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	<title>Original Signal - Transmitting Web 2.0</title>
	<link>http://web20.originalsignal.com</link>
	<description>Orginal Signal aggregates the 17 most popular Web 2.0 sites. The main purpose of the site is to provide 
a quick glance on what's happening without using your desktop/web RSS reader. New headlines (since your 
last cookied visit) come in pretty orange, visited ones are grey. All credits go to the authors of these weblogs. 
Without their hard work Original Signal would not exist. Original Signal was inspired by Popurls and the Web 2.0 Workgroup.</description>
	<pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 05:52:15 CET</pubDate>
	<language>en</language>
	
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  <title>It's in the Bag!  The Apple Tablet Computing Device</title>
  <link>http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/its-in-the-bag-the-apple-table.html</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:34:06 CET</pubDate>
  <guid isPermaLink="false">http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/its-in-the-bag-the-apple-table.html</guid>
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  In the past 25 years, the personal computing revolution has evolved from tethered (desktop) to luggable (portable) to joined-at-the-hip (mobile).  Via the iPhone Platform (including iPod Touch), Apple has set the bar for mobile computing by seamlessly integrating computation, communications, and media across hardware, software, and service layers.No less integral, Apple has significantly evolved ecosystem development models by cobbling together developer tools, media relationships, marketplace/e-wallet functions, one-click software distribution, explicit platform governance, and a simple, but compelling, approach to sharing revenue with developers.But, the pièce de résistance has been a touch, tilt, sensor, and virtual keyboard-based user interaction model that has rendered the traditional physical keyboard plus WIMP-based model (i.e., windows, icons, menus, and pointing device) as so last century, the proverbial horse-and-buggy to Apple's Model T.The end result is that the iPhone has become the first truly personal computer; more personal to its owners than the PC ever was, a truth that bubbles to the top again and again when you talk to the 50M (combined) iPhone and iPod Touch owners.Thus, the core thesis of this article is two-fold.  One, that while Apple remains committed to cultivating its position in the legacy desktop /portable segment via the Mac, they understand that they will never be the leader of the PC market.  Two, given their dominance in mobile computing platforms, Apple will expand upon their iPhone strategy by attacking an "undefended hill" (an HP axiom) that's less hospitable to desktops/portables; namely, the bag-carrying consumer (think: purses, backpacks, briefcases, and the like).  The Bag-able Device: from Living Room to Classroom, Café to BusFirst, a market-sizing question.  How many tens of millions of people carry a bag wherever they go that is large enough to accommodate a bookish-sized device?  From a sniff test, would there be room for a really "phat" version of the iPod Touch in your backpack?  Your kid's?  Would you make room?Before answering, imagine that you're kicking back on the couch, with a cappuccino in one hand and a Tablet in the other.  After all, this is a device that is recline-able in the sense that you can comfortably use it from any position that suits you (it's neither overly bulky or hot, and input operations can be performed from any angle you desire).  Moreover, owing to its relative absence of moving parts and exposed interfaces, the Tablet is also slob-friendly, a euphemism for saying that it's not the end of the world if you are eating pizza while using it (less susceptibility to spills, sauces and greasy fingers).  In turn, this means that it's kid-friendly since the dearth of moving parts also means fewer to break.  On top of this, Apple's governance model provides a more direct path for parental controls on what types of apps can be used, and for how long.Taking the Tablet out of your bag, you instantly notice that this is a device that can support multiple modalities in a robust fashion.  A bigger screen means truer multi-touch, richer interaction possibilities, and a personal home theater experience that simply rocks (especially, when wearing decent headphones).  Plus, as iPhone has proven, this is no underpowered computing device.  Skype me? Sure. Video chat? In a snap.  Day planner? C'mon!Now, imagine iPhone's current gaming support scaling up to this device (not to mention the other two thirds of the 100K-app-strong App Store).  (Sidebar: I expect a straightforward upgrade path for developers to port their iPhone Apps to also run on the Tablet, offering tremendous platform leverage to the estimated 120K iPhone App developers.)Moreover, given their iTunes foothold, how much do you want to bet that, coincident to the Tablet launch, Apple pursues a TV 3.0 play (aka, TV Everywhere) powered by a subscription service for music, movies and TV programming?  In one fell swoop, the leverage of a TV 3.0 play could be extended not only to the Tablet, but to the Mac, iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV as well.Who else can match that kind of end-to-end firepower, especially in light of Apple's announcement that the iTunes/App Store Universe is backed by 100M active credit card-backed user accounts?That's also why Apple rebooting the book marketplace   is such a given from where I sit (i.e., look out, Kindle).  A final note: while businesses/enterprises have been less central to the iPhone story to date, I think that the Tablet is a device that is tailor-made for verticals and VAR (value added reseller) channels, with Education, Health Care, Retail, and Field Support as obvious beachheads.Flies in the Ointment: Avoiding the Tyranny of the Either/OrSo what could go wrong?  Apple's challenge is to ensure that consumers never feel like they are being forced to make a binary Either/Or decision between an iPhone, an iPod Touch, a Tablet, and of course, a MacBook.Under the hood, managing this one touches upon core strategic decisions about form-factors, runtime capabilities, and functional symmetries/asymmetries between the different Apple device offerings (read more about Apple's coming Hardware/Software Matrix decisions).At the same time, some of this is market segmentation thinking, and allowing consumers to choose the level of integration, the type of computing model, and the depth of Apple-centric leverage that makes most sense for them.  Why? Because Apple's overriding goal is to grow their portion of the consumer's communications, media, entertainment ,and Engagement Time online, and in concert, their Portion of Spend for those services.  To be clear, though, Apple has already proven that they can navigate this one with the release of iPhone, and the related segmenting decisions relative to iPod Touch and iPod (if anything, the net-out has been a total Halo Effect).  Hence, I am optimistic that not only will they successfully navigate this path with the Tablet, but that they have been planning for this transition for a long, long time.As such, for Apple, a successful Tablet launch is not merely a fuzzy ambition, but rather, it's in the bag.Related Posts:Rebooting the Book: One Apple iPad Tablet at a TimeApple, the 'Boomer' Tablet and the MatrixTouch Traveler: London, Paris and only an iPod Touch  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>Four short links: 13 November 2009</title>
  <link>http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/11/four-short-links-13-november-2.html</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:34:06 CET</pubDate>
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  Open Source Enters The World of Atoms -- an academic statistical analysis of open design.  We indicated that, in open design communities, tangible objects can be developed in very similar fashion to software; one could even say that people treat a design as source code to a physical object and change the object via changing the source.Why I Like Redis (Simon Willison) -- coherent explanation of why Simon likes and uses a particular nosql system. I can run a long running batch job in one Python interpreter (say loading a few million lines of CSV in to a Redis key/value lookup table) and run another interpreter to play with the data that&#8217;s already been collected, even as the first process is streaming data in. I can quit and restart my interpreters without losing any data. And because Redis semantics map closely to Python native data types, I don&#8217;t have to think for more than a few seconds about how I&#8217;m going to represent my data.© kiwiright (Vimeo) -- short documentary about copyright, made to raise awareness of the issues in New Zealand. (just as applicable to the rest of the world)Your Movements Speak For Themselves (Jeff Jonas) -- Mobile devices in America are generating something like 600 billion geo-spatially tagged transactions per day.  Every call, text message, email and data transfer handled by your mobile device creates a transaction with your space-time coordinate (to roughly 60 meters accuracy if there are three cell towers in range), whether you have GPS or not.  Got a Blackberry?  Every few minutes, it sends a heartbeat, creating a transaction whether you are using the phone or not.  If the device is GPS-enabled and you&#8217;re using a location-based service your location is accurate to somewhere between 10 and 30 meters.  Using Wi-Fi?  It is accurate below10 meters. A thought-provoking roundup of the information leakage with modern locative systems. (via TomC on Twitter)  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>Swine Flu Related Appointments up 6250%</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Mashable/~3/RzVhMPRz7nI/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 04:34:03 CET</pubDate>
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  Web-based doctor appointment-setting service ZocDoc has noticed an amazing increase of 6250% in Swine Flu-related appointments over flu-related appointments last year (the numbers have been normalized against time for the increased volume).  There has been an almost 14x increase in swine flu activity since September. Because of the massively increased demand, ZocDoc recently added &#8220;Swine Flu Shot&#8221; as a reason for the visit that patients can specify when searching for a doctor.&#8220;We have seen a dramatic increase in the number of flu-related appointments. Same-day flu appointments have increased by 15x since this time last year. Similarly, last year people made flu-related appointments an average of 4 days in advance. Now it is 48 hours on average, and trending downwards,&#8221; said Oliver Kharraz MD, ZocDoc&#8217;s Chief Medical Officer.H1N1-Related Appointments SpikeZocDoc&#8217;s data comes from the cities in which the company is active (New York and Washington, DC), where they have about 10% of the market.  That&#8217;s not a lot, but enough to be statistically significant, and with influenza now widespread in 47 of 50 states in the US, ZocDoc&#8217;s data can potentially be taken as an analogue for nation-wide activity. Further, the Centers for Disease Control is reporting a similar increase across the US in doctor reports of influenza like illness.One of the reasons swine flu has stayed top of mind in the collective conscious of the public is social media.  In April we were seeing over 10,000 tweets per hour about swine flu, and while that number has dropped, we are still consistently seeing up to 800 tweets per hour, according to Trendrr graphs, during peak times (note: tweets for &#8220;H1N1&#8243; are at approximately the same levels).  Swine flu has clearly become a part of the regular daily conversation.  Certainly in part because of social media sites likes Twitter and Facebook, swine flu has continued to stay top of mind among the public, and that could be a factor in driving increased demand for H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccine shots.The Need for Real-Time Health DataThe most difficult part of supporting the demand, said ZocDoc, has not been adding the technical infrastructure &#8212; that part was as trivial as adding an item to a couple of drop down menus in the patient and doctor user interfaces.  The real challenge has been constantly staying in contact with doctors to make sure that those indicating that they have H1N1 or seasonal flu vaccines actually do have them in stock.  ZocDoc told us they have been very proactive about keeping their information as reliable as possible.&#8220;This all underscores the need for systems that introduce new efficiencies to our healthcare system,&#8221; said Kharraz.  The experience dealing with the swine flu vaccine has been atypical for the company, which rarely has to deal with issues like scarcity and supply and demand that change the availability of a procedure daily.  However, it does point to a possible need for real-time capabilities in online healthcare systems.Real-time could be beneficial not only for patients, but also for doctors and researchers.  When ZocDoc asked doctors when they expected to get more shipments of H1N1 vaccine, about half said not until early 2010.  Real-time information about patients, doctors, and medications could help keep everyone more informed and keep supply ahead of demand.  And that could have a profound impact on the practice medicine, especially during special cases such as a pandemic disease.See also: HOW TO: Track Swine Flu Online and Google Helps You Find a Flu ShotReviews: Facebook, TwitterTags: flu shot, graph, swine flu, trends, zocdoc  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>You Can Go Home Again, Even If It Means Back To Yahoo While Rejecting Google (And Maybe Facebook And Twitter)</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/0Pt3Fv5PEIA/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  This past summer, Daniel Raffel was desired. Google was pushing hard to hire the product manager, we hear from a source. And there are whispers that Twitter and Facebook were also in pursuit of his services. Basically, it seems like he had his choice of the companies in Silicon Valley that everyone wants to work for. So where did he end up? Yahoo.Yahoo hasn't exactly seemed like the ideal place to work over the past couple of years. Besides just the Microsoft acquisition offer distraction (and subsequent search deal), and the CEO shuffle, the company has lost much of its sterling polish that it once had during the dot-com era. But what's even more odd is that Raffel has worked at Yahoo before. It's where he made a name for himself by helping to create Yahoo Pipes, the popular content mashup tool. But a few years ago, Raffel took off to work at Pioneers of the Inevitable, where he helped make Songbird, the open source desktop music player.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>All Aboard The Micro-Message Bus</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/5LrbKoggMOw/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  At the beginning of 2009, during a now-famous strategy meeting, Twitter's executives asked themselves, "Are we building a new Internet?"  At the crux of that question was the realization that Twitter "introduced a new form of communication to the world."  Public micro-messages are now everywhere—on Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, Google, Bing, Yahoo, AIM.  They are infiltrating every part of the Web, particularly as the backbone of realtime search.  Yes, status updates (which are a form of micro-message) existed before Twitter, but it is the growing public nature of these messages which makes them exciting.  For one thing, they need to be public in order to be visible to search engines.  But when Twitter and other companies talk about building a new Internet, they don't mean that 140-character messages are going to replace web pages.  Rather it is that these realtime streams are becoming the center of people's attention on the Web, and sending them off in all different sorts of directions.  These streams are the new Internet not so much because of the micro-content which they contain, but because they are a more efficient means of communication.  Remember, the Internet at its core is a communications system.  The battle going on now between Twitter, Facebook, Google, and others is to control this new realtime layer of communications on the Internet.  Each one wants to be driving the micro-message bus.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>iDroid Wars on Gillmor Gang</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/psu6xycbVe4/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  The Gillmor Gang debated the virtues and otherwise of the smartphone's latest pretender to the iPhone crown: Droid. Michael Arrington led the Droid's faction, with a QVC-like enthusiasm for the power of Any Phone That Runs Google Voice. Of course, he keeps his iPhone and iTouch a handy arm-grab away, but with Droid he may finally have some rationale for excommunicating himself from the Apple bosom.The New York Times' Saul Hansell provided context at the telecom level, while ex-monopoly telecom BT's JP Rangaswami placed his and BT's bet on the future of open platforms such as Android. JP's partner in crime at BT and subsidiary Ribbit, Kevin Marks, supported Arrington's vision of a game-changer in voice, while Robert Scoble was happy to defend the iPhone with faint praise just so he could have something to argue about with Arrington. He also elicits some new CrunchPad details from Mike.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>MySpace Fashion Socializes Content Around Style, Celebrities And Designers</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/bp5e_CNHj_I/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  At the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta outlined the strategy for the social network to perhaps regain some of its former glory: the "socialization of content." While MySpace may not be seeing major growth in terms of new users, the social network is gaining major traction on its communities that are based on niche verticals, such as MySpace Music. Van Natta said that he thinks MySpace has a unique position on the web because of its music deals with all the major labels and the independent ones in the music space. Van Natta's strategy is being applied in other verticals and MySpace Fashion is one niche community that has flown under the radar but features compelling content.MySpace Fashion, which had a significant UI overhaul last week, aggregates news and provides original content about all things fashion and style, including established and unknown designers, clothing, accessories, trends and celebrities. The site and all of its features, which like all for MySpace's niche platforms, can be fully accessed by non-MySpace members, making it a web destination as opposed to an enclosed community. The MySpace fashion community currently has includes over 500,000 MySpace members but site is also being accessed by non-MySpace members who simply want to visit the sites to checkout the latest trends and news about fashion.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>India is morphing into a global R&amp;D hub, but can it ever take on Silicon Valley?</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/PFf8GZzb6Ww/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  When Americans think of the Indian technology sector, they still perceive a nation of call center workers and low-level computer programmers administering databases and updating websites. But while the West was sleeping, Indian IT morphed into a giant R&#38;D machine. Indian companies that started out doing call center and low-level IT work have climbed the value chain to become outsourced providers of critical R&#38;D in sophisticated areas such as semiconductor design, aerospace, automotive, network equipment and medical devices.This is happening as multi-nationals set up their own R&#38;D operations in India and partner with local shops. Both the Palm Pre smart phone and the Amazon Kindle, two of the hottest consumer electronics devices on the market, have key components designed in India. Intel designed its six-core Xeon processor in India. IBM has over 100,000 employees in India. A large number of these are building Big Blue’s most sophisticated software products. Cisco is developing cutting edge networking technologies for futuristic “intelligent cities” in Bangalore. Adobe, Cadence, Oracle, Microsoft and most of the large software companies are developing mainstream products in India.Equally important are the arrival of Indian multi-nationals who are tackling global markets, such as Tata with its dirt cheap Nano car that the company is now positioning for a European market entry and Reva, which recently announced it was planning to build an electric car factory in New York state to address the U.S. market for electric vehicles.What has been missing to date in India, however, is early stage venture activity and the type of grass-roots entrepreneurism that is the hallmark of American capitalism and Silicon Valley.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>It’s Google’s World And Handset Makers Just Live In It</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/TETjvbTsOnI/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  When the Motorola Droid launched this month everyone was amazed that a company so down on its luck was able to put together a well-designed phone running a powerful, "brand new" OS. The whole package - hardware, software, and marketing - seemed flawless. In fact, phones running Android 1.5 now look hopelessly outdated and with 2.0's gesture, CDMA, and search support you'd wonder why handset manufacturers like HTC, LG, Kyocera, and Samsung are using 1.5 at all.The reasons have more to do with Google than any decision on the carriers' part. In fact, according to a source close to the handset business, Google's Android team directly assisted Motorola and Verizon in building the Droid's software from the ground up and is currently assisting another, unknown, handset maker in Korea to create a finely-tuned hardware and software combination. Most important, however, is that this is sort of assistance most manufacturers do not receive and, in the end, they are dinged for running an "older" version of Android.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>Tumblr Shares Stats: 20 Million Uniques, 420 Million Impressions Per Month</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/n5DZ11rChhQ/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  High-school dropout and Tumblr founder David Karp is doing a presentation today at the Eventoblog conference in sunny Sevilla, Spain. In one of his first slides, Karp shared some statistics about Tumblr, which appears to be growing pretty well, pretty quickly.Last August, the Tumblr team shared some growth statistics and claimed 50 million visitors and a healthy 255 million impressions in July 2009. This month (which I reckon is not actually this month but rather October), Tumblr self-reports 20 million unique vistors and 420 million impressions.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>Android 2.0 Source Released, Already Ported To The G1</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/BC63lBo2VRY/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  While Android 2.0 has been floating around on Motorola DROIDs for over a week now, one important chunk of it has been under lock-and-key: the source. Even amongst manufacturing partners, we're told, Google hasn't been completely open; outside of Motorola (and more recently, HTC), most of the other handset manufacturers have been left out in the cold with nothing to keep them warm but Android v1.6. Until tonight, that is.As the sun set over the Silicon Valley last night, Google pushed the source code for Android 2.0 to the Android Open Source Project. Within two hours, the endlessly able Android community had it up and running on the eldest Android of them all, the T-Mobile G1.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>Palm Pixi Review: Not For Everyone, But It Fits A Niche</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/pnB67dmtPL8/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  Palm and Sprint have taken a very different approach to the launch of the Pixi than they did with its slightly older and slightly brawnier brother, the Palm Pre. In the days leading up to the Pre, both parties were on full attack mode; keynotes were held, massive tradeshow booths were built, full page newspaper ads were run, and countdowns ticked away. With the Pixi? They've got a commercial. Compared to Palm's last run, the marketing campaign surrounding the Pixi is decidedly more average - and after spending a few days with the phone, I'd say they made the right decision there.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>MakeMyTrip.com: Is eCommerce in India Finally Happening?</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/Qz-DitPg_TU/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  GURGOAN, INDIA-- Back in 1995, Deep Kalra knew that India had burgeoning consumer promise. So he took a risk, quit his safe-but-boring banking job and joined AMF Bowling—an American company that was aiming to bring bowling alleys and billiard halls to India for the first time.It didn’t quite scratch his entrepreneurial itch and the hobby was ahead of its time for Indians. So after four years, he headed back into the safe world of banking. And then, in 2000, with some money saved up, he decided to leave again and do things his way. Enamored by the Internet and frustrated by how hard it was to travel in India he opened MakeMyTrip.com. The site—as you might guess from the name—was like any of the online travel brokers started during the dot com bubble, only it was in India.Of course, that was a pretty crucial difference. What Kalra didn’t know back in those dark days was that he was about to benefit from a global Internet truism: Online travel is the ecommerce gateway drug.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>Singularity University Executive Program: Ray Kurzweil’s Opening Address</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/6DVjQNnc1Rw/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  Over the last week Singularity University, an educational institution based at NASA Ames that draws some world's top technologists and futurists, has been holding an Executive Program with the goal of preparing executives for the "imminent disruption and opportunities resulting from exponentially accelerating technologies".  The roster of instructors is impressive, with a number of top professors and executives covering fields ranging from stem cells to robotics.Singularity has been posting a series of articles from reporters who have been attending the event, and over the course of the next few days we'll be posting full videos of the lectures, as well as some 1-on-1 interviews with the instructors.  You'll be able to find these videos by clicking the 'Singularity University' logo in the right sidebar, or by clicking this link.  ]]></content:encoded>
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  <title>This week on TechCrunch: Layoffs, movie memes, PlayD’oh and Mike Arrington – the hardest working man in technology</title>
  <link>http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/eJFbT2i4BW8/</link>
  <pubDate>Sun, 15 Nov 2009 02:33:30 CET</pubDate>
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  As any industry analyst will tell you, since its two journalists were returned from North Korea, Current.tv has been woefully overstaffed. The company simply doesn't require that many employees to edit YouTube clips for its audience of jobless hipster doucheballs who have fallen asleep in front of the television.And so it wasn't entirely surprising this week when TechCrunch reported on a 'bloodbath'  at the company, with 80 people being laid-off across all departments.Current's COO Joanna Drake Earl (who is herself three separate people) insisted to Leena that the layoffs aren't a 'cost-cutting measure' but rather a 'shift in programming strategy'. In most other companies, this would be classic corporate bullshit, but in Current's case Joanna, Drake and Earl might actually have a point. After all, by creating 80 new unemployed people - unemployed people who actually know what Current is - they've just doubled the target audience for their programming. How's that for a convenient truth?  ]]></content:encoded>
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