Engineered to grip sixty folded bills, or an equivalent thickness of cash and plastic, the Duck BillTM Money Clip is an affordable gift ($36, or $46 with engraving) that gives a good financial bite. As a large capacity money clip, it is designed to be a wallet alternative. (PRWeb Nov 21, 2008)

Read the full story at http://www.prweb.com/releases/money_clip/duck_bill/prweb1654904.htm

div style="margin-bottom: 10px; font-size: 10px;"posted by Neil/div a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6L1zPW0YW7k/SSdHmeCUOwI/AAAAAAAAL9c/6ucLxvezjQQ/s1600-h/Coraline-movie-poster.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 270px; height: 400px;" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_6L1zPW0YW7k/SSdHmeCUOwI/AAAAAAAAL9c/6ucLxvezjQQ/s400/Coraline-movie-poster.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5271260615083834114" border="0" //abr /There's an official CORALINE trailer out....br /br /object width="425" height="344"param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/nZI3X8advPYamp;hl=enamp;fs=1"param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/nZI3X8advPYamp;hl=enamp;fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"/embed/objectbr /br /It's out in English, but this version of it is it in Italian. Because everything sounds better in Italian.br /br /A few of you have written in asking if I'd done an Alan Moore and taken my name off the film, or if I'd had a falling out with the studio, as my name isn't mentioned in this trailer, just Henry Selick's -- and no, not at all. Nobody's name except Henry's is mentioned in the trailer, and that has more to do with Focus wanting to make sure that if they invoked span style="font-style: italic;"The Nightmare Before Xmas/span, people wouldn't then assume this was a Tim Burton film, and go and see it -- or stay away -- based on that. (On the international poster -- above -- you won't find my namespan style="font-style: italic;" or /spanHenry's.) I suppose it's a marketing decision.br /br /I chatted to Henry today, and am really looking forward to seeing a finished film -- the last twenty minutes of the thing weren't done the last time I was sent anything. And it has music...br /br /Incidentally, thea href="http://www.amazon.com/Coraline-Movie-Collectors-Neil-Gaiman/dp/0061649708/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8amp;s=booksamp;qid=1227317385amp;sr=1-1" Coraline Movie edition /ais now out, with an essay by me in the back, and another by Henry Selick...br /br /a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513N7j%2Bs8bL._SS500_.jpg"img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 500px; height: 500px;" src="http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/513N7j%2Bs8bL._SS500_.jpg" alt="" border="0" //abr /br /I've now assembled the same list of passwords for the CORALINE website -- a href="http://www.coraline.com/"www.coraline.com/a -- that a href="http://cleolinda.livejournal.com/683120.html"everyone else with access to a search engine has/a:br /br /span style="font-style: italic;"span style="font-weight: bold;"stopmotion /span: the Biggest Smallest movie ever made.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"buttoneyes/span : Meet the cast...br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"moustachio /span: Bo Henry, art director of Coraline, shows off his remarkable moustache tricks.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"armpithair /span: Every hair in the film was placed there by hand...br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"puppetlove/span : Director Henry Selick explains what it must be like for the puppets in the film.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"sweaterxxs/span : Micro-knitting. That's right: micro-knitting./spanbr /br /...br /br /A small collection of MAD fold-ins are up at a href="http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/28/arts/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html"http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2008/03/28/arts/20080330_FOLD_IN_FEATURE.html/a. I cannot imagine a better time-waster than if someone were to put every span style="font-style: italic;"Mad/span Fold-in up on line. I could click my way through them forever...br /br /...br /br /I've started playing with the T-mobile G1. First reactions -- I like it, mostly. It feels good in your hand. It's reasonably intuitive. (Bizarrely, when it isn't intuitive and I've had to head into manual land, the phone's software and the PDF of the manual do not always agree with each other.) I've had fun making ring tones, creating galleries. The way that your contacts list is also your Gmail contacts is mostly terrific (although it won't let me create entries that have the same email address as someone already on the list).br /br /The things I don't like about it so far seem huge and obvious: no Blogger app (when there's a LiveJournal app and several others) seems a huge omission, seeing it's from Google; it can't read or open PDF files yet; you can send it pictures and watch them as a slideshow, but you can't save them; the built in Gmail app can't do anywhere near the things that the gmail program on my N73 can do; the camera is about the same standard as the iPhone's, which is to say, a bit span style="font-style: italic;"meh/span. I like having a real keyboard but wish it was a tiny bit bigger -- I find myself typing with fingernails. Battery life is fine unless you've got Wifi on.br /br /More reactions after it's been on the road with me and been used for a bit.br /br /...br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Hi Neil,br /br /I just had a quick question on the span style="font-style: italic;"Who Killed Amanda Palmer/span book. I have the album already (and have listened to it countless times. It's beautiful).br /br /I was going to go and order the book, but when I went to the site, I found that the book seems to only be in packages. I was wondering if there are any plans to sell the book alone, or whether I should buy one of the packages. The extra CD could make a nice gift.br /br /Thanks,br /Nate/spanbr /br /Let's see... the book is being desgned right now, then it goes off to the printers. The people who bought the package version will get theirs first. Depending on where in the world it's printed, this could be a couple of months before anyone else. Then, when copies come in from the printer, they'll go on sale -- probably in the early Spring. I think.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Neil!br /br /I'm re-reading American Gods, and I'm at the point where Shadow first meets Sam. At the diner, Shadow reads a newspaper story saying "local farmers wanted to hang dead crows around the town to frighten the others away; ornithologists said it wouldn't work, that the living crows would simply eat the dead ones. The locals were implacable. 'When they see the corpses of their friends,' said a spokesman, 'they'll know we don't want them here.'"br /br /Neil, I don't have Time Enough for Love here at school, but wasn't there something very similar to that in that story? Was your dead crow story a little Heinlein homage?br /br /And OMG - just realized that Sam's last name is Black Crow, and that story was about crows. Wow. Sneaky of you.br /br /Chrisbr /br //spanbr /br /When I'm driving through small-town America I make a point of buying local papers in towns where I stop, and reading them, preferably in local coffee shops. I read that in a small town as I went, and thought "It belongs in my book". So I put it there.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Dear Mr Gaiman,br /I recently finished reading M is For Magic, and I have a question about the story Chivalry. Sir Galahad was considered the holiest of Arthur's knights; so, how coul he have obtained an apple from the garden of the Hespiredes? The Hespiredes were a part of greek mythology which was actually a religeon based on monotheism. So, how could he get something that his religeon said didn't exist? I am sorry to bother you with this question, but it has sparked my interest.br /br / - a young and curious reader/spanbr /br /He had to travel a long way.br /br /I don't think it would have been a problem for early Christians, of whom Galaad would have been one: in span style="font-style: italic;"The Golden Legend/span, which was the most popular book of stories about saints, collected in the thriteenth century, Saint Nicholas (the one who became Santa Claus) went up against the Goddess Diana. Then again, Narnia, a most monotheistic world, had more than its share of nymphs (just like the Hesperides) not to mention such gods as Bacchus and Silenus (and Santa Claus again) wandering around. So I would not worry about it, were I you.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"I loved the link to the Sandman Death 20th Anniversary Bookends you put up.br /When should they be coming out and how much of a dent will they put on my wallet, please?/spanbr /br /According to a quick Google, a href="http://www.toymania.com/news/messages/9960.shtml"http://www.toymania.com/news/messages/9960.shtml/a says they came out in September, and they will cost a wallet-twinging $295. (Ouch.) There are only a thousand of them.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"This one has almost nothing to do with you Neil, but since his website is still in the makings I thought you could perhaps forward this to him.br /I was very sad (like a child whose told there won't be a Christmas this year) to learn that Dave McKean's appearance this weekend in Buenos Aires was canceled.br /In the event's blog they posted Dave's email in which he mentioned he couldn't make it because a date was changed (which sounds reasonable). But it remained unclear if it was the date of ANIMATE (the Buenos Aires event) which was changed, or if it was one of Dave's previous engagements./spanbr /br /Dave McKean said...br /br /span style="font-style: italic;"Hi Neil,br /br /Please post this, as I certainly do feel very bad letting people down:br /br /I agreed to go to Animate in the summer and had to organize a militarybr /operation of friends and family to take care of our son Liam duringbr /the proposed week, as he is appearing as Gavroche in Les Miserables inbr /London and has to be accompanied to and from the theatre each day he'sbr /on, and also be available on 12 hours notice every day in case anotherbr /actor drops out.br /We managed this, so both Clare and I could make the trip to Buenosbr /Aires, a city we've always wanted to visit.br /Unfortunately, the date was changed by the organizers, and so we hadbr /to re-arrange.br /More importantly, it became obvious that the festival was nowbr /colliding with a variety of previous commitments falling in the latterbr /half of November, so I decided with great sadness to withdraw thisbr /year.br /I hate letting people down, and I was really looking forward to thebr /trip (though not the 24 hours travelling each way, I admit!).br /br /Hopefully there will be another event, an animation or film festival,br /that will allow me to visit the city in the future. Or maybe we'llbr /just go for a holiday, and do a signing in a bookstore.br /br /Thanks,br /Dave/spanbr /br /(I think it's worth pointing out that ten-year old Liam McKean -- owner of the original Pig Puppet -- is in span style="font-style: italic;"Les Miserables/span in London. If you happen to go and see it, check if he's in your performance. Get his autograph. Mention pigs. Make his day.) And that reminds me...br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Hi Neil,br /br /I thought you might like to let people know that Dave McKean is on the BBC4 programme "Picture Book" talking about his illustations for David Almond's 'The Savage' and how he was inspired by Comic Book's art. The programme is airing (again) at 19.10 on Saturday and 3.30 on Sunday, and is also currently available on the BBC i-player. a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fhnb6/comingup"http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00fhnb6/comingup/abr /br /Thank you again for all the stories,br /br /Marjorie/spanbr /br /You're welcome.br /br /span style="font-weight: bold;"Hi,br /br /Just read that you completed "the Dying Earth story." Huh? Is there a new collection of Dying Earth stories coming out? Is it an homage to Jack Vance's work, or what?br /br /Did a search for "dying earth" on your website and saw no other mention of it.br /br /Thanks,br /Chrisbr /br //spanspanIt's for a href="http://www.subterraneanpress.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PRODamp;Product_Code=martin07amp;Category_Code=PREamp;Product_Count=24"this/a./spanspan style="font-weight: bold;"br //spanbr /...br /br /And finally, Larry Marder talks about why a href="http://cgi.ebay.com/NEIL-GAIMAN-SANDMAN-Sketch-With-Larry-Marder_W0QQitemZ140282064832QQcmdZViewItemQQptZLH_DefaultDomain_0?hash=item140282064832amp;_trksid=p3911.c0.m14amp;_trkparms=72%3A1205%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318"the drawing we did together/a is so special at a href="http://larrymarder.blogspot.com/2008/11/neil-gaimanlarry-marder-drawing-up-for.html"http://larrymarder.blogspot.com/2008/11/neil-gaimanlarry-marder-drawing-up-for.html/a. div class="label_list" style="margin-top: 20px; padding-left: 15px; text-indent: -15px; font-size: 78%/1.4em; font-family: 'Trebuchet MS',Trebuchet,Arial,Verdana,sans-serif; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: .1em;"strongLabels:/strongnbsp; a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/Coraline%20movie" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"Coraline movie/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/liam%20mckean" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"liam mckean/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/Jack%20Vance" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"Jack Vance/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/Dave%20McKean" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"Dave McKean/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/crows" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"crows/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/why%20I%20was%20disappointed%20they%20cut%20Bacchus%20out%20of%20the%20Prince%20Caspian%20Movie" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"why I was disappointed they cut Bacchus out of the Prince Caspian Movie/a, a href="http://journal.neilgaiman.com/search/label/G1" style="color: #999; text-transform: uppercase;"G1/a/div

Here's a fashionable wallet for camera users who want...

Heres a fashionable wallet for camera users who want...

In October 2007, while most tech media attention was focused on the OiNK raid, another large site got police attention. TV-Links, which linked to videos on YouTube-like sites was raided and shutdown, with the admin arrested. A year later, we catch up with the ex-admin of TV-Links for the entire story.

When it became apparent that TV-Links.co.uk had been raided by police and the admin arrested, the news was met with some disbelief. TV-Links was a site that linked to videos that were hosted on video sharing sites like YouTube. It carried absolutely no illicit video content of its own.

Nevertheless, following an investigation by UK Trading Standards, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and the police, the admin was arrested. At the time, FACT claimed that he was detained due to “offenses relating to the facilitation of copyright infringement on the Internet.” Except there was a problem.

There is no criminal offense of ‘facilitation of copyright infringement’ under English law. There would have been at least a civil offense if TV-Links had hosted the videos themselves, but they did not. Sites like YouTube and Dailymotion did, but the police or anti-piracy groups didn’t go after these giants. Indeed, the police themselves seemed to disagree with FACT’s reasoning for the raid, saying that the admin had been arrested for “supplying property with a registered trade mark without permission.”

…which raised another problem. The Trade Marks Act 1994 (specifically section 92) was designed to deal with physical, real-world counterfeit goods. Supplying links, if anything, could only be considered a service - definitely not a sale of physical goods. Getting a conviction on these grounds would be tricky, if not impossible. Considering the problems highlighted above, it’s no surprise that the TV-Links case has disappeared from the news radar.

TorrentFreak tracked down the now ex-admin of the site, 26 year-old Dave Rock, for the lowdown on this important case which seems to ask two questions: Can someone be held responsible when 3rd parties merely link to copyright works that are hosted by someone else, and furthermore, does this constitute a criminal offense under an act designed to protect physical goods?

It all starts on the morning of 18th October, just five days before the police raided OiNK. Dave had some unwanted visitors. At 06:20, two police officers, three FACT members, and around five Trading Standards officials descended on Dave’s home. Fortunately for him, in his case the media wasn’t tipped off, so there were no photographers and reporters outside his house. Alan Ellis of OiNK was not so lucky.

“The police and Trading Standards officers were always polite and professional, I wasn’t man handled like you see with the over acting police on the TV,” Dave told us. “I was arrested as soon as I opened the door, not cuffed and was allowed to grab a few bits, like my wallet and phone. They seized my laptop, my old PC and annoyingly, my girlfriends PC too, along with random CDs and four or five old hard drives, ranging between 8GB to 15gb.”

TV-Links Homepage (large)

When we asked Dave what was on the search warrant, he said: “They ticked Video Recording Act 1984 - Section 16A and Trade Marks Act 1994 - Section 93. But, thinking about some of the questions during the interview I got the impression they were looking for DVD copying kit or they hoped to find this type of thing. FACT’s website always boasts about DVD pirate busts.”

The police officers then took Dave to the station where he was questioned. Not by the police, but by people from Trading Standards and FACT, a well known private anti-piracy company-come-lobby group. Quite why a private company is allowed to directly question someone in a criminal case that they may wish to prosecute privately is another question, and one that many people will find unpalatable.

It seemed that both outfits were disappointed, they must have expected more than just hyperlinks. In common with thousands of forums around the world, Dave didn’t know any of the TV-Links staff personally, and obviously didn’t know anything about the users. Almost 75% of the site’s visitors came from China, 10% from the US and next popular was the UK, at just 3.8%. Hardly a threat to Great Britain Ltd, but of course the implication was that Dave was making money. The reality was that he was receiving around $2 to $5 per day in donations from random site users, which he used to cover the server costs.

After six hours, Dave was released - without being charged and with no restrictions. Now, well over a year later, not much has changed. For the last 6 months or so, Dave has had no contact with the police and no contact through his lawyer with FACT or (Gloucester) Trading Standards. In fact, GTS has no further involvement in the case and has deferred to FACT, just in case they want to make a private prosecution. But, everything has gone very quiet.

TorrentFreak asked Dave if it had ever been raised that he was arrested under laws ill-placed to deal with the situation. He told us, “When it comes to law there isn’t really any point arguing after the point, you need to concentrate on identifying [in this case] how FACT will interpret the current law and, if/when this ends up in court, how they will use it to their advantage.”

Until then, it just seems like a waiting game. “I guess you could call it being in limbo, but recently I haven’t given it much thought, I’m just getting on with my life,” Dave told us. “The only thing that’s a little annoying is that FACT still have all the gear seized by GTS, apparently they’ve been given it for “forensic analysis”. Do I hear you cry ‘breach of Data Protection Act‘, for passing private data to a private company? Again this is something we are still looking into.”

So how on earth did TV-Links end up on the radar in the first place? Why was such significance put on the site and why did the response include a raid with so many people in attendance from the police, government trading standards and Hollywood-funded private company FACT?

“One thing I’d like to mention, Gloucester Trading Standards were always polite and professional,” said Dave. “In my eyes they were led up the garden path by FACT. My personal opinion is that Gloucester Trading Standards were lead to believe I was copying and selling DVDs. But, when they entered my home they only found crappy old PC gear, Laptop and no DVDs, and lost all interest - if they were ever interested in the first place.”

Despite the lack of interest and indeed grounds for a conviction, it doesn’t change the fact that TV-Links is gone as a result of the above actions. Why did it even find a place in people’s lives in the first instance? Dave believes it’s down to sheer lack of choice. “TV-Links and other linking sites are only around because the big media companies haven’t supplied the viewing public with any viable alternatives, at least until recently in the UK. The BBC iPlayer is very good, but it’s a shame it’s only 7 days of TV.”

So, with the authorities backing away, what are the chances of TV-Links making a comeback? “Running the site did take up all of my free time, it was good fun running it but I’m happy I now have my evenings and weekends free,” Dave told us. He has no intention of bringing the site back, particularly since a TV-Links.co.uk replacement site popped up many months ago at TV-Links.ws.

Finally, when sites are busted, many people are interested in exactly how the owners were tracked down by the authorities. With TV-Links, the techniques weren’t mysterious at all. They didn’t need to be. The reason why it was so easy is the very reason Dave felt free to run the site in the first place:

“To be honest I didn’t really attempt to hide my ID, as under UK Law linking to another site isn’t illegal, so I didn’t see the need.”

Post from: TorrentFreak

Cheap wholesale shoes International Trade Co.,Ltd., is professional supplier of name branded goods, including Shoes, handbags, Wallet, Jacket, Hoodies, T-shirt, Jeans, Hats, Watch , ipods, MP4, toys,Sunglass,carnival wigs and so on, and the products list as following:
(1)Jacket: Bape,Abercrombie&Fitch ARMANI, LRG, BURBERRY, Prada, POLO, Calvin klein, D&G Jacket etc.
(2)Jeans:Artful dodgger ,True religion,Gstar,BBC,LRG,DIESEL,Evisu,Armani,Levis,R ed monkey,Rock Republic,POLO,D&G, ERSACE,Gucci,Seven jeans etc.
(3)T-shirt: Rulph lauren,Luis Vuitton,D&G, JUICY COUTURE ,gino green,Coogi ,EDHARDY,GRAIL.,ARMANI,LACOSTE,VERSACE,BURBERRY,Ab ercrombi e&Fitch,Bape,Ddsuared
(4)Handbag: FENDI,CHLOE,CHOACH,Prada, Luis Vuitton, CHANEL,HERMES,GUCCI, JUICY COUTURE,DIESEL, Chriatian Dior,VERSACE,handbag etc.
(5)Hoodies: Bape,BBC,LRG,EVS,10Deep hoodies etc.
(6)Watch: Chanel,PATEK PHILIP,ROLEX,OMEGA,Breitling,glashiittee,taghever Brand watch.
(7)sunglasses:channel.Louise Vuitton,gucci,burberry.DolceGABBANA,PRADA.VERSACE, Ray ban,okley and so on
(8)caps:new era,edhardy,nba,Abercrombie&Fitch,Bape,Rocy,volcom
(9)Electronic:Apple MP3,APPLE MP4,APPLE IPOD,nonbrand mp3 mp4
stable quality, reasonable price, timely and safety delivery, and outstanding services
more information: pls open our web: www.cheap-wholesale-shoes.net
Msn&e-mail: wholesale_shoes@live.cn
Yahoo&e-mail: cheap_wholesale@yahoo.cn

A couple of weeks ago I headed over to Belgium as part of my ongoing TechCrunch Euro Tour, to get a taste of the local web/mobile entrepreneur community (BTW, come to the London and Helsinki events soon). I hooked-up with another TechCrunch writer, Robin Wauters, who had kindly arranged a TechCrunch Belgium meetup in Gent. Gent is quickly becoming one of the main places to startup in that country, as it’s a short drive from Brussels (which has the main airport and the excellent Eurostar), but Gent is cheaper, somewhat prettier and is a big university city with lots more potential talent to draw from. The startups each pitched their wares and here’s what I found. [Apologies for the delay in posting this, I've been visiting tech companies in China, of which, more later]. Thanks to Bart Claeys for the photos, below.

Adhese Control
Adhese has come up with a way of tracking the rich media ad campaigns increasingly littering the Web. It can tell you where your Flash creative is appearing and what people are doing with it, even if it goes through a network like Doubleclick. It will report impressions and clicks and interations like numbers of mouse rollovers etc. Interestingly, it will also track Flex / Air apps. You just add a small line of code to the banner or app. The cost is impression based. [Crunchbase]

Attentio
In May this year Attentio, which develops technology in the social media analytics (sentiment, topics, & brand profiles), won €1.5Million in backing. Their showcase blog trend search Trendpedia.com is very interesting - here’s TechCrunch’s trend graph. Their Attentio Brand Dashboard (SaaS) is sold through advertising and PR agencies which use it for issue detection, influencer identification, marketing ROI and basically to understand their word of mouth brand. Their main differentiation is being able to do this across European languages and sources. The average selling price is Euro 15-25,000 per year. They have deals now with the likes of Microsoft, Johnson & Johnson and Lexus. It’s an interesting market - similar trend tracker Umbria was acquired and TNS bought Cymfony. According to Gartner the “Social media analysis” industry will be worth $3bn by 2013. But of course, at the end of the day this is still anapp that has to be sold by humans, rather than scale virally across the web. [Crunchbase]

Casius.com
Casius is a service aimed at home owners who want to find trusted tradesmen, but they’ve been a long time coming. They raised EUR4m in 2000-2004 but burnt the lot, did an MBO in 2005 and since then are generating EUR6m per year in revenue from their service in Belgium. Tradespeople pay to go on the service and are matched to customers, not unline the UK-based MyBuilder.com. I rather wonder why it’s taken them so long to really get going and question the strategy of “getting big in Belgium first,” but the model seems predicated on local salesforces selling the service into the trade. That doesn’t scale too fast. And I hate their .com home page. Village People anyone? [Crunchbase]

Gloweme
They want to launch an MVNO in Belgium which is basically Blyk but with mobile web adverts instead of SMS. Blyk, if you recall, offers a very cheap mobile service aimed at the youth market in return for their opting into targetting advertising offers and campaigns. Gloweme think it can pull off a virtually free MVNO by allowing users to market the service to their friends in exhange for credit. Think Multi-Level-Marketing but in mobile. It must be said that ideas for MVNOs are not normally pitched at events like this, but I guess you’ve got to start somewhere. Odd place to start though. CEO Frank Bekkers “is an expert in MLM”. Ah…. [CrunchBase]

Contact Office
Self funded and profitable since 2003 they are a SAAS service for 450k users. It offers a full-blown suite of products like shared calendaring, contacts, shared bookmark, IMAP client, pretty much you name it. It has a sophisticated Ajax front end, drag and drop, Java backed end and was developed for modular integrations. You can manage your data (emails, contacts, meetings, documents, tasks) in this “virtual office” from anywhere. When I asked what the exit was for this business, the answer was “a trade sale”. Ultimately this is basically the opposite of Web 2.0 - lots of apps wrapped up instead of best of breed allowed to flourish as independent apps. But they clearly have a business with customers and revenues, so you can’t knock that.[Crunchbase]

IntroNiche
Their pitch: The Credit Crunch means you need to do great marketing. You need to attract customers and retain them. But it seems one company’s giveaway is another company’s gift. So this is a “B2B Craigslist for offers”. One business has a giveaway that is another business’s potential offer to get new business. So businesses trade these items. It sounds like it could work. Maybe. Just as well they are staying in consulting, while waiting for some kind of critical mass to develop.[Crunchbase]

Mollom
Mollom is a web site and protection moderation service which comprises some of the people who came up with the Drupal content management system, which is impressive. Right now they are concentrating on developing Spam filtering systems for companies, and they have already signed up a number of large players like MTV. It’s a hosted service with an open API. They don’t believe spam classification is binary ( in the same way Akismet does). Although they use Captcha’s only 4%of visitors have to fill out a captacha. So far they have blocked 30m spams on 3,000 sites. There is also a further model here which is bubbling up the best content - because if you can find the worst (spam) you might be able to find the best. It’s a Freemium model and they are self-funded. I think this has long legs. [Crunchbase]

iStockCV
Coming from the premise that most jobs sites suck and don’t appeal to the new online generation, IStockCV will publish your CV in many languages and allow you to upload a video CV as well. It’s a social network for CVs aimed at new generation used to doing things like a Seesmic video. They have also Integrated Tokbox so they can do live meetings. Promising. [Crunchbase]

KnowledgePlaza
This is a Web-based secure knowledge sharing platform with some social tools. You can share and manage bookmarks, documents and files, e-mails, contacts, microblogging. Apparently not so much like Huddle or Basecamp (project management) as “knowledge sharing”. Competitors might be Connect Beam, which is social bookmarking in the enterprise. Started in January they have a team of 15 and are backed by EUR500,000. At the moment they have 1,000 users with one big client and can’t say who it is, although there seemed to be hints that it was a global consulting firm. My stumbling block with KnowledgePlaza is that they have to sell the service into clients, which would slow adoption. But each to their own.[Crunchbase]

MyOwnDB
They bill this as “Microsoft Access on the Web” or the missing Microsoft / Google app for databases. Still in demo mode, MyOwnDB is an open source database application you can download and run on your own server or have your data stored on one of their servers. Competitors would include Dabble, CouchDB or EditGrid, but the difference is that it’s open source and you can use it right now. They says CouchDB is too technical for the average user. And MySQL is a great database, but if you want to share data you still have to develop a product doing that. They are aiming at the installed base of Microsoft Access business users. The two guys behind it founded UploadforMe.com. [Crunchbase]

Happenr
With the quintessential Web 2.0 “r” in their domain, these guys are attempting to build the “largest database of events going on in Europe”. Their point is simple: Eventbrite have ticketing but no content. Eventful has content but not ticketing. Happenr combines both and is focused on European events. It will therefore compete with Amiando in Europe. An iPhone app is on the way and they have seeded the engine with lots of events organisers. It ended up getting some traction on TechCrunch. But clearly work is needed on the database if this is to be truly Pan-European. A search for events in Birmingham, considered to be the UK’s second city after London, turned up results listed as being in Edinburgh and some that didn’t mention Birmingham at all. However, I can see a need for an engine like this - especially one that can track the myriad number tech events across Europe. (Disclosure: One of our writers, Robin Wauters, is an investor and acting as head of marketing in his limited spare time). [Crunchbase].

Radionomy
Radionomy allows users to set up an online radio station. It features pre-programmed music shows, libraries, the ability to upload your own music library (apparently they will be paying licenses for all this music, even the stuff users upload). Aiming for 200,000 stations and EUR63m in revenues - quite a tall order as right now they have about 1,000 stations and are aiming for 4,000 by the end of this year. This sounds like an attempt to create reach across a long tail of user generated radio stations and monetise accordingly. Radionomy shares revenues with their DJs based on audience. It sells 4 mins of advertising per hour compared to 18mins for commercial raido. They wan to create the Long Tail of radio. They have about a million euros in funding. However they have “20,000 on the waiting list” which rather puzzled me. If this is Web 2.0, why should there be a “waiting list” at all? [Crunchbase].

Tagger.fm
“Tag your favorite music by sending us an sms while you’re listening to the radio, at a concert or wherever you may be. By collecting these songs they become instantly available to share with you’re friends, and also give you the opportunity to purchase or to see upcoming concerts.” On first inspection this appears to be a clone of Shazam, but this is more like a service aimed at event organisers and radio stations so they can monetize live events, improve reach and ticket sales and get feedback. Sounds like a good business, but may not scale that fast in its present incarnation. [Crunchbase]

Tikitag
Profiled on GigaOm earlier this year, this Alcatel-Lucent internal startup is an RFID tag reading system designed to plug into the growing movement of the “internet of things”. This makes sense - we interact with 3-4,000 objects a day. With around $10 million in corporate funding, tikitag is a set of RFID- and Near Field Communication-enabled tags and a standards-based reader which uses both the ID of the tag and the location of the tag reader. Anyone can use it and they are selling the $50 hardware starter kit on Amazon in the US. It will be 24 euros in Europe. A tag could activate an iTunes song or a poster - you name it. There have been other proprietary attempts like this but a standards-based approach may win out. With the world seeded with Titkitag’s, Alcatel-Lucent will sell subscriptions for business users to link their applications with consumers, thus helping their own equipment business. This is also a “Long tail loyatiy systems for tiny companies”. All they need now is for consumer to “get it”… [Crunchbase]

Tunz
The Tunz boss decided not to show up for the pitch, but at least his employee did his best. This is a mobile wallet/payment system. You can pay anyone with a mobile phone number and receive payments via SMS. Think paypal for mobile. Started in Jan 2007, Tunz will also integratae loyalty points, has viral distribtuion, and the clients money is always redeemable through bank wire. Use your iPhone Safari navigator to visit https://m.tunz.com/ to access a version of Tunz.com optimized for your iPhone to access your account history, manage your alias, and recharge your wallet using your credit card. They only operate in Belgum but in January next year they want to expand. So far they have 3,500 users using it at places like the Carrefour supermarkets.[CrunchBase]

Yuntaa
They bill themselves as “more than just online file backup”. You can also synchornise with your PC, share files or edit and save your documents. So far they have 40,000 users with little marketing and just won a Series A funding round. The focus is security and piracy as against other file storage networks. It’s based on Sun and Oracle platfroms and also offers a business version for small busineses. Their argument against Silicon Valley startup Dropbox is that with Yuntaa you can do that and other things.[Crunchbase]

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

img class=face src=http://planet.ubuntu.com/heads/launchpad-heading.png alt= pa href=https://launchpad.net/~barryimg src=https://help.launchpad.net/BlogImages?action=AttachFile#038;do=get#038;target=baw.jpg alt=Barry Warsaw mugshot //aOur previous emMeet the developers/em a href=http://news.launchpad.net/meet-the-devs/meet-paul-hummerinterview/a was with a man known by his irc nick coderockstar/code./p pOn the Launchpad team we have another rock star, the a href=http://barry.warsaw.us/bass/index.htmlbass/a playing Mr a href=https://launchpad.net/~barryBarry Warsaw/a!/p pstrongMatthew: What do you do on the Launchpad team?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong In general, it is my life#8217;s work to see a href=http://catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/Z/Zawinskis-Law.htmlZawinski#8217;s Law/a fully realized in everything I touch. To that end, most of my Launchpad work has been to add spam vectors, er, I mean mailing lists to Launchpad. I don#8217;t know why anybody would think a href=http://barry.warsaw.us/software/index.htmlI know something about mailing lists/a, but there you have it./p pThese days, the basic mailing list features are working pretty well, so I#8217;ve been concentrating on other things, though often email related, such as the recent #8220;Contact this user#8221; feature./p pstrongMatthew: Can we see something in Launchpad that you#8217;ve worked on?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong If you#8217;ve used the Launchpad mailing lists, you#8217;ve used stuff I#8217;ve worked on. If you try out the new #8220;Contact this user#8221; feature in Launchpad 2.1.11, you will be using my stuff. Well, that#8217;s only if you like those features. If you hate them, someone else did it./p pstrongMatthew: Where do you work?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong I work out of my home in Silver Spring, Maryland USA. Well, I emdid/em up until about a week ago, when I moved into a temporary rental house while we#8217;re doing some work on our real house. I live about a mile walking distance from Washington DC./p pstrongMatthew: What can you see from your office window?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Right now, not much other than the side of my neighbor#8217;s house, but when I#8217;m back in my real home, I have a somewhat less boring view of the neighborhood. I can see all the way up the street leading to my house, so I#8217;m always prepared when the Fedex truck drops off the latest awesome mugs and hoodies from the a href=http://shop.ubuntu.com/Ubuntu store/a (/me waits for his endorsement bonus check)./p pstrongMatthew: What did you do before working at Canonical?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Directly before coming to Canonical I worked at a company called Secure Software, incidentally with Mailman#8217;s original inventor John Viega, though we were not working on Mailman. Secure built products around static analysis of C, C++, and Java code for security vulnerabilities. It was very cool software and allowed me to do a lot of C, C++ and Java hacking as well as the usual big pile of Python. I also did more Windows development than I#8217;d ever done before, and let#8217;s just say it#8217;s nice to be working for the makers of Ubuntu now! Unfortunately mdash; or maybe strongfortunately/strong mdash; Secure did not overwhelm in the market and, here I am!/p pI#8217;ve been pretty lucky to work at some great places, though my career has been pretty eclectic. I#8217;ve been able to do a lot of open source and free software, both officially and incidentally in my career. I won#8217;t bore you with the ten page resume though./p pstrongMatthew: How did you get into free software?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Well, I#8217;m an old timer so I#8217;ve actually been into free software probably before the term was even invented! My first real software job was as a summer intern at the National Bureau of Standards (now NIST), a US Federal research lab in suburban Maryland. I was hacking on homebrew graphics systems for robotic real time control and visualization, and most of the work was in FORTH. There was a pretty vibrant FORTH community and we shared lots of code, often by 8#8243; floppy disks, 9 track tapes and over the original ARPAnet and uucp. I continued with NBS/NIST after I graduated college and our lab eventually migrated to early SunOS systems. By that time I was learning C and hacking Unix, Emacs, window systems, etc. Back then at least, the software that US federal employees wrote was not subject to copyright (because it was taxpayer funded), so it was easy to give away, and it#8217;s always seemed very natural for me to share code./p pA few years ago I searched some of the various Usenet archives for early postings of mine. I think my first public post was of some Emacs trinket I wrote in 1985. It was probably what eventually became Supercite. In any case, tapping into that culture and its social interactions really got me hooked. I made a lot of friends online and I#8217;ve been very luck to keep many of them and even meet some of them in the real world./p pstrongMatthew: What#8217;s more important? Principle or pragmatism?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong a href=http://www.python.org/dev/peps/pep-0020/The Zen of Python/a says #8220;Practicality beats purity#8221;./p pstrongMatthew: Do you/have you contribute(d) to any free software projects?/strong/p pYes, quite a few actually./p pThese days I#8217;m most active in a href=http://python.org/Python/a and a href=http://www.list.org/GNU Mailman/a, though there are probably a dozen or so FLOSS projects I contribute to in various ways. I used to contribute a lot to Emacs and XEmacs, but these days I prefer to just be a (l)user. I also tend to scratch my own itch, and hosting projects on Launchpad and using Bazaar makes that just incredibly easy. For example, I needed an email robot on some of my public email addresses, so I wrote #8216;a href=https://launchpad.net/replybotreplybot/a#8216; which tries to do that totally anti-social job in the most standards-compliant way possible. Even though the package is published on the a href=http://pypi.python.org/pypiPython Cheeseshop/a, all the project management happens on Launchpad. In fact a href=https://launchpad.net/mailmanGNU Mailman itself is hosted on Launchpad/a now too./p pstrongMatthew: Tell us something really cool about Launchpad that not enough people know about?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong a href=https://help.launchpad.net/Code/ReviewMerge proposals/a are my latest kick. We use them a lot on the Launchpad project, and I think they#8217;re a great way to manage branches, review code, and link them to bugs, milestones and releases. I#8217;m not yet sure how useful all that stuff is for smaller projects, but for a large complicated beast like Launchpad, merge proposals are really great./p pstrongMatthew: Four string, six string or fretless?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Ah, what a great question, but those are not either/ors! img src=http://news.launchpad.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / I firmly believe that if you can#8217;t play a 4, you have no business with more strings. Guitar players would be wise to heed that advice. img src=http://news.launchpad.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / I played bass for almost 25 years before I got my first 5 string, and it#8217;ll probably be another 25 before I get a 6. My grandkids will have to slap and pop that hi C string for me though./p pFretlesses are very cool, and I played a 4 fretless (with a hipshot) almost exclusively for many years, though I am no Jaco. A good #8220;mwaahh#8221; just makes me so happy. My main axe these days though is a fretted MTD American 535. Having that gut rumbling low B string is just too much fun, though you have to use it tastefully. I#8217;m still saving up for a fretless 535 to match my main axe, but it#8217;s much harder to sneak those things past my wife these days. img src=http://news.launchpad.net/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif alt=:) class=wp-smiley / /p pstrongMatthew: a href=https://launchpad.net/~kikoKiko/a#8217;s special question! You#8217;re at your computer, you reach for your wallet: what are you most likely to be doing?/strong/p pstrongBarry:/strong Okay, this is a family show, right?/p pI do purchase a lot of stuff online. I hate going to the malls and I really hate shopping so if I can get through the holidays without getting in my car, it#8217;s a success. One of our favorite places is Zappos because you can just order like $10,000 worth of shoes, keep the one pair you like and send them all back for free. I do buy the occasional software, but not too much ongoing services, though I#8217;m currently looking at encrypted, secure online backups. I do tend to like to roll my own though, since hacking is so much fun./p pThanks for listening!/p

Microwave sandwich maker cooks up egg and bacon sandwiches in a hurry, saving you money and time.img src=http://dw.com.com/clear/c.gif?ts=1115768950edId=3prtnr=CNET%20Networks,%20Inc.oid=2100-null-ptId=2547onId=nullsId=17asId=astId=1CTYPE=rss_feedsCVAL= border=0 height=1 width=1 alt= /

A new report from Electronic Entertainment Design and Research shows that games on Nintendo's Wii are easier subjected to earlynbsp; "price protection" than games on PS3 and Xbox 360. Price protection is when publishers lower the per unit cost of a game title or SKU to maintain consumer patronage.brbrEarly price protection is when a title's third month average selling price drops by 20 or more from its original selling price. This may occur at retailers requesting the price cuts, or when a game underperforms to such an extent that they just want to clear their stock.brbrSays a href="http://wii.qj.net/tags/eedar/15474" id="tag" title="Electronic Entertainment Design and Research Group"EEDAR/a analyst a href="http://wii.qj.net/tags/jesse-divnich/14571" id="tag" title="Analyst for simExchange"Jesse Divnich/a,brp style="padding-left: 40px; padding-right: 40px;"Over 7.5 of Xbox 360 and 9.09 PS3 third-party published titles go into price protection early. The Wii, however, nearly doubles the Xbox 360 and PS3's average at 15.1 . These results are significant, as one would expect that aggregating the percentage of titles entering into early price protection across these three systems would produce similar results. This disparity on the Wii reinforces concerns that the market has had with third-party publishers developing successful titles on the Wii./pbr"Because of the highly competitive and unpredictable mainstream and casual markets, EEDAR believes retailers and publishers are overly aggressive on expectations for Wii games," he continued. "This is directly leading to a higher percentage of third party Wii titles entering into early price protection."brbrp style="text-align: center;"a href="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126522/EEDAR 20banner_qjpreviewth.jpg?608283" rel="lightbox[article126522]" title="EEDAR 20- 20Image 201 20 26nbsp 3B 20 20 26nbsp 3B 20 3Ca 20href 3D 22http 3A//img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126522/EEDAR 20banner.jpg 3F608283 22 20target 3D 22_blank 22 3E 3Cimg 20src 3D 22/img/newwindow.png 22 20title 3D 22Open 20in 20new 20window 22 20border 3D 220 22 3E 3C/a 3E"img style="margin-top: 3px; margin-bottom: 3px;" alt="EEDAR - Image 1" title="EEDAR - Image 1" src="http://img.qj.net/uploads/articles_module/126522/EEDAR 20banner_qjpreviewth.jpg?608283" align="" border="0"/abr/pbrThe release of games targeting the core market are typically spread out through the year to get less competition and improve chances of capturing a larger chunk of the market.brbrNaturally, there are more factors for a title to go into price protection, but EEDAR points out that it all boils down to the game's quality. "Every time we use our data set of aggregate game reviews, we generally come to the same conclusion; quality is one of the most impactful features for a video game," says Divnich.brbrNo game with quality scores over 91 have ever gone into early price protection. But games with 75 to 88 ratings, have similar chances of going into price protection early. So if you've been biting your wallet to keep yourself from suffering the full blast of game prices, you'd know from its quality if the price is gonna drop early or not.brbrhr style="width: 100 ; height: 2px;"brspan style="font-weight: bold;"More EEDAR and Divnich analysis:br/spanullia href="http://www.qj.net/Divnich-the-fad-of-music-games-have-peaked-can-only-go-down-from-here/pg/49/aid/126479"span title="Divnich: music games have peaked" style="font-style: italic;"Divnich: the fad of music games have peaked, can only go down from here/span/a/lilispan title="Divnich: music games have peaked" style="font-style: italic;"a title="Holiday bombs" href="http://www.qj.net/The-holiday-bombs-analysts-predict-which-games-will-fail-this-Christmas/pg/49/aid/126427"The holiday bombs: analysts predict which games will fail this Christmas/a/span/lilispan title="Divnich: music games have peaked" style="font-style: italic;"a title="Sony took the hardest blow from economic turbulence" href="http://www.qj.net/Sony-took-the-hardest-blow-from-economic-turbulence-says-analyst/pg/49/aid/126340"Sony took the hardest blow from economic turbulence, says analyst/abr/span/li/ulbrbrdiv class="feedflare" a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?a=jwcQ1GQL"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?a=mrypiLpN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?d=43" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?a=8zqxnHlG"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/qj/wii?d=50" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/qj/wii/~4/UzbatGQS7u8" height="1" width="1"/