Wendy Boswell stays on top of Web search and social media trends at About.com. You can catch up with her via Twitter.

If you’ve been looking for a simple way to track your spending, make a budget, or follow your investments – without splashing out any dough – then online finance managers might be just up your alley. Let’s take a look at Mint and Rudder, two very similar money management sites that give you the tools to manage your hard-earned cash.

Getting Started with Mint

Getting started with Mint couldn’t be easier: you’ll just need to hand over the username and password to your financial institution (you can reassure yourself with Mint’s privacy policy, along with a detailed FAQ of security issues).

It’s easy to add accounts to your Mint dashboard, and thousands of financial institutions are available from which to choose from. In less than five minutes total, I was looking at an extremely detailed (yet manageable) analysis of three of my accounts, along with transaction information, spending trends, saving suggestions, and more.

Mint Your Money

Those of us who are financial software-phobic will love Mint’s simple yet comprehensive financial habits breakdown. There’s nothing you have to dig through a manual to understand here – it’s all pretty basic. For instance:

Overview: This is your main dashboard where you can see a quick snapshot of what your money’s been doing: recent account activity, budget trends, any alerts, etc.

Spending Trends: This gives you a pie chart o’spending; you can dig down within each category to see what your spending looks like. This is Quicken without the hassle.

Transactions: You can get a quick overview of all your accounts at once here, filter them by individual account, search via transaction type or just type in a search term (i.e., “Costco”).

Ways to Save: Mint pays the bills with sponsored offers on the “Ways to Save” page; this is also where you’ll be offered potential moneysaving deals, such as a higher interest rate for your savings account.

Mint Alerts: The most convenient tool that Mint offers is email or SMS alerts that can warn you if you’re going over your credit limit, about to incur some fees, getting a bit low in your account, and a lot more. This is an amazingly simple yet super awesome way to stay on top of your finances.

Mobile Access: You can access your entire Mint profile from the convenience of a Web-enabled phone or mobile device. For instance, if you text “Bal” (balance) to “MyMint” (696468), you’ll get instant balance reports for any account you’ve added to your Mint dashboard – and as we’re heading into the holiday season, this comes in especially handy.

Credit Management: Mint also offers a credit management program that scans for better interest rates and fees in addition to information on how to lower your current credit card debt – again, all for free.

Investment Management: You can manage all your investments – 401K, brokerage accounts, etc. – in one easy portal with Mint (rather than logging into one out of the way site after another). Also, since Mint automatically updates your investment information, you can stay on top of exactly what’s going on, rather than relying on an annual update.

Pros & Cons

Pros:

· You don’t have to balance anything; it’s all done for you.
· Read-only connection to bank accounts according to privacy policy.
· Excellent credit card management program; scans for better interest rates and fees and gives you information on how to lower your current debt.
· Easy to set up alerts
· Free!

Cons:

· You can’t import from any other financial software (such as Quicken), and you can’t take Mint data anywhere else.
· Mint also trusts your bank or other financial institution to be completely right, there are no inherent checks and balances.
· Good for keeping track, but shouldn’t be the only thing you use - always go to the source.
· Can’t be used offline.

Getting Started with Rudder

Rudder initially is not as easy to set up as Mint. The process is similar: pick your financial institution, hand over your username and password (read the privacy policy), and wait for your information to be extrapolated. However, this initial step alone took nearly five minutes – compared to about thirty seconds for Mint, and everything at Rudder must be entered manually. Yes, that’s right – manually.

Once you’ve added in your data, Rudder will identify your recurring bills and expenses. You also have to add in your income, which unless you work a straight paycheck to paycheck kind of job is not the most intuitive way to track your revenue.

However, Rudder’s not necessarily about the nitty-gritty details (and this is where a lot of people might say “thanks, but no thanks”). Rudder likes to focus on your big fiscal picture via broad stroke financial widgets that track this activity, such as:

Spend Meter: a simple way to tell if you’re spending beyond your means, but it won’t give you exact dollar amounts.

Savings Widget: A simple way to track your savings.

Bill Tracker: See if there’s anything upcoming that needs to be paid.

Rudder also offers emails (daily, weekly, monthly) to give you your account overview without actually having to log in to your account – you can get these via your Web-enabled phone or mobile device.

Pros:

· Easy to use
· Good for overall tracking
· Email-based; manage your finances via your inbox

Cons:

· Requires a manual setup
· Not good for specific money management

Rudder is definitely a simple, no-clutter tool for tracking your finances...emphasis on simple. If you’re looking for a big picture sort of tool that gives you an overall view of your money, then Rudder might be a good pick.

Mint vs. Rudder: The Bottom Line

Many of us have a nagging feeling in the back of our minds that we’re just not doing enough to manage our money, so we purchase expensive financial management software packages that end up sitting unused on the shelf. Both Mint and Rudder aim to solve this problem, providing free, simple, yet powerful money management tools that anyone can use, no matter what their level of financial expertise.

However, Rudder, while somewhat useful, only provides a core overview of your finances and is tedious to initially get going. In addition, there’s not much in the way of actually teaching you to manage your money more efficiently; it’s a tool aimed at showing you what you have left in your account, and that’s pretty much it.

On the other hand, Mint is simple to set up and gives you a detailed yet completely understandable money analysis, with tools that can quickly help you become more financially savvy. Credit, investments, budgets – all of these are concepts that many of us tend to avoid, but Mint makes them accessible using our own accounts as a springboard to a healthier financial outlook. While Rudder is a good tool to get you going in the quest for fiscal improvement, Mint is a better long-term choice.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, bns124

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Related Articles at Mashable | All That's New on the Web:

Mint SMS: Monitor Your Finances On the Go
Rudder Helps You Manage Your Money From Your Inbox (The Startup Review)
Mint.com Launches Redesign with New Financial Resources and Educational Tools
Mint.com Offers Web-based Financial Tracking Tools
Personal Finance Site Mint Opens to The Public With New Features
Thrive Wants to Help 20 and 30-Somethings Manage Their Money
BillShrink Wants to Help You Manage Your Credit Cards

pimg class="float_right" src="/~~/f?id=47a93a374b543772005e74bfmaxX=200maxY=150" border="0" alt="grinch-santa.jpg" title="grinch-santa.jpg" width="200" height="150" /While online shopping spending shrank before Thanksgiving, growth jumped after the holiday: Americans spent $846 million online on so-called "Cyber Monday," up 15% year-over-year, a href="http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2607"according to comScore/a. They also spent $769 million online this past Saturday and Sunday, up 19% year-over-year./p pThat's still slower growth from last year, when Cyber Monday online a href="http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1930"sales jumped 21%/a. But it's a big improvement over pre-Thanksgiving e-commerce, which dropped 4% year-over-year./p pWhat does it mean for overall holiday spending? Sunday, comScore a href="http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/11/black-friday-e-commerce-sales-up-1-comscore"insisted/a that Cyber Monday was an "accurate bellwether" for overall holiday e-commerce spending. "While the year-over-year growth rates for individual online spending days vary quite significantly throughout the season, strongduring the past few years Cyber Monday has been within a few percentage points of the final holiday season growth rate/strong."/p pThat would suggest overall holiday e-commerce growth somewhere near 15%. Yet comScore still projects emflat/em year-over-year holiday e-commerce growth. We'll keep an eye out for an updated projection./p pThe revenues are nice, but will there be room for profit? Some 51% of consumers "indicated that the level of promotions and discounts is higher this year than last year," comScore reports. Meanwhile, bad news for offline retail: Some 39% of consumers said "there seemed to be fewer people out shopping in retail stores this year than last year."/p pstrongSee Also:/strongbr /a href="../../2008/12/cyber-monday-traffic-amazon-killed-amzn"Cyber Monday Traffic: Amazon Takes The Prize (AMZN)/abr /a href="../../2008/11/black-friday-e-commerce-sales-up-1-comscore"Black Friday E-Commerce Sales Up 1%: ComScore/abr /a href="../../2008/11/e-commerce-shrinks-for-the-first-time"E-Commerce Shrinks For The First Time/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/IAolaTJF_lvAAFd2KgjzyMafess/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/IAolaTJF_lvAAFd2KgjzyMafess/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=SbSk7djH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=SbSk7djH" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=LL7C2GcY"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=yBT5KlSR"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=80" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=7eYPWsdn"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?i=7eYPWsdn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=AgdDKHXe"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=131" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=bKSCsAZ2"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=336" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=sjLaf9VO"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?a=pkTcQjfs"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~4/WIYBdyDpCIU" height="1" width="1"/

Shares of Marvell Technology Group Ltd. rose in premarket trading Wednesday after analysts said the chip maker is doing a good job controlling its expenses and improvement is likely in store in the second half of next year.div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=pKt0O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=pKt0O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=qIlco"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=qIlco" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?a=QRZSo"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/ibtimes/tech?i=QRZSo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/ibtimes/tech/~4/473651314" height="1" width="1"/

divimg alt="" src="http://hits.guardian.co.uk/b/ss/guardiangu-feeds/1/H.15.1/92855?ns=guardianpageName=Film%3A+How+Hollywood+grew+up+about+teen+sexch=Filmc3=guardian.co.ukc4=Film%2CCulture+section%2CSex+education%2CSexual+health+%28Society%29c5=Not+commercially+useful%2CHealth+Society%2CSchools+Educationc6=Henry+Barnesc7=2008_12_03c8=1128017c9=articlec10=GUc11=Filmc12=blogc13=c14=Film+blogh2=GU%2FFilm%2Fblog%2FFilm+blog" width="1" height="1" //divpParents! Do you know what your teenage son has got himself into? The answer, according to the people behind such films as new teen comedy a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/movie/127833/sex.drive"Sex Drive/a, is socks, apple pies, soft fruit and his friends' mums. If it's inanimate or inappropriate, he's been there./ppApologies for crassness, but that's exactly the kind of humour regularly employed by Hollywood scriptwriters to describe the coming of age experience. Male teens are sweaty lumps of sexual frustration who will hump anything; they're enthusiastic but useless lovers who think finesse is something you yell when it's over. /ppWe have Paul Weitz's genre classic American Pie (in which unions with all the above occur) to thank for this stereotype - which, shockingly, is an improvement on the previous state of affairs. Following the progress of four high-school boys who make a pact to lose their virginity by prom night, the film gifted the sexcom genre with a whole new set of moves. /ppBefore Pie, comedy films for the teenage market followed Russ Meyers' mantra - "big laughs and big tits" - but weren't much bothered if the latter squeezed the former out. The format was all about cramming in gross-out gags regardless of the plot, hence the shallow humour of 80s hits such as a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v="W3A9rLoz_0o""Caddyshack/a and a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v="pKZV1MSldJk""Porky's/a. There were no consequences, there were no lessons, just slobbering blokes chasing after vacuous women - Benny Hill goes Beverly Hills. /ppThe relative realism of American Pie (pie-coupling notwithstanding) changed everything. It dealt with the issues that shape teenage sexual behaviour - peer pressure, competitiveness, parental attitudes - without ridicule, and it didn't patronise its audience. Put bluntly, it gave teenage boys a voice as well as a hard-on. /ppPost-Pie, it appears teen comedies are taking a (slightly) a href="http://yas.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/35/1/37"more sophisticated view/a of adolescent sex and sexuality. Sex Drive, the story of one boy's road trip across America to sleep with a girl he's met on the internet, is an example of the developing maturity of the genre's film-makers. Director Sean Anders takes inspiration from the sexual insecurity implicit in Gen-X classics such as Swingers and Clerks; hence, Sex Drive's hero, Ian, isn't just a randy teenager. /ppHe's lonely, desperate and hormonal, bullied by an older brother who boasts greater sexual prowess and outgunned by a more experienced best friend. He's also painfully insecure around girls, who tend to ignore or use him. Incidentally, it's significant that here, as in most blockbuster genres, the female characters are still always either a href="http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=axizXOjRjbI"sex objects/a or "one of the boys". The genre's film-makers still have a lot more maturing to do when it comes to their views on equality. /ppStill, it's reassuring that the film industry's love affair with the movies at the extreme end of the scale - the true a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0362120/"trash/a inspired by the genre's moronic, sexist 80s - appears to be fizzling out. It suggests that Hollywood is beginning to realise that most teenagers are driven by more than their base instincts. Concerned parents should take comfort in that. After all, hormones alone are unlikely to turn your teenager a href="http://www.imdb.com/media/rm466065664/tt0163651"pie-fucking crazy/a. But hormones, plus the influence of Porky's-like idiocy, just might./pdiv style="float: left; margin-right: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px;"ullia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/sexeducation"Sex education/a/lilia href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/sexual-health"Sexual health/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/cKa8xzetrk9qZ3GkmD1qiRGb9Nw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/cKa8xzetrk9qZ3GkmD1qiRGb9Nw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/p

This is a problem I've been struggling with for a while and could really use another set of eyes or advice from a fresh perspective.

We're professional wedding photographers who have to develop a very economical storage and backup solution. We shoot about 20 weddings a year averaging 4000 photos a wedding at an average of 25-30mb per photo (we shoot RAW). This equals about 120GB a wedding in raw files and about 2.5TB in RAW files per season.

We also shoot a variety of other projects throughout the year and will be adding video to our workflow this year, which means we need even more space.

Right now we have two Mac Pros. The following is the current plan for storage/backup, I'm looking for people to shoot holes in it so please be brutally honest and give me your best suggestions for improvement.

Machine 1 - 2TB total usable space
- 4 1TB drives running in RAID 10 (which will include booting the OS from the RAID)
- This computer will be used to store RAW data only. RAW photos, and RAW video footage
- When any data is downloaded to this RAID array it will also be downloaded to a Mac Book Pro to be transferred to an offsite backup drive so that at all times we have one on-site raid copy of the files and one offsite single backup of the file
- When this RAID array is full all 4 drives will be removed, one mirrored set will be put in static bags in storage and one set will be placed in a dual bay external enclosure for easy access ***Is it possible to transfer two striped drives from the Mac Pro to the dual bay enclosure while maintaining the striped RAID?***

Machine 2 - 1TB total usable space
- 4 500GB drives running in RAID 10 (which will include booting the OS from RAID)
- This computer will be used to store LIVE working data. Edited JPEGs, albums, business documents, video edits.
- This computer will have the entire 1TB content of the array copied to a 1TB external firewire drive each night for backup (erasing the contents from the previous night). At the end of one week I'll move that firewire drive to an offsite location and replace it with another 1TB firewiredrive. Those two 1TB drives will be switched back and fourth offsite and onsite each week so that the most we could ever lose of LIVE working data is 1 week if our studio burnt down or something.
- Again like above when this RAID array is full all 4 drives will be removed, one mirrored set will be put in static bags in storage and one set will be placed in a dual bay external enclosure


I know that the Mac Pro has two odd sata ports on the motherboard which can be used to plug in two esata connectors. Does anyone think it would be worth plugging in two esata connectors to MACHINE 1 in order to have six 1TB hard drives running in RAID 10 for a total of 3 TB usable space. I've read that it's quite a pain installing those esata extenders on the mobo

- I really want to figure this problem out without using a RAID controller card
- I Do not want to create a linux server to house more than 4 drives
- I Do not want to use 1.5TB drives, as I've read some really negative reviews on them (and I can't risk losing anyones wedding pictures!)
- I Do want to use the Mac Pros existing 4 bays to create a good solution.
- I don't mind switching the drives out once a year and putting them in an enclosure but I don't want to have to take them out more than once a year because a) it means i have to install a fresh copy of the OS and related programs on new RAID 10 drives and b) i don't want a ton of external drives cluttering things up

Obviously eventually we'll be looking at dedicated Xserve type RAID arrays but for now I want to stretch the capabilities of the Mac Pro to find an existing solution.

Thanks in advance for anyone who has even taken the time to read this thread, I know it's super long.

Rhys Chatham was born in Manhattan in 1952. He came under the musical influence of his father, Price, a harpsichordist, and became a devotee of the work of early music composers such as Giles Farnaby and John Bull, playing their music on a virginal. Switching to baroque and Boehm flute, he soon became interested in contemporary music and began playing the work of Edgard Varèse, Luciano Berio, Stefan Wolpe, Mario Davidovsky, and Pierre Boulez. nbsp; His immersion in the contemporary literature for flute led to his desire to compose. He began studying counterpoint and harmony at the age of 13 with Donald Stratton and Tom Manoff, who sparked his interest in serialism. nbsp; By 1982, Chatham was going deaf from playing too much loud music. He decided to make a series of fully notated pieces for the slightly quieter brass family of instruments. After awhile, this renewed interest in notation (and an improvement in his hearing) led him to return to writing for electric guitar ensemble; Die Dönnergötter (1984-86) was his first effort in this direction. After a series of interim pieces he concluded this period with an ultimate work, An Angel Moves Too Fast to See (1989) for a symphony of 100 electric guitars, electric bass, and drums. nbsp; Rhys Chatham's compositional concern has been to bring together seemingly incompatible elements and put them through a personal filter so as to vertically align them. During the seventies and much of the eighties, he devoted himself to combining the pounding, throbbing rhythms of rock with the aesthetic concerns of post-minimalism.

pWhen news came out that Conde Nast was launching its teen social media site a href="http://www.Flip.com" title="Flip.com"Flip.com/a, back in 2006, Staci a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/junior-achievement-meets-conde-nast-new-site-for-ambitious-teen-girls" title="had a very"had a very/a pertinent question: "Can Conde Nast, which has been so good at matching demographics with ideas for print, create an online place appealing enough to catch and keep teen girls attention among so much competition?" Now as it has announced that it is closing Flip.com, the answer seems to be, unfortunately, no. The site will close down on Dec 16th, according to a note sent out to users, reported a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/the_state_of_journalism/flipcom_to_close_december_16_102210.asp" title="by FishbowlNY"by FishbowlNY/a. "If you have any flipbooks that you would like to save before this date, we suggest you print them. It's easy; go to the flipbook and click on the Print button just below it." How convinient... /p p Just a few months after the site's beta launch early last year, the company tied to retool it, and make it more about partnerships and working through other social networks like MySpace and Facebook. Even that didn't seem to have worked. Part of it has been its own internal bungling and key employee defection. Then, it didn't have a big traffic funnel to bring any kind of mass to the social net, and if anything, the key in such an effort is the network effect. /p p Conde Nast, which some thought to be the perfect magazine machine and almost immune to a downturn, is having a particularly tough time during these times: it has been slashing jobs across the board, including at Portfolio and Men's Vogue, as well as its online division CondeNet. Flip.com was run out of CondeNet, and its budget review finished just late last month...Flip's closure is likely a result of that review. What else will the company pull the plug on? Any ideas? And by the way, I stand by a href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-conde-nast-scales-back-portfolio-mens-vogue-layoffs-are-coming/" title="my earlier prediction"my prediction/a in October: "I wouldn't be surprised if Portfolio ends up being a special section with Wired magazine or New Yorker a year down the line." Now, it may come even sooner... /p pstrongRelated/strong/p ul class="related" lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-conde-nast-social-net-flip-tries-to-avoid-flop-with-partnerships-and-pr" title="Conde Nast Social Net Flip Tries To Avoid Flop With Partnerships And Promotions"Conde Nast Social Net Flip Tries To Avoid Flop With Partnerships And Promotions/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/hachette-to-launch-home-improvement-portal" title="Hachette To Launch Home Improvement Portal; CondeNet's Flip Opens Today"Hachette To Launch Home Improvement Portal; CondeNet's Flip Opens Today/a/li lia href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/condenets-teen-girl-site-flip-will-let-users-control-advertising/" title="CondeNet's Teen Girl Site Flip Will Let Users Control Advertising"CondeNet's Teen Girl Site Flip Will Let Users Control Advertising/a/li /ul p!-- iMark Logic Digital Publishing Summit, Thursday November 6, Westin Times Square. Insight and perspective from Outsell, Gilbane, Simon Schuster, BusinessWeek.com, more. Evening cocktail reception. Cost is complimentary. a href="http://content.adbureau.net/accipiter/adclick/CID=000010cb0000000000000000/SITE=PC_US/AAMSZ=PREMB_NEWS/relocate=http://marklogicdps.eventbrite.com/"Register now!/a/i --/p pa href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=54CF3r"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=54CF3r" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=XxF8O"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=XxF8O" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=zw3BO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=zw3BO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=W8Yro"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=W8Yro" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=zjLeO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=zjLeO" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=yVshO"img src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=yVshO" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/473172160" height="1" width="1"/

div style="FLOAT: right"img title="Xbox 360 Arcade Bundles Get 256MB Internal Storage" alt="Xbox 360 Arcade Bundles Get 256MB Internal Storage" hspace="5" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/12/arcade-256mb.jpg" vspace="5" border="0" //div pIt is official now - Microsoft's Xbox 360 Arcade units will be equipped with 256MB of internal storage, which is an infinite improvement over its previous iteration (mathematically speaking, of course), since its predecessor came with 256MB of external memory. This would mean you are able to save games and download content the moment you get the Xbox 360 Arcade up and running in your home, although if you plan on traveling with your precious console, you will still need to purchase a Memory Unit. Any other goodies for us this Christmas, Microsoft? Congratulations on your console outselling the Sony PS3 three-to-one during the recent Black Friday period./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/12/xbox_360_arcade_bundles_get_256mb_internal_storage.html"Xbox 360 Arcade Bundles Get 256MB Internal Storage/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_081202185725" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081202185725?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_081202185725" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081202185725amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Fxbox_360_arcade_bundles_get_256mb_internal_storage.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/aCM4Nwcwhz_b9CkIrtU9hQrI2bo/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/aCM4Nwcwhz_b9CkIrtU9hQrI2bo/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=8TEBY6tN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=QaUuut2M"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=QaUuut2M" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=l1stAESG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=G1FhKTjd"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=G1FhKTjd" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=TNZOLRck"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=TNZOLRck" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/wDa4j2DZYq8" height="1" width="1"/

Publication Date: 2008 Nov 28 PMID: 19040742br/Authors: Ni, T. T. - Lemon, W. J. - Shyr, Y. - Zhong, T. P.br/Journal: BMC Bioinformaticsbr/br/ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: High-throughput microarrays are widely used to study gene expression across tissues and developmental stages. Analysis of gene expression data is challenging in these experiments due to the presence of significant percentages of differentially expressed genes (DEG) observed between tissues and developmental stages. Data normalization methods that are widely used today are not designed for data with a large proportion of tissue or gene effects. RESULTS: In our current study, we describe a novel two-dimensional nonparametric normalization method for analyzing microarray data which functions well in the absence or presence of large numbers of gene effects. Rather than relying on an assumption of low variability among most genes, the method implements a unique peak selection strategy to distinguish DEG from genes that are invariant in expression, prior to nonlinear curve fitting. We compared the method under simulated and experimental conditions with five alternative nonlinear normalization approaches: quantile, lowess, robust lowess, invariant set, and cross-correlation (Xcorr). Simulations included various percentages of simulated DEG and the experimental data used is from publicly available datasets known to be difficult to analyze due to the presence of approximately 34% DEG. CONCLUSIONS: We have demonstrated that the new method provides considerable improvement in the accuracy of data normalization when large proportions of gene effects are present. The performance improvement is mostly attributed to its variable selection component, which is designed to separate expression invariant genes from DEG. Adding this key component of the new method to alternative normalization approaches rescues the most of the sensitivity of these methods to gene effects. The results indicate that our method may be used without prior knowledge of or assumptions about housekeeping genes to normalize microarrays that are quite different.br/br/post to: a href = http://www.citeulike.org/posturl?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov%2Fentrez%2Fquery.fcgi%3Fcmd%3DRetrieve%26db%3DPubMed%26dopt%3DAbstract%26list_uids%3D19040742title=Entrez+PubmedCiteULike/a

centerimg title="More On Sony PS3 Firmware Update 2.53" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="More On Sony PS3 Firmware Update 2.53" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/12/ps3-253.jpg" border="0" //centerbr / pSony's PS3 will be getting yet another firmware update in the near future, bringing the version number to 2.53 then. Sony has made it known that they will ensure Flash Player works fine on the console, an improvement that users have long been expecting. Guess that means more and more people will be able to access sites that use Flash with wanton abandon without having to worry about it crashing or not being able to work. Other two features that come with the 2.53 update include full-screen mode playability as well as Live movie (via RTMP format) playback support. Hopefully this update will also touch on the browser's stability as it isn't exactly the Rock of Gilbratar at this point in time./p pPermalink: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/12/more_on_sony_ps3_firmware_update_253.html"More On Sony PS3 Firmware Update 2.53/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_081202171210" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081202171210?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_081202171210" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081202171210amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F12%2Fmore_on_sony_ps3_firmware_update_253.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/v1H4Rv9194MrcpSTZwobAjgDmqg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/v1H4Rv9194MrcpSTZwobAjgDmqg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=F6G6J9f8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=oTwVZtDN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=oTwVZtDN" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=dsyO3bCt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=MQa6dpzg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=MQa6dpzg" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=OgtMMGsS"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=OgtMMGsS" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ubergizmo/~4/REGcLOtiXl4" height="1" width="1"/

The Dwight Way is a remodel and the addition of a new building on the same site to create a 9-unit, mixed-use, urban infill project in the heart of Berkeley. Built originally as a corner grocery store with apartments above and a large side yard, the location had become one of the noisiest and busiest in the city. By restoring the existing building and adding a new one in an environmentally sensitive way, the project transforms this site into a green showcase. The goal was to use time tested methods to minimize energy use and to rely heavily on salvaged, recycled, and low-toxic finishes. Thoughtful passive design strategies such as excellent insulation, careful window placement and siting for passive solar benefit were among the most important strategies used to minimize energy consumption. The designers were able to achieve a 280% improvement in energy use in the existing building. The new building is almost twice as energy efficient as required by state energy code. The couple laid heavy reliance on salvaged and recycled materials saved tremendous amounts of manufacturing energy and reduced overall environmental impacts. Just three measures saved as much energy as the two buildings will use in a year: · Using blown-in cellulose insulation (made from old telephone books and newspapers) instead of fiberglass: · Substituting 50% of the cement in the concrete with fly ash (a by-product of coal burning); and · Leaving the aluminum siding on the existing building instead of replacing it with wood or stucco. The house has building materials which are published earlier on Superuse: Windshield Covering - http://www.superuse.org/story.php?title=Windshield-Covering Volvo Fence: http://www.superuse.org/story.php?title=Volvo-Fans Street Sign Fence: http://www.superuse.org/story.php?title=Street-Sign-Fence Other measures also contributed significantly to reduced overall environmental impact: · Reused car parts for awnings, railings, gates, shelves, parking bumpers and lighting. · Reused 3 1/2 tons of street signs for siding, eaves, gates, light shades and railings. · Insulated floor slabs. · Thousands of board feet of salvaged wood reused for doors, siding, trim, walls. · FSC certified, sustainably harvested 2 x 6 framing lumber. · Sustainably harvested oak slab counters. · Formaldehyde free kitchen and bathroom cabinet boxes in the new building. · FSC certified sustainably harvested hardwood flooring. · 100% wool carpets. · Non-VOC paints and woodwork finished with natural oils. · Photovoltaic panels. · Non-toxic permeable gravel paving instead of asphalt to retain rainwater on site. · Native and drought tolerant plants, eliminating the need for an irrigation system. · Bicycle parking area. · Small, gracious (average 785 sq ft, 2 bedroom, 1.5 bath) units reduce material demand. · Rehabilitation of existing buildings and infilling within the city reduce pressure to build in and commute from greenbelt areas outside the city. Karl Wanaselja and Cate Leger, lwarc The Dwight House (2004) Re-purposed Building Complex Berkeley, California, USA Source: http://www.lwarc.com/dwight1.html  » <a href='1'>original news</a>

News/release from mr305



This is a plugin that works BOTH IN-GAME, in XMB as well as Homebrew, consists of a 20 most Creative, Incredible set of effects put together in a small package to create a truly unique PSP experience.
You'll start to Love your PSP as if it's new (willing to trust me?) !

This is what has been in developement for months (with several sparing minutes every alternate weekends)

Since the beginning the main priority has been to create a very heavily optimized and tweaked product that everyone would like. With performance being maxed out; infact most of the effects including Flipped XMB run at FULL 60 FPS and with memory footprint being virtually ZERO - you can't go wrong.

VIDEOS:

- PART I: A Quick Glimpse at some of the effects -
{
- PART II: The Lasting Touch -


CONTROLS:

TRIANGLE+VOL UP/DOWN - Change Effect
VOLUP + VOL DOWN = Toggle Effect
TRIANGLE + ANALOG UP/DOWN - Adjust Brightness


Requirements:

CFW 5.00 M33-3
PSP 1000 / PSP 2000


The Scoop:

-> Contrast Boost that mimics PSP-3000's improved contrast via Software.
-> Brightness Boost with variable adjustment
-> Physically Flipped XMB with natural keymapping (PSP 1000 Feels lighter than it is, if held this way )
-> SUPER Stylish Music Visualizer (for Bars Visualization)
-> Warm Tones, Cool Tones, Red tones...
-> Colour Filters (5+)
-> Inverted Colors
-> Mirror effects (2)
-> Oil Paint effect
-> Everything else you could think of...


GAME Compatibility:

-> Shawn White Snowboarding
-> Midnight Club LA REMIX (Doesn't work)

Homebrew Compatibility (99% Compatible with ALL Homebrew):
Tested:
-> Geomety Wawz
-> PSPKVM / Opera Mini
-> Powernoid v2
-> Jelly Car v1.1

Future / Notes:

Be surprised when you see another update

-> Read the README's

Minor Update Bld 729:
-> Increased Main thead Poll delay from 10 to 5000. (Possible performance improvement)
-> Removed remaining references to security checks.

Download and give feedback via comments
Attached Files TweakDisplay_RLS_0_7_729_global.zip (10.9 KB)

pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/150-red-star.jpg" /In 2008 we saw the Semantic Web gain traction, giving us plenty of choice when selecting the 10 best Semantic Web products of 2008./p pThis is the first in a series of posts we'll publish over December, listing our choices for strongthe top web products of the year/strong. Then at the end of December, we'll post a strongTop 100 list/strong - which we'll be promoting over 2009 and opening up at some point for public voting. Without further ado, let's jump into the top 10 Semantic Web products of 2008./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12774amp;cb=12774' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12774amp;n=12774' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pEarlier this month we posted a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_semantic_apps_to_watch_one_year_later.php"an update to 10 Semantic Web applications/a that we have been tracking for a year now. Some of those make this list, as well as some from our follow-up post a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_more_semantic_apps_to_watch.php"10 More Semantic Apps to Watch/a. We also have a couple of other products in this list, which for one reason or another didn't get mentioned in our watch-lists. /p pYou may disagree with our selections, so do tell us in the comments what you think./p pemNote: the products listed below are in no particular order/em/p h21. Yahoo! SearchMonkey/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/yahoo-purple-logo.jpg" width="140" height="103" border="0" align="left" /In May this year a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_searchmonkey_launches.php"Yahoo! launched an open developer platform for search/a called a href="http://developer.yahoo.com/searchmonkey/"SearchMonkey/a. Yahoo hasn't had the happiest of years, but its willingness to innovate in search is to be commended. As we reported a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_apps_platform.php"at the Web 2.0 Expo/a in April, SearchMonkey is a component of a major overhaul at Yahoo! across all of its properties to "rewire" for the social graph and data portability. SearchMonkey allows developers to build applications on top of Yahoo! search, including allowing site owners to share structured data with Yahoo!, using semantic markup (microformats, RDF), standardized XML feeds, APIs (OpenSearch or other web services), and page extraction./p pWe think this is the best use of Semantic Web by an Internet bigco this year. So for that reason SearchMonkey makes our top 10 list. emRelated: a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semtech_making_the_web_searchable_searchmonkey.php"The Story of SearchMonkey/a/em./p h22. Powerset (acquired by Microsoft in '08)/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/pset-livesearch.png" align="right" /a href="http://www.powerset.com/"Powerset/a (see a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/exclusive_launch_of_powerlabs.php"our initial coverage here/a and a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/powerset_and_hakia_quest_for_semantic_web.php"here/a) is a natural language search engine. It's fair to say that Powerset has had a great 2008, having been a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/microsoft_acquires_powerset.php"acquired by Microsoft in July this year/a./p pAt the time of the acquisition, Powerset said that it needed a bigger partner to expand its product beyond its current state of only searching Wikipedia - something we had speculated about when the a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/rumor_microsoft_powerset.php"rumors of the acquisition first appeared/a. In its own statement, Microsoft stressed how useful Powerset's technology will be for improving Microsoft's own search products and to quot;take Search to the next level.quot; In a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/does_microsoft_powerset_beat_google.php"our analysis of the deal/a, we noted that it was a quot;bold play requiring exact executionquot; by Microsoft./p h23. Open Calais (Thomson Reuters)/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/calais_logo_mar08.gif" align="left" /At the end of 2007, ClearForest had been recently a href="http://www.clearforest.com/whatsnew/PRs.asp?year=2007amp;id=109"acquired by Reuters/a and at that point it had a Web Service and a Firefox extension. What a change a year brings! ClearForest went on to release a href="http://www.opencalais.com/"Calais/a, a toolkit of products that enable users to incorporate semantic functionality within their blog, content management system, website or application./p pSince a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/reuters_calais.php"launching the Open Calais API/a early this year, over 6,000 developers have registered with it and the service is doing more than 1 million transactions a day. a href="http://www.opencalais.com/node/8823"Version 3.0 was released/a earlier this month and version 4 is expected by January 09./p h24. Dapper MashupAds/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/dapperlogo.jpg" align="right" /In November a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dapper_mashupads_a_new_lease_o.php"we wrote about/a the recent improvement in a href="http://www.dapper.net/mashupads/"Dapper MashupAds/a, a product we first spotted a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/dapper_ads.php"over a year ago/a. The idea is that publishers can tell Dapper: this is the place on my web page where the title of a movie will appear, now serve up a banner ad that's related to whatever movie this page happens to be about. That could be movies, books, travel destinations - anything. We remarked that the UI for this has grown much more sophisticated in the past year. /p pThe company believes that its new ad network will provide monetary incentive for publishers to have their websites marked up semantically. We think this has plenty of promise, so it makes our year-end list./p h25. Hakia/h2 pimg border="0" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/hakia_logo_mar07.jpg" align="left" width="150" height="73"a href="http://www.hakia.com/"Hakia/a is a search engine focusing on natural language processing methods to try and deliver 'meaningful' search results. Hakia attempts to analyze the concept of a search query, in particular by doing sentence analysis. Over the past year Hakia has been busy extending its reach - a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hakia_licenses_semantic_search.php"licensing its proprietary OntoSem technology/a to other companies in March and a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/hakia_announces_semantic_api.php"announcing a Semantic API/a in June. It was also one of the first companies to a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/yahoo_opens_its_search_engine.php"utilize Yahoo! BOSS/a, by integrating their semantic parsing with the Yahoo! search index./p pWe think Hakia has made good progress getting its technology into the hands of third parties and making use of Yahoo's broader index, so for that reason it's among our top 10 for the year./p !--nextpage-- h26. TripIt/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/tripit_logo_nov07.jpg" align="right" /a href="http://www.tripit.com/"Tripit/a is an app that manages your travel planning. With TripIt, you forward incoming bookings to plans@tripit.com and the system manages the rest./p pOver the past year TripIt has continued to iterate on its feature set - introducing LinkedIn integration, better mobile functionality, more social networking features, and other goodies. In short, it's user experience continues to rock!/p h27. BooRah/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/boorah_logo_sep08.png" alt="boorah_logo_sep08.png" align="left" /a href="http://boorah.com"BooRah/a is a restaurant review site that we first a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/boorah_semantic_restaurant_reviews.php"reviewed/a earlier this year and has come on in leaps and bounds over 2008. BooRah uses semantic analysis and natural language processing to aggregate reviews from food blogs. Because of this, BooRah can recognize praise and criticism in these reviews and then rates restaurants accordingly. BooRah also gathers reviews from Citysearch, Tripadvisor and other large review sites./p pBooRah also a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/boorah_launches_api.php"announced last month/a the availability of an a href="http://boorah.com/api.html"API/a that will allow other web sites and businesses to offer online reviews and ratings from BooRah to their customers. The API will surface most of BooRah's data about a given restaurant, including ratings, menus, discounts, and coupons./p h28. AdaptiveBlue/h2 pemstrongDisclosure:/strong AdaptiveBlue's founder Alex Iskold is a feature writer at RWW./em/p pimg border="0" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/adaptiveblue_may07.png" align="right" width="238" height="56" /a href="http://www.adaptiveblue.com/"AdaptiveBlue/a are makers of the Firefox plugin, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/blueorganizer_semantic_web.php"BlueOrganizer/a. As we wrote in January this year, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/adaptive_blue_indigo.php"the basic idea behind BlueOrganizer/a is that it gives you added information about webpages you visit and offers useful links based on the subject matter./p pOver the past year the company has been working on a new product, a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/put_the_social_web_in_context_with_glue.php"called Glue/a. Launched last month, Glue is a more social networking oriented version of BlueOrganizer - it connects you to your friends based around things like books, music, movies, stars, artists, stocks, wine, restaurants, and more. We think the company has diversified smartly in 2008, by integrating social networking and mobile functionality into its products./p h29. Zemanta/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/zlogo.gif"a href="http://www.zemanta.com"Zemanta/a is a blogging tool which a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zementa_brings_a_semantic_layer_to_blogs.php"harnesses semantic technology/a to add relevant content to your posts. While it didn't make either of our 'Semantic Apps to Watch' lists in November, a number of commenters pointed it out as something they use. In September we covered a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/zemanta_releases_major_upgrade.php"a major upgrade to Zemanta's service/a, allowing users to specify the sources they want to see in the suggestions list that Zemanta provides. Users can now incorporate their own social networks, RSS feeds, and photos into their blog posts. As we noted, this makes Zemanta a lot more appealing to established bloggers who are in less need of suggestions and more in need of automation./p pZemanta's API is also being used by startups, including semantic bookmarking service Faviki - which we mentioned in a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/10_more_semantic_apps_to_watch.php?p=2"our second Watch-list/a. So all up, we think Zemanta has done enough this year to be included in our top 10 list./p h210. UpTake/h2 pimg src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/images/uptake-logo.jpg" width="150" height="44" border="0" align="right" /Semantic search startup a href="http://www.uptake.com/"UpTake/a (formerly Kango) aims to make the process of booking travel online easier. In a href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/semantic_travel_search_uptake.php"our review in May/a, we explained that UpTake is a vertical search engine that has assembled what it says is the largest database of US hotels and activities - over 400,000 of them - from more than 1,000 different travel sites. Using a top-down approach, UpTake looks at its database of over 20 million reviews, opinions, and descriptions of hotels and activities in the US and semantically extracts information about those destinations. /p pAnd now please let us know in the comments what you think of our selections. Do you think we've picked the best 10 Semantic Web products of the year?/p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/top_10_semantic_web_products_2008.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CMocRhN6GOs6CQNxJfi0HCHZneQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~at/CMocRhN6GOs6CQNxJfi0HCHZneQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=17VzMLFa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1035" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=NarFW15R"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=OUd0WMBh"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=OUd0WMBh" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Zxp0mQMt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=Zxp0mQMt" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Xl99Wg7k"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=Xl99Wg7k" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=bdbZJL2f"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=AiovxOmK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=1034" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/QRuIJbJSgdY" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/cleft_unto_the_suck.jpg" width="220" height="211" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2" align="right"/Merlin Mann doesn't crank out posts on software, focus, time-savers, and the other realms of "productivity pr0n" anymore, but he's still got a razor-sharp focus on the kinds of thinking that move things forward. He writes at 43 Folders about trying to get better at his personal photographs, and fighting off the mental nags that try to pull him off-path:br / blockquote... Even if a given shot is sh*t — and, most certainly, the vast majority of all my photos are varying degrees of sh*t — you still learn from the bad ones and no damage is done. Truth is, at the level I’m playing, there’s no real cost associated with failure. Unless, you count the damage of working with unrealistic expectations or the paralyzing joylessness of the conventional wisdom that only some are “Blessed with Creativity...” [insert Tinkerbell glissando]/p/blockquote pThe full post gives a tight, clear view on what it takes to learn, and learn honestly, from mistakes and making improvement a real goal. Similar in topic to a href="http://lifehacker.com/398068/ira-glass-on-getting-creative-work-done"Ira Glass' advice on working past the awful/a, and pretty funny, to boot. emPhoto by a href="http://flickr.com/photos/craigmdennis/3027962567/"craigmdennis/a./em div class="related"a href="http://www.43folders.com/2008/12/01/courageous-sucking"Photography, and the Tolerance for Courageous Sucking/a [43 Folders]/div /p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=58414250afd4e13d348bd42cffd5ebc6p=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=58414250afd4e13d348bd42cffd5ebc6p=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=58414250afd4e13d348bd42cffd5ebc6" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=rS51ZRpv"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=aHefealH"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=H1ashTGD"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=H1ashTGD" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=5a46J7H1"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=5a46J7H1" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/EQ45V987gV8" height="1" width="1"/