In VRM is Personal, I say this…

“Social” is a bubble. Trust me on this. I urge all consultants on “social ______” (fill in the blank) to make hay while the sun shines. Even as the current depression deepens, lots of companies are starting to realize that this “social” thing is hot stuff and they need to get hip to Twitter and the rest of it. (Just ask the Motrin folks.)

And it is hot. But much of that heat is relative to its absence in other areas. “Social” has sucked a lot of oxygen out of the online conversational room.

Meanwhile, here’s the challenge: make the Net personal. Make relationships personal. Equip individuals with tools of independence and engagement. That’s what VRM is about.

… and go on. Read the rest there.

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Apple on Wednesday hosted a press briefing, in which it let six iPhone app developers show off their current and forthcoming software products for the holiday season.br style=clear: both;/ a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:dda26b67d762dfb15068f313a0d07c03:IH5PFLz2mQ6dOuoB4WBjIHZ%2FHMevnWCOEkHrcZQMExsQwdDpDt2XgmZjyFCi7PnE5W9xliMFVszP'img border='0' title='Add to digg' alt='Add to digg' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/digg.gif'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:ee47670cd72369bfddd5bef10f9ed229:1SnmEVGYoXIOIoazrOfz7LeX9p7OZ5T3KROy%2BRdKuNUB1KudpYT7QnaYog7Kl2fHxQgrO4Xvpg49'img border='0' title='Add to Reddit' alt='Add to Reddit' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/reddit.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:7a8516bb3e4c74d309da516c91e7d201:zSRLtBrf6B8V86nhOHQZREbZdD7oXz9aTrmqoBiz3UKlkqBTTJjQ1s1mHkZvjcE4RXZrYJdPlgxtgA%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to Slashdot' alt='Add to Slashdot' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/slashdot.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:43bfa39efa2f9b359a95caaee7f6885c:dCC39tmU6XlyZR1QhbYyncl2pI%2FRiPGTlm4zRRKydRBysQn5lAU8%2B3%2BXAUNHLb5EGeuinZcUlbvz'img border='0' title='Email this Article' alt='Email this Article' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/emailthis.png'//a a style='font-size: 10px; color: maroon;' href='http://www.pheedo.com/hostedMorselClick.php?hfmm=v3:7e8d3ba8dc40a5345c07b6fd63e06633:2Gpern1U0sV4TEa2PahLibdkxDf%2FO7DsBsRJuAt0yWouBDq7eDWS%2BbataDfXWWc%2BdvrAiA90qrRlzQ%3D%3D'img border='0' title='Add to StumbleUpon' alt='Add to StumbleUpon' src='http://www.pheedo.com/images/mm/stumbleit.gif'//a br style=clear: both;/ img alt= style=border: 0; height:1px; width:1px; border=0 src=http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=fbe1abb7904b9b0f9309c1acb8141618 height=1 width=1/ img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=fbe1abb7904b9b0f9309c1acb8141618 style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/

A Novell- and Microsoft-sponsored project is close to releasing the first version of its open-source implementation of Microsoft's "Silverlight" technology, say reports. A Moonlight 1.0 beta will arrive "very, very soon," says a Moonlight developer blog, which also says the project is inviting more developers to help develop Moonlight 2.0.

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/ganzfeld.jpeg" width="146" height="246" /If you'd like to experience the effects of drugs without actually taking any pesky drugs, here's a little experiment that might be right up your alley. These things called Ganzfeld hallucinations are available to you without any shady alleyway dealing; all you need is a pair of headphones and a ping pong ball cut in half./p pYou simply place the ping pong ball halves over your eyes, so you only see diffuse white light, then listen to white noise through the headphones. What happens? Don't take my word for it, let's hear some customer testimonials:br / blockquote“a clearing in a forest [Lichtung], a place bathed in bright sun-shine, and the trunks of trees around. A feeling of a tranquile summer afternoon in a forest, so quiet, so peaceful. And then, suddenly, a young woman passed by on a bicycle, very fast, she crossed the visual field from the right to the left, with her blond long hair waving in the air. The image of the entire scene was very clear, with many details, and yes, the colours were very vivid.”/p p“I can see his face, still, it's very expressive... [I could see] only the horse that comes as if out of clouds. A white horse that jumped over me.”/p p“A friend of mine and I, we were inside a cave. We made a fire. There was a creek flowing under our feet, and we were on a stone. She had fallen into the creek, and she had to wait to have her things dried. Then she said to me: ‘Hey, move on, we should go now’.”/p p“It was like running a bob sleigh on an uneven runway right down... [There] was snow or maybe water running down... I could hear music, there was music coming from the left side below.”/p p“In the right side of the visual field, a manikin suddenly appeared. He was all in black, had a long narrow head, fairly broad shoulders, very long arms and a relatively small trunk.... He approached me, stretching out his hands, very long, very big, like a bowl, and he stayed so for a while, and then he went back to where he came from, slowly.”/p/blockquote pWhoa, dude. Someone try this out and let's hear how it works. Come on, I know a lot of you don't have anything better to do right now. Do this for science. [a href="http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2008/11/ganzfeld_hallucinati.html"Mind Hacks/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=e731d0472efb9a94f7ea610db7315c9a"img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=e731d0472efb9a94f7ea610db7315c9a" border="0" //a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=e731d0472efb9a94f7ea610db7315c9a" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=lzg2ZLdU"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=Y1B2pcLm"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=bimmWS1Y"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=bimmWS1Y" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=BjZ9YpDo"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=BjZ9YpDo" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/sJqQgVFF53o" height="1" width="1"/

centerimg title="Alarm Clock Hacked To Open Window Blinds" style="MARGIN: 0px" alt="Alarm Clock Hacked To Open Window Blinds" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/11/alarm-blinds.jpg" border="0" //centerbr / pThere is nothing quite like using natural sunlight to get you out of bed - and some smart aleck managed to do so by hacking his own alarm clock, allowing it to open up the window blinds whenever the alarm goes off as an added stimulus to get you up and running for the day. Of course, this won't really work if you intend to wake up before sunrise, but for the most of us, there is nothing more irritating that having strong sunlight shine in our faces even when we think we deserve a few more minutes in the bed. A microcontroller handles the alarm signal, helping drive the servo-wired blinds as well. /p pa href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/alarm_clock_hacked_to_open_window_blinds.html#comments"Add a comment/a | From: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/alarm_clock_hacked_to_open_window_blinds.html"Alarm Clock Hacked To Open Window Blinds/a | Visit a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"Ubergizmo/a | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081119055251" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081119055251?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081119055251" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081119055251amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F11%2Falarm_clock_hacked_to_open_window_blinds.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/uaFmwbEZ8a_ZIJuqvoHit68reCw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/uaFmwbEZ8a_ZIJuqvoHit68reCw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=bjRfAQ4d"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=SWOKCxGY"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=SWOKCxGY" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=iP1O7vUj"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=yAVDdqEw"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=yAVDdqEw" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=RKsS4WDF"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=RKsS4WDF" border="0"/img/a /div

Mods don't get much simpler and more useful than this: It's an alarm clock that whisks open some window blinds when the alarm goes off, so the sun can tempt you out of bed. There's a microcontroller...

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/11/alarm.jpg" width="494" height="263" style="display:block;" /Mods don't get much simpler and more useful than this: It's an alarm clock that whisks open some window blinds when the alarm goes off, so the sun can tempt you out of bed. There's a microcontroller to handle detecting the alarm signal and to drive a servo wired into the blinds, and some switches to override the alarm and open or close the blinds on command. Check the video of it in action./p pobject width="494" height="413"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/sNZG9Cal1zghl=enfs=1" param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always" embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/sNZG9Cal1zghl=enfs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="494" height="413"/objectLooks great, but frankly you'd need to wire a giant servo to my feet to drag me out of bed rather than use hack like this, but YMMV. [a href="http://hackaday.com/2008/11/18/alarm-clock-automated-blinds/"Hackaday/a]/p br style="clear: both;"/ img alt="" style="border: 0; height:1px; width:1px;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?i=08e2c90c5d7956fce4a85043a40baa7e" height="1" width="1"/ img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=08e2c90c5d7956fce4a85043a40baa7e" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=NpuUiXWg"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=67Z1u1Q7"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=3OMXJVyi"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=3OMXJVyi" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=Cg3XUltA"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=Cg3XUltA" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/N0qZF1m2ARo" height="1" width="1"/

div class="rxbodyfield"p class="ArticleBody" page="1"No company is immune from the economy's ebb and flow. So it's no surprise that, in the face of a fearsome downturn, IT shops are scrambling to figure out where they should cut./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"The big three analyst firms -- Forrester, Gartner, and IDC -- are busily slashing their IT spending projections. Just last week IDC predicted that in the United States, IT spending will decline to 0.9 percent, down sharply from a pre-crisis forecast of 4.2 percent growth./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"b[ Just/b bhow severe is the impact of the economy on IT? Find out in "a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/27/44NF-tech-spending_1.html?source=fssr" class="regularArticleU"Is tech in more trouble than we think?/a" ]/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"With numbers like those, IT might feel inclined to panic. But now is the time to stand tough, advises Andrew Reichman, senior analyst at Forrester Research. "Companies should tighten their belts, not take their pants off," he admonishes./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"At brokerage and investment banking firm Morgan Keegan, for example, CIO John Threadgill acknowledges that he has to "come up with better reasons" for the technologies to which he allocates IT resources. But after he eliminates or delays costs where feasible, Threadgill and his CIO colleagues must continue investing in certain areas, no matter how crazily the economy bounces up or down. "We'll continue to spend where we need to," says Threadgill./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"So which technologies get funded rain or shine? InfoWorld consulted a range analysts and CIOs to arrive at a consensus: the five technologies IT shops must continue to invest in despite the recession. The common theme, says IDC chief analyst and senior vice president Frank Gens, is that "any technologies that can save companies money or reduce expenses will continue to thrive."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"b1. Storage: Disks and management softwarebr/ /b"There are some things that just won't go back in the bottle," says Mark Raskino, Gartner fellow and vice president of emerging trends and technologies. "Storage is one of those."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"Data keeps piling up and regulatory compliance mandates require that companies hold onto data longer than they've ever had to. To that end, IDC continues to estimate that spending on disk storage will double every two years, at least through 2012./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"Another growth area will be "storage management tools that help IT get better use out of the hardware they already have," says Steve Minton, vice president of worldwide IT markets at IDC./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"Forrester's Reichman suggests that thin provisioning, data de-duplication, and storage virtualization will prove worthy of investment. "Data de-duplication can improve performance, success rates, these types of things ? while storage virtualization is a way to be more flexible and move data nondisruptively."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"b[ Morgan/b bKeegan is one of the top 10 companies in the 2008 InfoWorld 100 Awards. Check out "a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/11/17/47FE-infoworld-100-morgan-keegan_1.html?source=fssr" class="regularArticleU"Morgan Keegan invests in resilience/a" for a complete case study. ]/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"Morgan Keegan's Threadgill agrees, saying that spending on storage and security will be his top IT priorities for 2009. "Our biggest spend next year is going to be storage. Data doubles yearly," he says. "With what's happening in the last 30 to 60 days, we also might see new regulatory requirements and have to keep our data forever."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"b2. Business intelligence: Niche analyticsbr/ /bAs data continues to accrue, the need to glean insights from it grows, agree analysts from Forrester, Gartner, and IDC./pp class="ArticleBody" page="1"CIOs will keep spending on general business intelligence, but more resources will go toward very focused analytics, explains Andrew Bartels, principal analyst at Forrester. The "analytics that help companies identify and retain their most-profitable customers will be key," he says./pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Gartner fellow and vice president Jackie Fenn adds that companies always need behavior analytics. In the supply chain, for instance, analytics that trigger alerts when suppliers are running into problems, such as delaying supply or payment, can deliver real value to companies./pp class="ArticleBody" page="2""The broader range of data sources will lead to greater need for analytics," Gartner's Fenn explains. "There are many different masters, as companies tap analytics to cut costs, avoid errors, predict behavior of customers before they lose them, grow market opportunities."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Michael Khan, CIO of international eye care service Specsavers, adds that he is continuing to invest in technologies that improve customer insight and retention because "it's easier to keep those customers now, even at a cost, than to try and win them back later."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"b3. Virtualization: Optimizing resourcesbr/ /b Virtualization is the datacenter version of getting the most out of what you already have. Up-front investment in virtualization tends to be fairly low, but can deliver quick and substantial returns. "Virtualization will continue to be popular because it allows companies to defer other costs -- in this case, that's mostly hardware," IDC's Gens says./pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Specsavers began tapping virtualization before the downturn. "Virtualization is a key tactic we've been doing for some time to minimize hardware acquisition costs," Khan says, "and that will continue."?/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"b[ For/b bmore on the security risks of virtualization and how to address them, read "a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/03/13/11NF-virt-security_1.html?source=fssr" class="regularArticleU"Virtualization's secret security threats/a." ]/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Virtualization has advantages beyond hardware cost reduction. "Everybody's moving to virtualization," Forrester's Reichman says. "You're likely to be more efficient with server and storage resources in the long run, and if you have expertise, that return is likely to come fast. A down economy might be the right time to throw down and do it, especially if you can time it with hardware refreshes."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Transplace, the $2.5 billion transportation logistics provider, is reaping the benefits of moving to 90 percent virtualized infrastructure, according to CTO Vince Biddlecombe. "Converting from a physical to a virtual infrastructure is particularly beneficial during tough economic conditions," Biddlecombe says. "Virtualization has allowed us to save on power and cooling costs as well as the amount of time our IT staff spends on server admin. It provides us with more efficient use of capital as well as increased flexibility during challenging times."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"But CIOs should also expect virtualization to force security investments because, as Threadgill explains, "the virtual machine environment has to be as secure as the physical environment."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"b4. Security: Data and end pointsbr/ /bNo surprises here. IDC's Gens, in fact, says that security is "always the No. 1 concern of IT. As you see more resources out there on the Internet, there's concern that they're secure."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Companies will have a particular focus on securing network end points, devices, and those applications that serve them, according to IDC's Minton. "Whether you're in a recession or not, no company wants to be on the front page of the Wall Street Journal because their data was breached," he adds./pp class="ArticleBody" page="2"Threadgill lists security as the second of Morgan Keegan's top two spending priorities, behind only storage. And Specsavers' Khan adds that his budget will include security technologies, namely firewalls, tools for securing end points, and data encryption for mobile devices and remote PCs. "There's no reduction in security expenses," Khan says. "If anything we're increasing our security spending."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"Gartner and Forrester agree that companies will continue to ratchet up security. Raskino adds that layoffs and, in turn, new hires will be yet another driver. "An economic downturn and recovery create massive churn," he says. "The processes and tools for managing and disabling access are going to be critical."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"b5. Cloud computing: Business solutionsbr/ /b Analysts from Forrester, Gartner, and IDC say that certain pieces of cloud computing will continue to expand -- and perhaps even accelerate due to the downturn./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"IDC predicts that cloud computing will account for 9 or 10 percent of IT spending by 2012, up from the 4 percent allocated in 2008. "That's a conservative forecast made before the Dow tanked," Gens adds. "So that's going to accelerate cloud offerings from the big vendors."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"b[ Times/b bof turmoil are times of opportunity. Check out "a href="http://www.infoworld.com/article/08/10/01/40NF-cloud-adoption_1.html?source=fssr" class="regularArticleU"Will the downturn accelerate cloud computing?/a" ]/b/pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"Gens sees many companies moving to the cloud for the applications and services most often sought by business types, who are actually circumventing the IT department to get what they need. These include such business solutions as sales-force automation, productivity, and marketing campaign software. "The more pure IT stuff -- infrastructure, infrastructure software, application development -- those are tech buyers, so there are fewer potential customers," Gens says./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"Tech buyers are taking a hard look at such cloud services as Amazon's EC2, which allows businesses to scale capacity dynamically by uploading virtual machines to Amazon's servers. But other less glitzy areas are getting traction, too. Cloud-based data backup and file storage services are "a really good idea that can be much more cost-effective" than going it the old-fashioned, in-house way, Forrester's Reichman says./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"Gartner's Raskino adds to the list of cloud resources CIOs will find valuable during a recession such services as e-mail, storage, and lightweight productivity apps. "This is a good time to have a cost-centric argument, so IT might even take a risk to get a payoff with cloud technologies, if they're mature enough," he says./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"bLooking toward recoverybr/ /b Over the next four years, IDC expects that the tech industry will lose more than $300 billion in revenue due to the spending slowdown. The good news: IT spending will make a full recovery and enjoy growth rates nearing 6 percent by 2012, according to IDC./pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"Whether such projections hold or not, Forrester's Reichman argues that IT shops must trim their sails and stay the course. "You cannot stop growing," Reichman explains. "Most companies are already fire-fighting, but you've got keep the lights on, keep things going forward, because the datacenter is always in a recession anyway. So keep moving."/pp class="ArticleBody" page="3"Specsavers' Khan advises IT shops to weigh their options carefully, because investments made during a recession often have lasting impact. "In these economic scenarios," Khan says, "you've got to make a judgment on which technologies will bring you advantage when things turn around and get better."/p/divbr style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=d84d961bca77cab7cdf7e2b775b8d00fimg src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=d84d961bca77cab7cdf7e2b775b8d00f border=0 //a img src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=d84d961bca77cab7cdf7e2b775b8d00f style=display: none; border=0 height=1 width=1 alt=/

pFiled under: a href="http://www.engadget.com/category/household/" rel="tag"Household/a/pa href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~apathak/shades/"img vspace="4" hspace="4" border="0" src="http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2008/11/rise-and-shine-alarm-clock-inset.jpg" alt="" //aFew devices receive as much attention to re-design as the a href="http://www.engadget.com/tag/mousetrap"mousetrap/a and a href="http://www.engadget.com/tag/alarm%20clock"alarm clock/a. Regarding the latter, Anupam Patahak, a Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Michigan, takes a natural light approach with his Rise and Shine Alarm Shades. At a predefined time, the modified alarm clock silently (or noisily) kicks off a servo to wind open the shades. Nothing like the deep, battleship gray skies of mid-western suburbia to rouse a young mind from sleep. Video after the break.br /br /[Via a href="http://hackaday.com/2008/11/18/alarm-clock-automated-blinds/"Hack A Day/a]pa href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/19/video-rise-and-shine-alarm-hack-is-sheers-genius/" rel="bookmark"Continue reading emVideo: Rise and Shine alarm hack is sheers genius/em/a/pp style="padding:5px;background:#ddd;border:1px solid #ccc;clear:both;"a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/19/video-rise-and-shine-alarm-hack-is-sheers-genius/"Video: Rise and Shine alarm hack is sheers genius/a originally appeared on a href="http://www.engadget.com"Engadget/a on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:41:00 EST. Please see our a href="http://www.weblogsinc.com/feed-terms/"terms for use of feeds/a./ph6 style="clear: both; padding: 8px 0 0 0; height: 2px; font-size: 1px; border: 0; margin: 0; padding: 0;"/h6a href=http://www-personal.umich.edu/~apathak/shades/Read/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/19/video-rise-and-shine-alarm-hack-is-sheers-genius/" rel="bookmark" title="Permanent link to this entry"Permalink/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/forward/1376586/" title="Send this entry to a friend via email"Email this/anbsp;|nbsp;a href="http://www.engadget.com/2008/11/19/video-rise-and-shine-alarm-hack-is-sheers-genius/#comments" title="View reader comments on this entry"Comments/a pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/u-cYt7ZkZmANTwc39hpK2qtNJxg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/u-cYt7ZkZmANTwc39hpK2qtNJxg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=JolI1T8B"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=JolI1T8B" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?a=lz4PCH12"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/weblogsinc/engadget?i=lz4PCH12" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~4/OVQMEW4eBPs" height="1" width="1"/

Filed under: Household

Few devices receive as much attention to re-design as the mousetrap and alarm clock. Regarding the latter, Anupam Patahak, a Mechanical Engineering student at the University of Michigan, takes a natural light approach with his Rise and Shine Alarm Shades. At a predefined time, the modified alarm clock silently (or noisily) kicks off a servo to wind open the shades. Nothing like the deep, battleship gray skies of mid-western suburbia to rouse a young mind from sleep. Video after the break.

[Via Hack A Day]

Continue reading Video: Rise and Shine alarm hack is sheers genius

Video: Rise and Shine alarm hack is sheers genius originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Nov 2008 04:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Ok Im not sure if anyone here can help me, but its worth giving it a shot before I send my HD4870 card back to the store. Here is the problem:

I was previously a owner of a Nvidia 8800GTS card which worked flawlessly in Age of Conan. However I wanted to buy a new graphic card to really get AoC shine, so I went and bought a Sapphire Radeon HD4870 and mounted it.

I deinstalled the drivers and used Driver Sweeper to clean up the rest. After that I installed the 4870. After this I started AoC and just after 5-10 minutes i experienced artifacts and a total freeze which ended with a hard boot of my computer. Hmm I thought, maybe a fresh install of Vista 64 would do. So here is what I have tried so far:

1. Reinstall Vista 64 with the HD4870 mounted. Same problem
2. Reinstall XP with the HD4870 mounted. Same problem
3. Reinstall AoC on both systems. Same problem

I am now about to give up and maybe get me a Asus ENGTX260 TOP maybe. But first I want to check here with you people. Have any of you experienced this problem before? And have a solution?

Thanks in advance :)

pimg alt="dow_jones_venturewire_Nov_08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/dow_jones_venturewire_Nov_08.jpg" width="160" height="43" /That's the message venture capitalists at the a href="http://showcase.dowjones.com/"Dow Jones VentureWire Technology Showcase/a in Redwood City CA today, are offering to entrepreneurs and startups./p pIn the midst of one of the worst economic crises the world has seen, investors are in the main optimistic, and agree that to weather this storm and come out on top, today's entrepreneur's need to change their mindset and go back to basics: go back to the garage, and success will follow./p p align="right"emSponsor/embr /a href='http://d.openx.org/ck.php?n=12620amp;cb=12620' target='_blank'img src='http://d.openx.org/avw.php?zoneid=861amp;cb=12620amp;n=12620' border='0' alt='' align="right" //a/p pa href="http://www.citigroup.com/citi/homepage/"Citi/a analyst Mark Mahaney explained that today's market brings new opportunities if you're willing to look for them. In the late 90's when all looked bleak, one company that broke through was a href="http://www.ebay.com"eBay/a(a href="http://quotes.nasdaq.com/asp/SummaryQuote.asp?symbol=EBAYselected=EBAY"EBAY/a); it went public in the fall of 98. "While the bar is exceptionally high right now, it doesn't mean someone can't break through it." /p pPointing out that even though this is going to be a tough period, William Tai, a href="http://www.crv.com/"Charles River Ventures/a anticipates the companies that will show up in VC portfolios will be born now. "If you look at returns on venture funds that were invested during a recession, they offered the best return. Companies that are being built now have fewer competitors, have the ability to address bigger markets and can hire high quality people that charge less."/p h2Five Tips for Startups and Entrepreneurs/h2 pstrong1. Don't focus on growth; focus on cash preservation/strong/p pDavid Cowan, a href="http://www.bvp.com/"Bessemer Venture Partners/a, recommends companies move toward cash preservation rather than growth. "Spend less time worrying about what competitors will do in terms of features, it won't be your biggest problem because competitors will have same issues in terms of growth," he said. "Move toward cash preservation."/p pstrong2. Work out how to monetize social networks/strong/p pMahaney said the opportunities he sees are in social networks. "At the moment, no one has figured out how to monetize them, but they can - absolutely," he said. /p pstrong3. Don't make new commitments, look for opportunities in mobile technology/strong/p pCowan also recommends to avoid new commitments, and to make money he suggests looking at new ways to use media. Taking out his iPhone, he played a tune for the audience using the new a href="http://ocarina.smule.com/"Ocarina application/a. "Six people developed this and it's they've sold tens of thousands." This is only one idea; there are lots of creative ways to use the Internet and mobiles./p pstrong4. Strike while there is less competition/strong/p pTai sees opportunity in going forward, and is most excited about Internet technologies, mobile and open source. "Everything is bigger and happens faster when stuff hits in this environment," he said. In the environment of a few years ago, you'd have 20-50 competitors; in this market you have fewer competitors and an opportunity to shine./p pstrong5 Look to the virtual world and expect to nurture your product for 7 - 8 years/strong/p pBasil Horangic, a href="http://www.nbvp.com/"North Bridge Venture Partners/a said that they're seeing excellent growth in companies that are working on social networks, virtual world space and the monetization for virtual goods. "There is a lot of innovation in those areas," he said. As for startups looking to be acquired, he tells the audience that the data shows companies go public and get sold at seven or eight years of age./p pimg alt="google_garage_1998_nov_08.jpg" src="http://www.readwriteweb.com/google_garage_1998_nov_08.jpg" width="270" height="214" //p pemPage and Brin in Wojcicki's garage, 232 Santa Margarita Ave, Menlo Park CA/em/p pIf a simple garage was good enough for Larry Page and Sergey Brin to start goliath search engine Google, it should be good enough for new startups trying to break out at a time when the odds are against them. So the advice of the day? Stop paying $5 for a latte, invest in a basic coffee machine and start innovating.br / /p stronga href="http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/5_tips_for_startups_and_entrep.php#comments-open"Discuss/a/strong pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/kqpQLFXyhCoDa4Kh7m0UU7bKpH4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/kqpQLFXyhCoDa4Kh7m0UU7bKpH4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=LMyMBBv8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=LMyMBBv8" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=SkQV0OwN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=Aj32tjnn"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=Aj32tjnn" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=GlKD5LT8"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=GlKD5LT8" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?a=U9PJszBa"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/readwriteweb?i=U9PJszBa" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/readwriteweb/~4/mWdtGS3pYuo" height="1" width="1"/

Hi folks!

First post here, so be kind!

Just unboxed my brand new MBP 15" and noticed an oddity?

Keep in mind I'm a Mac virgin but under "Shared" in Finder I seem to have a volume called "thomson" that when I go into its settings says I'm signed in as a Guest and that its a PC Server?

I'm connecting wirelessly through a BT Homehub which isn't connected to anything else at all!

Anybody shine some light?

Thanks!

div style="FLOAT: right"img title="Go Gold With Casa Gi Headphones" alt="Go Gold With Casa Gi Headphones" hspace="5" src="http://www.ubergizmo.com/photos/2008/11/casa-gi-headphones.jpg" vspace="5" border="0" //div pJeweller Casa Gi wants to introduce some refinement and glamour to the world of headphones, and hence they have decided to trump up an ordinary pair of headphones by slapping 18 carat gold all over it, accompanied by 118 diamonds encrusted in strategic places to help bring out the shine. Tipping the scales at a mere 18 grams, this pair of headphones will retail for a jaw-dropping pound;3,499. No idea which sheikh is going to pick this up, as we all know the rest of us ordinary Joes have more important bread and butter issues to worry about./p pa href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/go_gold_with_casa_gi_headphones.html#comments"Add a comment/a | From: a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2008/11/go_gold_with_casa_gi_headphones.html"Go Gold With Casa Gi Headphones/a | Visit a href="http://www.ubergizmo.com"Ubergizmo/a | a href="http://www.uberbargain.com/"Good deals/a/p pmap name="google_ad_map_081118085556" area shape="rect" href="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/imgclick/081118085556?pos=0" coords="1,2,367,28"/ area shape="rect" href="http://services.google.com/feedback/abg" coords="384,10,453,23"//map img usemap="#google_ad_map_081118085556" border="0" src="http://imageads.googleadservices.com/pagead/ads?format=468x30_aff_imgamp;client=ca-pub-7335032025195922amp;channel=9684588219amp;output=pngamp;cuid=081118085556amp;url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.ubergizmo.com%2F15%2Farchives%2F2008%2F11%2Fgo_gold_with_casa_gi_headphones.html"//p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6jokAk8UZSdKUUBfWf6IcrSRvYc/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/6jokAk8UZSdKUUBfWf6IcrSRvYc/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=587pe2zM"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=yT0cvbHt"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=yT0cvbHt" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=NeDUHSQV"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?d=52" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=7tFe1XbG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=7tFe1XbG" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?a=kfv81djS"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/ubergizmo?i=kfv81djS" border="0"/img/a /div

I am trying to send a picture via text from my phone (lg shine) to an iphone but its not working... Anyone know how I can text pics to iphone?

centerimg src="http://www.saidthegramophone.com/images/nike_air_max.jpg" alt="Nike Air Max 90 Burger, by Olle Hemmendorff"/center a href="http://www.gramotunes.com/Esau_Mwamwaya_Cape_Cod.mp3"Esau Mwamwaya amp; Radioclit - "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" (Vampire Weekend cover)/a. a href="http://www.gramotunes.com/Esau_Mwamwaya_Dinonsaur_On_the_Ark.mp3"Esau Mwamwaya amp; Radioclit (with Ben Brewer) - "Dinosaur On The Ark"/a. For a long time I have had an eBay Alert set up for Esau Mwamwaya. So that when he finally releases something, I can buy it. He hasn't released anything, though. And I haven't posted about him. But I love this stuff. It's like the indie rock version of Juluka - joyous, rousing, easy. It's chewing on sugarcane and floating on your back. He sings with such unselfconscious glee, as only a furniture salesman can. But Radioclit's beats (or, Vampire Weekend's, or MIA's, as the case may be) are also responsible for the songs' sky-blue sweetness. Sunbeams bottled, rainclouds fizzed - clean and undistorted glitter, a hundred shades of shine. a href="http://www.gramotunes.com/Esau_Mwamwaya_Dinonsaur_On_the_Ark.mp3""Dinosaur on the Ark"/a's Ben Brewer - who was once best known as one of Canada's wealthiest heirs, and is now best known as MIA's fianceacute;, - sings with an earnesty that is sterling silver, okay maybe stainless steel. Like Phil Collins or Adam Levine it's uncoloured amp; true, a perfect partner for Mwamwaya's utopian cheer. a href="http://www.gramotunes.com/Esau_Mwamwaya_Cape_Cod.mp3""Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa"/a has Mwamwaya taking on Vampire Weekend's melody and riff, saluting them at every opportunity, but whereas VW find their feeling in ambivalences, verses, nostalgia, Mwamwaya's version is straight gleeful - in love with life, with dancing, with the squeak yr sneakers make on the floor. [a href="http://www.myspace.com/theverybestmyspace"MySpace/download the entire album/a] (Thanks to the reliably a href="http://gorillavsbear.blogspot.com/2008/10/esau-mwamwaya-radioclit-very-best.html"keen ears amp; eyes at Gorilla vs Bear/a for catching the mixtape release!) small(photo is of a href="http://cyanatrendland.com/2008/08/13/nike-air-max-90-burger-by-olle-hemmendorff/"Olle Hemmendorff's 'Nike Air Max 90 Burger'/a)/smallimg src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/saidthegramophone/stg/~4/456378708" height="1" width="1"/

div class="image"a href="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/big_show.php?/avaxhome/f1/c4/0009c4f1.jpeg" target="_blank"img src="http://pixhost.ws/avaxhome/f1/c4/0009c4f1_medium.jpeg" id="external_img_640241"//a/divbr/ div class="center"b Linda Dominguez "How to Shine at Work" /bbr/ McGraw-Hill | 2003-05-23 | ISBN: 0071408657 | 240 pages | CHM | 1,7 MB /div

bTéléphone mobile LG KS360 :/b Ce téléphone multicolore ultramoderne est doté d'un clavier AZERTY coulissant complet, d'une fonctionnalité de fil de SMS et de la numérotation via l'écran tactile, pour discuter et accéder aux sites de réseaux sociaux avec simplicité, rapidité et convivialité. Pour ceux qui veulent rester en contact permanent avec tous leurs amis, le téléphone idéal arrive bientôt en magasin. LG, le constructeur de téléphones mobiles à l'origine des modèles Chocolate, Shine, Viewty et Secret, lance son tout dernier mobile, le LG KS360. Outre la richesse de ses fonctionnalités, le KS360 offre une apparence remarquable, avec son design lisse et épuré et ses différents coloris, notamment : titane et bleu, blanc et rose, noir et rouge, et noir et argent*.