We're a few days late on announcing November's Mod of the Month contenders, but as a bonus we've arranged an extra prize for the lucky winner of this month's competition. Read, vote and tell us your thoughts on this month's contenders!

After extensive debating and thorough vetting, the gamesblog's Spaceship! team would like to announce that first place in the Cover Art competition is Ed Sludden

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Kansas has won a three-year competition to land a new $450 million federal laboratory to study livestock diseases and some of the world's most dangerous biological threats. But some states that lost out are crying foul....

La Commission fédérale des maisons de jeu (CFMJ) exige du fournisseur des appareils à sous de type Super Competition qu'il lui présente un de ces ...

pYou can win a trip to the Ice Hotel in Lapland thanks to a competition launched by The Times./p pYou can enter the a href=http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/travel/commercial/article5268025.ececompetition/a until January 09 2009. /p pa href=http://www.hotel-blogs.com/.a/6a00d83451625269e201053635165a970c-pi style=DISPLAY: inlineimg alt=Ice_hotel385_442720a border=0 class=at-xid-6a00d83451625269e201053635165a970c src=http://www.hotel-blogs.com/.a/6a00d83451625269e201053635165a970c-800wi title=Ice_hotel385_442720a //a /p

Textile import quotas had successfully shielded the South African industry from competition from China, but would not be renewed at the end of this month, trade and industry director-general Tshediso Matona said yesterday.

p By David Lawsky SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Apple might be unfairly blocking rival software makers who want to sell music for its iPhone, according to some rivals and a technology rights group. The iTunes store accounts for four out of five songs.../pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/I4UNews?a=Zn5xGri1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/I4UNews?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/I4UNews?a=ApzDQVTv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/I4UNews?i=ApzDQVTv" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/I4UNews?a=cZLFB0qI"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/I4UNews?i=cZLFB0qI" border="0"/img/a /div

The American Gaming Association, the casino industry's biggest trade group, is a href="http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/nov/25/web-betting-wedge-big-gaming/"struggling to reach a consensus on internet betting/a, as its members take up divergent viewpoints. Some casino companies support federal regulation for it, while others want states to be able to regulate it (though maybe not a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081119/0317292881.shtml"Kentucky/a); others, of course, want to see the blanket ban continue, fearful of anything that might let new competitors in to the market. The AGA's latest approach appears to be to support legislation to study whether to legalize online betting -- which, we're pretty sure, sounds about as wishy-washy as could be. br /br / The facts surrounding online gambling in the US are already pretty clear: previous legislative efforts may have reduced online gambling, but they've also driven American bettors to largely unregulated services and forced them to use some other often-shady services to fund their activities -- since US banks are given the a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081109/0136582775.shtml"responsibility/a to stop gambling sites' funding. The result is that gamblers keep up the same activity they were doing before, but are now exposed to more danger and risk, while US authorities are missing out on the chance to collect some taxes. This still seems pretty irresponsible, since gaming regulators in mature markets would argue that driving consumers into unregulated territory where they're not protected by laws and rules governing casinos isn't a great idea. br /br / Meanwhile, the AGA's waffling isn't a surprise, since many of its members hate to see new competition in any form. But existing casino operators are, arguably, better placed than anyone to compete in new, highly regulated markets that don't require huge capital outlays on the scale of expensive new properties. Also, it's hard to understand how more competition for gambling dollars could hurt consumers, when competition might actually deliver them a number of significant benefits, particularly over gray-market services of questionable legality.p style="border-top: 1px #aaaaaa dashed;padding-top: 5px;margin-top: 10px;"emCarlo Longino is an expert at the a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"Insight Community/a. To get insight and analysis from Carlo Longino and other experts on challenges your company faces, a href="http://www.insightcommunity.com/"click here/a./em/p br /br /a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081125/0847552948.shtml"Permalink/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/articles/20081125/0847552948.shtml#comments"Comments/a | a href="http://techdirt.com/article.php?sid=20081125/0847552948op=sharethis"Email This Story/abr / br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=931e001b929af812c09503f93cd283f6p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=931e001b929af812c09503f93cd283f6p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=931e001b929af812c09503f93cd283f6" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?a=ckrAo"img src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~f/techdirt/feed?i=ckrAo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.techdirt.com/~r/techdirt/feed/~4/474388416" height="1" width="1"/

pWell, this was unexpected. Perhaps coming to terms with the fact that increasingly few people give a shit about a href="http://www.grammy.com/"strongthe Grammys/strong/a, the Recording Academy tonight announced its list of nominees for the 51st Annual Grammy Awards, and those nominees were...shockingly relevant. (Read the whole list a href="http://content.grammy.com/grammy_awards/51st_show/list.aspx"strongHERE/strong/a.)br / br / You know who got the most nominations? Lil Wayne! He's up for eight Grammys! That's right, not the Eagles or Bob Dylan or John Legend or U2 or some boring old fart your dad likes. Lil Wayne! Pretty risque move, Grammys. I like it.br / br / While it would be pretty awesome if the Grammy for Album of the Year went to an album with a href="/article/news/49855-dear-god-please-let-this-be-the-lil-wayne-album-cover"strongTHIS FUCKING COVER/strong/a, it probably isn't going to happen, as Weezy has some pretty stiff competition in that category: Coldplay's emViva La Vida or Death and All His Friends/em (which will probably win) Ne-Yo's emYear of the Gentleman/em (!),em /emRobert Plant amp; Alison Krauss's emRaising Sand/em (which will win if Coldplay doesn't), and-- hey why not?--Radiohead's emIn Rainbows/em. Yes, Lil Wayne and Radiohead are competing for Album of the Year. Please dear god, let those two pair up for one of those collaborative medley things that the Grammys always do. Please!br / br / But you know what's even crazier? M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" is up for Record of the Year! It totally won't win (it's up against Coldplay, Robert Plant amp; Alison Krauss, Leona Lewis, and Adele), but can you imagine if it did? Can you imagine if the entire Grammy telecast ends with M.I.A., Diplo, and Switch up there at the podium? How cool would that be? Also: this is the only Grammy nomination that M.I.A. received. Weird, huh?br / br / All in all, Coldplay are up for seven awards, Jay-Z, Ne-Yo, and Kanye are each up for six, Alison Krauss, John Mayer, Robert Plant, Radiohead, and Jazmine Sullivan (hey, there's a party!) are all up for five, and Adele, Danger Mouse, the Eagles, Lupe Fiasco, George Strait, and T.I. each got four noms. Not bad, right? br / br / As usual, there are some pretty interesting nominations in the genre categories as well. Daft Punk, Robyn, Moby, Kylie Minogue, Cyndi Lauper, and Brazilian Girls are the noms for Best Electronic/Dance Album, Daft Punk, Hot Chip, and Sam Sparro will duke it out with Madonna, Lady Gaga, and Rihanna for Best Dance Recording, Death Cab for Cutie is up against Radiohead, Coldplay, Springsteen, and Kings of Leon for Best Rock Song, Beck, Death Cab, Gnarls Barkley, My Morning Jacket, and Radiohead are the Alternative noms, while Jay-Z, Lil Wayne, Lupe Fiasco, Nas, and T.I. are up for Best Rap Album. Stephen Colbert and David Sedaris are up for Best Spoken Word Album, Flight of the Conchords got a Best Comedy Album nom, and Jonny Greenwood's emThere Will Be Blood/em score is up for Best Score Soundtrack Album. br / br / No Age get to fight Metallica for Best Recording Package, while Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails are both nominated for Best Boxed Set or Limited Edition Package. Danger Mouse and Nigel Godrich are up for Producer of the Year, Justice got a Best Remixed Recording nom for their mix of MGMT's "Electric Feel", and Cornelius is up for Best Surround Sound Album. Weezer, Gnarls Barkley, Erykah Badu, and Radiohead are up for Best Short Form Music Video, as is that Jack White and Alicia Keys James Bond song, which is weird, because that video is emterrible/em.br / br / The Grammys air on CBS on February 8, 2009. I can't wait to see what M.I.A. wears!/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/hhyYu5eteBaj3ERBvfNjrPrwlsA/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/hhyYu5eteBaj3ERBvfNjrPrwlsA/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/-COEGUsJ9Is" height="1" width="1"/

pMuch like the popular Hulu, Project Kangaroo was to offer Internet-based "catch-up" access to three major UK TV networks, in addition to archival content, but the Competition Commission today indicated that it has severe worries about the plan. "Remedies" will be coming soon./ppa href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081203-uk-regulators-bludgeon-kangaroo-video-on-demand-service.html"Read More.../a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/OR9cR-moTPXDFp6nI5KPvi03ZO0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/OR9cR-moTPXDFp6nI5KPvi03ZO0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=Nx7QByKh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?i=Nx7QByKh" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=oRwglMkI"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.arstechnica.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=rHPn22il"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=41" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~4/R3UAQJvPEMU" height="1" width="1"/

pMuch like the popular Hulu, Project Kangaroo was to offer Internet-based "catch-up" access to three major UK TV networks, in addition to archival content, but the Competition Commission today indicated that it has severe worries about the plan. "Remedies" will be coming soon./ppa href="http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081203-uk-regulators-bludgeon-kangaroo-video-on-demand-service.html"Read More.../a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/OR9cR-moTPXDFp6nI5KPvi03ZO0/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/OR9cR-moTPXDFp6nI5KPvi03ZO0/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=Nx7QByKh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?i=Nx7QByKh" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=oRwglMkI"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=50" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?a=rHPn22il"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/arstechnica/BAaf?d=41" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/arstechnica/BAaf/~4/R3UAQJvPEMU" height="1" width="1"/

centerembed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/1kchwH-3tY0amp;hl=enamp;fs=1" width="425" height="344" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"/embed/centerbr / pWhat happens when you cross a Roomba and a Zamboni? Well, chances are you'd get this - the "Winboni" window washing machine that is the brainchild of a brilliant quartet of students from MSU, snagging first place in the International Student Design Competition of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. A single push of a button will let the Winboni get to work automatically on your windows, relying on a suction fan to help it fight against gravity while Windex and felt pads are used for clearing up any bird poop and dirt. The union of window washers will probably have something to say against this, since those folks might be out of a job when the Winboni gets refined - might take many more years though./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/12/winboni_hybrid_washes_windows.html"Winboni Hybrid Washes Windows/a from Ubergizmo (a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"US/a, a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/fr"FR/a) | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a | Hot: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/blackberry_storm_review.html"Storm Review/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081203184643" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081203184643?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081203184643" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081203184643amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Fwinboni_hybrid_washes_windows.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nOf5aRX4Q0aKrLT1Rd1sqZamx2M/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/nOf5aRX4Q0aKrLT1Rd1sqZamx2M/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=R8LKW2YL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=NMGjAbOC"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=NMGjAbOC" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=LOiglVBs"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=svtRyUCA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=svtRyUCA" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=fK6mvFCk"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=fK6mvFCk" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/fNyB2G6ToNM" height="1" width="1"/

The PC gaming industry has seen many graphics chips come and go. Companies like 3dfx, S3, Trident, Intel, nVidia, ATI and others have tapped into the gaming industry and have produced 3d accellerators for the PC, and most of them have gone. There are only two major players in the PC graphics industry: nVidia and ATI.

These two graphics juggernauts unveil new products every year, which effectively doubles the effective processing power over the previous generation. This ruthless competition is both good and bad news for consumers: Good in that faster technology becomes cheaper, and we have many options. Bad in that the expensive video card you just purchased will remain bleeding edge for only a few months.

The latest battle comes just in time for the 2008 holiday season. ATI's 4800 series goes up against nVidia's GTX line of cards. Sapphire is one of the more well-known manufacturers of ATI-based video cards, and they have a secret weapon in the world of single-GPU video cards. Their 4870 Toxic video card not only comes pre-overclocked, but is stacked with 512MB of the fastest GDDR5 memory, which is certainly enough for today's gamer.
Read the full review at OCModShop.com

pLooks like Jerry Yang and the rest of the Yahoo (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=YHOO" class="ticker" title="YHOO"NSDQ: YHOO/a) gang weren't the only ones sad to see the search outsourcing deal with Google (a href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=GOOG" class="ticker" title="GOOG"NSDQ: GOOG/a) die. Sanford Litvack, a lawyer the Department of Justice hired specifically to examine the deal, was hungry for the chance to take the two giants on in court. "Of course I was looking forward to it. bWe felt pretty good about it, we felt pretty confident/b," Litvack said, in an interview a href="http://amlawdaily.typepad.com/amlawdaily/2008/12/hogans-litvack.html" title="with The Am Law Daily"with The Am Law Daily/a. He revealed that the companies a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoos-react-the-deal-was-only-incremental" title="abandoned the pact"abandoned the pact/a just three hours before the DOJ was set to file a a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-google-yahoo-doj-would-have-filed-an-antitrust-lawsuit" title="laundry list of complaints"laundry list of complaints/a. /p p —bComplaint specifics/b: Litvack said the DOJ would have alleged that "Google had a monopoly" in search and that the deal would have extended it. The charges would have been that the deal violated two parts of the Sherman Act: Section 1, which bans agreements that restrain trade unreasonably, and Section 2, which says its against the law for a company to monopolize or attempt to monopolize trade. /p p —bMicrosoft's lobbying wasn't a factor/b: Though MSFT a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-microsoft-outsmarted-complacent-google-in-dc" title="sustained aggressive lobbying efforts"sustained aggressive lobbying efforts/a, Litvack said that the company's offensive didn't sway him (or the DOJ) in either direction. /p p —bGoogle's still in the DOJ's crosshairs/b:nbsp; Meanwhile, the DOJ publicly outed Google's pre-deal search market share numbers—which Litvack said "may or may not" have been a warning about future antitrust actions. Still it's definitely a hint that The Department is keeping a close eye on Google's search-related moves. The companies had even tried to a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoo-google-try-to-sweeten-seach-deal-for-doj-approval" title="tweak the deal"tweak the deal/a in the hopes of garnering the DOJ's approval, but the increased scrutiny may have been what a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-breaking-google-withdrawing-from-yahoo-deal" title="drove Google to back away"drove Google to back away/a from it first.nbsp; /p pstrongRelated/strong/p ul class="related" lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-google-yahoo-doj-would-have-filed-an-antitrust-lawsuit/"Google-Yahoo: DOJ Would Have Filed An Antitrust Lawsuit; Competition Concerns Trumped Anything Else/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-yahoos-react-the-deal-was-only-incremental"Yahoo's React: Disappointed Google Withdrew, But The Deal Was Only 'Incremental' Anyway/a/li /ul piCheck out the best business jobs in digital media. a href="http://jobs.paidcontent.org/"Go here/a for paidContent.org Job Board./i/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=246axz"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=246axz" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=VyRyO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=VyRyO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=naZnO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=naZnO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=SI52o"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=SI52o" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=BpxvO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=BpxvO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=73lZO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=73lZO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/474209432" height="1" width="1"/

With the change in administration it’s time to stop pussyfooting around the issue of broadband access in the U.S. It quite honestly sucks. Yes, some people have access to FiOS, but others have access to speeds that rank even lower than the lame 768 kbps classification of broadband adopted this year (!) by the FCC. Uneven coverage and a lack of competition mean that we in the U.S. pay more for our broadband than many other countries and that about 1 percent of the population can’t get access at all. This has got to change, and the private market isn’t going to do it because it simply isn’t profitable to string fiber, coax or even copper everywhere people have settled.

With consumer groups and industry players calling for a broadband bailout, I’m inclined to agree, even if it does mean Google gets more broadband subscribers for free. The government needs to get involved, and it needs to throw some money at the problem — albeit in a highly organized way. I’ll argue later about what should be done, but first here’s a few reasons why it’s important. Broadband is like electricity and running water — every town, if not every person, needs access to it. Not to watch cats on treadmills or download porn, but because it gives people cheaper access to the world.

Educational Access

Today the New York Times ran an article about the rising costs of a college education and offered up the idea of distance learning as being one solution to rising costs. I don’t think distance learning can substitute for the entire college experience, but having participated in several distance learning classes, it can be used in conjunction with meetings online or weekly in-person meetings  to create a rich learning and discussion environment. Broadband makes that possible today, and faster speeds will only add to the interactivity of those online environments — making a college education more accessible. The kids who most benefit from this are not living in FiOS areas; they are in poorer areas where ISPs try to avoid or delay launching high speed services. I know, I live in one of those areas. The government needs to step up to improve this access divide.

Medical Care Improvements

Broadband also can save on medical costs and improve access to health care. A release issued today highlighted radiologists’ frustration with quality of care. Ninety-four percent of radiologists surveyed blamed missed or delayed diagnosis on the inability of medical imaging systems to communicate with information systems of physicians and hospitals. Delivering radiological scans via broadband requires fat pipes and rapid speeds, but the benefit to patients, insurers and doctors would be many: fewer scans, faster delivery of images where they are needed, and lower costs associated with the process.

Telecommuting Expansion

Another benefit of better broadband would be the ability for people to telecommute. This has far-reaching benefits, from fewer cars on the roads to increasing a family’s resilience in the face of economic uncertainty. As a telecommuter, when I change jobs I don’t have to sell my house, uproot my husband’s career or leave the network of friends and family who support us. The more people who have that flexibility, the less traumatizing job loss can be both for the individual family and for a particular region.

Those are a few of the reasons the government should care about broadband access. Broadband can help promote an educated citizenry, could help lower the costs of providing health care and could increase workforce flexibility and decrease traffic. So while older generations of legislators might deride the web as a series of tubes, the truth of the matter is those tubes could be the lifeblood for citizen access to education, information and services. We need policies and funding to make sure broadband reaches everyone, and we need it today. It would’t be a bailout. It would be an investment.

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Mike Ashley, the billionaire entrepreneur behind Sports Direct, will be forced to justify his recent purchase of a near-5 per cent stake in JJB Sports after competition investigators said that they would examine the deal.

Hey all,
I haven't seen many threads here like this so I decided I'd make a thread about the iPhone's top competition. Currently I don't have an iPhone, or Blackberry, or any type of smartphone (Sad I know). However, I wanted to make this thread to compile a list of phones that may come hand-in-hand with the iPhone, or possibly even better. What I want to know is, what phone do YOU (in your personal opinion) think out-performs the iPhone and its functionality, please list the phone name, and your reason as to why, but if your simply just feeling lazy go ahead and just post the phone name :p
Hopefully this will help people like me who are in the decision-making to foresee a few more options.

If this goes against any forum rules, go ahead and do what you have to mods

After months of local and regional competitions held at each of Guitar Center's 214 stores across the country, the top six undiscovered drummers in the nation have been selected from a field of nearly 5,000 competitors.

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/99052?ns=guardianpageName=Football%3A+Cool+Tevez+hat-trick+sends+United+into+the+semisch=Footballc3=The+Guardianc4=Carling+Cup%2CManchester+United+%28Football%29%2CBlackburn+Rovers+%28Football+club%29%2CFootball%2CSportc5=Not+commercially+useful%2CPremier+Leaguec6=Daniel+Taylorc7=2008_12_03c8=1128459c9=articlec10=GUc11=Footballc12=Carling+Cupc13=c14=h2=GU%2FFootball%2FCarling+Cup" width="1" height="1" //divpStrap a polygraph to Sir Alex Ferguson and he might just be forced to admit that he often finds the Carling Cup little more than a hindrance in a cluttered fixture list. At this stage of the competition the good definitely outweighs the bad and Manchester United will take their place in the semi-finals as the favourites to reach, and win, another Wembley final./ppEven with a vastly weakened side they were far too good for a Blackburn team teetering on the brink of a full-blown crisis, with Paul Ince facing voluble abuse from the small band of away supporters. There were chants of "We want Incey out" and "You don't know what you're doing" and the name of the club's former manager Graeme Souness was sung./ppThis was certainly a chastening experience for Ince on the ground where he once played with such distinction. Carlos Tevez was magnificent, scoring twice and taking much of the credit for forcing Aaron Mokoena into an own goal. Nani completed United's scoring and Blackburn's goals, via Benni McCarthy and Matt Derbyshire, had little impact, coming with the score at 2-0 and then 4-1. /ppFerguson watched this unfold from a seat high in the South Stand, having been banished from the dugout as penance for angrily confronting the referee Mike Dean after their recent game against Hull City. In truth, it was little more than a minor inconvenience, but a bitingly cold one, too, on a night when Mike Phelan and the other coaching staff could make use of the specially heated seats that Ferguson asked to be installed a couple of years ago./ppThe United manager had made 10 changes from the team that beat Manchester City on Sunday and it was clear that even if Ronaldo had not been suspended he would have been given the night off. This was an experimental side of fringe players, the Portuguese-speaking clan of Anderson, Nani, Rodrigo Possebon and Rafael da Silva, plus a couple of older heads in Gary Neville and Ryan Giggs. Ferguson had taken a calculated risk and, in the end, he was entitled to feel he got it just right./ppWith so many changes, it was probably only to be expected there would be spells when United did not play with the usual fluency and penetration. Blackburn are on a miserable run of form and, after a subdued start from the home side, it soon became apparent why Ince's team have not kept a clean sheet since mid-October./ppThe opening goal came from a Ryan Giggs free-kick and was credited to Carlos Tevez. It was a popular call as Tevez is a favourite of the Old Trafford crowd in what has become a difficult period for him in the wake of Dimitar Berbatov's signing. Replays, however, confirmed that Tevez's only role had been to apply pressure to Aaron Mokoena at the far post. With the striker coming from behind, Mokoena tried to head the ball clear but, losing balance, succeeded only in diverting it beyond Robinson for an own goal./ppUntil that point United had threatened only sporadically and Nani was demonstrating why he must be considered the player most at risk from the arrival in January of the Serbia international Zoran Tosic. Nani's slow development should be a cause of consternation for Ferguson given that the Portuguese international cost more than Ronaldo, but five minutes before the interval there was a demonstration of what he is capable of. The one-two with Tevez was fast and incisive and Nani's right-foot shot was precise to made it 2-0./ppFerguson has lost only two of the 33 games at Old Trafford in which he has faced teams managed by his former players. Briefly, Blackburn threatened to dent that record when the half-time substitute McCarthy ran on to Robinson's long goal-kick and, having benefited from Neville's slow reactions, lashed a right-foot volley past Ben Foster./ppThis was the night when Foster finally made his home debut for United, almost three and a half years since signing from Stoke City. Ince could reflect that his team made it a busier 90 minutes for the goalkeeper than Edwin can der Sar often faces but it was only a crumb of consolation given the way Blackburn's defence collapsed. Within two minutes Andre Ooijer had brought down Tevez, running on to Giggs's through ball and the Argentinian made it 3-1 from the penalty spot./ppThe outstanding moment of the night followed four minutes later. Anderson was involved three times, Giggs once and Tevez twice, as United's sharp, incisive passing and movement made traffic cones out of their opponents. It finished with Anderson running clear, with the chance to score his first-ever United goal. His unselfishness could only be admired as he squared the ball for Tevez to roll it into an empty net. It was a goal that deserved every superlative going. /ppThe game was won and it was inconsequential when Derbyshire stabbed the ball past Foster with five minutes to go and Benni McCarthy scored from Derbyshire's cross./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/carlingcup"Carling Cup/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/manchesterunited"Manchester United/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/blackburn"Blackburn Rovers/a/li/ul/diva href="http://www.guardian.co.uk"guardian.co.uk/a copy; Guardian News Media Limited 2008 | Use of this content is subject to our a href="http://users.guardian.co.uk/help/article/0,,933909,00.html"Terms Conditions/a | a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/webfeeds/1,,1309488,00.html"More Feeds/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/6TfHMdcuRQUjD3Ss9Td2_MU2YKo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/6TfHMdcuRQUjD3Ss9Td2_MU2YKo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

When you’re an itty-bitty company and your first big customer win is CBS, you turn a few heads. And so it is with iWidgets, which makes video applications that are customized for the likes of MySpace, Facebook, iGoogle and other social networks. Now that they’ve landed CBS, they’re working to bring on more TV broadcasters, as well as online video producers, as clients.

Syndicating your content or web site to social networks generally requires either hiring a developer who knows the inner workings of writing code for each site, or going with a one-size-fits-all widget provider. San Francisco-based iWidgets simplifies the process with a drag-and-drop web interface that spits out custom widgets.

CEO Peter Yared’s pitch goes something like this: Traffic to destination sites across the Internet is tracking downward. Everybody’s spending their time on social networks instead. If you’re in the content business, you need to deliver your stuff to where the people already are. So CSI, for example, has nearly 450,000 fans on its Facebook page, where an iWidgets app of top clips is front and center.

We’ve long been bullish on tying together communities and content, to the point of integrating characters, fans and storylines. But that’s a bit too ambitious and fuzzy for Yared, who said he’s focused on where the money is flowing today. iWidgets is set up in such a way that it can take a piece of lucrative video CPMs as an affiliate. In Yared’s opinion, video is the most monetizable aspect of social networks because users hate banner ads, whereas they’re used to dealing with an in-stream video ad, no matter what the environment. Indeed, CBS uses thePlatform to manage its video advertising, and iWidgets — at least according to its published rates — takes 15 percent of that ad revenue.

iWidgets just started offering a self-serve version of its platform, though it doesn’t allow integration with outside video advertising, so users won’t be able to make money from it.

Yared said iWidgets’ advantage over its main competition, Sprout Builder, is that its applications aren’t in Flash, making them more flexible; and over competitors like Clearspring, that iWidgets’ applications are customized for each social network rather than one-size-fits all. iWidgets is tightly entrenched in each social network; for example, it plans to offer its customers easy integration with Facebook’s new paid program for placing application items in users’ newsfeeds.

iWidgets has already raised a seed round of more than $1 million from Opus Capital, and is working on closing a Series A round that’s so far been held up by this fall’s market downturn, according to Yared.

Yared told us that the day his company launched with CBS (which didn’t go entirely smoothly, as there was some conflict over whether little iWidgets would receive full episodes or just clips), he received calls from nearly every other network. So his seven-employee startup, which to date has really been more focused on refining its nifty widget creator technology than cutting deals, has a lot to get done — including hopping on many flights to Los Angeles.

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