Willow Smith, the superstar daughter of world renowned actor Will Smith, sat down to do an interview with Yahoo Music. They discussed her single, working with Jay-Z and whether or not she will remake her dad’s classic song, “Parents Just Don’t Understand.”

Willow did say that she is open to remaking her dad’s 1988 classic rap song. “There’s a possibility,” Willow said to Yahoo Music. “There’s a possibility that I will. It’s a really great song.”

9 year-old Willow Smith seems like the most confident and lively person you would ever meet, however she did not have any problem talking about how she felt when working with Jay-Z, the superstar rapper.

“He’s Jay-Z! He’s sold like over…I don’t even know how many albums he’s sold,” she said about their first meeting. “I was nervous because what if he said, ‘Willow why do you want to sing?’ And I’m like, ‘Because I want to sing.’ He’s going to be like, ‘Umm, OK.’ I was really nervous.”

Willow also said, despite her being nervous, that Jay-Z is actually a very supportive boss. She said that when she has an idea he accepts it, and doesn’t just say, “Oh that’s bad, I don’t like that.”

In addition, Willow Smith said that fans can expect some Smith family collaborations in the future, but she can’t give any details right now.

A Nokia Mobile Device, Image Credit: Ilya Voyager

Mobile phone companies are now testing a new way of getting new customers. They are doing this by having ads for their devices appear on the devices of their competitors. This exposes their products to users who are already using something similar so they may be interested in what the competitor is offering.

The basic message of the advertisements is: Oh, you could do better than that thing. This is supposed to encourage users to switch over to the competitor. It’s questionable if it would work considering the fact that most people sign two-year contracts when they purchase a phone. This means that they would probably be unwilling to switch companies when they already have a device from a different one.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Nokia Corp. recently targeted ads for its Nokia Twist device at users of the Motorola Inc.’s Razr phone. Razr users who surf the Web would be dealt an ad saying, “Are you really still rockin’ a flip phone?” It then suggests upgrading to a Twist, says Gene Keenan, creative director of mobile at Isobar, a digital marketing agency owned by Aegis Group PLC that worked on the campaign on behalf of Nokia.

The term for this kind of advertising is called “intercept campaigning”.

There is a lot of competition in the mobile market and this type of advertising is going to force manufacturers and companies to up their standards. They will have to try to keep their devices on top so they don’t get their customers taken away by their competitors.

Mobile ad companies use technology to detect the programs and the data that control a user’s mobile phone when it delivers an ad. This allows the company to determine what kind of device the person is using and allows it to give the user the targeted ads.

You have probably heard a lot about Julian Assange in the past year. You probably think that you know quite a good deal about him from all that you have heard, read and seen in the media. What you most likely don’t know, however, is his story from him personally. Well, we will soon all figure this out because he has signed book deals worth more than $1.3 million in the US and the UK. This will allows the WikiLeaks founder to cover his legal fees and maintain the wistleblowing site.

He will be racing a former colleague to release an autobiography telling his side of the WikiLeaks story as the former collegue is not very satisfied with Assange’s actions.

Assange is currently fighting sexual assault allegations in Sweden while also trying to continue the gradual release of thousands of US diplomatic cables via WikiLeaks.

According to CNN, The U.S. administration, which has been angered and embarrassed by successive leaks of its foreign-policy secrets through WikiLeaks, is believed to be exploring ways to prosecute Mr Assange.

Assange has agreed to an $800,000 contract with Knopf and another $500,000 deal with the UK publisher, Canongate.

The deals are expected to net Assange more than $1.7 million after the book is sold in other countries and serialised in newspapers around the world.

Assange was supposedly very reluctant in signing the deals and agreeing to write the book. He supposedly didn’t want to have to do it, but decided to write it anyway because WikiLeaks needs the money. He also needs the money for all of his legal fees.

Amazon Kindle 3

This would probably be more interesting if Amazon would reveal how many units were actually sold of the Kindle 3, but as usual, Amazon refuses to reveal its numbers.

However, when you just look at Amazon’s archives and see that they sold more than 12 million copies of the seven Harry Potter titles as they said in December 2007 you can see that they probably sold more than 1 million units of the Kindle 3 and less than 12 million. This is a pretty wide margin for error, however, that’s the best that we can do with the information they have given out.

Some other interesting things about Amazon: On it’s peak shipping day this year it sent out 9 million items. That’s more than a lot of companies send out per year. Also, on Cyber Monday, the peak sales day for Amazon, customers ordered 158 items per second. You can only imagine how much revenue that generated for the massive internet company. Also, the company’s most remote holiday shipment wen to Grise Fiord. That’s north of the Arctic Circle in Canada. It’s got a population of 141 and an average yearly temperature of 2 degrees Fahrenheit.

These statistics show that things are going pretty well for the internet store and that despite the current economic situation, people are still buying things.

The three major airports in the New York metropolitan area all reopened by 6 PM. This is great news as they had been closed for a while, preventing a lot of travel from happening, in addition to all of the regular commuters being stuck where they were. There’s still some problems for the tens of thousands of stranded passengers as they haven’t all gotten to where they are going yet. There are only ten planes expected to touch down tonight at LaGuardia airport and there’s only two scheduled departures, to give an idea of what remains to be organized.

Also, there’s millions of people who have to dig themselves, their cars and their houses out from the huge blizzard. The worst of the storm has passed, however, it did cause over 4,155 flights to be cancelled and in some areas there were up to 32 inches of snow.

According to CNN, John F. Kennedy Airport, located further south in the same New York City borough of Queens, and Newark Liberty International, in northern New Jersey, opened to incoming and departing traffic at 6 p.m., said Port Authority spokeswoman Sara Joren.

The Federal Transportation Security Administration is coordinating with airports and airlines to bolster staffing if it becomes necessary when flights resume.

The snow storm causes a lot of traveling difficulties for thousands of people, but in the end everyone is okay and city officials are working on resolving any problems as quickly as they can.

The blizzard didn’t only cause problems in New York, there were many other states that were affected.

Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell has asked people to stay off the state’s roads unless absolutely necessary, said Peter Boynton, the commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Emergency Management.
“If you have to be on the road, of course, the rule of the day is take it slow,” he said.

Facebook Map, Image Credit: Facebook

A man named Paul Butler recently made a map of the world. His map is a bit different from the maps that we are used to as he made it using data graphs. He is a Facebook intern, so it was not unusual that he would use his information there to make a graph. He basically decided to connect all of people’s Facebook friendships and current locations to see how things were distributed.

The result was what Butler called, “a surprisingly detailed map of the world. Not only were continents visible, certain international borders were apparent as well. What really struck me, though, was knowing that the lines didn’t represent coasts or rivers or political borders, but real human relationships.”

The interesting thing about this map is the absence of some countries, like China, for example. This absence is because Facebook is blocked in China. This leads to them not being graphed because even if they do visit the site via a proxy, they are shown as visitors from a different country.

There are some other countries that aren’t very lit up such as Canada and Russia. This is due to them not being very widely populated in the areas that aren’t lit up. It gets pretty cold way up north and not very many people live there, and those that do have better things to do than to spend their days on Facebook.

This map shows the interconnectivity of human relationships across the globes, and how much we depend on the internet to stay in touch these days. This also shows that maybe China should let up on their system of blocking such communications websites. It would be a very valuable asset to the growing nation.

For most Americans jury duty seems to be a chore. Sure, it’s their constitutional right and all, but for most people it’s not all that fun. However, there seems to be one man who can find humor within a courtroom, and that man is Steve Martin.

Steve Martin Twitter

It turns out, however, that Steve Martin isn’t actually actively on jury duty at the moment. He is a part of an L.A. jury pool, however. Steve Martin’s publicist Alan Nierob told the New York Post that he wasn’t in a courthouse at all when he posted the tweets.

“He’s not serving jury duty, just tweeting as usual,” Nierob told the New York Post, “It’s great material, don’t you think?”

As the New York Post put it, “Martin, 65, poked fun of a defendant’s Conan O’Brien-esque hair, mocked a prosecutor’s Serbian accent, and advocated use of the Magic 8 Ball to determine guilt.”

Steve Martin himself said what he was doing in a Twitter post on Thursday. He said, “Serious note: I actually will be on jury duty soon,” he wrote. “I urge every citizen to experience it. I’ve never not been moved by the system.”

This shows that he had not actually been on a jury while tweeting these things, however, he will be soon.

On Friday, a part of the Paris Charles de Gaulle aiport was evacuted. It was evacuated due to the heavy accumulation of snow on the roof of the building of Terminal 2E. In addition, hundreds of flights were canceled because of a shortage of glycol, the main ingredient of de-icing fluid.

About 2000 passengers were moved from the terminal to other areas of the airport. The authorities called the measures “preventative.” Part of the roof of that same terminal collapsed in 2004. This happened shortly after the new state-of-the-art building was inaugurated. At the time, media reports said that four people were killed. It seems that they haven’t improved the construction of the terminal’s roof if they believe that they have to take measures to keep people safe in case of a collapse.

Almost a foot of snow had fallen on the roof on Friday at the time that authorities decided to close the terminal. People are working to clear the snow and to reopen the terminal.

French authorities asked airline earlier on Friday to cancel half their morning flights to and from the airport due to de-icing fluid running low. This led to a cancellation of 400 flights in the morning.

Early in the afternoon, the authorities asked airlines to also cancel a third of their flights for the rest of the day. This is a pretty big problem as Charles de Gaulle is the second biggest airport in Europe. Only London Heathrow is bigger. Luckily, for those who need to get to France, Paris’ second airport, Orly, hasn’t had to cancel any flights.

Qualcomm Stadium, Photo Credit: Intersofia

Despite the rain, however, the game will happen. Crews are preparing the field urgently and the Poinsettia Bowl Executive Director Bruce Binkowski told local news that the field is read. Some photos of the stadium verified that the field does, indeed, look great.

This feat was achieved by organizers covering the field with tarps during the rain, and then by pumping out the water on Wednesday. They left the logo drawing to be done early this morning. The start time for the game is 5:00 and it will be featuring the Aztecs taking on the Navy. It will go on exactly as was scheduled. Also, the parking lot has been cleared as well.

This is good news in the light of all the bad things that have been happening in California due to the rain. It shows that things can be done in spite of nature, and you just have to be smart and act fast.

Rainfall at rates of up to two-thirds of an inch per hour have been discoverd in California with some heavier burst seen in a few areas. This shows that it’s not over yet, but you can still look forward to it ceasing. When the rain lets up it shouldn’t be that big of a project to clean up the streets.

d0z.me

As an internet user of today, you should be well aware of the dangers posed by URL shorteners. If you aren’t ware of them, well, the main, most important danger is their abilty to mask potentially malicious links. This means that if you click on a shortend link you may potentially be killing your computer.

Usually the most popular URL shorteners take measures to protect their users from malicious links, however, there are many more obscure and not-so-popular URL shorteners out there that can’t protect their users as well.

A hacker named Ben Schmidt was inspired by all the media attention garnered by the WikiLeak’s “hackivists” DDos (Distributed Denial of Service) attacks. He decided that there could be an even more worrisome use for URL shortening services. He built a site, d0z.com, which looks and acts just like any other URL shortener from the perspective of the person clicking on the link. The only difference is that behind the scenes it’s initiating a DDOS attack on the target of the link creator’s choosing.

Schmidt put a disclaimer on the site which claims that d0z.me is only a demonstration of how easy it is to orchestrate a DDoS attack without havnig to infect someone’s PC or having to take control of a botnet by spreading malware.

You probably don’t have to worry about the links you share with bit.ly yet, however, you should be aware of the potential dangers of shortened URLs, and how hackers may use them to gain an advantage over their enemies.