I have never understood the whole idea of politicians getting their portraits done. But this year Jeb Bush, the outgoing governor of Florida decided to immortalize his blackberry in the painting.
It’s kinda funny to see how pervasive this little device is with its installed user base being less then 700,000 devices (But then again I am a VERY stubborn Treo user).
Quoted from the New York Times:
Mr. Brown’s music was sweaty and complex, disciplined and wild, lusty and socially conscious. Beyond his dozens of hits, Mr. Brown forged an entire musical idiom that is now a foundation of pop worldwide.
“I taught them everything they know, but not everything I know,” he wrote in an autobiography.The funk he introduced in his 1965 hit, “Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag,” was both deeply rooted in Africa and thoroughly American. It found the percussive side of every instrument and meshed sharply syncopated patterns into kinetic polyrhythms that simply made people dance.
His innovations reverberated through the soul and rhythm-and-blues of the 1970s and the hip-hop of the next three decades. The beat of his instrumental “Funky Drummer” may well be the most widely sampled rhythm in hip-hop.
The ethics of Morgan Stanley have hit a new low. In the banking and financial services industry the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) requires that all electronic communications get stored for at least three years, but it was recently discovered that Morgan Stanley regularly destroyed millions of e-mail messages by overwriting its backup tapes and by allowing employees to delete messages.
To cover up the email irregularities Morgan Stanley made false claims that millions of e-mail messages in its possession had been lost in the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center.
While claiming that the World Trade Center disaster had destroyed many of its e-mail messages, Morgan Stanley actually held millions of pre-September 11 e-mail messages that were restored to its system from backup tapes shortly after the attack, NASD said.
Many other of the firm’s e-mail messages were maintained on individual users’ computers and therefore were not affected by the attacks
Kinda puts into question the ethics of a company who is using our nations worst terrorist attacks to wrongfully cover up their illegal activities.
Let the recalls begin! Nintendo just announced a recall of 3.2 million straps for their Wii Remote Control worldwide affecting “all Wiis sold” to date and most of the units still on shelves.
With a California class-action suite on the way Nintendo decided to easily ship anyone the new strap without returning the old one.
Sure, reading that title is like reading ‘if it is raining you will get wet’, but hear me out.
Text messages sent to and from mobile phones will more than double over the next five years to 2.3 trillion messages a year. In 2005 mobile phone operators estimated that 936 billion messages were transmitted, netting telephone companies $39.5 billion.
The industry says these figures prove SMS to be “the most successful mainstream mobile data service to have emerged during the 30-year history of the cellular telecoms industry” [via]
That is some serious change. I’m sure in a few years cellular spam will not only start but also reach unreasonable levels. With the potential to directly impact a consumer, abuses will be on the rise.
Do you think texting is a new form of communication, or yet another disruptive technology?
It is no secret that Webblogs Inc. (The owner of DownloadSquad and independent arm of AOL) despises Digg. Kevin Rose and Jason Calacanis have engaged in a public ego fest, where both tech ‘big wigs’ beat their chest on who is better.
To add fuel to the fire, Jason Clarke via Downloadsquad, has posted a comprehensive opinion on WHY digg is destined for failure. He is certainly not alone in his thoughts about the destructive tendencies of Digg, as these sentiments are echoed across the blogosphere.
I reserve the right not to comment, but I am interested to know how much you agree or disagree with the article.
If you’ve ever had the good fortune of having one of your websites or blog posts dugg to the point of showing up on digg’s homepage, you’ve enjoyed a huge traffic boost to your site. This is wonderful for web publishers, and I’m not going to lie and say that we don’t care about it here at Download Squad; in fact, since the success of a given post is measured in large part by the traffic it drives to our site, it’s certainly a goal of ours to have our posts make the homepage on digg.
But how valuable is digg traffic, really, and is the digg community one that we should even care about? Unfortunately, after observing the digg community for about a year, I’d have to conclude no, it’s not. Now, at this point I should point out that AOL owns Weblogs Inc, who own Download Squad, and AOL also owns Netscape, recently converted into a social news and media voting site that is in many ways similar to digg. So if you don’t think I can be objective about this, you might want to just skip this post. But I’m not here to sing the praises of Netscape over digg either. Overall, I’m not certain that social media sites like Netscape, digg, reddit, del.icio.us, or even the granddaddy of them all – Slashdot – will have any relevance whatsoever in five years.
Okay, so now that I’ve condemned a whole class of website, or really a whole class of online community, I should point out that while digg drives the largest amount of traffic of the bunch, the community at digg is actually rotting from the inside out.
This is a very inflammatory statement to make, but all it takes is to browse through the comments on few random frontpage posts at digg, and you’ll see what I mean. The sheer level of superiority, sarcasm, and general negativity is overwhelming, and makes digg a place that is not only not fun to visit, it’s certainly not a place to “share, discover, bookmark, and promote the news that’s important to you”, as digg’s tagline optimistically claims.
A pharmaceutical company announced that they have created a new chewable birth control pill with a refreshing spearmint flavor. Mmmmm, Minty!
The product, called “Femcon Fe”, is billed as the first and only FDA-approved chewable birth control pill. The company says that one of the leading causes of oral contraceptive failure is not consistently taking these pills everyday. By making it chewable, and tasty, it’ll allow women to have more fun.
A mother had her 12-year-old son arrested for rummaging through his great-grandmother’s things and playing with his Christmas present early.
The mother called police Sunday after learning her son had disobeyed orders and repeatedly taken a Game Boy from its hiding place at his great-grandmother’s house next door and played it.
Now arresting the child may seem a little harsh, but the mother thinks it will teach the child an important lesson. The Mother said he faces expulsion at his school for taking a swing at a police officer.
Walmart has dipped their toes into the downloadable movie water with an exclusive “Superman Returns” DVD bundle containing a video download option with purchase of the physical DVD.
When you purchase a physical Superman Returns disc from Walmart, it will include a coupon that will allow for video downloads. The additional costs for these privileges are $1.97 for portable devices, $2.97 for PCs/laptops, and $3.97 for both portable players and PC/laptops. Now word yet on Mac support, even on the portable option.
You can bet I am getting my hands on a Walmart DVD, and trying this service out.
