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h4No place like home hub/h4 pNokia wants applications for its smart home box, but it's also
sniffing around for companies interested in selling the Linux-based home-automation gateway with
their own branding..../p
« Tu pourrais menvoyer un kit de culture de champignons avant linterdiction den vendre ?
» br /br /br /br /En voilà une demande étonnante ! Cest en ces termes que mon
ami polonais Piotr* me presse de faire un tour dans un smart-shop, minformant du même coup
dune nouvelle interdiction liée aux drogues douces aux Pays-Bas. En effet, au 1er
décembre, ces herboristeries spécialisées dans les psychotropes devaient avoir
retiré de leurs rayons les champignons dits hallucinogènes, soudainement devenus un
danger pour les consommateurs. Ce qui na pas lair dinquiéter mon ami : br /br /«
Ça doit coûter dans les 30 €.
Ça nous ferait un chouette cadeau de Noël avant lheure ! »br
/br /br /br /br /br /br /
ActionGear 1.0.2ActionGear is a task management application that lives in the
menubar and can also be opened with a global hot key. It supports to-dos, reference notes, and
attachments, organization into groups, capture from the screen or from an iSight, smart groups,
flags and tags, Growl integration, and other features.
WHAT'S NEWVersion 1.0.2:
Removed arrow icon in favor of a note icon next to description
Fixed data loss bug that occurred when computer crashes, ActionGear now saves to hard drive
when a task is added/updated
Fixed tags bug, smart group rules will match tags exactly now instead of partial matches
Fixed drag/drop bug for nested items into new groups
pSo it iis/i still possible for online video operators to raise money... Video distributor a
href="http://www.extend.com/" title="ExtendMedia"ExtendMedia/a has raised a $10 million third round
from existing backers Atlas, Venrock and TVM Capital, a
href="http://www.masshightech.com/stories/2008/12/01/daily11-ExtendMedia-grabs-10M-in-Series-C-funding.html"
title="MHT"MHT/a reports. ExtendMedia powers Showtime's download-to-own service, SanDisk's FanFare
video downloader and Bell Canada's video store. Based in Boston with production facilities in
Toronto, Extend's main product is its OpenCASE distribution system. It raised a $11 million in
2006, then a $12 million second round in 2007. Disclosure: ExtendMedia has previously been a
sponsor of paidContent.org events. /p pstrongRelated/strong/p ul class="related" lia
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/extendmedia-gets-12-million-second-round"ExtendMedia Gets
$12 Million Second Round/a/li /ul piOur streamlined mobile application for the BlackBerry and other
smart devices brings you the latest headlines quickly on the go. a
href="http://m.paid.mwap.at/"Click here to download/a./i /p pa
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=JljFMD"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?i=JljFMD" border="0"/img/a/pdiv class="feedflare" a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=FVfcO"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=FVfcO" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=ERjuO"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=ERjuO" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=RLGNo"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=RLGNo" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=3wk6O"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=3wk6O" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?a=lATCO"img
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=lATCO" border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/pcorg/~4/472388218" height="1" width="1"/
In spite of all the smart, multifunctional and state-of-the-art controllers that are
commercially available today, there is a continuous demand for custom physical interfaces and
configurable controllers. When using development platforms such as Arduino a lot of people will end
up with great applications and a breadboard full of components and wires.
This so called "physical interface prototype" isn't exactly portable, nor suitable for use during
a live performance, in a studio environment or as part of an interactive installation. Some
people are great with electronics and software, but when it comes to constructing an enclosure
they run into problems. Lack of supplies, suitable tools and DIY-skills are common reasons why
many projects just end up in a "temporary" cardboard case or never even get past the
breadboarding stage.
Erik writes:
The Pcb's shown are ment to expand the arduino from inputs / outputs, in the form of a shield in
a easy without having to breadboard. The ones not mentioned yet are a Arduino Relay Shield with a
Arduino Relaycontrol Shield, the 32 digital-in Shield and a 32 digital out Shield.
Nothing especially that I have in mind. Off course I have some ideas what to do with them, which
is use the shields in as inputs with the MachineCollective modules.
For a sneak-preview take a look at the physical-computing.nl, here you find still in a big beta-phase
the website, where I will hopefully soon can put a some tests and store for these shields.
What projects have you created with Arduino? What is the
best way to get started? Do you have ideas on improving physical interface issues with projects
that you or the people around you have done? Post your ideas/solutions/frustrations in the
comments and upload pictures and video to the Make Flickr pool.
a
href="http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2008/12/machine_collective_physic.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890"
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articles in Arduino/a | a
href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Fmachine_collective_physic.htmltitle=Machine%20Collective%3A%20physical%20interface%20prototypebodytext=%20From%20the%20Make%20Flickr%20Pool%3A%20Erik%20has%20created%20a%20nice%20collection%20of%20PCBs%20for%20Arduino.%20They%20are%20part%20of%20a%20larger%20project%20for%20the%20Machine%20Collective.%20In%20spite%20of%20all%20the%20smart%2C%20multifunctional%20and%20state-of-the-art%20controllers%20that%20are%20commercially...topic=tech_news"
/Digg this!/a
Home is where the heart is and, if mobile phone colossus Nokia has its way, it will soon be a place
where a smart mobile phone control centre lives. Nokia...
While fighting
continues in the North Kivu province of the DR Congo in spite of a well-publicised ceasefire,
in the relatively peaceful neighboring province of South Kivu yet another journalist has been
murdered. On the 21st of November Didace Namujimbo, who worked for the UN-backed Radio Okapi,
was shot in the head when he
was returning to his home in the evening.
Spanish journalist Hernán Zin met Namujimbo in his office when he traveled to Bukavu last
summer to report on sexual violence as a weapon of war. He
described him in his blog Viaje a la guerra [Es] (Journey into war):
Un hombre alto, de buena presencia, que hablaba un francés impoluto. El primer rostro
amigo que encontré en el Congo.
A tall man, with a smart appearance, that spoke with an impeccable French. The first friendly
face I met in the Congo.
And he added [Es]:
Además de una honda tristeza, me vuelven recuerdos de las conversaciones que mantuvimos
sobre la muerte de su compañero
Serge Maheshe, el 13 de junio de 2007. Hablamos sobre quiénes podrían ser los
culpables, pues yo tenía la intención de incluir su historia en la sección
de este blog Morir para
contar.
Besides deep sadness, I'm also reflecting on the conversations we had about the death of his
colleague Serge
Maheshe on the 13th of June 2007. We spoke about who would be the culprits, since I was
planning to include his story in the section of this blog called Morir para contar (Dying to tell).
Radio Okapi news editor Serge Maheshe had been shot in the head on the evening of the 13th of
June 2007 when he was returning home, in the exact same way as his colleague and friend Didace
Namujimbo a year and a half later. A year after Maheshe's murder, former Kinshasa Radio Okapi
journalist Cédric
Kalonji wrote [Fr] about the impunity for such crimes in the DRC:
Je constate amèrement que la justice, pilier de l’autorité de
l’État qui est le fondement même de la démocratie ne fonctionne pas au
Congo. Quand aurons-nous, et qui rétablira une justice efficace et indépendante
dans ce pays?
I bitterly realize that justice, the pillar of the State's authority which is the very
foundation of democracy, is not working in the Congo. When are we going to have, and go is going to
restore an efficient and independent judicial system in this country?
Now Cédric Kalonji wonders [Fr] again about the
state of democracy in his country:
En apprenant cette nouvelle, je suis partagé entre douleur, tristesse et colère. Je
me demande comment la démocratie s’installera durablement dans un pays où on
est visiblement allergique aux journalistes indépendants et professionnels. Devons-nous
laisser le Congo entre les seules mains des hommes forts, ceux qui sont armés?
After learning this news, I was torn between pain, sadness and anger. I asked myself how a
democracy can last in a country so visibly allergic to independent, professional journalists. Must
we leave Congo only in the hands of the strong men, those who are armed?
Kalire [Fr] thinks that Didace
Namujimbo's murder represents many others:
Comme Didace, ils sont nombreux à se faire tuer dans le Kivu.
Se faire tuer par «des inconnus», par on ne sait même pas qui: des
«rebelles»? des militaires congolais? des bandes de pillards? des voisins jaloux?
Comme Didace, ils sont des centaines à se faire tuer, violer par des
«inconnus».
Mais Didace est... était journaliste.
C’est pourquoi sa mort peut parler pour celle des autres.
Like Didace, there are many journalists being killed in the Kivus.
Being killed by “strangers”, we don't even know who: “rebels”? Congolese
servicemen? gangs of looters? jealous neighbors?
Like Didace, there are hundreds of people being killed, being raped by “strangers”.
But Didace is… was a journalist.
That's why his death can speak for that of others.
Freddy Mulongo [Fr] at the Radio Revéil FM blog, remembers the six media professionals
that have been murdered in similar circumstances during the last three years, including Didace
Namujimbo and Serge Maheshe. In his post, he summarizes
what all those cases have in common:
Les scénarios sont les mêmes: tous les journalistes congolais sont tués la
nuit, à proximité de leur domicile, on retrouve sur eux l'argent mais leur
appareils téléphoniques… Et après on arrête des
“innocents” que l'on présente comme des assassins. On organise une mascarade
de procès souvent dans un auditorat militaire, il arrive parfois que les
présumés assassins se rebiffent, pendant ce temps les vrais commanditaires courent
toujours et jouissent de l'impunité.
The scenarios are the same: all the Congolese journalists are killed at night, close to their
homes, their money is still on them but not their mobile phones… And then some
“innocent” people are arrested and presented as the assassins. A farce of a trial is
organized, often at the military court, sometimes the alleged killers fight back, and during that
time the real sleeping partners are running free and enjoying impunity.
For Freddy Mulongo, the situation of media professionals in the DRC is grim:
Ils sont journalistes et professionnels des médias en danger car comme le dit si bien
l'adage des Peuls dans l'extrême Nord du Cameroun: “Si on rase ton camarade.
Mouille-toi la tête, ton tour arrive!” A qui le tour? Qui sera le prochain victime?
They are journalists and media professionals in danger, because as the adage of the Peuls
people in Northern Cameroon goes: “If your neighbor is being shaved. Soak your head, it's
your turn!” So whose turn is it? Who is going to be the next victim?
Colette Braeckman [Fr] , a Belgian journalist and author expert in Central Africa, upon learning
about Didace Namujimbo's murder
wondered:
Comment concilier ces assassinats, qui semblent être d’origine mafieuse ou politique,
avec l’état de droit dont les élections de 2006 auraient du marquer la
naissance, avec « la fin de la récréation » solennellement
annoncée par le président le jour de son investiture?
How can we reconcile these murders, that seem to have a mafia or political motivation, with the
rule of law marked by the 2006 elections, with the “recreation is over” announced
solemnly by the President on the day of his inauguration?
Also this week Human Rights Watch has released a new report titled “We will crush you“, on
the restriction of political space in the DRC in which as Colette Braeckman notes “they
pass a very hard judgement on the two years following the elections”. In the summary of the
report they wrote:
Government agents have also threatened, arrested, tortured, and otherwise harassed journalists
and members of civil society who were linked to political opponents or who protested abuses
against them.
The summary concludes:
Elections themselves cannot bring democracy. Congolese and international actors must work to
establish an independent judiciary and a vibrant parliament with an effective opposition to
improve human rights, hold the executive to account for its actions, and counterbalance the
restriction of political space. Failure to establish such counterweights will endanger
Congo’s young democracy.
(Photo of Didace Namujimbo in
his Radio Okapi office in Bukavu, taken last May by Elia Varela Serra)
Just one day after it was officially declared that the United States was in a recession, Nokia
announced the beautiful, albeit expensive, N97, a $705 (550 Euros) smart phone. It#8217;s the
latest device in Nokia#8217;s high-end N-series of phones, and it#8217;s the first one in the
lineup to sport a touch-screen interface as well [...]div class="feedflare" a
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src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/LaptopMagazineNews/~4/Mn95RrDyk-Q" height="1" width="1"/
I met Kevin Rose co founder of Digg and Pownce a couple of
times. I found him smart, funny and engaging. I signed up for Pownce after we met, over a year
ago. But now Pownce is shutting down. I just woke up in Madrid with this email from them.
We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15,
2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new
pro accounts.
To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can
save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export.
Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not
be accessible after this date.
Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownce
Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,
The Pownce Crew
Pownce was supposed to be a “better Twitter” but Kevin, founder of Pownce has become extremely
famous on …Twitter. To me that is as if
Steve Jobs used Blackberry as his main communication platform. Not good. Because
as raw communication power goes with over 75K followers on Twitter (I only have 2500) Kevin is a
walking PR machine. This ranking will give you a sense of how famous Kevin is
on Twitter. He is only second to Barack Obama! Pity he could not use that power and the
promotional tools of Digg (Diggnation) to make Pownce the success it could have been. And Twitter
itself, as popular as it is, still needs to achieve to milestones, one is to get out of the geek
community itself and truly go mainstream and the other is to find a way to charge for its
services. As the financial crisis continues and VC´s stop funding fame and finally seek
fortune, Silicon Valley´s new motto will be “earn or die”.
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With energy conservation and easy eco-friendliness on just about everybody's agenda these days, one
of the most popular concepts is the “Smart Home,” a living environment that knows just
how much...
pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/gizmodo/2008/12/nokiasmarthomephone.jpg"
width="494" height="351" / With energy conservation and easy eco-friendliness on just about
everybody's agenda these days, one of the most popular concepts is the “Smart Home,” a
living environment that iknows/i just how much power you actually need to be comfortable and gives
you not a drop more. Nokia's hopping on that wagon with its new Nokia Home Control Center, a
Linux-based platform that will control your house's resources via your mobile phone./p pAccording
to Nokia, the NHCC will allow third-party developers to create services that are added onto the
accessibility platform. That way, you'll rarely come across an incident where some new smart home
tech you bought doesn't actually work with your main controller. NHCC works with Z-Wave, ZigBee and
KNX, three of the most common command languages for home networks. It will be launched some time in
2009. [a href="http://smarthomepartnering.com/cms/"Nokia/a via a
href="http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/12/nokia-working-on-mobile-based-smart-home-automation.php"Treehugger/a]/p
br style="clear: both;"/ a
href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=f268bc5db348cd1ebbfca9818cf5ff3dp=1"img alt=""
style="border: 0;" border="0"
src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=f268bc5db348cd1ebbfca9818cf5ff3dp=1"//a img
src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=f268bc5db348cd1ebbfca9818cf5ff3d" style="display:
none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=L2PCAkTk"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=wvt0cWBI"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=DPngQunR"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=DPngQunR" border="0"/img/a a
href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/gizmodo/full?a=EJc7qAtz"img
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/gizmodo/full?i=EJc7qAtz" border="0"/img/a /divimg
src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~4/whWZh3DsIy8" height="1" width="1"/
If you thought Randall Stross’ attack
on Tesla yesterday was in poor taste, wait until you read what Michael Wolff has to
say about MySpace. In a dinner interview with BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine, Wolff says:
…if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not
only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of
education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.
That’s just part of a much longer interview in which Wolff goes into detail on exactly why
he thinks MySpace will go the way of AOL. He also makes some blatantly incorrect statements, such
as “All of the growth now in MySpace is international,” which is incorrect.
In the last year MySpace has grown about 10% in the U.S., adding 7.5 million monthly unique users
to a total of 76.4 million. Non-U.S. users have grown from 45 million to 54 million, a 17%
increase. (source: Comscore)
And those comments about MySpace users being poor and uneducated aren’t entirely correct
either. Of MySpace’s U.S. users, 52% make more than $60,000 per year, which is far from
poor. 23% make more than $100,000 per year. Just 11.6% make less than $25k/year.
Facebook’s numbers are 65% and 33%, respectively, which is more impressive. But MySpace has
30 million more U.S. users than Facebook (76 million v. 46 million), so MySpace’s aggregate
numbers are higher. 17.6 million U.S. MySpace users make more than $100,000 per year.
Also true of MySpace users, according to Nielsen: 63% own homes, 86% are registered voters and
28% are college graduates. Facebook has similar numbers.
The problem with bleeding edge devices is that they quickly become old and irrelevant. Replaced
with the latest gizmo, old smart phones and PDAs tend to find their way to a drawer or a landfill
after about 2 or 3 years.
It's not that most of us want a throwaway society. It's that most of the gadgets we buy are
designed to expire, with hardware that cannot be user serviced, batteries that cannot be easily
replaced, and with firmware and software stacks that cannot be modified to accommodate the
future. Proprietary. Closed. User subjugating. Stupid.
One half of the solution is to choose open hardware and open source whenever you have the choice.
The other part of the solution is to hack your closed devices to do your bidding. Thankfully,
there are a lot of people working hard to make the latter possible, and you can run Free Software
on everything from Palms to iPhones.
We caught this note from Hans-Christoph Steiner on the dorkbot nyc mailng list. He's currently working on a project
called Reware, which is attempting to bring a common hacker-friendly Linux distro to a variety of
PDAs:
We've been working at Eyebeam since July on making it easy to hack old devices and run new
software on them. We now have our first Reware HOWTO video, showing the basics of how to use a
Reware image yourself, then it illustrates some of the Pd patches we've made.
Coming soon, a image for running Pd, Python, and Lua programs on PDAs, as well as a HOWTO for
making Pd patches for 1-5G iPods. The key idea is to turn old PDAs, mobile phones, etc. into
something like an Arduino, where you can easily upload your own code to the device.
Currently Reware supports several Palm devices, but with iPods on the radar and a number of
Pocket PCs that can run Linux, there's a lot of potential here. Just think about all those
200-400MHz ARM processors just waiting for something interesting to do.
The problem with bleeding edge devices is that they quickly become old and irrelevant. Replaced
with the latest gizmo, old smart phones and PDAs tend to find their way to a drawer or a landfill
after about 2 or 3 years.
It's not that most of us want a throwaway society. It's that most of the gadgets we buy are
designed to expire, with hardware that cannot be user serviced, batteries that cannot be easily
replaced, and with firmware and software stacks that cannot be modified to accommodate the
future. Proprietary. Closed. User subjugating. Stupid.
One half of the solution is to choose open hardware and open source whenever you have the choice.
The other part of the solution is to hack your closed devices to do your bidding. Thankfully,
there are a lot of people working hard to make the latter possible, and you can run Free Software
on everything from Palms to iPhones.
We caught this note from Hans-Christoph Steiner on the dorkbot nyc mailng list. He's currently working on a project
called Reware, which is attempting to bring a common hacker-friendly Linux distro to a variety of
PDAs:
We've been working at Eyebeam since July on making it easy to hack old devices and run new
software on them. We now have our first Reware HOWTO video, showing the basics of how to use a
Reware image yourself, then it illustrates some of the Pd patches we've made.
Coming soon, a image for running Pd, Python, and Lua programs on PDAs, as well as a HOWTO for
making Pd patches for 1-5G iPods. The key idea is to turn old PDAs, mobile phones, etc. into
something like an Arduino, where you can easily upload your own code to the device.
Currently Reware supports several Palm devices, but with iPods on the radar and a number of
Pocket PCs that can run Linux, there's a lot of potential here. Just think about all those
200-400MHz ARM processors just waiting for something interesting to do.
a
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href="http://digg.com/submit?url=blog.makezine.com%2Farchive%2F2008%2F12%2Freware_hack_your_old_pda.htmltitle=Reware%20-%20hack%20your%20old%20PDAbodytext=%20The%20problem%20with%20bleeding%20edge%20devices%20is%20that%20they%20quickly%20become%20old%20and%20irrelevant.%20Replaced%20with%20the%20latest%20gizmo%2C%20old%20smart%20phones%20and%20PDAs%20tend%20to%20find%20their%20way%20to%20a%20drawer%20or%20a%20landfill%20after%20about%202%20or...topic=tech_news"
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pa href="http://www.allisports.com/node/3368?type=sportid=341gid=4979"img
src="http://paidcontent.org/images/uploads/1040-reid_charles_railjam_port_07_0.jpg" alt="image"
align="right" width="170" height="196" //aSix months after announcing an action sports joint
venture built on the Action Sports Tour, divisions of NBC Universal (a
href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=GE" class="ticker"
title="GE"NYSE: GE/a) and Viacom (a
href="http://finance.paidcontent.org/paidcontent?Page=QUOTETicker=VIA" class="ticker"
title="VIA"NYSE: VIA/a) are already revamping the concept—name and all. Meet
Alli, the a href="http://www.allisports.com" title="Alliance of Action Sports"Alliance of Action
Sports/a, a combo of former AST events like The Dew Tour with the Maloof Money Cup, AMA Motocross
Championship and King of Wake events. (Maybe they're planning a revenue stream from people
searching for Alli, the diet drug.) The spin itself could be an action sport as NBC Sports and MTVN
Music Group pitch the notion that "the groundbreaking" partnership is only getting bigger and
better by adding skateboarding, wakeboarding and more motocross, and will be better positioned to
extract money from the niche sports. But the move comes just weeks after Wasserman Media Group a
href="http://www.paidcontent.org/entry/419-wasserman-cuts-41-percent-of-sportnet-staff-to-rationalize-business-cut/"
title="slashed 41 percent of the staff of Sportnet"slashed 41 percent of the staff of Sportnet/a,
with its intense action sports emphasis, to "rationalize" the business in the difficult
environment. /p p The two media companies co-own the Alliance, airing the programming across their
networks and other platforms. Allisports.com has been launched as the digital hub, with a social
network "where fans can connect with the sports and athletes by joining the Alliance." Members of
"Flux" communities automatically have an Alli account. Online sports vet Doug Kirk (NBA, SI, ESPN)
will oversee the hub as digital VP, according to a
href="http://http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/60718" title="SBJ"SBJ/a; Alli also plans
to add several sales and digital staffers. a href="http://expn.go.com/expn/story?id=3736510"
title="Release"Release/a. /p p bSBJ/b: The event deals are a mixed set ranging from revenue sharing
for the Maloof Money Cup and AMA Motocross Championships in exchange for air time and production
costs. King of Wake signed over digital rights to Alli; the event will be streamed on
allisports.com. /p p iPhoto Credit: a
href="http://www.allisports.com/node/3368?type=sportid=341gid=4979"Alli/a/i /p piOur streamlined
mobile application for the BlackBerry and other smart devices brings you the latest headlines
quickly on the go. a href="http://m.paid.mwap.at/"Click here to download/a./i /p pa
href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~a/pcorg?a=mFYq2k"img
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src="http://feeds.feedburner.com/~f/pcorg?i=DpXYO" border="0"/img/a /divimg
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Category: Lifestyle
Released: Dec 01, 2008
Price: $0.99
Description:
Great Collection of Inspirational Cards with smart and funny quotes from the most outstanding
people of all the times. Each day a new Inspiration Card will be opened to inspire you for great
achievements, positive thinking or just to cheer you up.
Note: The description above is the official one supplied by the application
developer and does not necessarily represent the views or opinions of this site or its staff.
img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/hotel_sidi_driss_t.jpg'/img:
Photo: a href="http://flickr.com/photos/scottroberts/2192864663/"scottroberts/Flickr/a p Whether
your fantasy hotel is a citeStar Wars/cite-style cave dwelling or a Hobbit hole in New Zealand,
specialty accommodations around the world will fulfill your nerdy needs. /p p Other hotels geek out
with crazy gear, from Apple- and Microsoft-themed suites to virtual golf courses. And while WiFi
has become a common hotel offering, a high-tech hotel in the Middle East extends internet access
all the way to its private beach. /p p These and other specialty accommodations make Wired.com's
list of top geek hotels. /p p stronga
href="http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hôtel_Sidi_Driss"Hôtel Sidi Driss/a, Matmata,
Tunisia/strong /p p strongLeft:/strong The Tunisian town of Matmata is riddled with a
href="http://lexicorient.com/e.o/troglod.htm"troglodyte dwellings/a, vertical caves dug out by
humans and turned into homes. The Hôtel Sidi Driss is one such desert delight. /p p
strongGeek factor:/strong Does the cave hotel look strangely familiar? The interior was used as a
citeStar Wars/cite filming location mdash; it's the Lars' homestead on Tatooine. /p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/hotel_sax_t.jpg'/img: Photo
courtesy Hotel Saxpstronga href="http://www.hotelsaxchicago.com/TheMicrosoftExperience/"Hotel
Sax/a, Chicago/strong /p p Plenty of businesses have gotten into bed with Microsoft. Now you can,
too: Chicago's Hotel Sax has a partnership with the software giant that lets weary travelers relax
into "the Microsoft Experience." /p pstrongGeek factor:/strong The Studio, Hotel Sax's
"Entertainment Lounge" available to all guests features Microsoft gear like Xbox 360s and Zunes.
Don't want to share? Book your own private "Entertainment Technology" studio or suite./p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/hotel_1000_t.jpg'/img: Photo
courtesy Hotel 1000pstronga href="http://www.hotel1000seattle.com/"Hotel 1000/a, Seattle/strong /p
p The operators of this high-tech hotel sank millions of dollars into the latest gear. With
luxuries like ubiquitous WiFi, HD TVs and a "fully converged IP infrastructure" that allows for
internet-enabled personalization of everything from room temperatures to the art on the walls,
Hotel 1000 was a shoe-in for citeHospitality Technology/cite magazine's 2008 award for overall
technology innovation. /p p strongGeek factor:/strong After playing around on the hotel's virtual
golf course, just flip the electronic "do not disturb" sign to keep hotel staff or annoying
co-workers at bay. /p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/avante_t.jpg'/img: Photo:
Mark Darleyp stronga href="http://www.jdvhotels.com/hotels/avante/"Hotel Avante/a, Mountain View,
California/strong /p p Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Hotel Avante is making a big play
for big players. The 91-room boutique hotel bills itself mdash; and its guests mdash; as "smart,
visionary, iconoclastic and artistic." /p p strongGeek factor:/strong To further its "creative
clubhouse" atmosphere, each room includes an "executive toy box" with a yo-yo, an Etch A Sketch, a
Rubik's Cube, playing cards and a Slinky. /p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/pod_hotel_akihabara_t.jpg'/img:
Photo: a href="http://flickr.com/photos/maurizio_mwg/2515790491/"maurizio_mwg/Flickr/ap stronga
href="http://www.capsuleinn.com/"Capsule Inn Akihabara/a, Tokyo/strong /p p Capsule Inn Akihabara
is one of only a few places to stay in "Electric Town," Tokyo's anime/otaku hub and the site of the
largest electronics market in the world. The tiny capsule rooms look like washing machines from the
outside. /p p strongGeek factor:/strong The hotel's sleeping units are "designed in the image of a
jet airplane's cockpit" with every device in the capsule mdash; TV, radio, alarm clock, lighting
mdash; designed to be controlled from a sleeping position. /p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/pod_hotel_t.jpg'/img: Photo
courtesy The Pod Hotel p stronga href="http://www.thepodhotel.com/"The Pod Hotel/a, New York/strong
/p p With free WiFi, iPod docks, relatively inexpensive rooms (called "a
href="http://www.thepodhotel.com/yourpod.html"pods/a") and the opportunity to make new friends in
its shared bathrooms, The Pod Hotel in Manhattan's Midtown East neighborhood is making a play for
the Facebook generation. Antisocial guests will be pleased to know that some rooms have private
baths. /p p strongGeek factor:/strong Nicknamed the "Facebook Hotel," this place has its own a
href="http://podculture.thepodhotel.com/PodCultureHome/tabid/36/Default.aspx"social networking
site/a to help guests find someone for dinner, drinks, shopping or whatever. /p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/tribecca_grand_istudio_t.jpg'/img:
Photo courtesy Tribeca Grand Hotelpstronga href="http://www.tribecagrand.com/"Tribeca Grand
Hotel/a, New York/strong /p p With its plush bar and 98-seat a
href="http://www.tribecagrand.com/meetings/grandscreen.htm"screening room/a, the Tribeca Grand is
definitely swanky. But book an iStudio and you'll be pampered, Apple-style. /p p strongGeek
factor:/strong The a href="http://www.tribecagrand.com/rooms/istudio.htm"iStudio rooms/a. They're
decked out with Apple products, including a Power Mac G5, photo- and video-editing software and an
iPod. /p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/woodlyn_park_t.jpg'/img:
Photo: a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/stephenr/106085993/"stephenr/Flickr/a pstronga
href="http://www.woodlynpark.co.nz/"Woodlyn Park/a, New Zealand/strong /p p Woodlyn Park is home to
Billy Black's Kiwi Culture Show, with sheep shearing and a dancing pig. But the real star of the
complex is a href="http://www.woodlynpark.co.nz/thehobbitmotel.html"The Hobbit Motel/a, two
polystyrene-block units with circular doors built into a hillside. /p p strongGeek factor:/strong
You can pretend you're a hobbit. /p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/ice_hotel_t.jpg'/img: Photo:
Ben Nilsson/Big Ben Productionspstronga href="http://www.icehotel.com/"Icehotel/a,
Jukkasjärvi, Sweden/strong /p p The Icehotel says it offers "an experience of a lifetime as
well as an encounter with art and design that will surprise your senses." Since it's made of ice
and snow, that claim sounds perfectly believable. You can book hot or cold accommodations at the
Icehotel. Each ice room is designed by an artist, such as the one shown here by Andrea Thomson. Got
the shivers? Heat up from the inside out at the a
href="http://www.icehotel.com/Content/AbsolutIcebar/"Absolut Icebar/a. /p p strongGeek
factor:/strong The ice palace in the Bond flick citeDie Another Day/cite was inspired by this
hotel. /p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/emirates_t.jpg'/img: Photo
courtesy Emirates Palace Hotelp stronga
href="http://www.emiratespalace.com/en/home/index.htm"Emirates Palace Hotel/a, Abu Dhabi, United
Arab Emirates/strong /p p Everything's superdeluxe at this Middle Eastern resort hotel, and it's
even better if you step up a notch: All suites boast 61-inch plasma TVs (regular rooms have puny
50-inchers). All guest rooms have handheld computers that control switches and outlets mdash; set
your language preference for the interactive screens upon check-in. /p p strongGeek factor:/strong
Free WiFi reaches all poolside areas and even the private beach. /p img
src='http://www.wired.com/images/slideshow/2008/12/gallery_geek_hotels/tomo_t.jpg'/img: Photo
courtesy Joie de Vivre Hospitalityp stronga href="http://www.jdvhotels.com/tomo/"Hotel Tomo/a, San
Francisco/strong /p p From anime-inspired wall pain
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
(
)
If you thought Randall Stross’ 
Category: Lifestyle