Author : Chris Deal

It’s the only story the news is talking about today: twenty years since the fall, since the wall came down. My boy asked me if I remembered it, where was I when I heard it had come down. Told him I was right where he was, asking my father what it meant, the wall coming down, the people separating. I told my boy, I told him my dad said it meant we could be together again, undivided by petty differences.

My boy, he said my dad sounded like a smart man.

He was, I told him.

What I didn’t tell him was that I was lying. I wasn’t sitting with my father when the wall came down. I was there. I held a sledgehammer in my young hands and I swung that thing over and over, until my muscles ached of acid and my shirt was soaked with sweat, clinging to me in the cold night.

What I didn’t tell him was that I was on the other side of that wall.

That wall wasn’t to keep people inside, but to keep them out.

What I didn’t tell my boy was my father, he remembered the first wall, way across the ocean, the remnant of another war, long before the last one. One country divided from itself, not one country cut off from the rest of the world. Families separated, not entire cultures. He knew his mother wasn’t born in here, but he never asked where I met her. He never asked where we lived before him. There was the way it was now, the way it was before, but he never cared about anything from then. Him, he had an entire life ahead of him, an entire world to see. He would never have to see his homeland tear itself apart, people of a different color removed from their homes, sent to a land they only knew as stories from their parents, grandparents. The war in our borders was a history lesson for him, not real life. He would never have to kill to preserve what was right.

My boy grew bored of the news, and he started surfing the neural-net.

One day, he may ask more about my father. He may ask about the before. He might ask about the wall that ran the full course of the borders, the guards who patrolled in jeeps with gauss rifles, the camps we sat in before being dumped on the other side, the constant broadcasts from the leader, the man who put an end to heterogeneity and proclaimed through homogeneity we would better ourselves, the man who declared war on the other, who defined that there was an other, the man who became a martyr before the revolution was complete, before I held that hammer and brought down that wall.

When my boy asks, I’ll tell him. For now, though, he can keep on as he is.

I’ll remember for him.

During my recent trip to India, I flew down to Bangalore for one reason: To meet N.R. Narayana Murthy. Murthy is the co-founder, executive chairman and former CEO for 21 years of Infosys, the first Indian company to go public on Nasdaq and effectively the company that began the $30 billion Indian IT outsourcing market.

Murthy’s idea was so successful that it quickly became controversial—not only within the United States where some Americans feel Indians are “stealing jobs,” but also in India where many are concerned about a tech economy that doesn’t make anything. I wanted to meet with Murthy, because in many ways he’s the best person to address what Indians at home and abroad are facing and where Indian entrepreneurship goes from here.

Here are a few highlights from our meeting:

His Day Job. Murthy thought he was stepping down from Infosys back in 2002, but he couldn’t fully let go. As such, he still works pretty much full time for the company, traveling to meet with customers and running a lot of the company’s mentoring and training programs. The more surprising aspect of his job: He personally signs off on the architecture of every building on each one of Infosys’ campuses that employ some 17,000 people around the world. The one we were sitting in was spread of eight acres and had some remarkable buildings, including one that looked like the Luxor casino in Las Vegas.

I asked why this was a top priority—after all, many Valley campuses are plush but from an architecture standpoint look about the same. He said when GE and other American multinationals were starting to come into his business everyone thought Infosys would lose the local talent war. So Murthy studied why people want to work at a particular place. One of the results was the comfort and design of the facilities. That was in 1994 when Infosys was designing the very building we were sitting in as we had this conversation. “I’ve been in charge of every building since– all over the world,” he says.

Hurting or Helping Local Entrepreneurship? Given exactly how plush Murthy and his colleagues have worked to make Infosys, has he indirectly hurt Bangalore’s entrepreneurship scene by making the risk of leaving so daunting? He smiled when I asked this and said, “We may have unwittingly. But I do feel like the spirit of entrepreneurship is alive and kicking in Bangalore.”

Further, I asked about Bangalore’s Zippo-flipping, free-spending generation of young techies who’ve graduated to a huge wave of multinational jobs that pay them far more than their parents ever made, in many cases more than the rest of their families combined. Murthy didn’t deny that that instant-gratification, “gimmie” contingent was strong in the city he helped build, economically speaking. But he blames the Internet and the mass-cross-pollination of Western pop culture, not the bigger paycheck from companies like his.

“We are moving towards a uniform, global culture with an intense competitive spirit and an intense desire for instant gratification,” he says. “But I have a firm belief that each generation is better than the previous one. The Indian entrepreneurs today are more daring than we were.” (This from a man who became a capitalist after after hitchhiking across communist Eastern Europe and getting thrown in jail for chatting up someone’s girlfriend on a train. “More daring” is a tall order, young Indian techies.)

Is India’s Tech Community Too Addicted to Services? Clearly, services has been a great business for Infosys and the hundreds of dollar-millionaires and even more rupee-millionaires that the company’s generous stock program has created. But a lot of Indian CEOs and investors complain that in most cases services-based tech businesses are a great way to get revenues quick, but not a way to build a huge, high-growth business. There’s a big question of whether India’s tech sector has a worrying lack of product-building know-how.

Murthy says it’s a progression. “India missed the industrial revolution, but Indians had intelligence,” he says. “We had to make do with pen and paper. We were always forced to look at the abstract. What is happening in India today is the creation of jobs. Let’s create jobs as long as they are legal and ethical, it doesn’t matter, as long as we make money. The time will come for creating products. I wouldn’t lose sleep over this. If we create enough jobs we’ll raise the confidence of the youngsters and they’ll create products.”

India’s Infrastructure. Here’s something it’s hard for even Murthy to be upbeat about: India’s shoddy physical infrastructure. Murthy has traveled the world and it’s frustrating that so much money has poured into the country he loves, and yet, the infrastructure is still so shockingly bad.

There is progress—Infosys for instance has benefited from a new overpass that cuts down on the drive to the campus by more than thirty minutes. (See!) But it’s not moving nearly fast enough, he says. “I don’t know if we will reach the level of the United States or China,” he adds.

Murthy gave a more nuanced explanation than the usual “it’s corruption” answer you get in India. He explained that 65% of India’s population lives in rural areas and 35% live in cities. And there’s such polarity between the quality of life that politicians have to appear to be doing more for the villages than the cities if they want to get re-elected. That leaves prosperous economic cities blighted by poor sewage systems, pollution spewing generators and beggars weaving through traffic tapping on car windows. “Different emerging nations take different paths,” he says. “In China, they chose to emphasize giving people economic freedom first and political freedom second. In India we chose the opposite path.”

Hurting or Helping US-based Indians? All you have to do is read the comments on one of Vivek Wadhwa’s posts to see the ugly, anti-immigrant, anti-Indian fervor that’s been whipped up in America, post-recession. A lot of it has to do with outsourcing. I asked Murthy if he felt his company and industry’s huge success has indirectly made life harder for Indian-Americans. He turned the blame on xenophobes like Lou Dobbs and grandstanding politicians who use the wedge issue to get viewers and votes.

But it’s an issue he has to address a lot. He answers it by saying every morning he gets up and gets a Pepsi out of his GE Fridge and drives his American car to work where he sits down at his Dell computer. India used to have companies that made soft drinks, refrigerators, cars and computers. But the American ones were better. Allowing them in hurt Indian workers in the short term, but provided a far better quality of life for a much bigger swath of Indians long term. He argues outsourcing has done the same thing for US companies. Greater efficiencies and cost-savings enables these companies to stay competitive and there’s no reason they can’t—in theory—plow those savings into better local jobs or job training.

This argument isn’t going to pacify hate-mongers, because nothing will. Murthy knows that too and while he regrets it, he seems to accept it as reality.

Advice for Entrepreneurs. Murthy has started a $170 million venture fund, so although he spends most of his time still at Infosys, he clearly cares about encouraging the next generation of entrepreneurs. He had two big pieces of advice for them. One, be able to articulate what you do in one sentence. If you can’t, you don’t have a good idea. And two, make sure the market is ready. Businesses are killed, not congratulated, for being ahead of their time.

The Iranian indie band talk about life as outlaws in their homeland, as documented in their new film No One Knows About Persian Cats

At first glance, Take It Easy Hospital look like any other aspiring indie duo. Dressed in impeccable Shoreditch chic – plaid shirt and skinny jeans for him, cute vintage dress, black tights and brogues for her – their teenage epiphanies came on copied cassettes of Nirvana and Pink Floyd, while these days they're more into Sigur Rós and Foals.

Their ambition for next year, once they find a drummer, is to get on to the bill at Glastonbury or Reading. The difference is that Take It Easy Hospital originally formed in Iran, where rock music is banned. When the local music industry is non-existent, gigs and recording studios are regularly raided by police and even MySpace is monitored, simply finding someone who shares your love of guitars and plaintive vocals is fraught with difficulties.

Ash Koshanejad and Negar Shaghaghi, the twin songwriters of Take It Easy Hospital, are the stars of a new Iranian film by garlanded Kurdish director Bahman Ghobadi, called No One Knows About Persian Cats (so named because pet cats, like rock musicians, are outlawed in Iran). The film is a fictionalised account of the duo's attempts to recruit a rhythm section in order to play a local underground gig and ultimately escape to the rock-friendly west. As the two indie innocents are taken under the wing of music-loving wide-boy Nader (Hamed Behdad), the film becomes a Linklater-esque romp through Tehran's clandestine rock underground. All the bands and musicians featured are real, but whether hairy blues rockers, jazz singers, class-war rappers or indie kids, they exhibit a love for making music that overrides the fear of being arrested the moment they switch on their amps. "If you were discovered playing rock music, you'd get arrested, you'd have to pay a fine," reveals Ash, matter-of-factly. "Sometimes you'd go to prison."

The film gleans affectionate humour from the various bands' ingenuity when it comes to hiding their rehearsal spaces from the authorities in diligently-soundproofed underground caverns, shacks constructed on the roofs of tower blocks or, in one case, in a working cattle barn (much to the cows' displeasure).

By coincidence, there is a British film out this month which also documents the struggle of a couple of indie dreamers to form a band – except 1234 is based in London, so the only obstacles are their own musical inadequacy and weedy sexual tension between bandmates. Persian Cats makes 1234 look rather pathetic.

In Iran musicians are forced to behave like fugitives, even though the charges invoked against them are vague (Ahmadinejad imposed a ban on "western and decadent music" soon after becoming president in 2005). "It's a not a written law," complains Negar. "There isn't this red line. You never know when you're crossing it. [The authorities] don't even really know what they're opposing. They don't see that music brings energy and good nature to society."

In 2007, Ash's former band Font staged an open-air gig in a private garden in a suburb of Tehran. Armed police arrived en masse to shut it down, arresting everyone in the audience, and slinging the band in prison for 21 days. "They didn't have any law that said what they should do with us, so they called us satanists. They said we were against the moral law and disgracing the face of society." Ash chuckles wryly at the memory. "It was an odd experience, sleeping next to a serial killer for three weeks. But it made me believe even more in what I was doing."

Font and Take It Easy Hospital are rarities: most Iranian wannabe rockers never even get further then their bedrooms, due to the subtle pressure exerted within families. "Under this regime, you don't have any opportunity to make a living from being a musician, so families prevent their children from learning music in the first place," Ash explains. "Families are a small example of big government. They don't trust the young generation."

When Ash and Negar were kids, the only opportunity they had to hear western rock music was when somebody from their community travelled abroad and brought back CDs. "They'd be copied on to a tape over and over again," says Negar. "We used to write the track names in class when the teacher wasn't looking and take it home with such excitement to listen to it." Even so, whatever they got depended on the tastes of the traveller; often hoping for something similar to Nirvana, they'd end up having to make do with ABBA.

The advent of the internet changed everything for Iranian teenagers, who were suddenly able to participate in global youth culture, employing their technological nous to stay one step ahead of government censors. The fact that the bands in No One Knows About Persian Cats wear Strokes T-shirts and pass around copies of the NME shouldn't seem that strange. But what is the attraction to Ash and Negar of the kind of fey indie music that even within its countries of origin is often considered a bit insular?

"Well, we are indie!" declares Ash. "We had to do it ourselves in bedrooms because if you step out into the streets, you cannot even tell anyone you've just written a song. We would make our own imaginariums in our rooms."

If they'd grown up in England, Take It Easy Hospital's wan, organ-driven indie-pop, topped with earnest observations about the "human jungle", might stand accused of being a little bit twee. But once you learn how hard Ash and Negar have had to fight just to get their songs heard, they take on a whole new complexion. And despite their ugly experiences in Iran, they are determined not to make rebel rock. "Me, I don't care about politics," says Negar. "The value of art is a lot more than politics. Politics is something that passes, but art stays for years."

Ash picks up the thread: "Politics is a tool to solve a situation at one moment. We believe that art is pure and always depending on human nature, so we've always kept ourselves far from politics. Our music is not dangerous, but the current regime in Iran feels that it has to keep people away from honest expression because if they face up to the reality they will soon find out what they are missing."

Ash and Negar agreed to star in Persian Cats not to make a political point, but to try to show the older generation, including their parents, that music is a force for good. But while Ash has received some positive feedback from older Iranians – "I've heard that they walk away after seeing this film to remember what they had before the revolution" – Negar is despondent that most of them haven't been able to overcome their prejudices. "I guess that when people decide to close their eyes to something, you can't force them to see the truth."

In the light of last year's post-election protests, the police crackdown on young people involved in music and the arts has intensified. When Take It Easy Hospital's old drummer went back to Iran several weeks after the election, he was arrested and beaten. Last January, the film's co-writer, Iranian-American journalist Roxana Saberi, was arrested in Tehran and handed an eight-year jail sentence on trumped up charges of being a US spy (she was eventually freed following a global outcry).

Reluctantly, Ash and Negar decided it was unsafe to return to Iran and have successfully applied for asylum in the UK, where they've been living since coming over to play at Manchester's In The City festival in 2008. In the film, the duo never make it to London, so in this case, truth is happier than fiction. However, Negar is at pains to point out that they never viewed England as the promised land, despite our rather more relaxed laws regarding the public airing of Farfisa-driven jangle pop.

"Some people say we've run away," says Negar. "But there is no running away. Moving from one country to another doesn't necessarily solve all the problems that are on your mind." Proof that indie introspection truly is an international language.

No One Knows About Persian Cats is out Fri; it previews at Brixton Ritzy, SW2, Tue

• World cinema

I never did use a Baby Monitor in my house, but if I did, I would definitely want to use the Sikker.

The Sikker isn’t like the ones that are essentially over-priced walkie-talkies. At least, that’s what they were several years ago. I’m sure that mobile technology has improved since then. Anyway, what makes the Sikker different from other baby monitors is that it comes in the form of two wristbands.

One band is for the baby, and one is for the parent. They are synced wirelessly together, as they are to the base station. The parent can use his or her bracelet to monitor the baby’s temperature, or remotely play music for the baby via the radio. I don’t see why an SD slot could not be added for MP3 tracks.

Hey, the Sikker (Danish for “safety”) is still a concept for now, so who knows what it is capable of? Why, I venture to say that maybe they will make it so those bracelets will float in air on the base station.

Of course, I can think of a problem with this already. What if your little baby doesn’t want to have a bracelet on? That sort of shoots your baby monitoring system all to heck, doesn’t it? I guess you could cuff (perhaps too strong of a word) the bracelet to a bar on the baby’s crib, but you won’t get the temperature reading.

Source
Check out the Coolest Gadgets 2008 Gift Guides, Christmas shopping made easy.
[ Legend of the Sikker copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

As it promised back in January, Affiliated Media, the holding company for newspaper chain MediaNews Group, has emerged for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The owner of the Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News was able to shrink its debt from a staggering $930 million debt to a more manageable $165 million. That 82.3 percent reduction in its debt, allowed it to end the bankruptcy period. This was a pre-packaged reorg, meaning its lenders are all in agreement. None of the newspapers will be affected, and Dean Singleton will remain chairman and CEO. Release

As it promised back in January, Affiliated Media, the holding company for newspaper chain MediaNews Group, has emerged for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The owner of the Denver Post and San Jose Mercury News was able to shrink its debt from a staggering $930 million debt to a more manageable $165 million. That 82.3 percent reduction in its debt, allowed it to end the bankruptcy period. This was a pre-packaged reorg, meaning its lenders are all in agreement. None of the newspapers will be affected, and Dean Singleton will remain chairman and CEO. Release

About a year ago, we covered the Taga Stroller Trike, which is essentially exactly what it says that it is: a way of putting your little kids on a much easier method of transport.

As you can see from the video, the Taga can now transform from bike into stroller. This looks like a new feature, as I did not see that feature when I reported on it the first time. I remember saying that it folds up, but they said nothing about its transforming feature.

This must be why the company has put out all these videos of the Transforming Taga. Especially since it can do its shape-changing feat in just 20 seconds. Considering the struggles that I have had with my strollers, I would say that is pretty good.

As I have said before, my experience with strollers isn’t always pleasant. I found that strollers didn’t turn when they should, and were horrendous to push uphill, even if there was only a slight slope. This particular Taga is like one of those awesome ones with three spoked wheels, easy to move, and get around.

Of course, all of this costs, and costs plenty. Price of the Taga Transformer: $1,495. Dang! Unless you are those parents from 18 Kids and Counting, I don’t see this as a wise investment.

Source
Tech Cult – We cover the latest tech news, but always with a funny twist.
[ Taga Stroller Trike can now transform into a baby stroller copyright by Coolest Gadgets ]

During 2005 to 2008, YouTube execs said a lot of dumb and nasty things to each other in emails and instant messages.

Thanks to Viacom's lawsuit against YouTube-parent company Google -- and the court's decision to release a "statement of undisputed facts"  -- you get to read it all!

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• Inside The He-Said, She-Said Of The Viacom-YouTube Dispute

Most parents would cringe at this, but that’s precisely what Nintendo’s general manager, Shigeru Miyamoto, wants to do. What are we talking about? Well, Nintendo is trying to get its Nintendo DS handheld gaming device into junior high schools in Japan. The portable gaming console is already used for guiding tours in museums, galleries and aquariums in Japan, and the company now wants to see it used as an educational aid as well. It’s not entirely clear how the DS might be used to aid education, but with games such as Brain Age, it’s not hard to imagine companies coming up with the right material/games.

Permalink: Nintendo Wants Its DS In Schools from Ubergizmo | RSS Sponsor: Win a Fellowes Microshred Paper Shredder!

The first time you walk into an Apple Store and pick up an iPad, you’ll understand the hype: Apple has managed to create a beautiful, thoughtfully designed, compelling product in a space where mediocrity was, until now, status quo. But odds are you probably won’t buy one — at least not yet. And that’s OK.

For despite the high level of anticipation for and proclamations associated with the launch of the Apple device, the fact remains that outside of a few select vertical uses (like medicine), tablets are constrained by their own form factor, stuck in the nether realm between productivity and portability. Standing onstage during the device’s unveiling, Steve Jobs himself posed a question that acutely underscores the tablet dilemma: Is there room for a third category of product that sits between your two most essential devices, the laptop and phone? As much as I’m looking forward to the iPad, I’m still not sure there is.

To date, no one’s been able to scale tablets as a core personal computing product, though it’s certainly not for lack of effort. Just about every player in the electronics world has given tablets a go, from Nokia with its Maemo-based N-series Internet communicators to Dell with its Android-based mini-slates to all manner of Windows-based convertible and slate tablet PCs. But the problem with all of them — and the iPad may also be included — isn’t that they’ve been unable to offer fundamentally differentiated experiences from the devices we already own and carry.

Think back to the iPod — before it existed, there wasn’t such a thing as taking your entire music (and eventually, video) library with you wherever you went. But the concept proved to be so elemental that it transcended the iPod as a device, and became a staple in nearly every product Apple makes, from iTunes on the Mac to the iPhone. In his iPad launch presentation, Jobs seemed pretty clear about the fact that the iPad won’t replace your phone or laptop (at least not any time soon), and yet Apple has still been deficient in demonstrating more than scaled-up iPhone experiences (like browsing, light email, and gaming) or scaled-down desktop experiences (like iWork).

Of course, it would be a failure of imagination to assume there won’t eventually be something built on the iPad platform that simply couldn’t be hosted on a phone or laptop. But so far Apple hasn’t shown it to us, which may be why so many are still lukewarm on the device’s prospects. This also might be why iBooks was January’s dark horse announcement — it was the only app Apple showed off that seems to call out for the iPad by name. But long-form reading is still arguably better suited to devices like the Kindle and Nook, which benefit from E Ink displays, while shorter-form media (namely periodicals) went all but ignored by Apple, which punted to publication-specific apps like the New York Times reader. Had Apple attempted to create a new, ubiquitous, standard format for magazines and newspapers, and leveraged its sales infrastructure for subscription content, the iPad might have been hailed as the iPod of publishing.

There’s no question Apple has (re)defined the tablet dialog and raised the bar for the space moving forward. For browsing the web, the iPad experience is second to none; the product itself almost seems to melt away, leaving the user to feel as though they’re literally reaching in and touching the content. And by the time the iPad’s price drops in a year or two, Apple may be able to parlay a groundbreaking product into a market leadership position. But in the mean time, the countdown to launch has begun and Cupertino’s set its sights on building yet another market, we’ll have to see just how many people are ready to put their money where Apple’s tablet is.

Ryan Block is the co-founder of gdgt and the former editor in chief of Engadget. Disclosure: gdgt is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, Giga Omni Media. Om Malik, founder of Giga Omni Media, is also a venture partner at True.

· Green Zone security man killed two colleagues
· War horrors played part in behaviour, family claims

The parents of a former British soldier who is facing the death penalty in Iraq for the killing of two colleagues said today that horrific experiences on active service had destabilised his behaviour.

Daniel Fitzsimons, 29, from Middleton, Greater Manchester, shot dead two fellow security guards while working for the private ArmorGroup in Baghdad's Green Zone last August. He maintains there had been a series of drunken fights and provocations.

If found guilty of murdering Paul McGuigan, 37, of Peebles, Scotland, and Darren Hoare, 37, from Australia, the former Royal Fusilier could be executed. The next hearing is on 7 April.

His stepmother Liz and father Eric met officials from the Ministry of Justice and the Foreign Office in London today to press the British government to become more involved in the case. The couple are hoping their lawyers will be able to persuade the families of the dead men to ask the Iraqi court for clemency.

Fitzsimons had seen terrible atrocities in Kosovo, Afghanistan, and Iraq, said his stepmother. "He was most affected by a young boy who brought them bread in their camp. One day the boy's severed body was found in the water supply," she said. He had been killed by Serbs for collaborating with the British.

"That played a huge part in the mental illness he suffered. He has post-traumatic stress disorder very badly."

While serving with a private security company in Iraq, the vehicle in front of Fitzsimons was hit by an explosion. "The plastic doors of the truck sealed shut in the heat and one of his team was stuck inside," said Clive Stafford Smith, director of the legal organisation Repreive, which is helping the family.

"His friend screamed for Danny to get him out but Danny could not break the window as it was bulletproof glass. He was forced to watch his friend burn inside the truck, unable to help."

Fitzsimons has given a detailed account, published in the Guardian today, of the violence in the contractor's residential quarters in the secure Green Zone that led to the killings. He admitted that his recollection was at points "blotchy" because of heavy drinking and claimed that McGuigan and Hoare had been harassing him through the evening.

Tariq Harb, the Iraqi lawyer representing Fitzsimons in Bahghad, said he had asked lawyers for the other families to consider withdrawing their claims.

McGuigan's family disputes Fitzsimons's version of events, insisting that McGuigan's body showed no sign of injuries from earlier fighting.

"The British postmortem clearly states that other than the horrific gunshot wounds, there were no marks on Paul to indicate that there had been any fighting," his family said.

• Iraq
• Law

The Numbers Behind the World’s Fastest-growing Web Site: YouTube’s Finances Revealed; Viacom releases YouTube’s finances from before the Google acquisition. (MediaMemo)

Hulu’s Ad Sales Team Is Undercutting Its Parent Companies; Hulu’s sales team is “actively subverting” the ad sales of its parent companies, which are also trying to sell ads for their shows, according to a source. (The Business Insider)

ITV Goes Cold on YouTube, Hulu; a senior ITV executive says that the broadcaster has “no plans” to do output deals to put its programming on video-on-demand aggregation services such as Hulu, YouTube, SeeSaw or MSN Video Player. (paidContent)

Madison Avenue Finds Old and New Media Can Coexist; more marketers are turning to web video, but many are increasingly doing so along with — rather than in place of — television. (NY Times)

Indie Web Producers Try to Overturn BBC’s Online Cull; Pact (the Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television), which represents independent online multimedia producers that have work commissioned from the BBC and others, urges the BBC not to cut its investment in digital media. (paidContent:UK)

The Guardian Finds Video Success With the Contextualization of Content; the newspaper has been innovating with online video since 2006, has invested heavily in video operations in its new headquarters and is finding traction with its own brand of journalistic video. (Beet.TV)

In an investors meeting on Thursday, T-Mobile USA CEO Robert Dotson told investors that the nation’s #4 wireless carrier is turning to third parties including Clearwire as a potential means of increasing spectrum as it faces a future filled with 4G offerings from its competitors. Rumors of a joint venture with Clearwire originally surface last September when Bloomberg reported that T-Mobile was in talks with Clearwire in a negotiation that involved a cash investment from T-Mobile USA parent Deutsche Telecom in exchange for access to Clearwire’s growing 4G  network and spectrum resources. Clearwire is in an enviable position having already rolled out an active and robust 4G network and is armed with ample spectrum. The 4G wireless provider owns up to 150MHz of spectrum in some areas and has 30MHz chunks that it is using for its WiMAX network. T-Mobile could license some of Clearwire’s ample spectrum as it begins the arduous and expensive process of rolling out LTE or, alternatively, T-Mobile could abandon its plans to pursue LTE and jump feet first into 4G by piggy backing on Clearwire’s 4G network. Though the outcome of T-Mobile’s decision regarding its future network resources is not known, one thing is clear: love it or hate it, Clearwire will most likely continue to be an integral part of our 4G future.

Read

Blockbuster UK has dismissed rumours that the company will be adversely affected by the potential bankruptcy of Blockbuster in the US insisting that its business is in "very good shape".

Although the parent company in the US has suffered years of declining sales and is currently rumoured to be close to bankruptcy, subsidiaries in other countries are generally run as separate companies.

Martin Higgins, managing director for Blockbuster UK said: "It is important for me to emphasise that Blockbuster UK is a separate legal entity, which is well-run and in a healthy financial condition with solid equity and no debt beyond normal accounts payables."

Read more...

Incroyable : Deepak Kumar, est né avec quatre jambes et quatre bras. Ce sévère et impressionnant handicap, que ses parents voudraient soigner par une intervention chirurgicale, a fait du petit garçon, aujourd'hui âgé de sept ans, une véritable icône religieuse aux yeux de dévots hindous[...]

[...]

[In this opinion piece, Game Developer EIC Brandon Sheffield takes Electronic Arts and Visceral to task for their competition asking fans to "design a kill" for Dead Space, calling it "incredibly regressive for our industry."]

Here we are in an era of video games coming under intense scrutiny for their violence, and for any hint of sexuality. This is an era in which the Australian and German governments are rejecting the sale of certain games by the handful, Venezuela has banned all “violent” video games with sweeping terms, and psychologists study the effects of violent games on behavior around the clock.

It’s in this climate that EA has chosen to launch its Design a Kill for Dead Space 2 contest, which to me runs second only to Acclaim’s attempt to buy ad space on tombstones in terms of irresponsibility.

Here’s the text from the press release, describing the contest:

"Have you ever played a video game and thought ‘wouldn’t it be cool if...’ Well, Visceral Games announced that fans of the critically-acclaimed Dead Space franchise can make their “what if” dreams a reality. This is their chance to design a kill and get it in the game. Players can submit ideas via text, video or still images.

Since the contest began last week, there are over 1,000 entries already, so the cooler the kill, the better chance it has of winning a place in the upcoming Dead Space 2 video game. To prove to the Visceral development team that they have the right stuff, players have to demonstrate Isaac Clarke defeating or dismembering various Necromorphs including the Slasher, Lurker, or Leaper using their own signature kill.

The grand prize winner will not only have an opportunity to have their dismemberment move recreated in the game but they’ll also win the opportunity to have their likeness modeled onto a non-player character in the game."

Where To Draw The Line?

I don’t believe we should shy away from violence in games – violence is a part of life, and can make for very interesting scenarios in games. And it’s no secret that a large majority of fun video games are based on conflict, much of which is combative. But I also believe that asking fans to think as hard as they can about an innovative way to kill someone is a very regressive thing for our industry.

Just think for a second about what EA is actually asking people to do. Yes, this is what many of us do every day – there are those of us who design combat and combat scenarios for a living. But asking fans to do it is just too much.

First, it’s acknowledging that games can inspire fans to think of ways to kill. Second, through promotion, the contest is saying this is a good thing to do, or that it would be fun, posing ‘wouldn’t it be cool if...’

Third, it’s implied that this is a proper way to enter the industry (that’s part of the implication, that this design will be your foot in the door). That really hammers home the misconception that all we do is think of ways for things to kill each other.

Fourth, it asks for documented evidence of this fan violence. EA must certainly have plenty at this point, with over 1,000 submissions, which anyone will be able to view once the competition is over at the official Facebook page.

Fuel For The Fire

Many in the mainstream media, parent-advocate groups, and in the public opinion at large consider the game-playing population to be mostly children. And for better or for worse, it’s likely that a number of children have in fact played the M-rated Dead Space. This kind of contest is amazing fodder for the groups that want to limit and restrict games, and it’s hard to believe EA or Visceral would not be aware of this.

If they are not aware of the regressive nature of this competition, as the video on the official page seems to suggest, that is incredibly unconscious, and certainly indicative of the immaturity of our industry. This seems like the sort of thing you should really think through. Perhaps we’re all so desensitized to violence in this industry that they did not think about it in this light.

If the intention is to get the contest to stir up controversy, well I suppose they may achieve their goal. If the mainstream media does get wind of the competition, and they get hold of even one video of a kid doing a “brutal kill” on his brother, the shitstorm begins. I do not think the results of this storm will be positive for anyone.

Little To Smile About

One of the images that accompanies the press release (above) shows a sample entry from an actual fan, in which all the descriptions of actions are accompanied by smiley faces, such as "knee in the head ^^." This description comes after the one that says "grabs the head and shoot in the neck."

You could argue that since the creatures you kill are not human, this is not so bad. I would disagree. They are humanoid enough, and asking fans to figure out a way to kill anything is enough to cause a horrified gut reaction in any parent or politician that may see it. A company as large as EA cannot simply make the “games are just fun” excuse. I do not believe this is an overreaction. I believe the reaction from those outside the game industry would be magnitudes above what I write here.

You could argue I’m bringing more attention to this contest by mentioning it here, and you’d be right. I think we have to take these things to task when we see them, and I can only hope that if an intrepid journalist is researching this “brutal kill” phenomenon they might see this article and pause before decrying the entire industry as actively breeding violence in its players.

Know that the assumptions and drives of one marketing campaign do not reflect the majority. There are those among us who recognize that this is regressive, and I would caution any game company against taking this sort of action in the future.

Organizers of this May's GDC Canada event in Vancouver, BC have confirmed the first social game and iPhone lectures for the event, with speakers from Zynga (Farmville), iPhone experts IUGO, and Diner Dash creator Nick Fortugno discussing major emerging markets.

Registration is now open for the event at the Vancouver Convention Centre, which talkes place on May 6th and 7th -- with early, reduced-price passes only available until the end of March.

This year, new tracks will focus on more hot games industry topics including digital distribution, social games, and iPhone games.

Some of the initially announced highlights for these vital tracks, many of which are bringing major creators to speak to the Canadian market for the first time, are as follows:

- In 'Building Social Games: Games at the Speed of Light', Zynga VP and Farmville GM Bill Mooney discusses how "The social gaming market is exploding - viral propagation across the world, low barriers to entry which create agile competitors, and a rapidly changing and imperfectly understood marketplace." In this key lecture, Mooney "walks through key learnings from his time making [major] Zynga franchises Mafia Wars and FarmVille."

- A lectures called 'A Tale of 14 Apps: IUGO's App Store Journey' sees Sarah Thomson, business development director of the Toy Bot Diaries and Zombie Attack! iPhone game creator discuss "what is working on the App Store and what isn’t, what factors, internal and external, contribute to an app’s success or failure."

- Presenting a lecture called 'The Art of Conversion: How to Manage Players through Your Game Service', Playmatics co-founder Nick Fortugno (lead designer of casual smash Diner Dash) and Media Shifters' Andrew Mayer will discuss new digital models of monetizing game players, including "converting platform users into game players, converting players into viral advocates, and, most importantly, converting your user base into paying customers."

The event will also once again host tracks about game design, business and production, programming, and visual arts. GDC Canada, presented by Reboot Communications and this website's parent the UBM Techweb Game Network, will also host evening networking events, as well as an expo hall.

More information on the 2010 GDC Canada event, including pricing specifics, lectures announced to date and registration deadlines, are available on the official GDC Canada website.

Here’s today’s wacky theory: Maybe the reason Viacom has gone after YouTube so litigiously is because YouTube is “the one that got away” — and anyone who’s ever had an unrequited crush knows how much it hurts to see something special slip through one’s fingers.

In today’s blog post by YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine, Levine takes issue with some of Viacom’s accusations towards YouTube,, given Viacom made repeated attempts to acquire YouTube before the Google deal happened:

According to CNET, Viacom was in fact serious enough about acquiring YouTube that it extended an offer prior to Oct. 9, 2006, when the deal was announced. What they proposed was that the two companies buy it together as a partnership, and thus “Viacom [would legitimize] the content on the site by providing content and developing a business model,” former Viacom exec Adam Cahan told CNET writer Greg Sandoval.

Before Google bought YouTube, Viacom was looking at the site, and even cautiously saying so publicly: On Oct. 4, 2006, Viacom Founder Sumner Redstone told Charlie Rose that YouTube was a potential acquisition as opposed to Facebook. “It’s a very good company,” he’s quoted as saying (video embedded below).

Five days after that interview, though, Google officially announced it would acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion. And five months after that, Viacom took its first legal action against YouTube, demanding that more than 100,000 clips be removed.

It’s interesting to consider what might have happened to YouTube had the Viacom acquisition occurred. You probably wouldn’t hear talk like “YouTube has become a metaphor for the democratizing power of the Internet and information” (per today’s blog post by YouTube Chief Counsel Zahavah Levine) if the site hadn’t remained independent from big media.

Instead, YouTube might have resembled MySpace following its acquisition by News Corp, working overtime to promote its parent company’s media properties. YouTube’s allegation that Viacom used YouTube as a promotional device after the Google acquisition only supports that theory.

Perhaps as an apology, Google offered Viacom $590 million for a licencing deal (per Peter Kafka on Twitter). But that doesn’t change the fact that like a cheerleader with too many options, YouTube decided to go with someone else to the prom. And so in the Viacom filing made public today, Viacom attacked YouTube’s principles and ethics with statements like:

You have to admit, that kind of sounds like something a bitter ex would write.

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