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Whiskerino 2009 : Profile : jar : Going up?

2009-12-17T20:27:12Z

YouTube - Blowing up Toy Cars in Slow Motion

2009-12-17T18:58:53Z

Iron Man 2

2009-12-17T05:30:23Z

Oh yes. Looking forward to this.

Climategate goes SERIAL: now the Russians confirm that UK climate scientists manipulated data to exaggerate global warming

2009-12-17T12:28:07Z

Climategate just got much, much bigger. And all thanks to the Russians who, with perfect timing, dropped this bombshell just as the world's leaders are gathering in Copenhagen to discuss ways of carbon-taxing us all back to the dark ages.

Ads To Offset Cost of Unlocked Google Phone?

2009-12-15T18:18:00Z

CWmike writes "Google isn't talking publicly about reported plans to sell a powerful Android-based smartphone called the Nexus One directly to consumers next year, but the idea is already raising eyebrows with analysts. The chief concern is that selling an unlocked phone directly to consumers, probably online, could be twice as expensive as buying one through a carrier. The unlocked approach has largely failed in the US, with the world's biggest phone manufacturer, Nokia, doing poorly with the concept. Nokia recently announced that its two direct-sales stores in Chicago and New York will close early next year, while online sales of unlocked devices will continue. Conceivably, Google could offer its phone at a price comparable to a subsidized phone from a carrier — as long as customers agree to receive mobile ads on the devices. Since advertising is central to Google's revenue model, that approach might make some sense, analysts said. 'Google doesn't want to be in the phone business or the mobile carrier business, so this must be about something else, and that's the advertising business, since Google is in the business of selling ads,' said Kevin Burden, an analyst at ABI Research. In one mobile advertising model being tested in Germany, users agree to receive a certain number of ads on their phones to reduce their monthly cellular and texting rates, although reducing the up-front cost of the actual device is relatively novel. Reinforcing the idea of using mobile advertising with direct sales of unlocked phones, Google bought AdMob in November."

One button to merge all duplicate contacts

2009-12-15T22:54:00Z

Posted by Dominik Marcinski, Software Engineer

Managing a big address book can be a challenge, so it's no surprise that the top request for Google contacts is a fast, easy way to merge duplicate contacts. You've been able to merge contacts one-by-one for a while, but now we've added a single button that merges all your duplicate contacts at once. To clean up your contact list in one fell swoop, just click the "Find duplicates" button in the contact manager, review the merge suggestions (and uncheck any suggestions you don't want merged), and hit the "Merge" button.

If you've been considering getting all your contacts into Gmail or syncing your Gmail contacts to your phone, now's the time to do it. As we've written about previously, you can sync your contacts to a wide variety of devices (including Android, iPhone, Blackberry, SyncML, etc). So if you were dreading spending hours getting your contacts in order, now you can do it with a couple clicks.

Sugarstreak

2009-12-16T00:20:20Z

Choose your own adventure on Youtube!

Apple - Support - iTune 9 Store - black text on black

2009-12-15T23:27:15Z

Android Market Hits 20,000 Apps

2009-12-15T16:22:49Z

Although the iPhone’s App Store is still king, the Android Market is growing fast. According to AndroLib, the online store has just reached the 20,000 mark, doubling in size in the last five months.

Google doesn’t disclose Android Market figures, but AndroLib and others track what apps are added and at what rate. Looking at the different statistics, it’s clear Android development is on the rise.

Given the success of the Droid, November was unsurprisingly the biggest month for both new apps in the English language Android Market, and also the biggest gain month over month.

Other interesting tidbits:

Games account for 15 percent of all applications in the Android Market. That’s pretty similar to the App Store’s own statistics, although the methodologies for categorizing application type might not necessarily be the same.

When it comes to app distribution, 30 percent of apps have been downloaded fewer than 50 times. Only a very small percentage of apps have been downloaded more than 250,000 times, which might indicate that creating a “hit” application for the Android Market requires more nuance than for the iPhone.

2010 is going to be a big year for Android, what with more handsets popping up — including the Nexus One — and a continued industry shift to mobile. Twenty thousand apps is a nice way to kick things off.

What are your favorite Android apps?

Reviews: Android, Android Market, App Store, Google, iPhone

Tags: android, Android Market, trending

Six Pack: Must See TV - Best Games

2009-12-15T16:45:00Z

We're going to mix it up a bit for the Six Pack this week. Instead of discussing and dissecting a number of topics of note throughout the league – I thought I'd pick out the six most interesting/intriguing matchups remaining on the 2009-2010 NBA schedule. So, take out your daily planner and uncap those highlighters; without further adieu, the six best matchups remaining on the 2009-2010 ledger (in chronological order):

1) December 19th – Kings at Bucks: A showdown between the two early leaders in the Rookie the Year race, as Tyreke Evans and the Kings travel to Milwaukee to take on Brandon Jennings and company. These two youngsters have produced some prolific performances over the first six weeks of their NBA careers. Brandon "Young Money" Jennings has exploded out of the gates (leaving, in his wake, a trail of misty-eyed GM's who passed on Jennings in June's draft) – highlighted by a jaw-dropping 55-point masterpiece against the Warriors last month. Meanwhile, Ty Evans is on pace to become just the fourth rookie in NBA history to average at least 20 points, 5 rebounds, and 5 assists in his rookie season. Who are the other three players that currently share that distinction? Oh, just some guys named Oscar Robertson, LeBron James, and Michael Jordan. Not bad company to keep. Jennings and Evans also square off one other time in Sacramento on March 19th, where we can assume each will be looking to make one last statement to the ROY voters…

2) Christmas Day Quintuple-Header: Five Games to keep you entertained after you have unwrapped all your presents and are busy munching on Christmas Eve leftovers… Two contests highlight the action: In the undercard, the Celtics take on the Magic in a potential preview of the Eastern Conference Finals at 2:30 pm EST. Then, at 5:00 pm, the Cavs and the Lakers square off in L.A. This is another potential playoff preview, but if these two teams meet later down the line, it would be in the NBA Finals. Regardless of what happens in June, what we do get as a gift on Christmas Day is the opportunity to watch the 2008 and 2009 MVPs (and two most gifted basketball players on planet Earth) try to one-up each other with the entire country watching. Happy Holidays.

3) January 18th - Magic at Lakers: Plenty of NBA action on Martin Luther King Day, but the best of the bunch is the rematch of the 2009 NBA Finals. Orlando swept L.A. in the 2008-2009 regular season, but the Lake Show took care of business when it mattered most. The last time these two teams saw each other, Kobe was running around looking for someone to hug as the Lakers celebrated the franchise's 15th title. Superman and the re-tooled Magic will be looking for a small measure of revenge.

4) December 27th - Mavericks at Nuggets: Will Mark Cuban make the trip? When the Mavs and Nuggets battled in the Western Conference semis last Spring, things got ugly. Per ESPN: "While walking out of the arena (after Game 3), Cuban saw Kenyon Martin's mother, Lydia Moore, and upon hearing a fan shout that the Nuggets were "thugs", Cuban reportedly looked at Moore and said, "That includes your son." Cuban tried to apologize via his blog but said later he should have contacted Moore and Martin directly with a mea culpa. Martin had this to say about Cuban to HoopsHype.com: "He's a coward. He couldn't face it. You all read the only apology that he's made [on his blog]. The world got to see it before the person who it was meant for got to see it. That tells you how that goes. I ain't never known nobody apology to somebody through other people." While it appears tensions between Moore and Cuban have died down, the Martin-Cuban feud is still on. After saying he would do right by Moore, Cuban added, "I would also like to know if Kenyon is going to take responsibility for his actions rather than hiding behind 'no comment.' Will he apologize to the wife of our staff member that he called a '[expletive] fat pig' immediately after Game 3? Will he apologize to fans that he threatened to, and I'm paraphrasing here, '[expletive] beat the [expletive] down' during Game 4?"

5) February 13th-14th - All-Star Weekend in Dallas: It's been a long, long time since the NBA All-Star festivities generated significant national buzz – but this year could different. If LeBron James delivers on his promise to compete in the Slam Dunk contest, sports fans across the globe will tune in. Also, the new Dallas Stadium will play host, meaning we could have the largest crowd ever to watch a domestic basketball game on that Sunday night (which, it turns out, may also be Tracy McGrady's season debut).

6) March 14th – Raptors at Blazers: The good people of Portland are generally (maybe stereotypically?) considered to be a mild-manned, tranquil, eco-friendly, and easy-going community. You'll get see plenty of Birkenstocks, coffee shops, and friendly grins if you are walking around town. However, the people of Portland are also passionate – and one of their passions happens to be Blazer basketball. Thus, if you forsake the franchise, be prepared to feel the wrath. Message boards and blogs were burning up this summer when Hedo Turkoglu left GM Kevin Pritchard at the altar. Portlanders were outraged that Turk had agreed to a handshake deal, only to bail and slink out of town at the 11th hour after Hedo's wife apparently convinced him to sign with Toronto instead. Worse yet, Portland didn't even realize how much the move would actually hurt the team, as small forwards Nicolas Batum and Travis Outlaw would both later sustain serious injuries – and the player Pritchard ended up throwing money at (Andre Miller) has failed to fit… This date in the middle of March will be the first (and only) time this season that jilted and angry Blazers fans get to voice their displeasure to Turkoglu directly. Expect them to make the most of it and expect the boos to rain down from all corners of the Rose Garden.

Honorable Mentions:

January 5th - Rockets at the Lakers: Trevor Ariza will receive his championship ring when he heads back to the Staples Center for the first time as a member of the Rockets. After he tries the ring on for size, he'll have to deal with an ornery Ron Artest in his mug for the next two hours.

January 8th - Lakers at Blazers: After playing 17 of their first 21 games at home, this will be one of the Lakers many road contests in 2010. And this is one road destination that has been extremely unpleasant this decade. L.A. has improbably lost eight straight games at the Rose Garden. You know that doesn't sit well with Kobe, as the Blazers could be a dangerous potential first-round matchup for the Lakers (if the season ended today, the Lakers would be the #1 seed and the Blazers would be #8).

Sometime in early January(maybe) - Los Angeles?: Whenever/wherever Blake Griffin makes his NBA debut…

January 22nd – Lakers at Knicks: Kobe authored a virtuoso 61-point performance on Broadway last season. What will he does this season as an encore during his lone Garden Party this year?

April 4th - Sunday Doubleheader on ABC - Cavs at Celtics and Spurs and Lakers: Four of the top teams in the NBA. Safe to assume they'll possess four of the top records in the league. With the season winding down, could homecourt advantage be on the line? Certainly a potential preview of playoff possibilities…

April 12th – Wizards at Knicks: Unless they make the playoffs, this will be the Knickerbockers final home game played at MSG before July 1st 2010. (So, yeah, it will be the Knickerbockers final home game played before July 1st 2010.) The question is: Who will the Garden faithful be cheering for when the Knicks next take the court? Will Toney Douglas still be wearing #23, or maybe someone else?

Joe Bastardi "It's Ice not Fire You're Going to Be Worried about Down the Road"

2009-12-15T16:15:00Z

Joe Bastardi interviewed by Don Imus regarding Global Warming, "Climategate", etc.

If you've read my blog long enough, you'll know that I'm skeptical of some of the premises behind Global Warming/Climate Change.

One of the meteorologists that I admire makes some very valid historical points about how the Earth's climate is constantly shifting.

Try to ignore the political banter, but pay close attention to Joe Bastardi's historical cycle comparisons.

Rich Daddy God

2009-12-15T18:22:38Z

Shared by wvpv
@challies

My friends know of my strange affection for bizarre ChurchMerch. A while back I posted some photos of Joel Osteen's Your Best Life Now board game. A little while ago we had some friends over to give it a shot. It was horrifying beyond all imagining. In fact, it was completely unplayable. It really made no sense at all. But we all did enjoy the part where we had to look into a mirror and say affirming things about ourselves (No joke! That's actually a component of the game). Here I am holding on to my miracle. This was about as much as the game offered...

And here's the gang, listening attentively as we try to untangle the ridiculous instructions:

Anyway, Your Best Life Now is very clearly a leading candidate for the title of the worst board game ever.

But then my friend Chisso surprised me with the gift of another gem. It is a board game ("Table Game Box") called Rich Daddy God. He did some research and came up with the story behind it. Apparently it was created in Taiwan by Mesiah Enterprise Co. specifically for the Chinese Christian market. It was then translated into English (Engrish?) and exported. I tried to find more information about it but came up dry. It is one of the few times that Google has completed abandoned me.

On the box is a star which offers the following description of the game's features: "Paul's travelogue. A great game suitable for all age group. And with graceful sticker." Along the bottom is this text: "By every words and sentences from the Lord play with you together enjoy to have fun full of blessing achieve in your life." Got that? Who doesn't want to have fun full of blessing achieve in your life? I hope for that every day.

The game basically plays like Monopoly, at least in so far as I could figure out the instructions. In place of properties are the cities that Paul traveled to during his three missionary journeys. Instead of buying properties you build churches. And instead of paying rent when landing on a space that is already-owned, you have to pay a tithe of the total value of that property as an "offering." In place of a banker is an angel. Play continues either for a set amount of time or until all the players are bankrupt (though I assume they actually mean all the players but one). There are a few other rules, such as upgrading a church to an international church much as one upgrades a house to a hotel in Monopoly. But the rules take only two pages to explain so are quite basic.

There are four characters in the game: Timothy, Paul, Barnabas and Philemon. This must be the only game in the world that allows you to play Philemon!

(Click through to read the rest of the article...)

Timothy (in the yellow robe) is my personal favorite (and be sure to check out the picture of him on the box). This must be the face he made while Paul circumcised him. Philemon (second from the right) looks like a Mafia hit man while Barnabas (far left) looks inebriated and Paul (far right) looks like a televangelist.

The game board simply lists the various cities Paul passed through on his journeys. There are the equivalent of two "Go" spaces where the player is given an injection of cash. Each city has a value (if you wish to buy a church there).

In a major difference from Monopoly, the cities also have cards associated with them. Players are given these cards when they land on any of the churches. The type of card the player receives varies depending on what church he lands on. The types of card are: Revelation, Blessing, Prayer, Repentance, Anointment and Temptation. Most of them include some kind of a penalty. Some of the cards are, in a word, bizarre.

Here are a few of the more notable ones:

"You're tempted by Satan: want to have famous car in life, wanna tell everyone that you're a rich man. You lose US $900 and back two steps." "Dear Jesus Christ I repent to you, I admit that I was lied to my lover and sold my friends just care about myself. In Jesus' name I repent Amen. Back 3 steps." "You have anointment of God: Go Troas to call the people who halitosis into the kingdom of God. God will heal." And so on. They get stranger and stranger.

And you know you wanted to see the "graceful sticker" that is referenced on the cover. Well, here it is. Isn't it graceful?

While we have not yet tried playing Rich Daddy God, neither do we expect to. It looks even more unplayable than Your Best Life Now and it's probably less fun. And yet somehow it exists. It seems that Mesiah Enterprises Co. has disappeared, or at least that they have stopped distributing this game. I doubt anyone will mourn its passing. But at least they've given me a swell new game for my collection. I'll treasure it always.

Sponsor:

Goodbye Twitterfeed, Hello Google

2009-12-15T13:04:37Z

Google Short URLs (goo.gl) and FeedBurner's Socialize feature now allows blog publishers to quickly and automatically push updates on to Twitter without using an external service.

Everything We Know About the Nexus One - And Plenty We Still Don't | AndroidGuys

2009-12-14T19:26:01Z

What a head-spinning weekend this has turned out to be! It seems like every tech site we've visited this weekend has something about the Google Phone/Nexus

28 Punctuation Logo Designs to inspire you!!

2009-12-14T11:15:36Z

You get to enjoy thousands of logos over the net everyday but have you ever noticed those unusual features which make a logo stand out among the crowd. Including unique features to a logo design makes it unforgettable and extraordinary for the viewers. Here I would like to appreciate the idea of punctuating the logos …. commas, colons, semicolons, exclamation marks, question marks and brackets can amazingly decorate your logo designs.

Usually, punctuation marks are ignored and not considered of much use in logo designing. However, today I have rounded up 28 creative logo designs stylized with Punctuation Marks. This collection will surprise you by showcasing the unique use of punctuation in logo designing.

Exhaust

Negative

Person Tage

Sh*talking

Branding

Numerical Man

Look!

Wynne Designs

Luv Talk

Fire Embrion

Enfinitive

Up

Schizophrenic

nhow

Ingenio

Quotekid

Rawik

God Press

Cloud Corner

Inequality Records

Punch Quotes

Earth

What?

studpaper

Talkmore

Enrecell

Web Company

Restyling

Ouch!

Nook filesystem found on microSD card

2009-12-14T05:03:00Z

Hackers working on the Barnes & Noble Nook have gotten a huge gimmee. nookDevs member poutine took the back off of his and discovered that the device’s filesystem is stored on a 2GB microSD card instead of onboard flash. Mounting the card revealed three ext3 partitions. You can find a listing of the files here. It’s mostly a stock Cupcake build with a few additions like ./system/app/instorewifi-release.apk. The debug interface, adb, is included so its a matter of adding it to the startup script to begin talking to the device over USB.

When the nook was announced, I was interested because it’s an Android device but worried that it would be too locked down to be fun. This is an amazing discovery and being able to modify the filesystem directly will surely make hack development much easier. The back is just screwed on so it isn’t that difficult to remove and since it’s under an external cover I can imagine people keyholing it to get easy access to the card. Veteran Android hackers like JesusFreke have already jumped in to help out. You can find them actively working in #nookdevs on Freenode.

A Google Phone Called Nexus One?

2009-12-14T02:37:51Z

According to several sources, Google has given a new Google phone to its employees. It’s apparently called Nexus One, Android 2.1-based, looks like this and this, has a touch screen, and is built by Taiwan’s HTC but with no HTC branding and full design control by Google. InformationWeek quotes he Wall Street Journal saying that “Google designed virtually the entire software experience behind the phone, from the applications that run on it to the look and feel of each screen. Google appears to want to throw its brand behind a device more directly, designing a phone without working with the wireless carriers that often dictate what features they allow on their networks.” The WSJ predicts that the phone will be available in 2010, apparently (says All Things Digital) sold by Google “without getting a wireless carrier to subsidize the handset” (though they might get infrastructure help from companies like T-Mobile).

I suppose when Google gives something to every employee they’re not afraid of, perhaps indeed hope for leaks, in order to give an early promotion to their products. Google in a blog post say they consider their product “the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative hardware from a partner with software that runs on Android to experiment with new mobile features and capabilities”. Sharing this with employees from “across the globe” means “they get to test out a new technology and help improve it.”

To get a feeling for just how public this is, consider that Google put up a special Nexus One game page publicly at android.com/holidays. Non-Nexus devices will be redirected to the Android homepage, but you can still see it loading or look at the source code and some of the included images (the special Android bots are called Abominable Applet, Robo-Ralphie, Runtime Rudolph, Nutcracker Hacker, SQL Snowman, Candycane Coder, Killer App Kringle, Patch Penguin, Christmas Cookie, Emulator Elf, Rock Star, and Gmail Gifty). Note you can also turn off JavaScript in your browser to avoid the redirect. The user agent string Google looks for in the code is
Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 2.1; en-us; Nexus One Build/ERD62) AppleWebKit/530.17 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/530.17

And what’s with the name, Nexus One? John Gruber writes, “Nexus is the brand name of the series of androids (a.k.a. replicants) in Blade Runner and Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?. The story concerns escaped Nexus-6 models”. (Note Sony also called its Android interface Nexus.)

If you’re a Google employee, please email me some photos of the Nexus One!

[Thanks DPic! Top image by Cory O’ Brien’s, used with permission.]

Update: I asked Cory O’Brien, who shot above photo, for some impressions from using the phone. Cory says he doesn’t work at Google but his friend does, so he was able to play around with the phone:

I don’t have any details on specs, but I can say that the phone felt quick, as the OS was snappy and the touchscreen was just as responsive as my iPhone. Sliding page to page and clicking were all instantaneous. Also, while they were nearly identical in terms of external dimensions, the screen on the Google Phone was about 5mm longer. The phone itself was unbranded with the exception of a small etched Android character on the back, and had a super solid build quality feel to it.

He adds:

The phone was brand new, so it just had all the standard Android apps. I didn’t notice any apps that stood out as being new/unique. (...) The X was part of the boot sequence.

[Thanks Cory!]

[By Philipp Lenssen | Origin: A Google Phone Called Nexus One? | Comments]

[Advertisement] Books about Google available on Ebay

French Military Contributes To Thunderbird 3

2009-12-14T02:28:00Z

fredboboss sends news about Mozilla's email client Thunderbird 3, whose release we noted last week. "Thunderbird 3 contains code from the French military, which decided the open source product was more secure than Microsoft's rival Outlook. The French government is beginning to move to other open source software, including Linux instead of Windows and OpenOffice instead of Microsoft Office. Thunderbird 3 used some of the code from TrustedBird, a generalized and co-branded version of Thunderbird with security extensions built by the French military."

Nexus One: The Google Phone in Pictures [PICS]

2009-12-13T18:59:46Z

Photos of Google’s Nexus One (aka the Google Phone) are – of course – leaking out on Twitter.

The phone is indeed the HTC Passion/Bravo device many suspected, minus any HTC branding. In addition to a Twittered pic, Engadget was smart enough to hop over to Google’s photo-sharing site Picasa and dug up a few more (below).

We gotta say, this is a sleek-looking device. Add this to the fact that it will be sold online and unlocked by Google, and it could be a compelling proposition.

Here’s our Google Phone coverage so far:

1. Nexus One: The Google Phone Has a Name

2. Nexus One: Google Phone Shows Up in Visitor Logs [PIC]

3. Nexus One vs. iPhone: What Google Needs to Succeed

4. Google Phone: Google Confirms “Dogfooding” of New Phone

5. The Google Phone Cometh?

Reviews: Google, Picasa

Tags: google phone, htc, nexus one, trending

Nexus One: The Google Phone Has a Name

2009-12-13T01:18:38Z

It’s just about confirmed now: Google will sell its own phone, built by HTC and named the Nexus One.

It will sell the Google Phone online and unlocked, so you’ll need to buy your cellular service separately. The entire user experience is designed by Google, according to the WSJ. It may resemble the HTC Passion, pictured.

Here are the details so far:

- Software: Android 2.1

- Hardware: HTC

- Specs (according to Jason Howell): Capactive touch screen, on screen keyboard only, thin, scroll ball, and animated desktop wallpaper

- Launch date: Rumored January 2010

- Tweets describe it as “an iPhone on beautifying steroids.”

- Google designed the entire user experience

- Google will sell the phone online, unlocked

- Google is “dogfooding” the Google Phone and has given it to employees all over the world to test it.

Will you have interest in buying a Nexus One? Let us know in the comments.

Reviews: Android, Google

Tags: trending