A year ago, the FT launched “a next generation search tool for business professionals”. Powered by Endeca, it was called Newsift and aimed to “enable users to string together a query that can provide insight into the relationship between people, organizations, geography, and business theme, which ultimately facilitates more informed business decisions”.

But Newsift is no more; the site has since gone offline.

A year ago, the FT launched “a next generation search tool for business professionals”. Powered by Endeca, it was called Newsift and aimed to “enable users to string together a query that can provide insight into the relationship between people, organizations, geography, and business theme, which ultimately facilitates more informed business decisions”.

But Newsift is no more; the site has since gone offline.

Coroner calls for further review of standards after hearing into morphine-related deaths of Dr Howard Martin's patients

Doctors who fail to adapt to modern medicine may face tougher sanctions, after an inquest into the morphine-related deaths of three seriously ill patients of a "stubborn or conservative" GP.

The County Durham coroner, Andrew Tweddle, said today he would ask for a further review of standards, which were drastically revised after the Harold Shipman murders.

Recording verdicts that high doses of morphine contributed to two of the deaths involving Dr Howard Martin, Tweddle said there had been no intention to kill but the GP's well-intentioned treatment had been out of date.

Martin, 75, was cleared at Teesside crown court in December 2005 of murdering Harry Gittins, 74, Frank Moss, 59, and Stanley Weldon, 74, who were all patients at the Jubilee Medical Group in Newton Aycliffe, where he was the oldest partner.

After the trial, Tweddle initially said inquests would not be held, but Moss's family appealed to the high court to reverse the decision.

Recording his verdicts, the coroner said: "Dr Martin has been described to me as an old-fashioned, traditional general practitioner, one who placed great store on his close personal relationship with his patients. However, such old-fashioned and traditional values should have not extended to a course of treatment which was described as 'risky' or 'antiquated'.

"His patients would have expected treatment that was in line with the accepted medical practice of the day, amended to the circumstances as necessary by Dr Martin, in keeping with his personal approach to the care of the terminally ill."

He said Martin had lied to Gittins's family about the patient's cancer spreading, saying he had been notified about this by medical colleagues. "Such a letter did not exist and Mr Gittins's cancer had not spread. The public should have complete faith in the GPs as they place their lives in their hands," Tweddle said.

Martin, who has retired to Penmaenmawr in Gwynedd, north Wales, voluntarily gave evidence to the inquest but declined, on legal advice, to answer several questions. He did not answer when the coroner asked whether he had refused to co-operate with a personal development plan required by NHS administrators.

The inquest heard that many other doctors, particularly older ones, had reservations about the scheme, but Martin's attitude had been sharply criticised. The judge who ordered the inquest, Mr Justice Underhill, said in his ruling: "Dr Martin allowed his prescribing practices to become crude and out of date and was too stubborn or conservative to be prepared to modify them."

Martin refused to comment on the judge's statement or the views of Professor Edwin Pugh, a palliative care consultant who raised concerns about the deaths. Pugh told the inquest that he had passed on worries about the level of morphine expressed by a respected Macmillan cancer nurse to the local health authority, which led to the police investigation and trial.

The coroner said that in 2000, when the alarm was raised, there was an "unfortunate lack of options" to deal with concerns about GPs. He told the inquest: "Where concerns and conduct fell short of meriting criminal proceedings or a formal referral to the GMC, such other alternatives were informal and could be ineffectual."

Reforms had since been implemented, especially after Dame Janet Smith's inquiry into the Shipman case, but there was still an argument for a further review.

The coroner recorded that morphine doses had contributed "more than minimally or trivially" to the deaths of Moss and Gittins in 2004, and that neither was likely to have died when they did but for the painkillers. He recorded misadventure verdicts on the two and an open verdict on Weldon, whose body had decomposed too much for effective forensic tests after exhumation.

The families of Moss and Gittins said after the verdict that their concerns about Martin's treatment had been vindicated. Jillian Coates, Gittins's daughter, said: "We have always accepted there are limits to a coroner's inquiry and understand that nothing said today affects the acquittal of Dr Howard Martin on the serious criminal charges he has previously faced.

"That said, the finding that these two men would not have died when they did if they had not received these injections of morphine that Dr Martin administered is a great relief to us and that is one of the questions that has troubled us for years."

• GPs
• Health

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

The concept is this - I tell you things that I'd have done in certain comics!!

But don't worry, I'm not talking about simple 20/20 hindsight things like pick a famous bad storyline and just say, "I wouldn't have done that."

No, I mean more like tweaks and nudges, stuff like that.

You can check out past years' I'ds to see what I'm talking about, or just read on (I've decided to consolidate them all into one big post this year to better center the discussion)!

I'd Have Silver Surfer Be Out on His Own Again

To put it simply, if Jack Kirby and Stan Lee think a character set-up is a good one, it's probably worth following their general lead.

They thought it was a great idea to have Silver Surfer be spurned by his former master, Galactus, and travel the world experiencing new things every day. You can expand that from the Earth to the universe and still get the same basic feel of their plans for the character, but making him go back to being Galactus' herald?

I don't think it works - he's too interesting of a character to have him stuck as Galactus' herald again.

Free the Surfer!

I'd Have Kept a Certain Character Killed in Cry For Justice Alive.

Spoilers for Cry For Justice!!!!

Okay, like Cry for Justice or hate it, the death of Lian Harper is pretty necessary to the plot of Cry for Justice. It doesn't mean that it was well-told or a GOOD plot or anything like that, but Green Arrow's granddaughter pretty much HAD to die (or someone of equivalent importance to him, like Speedy or Dinah or Hal) to get the reaction from Green Arrow that James Robinson wanted in the series. So I don't think it is fair for me (or anyone else) to say "I'd have kept Lian Harper alive," because that's not a tweak or a nudge - it would drastically change the story.

However, having one of the very few gay superheroes (and one of the coolest ones, at that) killed off IN A FLASHBACK did not seem to be a particularly important plot point, and the same gag (showing the big bad guy using the hero's hide as a rug) could have been achieved through any number of truly unremarkable characters (or even a new character), so I'd have kept Tasmanian Devil alive.

I'd Make the Red Hulk be Thunderbolt Ross

I know that Ross was sort of the "obvious" choice for the alter-ego of the Red Hulk, but just because it's the obvious choice doesn't mean that it is a BAD choice!

Having Ross turn into the very thing that he's been trying to chase down for years, and then finding out that he LIKED it?

That's a great twist on the old Ross/Banner dynamic, particularly for a character like Ross who wasn't exactly getting a lot of screen time anyways.

I find it hard to believe that the Red Hulk's actual identity will be cooler than Ross (maybe somehow it IS Ross! But it's most likely going to be Clay Quartermain).

I'd Have the Lead of Haunt Have a Different Job When the Series Began.

The main character of Haunt (about a guy who merges with the ghost of his dead brother to form a super powered being) was a priest when the series began. For, like, no reason that I can see so far (and he no longer IS a priest anymore). It's a distracting plot point in that it really doesn't seem to have a purpose, we never really get to see any sort of guilt (or hell, even any real response from other characters) over his role as a priest mixing with his several vices of his, and now he's no longer a priest - so what was the point? It was basically worth one fairly cheap gag in #1 (look, he went to a hooker but he's a priest!!) then never really used again - I'd have just dropped that aspect of the character period.

I'd Bring the X-Men Down to a Consistent, Moderately-sized Team.

I really think that, while the whole "Every mutant in the same area" concept is an interesting one in general, when it comes to a regular title it is better to have a consistent main cast of characters. There were a lot of characters in Grant Morrison's New X-Men run, but he had a main cast, and it was relatively small.

Joss Whedon continued in this vein, and Warren Ellis after him.

But I think based on a good idea (at the time) of "Why shouldn't Uncanny X-Men get to use cool characters like Cyclops and Emma Frost TOO?," we got this gigantic cast of X-Men, and I think the book works best with a small, consistent, moderately-sized team.

It can even use the same characters who are in Astonishing if you'd like to keep using Cyclops and Emma Frost and Wolverine, just get a regular team!

I'd Have Brian K. Vaughan Write Another Comic!

Come on, Brian, we're dying here! You're too awesome not to write any new comics!

I'd Make the Masters of Evil a Major Avengers Foe Again

So it's been, what, twenty years since the Avengers fought the Masters of Evil in the pages of the Avengers?

Doesn't that just sound WRONG to you? They used to fight the Masters of Evil a lot! Like, a dozen times in the first twenty years of the Avengers, but just the one time in the twenty years since, and that time wasn't even in their own title, but rather in the early issues of the Thunderbolts when the Masters were passing themselves off as heroes.

I guess The Hood's league of super-villains is BASICALLY the Masters of Evil, but I'd prefer the "real" thing.

I'd Have Kept One Couple Apart at the End of Y the Last Man

Spoilers for the end of Y the Last Man!

I really didn't like that Hero and Beth got together at the end of Y the Last Man. It seemed way too "cutesy" in a sort of "hey, guess what, everyone you knew ended up with everyone else you knew!" way. I'm glad Yorick didn't end up with Beth, and I guess Vaughan figured it would save space in the final issue by having the two characters together (so he wouldn't have to do two separate "wrap up" visits), but it really took me out of the moment to see how two basically random characters (who both happened to be major cast members of the title) end up together at the end.

I'd Have Roger Stern and John Byrne do Their Red Skull Three-Parter as a Prestige Format Series

Whether an extra-long one-shot (or hell, a three-issue mini-series), I'd bring Roger Stern and John Byrne back to finish the story that they were prepared to do before they left Captain America almost thirty years ago.

They were willing to do it in the past, so it's up to Marvel (well, okay, I guess it's also up to Byrne to work for Marvel again, which might not be a possibility)! This needs to happen!

I'd Give Kieron Gillen SOME Major Book to Write

I get that the thought of having Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker handling the ongoing titles of the Big Three (two for Fraction one for Brubaker) is too cool of an option to pass up, so I don't blame Marvel for not letting Gillen write Thor regularly, but he's surely shown that he's not just capable of writing a major character, but that he would THRIVE on such a title - so someone really ought to find a major book he could write! If not at Marvel, maybe DC?

I'd Have Not Killed Stealth

I really don't understand the concept behind killing off Stealth in REBELS, especially off-panel!! Her relationship with Vril Dox was fascinating - there had to be a better way to set up an adversarial position between Vril and Querl than to kill off Stealth (NOTE: If she returns to life due to Blackest Night, then, well, my apologies for even bringing this up as a complaint).

I'd Reveal That the Time Displaced Alpha Flight Died in The New Avengers' Collective Storyline

Or that the Time Displaced Alpha Flight (from Scott Lobdell's Alpha Flight run) are still alive - either or.

In either event, I'd use the gaping loophole Lobdell left for everyone at the end of that series and bring back Alpha Flight.

You don't even have to use them right away - just establish that they're alive out there and if someone EVENTUALLY wants to use them, have the option be there.

Open the door, basically.

I'd Bring Wesley Back Into the Pages of Angel

Angel spoilers ahead!

While Wesley did, indeed, die in the last episode of Angel, Joss Whedon made a point of saying that, had the show been renewed for Season 6, Wesley would be back, so now that Angel continues as a comic book, I don't see the point in keeping Wesley out of the comic. He was a strong part of the After the Fall storyline, and he'd be a great addition to the current cast (which, otherwise, IS a pretty interesting cast, a nice mix of established characters and characters introduced in the comic).

I'd Have Wally West's Parents Show Up Once in Awhile

While I can understand why people would not be interested in using some of Bill Loebs' Flash supporting cast like Chunk (although I like him a lot), I really don't understand why the fact that Wally's parents are both alive is not more of a plot point in any Flash comic. I mean, Wally's dad hasn't appeared in a comic in over ten years! Basically, since Bill Loebs last wrote a Flash (or Flash-related) comic, Wally's parents have been no-shows.

I think that's a shame - Bill Loebs did strong work with Wally's mother, Mary, and his father, Rudolph, and I'd like to see them show up once in awhile.

I'd Give Nick Fury and His Old SHIELD Allies Their Own Book

I LOVE the parts of Secret Warriors spotlighting Nick Fury, Ex-Agent of SHIELD.

I don't MIND the third-generation superhero characters, but I don't like them as much in a book that would be near-perfect if it was just Nick Fury, Ex-Agent of SHIELD.

So, well, I suppose I'd like a Nick Fury, Ex-Agent of SHIELD comic, basically.

Those are MY I'ds for this year - now share yours, too!

Rein out it owns IP, not Microsoft.

Mark Rein has said that Epic Games is free to do what it likes with Gears of War.

"We own Gears of War. We can do what we want with it," Rein, who is vice president of Epic, told VG247.

"We have a great relationship with Microsoft, and they helped turn the game into a huge success for us, and we are pretty happy with the way things are going."

Read more...

eldavojohn writes "The Guardian is reporting on the strained relationship that Scientology is having with the German government and the airing of a pesky documentary on Southwest Broadcasting. Until Nothing Remains, a $2.3 million documentary, is slotted to air on German television at the end of this month. It recounts the true story of Heiner von Rönn and his family's suffering when he tried to leave the Church of Scientology. A Scientology spokesperson called the film false and intolerant and also said they are investigating legal means to stop the film from being aired. More details on the film can be gleaned here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

eldavojohn writes "The Guardian is reporting on the strained relationship that Scientology is having with the German government and the airing of a pesky documentary on Southwest Broadcasting. Until Nothing Remains, a $2.3 million documentary, is slotted to air on German television at the end of this month. It recounts the true story of Heiner von Rönn and his family's suffering when he tried to leave the Church of Scientology. A Scientology spokesperson called the film false and intolerant and also said they are investigating legal means to stop the film from being aired. More details on the film can be gleaned here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan has seen a "significant improvement" under the Obama administration, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan said.

The relationship between the United States and Pakistan has seen a "significant improvement" under the Obama administration, the U.S. special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan said.

The "father of computer gaming" gave the keynote at GDC 2010 this past week, and while we really hoped he would tell us a lot about the upcoming Facebook version of Civilization, it got only the barest of mentions during the hour-plus talk. Instead, Meier shared wisdom with the gathered crowd, talking about the lessons he'd learned in player psychology over his long and storied career in game design. First, he talked about what he called the "Winner's Paradox" -- "if you've played Civilization," he said, "you're an egomaniac," since anyone crazy enough to think that they can actually "build a civ to stand the test of time," as it says on the game box, must be pretty full of themselves. And because of that, Meier says his players always believe that if they don't win for whatever reason, fate or the random number generator or the crappy AI must be out to get them. As a result, his policy has become to let the player win -- the threat of punishment is enough to keep it interesting, but in the end, the player should win the game.

He also talked about the "unholy alliance" between players and developers -- not only is the relationship beneficial for both parties (players offer their money, developers offer their time and talent), but it's also one of "mutually-assured destruction," as players can break contact with (or even just belief in) the game anytime they feel it's not fun any more, and developers can "really mess up the game, too." Everything in the game, said Meier, should be designed with an eye towards this alliance -- the AI should live to serve the player, the graphics and gameplay should engage imagination, and even options screens and load/save settings should be developed with an eye towards preserving the relationship.

Civilization Network was mentioned under a section Meier called "my bad" -- along with the original ideas to make Civ real-time (whoops) and make the tech path random, he said that the CN team had considered letting players give gold to each other on Facebook, but during playtesting, found that players never actually did. He did say that the game is deep into testing currently, and that it will allow co-op, singleplayer, and competitive gameplay, and that it will be interesting whether players play for just "a little time a day" or more than that. At the end of the talk, in reply to a question about where he saw gaming going, Meier declared that "this is the year of Civilization!" With CN coming soon and Civ V due out this fall, we can't wait to send our Settlers out into the world.

Sid Meier talks player psychology and the year of Civilization originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The "father of computer gaming" gave the keynote at GDC 2010 this past week, and while we really hoped he would tell us a lot about the upcoming Facebook version of Civilization, it got only the barest of mentions during the hour-plus talk. Instead, Meier shared wisdom with the gathered crowd, talking about the lessons he'd learned in player psychology over his long and storied career in game design. First, he talked about what he called the "Winner's Paradox" -- "if you've played Civilization," he said, "you're an egomaniac," since anyone crazy enough to think that they can actually "build a civ to stand the test of time," as it says on the game box, must be pretty full of themselves. And because of that, Meier says his players always believe that if they don't win for whatever reason, fate or the random number generator or the crappy AI must be out to get them. As a result, his policy has become to let the player win -- the threat of punishment is enough to keep it interesting, but in the end, the player should win the game.

He also talked about the "unholy alliance" between players and developers -- not only is the relationship beneficial for both parties (players offer their money, developers offer their time and talent), but it's also one of "mutually-assured destruction," as players can break contact with (or even just belief in) the game anytime they feel it's not fun any more, and developers can "really mess up the game, too." Everything in the game, said Meier, should be designed with an eye towards this alliance -- the AI should live to serve the player, the graphics and gameplay should engage imagination, and even options screens and load/save settings should be developed with an eye towards preserving the relationship.

Civilization Network was mentioned under a section Meier called "my bad" -- along with the original ideas to make Civ real-time (whoops) and make the tech path random, he said that the CN team had considered letting players give gold to each other on Facebook, but during playtesting, found that players never actually did. He did say that the game is deep into testing currently, and that it will allow co-op, singleplayer, and competitive gameplay, and that it will be interesting whether players play for just "a little time a day" or more than that. At the end of the talk, in reply to a question about where he saw gaming going, Meier declared that "this is the year of Civilization!" With CN coming soon and Civ V due out this fall, we can't wait to send our Settlers out into the world.

Sid Meier talks player psychology and the year of Civilization originally appeared on Joystiq on Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

It has been quite busy this week on the Web as loads of announcements leading up to SXSW have hit the newswires. This weekend's festivities in Austin look to top last year's Twitter invasion with a location-based show down between Foursquare and Gowalla. It was a busy week at ReadWriteStart as well, so here's a run down of the top stories in this edition of the Weekly Wrapup. This week we've got tips for not killing your startup, how little changes can make big impacts, the truth about VPs of sales and marketing, an early look at some data from TechStars, and an entrepreneur's take on coworking facilities.

Sponsor

10 Principles For Not Killing Your Startup

Everywhere you look these days, people are attempting to start innovative businesses and nonprofits, working on putting team, product and financing together, and generally trying to change the world - or, at least, their world - through entrepreneurship.

Meanwhile, I strongly suspect that the mortality rate of tech startups is as high as ever (no rigorous scientific tracking there, just common sense and observation - please do share stats if you know of some). In any case, one failed startup is one too many.

All the Small Things: Facebook Demonstrates How to Get Big Results From Little Changes

We've talked about design a lot recently, highlighting the nuances of thoughtful placement and treatment of various elements of a web page. Today I stumbled onto an interesting blog post by Ryan Spoon of Polaris Venture Partners about how small changes or additions, specifically in design, can at times make a huge difference for a product on the Web. In the example Spoon references, Facebook added a post log-out message to their homepage which for some users will suggest they look into using Facebook mobile - a small change that is proving useful for the social media powerhouse.

There is No Perfect VP of Sales and Marketing

Sales and marketing are not the same thing. It's true they both deal with relationship management and it's true that neither of these job descriptions require hardcore engineering, but just because they're both in the realm of words over code does not mean that they are the same. At the risk of muddling your mind with HR jargon, the core competencies of a marketer are very different from those of a sales person. Surprisingly, many startup CEOs insist on hiring for a VP of Sales and Marketing position.

First Look at TechStars Historical Results Data

TechStars is an early stage venture fund based in Boulder, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb was given an early peek at historical results data on TechStars companies, which the organization is about to release. The data shows acquisition and failure rates, as well as how many of the TechStar companies have gone on to receive angel or venture funding.

TechStars reports that nearly 6 of 10 of their companies have historically gone on to receive outside angel or venture funding (not including friends or family). Five other companies reported that they are now profitable without outside funding, so overall 27 of 39 (69.23%) TechStars companies have either raised outside funding after the program or bootstrapped to profitability.

An Entrepreneur's View On The Benefits of Coworking

We've all heard of the big company that started as two guys in their garage, but these days, with startup organizations and incubators, more and more success stories seem to feature companies that built their success from group collaboration. One excellent example of how startups can take advantage of collaboration is to work in a coworking environment with other companies and entrepreneurs.

Discuss

Last night, during Digg's annual SXSW party, Digg's CEO Jay Adelson announced a set of significant changes to Digg. Among the changes Adelson announced are a streamlined submission process, a personalized homepage, an unlimited amount of topic pages, a new commenting system and better curation tools. Earlier this morning, we got a chance to sit down with Adelson to discuss these changes in greater detail. Some of these changes will surely be extremely controversial in the Digg community and might also make some publishers who rely on Digg's traffic a bit nervous.

Sponsor

It's hard to underestimate the influence these changes will have on the Digg community. Not only did the Digg team create a completely new backend architecture, but Digg is also making a lot of changes to how the site will work from a user's perspective - some of which will surely be controversial among Digg's most active users.

Digg will launch the new site in alpha in a few weeks. You can sign up for an account here. It's important to note that Digg plans to work directly with its users and is looking for feedback from its alpha users. The alpha site, for example, will feature a large feedback bar at the bottom of every page.

Personalized Homepages as Default

On the new Digg, every user will get a personalized homepage which will be populated with stories that are popular among this user's friends and relate to topics this user has expressed interest in. This personalized homepage will become the default Digg frontpage for all users who have signed in to Digg. Users who are not signed in will still see the old Digg homepage. With this, the Digg team is clearly looking to get more users to sign up for the service. Digg will also update its users' profile pages.

Submitters Lose Power

Another major change to Digg - and one that will surely create some controversy among the most active users of the service - is that the new Digg will de-emphasize the power of submitters and put an even stronger emphasis on who votes for stories, as well as on outside signals from third-party services like Twitter and Facebook. Indeed, the new Digg will now allow publishers to auto-submit their stories through RSS feeds and a number of other mechanisms that the company plans to unveil in the next few weeks. Until now, while Digg didn't forbid publishers to submit their own content, this behavior was generally discouraged by the Digg community.

As Adelson told us, on the new Digg, submitting a story will basically mean that you are the first voter. Currently, a relatively small group of submitters has a lot of power over which stories will appear on the Digg frontpage.

Signals from Twitter, Facebook and Co.

While there will still be a role for those users who regularly discover new and interesting content, the new Digg will put a strong emphasis on votes and signals from your friends on third-party sites like Twitter and Facebook. Indeed, Digg will create a social graph for you that will take all of this information into account when it create your personalized homepage. On the homepage, Digg will also expose why a story appeared in your feed.

While Adelson couldn't go into details, it seems like Digg has established a very good relationship with Twitter and has had access to Twitter's firehose feed to almost a year.

Once the new digg comes out of beta, anonymous users will also be able to vote on stories. While the team is still working out the details, it is clear that Digg is looking to get as many signals as possible to augment the current voting process. It will be interesting to see how Digg will weigh all this information in the creation of personalized pages and the new topic pages.

The submission process for stories that haven't been submitted to Digg already will now be a one-click process.

Digg will also soon use third-party sign-on systems, including Google, Twitter Connect and Yahoo to allow its users to sign in.

Working With Publishers: What Will Happen to the Digg Effect?

Obviously, quite a few publishers will worry that the old Digg effect - which would often take sites down because of the huge amount of traffic a story on Digg's frontpage can create - will now disappear. Adelson, however, who also noted that Digg "wants to be a good source for traffic for publishers," thinks that this new system will create a more regular stream of traffic to publishers.

In the long run, Adelson noted, Digg also plans to open up its advertising platform to share revenue with publishers. This project is still in its early stages, but according to Adelson, this could involve using a widget on the publisher's site or by using Digg's salesforce to sell ad inventory on these sites directly.

To make all of this work, Digg completely stripped out the old infrastructure and started over by building a completely new platform. This, said Adelson, will allow Digg to easily make changes to the frontend and react to user feedback during the alpha and beta phase. At some point in the future, Digg might also open this platform up to third parties.

A Completely New Platform

Digg is clearly taking this new version extremely serious. The company plans to hire 50 engineers this year to help with scaling the architecture. Adelson was clearly proud of the work his team has done on the backend architecture. The new site will be "wicked fast," thanks to a complete retooling of every aspect of the site, up to the point where the bottlenecks for Digg are now network speed and latency. This is quite a feat, given that Digg now offers an almost unlimited amount of topic pages and a personalized homepage for every user - all of which will have to be recalculated constantly.

How Will Users React?

It will be very interesting to see how users will react to all of these changes. Adelson and the rest of the Digg team are very aware that this will create some controversy, but Adelson clearly thinks that this is the right way to go for Digg. The topic pages will allow Digg to cater to users who care about every type of news, be it the Boston Red Socks or the latest gadget news.

Discuss

Hugh Pickens writes "Techflash reports that Classmates.com has agreed to pay up to $9.5 million to its users to settle a lawsuit that accused the social network of sending deceptive emails that made people believe their old friends from high school were reaching out to connect — only to discover, after paying for a membership, that their long-lost buddies were nowhere to be found. Lawyers for the plaintiffs asserted that Classmates had 'profited tremendously from their false or deceptive e-mail subject lines and related marketing tactics.' Under terms of the proposed settlement, Classmates.com members who upgraded to premium memberships after receiving one of the 'guestbook' emails will be able to choose either a $3 cash payout or a $2 credit toward the future purchase or renewal of a Classmates.com membership. Classmates.com is also among companies that have come under scrutiny for their use of 'post-transaction marketing' tactics — in which customers are given additional offers as part of the online payment process, sometimes in such a way that they aren't aware they're also signing up to pay more. A November 2009 US Senate Committee report said Classmates made more than $70 million through its relationship with post-transaction marketing firms. The Classmates Media unit posted $58.8 million in operating profit for 2009, up more than 24 percent from the previous year, making Classmates 'the most profitable social network in the world,' according to CEO Mark Goldston."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Hugh Pickens writes "Techflash reports that Classmates.com has agreed to pay up to $9.5 million to its users to settle a lawsuit that accused the social network of sending deceptive emails that made people believe their old friends from high school were reaching out to connect — only to discover, after paying for a membership, that their long-lost buddies were nowhere to be found. Lawyers for the plaintiffs asserted that Classmates had 'profited tremendously from their false or deceptive e-mail subject lines and related marketing tactics.' Under terms of the proposed settlement, Classmates.com members who upgraded to premium memberships after receiving one of the 'guestbook' emails will be able to choose either a $3 cash payout or a $2 credit toward the future purchase or renewal of a Classmates.com membership. Classmates.com is also among companies that have come under scrutiny for their use of 'post-transaction marketing' tactics — in which customers are given additional offers as part of the online payment process, sometimes in such a way that they aren't aware they're also signing up to pay more. A November 2009 US Senate Committee report said Classmates made more than $70 million through its relationship with post-transaction marketing firms. The Classmates Media unit posted $58.8 million in operating profit for 2009, up more than 24 percent from the previous year, making Classmates 'the most profitable social network in the world,' according to CEO Mark Goldston."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Here is the archive of the lists Lorendiac posts here, and here is his latest piece! Remember, again, this list is written by Lorendiac, not Brian Cronin. - BC.

I once listed the various reasons why some people become superheroes and start looking for villains to smite -- and on another occasion I examined the options they have after they've subdued a villain in the traditional slugfest and then start asking themselves: "Now what shall I do with him?" (Those discussions, among others, can be reached via the links at the bottom of this piece.) But it recently occurred to me that I've never really addressed the middle portion of that process: Given that someone has already chosen to dress up as a superhero, just how does he go about finding those bad guys so he can smite them properly?

To put it another way, what's his preferred method of target acquisition?

Here are the answers I found for how the heroes and the villains may end up confronting one another.

(Obviously, there is no law which says a certain hero must use just one or two methods over and over. Some have developed styles which blend several methods together.)

11 Methods of Target Acquisition

01. Police Band
02. Spy Tech
03. Super-Senses
04. Hunted
05. Summoned
06. Detective Work
07. Pursuing One Long-Term Mission
08. Answering Appeals
09. On Patrol
10. Baiting the Trap
11. Chance Encounter

01. Police Band

"Hmmm. Bank robbery in progress, over on Fifth and Main? I'm only a few blocks away -- reckon I'll swing by and see what I can do!"

Modern law enforcement agencies have systems in place for rapidly spreading the word about current and recently-committed crimes. Some superheroes find ways of accessing that information network so they can react to emergencies which sound as if they require the hero's special talents. Sometimes that's as simple as keeping a police scanner handy to listen to current transmissions; sometimes the hero's methods go far beyond that.

For instance, Batman's friendship with Commissioner Gordon traditionally gives him access to anything the vast resources of the GCPD have already learned about the matter at hand (including material which has been provided by the FBI or other law enforcement oufits). Of course it doesn't always work that smoothly -- sometimes Jim Gordon isn't Commissioner this week, and sometimes he is but his relationship with Batman has fallen on hard times -- but we can usually assume this steady flow of information to be the default condition unless we are specifically told otherwise.

Furthermore, some superheroes have been employed as law enforcement officers, which gives them direct access to all sorts of data without needing to eavesdrop or hack into anything.

Sometimes the employers know exactly who they are hiring, and the hero is ordered to respond to the scariest reports that come over the radio. The Savage Dragon started his crimefighting career this way when he was hired by the Chicago police -- if bullets were just bouncing off a super-powered perpetrator instead of stopping him, they called in Officer Dragon to do what a regular SWAT team couldn't! Other superheroes who have collected regular paychecks from local or national governments, or even from the United Nations, in exchange for their "superheroic" activities, have included Plastic Man, Agent Liberty, the Avengers, Alpha Flight, the Justice League International . . . and, more recently, all of the Marvel heroes who chose to participate in the 50 State Initiative.

Sometimes the costumed stuff qualifies as "moonlighting" in the superhero's off-duty hours -- for instance, when Dick Grayson became a rookie cop in Bludhaven, his fellow cops didn't know he was also Nightwing in his spare time. Other superheroes who have tried to juggle a "regular law enforcement" job with an unoffical "costumed superhero" sideline have included the Golden Age Guardian (Jim Harper), Captain America (Steve Rogers), the Silver Age Flash (Barry Allen), the original Human Torch (Jim Hammond), and The Martian Manhunter ("John Jones" of the Denver PD).

02. Spy Tech

"Whoa! Look what just flashed up on this screen! The police don't know about it yet, but I do! If I hurry, I can get there before regular cops notice the problem, interfere, and maybe get themselves killed!"

This way the hero isn't just eavesdropping on what the police are hearing at the same time; he's often one step ahead of them because he has useful toys they don't!

The X-Men have sometimes been able to use Cerebro to pin down the locations of powerful mutants of interest, even if no one else in the world has noticed that these people are mutants.

Batman has also made heavy use of this approach, often via the services of Oracle (Barbara Gordon), who refuses to fret about the laws relating to wiretapping and hacking into private databases and so forth. At various times, Oracle's talents have also been available to Batman's apprentices, and to the Suicide Squad, and to the Justice League, and to her own hand-picked "Birds of Prey" agents. She likes to stay busy!

03. Super-Senses

"Eh? A few miles down the road, someone is firing an automatic weapon. Reckon I'd better check it out!"

Unlike "Spy Tech," this approach means the hero's ability to rapidly learn about things happening far away is not dependent on advanced technological aids. Instead, his "natural" perceptions go far beyond those of any normal person's physical senses.

Superman is the poster child for this one. For instance, if a large explosion happens anywhere in Metropolis when he's in residence, his super-hearing is probably going to pick it up while automatically ignoring all the miscellaneous "background noise" which doesn't sound nearly so life-threatening. Likewise, his X-Ray vision and telescopic vision can be incredibly handy!

Daredevil's senses are not as far-reaching as Superman's (and he's conspicuously lacking in vision-based powers, for obvious reasons), but still give him a huge advantage, although he has usually preferred to keep that fact to himself and let his enemies assume he's just a normal guy in a red outfit.

In addition to superhuman enhancement of the "normal" senses, there are other ways for information to reach a hero from afar and alert him to problems he may want to deal with. Including clairvoyance . . . telepathy . . . and even precognitive visions which can tip him off to what's going to happen at a certain place and time -- or perhaps what might happen unless he interferes!

(The movie Minority Report took that last scenario to the limit -- precognitive visions about your future misbehavior could be used as the basis for your being arrested, charged, convicted, and sentenced for the violent crime which you had never actually gotten around to committing in the first place!)

04. Hunted

"Well, that saves me the trouble of going out and looking for trouble tonight -- the trouble is looking for me instead, and it's loaded for bear!"

This naturally reminds us of Richard Connell's classic short story "The Most Dangerous Game," the basic premise of which has been shamelessly ripped off on innumerable occasions -- in movies, TV episodes, comic books, whatever. In this approach, the villain has decided: "I'm the greatest hunter in the world -- and I'm tired of tracking and shooting mere animals. What I need is a human quarry who's resourceful enough to give me a real challenge!" (Kraven the Hunter was a classic example when he debuted in the Silver Age.)

Some villains are not dedicated to "the thrill of the hunt" as a strong motivating factor in their daily lifestyles, but occasionally feel the need to hunt down and trap or kill a particular superhero -- or entire team -- for some other reason entirely!

For instance, while recently rereading (and parodying) the classic Dark Phoenix Saga, I've been reminded of a point which I had almost forgotten! The villainous agenda wasn't just to brainwash Jean Grey into deserting the X-Men and working for the Hellfire Club (or at least for Mastermind) from that day forward. Sebastian Shaw and his colleages of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club also wanted to capture as many of the X-Men as possible (along with potential new recruits Kitty Pryde and Alison Blaire) so as to use them as guinea pigs in trying to isolate -- and learn to manipulate -- the genetic "X-Factor" which made all the difference between ordinary humans and super-powered mutants. For some reason, the never-clearly-explained methods which Shaw and his buddies had in mind were expected to be fatal to the living subjects, which explains why they were unwilling to experiment on themselves and preferred to round up other mutants instead. But once they had the key factor properly isolated, they believed they'd be able to start producing mutants to order!

Note: Looking back on it, my best guess is that the Hellfire Club of that era (around 1980) had never heard of the very similar work which -- according to a retcon several years later -- had already been happening for a long time in the island nation of Genosha. If Shaw and his cronies had been aware of it, they could have simply tried to make a deal with the Genosha government, or else swipe some of the Genegineer's research and technology for their own purposes. Either of which would have been likelier to succeed than the complicated stunts they actually pulled against the X-Men.

05. Lured

"Will you come into my parlor, said the spider to the fly . . ."

This is slightly different from "Hunted." The villain is still taking the initiative in seeking a confrontation, but this time the villain doesn't exert himself to go looking for the hero -- he merely "invites" the hero to come looking for him at a certain place and time! This can range from the tantalizing clues of The Riddler and his ilk, which often have double meanings and other dirty tricks concealed within them, to something as simple and straightforward as Norman Osborn kidnapping Gwen Stacy and daring Peter Parker to come try and rescue her on a certain bridge!

06. Detective Work

The following dialogue is quoted from "The Question Annual #1." Batman (Bruce Wayne), Green Arrow (Ollie Queen), and The Question (Vic Sage) are having a little chat. Batman has just finished explaining something, and now the others react.

THE QUESTION: How do you know all that?

BATMAN: I've spent years developing informational resources --

GREEN ARROW: I thought you just swung down from rooftops and cleaned bad guys' clocks.

BATMAN: Occasionally I do. That's approximately four percent of my activity. The rest of it is finding out things.

Writer Denny O'Neil was trying to make a point. Just because Batman's stories tend to emphasize the moments of frantic violence doesn't mean that's practically all he ever does! Those moments are likely to come after long hours of less flamboyant behavior as he uses good old-fashioned detective work to solve mysteries which have caught his interest. But the cerebral stuff doesn't look nearly so exciting on the comic book page, so writers tend to just quickly summarize most of the "lead time" which was necessary for Batman to know how to be in the right place at the right time to engage in the obligatory slugfest and then hand over his latest adversaries to the police!

(I'm a little surprised, though, that Green Arrow, who had already spent long years as a costumed crimefighter himself at that point in his continuity, hadn't realized that the occasional juicy news item about Batman beating up the Joker only represented the tip of the iceberg in how Batman budgeted his time. Unless Ollie was just being ironic?)

07. Pursuing One Long-Term Mission

"There's one target I'm really interested in attacking, in any way possible, until the problem is settled for good! If I just happen to stumble across other violent criminals along the way, I may take a few minutes to deal with them -- but I can't afford to waste time looking for random riffraff otherwise! Got to stay focused!"

Yes, sometimes the hero is obsessively focused on tracking down and punishing one person or evil organization. Making a clean sweep may take a long, long time, but he is strongly motivated to see it through. Of course such a large goal may also involve heavy use of Spy Tech, Detective Work, and other methods of learning enough to know where the enemy's vulnerable spots are in any given adventure.

For instance, back in 1980 DC introduced Tom Tresser, their first user of the heroic alias "Nemesis," who was dedicated to taking down a crime syndicate whose leaders were collectively called "the Council." Nemesis disguised himself as various people in his efforts to get in close to one Council member after another and find ways to bring each one down. That mission statement provided the backbone for all his stories of the next couple of years (mostly as a back-up feature in "The Brave and the Bold, with two full-issue team-ups with Batman along the way). In his last story of the Pre-Crisis era, Tom Tresser apparently died in a terrible explosion in the moment of triumph against the last member of the Council, and -- having finally completed his mission -- was not heard from again for about four and a half years before John Ostrander dusted him off for "Suicide Squad."

08. Answering Appeals

"Please! You're my last hope! I don't know where else to turn!"

Here the hero waits for the victim or other concerned parties to call his attention to a particular problem. I am told that way back in the Golden Age, the original Hourman (Rex Tyler) placed a newspaper ad in which he offered to use his powers to help those who needed his special abilities to solve a knotty problem.

I think Rex was offering to work for free (but I haven't read that Golden Age story, so I can't swear to the details of his ad.) But sometimes a hero is waiting for someone to offer to pay for his time and trouble in working on their case as a freelance bodyguard, investigator, or what-have-you -- and once he takes the case, he will give it his best. Heroes for Hire, the Power Company, Silver Sable's Wild Pack, Booster Gold, Mark Shaw (Manhunter), The Human Target, the Suicide Squad, and Firearm (an Ultraverse character in the mid-90s, if you didn't know) have worked along those lines.

09. On Patrol

"I feel bored -- time to hit the streets and poke around at random, hoping to find a violent crime-in-progress so I can derail it! Maybe a supervillain ripping open an armored car or something!"

It is truly amazing how often this one works!

Granted, sometimes a story starts out with a hero attempting this free-form approach, and then one of the other methods is used to actually bring about the major confrontation of that issue. Superman may be flying a routine patrol over Metropolis when his super-senses detect gunfire from below. Batman may already be out on patrol in the Batmobile when he hears a police report about a villain running amok, not too far away from Batman's current position. Spider-Man may be doing his web-slinging around Manhattan, just for fun, when someone suddenly attacks him, meaning to hunt him down and kill him for a bounty!

In all fairness, I should mention that sometimes a writer pointedly reminds us that "wandering round and hoping for the best" is not the most efficient way to catch dangerous criminals. For instance: When Harlan Ellison wrote a Batman story for "Detective Comics #567," the entire plot was about Batman's frustrated attempts to find an excuse to bust somebody that night, and his general lack of satisfying success!

(Batman did collar one little drug dealer, and then promptly got chewed out by the customer -- an undercover cop -- for messing up an ongoing investigation which was meant to lead the detective further up the supply chain so he could identify much bigger fish before the GCPD arrested everybody at once. That was a hollow victory at best.)

At the end of the story, Batman returned home and complained to Alfred that it was the worst night of his life!

10. Setting the Trap

"I'm betting that scumbag can't resist this big fat juicy target! When he comes into view, I pounce!"

In #05, "Lured," I pointed out that the villain may be seeking to get the hero to approach him on a battlefield of the villain's own choosing. The hero, of course, has the right to employ similar tactics to make the villain come to him.

The hero may use himself as very obvious bait, or he may disguise himself as someone else whom bad guys are likely to try to kill or abduct in the near future (The Human Target specializes in that one), or the hero may set up some other situation which a villain will hopefully find incredibly alluring, but will not assume has a superhero lurking in the shadows! (Granted, some villains have such swollen egos that they don't really worry about that point, because they're confident they can easily handle any hero who is likely to show up!)

Another approach overlaps with Detective Work. Some superheroes don't have the sort of material resources which Bruce Wayne and his ilk can muster to arrange a high-profile event from scratch, tailor-made to a certain villain's known tastes. Failing that, there's always the low-budget possibility of deducing what a certain villain already wants to do next (stealing a certain item or killing a particular person, for instance), and then just lurking in ambush for hours, praying that you understood the foe's agenda as well as you thought you did when you started this stakeout.

11. Sheer Coincidence

"Fancy meeting you here!"

This is the one where the superhero was making no effort to find a villain to fight, and the villain was not planning to attract a superhero's attention today . . . and yet, thanks to dumb luck (or "the mysterious workings of fate," or whatever catchphrase you prefer), they suddenly meet in the same time and place anyway!

This one probably happens almost as often as "On Patrol" -- which is incredible, when you think about it.

What are the odds that if a superhero goes on vacation to a tropic isle, he'll just happen to stumble across a villainous conspiracy or rampaging monster?

Or that if he travels to a small town to visit an old friend or relative, a murder will occur during the hero's brief stay?

Or that if several English-speaking heroes in plainclothes are taking a French class in Paris, some of their fellow students will coincidentally be supervillains, also in plainclothes?

In real life, you might say the chances of any of those problems arising at a moment when you just happened to be visiting a usually-peaceful environment were vanishingly small, so why worry about it? But in the worlds which our beloved superheroes inhabit, the laws of probability appear to function in an entirely different fashion from what we take for granted! (And no, I'm not even talking about stories involving those few heroes who explicitly have the power to distort the probabilities! With them, it would only be remarkable if unlikely things didn't happen at the drop of a hat!)

I am reminded of the time in "The Amazing Spider-Man #4" when Spider-Man had recently tussled with Sandman for the first time -- and had been humiliated, finally running away after his mask was torn open. (Stan Lee loved to have Spidey conspicuously fail the first time he faced a new villain . . . then regroup, belatedly develop a more intelligent plan than "I'll punch his lights out in ten seconds flat!", and go on to victory in the stirring rematch!)

The following day Peter Parker had to attend high school classes, so hunting for Sandman would presumably have to wait until late afternoon or evening. However! Sandman just happened to enter that same high school in an attempt to shake the police off his trail for a bit, and just happened to make his way into the very classroom from which Peter was briefly absent on an errand for the teacher, and just happened to start trying to bully the school principal into issuing a high school diploma for Flint Marko (since he had never completed high school before becoming a hoodlum). The principal flatly refused, which didn't go over well -- but he was saved from serious harm by the timely arrival of Spider-Man, bursting into the room after hearing the commotion and doing his quick-change act!

That's right -- of all the buildings in the Big Apple which Sandman could have picked as a place to hide, and of all the rooms which he then could have entered within the building he picked . . . he inadvertently ended up in the classroom to which Peter Parker would be returning any minute now! How's that for Sheer Coincidence?

Not that the improbability of the situation bothered me at the time I first read the story as a mere slip of a lad, and not that it really bothers me today, either! But when I wanted an amusing example of an incredibly coincidental encounter in a "classic" story, it sprang to mind!

Well, those were all I came up with on my own. If you think I completely overlooked another approach to the problem of finding someone to pummel with a clear conscience, please speak up! Of course it always helps if you can provide specific examples so I can better visualize what you're talking about.

As promised above, here are some links to many previous pieces I've perpetrated over the last few years, comprising what I have come to think of as my Numbered List series. Every once in a while it amuses me to think about some odd aspect of the superhero genre, and to try to list and explain all the different approaches I can remember for that sort of thing, or all the different reasons that ridiculous things keep happening.

12 Motives for Killing a Comic Book Character
17 Excuses for Bringing Back a Dead Character
16 Types of Retcons
19 Ways to End a Superhero's Romance
22 Ways to Show a Superhero Killing Someone
9 Categories of Continuity
5 Types of Superhero Team Members
Secret Identities: 10 Ways to Unspill the Beans
Superhero Finances: 10 Situations
13 Reasons to Use a Deathtrap
14 Functions for a Superhero Costume
10 Types of Superhero Successors
14 Ways to Rehabilitate a Disgraced Hero
14 Motives for Becoming a Superhero
12 Tricks for Keeping Superheroes Young
13 Reasons to Quit the Superhero Racket
12 Rationales for a Hero-Versus-Hero Slugfest on the Cover
What To Do With a Supervillain After You Catch Him: 12 Options
14 Motives for Becoming a Supervillain

14 Answers to “Why So Many Retcons?”

10 Types of Comic Book Forum Weirdos

Annual Review of Cell and Developmental Biology, Vol. 22, No. 1. (2006), pp. 531-557.

Abstract The cell phenotypes of senescence and crisis operate to circumscribe the proliferative potential of mammalian cells, suggesting that both are capable of operating in vivo to suppress the formation of tumors. The key regulators of these phenotypes are the telomeres, which are located at the ends of chromosomes and operate to protect the chromosomes from end-to-end fusions. Telomere erosion below a certain length can trigger crisis. The relationship between senescence and telomere function is more complex, however: Cell-physiological stresses as well as dysfunction of the complex molecular structures at the ends of telomeric DNA can trigger senescence. Cells can escape senescence by inactivating the Rb and p53 tumor suppressor proteins and can surmount crisis by activating a telomere maintenance mechanism. The resulting cell immortalization is an essential component of the tumorigenic phenotype of human cancer cells. Here we discuss how telomeres are monitored and maintained and how loss of a functional telomere influences biological functions as diverse as aging and carcinogenesis.
Sheila Stewart, Robert Weinberg

While 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell' is an unjust policy in and of itself, it's particularly unjust when someone playing by the military's rules is outed by a third party and discharged because of it. In Sergeant Jene Newsome's case, the third party was the Rapid City, South Dakota police, who happened to see an Iowa marriage certificate at her home after showing up with a warrant for her wife, who was wanted for theft in Alaska.

The AP reports:   "Newsome was at work at the base at the time and refused to immediately come home and assist the officers in finding her partner, whom she married in Iowa — where gay marriage is legal — in October. Police officers, who said they spotted the marriage license on the kitchen table through a window of Newsome's home, alerted the base, police Chief Steve Allender said in a statement sent to the AP. The license was relevant to the investigation because it showed both the relationship and residency of the two women, he said."

The ACLU of South Dakota does not feel the information was relevant and have filed a complaint:

"'This information was intentionally turned over because of 'don't ask, don't tell' and to out Jene so that she would lose her military status,' said Robert Doody, executive director of ACLU South Dakota. The ACLU is focusing its complaint on the police department, not the military, and Newsome said she and her attorney have not yet decided on whether to file a lawsuit. 'The 'don't ask, don't tell' piece is important and critical to this, but also it's a police misconduct case,' Doody said."

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 11 PMID: 20222969Authors: Garg, A. - Tewari, R. - Raghava, G. P.Journal: BMC BioinformaticsABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: Identification of novel drug targets and their inhibitors is a major challenge in the field of drug designing and development. Diaminopimelic acid (DAP) pathway is a unique lysine biosynthetic pathway present in bacteria, however absent in mammals. This pathway is vital for bacteria due to its critical role in cell wall biosynthesis. One of the essential enzymes of this pathway is dihydrodipicolinate synthase (DHDPS), considered to be crucial for the bacterial survival. In view of its importance, the development and prediction of potent inhibitors against DHDPS may be valuable to design effective drugs against bacteria, in general. RESULTS: This paper describes a methodology for predicting novel/potent inhibitors against DHDPS. Here, quantitative structure activity relationship (QSAR) models were trained and tested on experimentally verified 23 enzyme's inhibitors having inhibitory value (Ki) in the range of 0.005-22(mM). These inhibitors were docked at the active site of DHDPS (1YXD) using AutoDock software, which resulted in 11 energy-based descriptors. For QSAR modeling, Multiple Linear Regression (MLR) model was engendered using best four energy-based descriptors yielding correlation values R/q2 of 0.82/0.67 and MAE of 2.43. Additionally, Support Vector Machine (SVM) based model was developed with three crucial descriptors selected using F-stepping remove-one approach, which enhanced the performance by attaining R/q2 values of 0.93/0.80 and MAE of 1.89. To validate the performance of QSAR models, external cross-validation procedure was adopted which accomplished high training/testing correlation values (q2/r2) in the range of 0.78-0.83/0.93-0.95. CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggests that ligand-receptor binding interactions for DHDPS employing QSAR modeling seems to be a promising approach for prediction of antibacterial agents. To serve the experimentalist to develop novel/potent inhibitors, a webserver "KiDoQ" has been developed (http://crdd.osdd.net/raghava/kidoq), which allows the prediction of Ki value of a new ligand molecule against DHDPS.post to: CiteULike

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 11 PMID: 20223836Authors: Xiao, S. J. - Zhang, C. - Ji, Z. L.Journal: BioinformaticsSUMMARY: The tissue-specific genes are a group of genes whose function and expression are preferred in one or several tissues/cell types. Identification of these genes helps better understanding of tissue-gene relationship, etiology and discovery of novel tissue-specific drug targets. In this study, a statistical method is introduced to detect tissue specific genes from more than 123125 gene expression profiles over 107 human tissues, 67 mouse tissues and 30 rat tissues. As a result, a novel subject-specialized repository, namely the Tissue-Specific Genes Database (TiSGeD), is developed to represent the analyzed results. Auxiliary information of tissue-specific genes were also collected from biomedical literatures. AVAILABILITY: http://bioinf.xmu.edu.cn/databases/TISGED/index.html. CONTACT: appo@bioinf.xmu.edu.cn or zhiliang.ji@gmail.com.post to: CiteULike

Game industry analysis firm EEDAR dropped some interesting statistics during its GDC panel this year. The first half of the presentation -- hosted by EEDAR president Geoffrey Zatkin -- concerned new intellectual property in the games industry. According to Zatkin, the amount of new IP released has increased slightly over the last three years. Specifically, it was up to 22 percent in 2009, up from 17 percent in 2006. However, breaking it down by console, Zatkin stated that new IP currently comprises 27 percent of Wii software, while that number drops to 17 percent on the PS3 and 360.

He added that certain genres see very few original properties, particularly fighting games. Furthermore, the relationship between new IP and ESRB ratings is different on various platforms. Most new IP on the Wii tends to be rated E, while new properties on 360 and PS3 tend to be rated T or M. Using data like this, Zatkin said, publishers can decide what sort of games to release on which platforms. The question, according to Zatkin, is whether publishers decide to follow the trends or fill the "holes" in their portfolios by releasing titles in underrepresented areas (any pubs up for a mature Wii fighting game?).

Zatkin also discussed the best time for publishers to release new properties. A bar graph illustrated a slight trend away from the industry crowding all its releases into the holiday shopping season, though it still accounted for 37 percent of releases in 2009. Zatkin also pointed out that many publishers release their major titles at the end of their fiscal quarters. The lesson for publishers looking to release new (and risky) properties? Keep your games out of the fourth quarter and try to release them in the second month of any given fiscal quarter.

Continue reading GDC 2010: EEDAR talks new IP strategy

GDC 2010: EEDAR talks new IP strategy originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Game industry analysis firm EEDAR dropped some interesting statistics during its GDC panel this year. The first half of the presentation -- hosted by EEDAR president Geoffrey Zatkin -- concerned new intellectual property in the games industry. According to Zatkin, the amount of new IP released has increased slightly over the last three years. Specifically, it was up to 22 percent in 2009, up from 17 percent in 2006. However, breaking it down by console, Zatkin stated that new IP currently comprises 27 percent of Wii software, while that number drops to 17 percent on the PS3 and 360.

He added that certain genres see very few original properties, particularly fighting games. Furthermore, the relationship between new IP and ESRB ratings is different on various platforms. Most new IP on the Wii tends to be rated E, while new properties on 360 and PS3 tend to be rated T or M. Using data like this, Zatkin said, publishers can decide what sort of games to release on which platforms. The question, according to Zatkin, is whether publishers decide to follow the trends or fill the "holes" in their portfolios by releasing titles in underrepresented areas (any pubs up for a mature Wii fighting game?).

Zatkin also discussed the best time for publishers to release new properties. A bar graph illustrated a slight trend away from the industry crowding all its releases into the holiday shopping season, though it still accounted for 37 percent of releases in 2009. Zatkin also pointed out that many publishers release their major titles at the end of their fiscal quarters. The lesson for publishers looking to release new (and risky) properties? Keep your games out of the fourth quarter and try to release them in the second month of any given fiscal quarter.

Continue reading GDC 2010: EEDAR talks new IP strategy

GDC 2010: EEDAR talks new IP strategy originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 23:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the video game industry, the talent (read: game developers) are often "hired guns," if you will -- part of a developer that is either wholly owned by a publisher (i.e. Infinity Ward's relationship with Activision) or a developer that's being contracted for development by a publisher (i.e. Ruffian Games' relationship with Microsoft). Rarely, if ever, is an individual (or individuals, as is the case here) represented by a talent agency, nonetheless a fancy, bigtime Hollywood one like Creative Artists Agency. That is, however, the case for the recently let go ex-Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West, who recently inked a deal with the agency.

Though a CAA representative wouldn't divulge any info on what the duo's next move is (nor the CAA's next move on their behalf), we have to imagine the pair's pedigree will help out just a bit in finding work. According to the LA Times Company Town blog report, hollywood talent agencies aren't exactly known for scooping up game developers, so this could very well mark a new option for (at very least) big name devs in search of greener pastures.

Ex-Infinity Ward heads now represented by Creative Artists Agency originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In the video game industry, the talent (read: game developers) are often "hired guns," if you will -- part of a developer that is either wholly owned by a publisher (i.e. Infinity Ward's relationship with Activision) or a developer that's being contracted for development by a publisher (i.e. Ruffian Games' relationship with Microsoft). Rarely, if ever, is an individual (or individuals, as is the case here) represented by a talent agency, nonetheless a fancy, bigtime Hollywood one like Creative Artists Agency. That is, however, the case for the recently let go ex-Infinity Ward heads Vince Zampella and Jason West, who recently inked a deal with the agency.

Though a CAA representative wouldn't divulge any info on what the duo's next move is (nor the CAA's next move on their behalf), we have to imagine the pair's pedigree will help out just a bit in finding work. According to the LA Times Company Town blog report, hollywood talent agencies aren't exactly known for scooping up game developers, so this could very well mark a new option for (at very least) big name devs in search of greener pastures.

Ex-Infinity Ward heads now represented by Creative Artists Agency originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Buzz, Google's controversial attempt to unseat Facebook as the most mainstream of social activity stream readers, just made some much-needed changes that Facebook could learn from as well.

Buzz users now have more granular control over what social interactions with content trigger an email sent to their email inboxes and explicit explanations for why each piece of content was sent by email to them. These changes are a good start but ought to extended into the body of Buzz as well.

Sponsor

Just like most Facebook users can't explain the difference between the new algorithmically filtered News Feed and the raw bulk flow of the Live Feed, Buzz too could benefit from explaining the mystery behind the magic. As social networking analyst danah boyd said at the opening talk of SXSW today, privacy online is grounded in user control.

Buzz violated the basic understanding of email as private when it surprised users by layering the new social network on top of their private Gmail. By granting users more control over information, today's changes are a small move in a better direction.

Why Not Give Users The Tools to Drive Their Own Experience?

Might social activity stream participation become more mainstream if users had clear and more complete control over what they see, what they expose and to whom? Many people believe that users are incapable of dealing with too many settings and need these decisions made for them. Perhaps it's just a user experience challenge, though. Nobody said creating the ultimate interface for mainstream users to drive their online activity was going to be easy.

Google's move with Buzz today looks like a nice first start. Hopefully it will be extended beyond the Buzz and Gmail relationship.

See also: How Google Buzz is Disruptive: Open Data Standards

Discuss

Are you kind, romantic, worldly and ready for a heady affair/relationship?

Bright, beautiful, happy, multifaceted, sexy, dark skinned woman 39, would like to meet an intelligent, funny, sincere and supportive gentleman - preferably 50+ for a mutually beneficial meeting of minds and bodies.

I am London based but free to travel and in Paris monthly. Be brave and write me - I am worth your time and effort.

All sane and reasonable replies will get a response.

"When you are with everyone but me, you're with no one.
When you are with no one but me, you're with everyone.
Instead of being so bound up with everyone, be everyone.
When you become that many, you're nothing.
Empty"

At the tail end of our GDC interview with Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, we remembered one more question we simply had to know: How well did Fable 2's episodic experiment go? We'll refresh your memory: Last August, Molyneux announced plans to release Fable 2 as a series of five downloadable "episodes," with the first one given away and the subsequent four priced at $10 each.

Molyneux's response: "That was hugely successful. There were something like over half a million. I think it was 600,000 downloads of the first episode, which was very, very cool." Of course, the first episode was free so how was the conversion rate? "It was a much higher than a normal conversion rate," Molyneux smiled. "Massively, massively successful, and I really love this relationship, which is much more sliced into episodes with consumers."

Of course, knowing where we were going with this particular line of questioning, Molyneux preemptively offered an answer."But we're not announcing whether that's coming out in this release," he said, tossing a smile towards the attentive PR people behind me.

Fable 2 episodic experiment deemed 'massively successful' by Molyneux originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

At the tail end of our GDC interview with Lionhead's Peter Molyneux, we remembered one more question we simply had to know: How well did Fable 2's episodic experiment go? We'll refresh your memory: Last August, Molyneux announced plans to release Fable 2 as a series of five downloadable "episodes," with the first one given away and the subsequent four priced at $10 each.

Molyneux's response: "That was hugely successful. There were something like over half a million. I think it was 600,000 downloads of the first episode, which was very, very cool." Of course, the first episode was free so how was the conversion rate? "It was a much higher than a normal conversion rate," Molyneux smiled. "Massively, massively successful, and I really love this relationship, which is much more sliced into episodes with consumers."

Of course, knowing where we were going with this particular line of questioning, Molyneux preemptively offered an answer."But we're not announcing whether that's coming out in this release," he said, tossing a smile towards the attentive PR people behind me.

Fable 2 episodic experiment deemed 'massively successful' by Molyneux originally appeared on Joystiq on Sat, 13 Mar 2010 13:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

It's SXSW weekend so you may be pretty burnt out on conferences - or just sick and tired of hearing about them - but if you're in New York City this week, don't miss what's sure to be a profound and fascinating A Historic Conversation in NYC: Ai Weiwei, Jack Dorsey & Richard MacManus

On March 15, at the prestigious Paley Center in New York City, a conversation will take place between Chinese digital activist and artist Ai Weiwei, Twitter co-founder and chairman Jack Dorsey, and ReadWriteWeb's Richard MacManus, ReadWriteWeb founder and editor in chief. The moderator will be Orville Schell, the director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society in New York.
The topic of the event is the emergence of digital activism for fostering positive social change. The onsite event is invitation only, but it will be live streamed exclusively on ReadWriteWeb on Monday, March 15, at 6:30 PM EST (-5 GMT), from the Paley Center for Media, New York City.

15 – 16 March 2010: London, England

2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum — London

The 2nd Annual Social Networking World Forum takes place at the Olympia Conference Centre in London. The two-day event features four dedicated conference streams:

• Social Networking World Forum
• Enterprise social media
• Social TV World Forum
• Mobile Social Networking Forum

The event features key speakers from global brands, organizations, social networking publishers and developers, pioneering social media leaders, top agencies, content producers, and more.

• Full workshop program within exhibition area
• Evening networking reception
• Pre-show online meeting planner for delegates
• Free pass for exhibition only

22 – 26 March 2010: New York City

Search Engine Strategies New York Conference & Expo

Go beyond search at Search Engine Strategies New York. Learn the newest trends, strategic action plans, and technology that industry leaders are employing today. Our experts will trace the natural evolution of search exploring topics such as: digital asset optimization, mobile application development, transition from search to discovery and more.Book your pass today. Enter RWW15 to save 15% off the registration. Sessions include:

• Digital Asset Optimization
• Deep Dive Into Analytics
• Augmented Reality: It's a Brave New World
• Bringing SEO In-House: The Pros and Cons
• Advanced B2B Search Marketing
• Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues

23 March 2010: San Francisco, California

S.F. Beta 4.0

After a long winter's hiatus, S.F. Beta is back, for its forth year straight! Join hundreds of founders, investors, developers, and technologists for a lively evening of demos, drinks, conversation, and new connections. Early bird tickets are available, and they're going fast. Register now for discounted admission. As always, we feature startup demos all night. This time around, the theme is Search & Discovery. If you're building the next Google (or the next Google acquisition), we want you here! Email cperry@sfbeta.com for more info.

26 March 2010: San Francisco, California

Freemium Summit

The first Freemium Summit is a one day event focused on exploring what it takes to succeed under the freemium business model. Across all segments of the media landscape, entrepreneurs and executives are pioneering models that combine a free offering with a premium, paid offering. This hybrid business model is one of the most exciting areas of business model innovation impacting the world of media and the Freemium Summit will explore the most important topics on the minds of leading practitioners.

Confirmed Speakers: Toni Schneider, Automattic (WordPress); Matt Brezina, Xobni; Aaron Levie, Box.net; Phil Libin, Evernote; Tom Conrad, Pandora; Drew Houston, Dropbox; Ranjith Kumaran, YouSendIt; Ben Chestnut, Mailchimp; Lance Walley, Chargify; Isaac Hall, Recurly; and Lincoln Murphy, Sixteen Ventures.

March 29, 2010: Portland, Oregon

Social Fresh Portland

The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day, you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Intel, Ford, Comcast, Nike and many more, as well as keynote Peter Shankman. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.

4 April 2010: Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

ConnectNow

TEDx CMU is an independently organized TEDx event that will be held on April 4th, 2010 at Carnegie Mellon University and will feature a full day of talks by prominent speakers as well as recorded videos from past TEDTalks. Confirmed speakers include Jonathan Fields (author, blogger and entrepreneur), Stacey Monk (founder of Epic Change, a startup nonprofit), Chase Jarvis (photographer, director and social artist) and Nathan Martin (CEO of Deeplocal, an innovation studio in Pittsburgh).

The theme of the event is "Fearless", and we are inviting speakers from cross-disciplinary backgrounds to talk about their experiences, and tell us a little about what inspires them to be fearless in the pursuit of goals. We hope to spark discussions and foster connections between participants, encouraging aspiring individuals to follow their dreams and make a difference. The event is free to attend, and the application deadline is March 21, 2010.

For more information about the event, visit tedxcmu.com or email info@tedxcmu.com. You can also find TEDx CMU on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

7 – 9 April 2010: Sydney, Australia

ConnectNow

ConnectNow brings together international specialists and thought leaders in social media, emerging technologies and their intersection with business. Learn how the realtime web, location based services, augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and personalised services are changing marketing and communications. Understand the importance of trust in relationship marketing and what is "social currency". For more info email info@connectnow.net.au.

13 – 15 April 2010: Dallas, Texas

PubCon South

PubCon, the premier search and social media conference, features the industry's biggest names and key players shaping the future of the Web. PubCon South will include cutting-edge panel sessions exploring tracks dedicated to search, social media and affiliate marketing, an intensive professional search and social media training program, and some of the world's top keynote speakers. PubCon South at Dallas will also hold a one-day, two-track slate of intensive educational training programs led by some of the industry's most respected search professionals. The event takes place at the Richardson Conference and Civic Center. Register here.

16 April 2010: Mountain View, California

Under the Radar: Cloud

Under the Radar: Cloud is must-attend event for dealmakers and heads of IT from large enterprises, SMBs, service providers, carriers and media companies who are responsible for helping their companies leverage new technology and innovation in the fast-evolving IT ecosystem. Join us for the 15th Under the Radar conference, featuring a hand-picked selection of the world's most innovative cloud startups among 350 top tech, media, telcom and finance executives. For ticket and more information, visit http://undertheradarblog.com.

16 – 17 April 2010: Royal Oak, Michigan

FutureMidwest

FutureMidwest is the region's largest technology and knowledge conference. Founded by Adrian Pittman, Jordan Wolfe and Zach Lipson, FutureMidwest is the fusion of two successful conferences held in Michigan in 2009 - the Module Midwest Digital Conference and TechNow.

Both conferences highlighted how technology and digital tools have dramatically changed the way we do business and the effect this transition has had on companies. FutureMidwest kicks things up a notch with presentations, group breakout sessions, relationship-building opportunities and influencers who are taking action to redefine business in the digital age. Register here.

April 19, 2010: St. Louis Missouri

Social Fresh St. Louis

The social media conference for marketers, Social Fresh is not about concept, but focused purely on case studies from the front lines. Learn what social media can really do for business bottom lines. Over the course of the day you'll hear from 35 speakers from companies like Ford, Best Buy, Scottrade, Hardees, CMT and many more. Register now and use coupon code RWW15 for 15% off.

19 – 21 April 2010: San Francisco, California

DrupalCon

DrupalCon is the premier conference focused on Drupal, the award-winning open source content management framework that is galvanizing social publishing and web development today. For a registration fee of $195, attendees get three full days of sessions led by the best and brightest Drupal experts.

Drupal has been downloaded over 2 million times since its inception, and project growth has doubled annually for several years. Drupal is used to deliver a wide variety of application types including blogs, wikis, community networks, digital media portals, and web content publishing and management.

26 April 2010: San Francisco, California

Future of Money and Technology Summit

The Future of Money & Technology Summit will bring together the best and brightest thinkers around money, including visionaries, entrepreneurial business people, developers, press, investors, authors, solution/service providers, and organizations who work where cash and commerce collide. We meet to discuss the evolving ecosystem around money in a proactive, conducive to dealmaking environment. Featured speakers include Jolie O'Dell from ReadWriteWeb, as well as representatives from Wells Fargo Bank, Kiva, SharesPost, Jambool, Founders Fund, Outright.com, SoftTech VC, and many more.

Use discount code "rww" to get 10% off registration.

7 May 2010: Mountain View, California

ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010

The ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010 will be an exploration of the latest Mobile development trends - both the technology and the emerging business applications. Get ready to explore, think and create the future of Mobile with the brightest in the industry, your peers! As in our last Summit, The Real-Time Web, the ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit is an unconference.

An unconference is a participant driven conference where the agenda is created on the day, in real-time and discussions are lead by conference participants. Read about the history of unconferences.

We will have two main tracks at this Summit - Development and Business - so the Summit will be of interest to managers, marketers, developers, innovators, entrepreneurs and thought leaders alike. Here's a sample of some of the topics we'll explore in both of these tracks.

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• Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform?
• 
  
• Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel?
• 
  
• Content, Publishing & Recommendations - the technologies and best practices.
• 
  
• Mobile Social Networking - how to tap into communities on mobile devices.
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• Internet of Things - the emerging opportunities from sensor and RFID data.
• 
  
• Augmented Reality - the technology and business applications of AR.
• 
  
• Native App vs. Browser Based - Including iPhone, Android, RIM, Palm, Windows Mobile and Symbian.
• 
  

Click here to register now, or to become a sponsor, or to help shape the conference.

11 May 2010: San Francisco, California

FinovateSpring

FinovateSpring 2010 will again showcase the most cutting-edge financial and banking technology innovations to Silicon Valley and the world. With Finovate's signature mix of short, fast-paced onstage demos (no slides are allowed) from handpicked companies and intimate networking time with their executives, this conference packs a ton of unique value into a single day.

Come see the cutting edge of banking and financial technology and network with hundreds of the leading financial executives, venture capitalists, press, industry analysts, bloggers and fintech entrepreneurs. Early bird registration rates are available.

May 17 2010: San Francisco, California

SF MusicTech Summit

The SF MusicTech Summit will bring together 700-plus visionaries in the music/technology space - the best and brightest entrepreneurs, developers, investors, service providers, journalists, musicians and organizations who work with them at the convergence of culture and commerce. We meet to discuss the evolving music, business and technology ecosystem in a proactive, conducive-to-dealmaking environment. Enter the discount code "rww" to get 10% off.

25 – 27 May 2010: Denver, Colorado

Glue

Glue is the only conference devoted solely to exploring the problem-sets facing architects, developers and IT professionals in a "post-cloud" world. Glue focuses on the APIs and protocols (Twitter, Facebook, Websockets, PubSubHubBub, XMPP), formats and standards (RDF/Linked Data, JSON, Microformats, HTML5), platforms and providers (Amazon, Rackspace, Google App Engine, Salesforce.com, Eucalyptus), Identity Protocols (OAuth/WRAP, SAML, OpenID, SPML) emerging NoSQL data models (Cassandra, CouchDB, MongoDB, Riak, HBase), and other mechanisms that are building the post-cloud world.

ReadWriteCloud will be blogging live from Gluecon and CloudCamp, and ReadWriteWeb's Alex Williams will be moderating the "Managing Complexity in the Cloud" session. Please join us May 25-27 in Denver, Colorado. ReadWriteWeb readers can receive 10% off of registration by using the code "RWW12".

15 – 16 June 2010: New York City

Corporate Social Media Summit

The Corporate Social Media Summit is a two day conference focused exclusively on how big businesses can take advantage of social media to enhance their marketing/comms strategy. Featuring:

• Practical and relevant insights from peers who have already used social media successfully
• 20-plus corporate speakers (including PepsiCo, Whole Foods, Dell, McDonald's, General Motors, Citi, Johnson & Johnson),
• Best practice, benchmarks and practical next steps you can use to take advantage of social media in your business
• A tightly-focused agenda with 14 in-depth, practical workshops giving you knowledge on only the most critical business issues surrounding corporate use of social media

Save $400 if you quote RWW400 when booking. Book here.

29 – 30 June 2010: London

Cloud Computing World Forum

The 2nd annual Cloud Computing World Forum is the perfect event to learn and discuss the development, integration, adoption and(...)