In Silicon Valley, every startup fears than an established brand will one day acquire a rival or build a similar offering and instantly become the industry gorilla. When it comes to advertising, Google, which claims not only both the largest ad network and number of relationships with advertisers, but the most automated and profitable system on the Internet, is the most obvious example of this phenomenon. Ditto for Oracle and Cisco in the enterprise software space and eBay and Amazon in e-commerce.

Yet while fear of the 800-pound gorilla rightfully looms, upstart ad ventures can take heart in mounting evidence that suggests online ad categories are not cornered by deep-pocketed brands, but by new market entrants. This has held true across several different categories, including Google in search, DoubleClick in ad serving, Advertising.com in display, NexTag in CPA, RightMedia in exchanges and AdMob in mobile. Each of these companies emerged from humble beginnings to become billion-dollar businesses, and did so in the face of large, incumbent competitors. Additionally, a slew of other firms exited at valuations in the hundreds of millions of dollars, among them Overture (search), Atlas (ad serving), ValueClick (display) and Quattro (mobile), to name just a few.

So, what makes online ad categories so likely to be won by new entrants? History sheds some light:

First, on an economic front, online ad businesses exhibit clear network effects that ultimately preclude incumbents from contending in the category. When Advertising.com began to scale its network in the early 2000s, two trends emerged. As the company generated more leads for advertisers, the advertisers were willing to pay more per lead, and as it bought more inventory from publishers, they become more willing to accept lower per-impression CPMs. Per-impression ad-serving costs for DoubleClick and per-impression publisher onboarding costs for AdMob demonstrate similar network benefits. Each of these examples make clear that in online ad categories, new entrants grow so quickly that they effectively create a market dynamic in which slower-moving and less nimble incumbents simply can’t compete.

Second, on an innovation front, the classic innovator’s dilemma is unusually powerful in new ad categories because incumbents are hampered by legacy business models and technology infrastructure developed during a prior market development phase. When NexTag entered the education and finance lead-generation business, it brought with it a new model for buying traffic and valuing it on a per-impression basis based on advanced algorithms. Within a few years, NexTag’s internal media buying tools were so automated and accurate compared to the company’s predecessors that it was able to far out-pay for good inventory — and avoid paying for bad inventory at all. NexTag’s suite of media technologies put it at an advantage as the category grew and the cost of inventory rose, further enabling it to pull away from the pack and eventually exit for more than $1 billion. Incumbents often underestimate the importance of iterating early in a market, which means that as a category matures and the price of learning goes up, they find themselves falling behind.

Third, relationships with key inventory sources matter. On the Internet, there are millions of inventory sources, but only a few that can change the dynamics of the category. In search, it was the relationship that Google developed to monetize Yahoo search results. In display, it was Advertising.com’s entrenched relationship with the AIM client that enabled it to generate millions of dollars in profit from view-through conversions. And in exchanges it was the Yahoo partnership that solidified RightMedia as the No. 1 ad exchange. Incumbents seem more willing to give huge inventory opportunities to small, up-and-coming companies than they are to building out solutions internally. Such tight-knit relationships ensure the success of new entrants across the board.

The final lesson history has taught us is that focus leads to superior execution. Perhaps the least recognized but most valuable asset new entrants have is focus. In their respective times, Google was the best search engine, RightMedia was the best ad exchange and AdMob was the best mobile ad platform. Yes, incumbents often build a better product down the line (DoubleClick’s Ad Exchange is one example), but by that point the new entrant has already exited, as RightMedia did for $680 million. Incumbents know this fact implicitly, so it’s imperative that startups invest in and preserve their focus as they continue to grow.

The next generation of online ad categories is already repeating history. The key for investors and entrepreneurs is to identify which areas are going to be categories, not features, and get involved with them early.

Tod M. Sacerdoti is the CEO and co-founder of BrightRoll; follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/todsacerdoti. Disclosure: Brightroll 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.

In the social hierarchy of a wolf pack in captivity, the omega ranks below the alpha and beta wolves. In human terms, if an executive or a warrior is an alpha male and a nice-guy middle manager like The Office's Jim Halpert is a beta male, then Greenberg and his brethren are omega males. While the alpha male wants to dominate and the beta male just wants to get by, the omega male has either opted out or, if he used to try, given up. Greenberg says of his somewhat stunted best friend, "We call each other 'man,' but it's a joke. It's like imitating other people." The omega male is not experiencing the tired trope of the midlife crisis. A midlife crisis implies agency, a man who has the job and the family and chooses to reject it. The omega male doesn't have the power to reject anything—he's the one who has been brushed off. He's generally unemployed, and his romantic relationships are in shambles—he's either single or, if he's married, not happy about it.     Here's a taxonomy of the different types you might find skulking across the small and large screens.

Almost every day a new person, someone I have never met or corresponded with, writes me an email in response to my blogs or one of my books. I do my best to answer such writers if the tone and spirit of their correspondence is gracious and invites a thoughtful reply. The only exception is when person simply wants to trash me personally and or attacks my work in a way that offers me no real room for cordial conversation. In such a case I will usually provide a short answer that expresses my inability to respond to such a letter since there is no room for dialog and mutual respect. I desire dialog and mutual respect and always offer the same back wherever I can.

Harshly negative responses once deeply troubled me. I still struggle with this kind of criticism. It leaves me feeling fragile and defenseless. It is humiliating. I was too sensitive while I was a pastor, and I have had a hard time dealing with the same kind of thing over the last nineteen years as the president of ACT3 and as a published author. Everyone who teaches and writes invites criticism. I expect it. What I did not but have finally come to expect sadly, is the angry person who simply wants to tell me off or makes a “case” for why my life and ministry is a disaster. I recall the late Vance Havner saying that every minister needed “the heart of a saint and the hide of a rhinoceros.” I am quite sure I have neither in abundance but I will press on praying for them both till my numbered days are finished.

A few days ago I receive a very interesting email regarding my posts last year on the late Keith Green. While I never knew Keith I loved him and feel he was, as I said at the time, the “real deal.” He made more than a few mistakes but they were made because he was young and filled with real zeal. Such zeal frightens folks, but some people need to be frightened now and then. Lethargy grips far too many of God’s people, and the church will never be bold and obedient until the prophets are heard. Keith was a prophetic voice. But he was more, as I noted in my articles. My “new” friend wrote the following to me (slightly edited by me):

I have to admit that I had not heard of you until recently. For this I am sorry. I just came upon a couple of articles you have on your blog site about [the late] Keith Green. I thought these were wonderful. I'm 49 years of age and was raised in the heart of the Jesus Movement at Maranatha Church in Portland, Oregon. Maranatha Church, along with Calvary Chapel in Costa Mesa, California, were probably the first two Jesus Movement "mother" churches of the late 1960's. I was there as a child among all those converted hippies. This experience gave me a broad context that some who have only heard about these events—but who weren’t actually there—or some who have since seen [the more recent] copies of real revival, do not have. I later bumped into Keith Green hearing him for the first time at Jesus Northwest. I'm thinking this was around 1977. This was amazing stuff. But like you I was concerned all along the way—deeply concerned to the point of considering writing him a letter but figured he'd not have gotten it—a big mistake I now realize. I remember seeing how strident he was at a concert that I attended in Vancouver, Washington. He was right on with what he said but when he apologized in the last article that came out before his death it was as if Keith had finally figured out grace. "I'm sorry if I blew you away with my lack of love,” he wrote. I loved that humility. It was like a glow came over him—and then I saw what I had seen at Maranatha—zeal with love; with so much more love than zeal. To get rid of the darkness we can rail against it or we can turn on the light!!

I still love Keith Green. His music seems so different than his teachings, or at least the words that I recall—his music isn't angry. Thank you for publicly calling Keith Green's former teachings into question—it's a very good thing to hear. I am sure that it is going to be hard for some people to hear this message since many never saw the zeal with love that I got to see at Maranatha—it was either a dry church or the passion of Keith Green for so many people in that context.

Rev. Armstrong I really do appreciate your writing. It was fun to read what you said. I want to thank you for your measured and balanced approach to Keith Green. It is so sad that he wasn't able to live to be a fully grown-up Christian. I wonder, along with you, what would have happened if he had lived and matured. I suspect that he would have been a very sweet man who taught the love of Jesus and more or less ignored the condemnation of those who at one time he had said were playing church. After all what's the point eventually? It seems to me that it is much better to be an example of balance and to be [more] like Jesus in the world. One former Foursquare pastor told me one of the greatest things I've ever heard as a Christian: "The most releasing day was when I found out I wasn't the Holy Spirit." I love that thought so much—I imagine Keith Green would have really figured that out too had he lived a little longer.

After I received this letter I wrote the author and asked permission to print an edited and anonymous version of his words to me. He wrote back another thoughtful and engaging letter. This reflects something of the breadth of readership on this site. It is a breadth I intentionally cultivate and desire. I welcome readers like my friend. Here is what he wrote in his second letter:

Thank you also for taking the time to write to me after I wrote to you. [You may use my thoughts anonymously.] One thing happened at the Keith Green Vancouver, Washington, concert that a friend of mine remembers but I don't is that apparently Keith got down on his knees during the concert, raised his arms to the heaven and proclaimed "Oh praise IT.” This was his commentary on the "I Found It" public relations campaign [directed by Campus Crusade for Christ across America] going on at that time. That was so funny [also insightful and courageous] but I've never heard it mentioned by anyone. A friend told me this story and said he was there with a friend whose father was on the national "I Found It" board. He said this guy wasn't amused!! That incident sums up Keith Green and his biting commentary on the times. He was really unvarnished.

Thank also for telling me about your site(s) and your new book. My vision has been to [move in the direction of] so much of what you are doing in your speaking and writing. I'm not sure when or exactly how those doors will open but I hope I'm ready when/if they do. It's exciting to talk to you and hear and see what you are doing. I'm one of those odd Christians who is a Democrat [something like] the teacher and author Tony Campolo but I am sometimes saddened by what I hear, not necessarily from him but from the other people on the Christian Left [who are evangelicals] . . . I wish they would build bridges with the Christian Right. The hard thing for the Right I think is that they just don’t know the difference—they just don't understand compassion in a [real] works kind of way and I believe we can teach them by being sweet to them. I think bridges can be built. My dad was a pioneer in migrant-rights worker movement back in the 1950's and then worked in the War on Poverty thus I feel so blessed to have seen what can be done to change people's lives by such action— something I think my friends on the Christian Left are trying to do—but honestly I don't quite understand either extreme among Christian evangelicals. I think of something that shocked me when I really realized it. At the end of the age, when we stand before the Lord, he is not going to ask "How many people did you lead to me?" This was shocking to me as a born again guy who has always been taught that bringing people to the Lord was the critical thing, which I do still believe. But Christ is going to ask us about our involvement in social justice. I was hungry and you fed me. It's such a shocking difference in spiritual priorities from what I usually hear in church. This is rather weird isn't it?
 
Thanks again. It's really fun to meet a new person who is insightful and is looking to teach and lead Christians into thinking and to balance. If there's anything I can do to help you let me know. I look forward to seeing more of your work and thoughts in your writings.

I hope this is the beginning of a relationship even if it is only via the Internet. This is not a virtual friendship any more than Christians who exchanged letters in centuries past, and never met face-to-face, had real friendships for the kingdom of God. I welcome my new friend into the circle of those who know and love me. I need his insights and his prayers. I need your insight and prayer too if I am to do a better job in my work for the whole church.

IT News Today: "Unfortunately, Ubuntu and I must part ways, as well as any community involvement I once had with it. What strained this relationship? Read on for a first hand account."

FmPro Migrator 5.57

FmPro Migrator quickly and accurately migrates FileMaker Pro database structure and data to MySQL, Oracle, Access, SQL Server, Sybase, DB2, OpenBase, PostgreSQL, FrontBase, SQLite and Valentina.

• Converts Access Forms/Reports, Relationships, Value Lists, Queries and Visual Basic to FileMaker 10
• Converts FileMaker Pro Layouts/Scripts/Value Lists to Microsoft Access
• Converts FileMaker Pro Layouts/Scripts/Value Lists, Relationships to Servoy Projects
• Converts Layouts to HTML/JavaScript
• Converts Layouts/Scripts to Revolution Stacks
• Migrates Access, Bento, Firebird and SQL Server to FileMaker 10
• Converts Bento Forms to FileMaker Layouts
• Automated Table Consolidation Feature
• Generates Perl CGI scripts for all databases
• Facilitates FileMaker ESS Configurations
• Host FileMaker Pro data at any ISP supporting MySQL
• Documents FileMaker Pro database structure
• Migration of large text fields and image data for all supported databases
• No ODBC driver licensing required for UNIX servers
• Repeating Fields Extraction
• Economical Single-User License
• FileMaker image export feature
• Export Layout XML to individual files (Developer Edition Feature)

FileMaker Pro database fields containing more than 255 or 4000 characters of text are migrated to the appropriate large text column type in the destination database. Container field data within FileMaker Pro container fields is migrated directly to the appropriate BLOB type of database columns through a network connection. No manual data entry is required for processing either of these specialized data types.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 5.57:

• Added new PHP to revTalk conversion feature.
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• Updated Fmig_Preferences.db3 (v6) and MigrationProcess.db3 (v4) files to include new preference items for new features.
• Renamed Convert Database to Revolution feature with new icon and changed name to Convert Layouts to Rev.
• Removed obsolete Perl CGI code generating feature.

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• Mac OS X 10.5 or later.
• FileMaker.
• ODBC Driver.

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The Piano by Jane Campion (1993)

If I hadn't seen The Piano when I did, I may never have made a feature film. I've been making little films since I was eight – I begged my father to buy me a Super 8 camera after he took me to see Doctor Dolittle with Rex Harrison – but for a long while I thought I wanted to make documentaries. I found cinema incredibly inspiring, but I wasn't hearing any voices that felt like my voice in that world. It was a bit like being a singer and hearing wonderful music, but feeling there was nothing in your range. When I first saw The Piano I suddenly felt, my goodness, this is something I could do. It was almost a lack of confidence, before. But seeing the film, the power of its imagery and the delicacy of the way that emotion was handled in it, it felt in tune with who I was as a person and who I was as a filmmaker. It made me see film as a possibility for myself.

I first saw it in a cinema on the King's Road with the man who was to be my husband. We'd only recently met. At that point I knew I very much wanted to have children, and here was a film exploring the relationship between a mother and a daughter. I was excited, but my boyfriend didn't really get it at all. He found it slow and uninspiring. Still, I remember in that moment feeling an incredible connection with the film.

It's really influenced me in a lot of specific ways, beyond giving me the feeling I could go out and do this. It has sunk in at a very deep level. There were shots in Bleak House that were directly inspired by The Piano. The way the humvees move across the desert in Generation Kill, these very still, tranquil shots – they're very like the shots of the piano on the beach. Even more recently, in Nanny McPhee, there are silhouette shots that are very like those of Holly Hunter being carried in across the waves. Anna Paquin who played the little girl is now in True Blood with Alex Skarsgård, who I cast in Generation Kill. She's so, so brilliant in the film and is now working with Alex. I love that.

It's been really interesting to me revisiting the film now that I've had children. It plays very differently, I've found other layers in it, about that closeness and the language between a mother and a daughter. They're a bit young now, but I look forward to the day when I can sit down and watch it with my daughters. I think they'd get a huge amount from it.

Susanna White's next film, Nanny Mcphee and the Big Bang, is released on 26 March

• Jane Campion

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

Unite and Labour are in an abusive relationship that stops any chance of worthwhile change

Success hasn't spoiled Charlie Whelan. He was a character assassin and thug long before he became famous. I last met the political director of Unite in the autumn of 2008 as he was encouraging compliant journalists to go after Alistair Darling. I thought I had witnessed all varieties of political hypocrisy, but Whelan still shocked me because he was attacking the chancellor for a crime that was no crime at all to anyone in the centre-left tradition.

Darling had correctly identified that allowing speculators to run riot had left Britain facing the worst financial crisis in 60 years. Gordon Brown had to betray a friend and denigrate an ally for this statement of the obvious because he was the bedazzled dupe who had borrowed as if the riotous market could roar on forever and told City bankers at the Mansion House in 2007 that Britain needed more, rather than less, of their "vigour, ingenuity and aspiration". Despite their loudly professed left-wing principles and equally suspect mockney accents, Whelan and Damian McBride went for Darling for honestly admitting that boom and bust had not been abolished after all. Lobby correspondents behaved like children egging on the playground bully, and allowed "government sources", hiding behind the coward's cloak of anonymity, to tell their readers that the chancellor's job was on the line.

The Thick of It does not give you the half of it. Before Darling, Whelan's target was Martin Bright, the New Statesman's political editor. He boasted to Bright's wife at the 2008 British Press Awards that he had the power to instruct Geoffrey Robinson, the magazine's Brownite owner, to fire her husband and father of her children for not showing due respect to Gordon Brown and for making a documentary about Ken Livingstone's indulgence of the Islamist far right. "He can't allow this. He can't allow criticism of Gordon. If Geoffrey's got any sense, he'll listen." Bright was duly forced out, although the paper insists that it remains a part of the free press, and that its compliance with Downing Street's publicly declared wishes was a coincidence.

I drag up these ugly scenes because the Tory attack on Whelan and Unite is missing the point. Conservatives claim that by making Brown's spin doctor its political director, Unite is using its powers of patronage to take over the Labour party. Unite officers are getting Labour nominations for plum seats – John Cryer in Leyton, Jack Dromey in Birmingham Erdington – while Unite money is funding the fight against the Tories in the marginals.

The money matters, of course, but the story isn't quite right. Manufacturing Birmingham was always going to look favourably on Dromey, who has been involved in industrial disputes since the 1970s. Meanwhile, far from being a Whelan placeman, Cryer was another of his targets. Along with fellow Unite officials, Cryer went on long-term sick leave after Whelan came to the union, the cause of which may be guessed by the grievance procedures they brought against him citing stress.

Unite isn't running Labour. Both are caught in an abusive relationship, and it is hard to know who is the abuser and who is the victim. The union is hurting Brown's cause by dragging him into air strikes just before an election, but the union movement and British politics is suffering as badly.

From the narrow trade unionist point of view, the BA cabin crew are not benefiting from having Whelan, the supposed master of spin, as a comrade. The media always turn on strikers, because managers briskly deunionised most of the industry in the 1980s, and because editors know that more readers will complain about a strike than support it. Even if you accept that bias, you ought to be surprised that Unite is putting its case so poorly. The public does not know that air hostesses and stewards are not revolutionary militants, but reasonable men and women who made a conciliatory offer to accept a pay cut instead of redundancies which extremist managers refused to countenance.

More widely, an opportunity to change the terms of public debate is being missed. Commentators announce that the recession and strikes herald a return to the 1970s, and cannot see that today's crisis is nothing like the collapse of social democracy a generation ago. Margaret Thatcher won three election victories because enough voters believed that exorbitant wage demands had wrecked the economy. This time, no one can plausibly maintain that the unions brought ruin to the country. The folly of the financial elite, and the neglect of the public officials and politicians who should have been regulating, brought us low in 2008. Trade unions ought to be agitating for causes which are close to their hearts: how to create a new Britain which is not so fatally dependent on the manipulation of money markets; how to revive manufacturing; and how to regulate the City so that never again do working- and middle-class taxpayers have to bail out the super-rich.

If they did, they would find that many Mail and Telegraph readers would support them, because they know that their taxes will rise and services will be cut to pay for the City's blunders. Yet Britain's largest union cannot begin an urgent conversation because it is not just tying itself to Labour but to the Brownite faction, which Unite's leaders dumbly believe to be a left-wing alternative to the hated Tony Blair. They don't understand that the Brownites are not rough yet honourable street fighters in the Labour movement, but the Westminster equivalent of Mafia enforcers who try to eliminate anyone who stands in their don's way regardless of their political beliefs. They assail the chancellor for knowing a classic crisis of financial capitalism when he sees it and journalists for criticising politicians who court religious reactionaries. When Brown is gone, they hope to extend the Brownite reign by persuading the unions to put the unprepossessing Ed Balls in his place, even though as Brown's deputy at the Treasury he was as culpable for the regulatory failure as his equally unprepossessing patron.

Outsiders look at our clannish politics and ask why the Conservatives cling to Lord Ashcroft and Labour continues to listen to Whelan when they bring nothing but disrepute to their parties. More striking is the torpor of the trade unions, which ought to be seizing the chance to create a new political consensus, but are letting it slip away.

• Gordon Brown
• Alistair Darling
• British Airways
• Trade unions

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

Austin Heap, the programmer from California, explains how he created Haystack, the software that broke the grip of Iran's censors after the disputed 2009 election

If you imagined a computer hacker with the know-how to topple governments, you might well picture someone who looks a lot like Austin Heap. He's a 26-year-old programmer from San Francisco with long wavy hair, wearing jeans, T-shirt and aviator sunglasses the morning we meet. He is also the creator of a piece of software called Haystack, which was a key technology used by Iranians to disseminate information outside the country in the protests that followed the disputed election result in June 2009, when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad unconvincingly triumphed against three challengers.

The Iranian government already filtered its citizens' email and Skype conversations, but in the aftermath of the election, such censorship was increased in an attempt to identify dissidents who were using the web to organise and communicate with each other and with the outside world.

A tech wunderkind originally from Ohio, Heap developed Haystack to open up social networking sites such as Twitter and Facebook, giving voices on the streets a platform, and people in the west a window into a closed-down state. He's now the executive director of the Censorship Research Centre in San Francisco, a non-profit organisation founded with his colleague Daniel Colascione to provide anti-censorship education, outreach, and technology for free to those who need it most.

What is Haystack and how does it work?

Haystack is a piece of software that someone in Iran runs on his or her computer. It does two things: first, it encrypts all of the data; second it hides that data inside normal traffic so it looks like you're visiting innocuous sites. Daniel and I developed Haystack by looking at how the regime was using technology to filter the internet, and figured out the best strategy to get around it.

Why did you decide to take on the regime?

I remember the day of the election, sitting around watching Twitter, watching what was going on, reading the election results and thinking, that looks weird. Then I realised that the internet censorship had stepped up more than normal. I thought, hey, I can set up a few proxies and help a few people out. While I'm at it, why not post instructions online so other people could use their computers to get around the government filtering.

Imagine what you can do if you can watch someone's internet connection: you can watch them log into GMail, you can watch them log into Facebook, you can see who they're talking to, you can intercept messages. That's why the encryption part of Haystack was really important. It had to start on the user's side, on their computers. Then it makes its way through the government filters.

Were you politically motivated?

No. I just remember sitting there watching the election results thinking, why are they violently reacting to people who were voting? It's not like they were just jailing people; they were killing people in the streets – people who had a different opinion, people who wanted to share their stories and voice what they thought was right. It shocked me that someone would retaliate in such an inhumane way, and for someone to use the internet as a tool of oppression, as a tool to stop dialogue.

I gather that according to US law, it was illegal to export Haystack to Iran, simply because it would flout Iranian laws – but it did virally make its way onto Iranian computers...

I'll never forget the first person who got a copy of Haystack and sent me a screenshot of Twitter. All of a sudden, the internet was open again. Haystack also allowed people to make Skype calls back to their families securely. It allowed people to send GMail without worrying that someone would try to steal their password or monitor their communication. It gave them a layer of protection that allowed the random person to be a citizen journalist and to do so without the risk of persecution, jail or torture.

Is there content that shouldn't be spread around the web?

The internet is used for anything from drug trafficking to human trafficking. That's completely wrong. But when you decide that you're going to support an open internet, you have to open all of it. You can't go down this slippery slope of saying what's right and what's wrong. Who is this panel of people who's going to say this is OK, this is not OK? Outside the obvious things that are human rights violations, free speech is free speech.

Isn't that a very American point of view?

I don't think [Haystack] has anything to do with American ideology. I think that if you look at what the UN has listed as basic human rights, one of those is the ability to freely and openly communicate. No one should ever have to stop and say, "Can I be this? Can I think this? Can I say this?" It's what we as people deserve.

Who are your greatest critics?

I don't even know where to start. I have a whole fan club of people who hate me. There's clearly been opposition by the Iranian government. They recently passed a law that makes it illegal to use software or proxies that evade the censorship that they've imposed. They're detractor number one.

In my day-to-day life I meet people who don't support what I do. One of the most shocking examples was when someone came up to me and said, "Don't you get that Ahmadinejad is our Obama?" That took me back.

After Google announced it was leaving China, the Chinese government said that US-originated systems that opened up the governmental web blockades – such as Haystack - were acts of terrorism. Are you a terrorist?

It's interesting. There are a lot of things that they [China] do and pursue, a lot of laws that I don't feel anyone should observe. They have a long history of jailing dissidents and people who republish old cartoons. They pick and choose how to enforce laws and they come up with laws that frankly I would consider an act of terrorism of mankind. Maybe we should agree that we're both the same kind of threat, but to one another.

Hilary Clinton made a speech recently that outlined the US State Department's policy on web freedom. She argued that there was no place for censorship. What's the relationship now between the US government and Haystack?

I don't like the view that Haystack is a puppet of the US State Department, but I'm happy to see that the State Department is standing up for a free and open web. They have a long history of protecting human rights around the world and documenting abuses. This is the next step. We live in such an interconnected world. Policy makers, organisations that draft and enforce these policies need to catch up. And they are.

What's next for Austin Heap and for Haystack?

There are a lot of places around the world that are either severely censored now that could use people like me and tools such as Haystack, and they need to be addressed. That includes everywhere from Australia, which is currently dipping its toes in the censorship pool, to Egypt where there are more bloggers jailed than journalists: this is a global problem.

The way Haystack was developed was that we looked at how Iran specifically does its filtering and we came up with a method around it. If you look at what China does with their filtering, they use wildly different technology and have spent millions, hundreds of millions on their censorship. They're probably the best censors in the world. We hope to run down the list. Take on each country that has decided that it's going to try to use the internet against people.

• Iran
• Freedom of speech
• Human rights
• Software

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

The French four-piece talk to Hermione Hoby about ants, surrealism and creeping success

In a bar in the Opéra district of Paris, brothers and guitarists Laurent Brancowitz and Christian Mazzalai – also known as one half of French band Phoenix – are reflecting on a cover version of the band's single, "Lisztomania".

"It would... bring a tear to the eye of an SS officer," says Brancowitz, shaking his head with wonderment. Later, speaking from New York, singer Thomas Mars agrees: "We all had tears in our eyes when we watched it." Google "PS22 Chorus Lisztomania" and you'll find a video of an American kids choir whose members look and sound like they've never loved a song so much in their lives.

It makes perfect sense that a bunch of elementary schoolchildren should have made such a brilliant cover. As Brancowitz himself explains, the band's fourth studio album was written without ties to a record label or manager because "we wanted to do something like kids again. That's always what we're looking for."

The album's reception last year suggests they found it. As you might guess from the title (in their words, "an equally glorious and stupid" one), Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix is a record blessed with a breezy playfulness, though its songs are meticulously crafted. Ten years on from their debut, the album has earned Phoenix two rather different badges of distinction: a Grammy for best alternative album, and the perhaps even greater accolade of being the most blogged-about band of 2009 (according to website the Hype Machine).

The band also has a fearsome reputation as a live act, something you can judge for yourself on the Observer's live album giveaway (see panel, left), an exclusive recording of the band performing in Sydney a few weeks ago.

They could be forgiven a spot of bumptiousness, then. Instead, they seem genuinely surprised that their London Roundhouse dates later this month sold out so fast. Brancowitz jokes that "there's been a lot of resistance from your little island; we feel like Napoleon trying to invade". Mars agrees: "It's a mystery in the UK. I feel like it's a love and hate relationship. Most of the things we were listening to come from the UK. But maybe before we weren't in sync with the era we were living in..."

Brancowitz has another theory as to why this album has been such a success: "It was the album we made with the most humility. The good things we do are the product of luck and not from our personal songwriting genius." So modest! "No, but it's true," he protests gently. "It takes a lot of courage to admit it. It's a long, chemical process. We just sit and a few thousand tries later..."

That slow-burn approach to songwriting (they took two years to make the album so "a few thousand tries" perhaps isn't too outrageous an estimate) is mirrored in the steadiness of their rise. Gradual success has been, as Mazzalai puts it, "a pure pleasure at every step".

When I ask whether their inclusion of musical "naffness" (Alphabetical, their second album, betrayed a penchant for 70s soft rock, for example) has been a conscious thing, Brancowitz replies with a typically rococo turn of phrase. He concedes it's semi-conscious, but is, he says, always based on "an instinctive ravishment".

Such un-English wording possibly accounts for the charm of their (English) lyrics. As Mars explains: "We like doing lyrics that are cryptic and abstract, we leave out all the in-betweens, everything that makes sense. That's impossible to do in French, because every word betrays what's going on. In English you can put all these pieces together and create this weird, poetic thing." He pauses. "It's very like French surrealism in a way."

As that mental leap from truncated English to French surrealism indicates, the band remain utterly Gallic, despite their formative diet of My Bloody Valentine, the Smiths and any other British band that, as Mars puts it, have "something about them that makes me lose my balance".

The two brothers, plus Mars and bassist Deck D'Arcy (all four are in their early 30s), grew up in the conservative Parisian suburb of Versailles, a place where, Brancowitz says, "it's really easy to be a rebel without a cause – you don't have to have a very crazy haircut. It's very Catholic, so there are a lot of families of old nobility..."

"They're scary," adds Mazzalai.

Scary though it may have been, there's no question that being four kindred spirits in what they paint as a cultural wasteland has gone a long way in binding them together. "Alone we are poor, but together..." Mazzalai trails off.

Brancowitz, a man of many metaphors, continues: "You know ants? They have very minimal tasks but in the end they build these very complex structures. That's the same for us. Really, I don't remember taking creative decisions, they just happen."

They also insist they're "really bad musicians in terms of technique". "I don't even know how to do a scale," claims Brancowitz, prompting Mazzalai to add: "We don't know how to play with other musicians. I tried with friends to do sessions a few times and it's always a disaster."

Touchingly, Mars echoes many of these sentiments when we speak later. While the other three live in Paris, he's now based in New York with his film director girlfriend Sofia Coppola, who is expecting their second child in May. His relocation hasn't put any distance, musically, between him and his bandmates though.

"On our own we are not really great," he tells me. "It's not that I don't believe in my friends but the four of us have this thing, this balance of us all together."

Accounting for that balance, Brancowitz says: "Thomas has a very abstract vision of everything, and Deck is more of a mathematician – when there's a decision about harmonic complexities, he's there. He knows every equation."

There's a certain indulgent affection to the way they talk about their bassist, I suggest. "Ah, but we're all weirdos," smiles Brancowitz. Mazzalai takes up the theme: "We're all fascinated by mathematics, we love it. But you know," he adds with a shrug, "even beats are mathematical – it's mathematics that makes people dance."

This is as perfectly Phoenix-like a sentiment as there can be. Cerebral precision and mindless abandon are an irresistible combination – and those jiving elementary school kids aren't the only ones to know it.

• Phoenix
• Pop and rock

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

John Gilmore keynote – What do we do next, having produced a free software system for our computers? Perhaps we should aim at Windows? Wine + an extended ndiswrapper to run other hardware drivers + a better system administration interface/resources/manuals. However that means knowing a lot about windows internals – something that open source developers don’t seem to want to do. We shouldn’t just carry on tweaking – its not inspiring; whats our stretch goal? Discussion followed – reactos, continue integrating software and people with a goal of achieving really close integration: software as human rights issue! ‘Desktop paradigm needs to be replaced’ : need to move away from a document based desktop to a device based desktop. Concern about the goal of running binary drivers for hardware: encourages manufacturers to sell hardware w/out specs; we shouldn’t encourage the idea that that is ok. Lots of concern about cloning, lots of concern about what will bring more freedom to users, and what it will take to have a compelling vision to inspire 50000 free software hackers. Free software in cars – lots of safety issues in .e.g brake controllers, accelerators.

Eben Moglen – ‘We’re at the inflection point of free software’ – because any large scale global projects these days are not feasible without free software. Claims that doing something that scales from tiny to huge environment requires ‘us’ — A claim I would (sadly) dispute. Lots of incoming and remaining challenges. ‘Entirely clear that the patent systems relationship to technology is pathological and dangerous’ – that I agree with! Patent muggings are a problem – patent holders are unhappy with patents granted to other people . Patent pools are helping slowly as they grow. Companies which don’t care about the freedom aspect of GPLv3 are adopting it because of the patent protection aspects. Patent system is at the head of the list of causes-of-bad-things affecting free software. SFLC is building coalitions outside the core community to protect the interests of the free software community. We are starting to be taken for granted at the high end of mgmt in companies that build on free software. … We face a problem in the erosion of privacy. We need to build a stack, running on commodity hardware that runs federated services rather than folk needing centralised services.

Marina Zhurakhinskaya on GNOME Shell: Integrates old and new ideas in an overall comprehensive design. Marina ran through the various goals of the shell – growing with users, being delightful, starting simply so new users are not overwhelmed. The activities screen looks pretty nice The workspace rearrangement UI is really good. The notifications thing is interesting; you can respond to a chat message in-line in the notification.

Richard Stallman on Software as a Service – he presented verbally the case made in the paper. Some key quotes… “All your data on a server is equivalent to total spyware” – I think this is a worst-case analogy; it suggests that you can never trust another party: kindof a sad state of paranoia to assume that all network servers are always out to get you all the time. And I have to ask – should we get rid of Savannah then (because all the data is stored there) – the argument for why Savannah is not SaaS is not convincing: its just file storage, so what makes it different to e.g. Ubuntu One? “If there is a server and only a little bit of it is SaaS, perhaps just say don’t worry about it – because that little bit is often the hardest bit to replace.”  ”Lets write systems for collaborative word process that don’t involve a central server” — abiword w/the sharing plugin ? RMS seems to be claiming that someone else sysadmining a server for you is better than someone else sysadmining a time-shared server for you: I don’t actually see the difference, unless you’re also asserting that you’ll always have root over your’ own machine’. The argument seems very fuzzy and unclear to me as to why there is really a greater risk – in particular when there is a commercial relationship with the operator (as opposed to, say, an advertising supported relationship).

It's another Jacques Tardi-drawn comic! All hail Tardi! (And hey! I get to break out the Not-Safe-For-Work warning! Just so you know!)

Yesterday, I looked at an adaptation by Jacques Tardi of a book written in the 1970s. Today, we look at a comic that actually came out in the 1970s and is now back in print! It all works out!

You Are There was written by Jean-Claude Forest, who is best-known for this (well, the comic on which it was based), and drawn by Monsieur Tardi. Kim Thompson translated this sucker, and Fantagraphics published this bad bear. You will be charged no more than $26.99 for this, which isn't bad considering it's 163 big-ass pages chock full of grand Tardi art.

This is a very strange comic that doesn't completely work. Forest, channeling his inner Mark Twain, wrote in an early book edition about You Are There: "No one should see in Ici même a pamphlet, a satire on our society or the men who represent its political regime. Nor did I have any specific intention of mocking man's attachment to property. If this attachment leads to grotesque situations in this book, it does so no more than politics, law, groceries or fornication; it serves through its ramblings a story, a plot whose basis lies elsewhere and was intended, so far as I was concerned, to speak of something entirely different." If that's so, it's too bad, because You Are There works best as an absurdist critique of society and politics. It's a rambling, occasionally surreal look at a man who is crazy only because a crazy society says he is; who then is really insane? Perhaps Forest meant it as a love story, and there is a romance at its heart, but the romance is just as odd as the rest of the book, so it's unclear what, exactly, Forest was saying with this comic.

The situation is certainly interesting: Arthur There, the protagonist (and hence the title of the book) lives in a place called Mornemont, which, as we learn early on, was once a vast tract of land of which he is the sole heir. Over the decades and centuries, however, Mornemont has been subdivided into smaller plots of land, each owned by a different family. Arthur is embroiled in a lawsuit to get all the land back, but in the meantime, his one victory has given him ownership of all the walls and the gates through them. He lives in a narrow shack built on one of the walls and makes a living by charging a toll every time someone wants a gate open, gates to which he has the only keys. Throughout the book, he rarely comes down off the walls - the residents, he believes, would kill him for trespassing. His lawsuit to reclaim the rest of the land, however, continues throughout the book. In Paris, the president fears that he's going to lose the election, so he begins making plans to hole up somewhere and plan his triumphant return. Naturally, he picks Mornemont, but the reason he does is clever and changes Arthur's life quite significantly.

Ultimately, this is a story of a man fighting against the forces of conformity, as Arthur desperately tries to remain his own man. Everyone wants him to change, and even if some of the things that happen in the book are in his own mind, he clings to a dream when a lesser (or, perhaps, saner) man would have given up on them. He falls for Julie, who's the daughter of one of the couples living on "his" land, and their relationship is bumpy, to say the least. Julie is a bit crazy, too, in a different way than Arthur. She has what we might categorize as Tourette's, with no internal filters to stop her from saying whatever's on her mind or doing whatever's on her mind. Arthur's behavior is the polar opposite of Julie's, as he keeps everything inside him. This provides the very odd climax of the book, at which their personalities have switched places, to a degree. Julie believes in nothing, while Arthur believes in everything, so when they're on a row boat, about to escape from their pasts, suddenly things are different for both of them. The final image of the book, a surreal summation of events in the book, becomes a comment on what men will do to change their lives. It's not a particularly happy ending, but it is a logical ending.

The one thing you must deal with as you commence reading the book is that, even with a fairly standard narrative, Forest writes oddly. Apparitions appear for no reason. The scene shifts quickly in the middle of a page with no narrative tags to show it. Julie and Arthur often appear to be saying simply what's on their minds and not actually talking to each other. Julie's frankness about nudity and sex is unusually disconcerting (not because she likes sex and being naked, but because of the way she's so aggressive about it, especially in public). There's a strange, detached tone to the book, so even when serious things are occurring, Forest presents it absurdly, making it difficult to penetrate the author's intent (if, indeed, he had any). It's a complex work that keeps the reader at arm's length, which makes it hard to love.

Tardi, however, is stunning. The strange world of Mornemont and its walls are fully realized, with astonishing detail that makes Arthur's desires even more concrete. The warren of homes and barriers along which Arthur runs provide a surreal backdrop for Arthur's fantasies, which Tardi simply places in the panels with no preamble, integrating the hallucinations so well into the "real" that they occasionally catch us off guard. It's a beautiful evocation of how Arthur sees the world. The stolid governmental world crashes against the private lives of the politicians, a theater of fluid sexuality and vice. At the end of the book, Tardi turns the tenants of Mornemont into costumed caricatures, medieval archetypes, and fools, who attack Arthur's home because they're tired of his lawsuit. Tardi pulls out all the stops, with the army moving in and the homeowners turning riotous and the two worlds crashing together. The absurdity of Forest's script is brought to amazing life, from Arthur's odd gatekeeper outfit to Julie's unabashed sexuality - at one point she sucks her thumb, and it's a creepily erotic sight. It's a tremendous work of art, heightening the weirdness of the narrative very well.

I would recommend You Are There because it's a thoughtful look at the pressure of conformity and what drives a man mad. But it is a difficult comic, because Forest isn't interested in making too much sense, even though it's fairly easy to figure out "what happens." Tardi is fantastic and makes the book even wackier, which isn't a bad thing. I have to warn you about it, but it's definitely worth a look.

In the next few weeks, the ReadWriteWeb events guide will take you from New York City, to San Francisco, to Portland, Oregon. Along the way you'll find a conference on search engine strategies, a showcase for startups, an in-depth look at the freemium business model, and a day filled with of social media case studies.

How do you like your events calendar? As a world map? As an iCal (and Google Calendar-importable) file? You can also import individual events using the link beside each entry. Know of something cool taking place that should appear here? Let us know in the comments below or contact us.

Sponsor

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.

• 
  
• Geo-location services - what can you do using location as a platform?
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• Commerce & Marketing - as more and more consumers use smartphones, how can businesses utilize this channel?
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• 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 future of cloud computing and SaaS. Building on the success of the 2009 show, this two day conference and free-to-attend exhibition will provide a focused platform for the global cloud and SaaS industry. Show highlights include:

• Co-located with CloudCamp London
• Co-located with Green IT conference
• Free-to-attend exhibition with seminar and scenario theatre
• Free-to-attend evening awards presentation
• Hear from leading case studies on how they have integrated cloud computing and SaaS into their working practices
• Learn from the key players offering cloud and SaaS services
• Evening networking party for all attendees

5 October 2010: New York City

FinovateFall

FinovateFall will return to Manhattan on Tuesday, October 5 to showcase dozens of the biggest and most innovative new ideas in financial and banking technology from established leaders(...)

According to her, Cherie Currie is currently living on cloud nine. She has Dakota Fanning playing her in The Runaways, which is all about her early days in rock and roll, and she also rocks artistic carvings with a motorized blade as Chainsaw Chick. That's a long way since being the young girl who lost her innocence at a very early age. The Runaways exists because of the memoir Neon Angel she wrote, and while the movie doesn't exactly tell the true story, she's happy with the results.

We spoke to Cherie at Sundance this year, and she went into detail about an early childhood tragedy that pushed her into the world of rock, what it was like working with Dakota, why she wields a chainsaw, and her real relationship with Joan Jett. Read on for the full interview just after the break.

Filed under: Interviews

Continue reading Interview: Cherie Currie on 'The Runaways'

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The hunt for Captain America may be over by the weekend. THR's Heat Vision is reporting that Chris Evans has been offered the part of Captain America. Let me stress the key word in that sentence: offered. He has not yet accepted, and neither Evans, his reps, or Marvel will confirm or deny whether negotiations have been opened.

Marvel would be taken a bigger leap of faith than they did with their other candidates, as he reportedly still hasn't screen tested for the role. But he has a good relationship with the shingle after Fantastic Four, and he's an actor who attracts a lot of buzz for his performances, but just hasn't managed to crack that A-List ceiling.

One thing keeping Evans from accepting could be schedule conflicts. The First Avenger: Captain America is set to shoot this summer, and Evans has already signed for the romantic comedy What's Your Number? The demanding contract may also be an issue. Many actors have balked at Marvel's universe building demands, and any possible Cap faces three solo Captain America movies, plus The Avengers. Most of the Marvel deals have signed actors and actresses for a minimum of 9 films. That's a tough commitment for any young up-and-coming actor like Evans.

Obviously, it's all still in the whispering stages, and it may be a test to see how fandom reacts. I think he'd be a great pick, and is the best candidate so far. What about you?

Filed under: Action, Casting, Paramount, RumorMonger, Newsstand, Comic/Superhero/Geek, War

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Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 143, No. 2. (07 January 2010), pp. 740-749.

An electronic nose (EN) based on an array of chemiresistors, combined with a preconcentrator unit, for the detection of some volatile organic vapors was developed. In order to choose the proper polymers, seven potential polymers were chosen from numerous available polymers according to the principle of the linear solvation energy relationship (LSER). Different possible sensors arrays (128 arrays) composed of these seven polymers were designed by full factorial design (FFD). Principal component analysis (PCA) showed that four of seven polymers had enough ability to recognize different gas classes. By using Hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), the tested polymers were categorized into four main groups with respect to their recognition ability. Combination of the FFD with PCA and HCA, brought to the identification of 8 proper arrays containing four polymers in each array. Precisely evaluation of predicted arrays with respect to their calculated resolution factors showed that the electronic nose containing the polymers of 75% pheny125% methylpolysiloxane (OV25), hexafluoro-2-propanolsubstituted polysiloxane (SXFA), poly bis(cyanopropyl)-siloxane (SXCN) and poly(ethylene maleate) (PEM) was the most proper design for recognition of analytes of interest. The fabricated EN was used successively for target gas recognition at three different concentrations.
Taher Alizadeh

Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical, Vol. 145, No. 2. (19 March 2010), pp. 620-627.

The aim of this paper is to find useful relationships in differential form that describe the isothermal steady state interactions between a sensor array based on metal oxide sensors and a mixture of vapours. These equations of state relate the variation of partial molar intensive quantities (as the change of the sensor molar partial sensitivity or molar adsorptions enthalpy), to gas mixture components concentrations and sensor array parameters. This kind of equalities is known in the thermodynamic of miscellaneous as Gibbs–Duhem equations.
Abdelaziz Abbas, Ahcène Bouabdellah

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 17 PMID: 20236947Authors: Ballester, P. J. - Mitchell, J. B.Journal: BioinformaticsMOTIVATION: Accurately predicting the binding affinities of large sets of diverse protein-ligand complexes is an extremely challenging task. The scoring functions that attempt such computational prediction are essential for analysing the outputs of Molecular Docking, which is in turn an important technique for drug discovery, chemical biology and structural biology. Each scoring function assumes a predetermined theory-inspired functional form for the relationship between the variables that characterise the complex, which also include parameters fitted to experimental or simulation data, and its predicted binding affinity. The inherent problem of this rigid approach is that it leads to poor predictivity for those complexes that do not conform to the modelling assumptions. Moreover, resampling strategies, such as cross-validation or bootstrapping, are still not systematically used to guard against the overfitting of calibration data in parameter estimation for scoring functions. RESULTS: We propose a novel scoring function (RF-Score) that circumvents the need for problematic modelling assumptions via non-parametric machine learning. In particular, Random Forest was used to implicitly capture binding effects that are hard to model explicitly. RF-Score is compared with the state of the art on the demanding PDBbind benchmark. Results show that RF-Score is a very competitive scoring function. Importantly, RF-Score's performance was shown to improve dramatically with training set size and hence the future availability of more high quality structural and interaction data is expected to lead to improved versions of RF-Score. CONTACT: pedro.ballester@ebi.ac.uk; jbom@st-andrews.ac.uk SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: Additional experiments, codes implementing RF-Score and usage instructions enabling the reproducibility of all results are available at Bioinformatics online.post to: CiteULike

J Clin Oncol In J Clin Oncol, Vol. 27, No. 32. (10 November 2009), pp. 5312-5318.

PurposeAn outcome of considerable concern among breast cancer survivors is the development of second primary breast cancer. However, evidence regarding how potentially modifiable lifestyle factors modulate second breast cancer risk is limited. We evaluated the relationships between obesity, alcohol consumption, and smoking on risk of second primary invasive contralateral breast cancer among breast cancer survivors. MethodsUtilizing a population-based nested case-control study design, we enrolled 365 patients diagnosed with an estrogen receptor-positive (ER+) first primary invasive breast cancer and a second primary contralateral invasive breast cancer, and 726 matched controls diagnosed with only an ER+ first primary invasive breast cancer. Obesity, alcohol use, and smoking data were ascertained from medical record reviews and participant interviews. Using conditional logistic regression we evaluated associations between these three exposures and second primary contralateral breast cancer risk. ResultsObesity, consumption of [≥] 7 alcoholic beverages per week, and current smoking were all positively related to risk of contralateral breast cancer (odds ratio [OR], 1.4; 95% CI, 1.0 to 2.1; OR, 1.9; 95% CI, 1.1 to 3.2; and OR, 2.2; 95% CI, 1.2 to 4.0, respectively). Compared with women who consumed fewer than seven alcoholic beverages per week and were never or former smokers, women who consumed [≥] 7 drinks per week and were current smokers had a 7.2-fold (95% CI, 1.9 to 26.5) elevated risk of contralateral breast cancer. ConclusionOur population-based study adds to the limited available literature and suggests that obesity, smoking, and alcohol consumption influence contralateral breast cancer risk, affording breast cancer survivors three means of potentially reducing this risk. 10.1200/JCO.2009.23.1597
Christopher Li, Janet Daling, Peggy Porter, Mei-Tzu Tang, Kathleen Malone

Publication Date: 2010 Mar 17 PMID: 20236946Authors: Fernandes, A. D. - Gloor, G. B.Journal: BioinformaticsMOTIVATION: Mutual Information (MI) is a quantity that measures the dependence between two arbitrary random variables and has been repeatedly used to solve a wide variety of bioinformatic problems. Recently, when attempting to quantify the effects of sampling variance on computed values of MI in proteins, we encountered striking differences among various novel estimates of MI. These differences revealed that estimating the "true" value of MI is not a straightforward procedure, and minor variations of assumptions yielded remarkably different estimates. RESULTS: We describe four formally-equivalent estimates of MI, three of which explicitly account for sampling variance, that yield non-equal values of MI even given exact frequencies. These MI estimates are essentially non-predictive of each other, converging only in the limit of implausibly large data sets. Lastly, we show that all four estimates are biologically-reasonable estimates of MI, despite their disparity, since each is actually the Kullback-Leibler divergence between random variables conditioned on equally-plausible hypotheses. Conclusions: For sparse contingency tables of the type universally observed in protein coevolution studies, our results show that estimates of MI, and hence inferences about physical phenomena such as coevolution, are critically dependent on at least three prior assumptions. These assumptions are (a) how observation counts relate to expected frequencies, (b) the relationship between joint and marginal frequencies, and (c) how non-observed categories are interpreted. In any biologically-relevant data, these assumptions will affect the MI estimate as much or more-so than observed data, and are independent of uncertainty in frequency parameters. CONTACT: Andrew D. Fernandes andrew@fernandes.org.post to: CiteULike

Summit Entertainment | 2009 | 130 mins | Rated PG-13 | Mar 20, 2010

The relationship between mortal Bella and vampire Edward is continuing to blossom and grow even though ancient secrets are in line to destroy them. When Edward leaves in order to keep the love of his life Bella safe; she takes it upon herself to test her life in many reckless ways. Things don't go as she planned though when her good friend Jacob ends up saving her which opens her eyes and mind to many more secrets that could threaten all their existence.

The Twilight Saga: New Moon complete specs at Blu-ray.com | The Twilight Saga: New Moon at Amazon

Today I am pleased to announce two fantastic opportunities for two enthusiastic, motivated and energetic folks to come and join my team for a six month internship. You will join Daniel Holbach, Jorge Castro, and David Planella as team-mates and report to myself as honorary horse-folk, working on awesome solutions to help make Ubuntu an ever more compelling community to be a part of.

This is a fantastic opportunity to work inside a fast-paced, collaborative environment, solving important problems, working with awesome colleagues and adding Canonical as a rocking reference to your resume.

Before we get to the details about the roles, I want to be clear on a few general elements:

• These are internships: they are are not normal full roles.
• Like most internships, these roles are unpaid.
• Each role lasts for six months.
• Working hours are Mon – Fri from 9am – 6pm.

I want to be clear that my team is a fast-paced, hard-working, hectic environment. I am going to work you hard, and you should expect that, but my goal here is to help you squeeze every ounce of opportunity out of your internship. We will have 1-on-1 weekly calls, I will help guide you on what to work on, help you manage your work, solve problems, and be effective in your projects. In other words: when you sign up for your internship, expect a solid six month adventure, but an adventure that will sow the seeds for many great opportunities in the future.

So, I am looking for two roles:

• Ubuntu Community Documentation Author (Internship)
• Ubuntu Community Web Developer (Internship)

Let’s take a look at the job descriptions:

Ubuntu Community Documentation Author (Internship)

Job Title: Ubuntu Community Documentation Author (Internship)

Reports to: Ubuntu Community Manager

Job Location: Home with some travel engagements.

Job Summary: To produce documentation and online materials for the Ubuntu community and new contributors.

Key responsibilities and accountabilities:

• Produce a series of well-written and clear materials about a range of different topics in the Ubuntu community surrounding how to participate.
• Make these materials available on line and ensuring they follow style and quality guidelines.
• Work with the Ubuntu Documentation Team, Learning Team and Ubuntu Manual project to liaise around collaboration and best practise for materials production.
• Promote and raise awareness of this documentation inside and outside the Ubuntu community.
• Identify common needs and requirements for materials, prioritize them and build them into your workflow.
• REQUIREMENTS

Specific Job Skills: Excellent writing skills, strong networking and social networking skills, good relationship building abilities, process driven, able to manage multiple work streams, good prioritisation, independent, willing to travel potentially 25% of their work time, and able to resolve conflict.

Experience: Experience of working with community in Ubuntu and Open Source projects, experience of the upstream/distributor relationship, technical experience.

Key Qualities: Have strong social skills, a good networker and a good technical knowledge of Ubuntu and the Open Source and upstream/downstream development process. Candidates should be process driven, strategically minded and committed. Competent visual design and artistic talent is highly desirable. Other: Candidates should provide evidence of existing experience and work in the Open Source community and suitable references.

Ubuntu Community Web Developer (Internship)

Job Title: Ubuntu Community Web Developer (Internship)

Reports to: Ubuntu Community Manager

Job Location: Home with some travel engagements.

Job Summary: To design and develop web functionality across a range of Ubuntu community infrastructure web properties.

Key responsibilities and accountabilities:

• In conjunction with the team and the community, design new features and solutions for specific needs in our key web properties.
• Develop and implement such features and solutions using a range of appropriate tools.
• Provide solid testing and quality assurance over your work during the development phase and before deployment.
• Triage, fix and deploy bug fixes.
• Work with the community to collaborate together on projects and solutions.
• Report your progress to the team and the wider community.
• Be responsive to changing needs, emergency fixes and feature requests and be reactive to a range of different customers.
• Requirements

Specific Job Skills: Excellent web development skills (Python, Django, PHP, HTML, CSS and Database experience are a must), good experience of Launchpad, Bazaar and Ubuntu community infrastructure, strong networking and social networking skills, process driven, able to manage multiple work streams, good prioritisation, independent, willing to travel potentially 25% of their work time, and able to resolve conflict.

Experience: Experience of working on collaborative web development projects in Python, Django and PHP, strong development experience over a range of projects, experience of working with community in Ubuntu and Open Source projects. Key Qualities: Excellent developer, strong social skills, a good networker and a good technical knowledge of Ubuntu and the Open Source and upstream/downstream development process. Candidates should be process driven, strategically minded and committed. Competent visual design and artistic talent is highly desirable.

Other: Candidates should provide evidence of existing experience and work in the Open Source community and suitable references.

How To Apply

If you are interested in applying for these roles do not contact me directly, you should follow these steps:

• Ensure you have a recent, up to date resume (in PDF or OpenOffice.org format) that outlines your experience, education, your community achievements, technical background and information about your interests and ambitions.
• Send an email to alice.paul AT canonical DOT com with the subject Community Team Internship Application and the following details:

• Specify which role you are interested in.
• Your resume attached.
• A few paragraphs about why you would like to have the role.

Good luck and I will speak to some of you soon in an interview!

What the crap? A French comic? Are the French even allowed to make comics? Aren't they too busy being snooty and smoking Gauloises and wearing inappropriate swimwear? Where do they find the time to make comics, anyway?*

Well, the French can do all those things as long as they keep making comics this good, I tell ya. West Coast Blues is a cracking good crime comic, not really noir but definitely a tale of bad people doing bad things to each other. It's also, oddly enough, very wryly humorous, in a way we don't often see in crime comics here in the States. It was a novel by Jean-Patrick Manchette in 1976, and in 2005, Manchette's old collaborator, Jacques Tardi, finally adapted it to comics (and then Kim Thompson translated it into English). Presumably, had DC's association with Humanoids continued, this would have been a DC book. As it is, Fantagraphics has published it in the States. Good for them!

The plot is deceptively simple, as for most of the book, we have no idea what's going and Manchette simply follows his main character around. We begin in the present with George Gerfaut, cruising around in his Mercedes in the middle of the night listening to West Coast style jazz (hence the name of the book - George digs the jazz!). After a few pages, we're introduced to another man, Alonso Emerich y Emerich, a Dominican of German descent who used to be in military intelligence. We have, initially, no idea what his purpose is, because we quickly get back to George, who is passed by two cars, one chasing the other. The first car crashes, the second car takes off, and George helps the first driver to the hospital. Then he returns to his house. A few days later, his family heads out on vacation. It takes us a few pages to realize that this is happening in time well before the opening scene, because Manchette doesn't give us any indication that we've flashbacked. That's okay, though - the transition between the "present" and the "past" is interesting because Manchette links them through George driving late at night. While we may be a bit lost initially, we quickly regain our footing.

George doesn't realize he's being tailed by two hitmen in the employ of Alonso, who goes by Mr. Taylor. Again, we don't know why they want to kill George (we can figure out it has something to do with the driver of the car, but we don't know what), but that's part of the fun. Because as the follow George to the seaside, the plot kicks into high gear. It's rather humorous - the hitmen can't kill George. Through, really, very little effort on his part, he manages to elude them. In their first attempt, he manages to grab one of the killer's balls, which of course tends to put him off. This attempt switches something on in George, and he abandons his wife and returns to Paris. The killers can never quite catch up with him, and when they do, he escapes again, killing one of them almost accidentally. Then he flees into the forest and ends up in the foothills of the Alps, where he's found by a slightly eccentric woodsman. And he simply stays there. He becomes someone else completely, learning how to be self-sufficient, hooking up with a woman, and changing his appearance by growing a beard. But the second killer tracks him down, and George ends up back in the world, ready to find out exactly why these two men were sent to kill him.

The fascinating thing about this story is the character of George. Actually, Carlo and Bastien, the two hitmen, are pretty interesting as well, but George is the central character, so he ought to be fascinating. As I pointed out, he doesn't escape from the killers because he's tougher than they are; he might be a bit smarter, but he's also really lucky. Manchette doesn't make it a ridiculous, corny kind of luck, but he does show that George happens to do things that throw them off the track without knowing he's doing it. This makes the pursuit rather odd and darkly humorous. The book is full of violent death, and it's definitely not a comedy, but just the fact that these two professional killers have such a tough time blowing away this rather inept sales manager makes it border on the surreal. Then, we think the book will be about George becoming more of an independent dude and less of a simpering whiner, as he's forced to live in the wild for so many months. But Manchette doesn't quite give us that, either. George is a complicated guy who realizes certain things about the way society is structured but still yearns for other things. By the end of the book, we're back on the freeway, but Manchette has made us see that George has changed, just maybe not enough that we would expect. West Coast Blues is, in my mind, very "European" in that regard - this is a broad generalization, but Europeans are more bound by history, both societal and personal, than Americans, so if this book had been written by a Yankee, it probably would have ended much, much differently. That it doesn't is a testament, I think, to Manchette's storytelling - he never takes the easy way out, even if George's fate might seem like he does. George has been affected by what happens to him, but in not so overt (American?) way.

Tardi's art is quite stellar, as well. He's amazingly detailed, but he doesn't pull any tricks on the reader - his work is very straight forward. He relies on very strong storytelling skills, as he simply takes us through George's story. We get a great sense of place from Tardi, either in the urban settings or, even more impressively, in the rural interlude George experiences. Tardi does masterful work with the characters, too - they look and move like people, stumbling when you might expect it, breaking bones when you'd expect it, acting like human beings. His best work might be with Carlo and Bastien, as George remains very low-key throughout (except for one brief scene). Carlo and Bastien, however, have a fun relationship, and Tardi helps with it. Manchette gives them good banter, but Tardi manages to portray their care for each other even as he keeps their faces impassive. It's a very verbose comic, but Tardi matches Manchette with panels that demand a great deal of attention - this is a visual feast as well as a literary one.

I suppose the only problem one might have with the book is its somewhat excessive narration, because often Manchette simply tells us what the pictures already do (and Tardi adapted it to comics, so why he didn't cut some more of it is beyond me). Occasionally, the narration is absurdly excellent - when Manchette lists all the weapons Carlo and Bastien have in their car, for instance, it's a comic mini-masterpiece - but occasionally, we can tell exactly what's going on and don't need to be told. Again, this is a comic adapted from a book into French and then translated into English, so there are many filters for it to go through. I don't have too big an issue with the words, but I should caution you that it feels bloated every once in a while.

Other than that, West Coast Blues is a very good crime comic. The fact that it has a slightly different sensibility than most American crime fiction makes it refreshing, and the fact that Manchette has a wry sense of humor about the material works well, too. And it looks great. And Ed Brubaker thinks Tardi is great. Dare you go against Ed Brubaker????

* Before you jump my shit, I'm joking. I am well aware of the long French tradition of comics, and cut my teeth on Asterix and Obelix before I had even heard of the X-Men when I was but a lad. Chillax, people!

Next: Can it be more Tardi? Well, of course it can!