World Trends!

Japan to free Chinese boat captain amid row

2010-09-24T00:39:00.000-07:00

Japan is to release a Chinese fishing boat captain whose arrest two weeks ago led to the worst row with Beijing in years, Japanese media report.

The Japanese authorities had accused Zhan Qixiong of deliberately ramming two patrol vessels near

disputed islands in the East China Sea.

China had been demanding his immediate and unconditional release.

The move came after four Japanese men were detained in China on suspicion of illegally filming in a military area.

A Japanese foreign ministry spokesman said its embassy in Beijing had received confirmation that the four were being held, but he said he did not want to speculate whether it was linked to Japan's detention of a Chinese fishing boat captain.

Officials said the four men were employees of a Japanese construction company who were in China to bid for a project to dispose of chemical weapons from World War II.

Escalating tensions

At a news conference, prosecutors in Naha, Okinawa, said Mr Zhan was "just a fishing boat captain" and had no criminal record in Japan.

They did not perceive any premeditated intent to damage the patrol boats, said Toru Suzuki, the office's vice prosecutor, the Associated Press reported.

"We have decided that further investigation while keeping the captain in custody would not be appropriate, considering the impact on the people of our country as well as the Japan-China relations in the future," he said.

It was unclear when he would be released.

Tensions had escalated since Japan detained the Chinese captain.

China issued a series of diplomatic protests, cancelled official visits and cultural events, and said that the row could seriously harm relations.

Earlier this week Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said that Japan bore full responsibility for the situation and demanded the immediate release of the captain.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the two sides to settle the issue before it had a long-term impact on the region.

The Japanese coastguard arrested Zhan Qixiong on 8 September after his trawler collided with two of their patrol boats in an area claimed by both countries, near uninhabited islands which may have oil and gas deposits

Japanese prosecutors had until next Wednesday to decide whether or not to charge the man.

Facebook DNS Failure and Login Problem

2010-09-24T00:32:00.000-07:00

Facebook DNS Failure Updates. Recently we have been receiving lots of complaints and reports regarding thatFacebook DNS failure and login problems. As of now Facebookusers reported that they received a DNS error when they visit the site.

This is really a headache for lots of people who use Facebookalmost every hour of the day, this DNS problem for sure will be fix in no time so we just have to wait.

For updates, Facebook when back online again but for matter of minutes it seems that the site go down again.

We still haven’t received any formal announcement from Facebookheadquarters in California so currently it’s hard to speculate what’s really happening.

Some says that Facebook was hacked but before the downtime ofFacebook , the site itself is having problem loading for many users.

What do you think happened? Is it still down on your end? Is Facebookslow?

Outsourced TV Show: Watch Pilot Outsourced New NBC TV Series Premiere

2010-09-24T00:09:00.000-07:00

Outsourced TV Show: Watch Pilot Outsourced New NBC TV Series Premiere – ‘Outsourced’, the new comedy show on NBC, stands out from the shows which precede it. Following on from “Community,” “30 Rock” and “The Office,” the show as it’s work cut out for it. It’s similar to being a band having it’s debut performance after the crowd being warmed up by Elvis, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. So, essentially, for that program, it’s either make something of equal quality, or get shafted out of existence.

Watching the show’s debut, it seems as if the show is set to be outsourced to the garbage bin. Despite having a quality cast, Ben Rappaport, Diedrich Bader, Rebecca Hazlewood and Anisha Nagarajan, the show falls flat and fails in many areas, from it’s extremely poor jokes to the horrible job of simulating Mumbai and a call centre there.

The jokes show a lack of creativity, intelligence, wit or humour. They’re the same jokes that the ignorant have been saying for years. Indian food is gross and makes you have to go to the bathroom! Misogynist Eastern cultures produce timid women! Don’t you just hate it when you call customer service and get one of those horrible foreigners?

‘Outsourced’ looks set to be destined to be out of touch with the times, relying on the viewing of ignorant fools, not a good market to be aiming at.

What are your thoughts on Outsourced pilot?

'50s pop singer Eddie Fisher dies at age 82

2010-09-24T00:00:00.001-07:00

Eddie Fisher, whose huge fame as a pop singer was overshadowed by scandals ending his marriages to Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor, has died. He was 82.

His daughter, Tricia Leigh Fisher, told the Associated Press that Fisher died Wednesday night of complications from hip surgery at a hospital in Berkeley.

Fisher became a hit with teenage girls in the 1950s, selling million of records. His 32 hit songs included "Thinking of You," "Any Time," "Oh, My Pa-pa," "I'm Yours," "Wish You Were Here," "Lady of Spain" and "Count Your Blessings."

But Fisher might be better remembered for the scandals in his personal life. He married Reynolds in 1955 and they had two children, including actress Carrie Fisher. In 1958, Eddie Fisher's best friend, producer Mike Todd, who was married to Elizabeth Taylor, was killed in a plane crash. Fisher created headlines when he left Reynolds to marry Taylor, who in turn divorced Fisher five years later to marry Richard Burton.

He later married and divorced actress Connie Stevens and went on to marry two more times.

His career never recovered from the notoriety in his love life.

The news of Fisher's death was first reported by Deadline.com.

Rest in Peace...

The Office Season 7 Premiere: Steve Carell Returns To Dunder Mifflin

2010-09-23T23:55:00.000-07:00

The Office Season 7 premieres tonight on NBC.

The highly anticipated return of Steve Carell is finally here as The Office Season 7 premieres tonight on NBC.

Coming off a stellar six seasons of non-stop comedy at the Dunder Mifflin offices, Michael Scott (Steve Carell) will be throwing in the towel after The Office Season 7. Will the departure of Steve Carell on The Office be the end of the show, as we know it?

Of course it will, I for one will be tuning in to The Office Season 7 as a farewell to Michael Scott and The Officeas a whole. There is no way that NBC will be able to deliver another Steve Carell. He is the paperweight that keeps Dunder Mifflin grounded and without him, the show will just be a big mess of nothing.

Enough with the bad news about The Office, let’s get on to The Office Season 7 premiere, which is happening tonight. For The Office Season 7 Episode 1 entitled “Nepotism” we will find a new assistant around the Dunder Mifflin office. The staff hates his guts but Michael refuses to fire him.

Our favorite couple, Pam (Jenna Fischer) and Jim (John Krasinski), who got married and had a baby in The Office Season 6, will battle issues of their own. Pam tries to show Jim that she has a playful side by pulling a practical joke in The Office.

With this being the final season of The Office for Steve Carell, we can expect to be the best one yet. Get your to laugh your ass off every Thursday as The Office is back baby!

Clear your schedules and get your DVR’s ready because The Office Season 7 will premiere tonight at 9pm onNBC.

Big Bang Theory Season 4 Episode 1: Watch Full Episodes Online S04E01

2010-09-23T23:51:00.000-07:00

Big Bang Theory Season 4 Episode 1: Watch Full Episodes Online S04E01 – The Big Bang theory season 4 episode 1 called “The Robotic Manipulation” which was directed by Mark Cendrowski and written by Chuck Lorre, Lee Aronsohn & Dave Goetsch -Story,Steven Molaro, Eric Kaplan & Steve Holland-Teleplay aired this evening on CBS.

The Big Bang theory started back up tonight, and everyone is in for some new adventures. Mayim Bialik was the guest star on the program as Sheldon’s new date, and will be appearing on a number of episodes throughout the season.
Tonight is the premiere of season four, and fans were able to watch Penny chaperon Sheldon and Amy on their first date. In the beginning, it seems like Penny is the more worldly woman at the table, but before you even know what it happening, Amy reveals that she is pretty damn wordly herself.

The series has been looking to add another character to the series for quite some time, and experts have said that they think that if the fans like the Bialik storyline this season, they probably would like to keep her on board for next year. She would make for an interesting addition to the cast and would serve as a great love interest for Shelton who many fans believe needed someone else in his life.
The subplot of the installment focused on Wolowitz “borrowing a robotic arm from NASA and using it to hold napkins and for sex.

This will be a big season for the show that has become immensely popular over the course of its first three seasons the off-brand humor has made the show a success, but it continues to push itself to new heights by exploring sides of their characters that we have not been able to see yet, such as Sheldon’s romantic side.
We are not sure that it is a good idea that the series is now opening up a comedy bloc on Thursdays- they might lose some viewers.

Here are some funny lines from the premiere:
“At best, it’s a modest leap forward from the technology that gave us Country Bear Jamboree.”
“You have broad hips and a certain corn-fed vigor. Is your womb available for rental?”
“Would have been more flattered if you were a homosexual.”
“Apparently, a semi-incestuous Teens 4 Jesus hoedown didn’t count.”
“Let’s round that up to 31.”
“Penny, to your mind, are you a slut?”
Raj: “You slipped and fell into a robot hand?”
Wolowitz: “Yes.”
Raj: “P*nis first?”
Wolowitz: “Yes. Now help me!”
Leonard: “I’d suggest a lubricant, but I have a feeling you fell on some of that as well.”

What are your thoughts on the episode?

Interview With Mark Zuckerberg On The “Facebook Phone”

2010-09-23T13:32:00.000-07:00

Over the weekend I wrote an article about Facebook’s mobile plans, particularly that they are working on a branded mobile phone. Facebook said the story was innacurate, despite CNET, Alley Insider and others writing independent stories confirming that Facebook was working on a phone. We responded aggressively.

Facebook reached out to us on Monday to clear the air, and invited us to Facebook HQ in Palo Alto, California to speak to CEO Mark Zuckerberg directly about Facebook’s mobile plans. Jason Kincaid and I spoke with Mark for about half an hour. The transcription of that interview is below.

For now this is just the raw footage, so to speak. We’ll parse this in a later post. There are some really fascinating things in this interview though.

INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT:

Mark Zuckerberg: Before we get into this, I want to apologize for the miscommunication. I think our folks were trying to reach out to you and weren’t able to reach you before we issued our statement.

At the end of the day, when people say “building a phone” they actually can mean very different things. Internally, the way we talk about our strategy, it’s like the opposite of that. Our whole strategy is not to build any specific device or integration or anything like that. Because we’re not trying to compete with Apple or the Droid or any other hardware manufacturer for that matter.

Our strategy is very horizontal. We’re trying to build a social layer for everything. Basically we’re trying to make it so that every app everywhere can be social whether it’s on the web, or mobile, or other devices. So inherently our whole approach has to be a breadth-first approach rather than a depth-first one. And we work on all of these different things at the same time, so I’m sure whatever leak you got was probably accurate for whatever the person said. But it was probably just one part of what we are doing. Anyhow. I just wanted to give that context.

Michael Arrington: Ok. So let’s talk about how you see, what is Facebook’s role in the mobile world over the long run?

Mark Zuckerberg: So I guess, we view it primarily as a platform. Our role is to be a platform for making all of these apps more social, and it’s kind of an extension of what we see happening on the web, with the exception of mobile, which I think will be even more important than the web in a few years – maybe even sooner. But the basic thing that we’ve found from building social apps and this platform ourselves is that almost any experience or app can be better if it’s social and it has your friends with you. And we just expect there to be really tremendous disruption over the next five years.

We’ve seen this with a bunch of the apps that we’ve built. Stuff like photos and events and groups — we’ve built pretty basic versions of those apps to start but they ended up being so much more used because of their social integrations.On Platform we’re now really starting to see that with games through the four big gaming companies: Zynga, Playdom, Playfish and Crowdstar, andit’s really interesting looking at Zynga and traditional gaming companies. Zynga is just so much more efficient as a company right now. That’s what disruption looks like, when your model is changing.

It seems like games are often an early indicator of a platform spreading to other verticals. You kind of saw that with the iPad or iPhone, probably more iPhone than iPad. Even early PCs. So our view is that over the next few years we should expect in all of these different industries for there to be a lot of disruption…by either the incumbent in this space or some new entrepreneur coming in and building a social version of whatever it is, whether it’s commerce or media. It could be a number of these different verticals, and Mobile will really just be an extension of that and will eventually get to a larger scale than the web. The web is only at one and a half billion people whereas everyone is going to have a phone and all the phones are going to be smartphones. So our strategy is that we want to go wherever people are building apps so we can make all of those apps social if they want that.

Michael Arrington: With the tools that you’ve given them on the web. Tools like Connect for example..?

Mark Zuckerberg: I think it’s different in different places. For example, take Instant Personalization. Our goal is to make it so there’s as little friction as possible to having a social experience. So you go to some apps, take Rotten Tomatoes, which we just launched last week. If people had to click this blue button to Connect, then some percent of them would, but it would be the minority because you don’t know exactly what you’re going to get before you click it.If you had to put up some modal dialog then that would be crazy from a UX perspective. But the fact that they can do that instant integration for the users that want it means that everyone has a good experience as soon as they get there.

On phones we can actually do something better. We can do a single sign-on if we do a good integration with a phone, rather than just doing something where you go to an app and it’s automatically social or having to sign into each app individually. Those are the two options on the web. Why not for mobile? Just make it so that you log into your phone once, and then everything that you do on your phone is social.

Michael Arrington: You’re turning on a layer…

Mark Zuckerberg: That’s what we’re trying to do. The reason I just gave that example is that some things, like the implementation is different on mobile.

It’s different on mobile than it would be on the web simply because it is not really possible. I guess maybe Google or Microsoft could have you log into the browser, but we can’t because we don’t build a browser – but, that is the basic strategy.

And then, we invest differently in different platforms depending on how big they are, and how many users are there. So, iPhone is the one we’re investing in the most now, and Android increasingly. If Windows Phone 7 takes off, then I’m sure we’ll put resources on that. We invest at all different layers of the stack too, so we have people who are working on the lowest common denominator HTML5 stuff that works across all systems. So maybe we’re not building a lot of specific stuff for RIM and Blackberry, but the HTML5 stuff that we’re doing will work there.

And maybe we’ll build specific apps for iPhone and Android. And then, for something that is as important as iPhone or Android, we’ll also build integration into the operating system. So for iPhone, we built in contact syncing, and for Android we integrated and did contact syncing pretty seamlessly. The question is – what could we do if we also started hacking at a deeper level, and that is a lot of the stuff that we’re thinking about.

And then the question is: different people come to us with different ideas all the time, and we mentioned the example of the INQ phone in the past, and I think you appropriately said that it isn’t some massive big thing, but it is cool and actually a lot of people bought it. But, people might want to take different cuts of different operating systems, or build different feature phones and integrate Facebook in different ways. The mobile market is just so fragmented that there is a lot of experimentation that can happen now too, so we’re figuring out exactly what the optimum level of the stack is to be at. The reality is it will probably be different things to different phones. For some devices that we’re not going to do a lot of specific work for, it will be HTML5.

For platforms that are really important, but are hard to penetrate, like iPhone, we’ll just do as much as we can. For Android, we can customize it a bit more. Other folks are going to want to work with us on specific things. But, our goal is not to build a phone that competes with the iPhone or anything like that.

And this is the thing that was potentially really damaging about having that meme our there is: if all of the people that are our partners, who are the main people that we’re trying to work with to make everything social, think that we’re trying to compete with them, that makes them not want to work with us.

So, it is really important for us that people understand what the strategy is and that the real approach is to make everything social, not to build a vertical approach.

Michael Arrington: So, are you working on a ground-up operating system for mobile phones today?

Mark Zuckerberg: An Operating System? No.

When you get into the definition of what building a phone is, there are all these different things, which I think is the grey area, where, actually, sometimes even people internally refer to stuff as ‘Facebook phones’.

There’s the Apple approach of really designing all the hardware – I don’t think that they manufacture it themselves, but they probably work very closely with Foxconn – but they do have chip design and all of that in-house, I’ll bet we’ll never do anything like that. That is different from what we do.

And just from the 6 years of experience we’ve had building Facebook, which is a pretty complex system, you can’t just wake up one day and decide you want to do this stuff. Even building a whole operating system is, like years and years of work. So that is what Google does.

And Google has been in a bunch of different places. Nexus One, I think people would say they built that phone a bit more, but the Droid, I don’t think you could consider that is a phone that Google built, but some people would. I think what you’ll find is that all of this stuff that we do, is lighter than all of those things.

I mean, who knows, 10 years down the road, maybe we’ll build our own operating system or something, but who knows. That is more history than we’ve had so far with the company, so it is really hard to predict that far out. But for now, I think, everything is going to be shades of integration, rather than starting from the ground up and building a whole system.

Jason Kincaid: So, it sounds like a customized version of Android seems like the best thing, the deepest integration you could do without building your own operating system.

Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah, and I mean…

Michael Arrington: Is that putting words in your mouth?

Mark Zuckerberg: No, I mean, we’ve looked a bunch of different technical things.

I know if we were going to build an operating system, then we wouldn’t have anything to talk about for 4 years. And I know we didn’t start 4 years ago, so I know we’re nowhere near anything on that. What I can say generally is that our goal is not to build an operating system from scratch, or else not to design hardware from scratch. Our goal is to make it so that we can design the best integrations in the widest variety of phones.

One thing that I think is really important — that I think is context for this, is that I generally think that most other companies now are undervaluing how important social integration is. So even the companies that are starting to come around to thinking, ‘oh maybe we should do some social stuff’, I still think a lot of them are only thinking about it on a surface layer, where it’s like “OK, I have my product, maybe I’ll add two or three social features and we’ll check that box”. That’s not what social is.

Social – you have to design it in from the ground up. These experiences, like what Zynga is doing or what a company like Quora is doing, I think that they have just a really good social integration. They’ve designed their whole product around the idea that your friends will be here with you. Everyone has a real identity for themselves. And those are fundamental building blocks. Now, I don’t know how long it’s going to take to get the mobile environments that you see today to a state where you can build really robust social applications on top of it. So that’s the biggest driving force for us — to try to work with these folks and see how deep we can get on our own to make sure that we can build that plumbing. Our goal is to make it exist.

Michael Arrington: The folks in this case being the manufacturers and the carriers..?

Mark Zuckerberg: And the people building the Operating Systems. It could be anyone. There are people that manufacture phones who come and talk to us. And are like, OK, we have our own OS where we’re working with Android and we want to see if we can build a deep integration with Facebook on this. Interestingly a lot of this stuff, we don’t even do the engineering work.

The INQ phone, I don’t think we had any engineers work on it. And certainly HTC modifies all their own Android stuff — Sense. I think a lot of companies are trying to figure out how to differentiate on that. A bunch of them are interested in talking to us, I think it makes sense. Social is becoming more important to make all these applications better. If we can help them do that, that can potentially be very valuable, but that’s more them. I don’t know — it’s a very decentralized ecosystem and there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. But I think the main message that I would hope that you guys would come away with from our strategy is that our goal is breadth not depth.

Michael Arrington: I know these seem like small questions compared to the big vision you just put out. Have there been discussions with hardware manufactures to have a Facebook-branded phone some time sort of soon, in the next year or so? This is what CNET reported on yesterday.

Mark Zuckerberg: What does that mean… Facebook-branded phone…

Michael Arrington: You know, like the Nexus One was Google-branded even though it was also HTC-branded. I would imagine we’re talking about physical branding on the phone itself.

Mark Zuckerberg: I think there are probably exploratory conversations around.. on the order of what I just said with all these different companies. But none of them have gotten to that level of detail. Like Apple in their ads has Facebook as a fairly prominent feature. But you wouldn’t call this a Facebook-branded phone. And we want to do as deep an integration as we can with them, because this is an incredibly important device. I don’t know.. whether we help companies out with marketing, I think is almost more of a tactical question.

Apple had to ask us if they could use Facebook in their ads and we said “yes” — we think it’s good for us and good for them and good for the Facebook app on the phone and ultimately for users, and all that. I think that’s kind of the way we’ll think about it for all these other things too. Our goal is really just to make it so that over time there will be deep integrations everywhere.

I think this was what was tricky with your blog post. Actually I didn’t even read the whole blog post so it’s tough for me to even comment on this. But I would imagine that a lot of the facts in there are correct from whoever gave them to you, but I think the framing was not how we think about it. In a way that was potentially really damaging to what we’re trying to actually do. So, do we have any conversation with someone to do deep integration? I’m sure we do. And I’m sure we’re talking to them about marketing.

Michael Arrington: Is another way of saying that the goal will never be to go head-on against the iPhone and Android and their businesses, at least, the strategy as you currently see it?

Mark Zuckerberg: Yeah, I mean I think we’re trying to do something pretty different. I think those are both, iPhone is clearly a vertical strategy, Android is a bit more horizontal although they’re focusing on specific things now too. I mean like the Droid is vertical, Android I think is horizontal. Ours is definitely more of a horizontal platform. Our goal is to have Facebook be everywhere and everything be social rather than a specific device.

Michael Arrington: And significantly beyond even a native app.

Mark Zuckerberg: It’s interesting, I think a lot of the time there isn’t such a black and white difference between what’s a platform and what’s an app. It’s really just like the most important apps become platforms. It’s like Facebook was an app for a long period time before we created a development platform but the fact that it was the app that was most used by its users kind of gave it the license to be a platform for a lot of other use cases. Right? And I think we’re starting to see that on mobile as well where I’m pretty sure on iPhone, Facebook is by far the biggest app. There are all these stats that come out, I remember there’s one in the UK that’s like Facebook is more than half of all mobile web minutes and I haven’t seen anything that contradicts that in other countries, I only saw this particular study in the UK. So I think it shows that phones are really social devices and all the apps on them should be social as well and I think we want to try to make that happen. But is this our place to build hardware? No. Is our place to manage virtual memory? No.

Michael Arrington: So do you think maybe these rumors–I’m going to ask you to speculate–came out of one of a billion conversations that you guys tend to have all the time with different people?

Mark Zuckerberg: It’s really hard for me to say.

Michael Arrington: Fair enough

Mark Zuckerberg: If I knew who leaked it to you, I would’ve fired them already.

Michael Arrington: One of the interesting arguments is that you’ve got Erick Tseng and Joe Hewitt, who you’ve had around forever, and you have Matthew Papakipos, that’s a pretty serious team of hard core dudes. Is this what they’re focusing on, what you’ve been describing over the last few minutes? These deep integrations across multiple platforms?

Mark Zuckerberg: So they’re actually to date focused on different things. I think Joe and Matt work together on a bunch of stuff. Erick has actually been working on a different part of the strategy. But that makes sense, what I’m describing is a strategy that has a lot of different pieces so you kind of need to spread out the people who can drive these things.

You know one of the things that Joe and Matt have in common is a real passion for web development. Matt did Chrome OS, and Joe complains a lot about app development [laughs], so one of the things that will be interesting for us is a lot of these companies now, that aren’t us, are doing a lot of the heavy lifting on web platforms to evolve them towards HTML5 and I think we may actually be…we’re i hope, helping to push that along as well, but frankly, we’re not the ones who are driving the development in this ecosystem right now, quite the way that Android and iPhone are, but a lot of what I hope that we can do is provide some standardization there.

We’re investing a lot in HTML5 and we want to make that a really good platform and I think that is some of the stuff that they’re doing. So those guys are definitely working on mobile stuff, at least part of the time, I know Matt is. And I know that they both care a lot about the HTML stuff we’re doing and the HTML5 and making that a standard thing.

Michael Arrington: You said Erick’s working on something else, what’s that?

Mark Zuckerberg: Um, oh he’s working on a bunch of stuff.

Michael Arrington: What’s the top secret mobile thing he’s working on though?

Mark Zuckerberg: I actually think that what he’s working on, is like I don’t think that any of the stuff is that top secret.

Michael Arrington: So there’s a theory in talking to my sources that there are…

Mark Zuckerberg: That there are levels of top secretness [laughs]? I mean, we have a pretty open culture.

Michael Arrington: There’s a theory that part of our story is being driven by sources with old information maybe over the summer, the stuff that CNET got into and that part of it is being driven by something else going on here that hasn’t been uncovered yet. And that it’s super secret and it’s Erick’s project and it’s the super secret mobile project. Maybe you don’t want to say what it is, but maybe you want to say there is something or that’s also a red herring or what?

Mark Zuckerberg: No, I think that one of the ways we break stuff down internally is that we have some people who work on projects and some people who run the whole operational strategy. So for example the highest level version of this — you have Chris Cox and Mike Schroepfer who run the organizations for product and engineering, and then you have people like Bret Taylor who’s CTO who will work on specific projects at a really high level but doesn’t have anyone reporting to him.

The way that the mobile stuff is structured — Erick is really the lead PM for mobile stuff in general. I’m sure there’s specific things in there that aren’t announced yet. But he’s not running a secret project. That’s… I think that’s more like the type of stuff that Joe is working on or that Matt would typically work on.

Michael Arrington: The secret stuff goes through him?

Mark Zuckerberg: Not in general… I don’t think the secret stuff is that secret (Elliot Schrage: There’s some cool things, even if they’re not secret). There’s some stuff that hasn’t been announced, but there’s nothing like a fundamental departure from the strategy that I am laying out.

Jason Kincaid: So when he wrote about a Facebook phone, my initial thought wasn’t about a smartphone, it was about a feature phone. And this isn’t a sexy feature at all, but Facebook Zero, you guys launched last spring.

Mark Zuckerberg: That’s actually going really well.

Jason Kincaid: For me, and I saw that and at the time you had 50 carriers signed up and I’d imagine you have more than that now with free data access to basic functionality. And when I heard Facebook phone, my understanding with the way it works right now, is these people who don’t have great data connections and have pretty.. not great phones, and they don’t have great browsers. And they have to fire up their browser manually and go to 0.facebook.com. And when I heard Facebook phone, I wondered, what if they got a phone that launched directly into Facebook for free for basic functionality like messaging, and your address book. Carriers can charge for other content like media. Am I totally off base here?

Mark Zuckerberg: I need better more updated stats on how Facebook Zero stuff is working. My understanding is that it’s a really big deal in Africa and India and that it’s helping those people get on. Certainly a big thing that we will hopefully eventually be in a position to work on is spreading smart phones and spreading more of this stuff to people who can’t get them today. And that kind of links to the HTML5 stuff that I was talking about. We’re not working on anything specific to what you’re saying today. But just because there’s so many mobile phones today and we’re not on all of them so I think that’s the first order bit — it’s building a mobile platform that can span everything and make it so every app everywhere can be social.

But I think a big goal for this over time will be.. the web is so good for this. I can just speak as a developer, 2004 when I was coding Facebook there was no question in my mind like what I was going to build for. It was, you’re clearly going to build for the web. I’m not going to build software and I’m not going to build for a phone.

And that clarity was so valuable whereas today it’s like, Ok, we want to go build an app. Even a new product that we launch. We’re working on Questions, and it’s like OK. So we build Questions for the web, then we build the “m” site for Questions, then we build the Touch HTML5 version of questions. Then we build the iPhone version of Questions, and then the Android version, and then maybe.. (Elliot Schrage: iPad…) Right, the iPad stuff. And then we don’t work on a RIM version and then a bunch of people are pissed because it’s not available on their phone.

It’s kind of a disaster right now. I really hope that the direction that this stuff goes in is one where there’s more of a standard and again I think we have some people who are pretty good at working on this and hopefully we can capitalize on that because frankly we don’t… we have 4 or 500 engineers at the company, it’s pretty hard for us to build a lot of new products and build them all for these different platforms. So if something like HTML5 becomes a big standard then that would be hugely valuable for us. So we’ll help push that. I imagine that over the long term that will be the solution to this problem that you’re talking about.

The HTML5 stuff I think it’s going to be pretty good. Some of the stuff that we’re working on. Let’s say we build something for the web. And we have an HTML5 version of it. But we haven’t built an iPhone version yet. If we can build a container in so that we can at least make it so that as part of the Facebook app on the iPhone you can get notification hooks and things like that and get an HTML version of the app until we get around to build an iPhone version then that’s cool. We just launched Places a month ago and we still don’t have it done on the Android version yet. And that sucks. If we could build just one HTML5 version then have it everywhere then that would be awesome.

SugarHouse Casino- Philly rolls the dice

2010-09-23T13:30:00.000-07:00

SugarHouse Casino’s opening is scheduled for today. Philadelphia goes right next to Las Vegas or Atlantic City as the big opening celebrates the right of gamblers to act freely in their own town. As there are always two sides of the same story, people’s opinions are pro and con. Those who support the initiative say that the casino will work as an economic engine for Philadelphia and will attract many tourists from all over the world. The other party show their indignation, as in their opinion SugarHouse Casino will create a gap between the local high rollers and the poverty of the city.
As the opening party is about to begin, they all will have to accept the idea that the casino is now part of the Philadelphia experience for anyone.
Inside of the SugarHouse casino one can find 1,600 slot machines and 40 tables for games like roulette and poker. Over $ 1 billion in gaming taxes are expected to flow towards the City of Philadelphia in the first five years of activity.
The complex is located on the site of the former Jack Frost Sugar Refinery and the construction costs were estimated at about $550,000. The casino’s offer, besides the gaming area, includes a 3000 car garage, a 500-room hotel, a spa and a 30,000-square-foot event center.

Katy Perry's 'Sesame Street' controversy followed up by 'True Blood' parody, 'True Mud'

2010-09-23T13:20:00.000-07:00

HBO;YouTube

'True Blood' stars Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer are parodied in 'Sesame Street's' new promo, 'True Mud.' WATCH VIDEO below.

"Sesame Steet" appears to be trading in the alphabet for the adult set.

On the heels of PBS' announcement that it would be pulling Katy Perry's cleavage-heavy "Hot N Cold" duet with Elmo from the 41st season, the series has released another adult oriented clip.

In "True Mud," the show riffs off "True Blood," HBO's hyper sexual vampire series starring Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer.

After opening with a song virtually identical to the opening track of the HBO show, an orange muppet with a coif like Bill Compton's enters a diner and asks a Sookie-stye waitress with blond hair for some True Mud.

"He must be one of them grouches! Grouches love mud!" some nearby patrons cry, imitating the townsfolk in "True Blood's" first season who gasped at Bill Compton's arrival in an otherwise human bar.

Muppet Sookie brings out some True Spud, by accident, and gives the young viewers a little rhyming lesson.

In the end, the customer jumps into a giant bath of mud.

The parody comes the same day that "Sesame Street" producers opted not to air a segment in its 41st season that features Katy Perry singing a duet with Elmo while dressed in a low-cut yellow-green heart-shaped dress, a sheer piece of material covering her ample cleavage.

"In light of the feedback we've received on the Katy Perry music video which was released on You Tube only, we have decided we will not air the segment on the television broadcast of Sesame Street, which is aimed at preschoolers," the show's producers said in a statement. "Katy Perry fans will still be able to view the video on You Tube."

In the video, which earned over 1 million views on YouTube Monday, Perry is seen bouncing after Elmo while singing a version of "Hot N Cold" that focuses on the puppet waffling over their play date instead of an up-and-down relationship.

"You can practically see her t---," one person commented, according to the website. "That's some wonderful children's programming."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dAZ1-nF3VI

Conservatives split on GOP's new 'Pledge To America,' unveiled by House Republicans

2010-09-23T13:11:00.000-07:00

Thursday, September 23rd 2010, 3:01 PM

Applewhite/AP

House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio is seen at a lumber company in Sterling, Va., Thursday, to announce the Republicans "Pledge to America" agenda.

Not everyone is as wild about the GOP's latest "Pledge to America" as House Minority Leader John Boehner. (Click through the next page to read the document in its entirety.)

While liberals have predictably slammed the Republicans' plan, unveiled Thursday, to fix the country, the pledge is getting mixed views from conservative pundits, some of whom argue the 21-page document is all bark and no bite.

Conservative blogger Erick Erickson called the pledge the "most ridiculous thing to come out of Washington since George McClellan."

Erickson blasted the document for not providing specific, long-term solutions.

"Yes, yes, it is full of mom-tested, kid-approved pablum that will make certain hearts on the right sing in solidarity," he wrote on his blog, Redstate.com. "But like a diet full of sugar, it will actually do nothing but keep making Washington fatter before we crash from the sugar high."

The pledge gathers familiar talking points for Republicans, such as cutting taxes and slashing government spending. It comes at a time when the GOP is gearing up for the midterm elections and hoping to gain majorities in Congress.

The pledge is taking a page from the 1994 GOP playbook when the Republicans touted their "Contract with America," which offered a specific plan of action for a GOP Congress. That year the Republicans gained control of the House.

Similarly, the new pledge may counter the peception that the GOP has adopted a strategy of rejecting every Democratic bill without having solutions of their own.

Conservative commentator and former Bush speechwriter David Frum echoed Erickson's disapproval but said he's not surprised that the document offers nothing new.

"Did you seriously imagine that they would jeopardize the prospect of victory and chairmanships by issuing big, bold promises to do deadly, unpopular things?" asked Frum.

He also said the "Pledge to America" is a pledge to do nothing and even goes against what the Tea Party stands for.

"Tea party activists have been claiming all year that there exists in the United States a potential voting majority for radically more limited government," Frum wrote. "The Republican ‘Pledge to America' declares: Sorry, we don't believe that."

Of course, not all conservatives outright decried the pledge. Some, like syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin, said they were cautiously optimistic.

"Sure, signing off on political pledges is a little like ordering X-ray glasses from a comic book -- you just know it's not going to be nearly as good as advertised -- but I like the GOP's effort so far," she wrote.

And Tony Perkins, president of the conservative, Christian lobbying organization, The Family Research Council, said the pledge is "not exceptional, but it is satisfactory."

"It does lay a foundation to build upon, and it moves congressional Republicans to a place of public acknowledgment that values issues are to be a part of the conservative way forward," he added.

Dustin Moskovitz the youngest billionaire on the Forbes rich list

2010-09-23T06:45:00.001-07:00

Forbes have just released there annual USA rich list, with Dustin Moskovitz worth $1.4 billion how was Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard room mate and Facebook’s third employee, he owns a 6% share of Facebook. He left the facebook organisation in 2008 to started Asana, a software company for individuals and small companies.
Dustin Moskovitz who at age 26 is the youngest billionaire on the Forbes rich list,
Mark Zuckerberg the co fonder of facebook is said to be worth more than $6.9 billion in August 2010.

Mark Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz have some way to go if they want to get the the top of the list and no doubt that they look up to him, because Bill Gates is top of the pack with a estimated $54 billlon, mostly made from microsoft corporation, followed by Warren Buffett with a cool $45 billion, who is also Bill Gates bridge partner strangely enough.

Unfortunately for Steve Jobs (founder of Apple) is only worth $6.1 billion, hopefully he will create a lot of hype around the next few iphone launches and starts to catch them up, which shouldn’t be to hard if they go like the last one, which netted he with more than 3 million units sold since April.

Bishop Eddie Long Cancels Tom Joyner Radio Interview, Attorney Shows Up In His Place

2010-09-23T06:08:00.000-07:00

Bishop Eddie Long | Radio interview, press conference canceled in wake of 3rd lawsuit

By Megan Matteucci and Christian Boone

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

8:42 a.m. Thursday, September 23, 2010

Mega-church leader Bishop Eddie Long has canceled a previously announced appearance on the Tom Joyner Morning Show Thursday after a third man filed a lawsuit accusing the prominent minister of using his pastoral influence to coerce him into a sexual relationship. In addition, Long's attorneys canceled plans for a press conference to address the growing scandal.

The syndicated radio show, heard locally on Kiss 104.1, had issued a press release saying he would discuss the allegations. However, the show's Roland Martin, who was scheduled to interview Long at 7:15 a.m., said on his Twitter account early Thursday that "the lawyers have made the decision that due to the third lawsuit that Bishop not to do interviews tomorrow."

Craig Gillen, an attorney for Long, was interviewed on the radio program instead. Gillen said there was "miscommunication" about a press conference today, and that there would not be one . On Wednesday a Long representative issued a release to media members that a press conference would be held Thursday.

A lawsuit filed Wednesday by Jamal Parris, 23, a former member of New Birth Missionary Baptist Church, claims Long made Parrish call him “Daddy” and coerced him into sexual acts.

The suit, similar to two filed on Tuesday (Read a PDF of one of the earlier lawsuits), accuses Long of using his power to force the plaintiff into a sexual relationship. In exchange, Long placed Parris and the two other men on the church’s payroll, bought them cars and other gifts, and took them on lavish trips, according to the suits filed in DeKalb County Superior Court.

Long adamantly denies the allegations.

Stephen M. Brown, senior vice president of media strategy at MS & L’s Atlanta office, questioned the time it’s taken Long to make a personal statement about the allegations.

“Something definitive needs to be said, for sure,” he said. “I think he needs to explain what the relationship was between himself and the people making these allegations and detail any misunderstandings."

Parris' allegations are similar to claims made by Anthony Flagg, 21, and Maurice Robinson, 20, who filed suits Tuesday.

Robinson and Flagg say Long began having inappropriate relations with them when they were 16. They are seeking a trial by jury and unspecified damages.

“It is unfortunate that these young men have chosen to take this course of action,” Long's attorney, Craig Gillen, told the AJC Tuesday night.

Parris and his mother joined the church in 2001 when he was 14.

Within two weeks, Long gave Parris his personal cell phone number, the suit alleges.

Their relationship intensified during the 2004-05 school year, with Long often inviting Parris to his guesthouse on Snapfinger Road.

"Initially, Long engaged in sexual touching during their encounters and then escalated the activity to oral sodomy and other acts of sexual gratification," the suit reads. "Long would discuss the Holy Scripture to justify and support the sexual activity."

Parris claims he left the church in 2009 "disillusioned, confused and angry."

Attorney B.J. Bernstein, who is representing the three plaintiffs, has said they do not want to comment. Phone calls left with them and their relatives were not returned.

Meanwhile, gubernatorial candidate Roy Barnes has canceled a Friday morning fundraiser that Long was to co-host.

"While these allegations are troubling, we will refrain from commenting until all the facts are known,” Barnes spokesman Emil Runge said in a prepared statement.

Bernstein claims Long abused his pastoral relationship with the men and convinced them that the sexual relationships were a “healthy component of [their] spiritual lives.”

Parris’ suit claims that Long took him on trips on his private jet as far away as Trinidad and Honduras.

On some of the trips with Robinson and Flagg, Long would use the alias “Dick Tracy” when he checked into hotels. According to online service Accurint, a Dick Tracey Long lives in Lithonia at the same address as Eddie L. Long.

The three suits each allege 11 counts, including fraud and negligence, against Long, the 25,000-member church and the Longfellows Youth Academy.

The three plaintiffs were each members of the academy, which is aimed at helping men “love, live and lead.”

Two of the men have criminal records, including a recent arrest for a burglary at Long’s office.

In June, Robinson and Anthony Boyd were charged with using a secretary’s key to enter Long’s personal office at the Lithonia church. Robinson and Boyd, who were captured on surveillance cameras, took an iPod, iPad and jewelry, according to a police report.

The case is still pending, said a spokesman for the district attorney.

Bernstein said Robinson and Flagg, who was there the night of the burglary but not charged, were angry at Long and seeking retaliation after learning he was involved with other men.

Court records show Flagg was charged with simple assault in 2007 and sentenced to an anger management class. A warrant was issued after he failed to show up for court, court records show.

After that arrest, Long had Flagg move into a friend's house in Lithonia, the suit alleges. Flagg was still attending Miller Grove High School at the time, but his mother thought the move would be good for him, Bernstein said.

Instead, Long used that time to engage in sex acts with Flagg, the suit alleges.

Despite that, Flagg, and Robinson, both graduated from Miller Grove in 2008. They still live in DeKalb. Parris now lives in Colorado.

The sex acts occurred when the men were 16, which is the legal age of consent in Georgia, Bernstein said. But Bernstein said some of the acts which occurred at hotels in other states could be considered criminal, which is why she contacted the U.S. Attorney’s Office, Bernstein said.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney said Justice Department policy prohibits him from confirming or denying any possible investigations.

DeKalb school board member Eugene Walker, who has known Long for more than 20 years, said he did not believe the allegations.

“Ever since I have known him, he has reached out and lifted up our young people,” Walker said. “These allegations are absolutely not true. They have accused me of a whole lot of wrong things and they, like this, weren’t true. He’s a great servant and I can’t say anything wrong about him.”

--Staff writers Jeremy Redmon and Shelia Poole contributed to this report

Abbott Laboratories: Similac Recall on Possible Bug Parts in Formula

2010-09-23T05:43:00.001-07:00

Abbott Recalls Similac Formula

Over the last few months there have certainly been a ton of recalls in the United States. This afternoon, we were made aware of yet another recall by Abbott Laboratories, on their Similac baby formula. Abbott Laboratories has initiated a recall on approximately 5 million boxes of the powdered baby formula called Similac because of the possibility that parts of beetles may be within the powder.

The official recall notice is as follows, “Abbott is recalling these products following an internal quality review, which detected the remote possibility of the presence of a small common beetle in the product produced in one production area in a single manufacturing facility.”

Officials with the company are urging consumers who have purchased Similac to check the official website of the company to see if their formula was produced at the plant in which the contamination occurred. The Food and Drug Administration has stated that even if an infant were to drink the contaminated formula, there are no major health risks involved besides a possible belly ache.

Abbott Laboratories is a pharmaceutical and medical product company with close to 90,000 employees, and markets it’s products to over 130 countries around the globe. The publicly traded company has it’s headquarters in Abbott Park, Illinois, and has been in operation for over 120 years. The Contaminated Similac has only been shipped within the US, Puerto Rico, Guam, and the caribbean.

Zuckerberg overtakes Jobs and Murdoch on Forbes rich list

2010-09-23T05:25:00.001-07:00

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has overtaken Apple chief Steve Jobs on the Forbes magazine rich list. Photograph: Christian Alminana/WireImage.com/David Paul Morris/Getty

Mark Zuckerberg probably likes Forbes today: the magazine has named him the 35th richest – as in most valuable – person in the US, passingSteve Jobs (42nd) and Rupert Murdoch (38th) on the way.

The co-founder of Facebook, aged 26, is estimated to be worth $6.9bn (£4.4bn), based on his shareholding in the social networking site, which boasts 500 million members worldwide.

The value is calculated based on recent investments in his company by outside businesses in return for shares. That has tripled since last year – the largest relative increase on this year's Forbes US rich list.

The complete Forbes list of the 400 richest people in the US is topped, as it has been for years, by Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, who has since left it to carry out charitable work in the developing world. His shares in the company are valued at $54bn – up by $4bn from last year.

Zuckerberg is one of only eight members of the US list under 40. Two of the others are co-founders of Facebook – one of them, Dustin Moskovitz, is the youngest on the list, born just eight days after Zuckerberg, and worth $1.4bn. Two others of the under-40 set are the co-founders of Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, both worth $15bn and aged 37, making them equal 11th on the list.

The list shows the dominance of technology companies in creating value in the US. Out of the top 50, 13 are in technology companies. After Gates, the third most valuable is Larry Ellison, chief executive of the database company Oracle ($27bn); other technology companies including Microsoft, Amazon (Jeff Bezos, 18th with $12.6bn), Apple (Jobs is valued at $6.1bn from his shares in Apple and Disney Pixar), SAS Institute (which makes business analytics software), Google (Eric Schmidt, the chief executive, is 48th at $5.45bn), eBay (co-founder Pierre Omidyar is 47th with $5.5bn). Murdoch, the News Corp chairman and chief executive, is valued at $6.2bn.

The listing also shows that the stock market has been kind to the billionaires: where last year, a fortune of $950m was enough to get you into the top 400, the entry price has risen again to $1bn. In all, the 400 are worth a total of $1.37tn, compared with $1.27tn last year – an increase of nearly 8%, compared to the stock market's rise of just 1%.

Most benefited from growth in their companies: after a dismal 2009, when 314 out of the 400 saw a fall in their wealth in the wake of the 2008 collapse of Lehman Brothers and the banking crisis, the top 10 this year gained $24.9bn in value (after dropping $40bn in value last year), and 217 of the list are now worth more than a year ago. Only 84 have seen decreases in their calculated wealth

'American Idol' Judge Jennifer Lopez: Everything You Need To Know!

2010-09-22T13:21:00.001-07:00

Next season, Jennifer Lopez will be the female face of the "American Idol"judges' panel. She picks up where Ellen DeGeneres, Kara DioGuardi and, yes, Paula Abdul left off. Lopez, of course, will be joined by sole original "Idol" judge Randy Jackson and fellow newbie Aerosmith frontman Steven Tyler. But while Lopez will be new to the show, her career timeline begins nearly two decades ago.

In the early 1990's, the Bronx-born entertainer got a gig as a dancing "fly girl" on the groundbreaking comedy series "In Living Color." Lopez was really there to serve as background talent to would-be superstars like Jim Carrey, Jamie Foxx and the Wayans brothers, but Hollywood was soon calling on her. She starred first in 1995's "Money Train," before landing the lead role in the biopic "Selena." The film allowed Lopez to display her abilities not only as an actress, but as a singer. That same year, she starred in "Anaconda." A part opposite George Clooney in 1998's Steven Soderbergh-directed "Out of Sight" made it clear that Jennifer was climbing the ranks.

Little did anyone know, however, that Lopez was also plotting her musical path. She released her debut album, On the 6, in '99 and the record made her a certifiable pop star thanks to hits like "If You Had My Love" and "Waiting for Tonight." On the 6 also featured the duet "No Me Ames" with Marc Anthony, whom she later married in 2004.

But Lopez didn't abandon the movie business. After appearing in the 2000 psychological thriller "The Cell," she turned up in a string of romantic comedies, including "The Wedding Planner," "Maid in Manhattan" and "Monster-In-Law." In the '03 action flick "Gigli," Lopez mixed business with pleasure, co-starring with beau Ben Affleck. But the pair's high-profile engagement fared just as badly as the movie did at the box-office; "Bennifer" called it off that same year. (The duo appeared together again, at least onscreen, in Kevin Smith's "Jersey Girl," though Lopez only had a small role in it.)

When she wasn't busy with her A-List acting career, J.Lo managed to squeeze out several more albums: J.Lo (2001); This Is Me ... Then (2002);Rebirth (2005); and Como Ama una Mujer and Brave, both 2007. Those projects spawned massive hits like "Love Don't Cost a Thing" and "Jenny From the Block." Not content with chart- and box-office success, Lopez also conquered the fashion and fragrance industries, with her clothing lines and a series of top-selling perfumes eventually selling at major retailers.

Earlier this year, her rom-com "The Back-Up Plan" hit theaters, but she seemed to suffer a musical setback when her latest album, Love?, was indefinitely postponed. By summer 2010, though, Lopez was back in the headlines as one of a number of stars rumored to be replacing the departing "Idol" judges. While blogger Perez Hilton was critical of Lopez as a possible selection, her onetime "How I Met Your Mother" co-star, Neil Patrick Harris, was rooting for her.

"She's great. I have nothing bad to say about her. She's nice, crazy talented, super-gorgeous, has things to say about people," he raved. "[She has] good strong opinions so I think she'd be a great fit."

What do you think of Jennifer joining "AI" as a judge? Tell us your thoughts in the comments!