Stem cell research – free at last!

Well not quite free just yet, but the day is coming and it couldn’t come too soon. Among many, many bad science policies the US suffered under Bush 43, completely wrecking stem cell research through withholding federal funds was up there.

Thankfully some private and state money came through to keep the US from completely falling behind other countries in this vital medical research area, but Bush 43′s policies hurt and probably have cost American lives because of so-far-undiscovered breakthroughs related to stem cell research.

From the Technology Review link:

Three years ago, when Rene Rejo Pera was setting up a new lab at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), she had to make sure she had two of everything: one microscope for her federally funded lab, for example, and one for a privately funded replica next door. Because of funding restrictions on stem-cell research ordered by President George W. Bush in 2001, this was a redundant scenario played out in labs across the country. The edict specifically limited federal funding for embryonic stem-cell research to a small number of cell lines already in existence, leaving scientists who wanted to conduct cutting-edge research in this area scrambling for private money.

Scientists are now looking forward to an end of that edict. President Barack Obama promised during his campaign to overturn the order, and most expect the action to happen soon. “The imminent change in policy will quite literally allow us to take down these walls and integrate the laboratories in a way that will make the work move much more efficiently,” says Arnold Kriegstein, director of the Broad Center of Regeneration Medicine and Stem Cell Research at UCSF.

Live Nation, Ticketmaster exposing all that’s wrong …

… with the flailing music industry. The recording end has its own set of problems, but live music has been plagued by bad promotion and draconian ticketing fees. A number of bands have fought against Ticketmaster — maybe that should be a sign things aren’t all that great  — but no one has succeeded.

If this deal goes through, ticket prices for events handled by the new monopolist will go up. Anyone who thinks otherwise can get in touch. I have a Nigerian associate who’d love to talk to you. 

From the link:

Concert promoter Live Nation Inc. and ticketing giant Ticketmaster Entertainment Inc. confirmed their merger plans Tuesday and got right to work addressing antitrust concerns that have taken center stage.

Ticketmaster Chairman Barry Diller, to be chairman of the new company — which would be called Live Nation Entertainment — sought to dispel the notion that the deal would lead to higher ticket prices.

”Ticketmaster does not set prices. Live Nation does not set ticket prices. Artists set the prices,” he said, without mentioning the ticket surcharges Ticketmaster relies on for much of its revenue.

Under the deal announced Tuesday, each Ticketmaster share would be replaced by 1.384 shares of Live Nation stock. Ticketmaster shareholders would own 50.01 percent of the new company, while Live Nation shareholders would have 49.99 percent. Live Nation Chief Executive Michael Rapino would be the new company’s CEO.

XBRL and corporate regulatory filings

This has been coming down the pike for a while and now it’s arrived — XBRL and corporate regulatory filings. This move is a great boon for investors and anyone else who regularly reads quarterly reports and other corporate financial filings.

From the link:

The Securities and Exchange Commission is officially moving corporate regulatory filings into the Internet Age. This morning the SEC issued a rule mandating that the 500 largest public companies start to file their financial results using the interactive data tagging language known as XBRL by April 13.

XBRL tagging is said to make financial statements more searchable and comparable.

By 2010, all so-called accelerated filers, amounting to about 1,800 public companies, must comply with the new rule, and by 2011 all public companies must do so.

During their first year of filing, companies are required to use XBRL for the three primary financial statements — the income statement, the cash flow statement, and the balance sheet — as well as for footnotes to the statements, which can be presented in a “block” format. However, by the second year, footnotes must be formatted in a detailed manner.

Companies will have a bit of breathing room regarding their first submission. The SEC is allowing the first XBRL filing to be submitted 30 days after the traditional filing on the regulator’s EDGAR database system. But all subsequent financial results must be filed on EDGAR and with XBRL tagging at the same time.

Stimulus shuts out small business

A release from yesterday:

Stimulus Bill Ignores Firms That Create Ninety-Seven Percent of New Jobs

PR Newswire via NewsEdge :  PETALUMA, Calif., Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ –According to the latest United States Census Bureau statistics, businesses with fewer than 20 employees account for 90 percent of all U.S. firms and are responsible for more than 97 percent of all new jobs. The Small Business Administration (SBA) Office of Advocacy released a report on the Census Bureau findings. (http://www.inc.com/news/articles/200708/data.html)CNNMoney.com and Inc.com released stories on the SBA report. (http://money.cnn.com/2008/07/30/smallbusiness/job_creation.fsb/index.htm) Since 2003, a series of more than 15 federal investigations have uncovered that the Bush Administration allowed billions of dollars in federal contracts earmarked for small businesses to be diverted to Fortune 500 firms and thousands of clearly large businesses around the world. (http://www.asbl.com/documentlibrary.html) Neither the House, nor Senate versions of the economic stimulus package contain any provisions to address the diversion of federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms. Additionally, the bills fall short of addressing the needs of America’s top job creators. Hundreds of stories chronicling the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants have been released by virtually every major newspaper in the country. (http://www.asbl.com/news.php) Major television networks like CBS, ABC, FOX and CNN have covered the story. (ABC, http://www.asbl.com/abc_evening_news.wmv; CBS, http://www.asbl.com/cbs.wmv; FOX, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8y2F8zl2ebs; CNN, http://www.asbl.com/showmedia.php?id=1170) In 2005, the SBA Office of Inspector General released Report 5-15, which described the diversion of federal small business contracts to Fortune 500 firms as, “One of the most important challenges facing the Small Business Administration and the entire Federal government today.” (http://www.sba.gov/IG/05-15.pdf) In February 2008, President Obama released the following statement, “Small businesses are the backbone of our nation’s economy and we must protect this great resource. It is time to end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants.” (http://www.barackobama.com/2008/02/26/the_american_small_business_le.php) To date, he has not proposed even a single policy to make good on his campaign promise. Based on information obtained through a series of successful Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuits against the Bush Administration, the American Small Business League (ASBL) estimates that every year up to $100 billion in federal contracts earmarked for America’s top job creators are diverted to corporate giants in the defense industry. On December 6, President Obama’s transition team estimated that every billion dollars spent on federal infrastructure projects would create 40,000 jobs. (http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/politics/07radio.html) The ASBL estimates that a provision in the stimulus bill that would end the diversion of federal small business contracts to corporate giants could create up to 4 million new jobs. The powerful lobby for the defense industry has successfully blocked any attempts at legislation to stop the flow of billions of dollars in government small business contracts to many of the largest defense contractors in the country. SOURCE American Small Business League <<PR Newswire — 02/10/09>>

Linda Thomsen leaves SEC

Good riddance.

From the link:

The SEC says Linda Thomsen is leaving to pursue opportunities in the private sector, but did not provide further details. She has been the agency’s enforcement director since May 2005.

Thomsen became a lightning rod for criticism over the SEC’s failure to detect the $50 billion Ponzi scheme allegedly run by money manager Bernard Madoff, despite red flags raised to the agency staff by outsiders over the course of a decade.

Electronic run on banks almost bankrupted the US

This is one frightening story. Since it didn’t come to pass there’s no way of knowing exactly how bad it would have been, but I think it’s safe to say even the rosiest scenario would have been bad, bad news for the U.S.

The quote below is from Capital Markets Subcommittee Chair, Rep. Paul Kanjorski of Pennsylvania.

From the link:

Kanjorski: “The Treasury opened its window to help. They pumped a hundred and five billion dollars into the system and quickly realized that they could not stem the tide. We were having an electronic run on the banks. They decided to close the operation, close down the money accounts, and announce a guarantee of $250,000 per account so there wouldn’t be further panic and there. And that’s what actually happened. If they had not done that their estimation was that by two o’clock that afternoon, five-and-a-half trillion dollars would have been drawn out of the money market system of the United States, would have collapsed the entire economy of the United States, and within 24 hours the world economy would have collapsed.”

“It would have been the end of our political system and our economic systems as we know it.”

Nanotech and battery efficiency

The latest news on nanotechnology and lithium-ion batteries.

The release from today:

Batteries get a boost at Rice

Researchers create hybrid nanocables to improve lithium battery technology

Need to store electricity more efficiently? Put it behind bars.

That’s essentially the finding of a team of Rice University researchers who have created hybrid carbon nanotube metal oxide arrays as electrode material that may improve the performance of lithium-ion batteries.

With battery technology high on the list of priorities in a world demanding electric cars and gadgets that last longer between charges, such innovations are key to the future. Electrochemical capacitors and fuel cells would also benefit, the researchers said.

The team from Pulickel Ajayan’s research group published a paper this week describing the proof-of-concept research in which nanotubes are grown to look – and act – like the coaxial conducting lines used in cables. The coax tubes consist of a manganese oxide shell and a highly conductive nanotube core.

“It’s a nice bit of nanoscale engineering,” said Ajayan, Rice’s Benjamin M. and Mary Greenwood Anderson Professor in Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science.

“We’ve put in two materials – the nanotube, which is highly electrically conducting and can also absorb lithium, and the manganese oxide, which has very high capacity but poor electrical conductivity,” said Arava Leela Mohana Reddy, a Rice postdoc researcher. “But when you combine them, you get something interesting.”

That would be the ability to hold a lot of juice and transmit it efficiently. The researchers expect the number of charge/discharge cycles such batteries can handle will be greatly enhanced, even with a larger capacity.

“Although the combination of these materials has been studied as a composite electrode by several research groups, it’s the coaxial cable design of these materials that offers improved performance as electrodes for lithium batteries,” said Ajayan.

“At this point, we’re trying to engineer and modify the structures to get the best performance,” said Manikoth Shaijumon, also a Rice postdoc. The microscopic nanotubes, only a few nanometers across, can be bundled into any number of configurations. Future batteries may be thin and flexible. “And the whole idea can be transferred to a large scale as well. It is very manufacturable,” Shaijumon said.

The hybrid nanocables grown in a Rice-developed process could also eliminate the need for binders, materials used in current batteries that hold the elements together but hinder their conductivity.

 

###

 

The paper was written by Reddy, Shaijumon, doctoral student Sanketh Gowda and Ajayan. It appears in the online version of the American Chemical Society’s Nano Letters.

The project is supported by funding from the Hartley Family Foundation.

The paper can be found online at: http://tinyurl.com/dz7oe8.

Bush administration overpaid in bailout

No surprise there. Bush 43 was an eight-year corporate Xmas morning.

From the link:

The Bush administration overpaid tens of billions of dollars for stocks and other assets in its massive bailout last year of Wall Street banks and financial institutions, a new study by a government watchdog says.

The Congressional Oversight Panel, in a report released Friday, said last year’s overpayments amounted to a taxpayer-financed $78 billion subsidy of the firms.

The findings added to the frustrations of lawmakers already wary of the $700 billion rescue plan, known as the Troubled Asset Relief Program. Congress approved the plan last fall, but members of both parties criticized spending decisions by the Bush administration and former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Financially ailing insurance giant American International Group, which the Treasury Department deemed to be too big to be allowed to fail, received $40 billion from the Treasury for assets valued at $14.8 billion, the oversight panel found.

Watch out — the SEC is back in business

And baring teeth.

From the link:

The new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission is ending a practice that she said had slowed the agency’s enforcement efforts against corporate wrongdoing.

In her first public address as SEC chairman, Mary Schapiro said Friday that she was ending a two-year policy requiring agency enforcement attorneys to get approval from the commissioners before negotiating fines and penalties with companies accused of violations.

Schapiro said that practice “just sends the wrong message” and has caused delays. It is among the steps she said she is taking to revitalize the SEC’s enforcement efforts and bolster investor protection.

This might be …

… the single most stupid thing ever written about Sarah Palin. And that’s saying a lot.

From the NewMajority link:

She looks better every time the Democrats appoint another millionaire tax cheat who went to the right schools.

Until the apologists get off the snowbilly’s bus, the GOP is doomed at the ballot box. Image rehabilitation doesn’t even come into play here. Palin is electoral disaster and a punchline. The base she appeals to is tiny, and mostly hated, by everyone else who votes.

Sunday video fun — Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings

Providing a lesson in civil disobedience.

Sully nails it …

… totally.

This graph sure does concentrate the mind and reveals, to my mind, the surrealism of the current GOP. They spent the last eight years spending like FDR in a boom and now they’re born again fiscal conservatives?

And even follows up on the graph.

GOP pushing to delay CPSIA of 2008

This is news that affects one of my clients, Vouch Software, because its application is a virtual product safety test for infant toys and products. I will say pretty much everyone is in agreement that this law was far too draconian and implemented way too quickly. Hopefully this legislation will gain some traction to give the industry a little breathing room.

I’m betting this will be big talk next weekend at the Toy Industry Association’s Toy Fair ’09 in New York. The safety talk is to be held Monday, February16.

From the WSJ link:

Congress rushed to pass a tough new consumer safety law last year, and now a number of Republican lawmakers are rushing again to pass legislation to delay the date the stricter rules go into effect.

The bill, which sets stringent limits on lead in children’s products and bans some phthalates, a class of chemicals used to soften plastics, called for children’s products to be in compliance by Tuesday, Feb. 10. Companies, particularly smaller ones that make toys and other children’s products, are worried and have been begging lawmakers to delay the rules. Because the standards were applied retroactively, they argue, they now face warehouses full of noncompliant inventory, financial losses or even bankruptcies. Some lawmakers blame the Consumer Product Safety Commission for doing too little while the CPSC’s acting chairwoman blames Congress for going too far.

SCHIP and tobacco taxes

Master blender of pipe tobacco, G.L. Pease, makes a great point on the increase in tobacco taxes and the recently passed SCHIP. One, it’s absurd on so many levels; and two, major cigarette companies were allowed to basically tax their competition (roll-your-own tobacco) out of existance.

Bad politics, bad policy and it’s based on faulty research. If you’re curious about the last bit there, do some background — the research, I think from the 60s, that all tobacco stats are based on is terminally flawed. When the government didn’t get the desired result, the stats were altered mid-stream to ensure the research was sufficiantly negative. Bad, bad science and bullshit politics. Don’t get me wrong. Tobacco is not a healthy item in large quantities, but it is not the evil it’s somehow been made out to be.

From the link:

This following mercilessly swiped table indicates the new Federal excise tax on tobacco products, along with the current taxes we all know and despise, and the proposed taxes vetoed twice by ex-prez G.W. The new rates go into effect 1st April, 2009. Fortunately, for most of us, pipe tobacco isn’t hit as badly as it could have been, resulting in a price increase of only about 20¢ per ounce. Nor have cigars, taken a serious beating, but it may herald the death of many RYO tobaccos currently on the market. Is it any wonder that Big Tobacco supported this? Nothing like taxing your competition into oblivion in the spirit of free trade.

Tobacco Product	Current Tax	SCHIP 2007 (Vetoed)	SCHIP 2009 (New Tax)	Tax Increase (April 2009)	% Increase (April 2009)
Cigarettes	$0.39/pack	$1.00/pack	$1.01/pack	$0.62/pack	158%
RYO Tobacco 1	$1.10/lb	$8.89/lb	$24.78/lb	$23.68/lb	2,159%
Pipe Tobacco	$1.10/lb	$2.81/lb	$2.83/lb	$1.73/lb	158%
Large Cigars	$0.05 ea (Max)	$3.00 ea (Max)	$0.40 ea (Max)	$0.35 ea (Max)	722%
Small Cigars	$0.04/pack	$1.00/pack	$1.01/pack	$0.97	2,653%
Chewing Tobacco	$0.195/lb	$0.50/lb	$0.50/lb	$0.31/lb	158%
Snuff	$0.59/lb	$1.50/lb	$1.51/lb	%0.93/lb	158%

What truly amazes me about this is that the fools who author this sort of nonsense don’t seem to be able to comprehend that building social programs based on revenues derived from taxing something they’re hoping to extinguish is the worst sort of fiscal folly imaginable.

Saturday video fun — Acrassicauda meets Metallica

Acrassicauda, the Iraqi heavy metal band that recently relocated to New Jersey under refugee status, met Metallica backstage.

From the link:

And what better way to welcome the guys to New Jersey than giving them backstage passes to a Metallica concert:

And on Sunday night, two days after the last of the band’s four members was resettled in the United States, they enjoyed what any metal fan would have to call heaven: bearhugs and “Wow, dude” heart-to-hearts backstage with Metallica at the Prudential Center in Newark. It probably wasn’t necessary for James Hetfield, Metallica’s lead singer, to surprise them after the show by handing over one of his guitars, a black ESP, and signing it “Welcome to America”; their minds were already blown.

Don’t do it Kay Bailey

This 538 post is actually about Palin already endorsing the pathetic Rick Perry as Texas governor in 2010, but it touches on another point — that Kay Bailey Hutchison may leave the Senate to run for the seat.

Nate Silver points out Kay Bailey has a significant “what-if” polling lead over Perry. Not surprising since Perry is ineffectual and toadying in a very weak office. For those who don’t know Texas politics, the power rests in the lieutenant governor’s office. The governor is something of a cheerleading figurehead with some actual power and responsibility.

The only reason I could ever see Hutchison covet the office would be as a springboard to the White House. She’s a very effective senator and I’d hate to see the state lose that voice and experience in D.C. Especially since junior senator is the moronic John Cornyn. I shudder to think of “Big, Bad John” as a senior senator.

I also don’t see Hutchison with any hope of getting to Pennsylvania Avenue on the heels of Bush’s eight years of shame and fail.

Palin’s obviously trying to knock a real threat as the female voice of the GOP. It’s no contest, really. Hutchison is intelligent with a strong sense of the political game. Palin is, well Palin — glasses, boobs, hair, dipshit aphorisms, no grasp of policy and absolutely no clue.

Palin’s backing the wrong horse in this race if Hutchison does indeed run. But Kay Bailey, please, please stay in the Senate. The State of Texas needs you. Needs you in D.C., not Austin.

From the link:

The problem is that Rick Perry isn’t especially likely to be Texas’s governor in 2012. Rather, Hutchison is. A Texas Lyceum(.pdf) poll conducted in June showed Hutchison with a 36-22 lead over Perry among prospective Republican primary voters. Hutchison also polled the race herself, and — the usual caveats about internal polls applying — gave herself a 55-31 lead over Perry. And Perry’s approval ratings are well below par, with 42 percent of Texans saying he’s doing a good job as governor and 58 percent a poor one.

Synaesthesia and cheaper fuel cells through nanotech

From KurzweilAI.net — I’m going old school (old school for this blog) today with post containing multiple bits from today’s KurzweilAI e-newsletter.

First up is a story on the genetic roots of synaesthesia — the condition of seeing sounds and tasting colors and other mixed up signals from the five senses. The second is on carbon nanotubes making fuel cells more cheap and longer lasting.

Genetic roots of synaesthesia unearthed

New Scientist Health, Feb. 5, 2009 The regions of our DNA that wire some people to “see” sounds have been discovered. So far, only the general regions within chromosomes have been identified, rather than specific genes, but the work could eventually lead to a genetic test to diagnose the condition before it interferes with a child’s education.   Read Original Article>>

Cheaper Fuel Cells

Technology Review, Feb. 5, 2009 University of Dayton researchers have shown that arrays of vertically grown carbon nanotubes could be used as the catalyst in fuel cells. (Science) The carbon nanotubes, which are doped with nitrogen, would be much cheaper and longer lasting than the expensive platinum catalysts used now, with four times higher current densities.   Read Original Article>>

Job loss and the internet

Seems as though the internet is providing some distraction and solace for those who are out of work right now.

Online gaming is huge (it’s always been a distraction for me, but I work out of my home office in front of a computer most of the day), social networking is popular and the involuntarily idle are blogging, tweeting and IMing with abandon.

Sounds like all this activity is a good thing given our current economic situation.

From the WSJ link:

Internet games, gambling and other forms of online entertainment have seen significant surges in use in the several months since the economic downturn deepened. Social-networking services like Facebook, blogs and discussion forums — all well-known time sinks even during good times — are also seeing strong growth. Some purveyors of online entertainment say business has never been so good for them.

Robert Kraut, a professor of social psychology and human computer interaction at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, says games and other forms of entertainment can provide escape for people steeped in anxieties about the economy. “There’s evidence these distractions have a psychological benefit because they prevent a downward spiral of rumination,” says Dr. Kraut.

The trend echoes the escape mechanisms that people turned to during the Great Depression in the 1930s. At the time, people paid a nickel to spend entire afternoons and evenings watching films featuring Charlie Chaplin and others, cartoons and newsreels, says Gary Handman, a director at the Media Resources Center at the University of California at Berkeley.

Geithner to announces latest bailout on Monday

This ought to be interesting. Bush’s sad sack team had their shot, now Obama’s team begins in earnest. I honestly don’t know what the answer is here, or that there is an answer for that matter. I do know I’m not alone in having deep suspicion and reservations about all this corporate socialism.

I wish Geithner and the rest of Obama’s team the best of luck. Anyone who hopes for failure (read: Rush Limbaugh and other nut jobs on the right) is only hoping for the failure of the United States.

From the link:

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner and other top officials are putting the finishing touches on a plan to overhaul the U.S. government’s $700 billion financial rescue program.

A Treasury official said Geithner will deliver a speech on Monday outlining the new plan.

But Treasury officials would not comment on a report Thursday that the administration is considering proposing changes to the current accounting standard that require banks to carry assets such as mortgage-backed securities on their books at fair value, a process known as “mark to market.”

Critics of this process contend that it has made the current financial crisis worse by forcing banks to slash the value of assets that are currently depressed because of market conditions. Treasury officials said the administration’s plan was not yet complete and would be revealed in Geithner’s speech in Washington next week.

Geithner met Thursday with Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and other officials who serve on the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets. The group was formed in the wake of the 1987 stock market crash with the goal of better coordinating the government’s response to market crises.

“This is a critically important group,” Geithner told reporters before the meeting began. “Together this group has the authorities and instruments and experience and talent that are going to be critical to helping solve the financial problems facing our country.”

The digital world and the entertainment industry

I’ve blogged on the battle betweendigital media and the entertainment industry (link goes search for RIAA, but both RIAA and MPAA are equally stupid on this topic. The RIAA is just a little more stupid) and how futile this fight is for the dinosaurs.

In fact, the war is over and the industry has lost. Lost credibility, angered customers and is now way behind a curve that could have been used as a slingshot into the future. Instead both the RIAA and MPAA are floundering.

I don’t the MPAA is going anywhere, but I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if the RIAA either ceases to exist, or continues in a radically different form within five years. I can see the major labels pulling away from an organization that increasingly acts like a cornered, dying beast.

Here’s a story on how “digital pirates” are blowing past every blockade Hollywood movie studios throw in the way.

From the link:

On the day last July when ”The Dark Knight” arrived in theaters, Warner Brothers was ready with an ambitious antipiracy campaign that involved months of planning and steps to monitor each physical copy of the film.

The campaign failed miserably. By the end of the year, illegal copies of the Batman movie had been downloaded more than seven million times around the world, according to the media measurement firm BigChampagne, turning it into a visible symbol of Hollywood’s helplessness against the growing problem of online video piracy.

 

The culprits, in this case, are the anonymous pirates who put the film online and enabled millions of Internet users to view it. Because of widely available broadband access and a new wave of streaming sites, it has become surprisingly easy to watch pirated video online — a troubling development for entertainment executives and copyright lawyers.

Hollywood may at last be having its Napster moment — struggling against the video version of the digital looting that capsized the music business. Media companies say that piracy — some prefer to call it ”digital theft” to emphasize the criminal nature of the act — is an increasingly mainstream pursuit. At the same time, DVD sales, a huge source of revenue for film studios, are sagging. In 2008, DVD shipments dropped to their lowest levels in five years. Executives worry that the economic downturn will persuade more users to watch stolen shows and movies.

The full list of Madoff victims

Here’s the entire list of victims in Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. It’s a PDF, it contains 162 pages of names and the print is tiny.

Enjoy

Upate 2/7/09 — Er, I forgot to post the link to the list and this page has been taking some traffic. So sorry — here’s the link to the PDF.

Twitter for business

Honestly, I’m not certain I see a whole lot of utility for Twitter in the business world, but my mind is open.

That’s one of the best aspects of new (well not totally new, but still feeling its oats in the case of Twitter) online applications. It’s almost impossible to guess exactly when and where they find that niche usage. Many never do find the sweet spot, but those that do often surprise.

I’ve done some tweeting — mostly during the presidential debates. C-Span contacted me and asked if I wanted to contribute to their new media coverage. Twitter was a major part of that effort so I did contribute a few tweets to the cause. I’m about to ramp up my tweeting because I’m adding tweets to my blog syndication.

You can track me here:

http://twitter.com/davidkonline (@davidkonline in Twitter parlance)

I’m not going to go crazy, but once the syndication is in place expect tweets on either big stuff with a link or little stuff that I decided against blogging about, but thought cool/interesting/important enough to throw out there as a tweet.

From the CIO.com link in the first graf:

 Twitter remains a very nascent social network, so if you don’t know how it works or what it does (or you haven’t even heard of it), don’t feel bad. In fact, you’re still in the majority. But we’re here to help you reap the benefits of Twitter with this quick get-started guide.

Jeremiah Owyang (@jowyang), a senior Forrester analyst who researches social media and who pens a blog on Web Strategy, says that while Twitter doesn’t release exact numbers, he estimates that three to six million people use Twitter, compared to 150 million for Facebook.

Here is an (appropriately) short explanation of Twitter: Twitter is a free service that allows users to publish short messages of 140 characters or less. These messages are read by “followers” — people who make a conscious decision to subscribe to your messages and have them delivered to their own Twitter home pages.

Each message you post is known as a “Tweet.” In the social media and social networking industry, Twitter facilitates a process known as microblogging or microsharing. Every user is identified by putting an “@” sign in front of their name (for instance: @cglynch).

Joining Twitter has value for many people, but it can also be a waste of time if you don’t understand how the medium works and how best to utilize it. We take a look at suggestions from social networking gurus to help you determine if adding Twitter to your daily tech diet is in your best interest.

Tim Berners-Lee on the semantic web

Very cool bit from Mark Frauenfelder at boing boing on the man who invented the World Wide Web and his latest project, the semantic web.

From the link:

Today, he has the same problem. People have a hard time understanding his new project, the Semantic Web. The Web was about putting your documents on Web. The Semantic Web is about putting your data on web.

From my Tech Review article about TBL:

TECHNOLOGY REVIEW: For several years, you’ve been promoting something you call the Semantic Web, but people don’t seem too excited. Why not?TIM BERNERS-LEE: It’s not the first time I’ve had this paradigm-shift problem. Early on, people really didn’t understand why the Web was interesting. They saw it in the smaller scale, and it’s not interesting in the smaller scale. Same thing with the Semantic Web.

TR: How do you get past that?

B-L: Right now we are just starting by putting applications onto the Semantic Web one by one and linking them up where it seems useful. But what’s exciting is the network effect. The vision is that we will get to a critical mass, where everything starts getting linked into an unimaginably large whole. Then, the incentive to add more to it rises exponentially as the value of what is out there also does.

Because few people initially get this great “aha!” of connecting to a huge mass of Semantic Web data, it all has to be done by people who are convinced — who understand that it’s worth putting the effort into getting the thing off the ground.

The technology is “linked data.” (Linked Data is a catchier term than Semantic Web. But is Linked Data part of the Semantic Web or the new name for the Semantic Web?) The cool thing about Linked Data is the relationships. He wrote an article called Linked Data a couple of years ago.

Why is linked data important? Curing cancer, understanding economy, global warming. A lot of the state of the knowledge of human race is stored in databases that are not shared — stored in “silos.” Now they are linking the data, bridging across different disciplines. “When you connect data together you get this huge power out of it.”

Cato Institute on the stimulus plan

A bunch of Cato-related links from the inbox today:

Stimulus Debate Heats up in Senate

President Obama’s stimulus bill moved to the Senate this week where it is facing stiff opposition from Republicans. In its current form, the bill still lacks enough votes to make it to the president’s desk. The Cato Institute placed a full page ad in newspapers nationwide showing that there is no consensus among economists about the stimulus plan. The ad features a statement signed by more than 200 economists, including Nobel laureates and other leading scholars who agree that the best way to boost economic growth is to lessen the burden of government. Each day, more economists continue to add their names to the online version of the ad. On Monday, a new version of the ad with more names will run in The Wall Street Journal. Read Chris Edwards and Ike Brannon’s recent article in the National Post, “Barack Obama’s Keynesian Mistake,” to learn more about the economic principles underlying the stimulus plan. You can also watch senior fellow Alan Reynolds discuss the stimulus plan on CNN, Fox News and listen to his latest interview on the false consensus for stimulus. If you think the word “stimulus” is a misnomer given the actual contents of the bill, then you’re not alone. Cato executive vice president David Boaz and senior fellow Daniel J. Mitchell discuss why the plan should not be termed a “stimulus.” If you run a blog or Web site and want to take a stand against this massive government intervention plan, go to cato.org/fiscalreality and click “Spread the word.” We have created an online widget that you can post on your Web site that will show your readers that you do not agree with the stimulus plan.

Limbaugh not so popular

He’s loud and he’s often wrong. It seems his claim of being the most powerful Republican is either dead-wrong or very, very troubling for the GOP.

These numbers are a bit old — from last October — and from a Democratic research firm, but are very telling.

Anyone who wants to get a handle on Rush’s true listener base ought to take a little time to break down how radio numbers are reported and how those numbers relate to unique individuals who are listening. (I’ll give you a little hint — his actual listener base is much, much, much more small than anything reported. Probably well below 5M. Very well below. That compares his touted 20M.)

From the link:

Republicans who have turned to Rush Limbaugh to lead the fight against President Obama may have backed the wrong horse. According to one recent poll, Limbaugh turns out to be one of the most unpopular political figures in the country.

An October 24, 2008, poll conducted by the Democratic research firm Greenberg-Quinlan-Rosner has Rush Limbaugh enjoying a public-approval rating of just 21 percent among likely voters, while 58 percent have “cold” feelings toward the right-wing radio-talk-show host. Limbaugh’s cold rating was higher than that of all the political figures the firm polled. It was seven points higher than Rev. Jeremiah “God Damn America” Wright and eight points higher than former Weather Underground domestic terrorist William Ayers. (As the firm points out in an email, it’s true that Wright and Ayers both had lower “warm” ratings than Limbaugh—as you’d expect for men who have virtually no constituencies.)

Ballmer lectures XP users

This time he’s targeting enterprise — read: corporate — users of XP who heretically refuse to upgrade to Vista, plus he’s reading tea leaves to assume they also aren’t going to upgrade to the currently beta-only Windows 7.

I’m sure Steve is doing this because lecturing from on high has worked so well in the past for Microsoft. And home users have totally abandoned XP as an operating system and clamor for the latest and greatest from the Redmond behemoth.

… er, maybe not.

From the link:

In an interview at a New York City event Tuesday to mark the extension of Microsoft’s collaboration with EMCto help IT pros improve virtualization, security and content management, Ballmer touched on the progress of Windows 7, stressing that its faster performance, longer battery life and simplified security settings will be “a pretty good step forward in terms of what users care about.”

For these reasons and others, Ballmer warns, enterprises that stick with Windows XP too long they will hear about it from impatient users who have been using newer computers running Vista and Windows 7 at home.

Says Ballmer: “If you deploy a four or five-year old operating system today, most people will ask their boss why the heck they don’t have the stuff they have at home.”

SEC fighting House in Madoff probe?

Looks like the House thinks so.

From the link:

House lawmakers on Wednesday accused the Securities and Exchange Commission of impeding their probe into the agency’s failure to uncover the alleged $50 billion Bernard Madoff fraud.

The clash between lawmakers and high-ranking SEC officials at a House Financial Services subcommittee hearing came after the man who waged a decade-long campaign to alert the regulators to problems in Madoff’s operations denounced the agency for its inaction. Whistleblower Harry Markopolos also said he had feared for his physical safety and would turn over new evidence that Madoff had not acted alone.

In loud, angry exchanges, lawmakers threatened to issue subpoenas to SEC officials to compel their testimony in the case.

Latest Volvo safety tech

I love Volvos. I drove a mid-80s 240 sedan for years and still would if they continued making that body style. And I always loved the safety features, rudimentary as they were back then.

Here’s the latest — automatic braking at low speeds. The only question I have is — when you suddenly brake and the driver behind you doesn’t have this tech, aren’t they going to rear end your car? Just moving the accident one car down the food chain. I guess it does leave them at fault.

From the link:

Volvo City Safety: Minimizing Rear-End Collisions

Ever feel like your attention wanders in heavy city traffic? Volvo City Safety is aiming to make up for that. It’s a new system designed to prevent or minimize rear-end collisions in stop-and-go situations. Active at speeds up to 18 mph and standard in the Volvo XC60, City Safety uses an optical laser to continuously monitor traffic, and will recognize sudden braking by the vehicle in front of you. If you don’t react and are about to drive into the car in front of you, the system will automatically trigger an emergency stop. Volvo is also working on systems to protect pedestrians.

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Image credit: Volvo

Oil and gas news from Davos

Here’s a blog post I did for EnerMax on an oil and gas investment report from the World Economic Forum in Davos. The consensus from industry leaders is the current low petroleum prices are affecting investment.

From the link:

The World Economic Forum in Davos hosted a presentation by leaders in the international oil sector. The consensus from energy leaders is the current price of a barrel of oil at around $40 is too low to prompt enough oil and gas investment for future demand. BP’s Tony Howard said a fair market price is somewhere between $60 and $80 per barrel of light, sweet crude.

Howard added the current low price of oil is due to little, or no, economic growth in most parts of the world and the subsequent short-term demand destruction. He said a higher market price for oil would help OPEC nations to balance their budgets and invest in oil to guarantee future supplies as demand ramps back up with a global economic recovery.

Fences desktop app for Windows

This isn’t an endorsement (or a non-endorsement for that matter — just passing info along). I’ve not downloaded the program for use, but did look over the site after this release came across the inbox tonight. It looks pretty interesting for Windows users.

My desktop is an ongoing mess, and that’s just the one full of papers, books and a half-empty candy box. Badabing, I’ll be here all week folks. Be sure to tip your waitress and try the porterhouse special on Tuesday night …

The release:

Stardock’s New ‘Fences’ Application Solves Desktop Clutter Problems, Organizes the Desktop

PLYMOUTH, Mich., Feb. 4 /PRNewswire/ — Stardock launched its most innovative desktop utility application since the popular WindowBlinds today — Stardock Fences for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. The free application from Stardock clears desktop clutter and provides consistency and organization for groups of files on the desktop. Fences allows users to literally “draw” labeled shaded areas on the desktop which become movable & resizable “containers” for desktop icons. These groups arrange and hide the files on the computer’s desktop solving the “constant mess” problem that has plagued the desktop since its inception.

Stardock President and CEO Brad Wardell said, “This is easily the most innovative piece of software we’ve released since WindowBlinds, which considering the popularity of DeskScapes, ObjectDock, DesktopX and our other programs I think is saying a lot.”

To help solve another weak point of the desktop — the mere appearance of clutter, Fences offers a novel quick-hide feature. Users can double click the desktop and all of the icons will fade out. When users double click again the icons will return. Users can pick and choose which desktop icons hide when the feature is activated.

To see Fences in action and download please visit: http://www.stardock.com/products/fences/.

  For more information about Stardock please visit www.stardock.com.

  About Stardock

Stardock is one of the world’s leading developers and publishers of PC games and desktop software.  Its PC games include Sins of a Solar Empire, the highest rated and best selling PC strategy game of 2008 as well as the critically acclaimed Galactic Civilizations series. Its desktop software includes Object Desktop, WindowBlinds, and a host of other programs for customizing the Windows experience. Learn more about Stardock by visiting www.stardock.com.

Source: Stardock
   

Web site:  http://www.stardock.com/
http://www.stardock.com/products/fences