May the Light Returning at the Solstice of Winter bring joy and gladness.

To raise awareness of AIDS in Africa, people from 156 countries recently came together and sang the classic Beatles hit, “All You Need is Love”. The effort and the video are both earthy, joyful, authentic, and touching. Please share it with your friends and some strangers, too, so we can flood 2010 with love.

The geek-o-sphere has been rife with rumor and speculation regarding Apple’s next big paradigm-shifting network device. Mashable writer, Barb Dybwad, titled her latest article about these devices, “The Age of the Internet Tablet is Nigh“. Call it the Apple Tablet or the Apple Touch, either way it will be a ubiquitous technology that has the potential to liberate computer users from being anchored to a desktop or an otherwise stationary networked access point. Folks are speculating that with e-reader capabilities, traditional print media – newspapers, books, and magazines – will migrate for survival to Tablet platforms.  Digitimes is reporting that Foxconn has a projected release timeline for the 1st quarter of 2010. Apple has rented a stage at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts for Wednesday, 27 January 2010, to make a major product announcement. With this much chatter about a rumored device, we predicts the Tablet will be available in the 1st quarter of 2010.

Gizmodo has its typically great article with much circulating geek information about this new piece of Apple gadgetry. Here is Gizmodo’s post and Mashable’s gallery of pix. Price is projected to be between $650-$800 USD. iLounge, however, has the scoop from its highly reliable insider source: check out 10 New Details on the Apple Tablet, with much new information.

The Apple Tablet could do for data access what the iPhone did for smartphones. As well, with a proposed built-in 3G and soon 4G wireless service, the device could start the trend toward practical devices used to access the data cloud in daily life. Consider the data padds in Star Trek, where every sentient race had them and they were used in literally every setting: is this future now on us? With the rapid convergence of augmented reality, tablet devices will soon be ubiquitous and afford universal data cloud access, along with electronic health management tools, adjunctive human memory features, and immediately recognized devices for home audio, video, and house electronics, as well as ultimately providing videophones. Could we be witnessing the replacement soon of mobile phones, laptops, notebooks, and desktops?

Star Trek PADD: Does it look familiar?

Mashable’s and The Mac Observer’s list of probable technologies for the Tablet include:

• 10 inch touchscreen
• on screen keyboard
• no phone service or 3G/4G
• wireless connectivity like iPod to iTunes
• e-reader/e-book capabilities
• front-facing camera (hello, video!)

Given that Apple has just brought back Michael Tchao, one of the original Apple Newton developers, this device’s technological reach is assured. Another well-designed and practical hardware device from Apple will shape future information and creative technologies. One question: does this now mean that our smartphones will slowly disappear, as the Tablet or Touch could have videophone capabilities? 2010 could be another year that reshapes how and with what convergent technologies we will communicate with each other.

In March 2009, the National Park Service listed Blair Mountain in the National Register of Historic Places. Unfortunately, heavy lobbying by Big Coal resulted in the Chief of the National Register for the National Park Service, Carol Schull, removing Blair Mountain for the register, paving the way for coal companies to pursue permits for mountaintop removal mining on the mountain. This decision came from intense pressure, as the coal mining companies want to mine the land at Blair Mountain, so they can dig for coal and destroy the ecosystem.

We must not let them.

Such wanton disregard for the Earth, for the regional people and historic culture of Appalachia, and for federal institutions like the National Register of Historic Places is an appalling abuse of corporate power and smacks strongly of profiteering and greed. This situation, with the exception of the setting, is virtually identical to the one in the recent record-breaking movie, Avatar . When 10,000 people clashed in 1921 with coalmining companies, fighting for the right to unionize, the battle for Blair Mountain lasted 10 days, fomenting a powerful and historic regional rebellion. Now, the fight for Blair Mountain must ramp up or we stand to lose a national historic monument and damage to the land, streams, forests, homes, lives, and the centuries-old culture of Appalachia will be permanent. We must stand with our ancestors and honor the legacy of the Battle of Blair Mountain.

We can stop this madness and here are some resources to reverse this decision.

Related articles by Zemanta

• JPMorgan Chase Cashes in on Destroying Appalachian Mountains (treehugger.com)
• Rahall: EPA drops objection to W.Va. surface mine (sfgate.com)
• It’s Only Appalachia (dailykos.com)

Using off-the-shelf products that interface with Google Earth and Street View, Liquid Galaxy is an amazing visual feast. It uses the vast data being gathered by Google to go 10,000 feet below the ocean, to soar into the atmosphere from Europe to the USA, and more. Check out the live demo at TED by Google engineer, Jason Holt.

For being generally mean-spirited, small-minded, closed-hearted, inhumane, selfish, and for perpetrating emotional violence on the American people and the world, these folks and institutions have made it to the Jimboland Jots Hall of Famous Assholes.

1. Karl Rove – for crimes against the American people
2. George H. W. Bush – refused to show respect for Senator Edward (Ted) Kennedy by declining to go to his funeral, although every other living American President attended
3. George W. Bush Jr – see Karl Rove
4. Dick Cheney – see Karl Rove
5. Rush Limbaugh – for hypocrisy of the highest order; fundamentally he is anti- and un-American
6. Ann Coulter – for being such a negative, hateful bitch
7. Phyllis Shlafly – see Ann Coulter
8. Stephen Baldwin – a good lookin’, homophobic, propaganda-swillin’ jerk
9. Newt Gingrich – see top 5 entries
10. Republican Party (USA) – for being homophobic, racist, sexist regressives
11. Pat Robertson – famous for blaming every disaster on gay people or otherwise demonizing the suffering, yet persists in calling himself a “man of ‘God’”; fundamentally he is anti- and un-American
12. Michael Savage – see Republican Party and Ann Coulter
13. DEA – for wrecking countless lives because of marijuana hysteria and propaganda
14. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) – see Republican Party
15. The Roman Catholic Church – see Republican Party
16. Alabama Senator Larry Dixon – for stating that medical marijuana makes people with cancer into lesbians (there are countless lesbians now laughing their BUTTS off)
17. US Supreme Court Justice Anton Scalia – for being a generally anti-1st Amendment, anti-freedom, anti-gay, anti-everything pompous fool
18. Maggie Gallagher and the National Organization for Marriage for promoting lies, hatred, and fear of gay people
19. Glenn Beck – major shill for Republican and Mormon lies and propaganda
20. Senator Joe Lieberman – for blocking any progress on the 2009 health care reform bill
21. Sarah Palin – for giving brainless beauty queens a really bad name and for showing her inhumanity by permitting Alaskans to kill defenseless bears and wolves in the dead of winter from helicopters
22. Teabaggers (so-called Tea Party) – for having the audacity to claim the mantle of the original Boston Tea Party activists; for their regressive, racist, homophobic, fearmongering weltanschauung; and for showing extraordinary selfishness in the tired mantras of “no new taxes” and ” less government”

Check this out: in a word, Pivot is brilliant. Creativity in under 5 minutes.

When a man is witness to a murder and takes pictures of the killer, he has to run for his life. During the chase he is able to turn the tables and the prey becomes the hunter. All resulting in an unfortunate ending. The film is designed and animated by: Kevin Megens, Floris Vos, Arno de Grijs, André Bergs Music and sound design by Alex Debicki. Script by Jan Eduards. Produced by il Luster Productions,  2009. For more information, visit Pivot on Vimeo.

Check out this longer trailer for Burton and Depp’s upcoming Disney remake, via Burtonesque sensibilities, of Alice in Wonderland.