitable! And for Apple, that's certainly seems to be enough.

UPDATE: Peter in the comments notes that Ping does have a "very limited" Facebook Connect integration. So good on them, but if it's just to find friends to feed your Ping network, I'll stand by my comments above.

Yesterday, at the Apple music event in San Francisco, I had a short chat with Apple CEO Steve Jobs, as he strolled through the demo room for the media, just after he had announced various updates for the iPod, Apple TV and iTunes onstage.

One of the those was the introduction of a new social network for music called Ping that Apple (AAPL) has integrated within iTunes 10 and which looks an awful lot like the experience you get on Facebook.

Essentially, it is a vertical versionin this case for musicof the powerful social networking site.

Facebook has noodled for years about creating its own social music offering, including doing a partnership with Lala, which was bought by Apple last year and shuttered in June.

But its efforts have largely gone nowhere.

And Facebook is nowhere on Ping too. Currently, there is no linking, sharing or participation of any kind with Facebookor Twitter or MySpace eitheron Ping, which will work only on the iTunes software on computers, iPhones and iPods.

When I asked Jobs about that, he said Apple had indeed held talks with Facebook about a variety of unspecified partnerships related to Ping, but the discussions had gone nowhere.

The reason, according to Jobs: Facebook wanted onerous terms that we could not agree to.

Definition, according to an online dictionary: Involving an amount of effort and difficulty that is oppressively burdensome; Involving heavy obligations.

Jobs did not elaborate on those troublesome terms and also would not say if Ping would incorporate Facebook Connectwhich would make it much easier to find friends to share music with.

We could, I guess, he shrugged.

And when I asked how to find friends, Jobs offered, noting iTunes had 160 million users across the globe: You can type their names into search or send them emails inviting them to join.

Okay, although being more open would work too!

As MediaMemo's Peter Kafka noted:

Maybe Apple plans on joining the rest of the Web, via an open API that will let Facebook, Twitter et almaybe even the to-be-launched Google (GOOG) music serviceplay nicely with Ping. We'll see.

Facebookincluding some execs who are definitely irked about how closely Ping resembles Facebook, right down to the blue color schemehopes so.

Consider the statement issued by Facebook to meafter attempts to get it verbally failed, due ironically to several dropped connections on the iPhone of the exec I spoke to:

Facebook believes in connecting people with their interests and we've partnered with innovative developers around the world who share this vision. Facebook and Apple have cooperated successfully in the past to offer people great social experiences and we look forward to doing so in the future.

In other words: Zing, Ping.

In any case, Jobs said he had great hopes for the social music service, adding that Ping could be the most significant thing to come out of yesterday's announcements.

But soon enough, he moved onto the new iPods: Isn't the Nano amazing?

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THIS AIN'T NO GAME

blekko Explains Itself: Exclusive Video (Update: Exclusive Invite) (battellemedia.com)

Blekko Makes Influencing the Influencers Easy (travismurdock.com)

Blekko: A Search Engine Which Is Also A Killer SEO Tool (searchengineland.com)

Blekko vs. Google: I Do Believe I'm Now in Love With BOTH Search Engines (web-savvy-marketing.com)

Blekko search: first impressions (economist.com)

The Upside-Down Logic of Taking on Google at Search (technologyreview.com)

Blekko search: Coming soon to a browser near you (memburn.com)

Link data from Blekko (receptional.com)

Blekko review (arhg.net)

New Search Engine Blekko Takes Vertical Search to a New Level (eyetraffic.com)

Taking Blekko out for a Spin (thenoisychannel.com)

Blekko Screencast And Founder Interview (techcrunch.com)

TechCrunch Review: The Blekko Search Engine Prepares To Launch (techcrunch.com)

Blekko Demos Slick New Search Engine (thenextweb.com)

Blekko: New Search Engine Lets You Spin The Web (searchengineland.com)

Using #blekko, have a wicked smile in my face, like the smile I had when I used Google back in 2000.

This #Blekko is freaking awesome. Example, I can search Apple Computers /History. Slashtags are going to change the web!

@bryanphelps @blekko is a new kind of crack. woot! You can't take just one bite of the stuff. Awesome :-)

Who cares about FB QnA! @blekko has managed to launch a search engine in 2010 & it actually works! Love it! Much needed goog competition!

@blekko love it! Relevance is awesome even for obscure sites! Open up the API soon & let the party begin!

#Blekko has a nice feature: you can track pages by AdSense ID :-)

I have officially created my first to slashtags on Blekko. I'm totally digging it. I feel like a superpower.

voteforme | Slashtags rock! @blekko has kept me up until 1am :-)

Finally got in to @blekko. Crowdsourced indexes that are social more amazing than I expected.

"you have marked the site www.ehow.com as spam. it is now dead to you." - I'm in love with @blekko!

#blekko /date is brilliant. sort reviews based on dates, weeds out -ve reviews of early versions of products, say dell u2410 :)

@blekko is pretty rad...

Loving the very intuitive interface for @blekko. Never thought I'd feel that way about search again!

I just made the /so slash tag on #Blekko to search the Stack Overflow trilogy - lovin' it!

Trying out new search engine Blekko. It has very cool 'slashtags built in' functionality and transparency http://blekko.com #search #blekko

got my #blekko account /very /cool. Thanks @blekko!

Dude. Blekko is pretty damn cool.

Wow. @blekko isn't half bad with search results.

So, I've been using @Blekko for today and I'm just blown away by the options. Researching via verticals just got very, very, easy.

Trying #blekko the new search engine. seems really good to me

yesiamben - Actually really impressed with @blekko! The search stuff seems good, the results are relatively spam free, and I love the SEO stuff... #win

Interestingly, @blekko is the only search engine to rank Google first for the query "search engine". Google lists Dogpile first.

nicholasmarx - Received my @blekko beta invite today. Loving it so far, very cool.

I think #blekko is right, security through obscurity doesn't work techcrunch.com/...

Searching for "ffmpegx iPad conversion," @blekko gave me way more useful results than google, even without slash tags. So impressed.

RT @RedUrbanNA: Finally gotten to play with Blekko http://blekko.com Slashtags are a real game changer. http://goo.gl/4h1H

The more I play with blekko the more I really like it. I think I am going to try and go blekko for a week

Nice "UX" slashtag on Blekko!! http://bit.ly/bZWqzm Google is still my primary search engine, but I now use Blekko for advanced search

@blekko been playing around with blekko this weekend and it's impressive. Still determining how to fit it into my normal web use

@justinhj dude, on that note, you seen @blekko? shit is fucking amazing

Searched "open office for mac" on Google and got nothing worth clicking on, used @Blekko and got what I wanted #blekkowins

Wow - @blekko is really neat. They definitely have something there.

@blekko That is awesome! Today, I've used blekko to find something on @techcrunch instead of using their search. It was way more productive.

Checking out @blekko The slashtag system makes it very easy to repeat searches and narrow the scope of a search

@blekko it will take some getting used to but I could see blekko becoming a verb.

Lightbulb just went off in my head on how @blekko works and it's freaking sweet. WTB Blekko search bar for Safari.

@blekko I'm currently testing blekko.com and am astonished by the exact and complete search results. Thumbs up!

Trying @blekko. A bit mind boggling to begin with but definitely interesting. A kind of "Command line for personal search".

stefankulk - Creating a slashtag on @Blekko is like setting up a @Google custom search (http://www.google.com/cse/), but ten times faster

Just tried blekko search engine -- "python /tech" gives me the programming language "python /science" gives me the snake -- cool! #blekko

Congrats #blekko for winning. I compared @blekko against Google CSE head2head with the same list of websites

@milesEfron But what @blekko is doing with them is quite different. The closest comparables are vertical search and custom search engines.

@bradwarwick there is a lot in @ blekko that you'll like too - I'll show you tomorrow (if you have time)

Wow - @blekko is really neat. They definitely have something there.

I am trying out @blekko right now and I LOVE IT

Need to make @blekko an online habit. Can get more done on @blekko in 5 minutes than would take 20 on other sites.

I'm really starting to love #blekko. Made it my homepage already.

Just created /green slashtag. As a LEED AP this looks like it will be a sweet tool Way to go Rich!

As a member of @blekko, I am now able to slash the web. SWEET!

Creating a slashtag on @Blekko is like setting up a @Google custom search (http://www.google.com/cse/), but ten times faster

Had a sense of achievement one more time using #Blekko to figure out where my friend will be in holidays.

@handshake20 have you heard of @blekko? I just started playing with the beta, has options to curate the web. cool stuff.

well since google has turned evil, i'm going to @blekko and waiting for them to start introducing /email and /apps

Just got an invite to test @blekko . I like what I see.. Very useful search engine!

Just got my blekko invite. This is seriously cool.

yeah. just received a beta invite for @blekko... first impression: awesome tool :)

Really impressed with Blekko, a new search engine currently in private beta. Easily created a sanews slashtag. Allows: strike action /sanews

I GOT MY @BLEKKO INVITE ALREADY!! I love you guys! New home page for sure

Blekko: the only latter-day Google search "competitor" I haven't immediately laughed at http://bit.ly/cCrghv (Still a bit geeks-only tho).

blekko is like a search engine for the top 5%. very clever. now plan to experiment with it for a week. starting. now.

Thank you @blekko for the invite to your new search engine. So far I am really liking it. suggestion: red links to blue or user customizable

And that's the end of "A Week With @Blekko". Went pretty well! Looking forward to giving everyone details on how it went!

#blekko rocks, Google killer. I've seen Chacha, Mahalo, Quintura, even Bing redesign, so I totally didn't expect anything... stunned

Email: "An invitation was sent to you by Rich Skrenta to try a new search engine developed by blekko." Nice

Just got my blekko account...i like.

Repost! #blekko rocks, Google killer. I've seen Chacha, Mahalo, Quintura, even Bing redesign, so I totally didn't expect anything... stunned

maybe... #blekko could be a first collective intelligence search engine. if success, it will be a google killer. over the PageRank :-)

ooh no #bing versus @blekko what to do? Google is no more search engine of choice - I'll sleep on it

Figuring this @blekko thing out. Slash tags seem pretty awesome

@blekko I'd also love to see API slashtags for /facebook, /google, /posterous, /tumblr, /wordpress and /identica or /statusnet.

@blekko looks very interesting, great done guys! Now you have one more user ;-)

Blekko.com - Why another search engine? Because this one is unique.: http://wp.me/pOEb4-2B

i got my #blekko beta invite. this is awesome. my new search engine of choice.

@ScepticGeek You are missing the commercial aspect of blekko! There is need for YBoss alternative - Bing's index is worse than blekkos!

I like blekko.com. Start wondering how search engines could even exist without #slashtags

Thumbs up to Blekko. Community driven Slashtags are a very cool twist on search. Very useful. Congrats! http://blekko.com/

@blekko :) Thanks for the invitation - it s more revolutionary as i heared about.

Playing around with #blekko and finding it really cool.

The new @blekko search engine is awesome! Good job!

Testing Blekko and this is not bad, not bad at all. It actually has way more features than any other search engine.

playing with blekko tonight, I like the search results i'm getting

surprised: @blekko is delivering significantly better results than google...

Trying @blekko and its fantastic! Can conceive of some cool /slashtag tools using set operators: /politics - (/conservative + /liberal)

Just tried @blekko search beta and with out doubt its impressive ....they are sure to change the future of searching the web

Hot Startup #3 this week is @blekko. Full web search engine that provides query refinement features called "Slashtags" http://bit.ly/aSizkO

Wow, blekko made my life happier. http://blekko.com/

Hey @blekko really like what your doing with search!

@blekko I see slashtags for /alcohol, /beer, /tea and /wine. I'd love to see a built-in /coffee as well.

My use of google is down ~75% after receiving a beta invite to Blekko and my productivity is up easily as much. Hot damn. #SlashTagsFTW

Content.mills beware! #blekko lets me blacklist domains. It could have been you Google... do you remember what happened to MS round '95?

@AndrewGirdwood's review of new search engine Blekko - "modern and up to date" http://bit.ly/9khrcR

@calebhicks Blekko is definitely a more intelligent way to search. Have you used it extensively yet?

got beta access to @blekko http://blekko.com using it today instead of Google, good experience up until now

10-second impression of @blekko: nerdy. very, very nerdy.

Playing around witk @blekko. Really interesting new approach to search, and some great stuff for SEO purposes

Anybody want a beta invite to use an awesome new search engine @blekko? Really impressive work they are doing with slashtags and analytics.

The more I play with blekko the more I really like it. I think I am going to try and go blekko for a week

Testing out Blekko search now. Definitely some nice points in terms of the filters. Check out the feature-set here: http://selnd.com/dpFBdW

Video: A new kind of socially-biased search engine: @Blekko youtube.com/watch?v=tlESXi (I love this innovative new search engine, here's why).

Had @blekko for 2 mins, incredibly powerful. UI leaves a lot to be desired. Hope it's improved, can see this becoming my default.

@blekko is surprising. I need to play more with slashtags but it seems a little more social than google

trying out #blekko . it's been very fast and accurate, so far... love the #slashtags feature too :)

#blekko is my default search engine now. It didn't work for some specific long tail very well, but slash tags will make up for it massively.

Blekko is a stealth search engine which aims to change the search game by being fairly transparent with ranking data. S.. http://dld.bz/ts5a

Really intrigued at how simply and competently @blekko improved searching the web for me.

Very impressed with @blekko -- SEO and Analytic features beat commercial offerings, and searching emphasises fun & discovery

@blekko OK, I'm hooked! I asked for a /coffee slashtag, and here it is. It even searches @counter_culture @starbucks & @coffeegeek

every time I go to @blekko I started humming a Peter Gabriel song.

The time is right for a search solution like Blekko. They let me filter out Demand Media? They are my new best friends. http://bit.ly/dtqyvV

@blekko social search engine looks great, thx for the invitation #blekko this will grow fast I guess

Just got a nice thank you email from @blekko for raising a bug. No one have ever thanked me for raising a bug before..

I'm liking @blekko search more and more every time I use it. Just wish they would fix a few bugs.

Just created a /github slashtag for Blekko, works really well. Surprised there wasn't one already shared.

@staticnrg Well, it tries. I am newly in love with @Blekko #hcsm

Got my @blekko invite. Interesting concept! This could actually be usable.

#blekko is great for lists, especially tracking your competitors - my defintion - #blekko is a new search engine with analytics

Alright, my twitter has been buggy for days, but all is right again..My Blekko invite hath arrived. Time to slash for new facts. TY #BLEKKO

Most new search engines fail badly. @blekko is preparing to defy the odds: http://bit.ly/bLpg6V

Ow. 3am. @blekko ate my sleep cycle. But now I can search for Scala without typefaces, stairs, sign makers, and fonts polluting the results.

Wow - @blekko is painfully cool.

ha ha, somebody has broke the #google here so everybody's blocked, but since I switched to #blekko I don't really care :)

I like @blekko because it's not just a copy of Google - it's something new! I'm /happy /to /be /a /beta /tester #blekko

@blekko Finally an actual innovation in web search! And, a team that can actually implement it ... can I have an invite?! #blekko

@gogoeskimo Think of /slashtags as blekko's page rank. Much more effective at filtering noise since they originate from users. $0.02

@blekko Must say you are doing great with local search for the UK, I wasn't expecting that this early on.

Blekko is a full web search engine that differentiates itself by offering access to data and algorithms - http://blekko.com/ #search #Blekko

checking out blekko. i like their puppet.

I think @blekko could be great if you could edit other people's slashtags. (Tag owner would approve edits.)

Search results I'm getting from Blekko are better than Google and Bing. Bravo!

I think the /noporn blekko slashtag is the best thing since sliced bananas.

@blekko Thanks for the invite, really interesting to see what you are doing with search. I like the SEO data.

The slashtag feature and the transparency of new search engine Blekko are pretty nifty

Blog - The Upside-Down Logic of Taking on Google at Search - New search engine Blekko has opened in beta--is it diff... http://ow.ly/18r0tK

@parislemon you, my friend, should use @blekko for the site removal feature alone let me know if you want an invite about

Playing with @blekko, I like it!

@Blekko rocks! (got my invite) RT @scobleizer Video: New kind of socially-biased arch engine: @Blekko

Getting in on this @blekko love in, it's pretty darn impressive.

Twenty minutes using @blekko and I'm already loving it. Amazing search experience.

@blekko thanks for the invite. Surprised there wasn't a /wikipedia slash yet, o/wise cool service, not sold on it yet but fast + useful.

So true! RT @blekko: RT @spladow: . @blekko has the best default avatars. http://brizzly.com/pic/37SI

blekko is not half bad at all.

Thanks @blekko for the invite - already have ideas for a couple of slashtags now to read up on how to make them. :-)

Just identified a whole network using @blekko pretty powerful stuff

been having a good play with new search engine @blekko this week and am loving the #seo #slashtag verrrrrrry useful!

New Search Engine Blekko Takes Vertical Search to a New Level http://bit.ly/cKq9gy | #verticalsearch

RobBruceMcNair: @mcbay watch this vid with @blekko and @scobleizer especially 16 mins in for real-time link http://url4.eu/73ihJ

Great start to the day, got a @blekko invite first thing in the morning, 2 KM run and 2 KM walk.

Trying #blekko and it looks really interesting. I like the ease use of /tag.

@kristy hehe, meantime I'll just tease you w/ snippets of how awesome it is ;) #blekko

EntrepreneurNB - Anybody want a beta invite to use an awesome new search engine @blekko? Really impressive work they are doing with slashtags and analytics.

Going to try to use @blekko as my main search engine now. We'll see how this goes

@blekko. Love it. Sadly I make a living from Google. But I love it. Can I keep it anyway?

Just playing around with @blekko beta. Amazing concept, and it works really well already. The /rank slash is incredible.

Filed under: Sex, Photos, Lists, Food, NSFW

This is what you get when you say peas and carrots ten times fast.

Some parsnips like to be tied up.

Orange you glad I didn't say something off-color?

Looks like someone just saw the sugar plum fairy.

Quit calling him one-dimensional.

About to nut on the tree.

Anyone have any whipped cream?

It's not easy being green.

a

Looks like we got a lemon.

Dog leg right.

a

Another satisfied customer of the Brazilian Butt Lift.

Is it supposed to be red like that?

a

Quit playing with your mushroom. You're going to go blind.

At least it's somewhat symmetrical.

I bet Peter Piper picks at this all day.

And that's how you can tell if it's ripe.

Permalink | Email this | Linking Blogs | Comments

[This is a guest post by Roy Peter Clark. He was indirectly quoted in "Flacks and hacks and brainscans" (11/23/2007), but the "analysis and criticism" that he mentions can be found in "Slippery glamour" (7/4/2008), "Don't tell Sister Catherine William" (7/5/2008), and "Funky a" (7/7/2008). I admire him for being such a good sport about the whole thing, and I urge readers to respond to his invitation to read his new book and to comment "thumbs up, thumbs down, or thumbs sideways". Substantively and politely, of course.]

About two years ago, my work became the subject of analysis and criticism on Language Log. At the time I was not familiar with this community of language experts and students and was not prepared for what was about to happen. Under a category of comments called Prescriptivist Poppycock (gotta love the alliteration), I read folks who questioned my scholarship, my credentials, and my writing. I am not complaining about this. I would like to describe what happened and how I responded to it.

In brief, the criticism, some of it harsh and uninformed, helped me straighten out some crooked thinking about language, a process that resulted in the recent publication by Little, Brown of my book The Glamour of Grammar: A Guide to the Magic and Mystery of Practical English. On August 22, Ammon Shea gave the book high marks in the New York Times Book Review, calling it very much a manual for the 21st century.

I write this on Language Log not to tell you that my success has proved some of your commentary off the mark. Quite the contrary, I have often said now to friends and colleagues that had I not been roughed up by the Language Loggers, I could not have developed the muscle tone to write the book.

Let me explain how all this came to pass.

I once heard an interview with a famous songwriter who was asked What comes first, the lyrics or the melody. To which he responded: What comes first is the phone call. My phone call came from a Little, Brown editor, Tracy Behar, who had worked with me on a previous book Writing Tools: 50 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. Published in 2006, more than 75,000 copies are in print, a success that Tracy wanted to turn into a sequel. Would you consider writing a book about grammar? The answer was no, until they offered an advance, and then the answer was yes As long as you let me define grammar' as broadly as possible.

My idea was to write and publish about a dozen pieces on rhetorical grammar on the Poynter Institute website, an influential source for journalists and other writers. My goal was to 1) to work out in print what we would mean by grammar; 2) to understand what I knew and what I needed to learn; 3) to find a voice that was congenial and curious, more the eager student than the pedantic teacher.

Later, a young friend of mine, Jason Fry, an expert on online news, argued that it was not a good idea to write and publish on the web material that was not fully cooked. I would not be judged by my eager transparency, he said, but by my mistakes, assumptions, and miscalculations. He was right. Someone, perhaps it was Mark, sent me a message that my essays were being discussed on Language Log. I'll be the first to admit, that the work you saw back then was not fully cooked. In fact, it was half-baked.

By then, the water was a little too bloody to stick my hand in (saw the movie Piranha yesterday in 3D). In spite of my silence, I read all the comments, took them seriously, and used them to draft a personal plan of research and writing. I learned what I could write about language with confidence, as well as areas I should avoid.

As a result of this experience, I had little hope that the book would be a critical success and the glowing review in the NYTBR came as a complete surprise. Because of it, Little, Brown went into a second printing, less than two weeks before the book was first released. Here are the lessons I learned from my encounter with members of this virtual community of language thinkers and workers.

• The Internet is not a pleasant little garden. There are more snakes than robins, and no writer should enter without being prepared to be handled roughly, at times venomously.
• If you are willing to venture in you can learn an awful lot, including from commentators who are, at times, uncivil or worse.
• When you comment on a person's work, especially when he or she is not part of the conversation, it's good to envision that person a real and not virtual as someone who you might run into the next day on the cafeteria line.
• In an area as vast as language, there are many so-called discourse communities that sometimes express themselves as factions: linguists, poets, journalists, deconstructionists, semanticists, composition teachers, prescriptivists, descriptivists, free lancers, and many more. All pilgrims should be prepared to encounter reflexive misunderstanding of their motives, values, and intentions.

Finally, I am not suggesting for an instant that the revisions you would find in Glamour of Grammar from two years ago would meet the highest standards of this group. So I invite anyone to get a copy, and offer a summary, review, or critique. Thumbs up or thumbs down or thumbs sideways, I promise to respond in a spirit of collegiality and with a shared passion for language, literature, and the craft of writing.

FlowingData reader Chris asks:

I was wondering, have you ever considered doing a Chernoff faces tutorial for R? I think Chernoff faces are pretty interesting and I haven't seen much about them on the web.

This wasn't the first time someone's asked how to make Chernoff faces, so I did a quick search. Guess what. There's an R library for that. This tutorial describes how to apply Chernoff faces to your own data.

Chernoff Faces

The point of Chernoff faces is to display multiple variables at once by positioning parts of the human face, such as ears, hair, eyes, and nose, based on numbers in a dataset. The assumption is that we can read people's faces easily in real life, so we should be able to recognize small differences when they represent data. Now that's a pretty big assumption, but debate aside, they're fun to make.

We've seen them applied to baseball players and judge ratings. In this tutorial, we'll look at US crime rate by state.

Download R

Like in previous tutorials, we'll be using R (surprise, surprise), the software environment for statistical computing and graphics, to make our Chernoff faces, so if you haven't already, download and install R first before moving on. It's free, open-source, and a one-click install. Go on, I'll wait for you.

Step 1. Install package

Once you've opened up R, the first thing we need to do is install the aplpack (Another Plot Package) package by Peter Wolf. Go to the the "Packages & Data" menu in R, and select the "Package Installer." Select "CRAN (binaries)" in the dropdown menu if it's not already on that, and then click on "Get List." Scroll down to "aplpack" and click on the "Install Selected" button and installation should begin.

Alternatively, you can also just type this in the R console:

install.packages("aplpack")

Step 2. Load the data

Next we need to load the data into the R environment. Like I said, we'll be looking at crime rates by state. I got the data from Infochimps, which is actually from Table 301 of the 2008 US Statistical Abstract, but it's typically a headache going through dot gov navigation, so I avoid it when I can.

I cleaned the datafile I got from Infochimps a little bit more so it only includes the numbers we're interested in. You can find it here, but you don't need to download it. We'll load it directly into R via the URL using the read.csv() command.

crime <- read.csv("http://datasets.flowingdata.com/crimeRatesByState-formatted.csv")

To view the data, type the following:

crime[1:6,]

This shows you the first six lines of our dataset. Note that there are eight columns. The first column is state name, with the exception of the row for US average and District of Columbia later on. The rest of the columns are seven categories of crime.

Step 3. Make some faces

Once the data is in, it's actually really easy to make some faces using the faces() function from the aplpack package. So far we've only installed the package, so now we'll load it:

library(aplpack)

If you get errors when you try to load, you might want to check to see if you installed the library correctly.

Okay, let's make some faces:

faces(crime[,2:8])

Here we're telling R to use the faces() function, using columns 2 through 8 of our crime data. Remember, the first column is state name. You get something that looks like this:

Step 4. Change Features

This is pretty much what we want except for two things. The first is that the faces are labeled with numbers. That isn't of much use without a key. The second is that some of the faces are smiling. For more positive datasets like quality of life or baseball stats, that would make sense. The higher the value, the better. This is crime data though. The higher the value, the worse. Smiles for rate of larceny theft doesn't seem quite right.

Unfortunately, the faces() function doesn't let us choose what face parts to associate with each metric, so we need to find a workaround. According to the documentation (view by typing ?faces), the curve of the smile is applied to the sixth column in the input matrix, which is crime in this case.

Ah. Here's what we'll do. We make the sixth column in our data all the same value. That way all smile curves will be neutral. Here's how we can do that:

crime_filled <- cbind(crime[,1:6], rep(0, length(crime$state)), crime[,7:8])

The cbind() function combines multiple columns to form a matrix. In the above, we combine the first six columns of crime, stick a column of zeros whose length matches the number of rows in our crime data, and then we end with the last two columns in crime. We save the new matrix into a variable called crime_filled. Similar to in Step 2, you can type the following to see the first rows of crime_filled.

crime_filled[1:6,]

Notice the new column of zeros?

Now use faces() with crime_filled:

faces(crime_filled[,2:8])

We get similar faces, but with no more smiles:

Step 5. Add labels

Instead of numbers, it'd be much more useful to include state names. Easy.

faces(crime_filled[,2:8], labels=crime_filled$state)

It's the same as previous, but we use the labels argument to use the state column in crime_filled to label with state names.

Much more useful now. We can easily associate the faces with a state. It's a little cluttered, but we can fix that up easy in Illustrator.

Step 6. Fix up in Illustrator (optional)

You can pretty much stop here if you like, but as most of you know, I like to save the image as a PDF, bring it into Adobe Illustrator (aff), and clean things up to make it more readable. You can also try Inkscape, the open-source alternative, although I've never tried it.

After some label cleanup and some annotation, here's our final result. What's going on there Washington, D.C.?

Not too bad, right?

Read the R documentation on faces() for more details on what else you can do with the function. Remember, documentation is your friend when it comes to making full use of R.

Now go on. Have some fun with your new Chernoff toy.

Got a visualization question? Post it in the forums.

• Chernoff Faces to Display Baseball Managers From 2007 MLB Season
• An Easy Way to Make a Treemap
• How to Make a Heatmap a Quick and Easy Solution

Alfred Hitchcock, mais conhecido como mestre do suspense, um dos meus diretores de cinema favoritos tambm, j foi referncia na moda diversas vezes. Uma delas bem recente foi a homenagem que a Vanity Fair fez em 2008, com atores de Hollywood encenando cenas clssicas dos seus filmes.

Mas esses ltimos dois meses apareceram coincidncias maiores. A nova campanha do Tom Ford, um editorial da Vogue Italiafotografado pelo Peter Lindbergh e outro fotografado pelo Eugenio Recuenco, que adora buscar no cinema referncias para suas fotografias (esse editorial eu no consegui descobrir onde foi publicado, se algum souber, me avisa!).

Pra mim, o melhor o do Peter Lindbergh, super soturno, com uma brincadeira cheia de sombras. O Tom Ford . Tom Ford. Ele sabe usar a referncia exatamente como seu prprio estilo manda. A campanha elegante, divertida e com um pouco de choque no meio. J o Recuenco foi atrs do glamour, o que, ao meu ver, no tem tanto a ver com a referncia ao Hitchcock, apesar de as fotos tambm serem muito boas. E vocs, qual acham melhor?

Peter Lindbergh para Vogue Itlia

Peter Lindbergh para Vogue Itlia

Peter Lindbergh para Vogue Itlia

Peter Lindbergh para Vogue Itlia

Peter Lindbergh para Vogue Itlia

Peter Lindbergh para Vogue Itlia

Tom Ford

Tom Ford

Tom Ford

Tom Ford

Eugenio Recuenco

Eugenio Recuenco

Eugenio Recuenco

Eugenio Recuenco

Eugenio Recuenco

Posts Relacionados:

1. Karl Lagerfeld e Baptiste Giabiconi, j deu!
2. In Wonderland
3. Janete Friedrich na Vogue Italia
4. Suplemento de jias da Vogue Rssia

Peter Craig just set the URDB world record for the longest active email address which is 345 characters in length. contact-admin-hello-webmaster-info-services-peter-crazy-but-oh-so-ubber-cool-english-alphabet-loverer-abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz@please-try-to.send-me-an-email-if-you-can-possibly-begin-to-remember-this-coz.this-is-the-longest-email-address-known-to-man-but-to-be-honest.this-is-such-a-stupidly-long-sub-domain-it-could-go-on-forever.pacraig.com

After a problem-plagued relaunch of the link-sharing site last week, some Digg users seem to have taken matters into their own hands, and have been voting up or digging links from competitor Reddit.com as a way of showing their displeasure with the new version of the site. By noon on Monday, nine out of the top 10 links for the previous 24 hours came from Reddit (the only one that didn't was a sponsored link), and most of them had been voted up over 1,000 times. The revolt even spawned a hashtag on Twitter: #diggrevolt.

Some users have complained that the service has been dominated by content from mainstream publishers, which they say has been obscuring the unique or undiscovered links that Digg fans used to enjoy. According to one estimate, more than half of the site's top stories have come from just seven sources. Founder and CEO Kevin Rose, who said in a recent blog post that Digg plans to change some of the most heavily-criticized features, said in a message posted to Twitter that the site is working on what he called the source diversity part of the site's ranking algorithm. According to some reports, manual submission of stories to the new version of Digg were also briefly suspended during the day.

In addition to digging Reddit posts, Digg users have also been registering their concerns about the new version of the site by voting up posts that call on founder and CEO Kevin Rose to do the right thing, etc. Users of the site have employed similar tactics in the past to express their disapproval, including a campaign in 2007 to protest Digg's removal of links to a DVD-cracking code. In that case, Rose posted a response saying he'd heard the criticisms and Digg had decided to leave future links to the code up, despite the risk of legal action.

The new Digg does have some prominent supporters, however: Ryan Block, co-founder of the technology-buying community gdgt which he started with former Engadget founder Peter Rojas defended the redesign on Twitter, after saying that it was lame and petty how a subset of bitchy Digg users are hijacking the site. Block called the relaunch the most inspired product launch Digg has ever had, and said that the redesign realigns interests and does a lot to remove the incentives to game the system. He also said that Digg had to change because the model that made Digg popular no longer works social news has evolved, and so Digg had to evolve with it. Rose responded by saying: Thanks for the support, we're pushing new code like mad trying to stabilize/add back features/fix bugs.

That users have been making their case against Digg by voting up Reddit links is fitting, since there's long been a rivalry between the two sites (although in a recent video interview with Kara Swisher at All Things Digital, the Digg founder denied that Reddit was really a competitor). Reddit fans often argue that their site gets links first, in some cases days before they show up at Digg, and in a controversial post about Digg earlier this year, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian warned Rose that he (Rose) appeared to be making changes that were designed to meet the needs of its venture capitalist backers rather than users.

Reddit has had its own share of difficulties recently: The site, which was bought by Conde Nast, recently got some heat from its own users after it asked for financial donations and then launched a subscription version. In the latest twist, the site got into a dispute with Conde Nast over marijuana-related ads, which sparked what appeared to be a semi-serious acquisition offer for the link-sharing site from Ben Huh, founder and CEO of the I Can Has Cheezburger empire of humor websites. Ohanian responded to the takeover offer on the weekend with a post on his blog featuring a series of LOLcat photos.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub req'd): Social Advertising Models Go Back to the Future

Post and thumbnail photos courtesy of Flickr user pixietart

gdgt is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

The Pirate Bay - Away From Keyboard is a documentary on the founding of The Pirate Bay raising money on Kickstarter. I kicked in some money after hearing about it from Peter "brokep" Sunde. The filmmakers have been shooting for two years and are looking for $25,000 to finish the film (they're over $22K as I type this): "This campaign starts exactly one month before the Court of Appeal hearings start in The Pirate Bay trial in Stockholm, Sweden. In 2009 the founders of The Pirate Bay were convicted to 1 year in jail and to pay damages of around 4 million dollars for having 'assisted in making copyrighted content available'. The precedent in the Pirate Bay case will have consequences for the future of the internet. We will cover the upcoming trial closely."

TPB AFK: The Pirate Bay - Away From Keyboard (Thanks, Cowicide, via Submitterator!)

Intel has announced a $1.4bn cash deal to buy Infineon's Wireless Solutions (WLS) business, maintaining the 3G, WiFi, WiMAX and LTE company as a separate venture but also dipping liberally into their expertise for upcoming Intel products and strategy. This relatively hands-off approach to running Infineon is likely to placate the company's existing customers which includes Apple, who source their WiFi+3G chipset for the iPad from the firm while will also see them continuing to supply ARM-based chipsets together with Intel silicon.

First rumored back in May, at the time the deal was said to be splitting opinion among Infineon's board and CEO Peter Bauer. According to Intel, WLS accounted for 30-percent of Infineon's total annual revenue in the past financial year. The deal is expected to be finalized by Q1 2011.

Press Release:

Intel to Acquire Infineon's Wireless Solutions Business

Neubiberg, Germany and Santa Clara, Calif., Aug. 30, 2010, CEST (Aug. 29, U.S. PDT) Infineon Technologies AG and Intel Corporation have entered into a definitive agreement to transfer Infineon's Wireless Solutions (WLS) business to Intel in a cash transaction valued at approximately $1.4 billion.

WLS, a leading provider of cellular platforms to top tier global phone makers, will operate as a standalone business serving its existing customers. WLS will also contribute to Intel's strategy to make connected computing ubiquitous from smartphones to laptops to embedded computing.

The global demand for wireless solutions continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, said Paul Otellini, Intel president and CEO. The acquisition of Infineon's WLS business strengthens the second pillar of our computing strategy Internet connectivity and enables us to offer a portfolio of products that covers the full range of wireless options from Wi-Fi and 3G to WiMAX and LTE. As more devices compute and connect to the Internet, we are committed to positioning Intel to take advantage of the growth potential in every computing segment, from laptops to handhelds and beyond.

The sale of WLS is a strategic decision to enhance Infineon's value. We can now fully concentrate our resources towards strong growth in our core segments Automotive (ATV), Industrial & Multimarket (IMM) and Chip Card & Security (CCS). This creates a great perspective for all Infineon customers, employees and shareholders, said Peter Bauer, CEO of Infineon Technologies AG. We all stand to benefit enormously from this deal. Thanks to the outstanding effort of the employees and the management during the last years, WLS is excellently positioned to grow further with the new owner who is ideally suited for this business.

The WLS transaction is a strategic decision for Intel and Infineon. WLS complements Intel's existing assets and enables growth in mobile computing, smartphones and embedded computing. Infineon will benefit from this by stronger addressing three central challenges to modern society energy efficiency, mobility and security.

Intel's goal is to expand its mobile and embedded product offerings to support additional customers and market segments, including smartphones, tablets, netbooks, notebooks and embedded computing devices. Through this effort, Intel will pair WLS' best-in-class cellular technology with its core strengths to enable the delivery of low-power, Intel-based platforms that combine its applications processor with an expanded portfolio of wireless options bringing together Intel's leadership in Wi-Fi and WiMAX with WLS' leadership in 2G and 3G, and a combined path to accelerate 4G LTE.

Intel expects WLS to continue growing, and remaining a standalone business to ensure continuity of existing customer sales, projects and support. The business will continue to support its customers with the best solutions possible, including ARM-based products as well as Intel-based application processor platforms with leading-edge 3G slim modem solutions.

WLS today holds leading positions in the field of wireless mobility and cellular platforms for smart phones and ultra-low-cost, entry phones. WLS provides baseband processors, radio-frequency transceivers, power management integrated circuits (ICs), additional connectivity features, single-chip solutions as well as the corresponding system software. This helps to enable the smooth transmission of voice and high-speed data from the backbone of the telecommunication network to the end user's device. With annual revenue of Euro 917 million, WLS was approximately 30 percent of Infineon's total annual revenue of Euro 3.03 billion in the past financial year.

The board of directors of Intel and the supervisory board and the management board of Infineon have approved the transaction. It is expected to close in the first quarter of 2011, subject to certain regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions specified in the definitive agreement.

Relevant Entries on SlashGear

• Intel shows off concept PC with integrated WiMAX
• Intel axe WiMAX Program Office (and surprise the Taiwanese government)