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14 min: Here's Ian Copestake: "For me rugby lost its appeal when Diego Dominquez gave up, so I don't have a clue what England's best side is. But I get the impression that many other people haven't a clue either." Least of all Martin Johnson on the evidence of this Six Nations.

13 min: Parra misses his kick. The ball eventually works its way back to Trinh-Duc, deep in his own half. He kicks high but not long, allowing Flood a chance to run back at the French. The rain has made everything slippery, though, and Flood loses the ball.

11 min: France win the lineout and fling it wide. Andreu nearly finds a way through, but is tackled by Ashton. A certain amount of midfield grinding then takes place before Shaw is caught offside. He looks injured too. Parra is lining up the penalty, slap bang in the middle of the park. It is also absolutely slating it down, rainwise.

9 min: Another scrum goes down and the referee gives the free-kick against England again. He's being very finickity about scrummaging. France kick long, then Cueto kicks it straight back at them and finds a solid halfway-line touch.

8 min: Nick Easter leaps the highest to win a line-out against the head. Care passes to Tindall on a crash ball run and England are pressurising France. They pass the ball along the backs, thanks to some great quick hands from Flutey. Cueto tries to chip through the French defence but it is charged down allowing France to regroup. A knock-on from England then gives the home side the scrum

France 3-7 England Flood nails the conversion, a good kick from the touchline. Blimey, this wasn't in the script.

TRY! France 3-5 England (Foden, 4 min) A sensational reply by England. From the kick off, they keep possession and, with two lots of quick ball, they work the ball out along the backs very smartly and Foden charges for the line.

DROP GOAL! France 3-0 England France muff it up though. They throw the ball wonkily and England get a let off, winning the scrum. The referee, though, is being a bit fussy about the binding in the scrum and eventually awards France a free-kick, which they take quickly. From the next breakdown, Trinh-Duc drops deep and slams a drop-kick over with consumate ease.

2 min: Trinh Duc hoists a high ball up which Foden claims well. He hoofs it back and then France find a great touch about 15 metres from the England line.

Peep, peep: England keep possession from the kick-off but lose it later when Flutey is flattened somewhat illegally. France kick long ... but too long and Ashton, on his debut, touches down behind the try line for a 22.

Commentary watch: How long before Brian Moore says something marginally dubious about the flakiness of the French? How long before he talks about England's passion to beat the Frenc?... Oh, hang on. He's just done the last one already.

It's for charidee: "My rugby mad friend Charlene is running a triathlon for Hearts and Balls, a charity that supports catastrophically injured rugby players, in case any of your lovely readers would like to sponsor her. She's managed to persuade three of the Scotland team so far but the more support she gets the better as she's dreading it," writes Eleanor Stanley.

The French anthem is brilliant. And always has been. It's also a bit silly, which is how all good anthems should be.

Anthem time: England go first. They adopt the arms-around each other, bellowing out of tune approach. Toby Flood, however, adopts the look of a man about to go over the top in the trenches.

Here come the teams: The noise in Paris is sensational. "So, 'Imanol Harinordoquy has admitted he cannot help but "bear a grudge" against England'," writes Gary Naylor. "Me too, and I'm English."

Teams

France: Poitrenaud, Andreu, Bastareaud, Jauzion, Palisson, Trinh-Duc, Parra, Domingo, Servat, Mas, Nallet, Pierre, Dusautoir, Bonnaire, Harinordoquy.
Replacements: Szarzewski, Poux, Chabal, Lapandry, Yachvili, Marty, Malzieu.

England: Foden, Cueto, Tindall, Flutey, Ashton, Flood, Care, Payne, Hartley, Cole, Shaw, Deacon, Worsley, Moody, Easter.
Replacements: Thompson, Wilson, Palmer, Haskell, Youngs, Wilkinson, Tait.

Referee: B Lawrence (New Zealand)

Preamble: Scotland's win over Ireland means that France have already been named as Six Nations champions. This, then, is the game that could see them become Grand Slam winners. How much would they love to do that against the English, against who they have a considerable emnity. Imanol Harinordoquy has admitted he cannot help but "bear a grudge" against England.

As for England, it will be interesting to see how their new look side pans out. First: Lewis Moody, who will captain tonight with Steve Borthwick injured. He's gone from the bench in the last game to leading it in this one and his style will not be one of nuanced tactics. Instead, Moody's is a body-on-the-line, beat the chest type of leadership. Would Nick Easter or Joe Worsley have been the better choice. We'll see.

Toby Flood's promotion to the starting line-up is a deserved one but, really, Martin Johnson had no choice, so limited has Jonny Wilkinson's game been. He's suggested England need to "go out there, forget about the result, and play ... the ability to express yourself as an individual is key." It suggests he wants to spearhead a new, attacking, flair-filled game.

How will that tie up with Moody's more attritional skills? It could be just what England need to defeat the French - plenty of grit up front (and some in the backs with Mike Tindall's reinstatement), plenty of creativity behind. Or it could be a complete mess with the French - with their patience and incision - absolutely the best team to pick holes in any uncertainty or joined-up thinking. It's worth bearing in mind that, though England have beaten France in their last four meeting, they have a score difference of plus 50, while England are 31 points shy of their lowest-ever Six Nations aggregate points tally.

• Six Nations rugby
• England rugby union team
• France rugby union team
• Rugby union

Tom Bryantguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

It's about time somebody made a media award that actually does something other than serve as a impromptu murder weapon. At this years SXSW festival, the Web Awards were built around Bleep Labs' Thingamagoop 2, the analog synth toy (which now has digital/Arduino-control capability).

Bleep Labs

In the Maker Shed:


Thingamagoop 2
Our Price: $100.00
Make, mod, hack, and bend your own analog noise monster! Great for beginners with its detailed instructions and photos of each step. Advanced users can taking advantage of Arduino integration, control voltage in and out, or just bend it like crazy! Choose from 3 colors!

Read more | Permalink | Comments | Read more articles in Music | Digg this!

You know those special amps used by Spinal Tap that go to 11, in order to provide "that extra push over the cliff"? It appears Fox News has gotten a hold of some and hooked them up to its coverage of health care reform.

As the reform bill moved closer to a vote in the House, the Fox News noise machine went into overdrive, hurling every false and misleading claim it could muster.

The week in Fox News health care hysteria began with an oldie-but-goodie -- Steve Doocy, Bill Hemmer, and Bill O'Reilly all claimed or suggested that the bill will, in O'Reilly's words, "require American taxpayers to fund abortion." But it doesn't, at least not beyond what is currently permitted under current law. Fox News, unfortunately, is not alone in repeating this falsehood.

Then, Doocy and Hemmer, joined by Neil Cavuto and several other hosts, jumped on the idea that a legislative procedure the House is reportedly considering to pass the Senate's version of health care reform would allow them to do so without a vote. Wrong again -- the House would need to vote to implement that procedure.

Carl Cameron, however, broke through the noise on this issue, pointing out that the process would simply pass the bill "in one vote instead of two" and that the process "has been used, literally, for centuries" -- indeed, Republicans made copious use of the "self-executing rule" when they controlled Congress. Even Charles Krauthammer conceded that it's constitutional. Still, that didn't keep Alisyn Camerota from scoffing that the rule "might as well be a self-immolating rule."

Fox News then pounced on a survey claiming to have found that 46 percent of primary care physicians would consider leaving their profession if health care reform passes. O'Reilly, Sean Hannity, and contributor Dr. Marc Siegel all portrayed the survey as having been published by the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine.

Except it wasn't. The article was written by the physician-recruiting firm that conducted the survey, and it actually appeared in an employment newsletter produced by the publisher of the New England Journal of Medicine, not the Journal itself. Further, the survey itself was not all that scientific -- done via email contacts taken from the recruiting firm's database -- so any claim that the survey's results accurately reflect the view of the American medical community is dubious at best.

Fox News' Megyn Kelly did eventually note that the survey was "not a scientific poll." But that didn't keep Glenn Beck from insisting -- hours after Kelly corrected the record -- that "The New England Journal of Medicine says that if this bill is passed nearly one-third of doctors will quit practice medicine."

(Beck, meanwhile, is keeping up the long tradition of Fox News hosts pushing partisan political agendas by joining with Republican Rep. Steve King to promote an anti-reform rally in Washington.)

Fox News contributor and serial misleader Dana Perino made her own non-contribution to the health care debate, asserting that the reform bill's Medicare investment tax on those making over $200,000 a year is "so disturbing ... because the people who make that money are the small business owners." In fact, fewer than 1.3 percent of small business owners would be affected by the tax.

When the Congressional Budget Office released new numbers detailing how the reform bill would reduce the deficit by $130 billion over 10 years, Fox News didn't want to talk about that -- it spent far more time highlighting how much the bill would cost instead of how much it would save. And when that didn't seem to work, it tried to discredit the CBO as untrustworthy and unreliable. Never mind that when the CBO issued "favorable" numbers last fall on a Republican health care reform plan, Fox News praised the CBO as "nonpartisan."

The Fox News spin is even confusing its own hosts. Brian Kilmeade can't quite comprehend how a bill can cost money yet reduce the deficit, and Kelly admitted, "I don't understand anything they're talking about when it comes to this potential law."

Fox News' inept war against health care reform, while in keeping with its function as the communications arm of the Republican Party in exile, is making itself look like the Spinal Tap of news. It doesn't really need that "extra push over the cliff" -- after all, that's what it's been speeding toward for years.

At this rate, it probably won't be too long before a Fox anchor spontaneously combusts.

Other stories this week

A whole lot of shaky earthquake claims goin' on at Fox

How much does Fox News oppose health care reform? It's pretending natural disasters didn't happen if they're inconvenient to the anti-reform agenda.

On March 18, Doocy took exception to President Obama's statement that a provision in the health care reform that would help Louisiana cope with Medicaid shortfalls resulting from Hurricane Katrina might also help Hawaii because it "went through an earthquake. "Hold it. What Hawaiian earthquake?" Doocy asked. "There was an earthquake in 1868 that killed 77. There was an earthquake in 1975 that killed two." After noting that the provision applies to states that have suffered a natural disaster "within the last seven fiscal years," Doocy added: "Essentially it boils down to just one state, and that is Louisiana."

Doocy seems to have forgotten that there was an earthquake in Hawaii in 2006. Not only did it cause tens of millions of dollars in damage, the Bush administration "declared a major disaster exists in the State of Hawaii and ordered Federal aid to supplement State and local recovery efforts" as a result of the quake.

But Doocy didn't need to rely on federal agencies for information on the quake -- Fox News reported on it at the time. (Investor's Business Daily similarly ignored its own reporting to suggest there was no recent Hawaii quake.)

It seems that rather than trust the federal government or his own news organization, Doocy chose instead to trust right-wing bloggers, who were spreading the misinformation. That runs counter to a 2007 memo -- issued after Doocy and other Fox hosts falsely claimed that Obama was educated in a madrassa -- in which Fox News vice president John Moody reportedly wrote, "For the record: seeing an item on a website does not mean it is right. Nor does it mean it is ready for air on FNC."

Media Matters has written Fox News requesting that Doocy correct the record. We shouldn't have to, since Fox News is supposed to have a "zero tolerance" policy toward on-air mistakes, but then, these are the same folks that ludicrously insisted that a Fox & Friends graphic in which poll numbers added up to 120 percent contained no errors.

The latest right-wing witch-hunt target: Jim Wallis

Fox News has long been a leader in witch hunts against Obama and his administration (or, really, anyone who can be remotely tagged as liberal). Now Glenn Beck, as an extension of his repeated challenged Beck to a debate over social justice, Beck demurred, his vaguely threatening statements making it clear his witch hunt was more important than reasoned debate: "In my time, I will respond. ... Just know the hammer's coming. ... And when the hammer comes, it's going to be hammering hard and all through the night, over and over."

Right-wing website WorldNetDaily, meanwhile, blundered into the breach with a poorly written article that attempted to put words in Wallis' mouth. WND claimed that Wallis was a "champion of communism," even though Wallis has declared communism to be a "failed" system; asserted that Sojourners has published "a slew of radicals" while ignoring that it has also published a slew of conservatives; and alleged that "Sojourners' official 'statement of faith' urges readers to 'refuse to accept [capitalist] structures and assumptions that normalize poverty and segregate the world by class,' " even though the word "capitalist" -- inserted by WND -- actually appears nowhere in the statement. WND even falsely claimed that Wallis "labeled the U.S. 'the great captor and destroyer of human life.' "

Somehow, we suspect that Beck's upcoming assault on Wallis will be just as divorced from reality as WorldNetDaily's.

Erick Erickson joins the "scumbags" at CNN

Should a blogger who once called a retiring Supreme Court justice a "goat f---ing child molester" be rewarded with a regular commentary gig on CNN? Doesn't matter -- the deal's been done.

CNN announced this week that RedState editor Erick Erickson has joined the network as a political contributor, mainly appearing on John King's new show. The network claimed that Erickson is "a perfect fit" for King's show, adding that "Erick is in touch with the very people John hopes to reach."

Media Matters has detailed Erickson's history of outrageous statements, of which the aforementioned is but one.

Predictably, conservatives defended Erickson's new job, his fellow RedStaters among them. One of Erickson's RedState defenders, however, went a tad off-message: "From Non-Conservatives, to Academics and Liberal Elitists, to self-soiling and unprincipled Professional Politicians and firmly-entrenched good ole boys inside the M(ostly) S(cumbags) M(edia), each of these clowns has a tale of doom about the hell we're headed for compliments of CNN's hand basket."

We have to wonder: Does Erickson consider his new CNN colleagues to be "scumbags"?

This week's media columns

This week's media columns from the Media Matters senior fellows: Eric Boehlert examines the media myth of Obama's "falling poll numbers," and Karl Frisch tells you how to annoy Glenn Beck in five minutes or less.

Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg

Media Matters maintains active online communities on the nation's leading social networking sites. Be sure to join us on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, and Digg and join in on the discussion.

Media Matters Minute now on YouTube

For some time now, radio shows and stations throughout the country have been carrying the Media Matters Minute, a daily, minute-long recap of our work topped off with the "most outrageous comment" of the day. We encourage you to subscribe (YouTube / iTunes /RSS) to the Minute's daily podcast, hosted by Media Matters' Ben Fishel.

This weekly wrap-up was compiled and edited by Terry Krepel, a senior web editor at Media Matters for America.

Ahead of the release of Shank, which was met by protests from locals during filming, a look at some other location shoots that went bad

Question: if you peaked out your window, and noticed a ragtag gang of knife-wielding teens storming past, what would you do? Call the police, of course. That's exactly what residents of the Heygate Estate in Elephant & Castle did, only to find their estate was actually the film set of dystopian thriller Shank, where knife-wielding gangs roam free, starring Kaya Scodelario (Effy from Skins), Kidulthood's Adam Deacon, and oddly, Tim Westwood. "I can see," offered the director Mo Ali, "how residents might get the wrong impression".

Long gone, of course, are the days of parking your entire film in the MGM lot and making do with a plastic tree and the contents of the fire bucket to make Elvis look like he's in Hawaii. But with the credit crunch, more places than ever are eager to take the film companies' dollar. David Boice – who runs BeforeTheTrailer.com, a fansite that tracks location shoots – points out that previously unlikely locations are now tripping over themselves to give generous tax breaks and entice film crews, with Michigan leading the way. The result? "In the past year the city of Detroit has filled in for Washington [for Red Dawn]. Rather than filming 'on location', they just film where there's the best incentives."

Last April, the LA Times reported that LA-based location shoots had fallen to their lowest level since records began. Put another way: everywhere is anywhere now. But with more locations, come more problems. The films that have been protested about because of the nature of the film are too numerous to mention – from Brick Lane due to perceived prejudice against the Bangladeshi community to Basic Instinct, which, well, take your pick – anti-woman and anti-gay were the main ones.

But, like Shank, what about the effect on the locals? And what, more importantly, about the house prices? You can forgive the residents of London's Kentish Town (Zone 2, tube, nice pubs), for instance, for being concerned when filming commenced on Nick Love's hooligan film The Firm, as they prepared for a brawl scene involving 140 actors, stuntmen, extras, and with dire warnings of "noise and swearing". That wouldn't do. That wouldn't do at all. With Timmy listening! The locals protested, and filming was soon moved to Hackney. "Residents of Hackney were happy for the fighting to take place on their streets," reported a London freesheet, who declined to mention if the residents actually noticed the difference.

Still, brawling in the UK is one thing. When location shoots go global, it can be far worse. Of course, we all know the foreign shoots that went south – Terry Gilliam's aborted crack at Don Quixote, Coppola going cuckoo during Apocalypse Now – but at least those two can say one thing: they didn't bar people from the Almighty. Last September, Julia Roberts was on location near Dehli filming the Brad Pitt-produced Eat, Pray, Love, in which she plays a woman who finds God via food and Hindu spirituality. All well and good. The only problem was, no one else could find God, as their temple was shut. Villagers hoping to celebrate the beginning of Navratri – a nine-day Hindu festival of worship and dance – found their temple sealed by Roberts's security team, which featured the small matter of 350 guards, bulletproof cars, and a chopper. It was a security detail that essentially said: We have your God now. He's shooting a movie. And he's not available for comment. One villager threatened a break in: "I am going to barge in for the evening aarti [ritual]. Let's see who stops me. What is it that they are shooting that we cannot even enter our own temple?"

Of course, upsetting the faithful is one thing. But won't someone, please, think of the dangerous criminals. Not, it seems, Mel Gibson. For his latest, How I Spent My Summer Vacation, in which he'll star as a career-criminal sent to a harsh Mexican prison, 300 real-life inmates were made to relocate from their prison in the Gulf coast city of Veracruz this January to make way for the film crew, causing not just demonstrations by relatives, angry at having to travel further to visit their incarcerated ones, but a full-scale prison riot. "Mel Gibson, it's your fault they want to take away our relatives," read a banner of one of protesters, who clearly wasn't big on irony.

Yet if you can't find it in your heart to feel for the muggers and murders crushed under Hollywood's unfeeling foot, at least spare a thought for the prostitutes. When Ed Harris-starring drama The Third Miracle was filming in Ontario, Canada, in 1998, they unwittingly became the third consecutive production to shoot in the red light districts of Sherborne and Carleton, causing out-of-pocket street workers to protest about lack of earnings.

Yet sometimes, it's not even that their home has been disrupted, trampled on and destroyed. It's that they're not getting enough credit for it. When filming A Quantum Of Solace in the small town of Baquedano, Bolivia, local mayor Carlos Lopez took matters into his own hands by jumping in his car, nearly hitting two police officers as he sped through the barricades, storming the set, and coming to a skidding halt between Daniel Craig and the cameras. The reason? Bolivia was being used to represent local rivals Chile, and that wouldn't do at all. He was swiftly taken into police custody. But as for Bond himself? Not just shaken or stirred it seems, but, according to Lopez, a full-scale pants disaster. "He fled in terror!" he said after being released. "When he saw me, James Bond ran off!" 007, really ...

Still, protests from the locals are what you expect. While filming Australia – the Baz Luhrmann multimillion pound movie/tourist board infomercial – the protests came from closer to home. Extras were appalled when actors climbed upon a first world war memorial in the tiny town of Bowden during a cattle stampede scene, and lobbied to ensure the actors stood their ground and took the marauding 2,000lb beasts like men. Rumours that another memorial was needed for the fallen thesps are, as yet, unconfirmed.

There's even been the odd occasion where it wasn't the filming itself that caused the disruption, but what those filming asked the locals to do. When a crew was about to film aerial scenes for The Dark Knight in Hong Kong, they sent letters to building residents requesting they keep their lights on to present the city in its full illuminated glory. For six days. From 7am to 11pm. Unsurprisingly, they declined. "Producers are able to create the same effects through post-production," argued Gabrielle Ho at Green Sense, "but instead they are asking us to turn on so many lights, wasting so much energy."

Though there is one thing to be said about all these disruptions: they ended once the filming did. The crew of The Beach not only got permission to film in what was part of a protected national park in Thailand – Maya Bay on Phi Phi Le island – in 1998, but also to make it even "more" of a paradise, uprooting trees, removing natural vegetation that held the sand formations together, levelling sand dunes, and adding 100 non-native coconut palms. Fox promised to put everything back the way it was, but there was erosion, and in 2006 Thailand's Supreme Court upheld an appeal court ruling that the environment had been harmed. Still, Leo had had a look, and it seemed OK to him. "From what I see with my own eyes, everything is OK," the self-described environmentalist said in a statement. "I have seen nothing that has been destroyed or damaged in any way – I cannot tell you the reasons why people have been saying the opposite. It is beyond me." It's beyond us too, Leo. Those inconsiderate, unfeeling bastards.

Shank is out on Friday

• Julia Roberts
• James Bond
• Terry Gilliam
• Skins
• Mel Gibson
• Baz Luhrmann

guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Japan and its alarm clocks. Most of these devices force you to wake up through an extra-annoying noise (or by moving away from you), but this new one, the so-called Twist Alarm Clock [JP], makes you solve (simple) math problems.

The way it works is that when the alarm starts ringing in the morning, the clock uses its two displays and two rotatable parts to create a math problem, for example 8+2=?. It won’t stop ringing until you give it the right answer. 5-4=2, as seen in the picture above, won’t work. Maker D-Forme says the main idea behind their clock is to force buyers to activate their brains in the morning.

Sized at 13.5×6.3×7cm, the Twist Alarm clock is available only in Japan (price: $30). If you’re interested, I’d suggest contacting import/export specialists like Japan Trend Shop, Geek Stuff 4 U or Rinkya.

WorkSnug, an augmented reality iPhone app that is setting out to connect "mobile workers" (that's everybody now, right?) to the nearest places to work in major cities, is now live in New York and San Francisco. This follows launches in London and Barcelona. To kick-start a process to reach scale they've used volunteers and app users to visit and review hundreds of workspaces where the coffee is good and the screaming kids are less prevelant - rating WiFi, noise levels, power provision, "community feel", with the idea that we all hang out in a mobile kind of way these days. They have an Augmented Reality iphone app [iTunes Store link] which pulls in data from the site.

Les Creative EP-3NC sont les nouveaux écouteurs intra-auriculaires de la marque singapourienne. Ils ont la particularité d’êtres dotés du système Noise Cancelling (réduction active du bruit) via un petit boitier munis d’une batterie dont l’autonomie peut atteindre 100 heures. Quand le système n’est pas activé, ces écouteurs fonctionnent normalement, comme un casque antibruit passif. Ils sont disponibles sur le site de Creative pour 99 euros.Voici un petit test de ces derniers.

Lire la suite..

ZeroChroma has unveiled its new Projeto case for the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS. The Projeto is a hard plastic case offering a unique multi-angle kickstand on the back that allows users to choose between one of 18 positions to ensure a proper horizontal viewing angle, and a retractable sound-scoop passive amplifier for improved sound that also helps block the microphone from background noise and wind, and helps direct the user’s voice back at...

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 27, No. 1-3. (June 1995), pp. 461-464.

A method using six sensors for measuring the activity of the autonomic nervous system (ANS) is presented. The measured parameters are: skin potential, skin resistance, skin blood flow, skin temperature, instantaneous heart rate, and instantaneous respiratory frequency. The multiparametric measurement of variables of different natures provides complementary information relating to ANS activity. The sensors are characterized by being non-invasive and painless and provide minimal discomfort to the subjects. The sensor's instrumentation system is portable and can be used in laboratory and in real conditions (sports field, on board a vehicle, air -traffic control room, etc.) and presents high immunity to noise. experiments were performed on 11 marksmen during a shooting competition to study the correlation between ANS activity and shooting performance on the basis of the subjects' control of their emotional reactivity and concentration/relaxation technique.
A Dittmar

[In a GameSetWatch-exclusive set of blog posts covering the week of GDC 2010, Magical Wasteland blogger and Game Developer magazine columnist Matthew Burns concludes his journey through the San Francisco-based show. Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 and Part 6.]

For me, the 2010 Game Developers Conference was a little like standing in the center of a three-way collision between art, technology and business– three trains barreling into each other with the full weight of their cross-cultural inertia behind them, the impact releasing tremendous energy and particles of a new, unknown type.

The trend-spotters registered, of course, the noise around social media (most of it seemed little more than just that: noise) and the still-echoing boom of free-to-play with real money transactions.

Three-dimensional displays requiring glasses continued to confound me as to their worth, even though a man in a business suit I randomly encountered at the Intel booth told me he thought in no uncertain terms it was the future. Strange “virtual reality” peripherals, exhibited at shows like this year after year and to no subsequent momentum, persisted in their search for relevance.

Many of sessions had to do with going or being independent in a world dominated by increasingly monolithic publishers. There was also tangible worry about layoffs, accompanied by an unsubstantiated hope that casual games or serious games might magically pick up the slack in available openings. Cell phones were an accepted, legitimate platform that nobody thought once to deride. Game developers are still mostly white males.

I must remind myself, however, that the eighteen-thousand strong attendance was only a fraction of the total developer community. For everyone who was there, many more stayed at home for monetary reasons, or because were stuck at work, unable to come because all hands were needed on deck for an upcoming milestone.

Some companies are willing to accept only a limited number of “slots,” ensuring that only the most important or most desirous were able to get one. I’d even heard tales of studios discouraging their employees from going at all because they were afraid networking at the show could lead to their finding better jobs elsewhere.

Back home in a familiar bed, recovering from the flu I picked up, I have trouble falling sleep even though I’m exhausted. There’s simply too much for me to be spun up about from the last six days. I drift in between wakefulness and dreams of a type I’ve never had before, feverishly plotting my next steps towards the realization of ideas both new and old. Like a student in a martial arts class, I’m beaten up, but oddly invigorated by it.

“Video games.” Someone started saying the phrase to punctuate the end of conversations: conversations about Bayonetta’s addiction to lollipops, forum-organized Activision “boycotts,” or Sonic the Hedgehog fans. Video games. The usage spreads, because what else can you say about this wide-ranging, incomparable, baffling land, with its sublime peaks and dispiriting trenches, its rich veins and its unexplored territory?

For every promising, flag-waving triumph of there are ten facepalm moments, but we stick with it regardless. We know that despite every disappointment, that there is something special to be found here.

Even Senator Yee in his amicus brief wrote that “the interactive nature of video games is vastly different than passively listening to music, watching a movie, or reading a book.” In this case the video game advocates and their would-be censors agree: games are a medium apart, something uniquely powerful (and perhaps, due to that very power, dangerous).

The natural instinct is to try to take its reins, and steer it like a beast in the direction we want it to go: to wrestle it into a career, or into money, or into the approval of others. We want to take what we see in video games and make it about us; or try to sum it all up in a few easy words or split it into overly simplistic categories. Agendas are advanced, ulterior motives lurk, and everyone holds in his or her mind some kind of ideal state.

But the whole of the thing– this gigantic ball of ideas and expectations and initiative called the game industry– is much too big, too disparate and too absurd to understand in any rational way, except as a inexorable force of nature. So to believe one could somehow control it is nothing more than fantasy.

[Special thanks to Simon Carless and Darius Kazemi for making this series possible.]

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.

Name: Trada

Quick Pitch: Trada’s online marketplace boosts Google and Yahoo search ad results by crowdsourcing search expertise for small and medium businesses.

Genius Idea: Trada takes a lot of the complexity of running SEM (search engine marketing) campaigns by letting advertisers or agencies take advantage of lots of different search experts who can execute campaigns for them quickly and efficiently.

Trada is officially launching today, after being in private beta since January, 2009. The idea is pretty simple: Have advertisers or agencies lay out the parameters for a campaign, like the landing page, a budget, maximum cost per click, etc. and then have search experts work in tandem to generate keywords and ad groups that can be submitted to various ad networks like Yahoo and Google AdWords.

Once a campaign has been submitted, advertisers can monitor the keywords to see how different things are performing and to make sure that the keywords are clear and accurate. Search experts get to keep the difference in what the advertiser is willing to pay per click/conversion and what it actually cost to generate. In other words, they have a very real incentive to get as many conversions or clicks for your campaign as possible.

Trada is essentially acting as the liaison between the two groups — which means that they also offer some stability and checks and balances for both parties. Search experts have to pass an entrance exam before being accepted into the program.

Trada is free for advertisers or agencies to use — their budget and total advertising cost will vary depending on the parameters of the campaign. Search experts get to keep 75% of their profits, with 25% going to Trada.

Trada sounds like a low-cost way to try different SEM strategies and to take advantage of people that are actively working to get you conversions because it benefits them. Likewise, it might be a low-noise opportunity for search experts who don’t want to have to be tied to certain campaigns or companies and can choose what projects they work on and so-forth.

Have you ever run any search engine marketing campaigns? How did you figure out your approach? Let us know!

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BizSpark is a startup program that gives you three-year access to the latest Microsoft development tools, as well as connecting you to a nationwide network of investors and incubators. There are no upfront costs, so if your business is privately owned, less than three years old, and generates less than U.S.$1 million in annual revenue, you can sign up today.

Entrepreneurs can take advantage of the Azure Services platform for their website hosting and storage needs. Microsoft recently announced the “new CloudApp()” contest – use the Azure Services Platform for hosting your .NET or PHP app, and you could be the lucky winner of a USD 5000* (please see website for official rules and guidelines).”

Tags: advertising, ppc, SEM, SEO, trada

MikeChino writes "Scientists at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have discovered that a mix of zinc oxide crystals, water, and noise pollution can efficiently produce hydrogen without the need for a dirty catalyst like oil. To generate the clean hydrogen, researchers produced a new type of zinc oxide crystals that absorb vibrations when placed in water. The vibrations cause the crystals to develop areas with strong positive and negative charges — a reaction that rips the surrounding water molecules and releases hydrogen and oxygen. The mechanism, dubbed the piezoelectrochemical effect, converts 18% of energy from vibrations into hydrogen gas (compared to 10% from conventional piezoelectric materials), and since any vibration can produce the effect, the system could one day be used to generate power from anything that produces noise — cars whizzing by on the highway, crashing waves in the ocean, or planes landing at an airport."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.