News broke yesterday that popular online Q&A startup Formspring.me had raised some $2.5 million in venture funding and would be relocating to Silicon Valley from Indianapolis. As a user and fan of the service, I am happy to see the company rewarded for its success, and I am excited to see how they can improve their already great product. However, as a follower of the national and global startup culture, it is a little disappointing to see the company leave their home and head west to the Valley.

Sponsor

Formspring.me was spun out of Formspring.com, a platform for creating online forms, when users began creating forms to answer personal questions. According to the New York Times' Brad Stone, Formspring.me has raked in $2.5 million from investors based solely in Silicon Valley. VC firms Baseline Ventures and Freestyle Capital teamed with angels Kevin Rose, Dave Morin and Ron Conway's SV Angel to provide Formspring.me with some well deserved, and high profile funding.

Silicon Valley is certainly the mecca of venture capital and social web applications, and in many ways, moving the company to the Valley is a smart move. As we mentioned back in January, Formspring.me plans to rewrite its application to scale more efficiently as the product grows in popularity - something that requires talented programmers. The company has already listed four job openings in San Francisco for a pair of developers, a designer and a data analyst.

By moving to the Valley, Formspring.me will be able to tap the enormous talent pools to find top tier programmers and designers to take their app to the next level. If they want to build out an API and create mobile applications for their app, they are in the right place to do it. When the time comes to look for further funding, having set up shop in the Valley will certainly benefit the company in their efforts.

For other cities outside of the Valley looking to build competitive startup and venture capital communities, these are unfortunate truths. It is not uncommon to see successful startups leave their cities of birth for the Valley to find talented employees and raise their chances for finding funding. We recently discussed Chicago's growing startup scene, which is not far from Indianapolis, but the opportunities in the Midwest do not yet compare to those available in other booming startup cities.

Had Formspring.me been founded in a city like Austin, Boulder, New York or Boston, they would have likely remained there upon receiving funding. That is, perhaps, if they received funding locally. While the Midwest is growing its startup culture, there are far fewer VC firms, and far smaller talent pools when compared to other locations. Until more cities have their own thriving startup scene, stories like Formspring.me's will continue to play out across the country.

The fact that Formspring.me attracted funding from the Valley before relocating raises the question of whether the decision to move was theirs or if it was a recommendation or stipulation of the investors. We have reached out for comment on this question and will update this post as more information becomes available. In the meantime, let us know what you think of Formspring.me or any other startup moving to the Valley in the comments.

Disclosure: The New York Times is a syndication partner of ReadWriteWeb

Greg Sargent / The Plum Line:
SEIU To Yank Support For Arcuri, Will Search For Challenger  —  It appears SEIU is dead serious about this business about yanking support for House Dems who vote No on the health bill.  —  The SEIU bluntly informed Dem Rep Michael Arcuri of New York yesterday that it's pulling support …

Ali Abdullah Saleh says end to government's long-running battle with fighters in north of country has been agreed

The Yemeni president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, today declared an end to a long-running war with Shia rebels in the north of the country.

Saleh said a ceasefire with Houthi separatists had begun yesterday. "The war is over, not stopped or in a truce," he told the Arabic al-Arabiya TV station.

Rebels have been fighting the central government since 2004 in a conflict that has seen more than 175,000 people displaced into refugee camps. It has resulted in several thousand deaths and spilled over into neighbouring Saudi Arabia last year.

It is believed that part of the deal to end the conflict will include landmines and roadblocks being removed by rebels. "These are considered positive indications to prove good intention not to return to a new war," Saleh said.

News of the peace deal came a day after the Yemeni government said it would free Houthi rebel prisoners as part of the truce.

The Houthis, part of a powerful clan believed to have between 5,000 and 10,000 fighters, have used roadside bombs, rockets and other arms to protest against perceived religious, political and economic discrimination by the government.

The path to a settlement has not been easy, with the government recently accusing the rebels of returning to vacated positions and holding on to cleared landmines.

Some have questioned how long a ceasefire between the two groups will last, but a statement released by the rebel leader, Abdel-Malik Badreddin al-Houthi, said fighters would "cease combat on all fronts".

"Once the ceasefire is consolidated, we will proceed to reopening roads and dismantling checkpoints and barricades," he said.

The rebels are reported to have released around 170 pro-government fighters.

The end of hostilities with the Houthis closes one of three fronts on which Yemeni government forces have been battling. The government still faces pressure from western countries and neighbouring Arab nations to deal with al-Qaida militants who have taken advantage of instability to establish militant training camps.

It is still also involved in fighting separatists in the south, who have staged demonstrations calling for independence amid reports of escalating violence.

• Yemen

Palm (NSDQ: PALM) provided a stark view of its financial and market position yesterday after releasing its third-quarter results. With inventories mounting, cash reserves dwindling and its market competitiveness to be determined, investors today are being quick to ditch the stock. In afternoon trading, Palm’s stock was down about one dollar, or 18 percent, to trade at $4.60 a share.

To be sure, there were critics that were even more harsh and believe the stock could go lower. Canaccord Adams technology analyst Peter Misek cut his price target from $4 to $0, and maintained his “sell” rating. In a note to clients, he wrote: “We believe Palm’s troubles will only accelerate as carriers and suppliers increasingly question the company’s solvency and withdraw their support. With what appears to be roughly 12 months of cash on hand, an accelerating burn rate, a complete lack of earnings visibility, and substantial debt and preferred equity, we no longer see any value in the company’s common equity.”

Palm (NSDQ: PALM) provided a stark view of its financial and market position yesterday after releasing its third-quarter results. With inventories mounting, cash reserves dwindling and its market competitiveness to be determined, investors today are being quick to ditch the stock. In afternoon trading, Palm’s stock was down about one dollar, or 18 percent, to trade at $4.60 a share.

To be sure, there were critics that were even more harsh and believe the stock could go lower. Canaccord Adams technology analyst Peter Misek cut his price target from $4 to $0, and maintained his “sell” rating. In a note to clients, he wrote: “We believe Palm’s troubles will only accelerate as carriers and suppliers increasingly question the company’s solvency and withdraw their support. With what appears to be roughly 12 months of cash on hand, an accelerating burn rate, a complete lack of earnings visibility, and substantial debt and preferred equity, we no longer see any value in the company’s common equity.”

Palm gave a disappointing forecast yesterday, and today, shares are down 18%, with one analyst cutting his price target for the stock to $0. Clearly, the turnaround isn't happening as fast as Palm had hoped, and now it may be toast.

Read the rest of this story »

See Also:

• Palm Cut To Zero At Canaccord Adams
• Palm Sold Only 408,000 Smartphones Last Quarter
• Apple's HTC Patent Suit Could Be Another Reason For Someone To Buy Palm

Yesterday, David Chen live-tweeted the process of becoming an American citizen when he, along with 900 other individuals, participated in the Naturalization Oath Ceremony at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Chen, the managing editor of /Film, is used to using his Twitter account to live-tweet film festivals or events like Comic Con, but this was something different.

“I didn’t anticipate being able to live-tweet the ceremony, because I had heard a rumor that they would confiscate my electronic devices. This ended up not being true, so after I checked in, I realized I had an opportunity to show people an aspect of citizenship that they might not usually be privy to. And I took it.”

In addition to sending out tweets about the ceremony, Chen also uploaded videos to YouTube, photos to Flickr and even took the time to do an audio interview with another new citizen.

After the ceremony, Chen wrote about the experience on his blog, sharing what it means to be an American to him. Born in Taiwan, Chen’s family came to America when he was two years old. Now more than 20 years later, he’s officially a U.S. citizen.

We’ve seen examples of people using social media to share love, report on breaking news and even on the birth of a child. It only makes sense that we now have one of the first instances of someone live-tweeting the naturalization process.

The mobile nature of something like Twitter — Chen was able to send out updates as he waited in line for his certificate, prepared to say the oath, etc. — makes it the perfect medium to capture some of these life events.

Congrats Dave! How do you use social media to share your stories with the world? Let us know!

Tags: citizenship, dave chen, Film, twitter

Palm shares plunged in late trading Thursday after the company posted yet another dismal quarter and warned that revenue for the current one will fall far short of Wall Street expectations. The company will have to take substantial charges to help its carrier partners eat through excess inventory, and whatever luster once existed for its flagship Pre is long gone. The question now is, who’s going to pick up Palm?

Palm’s last-ditch gamble on webOS has been a disaster. The operating system — which debuted last summer on the Pre — has received solid reviews, but an utter lack of effective marketing from Sprint — and more recently, Verizon Wireless — shackled handset sales. And an upcoming partnership with AT&T — which looked to be Palm’s last chance at redemption — is reportedly fizzling already after the carrier delayed the launch of webOS handsets, slashed its order and cut its marketing budget.

So what are Palm’s options? CEO Jon Rubinstein is projecting a “stay the course” attitude, saying better training of Verizon Wireless sales staffers will begin to pay off — a questionable theory given the flat-line demand for the Pre Plus and Pixi Plus so far. Producing a tablet would be an interesting strategy, as James over at jkOnTheRun suggested yesterday. But the market for tablets is still very uncertain, and there’s little reason to believe Palm can move a different kind of hardware when it can’t sell phones. So a suitor will likely sweep in and pick up Palm, snatching up webOS — the company’s most valuable asset — and a sizable patent portfolio. Here’s a quick rundown of the most likely (or most highly speculated) candidates for acquiring Palm — including their odds of doing so:

• Google : The most intriguing play on the board, Google might be compelled by Palm’s patent portfolio, as Gizmodo noted yesterday. What’s more, Google and Palm both operate Linux-based mobile operating systems, which would make it easy for Google to cherry-pick the best features from webOS and add them to Android. Google could easily afford Palm, and as a bonus would keep it from falling into the hands of a competitor. Odds: 7-1
• Dell : The Texas computer vendor joined the smartphone space a few months ago, launching handsets in Brazil and China, and will soon launch an Android-based device through AT&T. But its late entry means Dell will have a hard time differentiating its hardware, and coming to market with its own mobile operating system, app store and developer community could be a great way to stand out from the crowd. Odds: 7-1
• Hewlett-Packard: HP’s tiny smartphone business is dissolving in the superphone era. Picking up what amounts to a turnkey mobile OS would be a huge — if costly — move to attract attention and breathe life into its mobile business. Odds: 11-1.
• Nokia : Nokia has long been mentioned as a potential buyer for Palm, but successfully marrying the two has become an increasingly difficult proposition. Nokia already claims the world’s most popular smartphone OS in Symbian, and its Maemo — um, sorry, I mean MeeGo – operating system appears to be its long-term strategy. What’s more, Ovi has gained impressive traction in recent months. Adding another platform to the mix would only serve to distract Nokia just as it finally appears to be regaining its focus. Odds: 25-1
• Motorola : Another hardware maker that might be compelled by the idea of owning its own OS, Motorola’s $8 billion in cash ensures plenty of capital to pocket Palm. Yet despite what Om suggested earlier this year, taking on a mobile operating system would likely be more than Motorola could handle, given its difficulty in regaining its once-dominant market share in smartphones. Marriages of two weak players from different spaces rarely end up happy. Odds: 30-1
• Microsoft : Palm and Microsoft seemed like a great fit just a few months ago. But that was before the gang from Redmond went public with its plans to scrap Windows Mobile in favor of Windows Phone, an impressive, consumer-targeted platform set to debut late this year. Windows Phone may fail gloriously, but there’s no reason to bring another OS into the fold — and webOS is largely considered to be Palm’s most valuable asset. Odds: 35-1
• Cisco : An acquisition of Palm would enable Cisco to immediately expand beyond infrastructure into the mobile consumer market. Such a move wouldn’t exactly be unprecedented for Cisco, which last year bought the maker of Flip Video camcorders for $590 million, but maintaining a mobile operating system is a far more sophisticated endeavor than simply churning out camcorders. Odds: 40-1.

This is only a partial list, of course, and new potential suitors are sure to emerge as Palm begins to circle the drain. The clock is ticking, and there’s almost no hope Palm can reverse course at this point. So someone in the mobile space might be able to do very well by picking up a dying company at a cut-rate price.

Related content from GigOM Pro (sub req’d):

Could Games Redeem Windows Mobile and Palm’s webOS?

Image courtesy Flickr user nathangibbs.

Experts believe release of pent-up energy after such a long, hard winter could produce the most spectacular spring in years

Up in the plane and ash trees, all London's wildlife appeared hard at spring yesterday. Tail feathers were shaking along the Regent's canal, the first buds were bursting on brambles and honeysuckle and carpets of crocuses were delighting crowds in the grand royal parks.

But in the more egalitarian Camley Street natural park, just 100 yards from St Pancras station, there was still precious little sight or sound of a new season. A heron was spotted last week, a few tits were investigating the bat boxes but the grasses were dead, the hedgehog boxes empty and the newts absent.

It's been the longest, hardest winter the UK has known for 30 years, with twice as many frosty nights as usual, says the Met Office. Wales has barely seen a daffodil and vast swaths of countryside that should be green by now are still dull and grey after months under snow. But – shout it! - tomorrow is the vernal equinox, the official first day of spring in the northern hemisphere, when night and day are the same length.The release of pent-up energy could spur the most spectacular spring for years, but there have been losers as well as winners.

For more than a decade, ever milder winters have led to ever earlier springs, with daffodils and frogspawn found at Christmas and confused insects and small mammals stirring in January. But this year, says Matthew Oakes, conservation adviser to the National Trust, harks back to older times when British life, to all natural intents, began near the end of March. "The trend is to earlier seasons, but this is a slow, late, old fashioned spring," he said.

Oakes, who keeps meticulous records of nature's first sightings, says wildlife in London is well ahead of the rest of the country because of the "heat island" effect of 12 million people driving cars and heating their homes. "Outside London, everything appears incredibly late this year. It's the first year since 1996 that there have been no bumblebees in January. In the woods very little has been happening. The bluebells and wild garlic are putting up their first spikes and the primroses are just starting. There a little bit of green from honeysuckle and rose but the woods are really leafless.

"Rooks are only building their nests now. The bluebells this year will be very late, perhaps not in full flower until mid-May," he adds.

Oates's predictions were echoed by Steve Marsh, a conservationist with the Woodland Trust, which has up to 40,000 people recording the arrival of the seasons and posting sightings on the web. He said: "This has been an exceptional season. We've only had one blackthorn in blossom so far, yet usually we would have 1,000 or more sightings by now. There have been only 10 recordings of coltsfoot when we would have expected hundreds. And it's the same with celandines. Normally we would see them now right across the UK, but this year there has been sparse coverage in the south and midlands and almost none reported in northern England and Scotland". But he adds that even this year's "late" spring is early compared to 1970s. "

Among those celebrating, say conservationists, are galanthophiles - snowdrop lovers - and those cherishing bats, who can expect a bumper year because the baby mammals thrive in a hard winter with its deep, refreshing hibernation. Equally, Jack Frost may have stopped some pests in their tracks, including the parasitical sturmia bella fly which has nearly wiped out tortoiseshell butterflies and the midge that can spread the bluetongue virus among livestock.

But pity the very small birds, says Paul Stancliffe, of the British Trust for Ornithology. "We don't know for certain yet what effect this winter has had on bird populations, but other bad winters, like in the 1940s and 1960s, really hit small ones like the goldcrest and the wren very hard. This winter will almost certainly have had an [adverse] effect on them. Frozen water and plummeting temperatures may have also severely reduced populations of birds like the kingfisher and heron, who have had less water open water to feed from."

But the growing British habit of feeding garden birds will certainly have helped, he says. "We spend £200m-300m a year on bird food. That will have seen many birds through the harshest months."

On the wing, there are further signs of winter easing its grip. Scientists in Ghana this week reported great flocks of swifts heading north and the first swallows and wheatears have just arrived in southern England from equatorial Africa after one of nature's greatest annual journeys.

"The migration is well under way," says Stancliffe, whose records suggest we can expect great numbers of swallows, swifts, willow warblers, ring ouzel and housemartins to arrive in the next few weeks.

"The early birds are taking a gamble. If we have had an early spring they get the best choice of nest sites and mates. But in a bad winter, like this, they could be in trouble. Next week we should get a rush of migrants. If this milder weather persists then they will have timed it right. All they need now is a rush of insects."

"It's all about to explode," says Oakes. "It could come with a bang and be one of the most spectacular springs in years. We've all – humans and wildlife – suffered a lot. We all need the sunshine now".

What's thriving

· Snowdrops

· Crocuses

· Bats

What's not

· Daffodils

· Bluebells

· Bumblebees

· Kingfishers

• Wildlife
• Insects
• Birds
• Weather
• Plants

UK government 'shamefully' refuses to support Kenyan proposal for a ban aimed at reducing elephant and rhino poaching

The Conservatives today criticised the government for failing to support proposals from a number of African countries to impose a 20-year ban on any legal sales of ivory.

The plan, led by Kenya, is being discussed at the meeting of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) in a bid to tackle the poaching of elephants and rhino.

It counters a bid by Tanzania and Zambia to hold one-off sales of their legally held ivory and "downlist" their elephants from the highest level of protection.

The UK government said it was initially "sympathetic" to the Kenyan proposals, subject to a review after 10 years of the scheme, but the EU, which votes as a bloc at Cites, decided not to back it. But on a Cites vote this week on whether to ban the international trade in bluefin tuna, the UK acted alone rather than as a bloc with Europe and chose to support the Monaco proposal of opposing the ban.

There are concerns that, if the one-off sales of ivory from four African countries in 2008 results in a lower demand for illegal ivory, a 20-year moratorium would not be a positive step.

But conservationists have raised fears over a rise in illegal trade and poaching following the sales, which they believe stimulate the market and provide a cover for traders to offload illegal stocks.

Shadow environment secretary Nick Herbert said the government had "shamefully" refused to support the Kenyan proposal for a ban on sales and continued to back stockpiling of legal ivory - for example from animals which had died naturally.

"Instead of flooding the market with more ivory and legitimising the trade, these stockpiles should be destroyed. We should be choking demand for ivory, not stoking it," he said.

The UK opposes the bids by Tanzania and Zambia to have one-off sales of their ivory, but EU countries are still considering their requests to "downlist" their elephants from Appendix I to Appendix II of the convention.

Such a move would not allow a trade in ivory, but could let other elephant body parts be traded internationally and the sale of live elephants, for example to safari parks elsewhere, could go ahead.

It could pave the way for a potential ivory sale in the future.

A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) spokeswoman said: "The EU has agreed with the UK's position to vote against the proposals from Tanzania and Zambia to sell ivory stocks in a one-off sale.

"The EU has decided not to support Kenya's proposal for a moratorium of ivory sales for 20 years."

She said that, regardless, the UK would not consider other sales of ivory until the effects of the 2008 one-off sale of ivory, which was intended to reduce demand for illegal poached ivory, had been fully analysed.

That would take at least another six years, she said.

The 20-year ban would extend an existing nine-year moratorium, agreed at the time the four African countries were given the go-ahead to sell their legal ivory stocks, on any further sales.

Yesterday efforts to increase protection of polar bears and Atlantic bluefin tuna were defeated at the international meeting.

• Conservation
• Wildlife
• Kenya

John Sheehan, a former Nato commander, sparks outrage over claims homosexual soldiers weakened the Dutch army

A retired US general's claim that gay Dutch soldiers were partly to blame for allowing the Srebrenica massacre has sparked outrage in the Netherlands.

John Sheehan, a former Nato commander who retired from the military in 1997, told a Senate armed services committee hearing in Washington yesterday that gay soldiers weakened the Dutch army, which failed to prevent Serb forces from massacring some 8,000 Muslim men in the Bosnian enclave of Srebrenica in July 1995.

Dutch caretaker defence minister Eimert van Middelkoop said today the claim was "damaging" and not worthy of a soldier. "I don't want to waste any more words on it," he said.

General Henk van den Breemen, Dutch chief of staff at the time of the Srebrenica massacre, called Sheehan's comments "total nonsense."

The comment shocked some at the Senate committee, where Sheehan was opposing a proposal to allow gay people to serve openly in the US military. The committee chairman, Carl Levin, told Sheehan he was "totally off target".

Sheehan said European militaries deteriorated after the collapse of the Soviet Union and focused on peacekeeping because "they did not believe the Germans were going to attack again or the Soviets were coming back".

Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and other nations believed there was no longer a need for an active combat capability, he said. "They declared a peace dividend and made a conscious effort to socialise their military that includes the unionisation of their militaries, it includes open homosexuality."

Dutch troops serving as UN peacekeepers and given the task of defending Srebrenica in 1995 were an example of a force that had become ill-equipped for war, he argued.

"The battalion was understrength, poorly led, and the Serbs came into town, handcuffed the soldiers to the telephone poles, marched the Muslims off, and executed them," Sheehan said. "That was the largest massacre in Europe since World War II."

Levin, a Democrat, appeared incredulous: "Did the Dutch leaders tell you [the fall of Srebrenica] was because there were gay soldiers there?"

"Yes," Sheehan said. "They included that as part of the problem." He claimed the former chief of staff of the Dutch army had told him.

Levin said some militaries might have focused on peacekeeping to the detriment of their fighting skills. "But I think that any effort to connect that failure on the part of the Dutch to the fact that they have homosexuals, or did allow homosexuals, I think is totally off target."

Levin supports ending restrictions on gay people serving in the US armed forces.

"The Dutch military, as you point out, were peacekeepers and not peace-enforcers. I agree with that," he said. "But what the heck that has to do with the issue before us is what mystifies me."

• Netherlands
• Nato
• US Congress
• US foreign policy
• US military
• United Nations
• US politics

· Captain loses battle of wounded knee for Six Nations finale
· Lewis Moody named as stand-in captain

The England captain Steve Borthwick has failed to recover from a knee injury in time to face France in tomorrow's Six Nations game.

The second-row's place in the team goes to Louis Deacon of Leicester. Lewis Moody will captain the team.

Borthwick underwent another scan on his injured left knee yesterday and was ruled out before the squad left for Paris today.

The Stade Français lock Tom Palmer has been training with England all week and comes on to the bench.

Borthwick aggravated an existing injury late in England's 15-15 draw with Scotland last weekend.

Borthwick, who has captained England in 20 consecutive Test matches, had been carrying the injury for about three weeks but it flared up worse than normal at Murrayfield.

• Steve Borthwick
• England rugby union team
• Six Nations rugby
• Rugby union

In a radio interview, Lady Gaga took aim at those who criticize her depiction of various sexual orientations and gender identities in the "Telephone" video:

“There are transsexual women and transgender women and suddenly it becomes poisonous and something else because there are some people in this world that believe being gay is a choice. It’s not a choice, we’re born this way."

In a recent interview with OUT, performance artist and personal trainer Heather Cassils discussed how she landed the role of Gaga's prison girlfriend:

"I got cast because I work as a personal trainer. I run my own independent contracting business, and I run it out of a gay gym in Silver Lake. There's a woman at my gym named Dallas, and she's also kind of an aspiring actress of sorts, and she had been called in to play one of the guards. She called me up from the casting and said they were desperate for bodybuilders, and she told them, 'There's this person at my gym who's not a pro bodybuilder, but she has a really cut physique,' and she suggested I'd be perfect for it. So I went down and auditioned -- but I'm not hormones or anything like that -- so they ended up casting me as an inmate in the prison scene. They were blocking the scene, and the woman who was blocking for Gaga disappeared, and Gaga came out, and she just kind of instantly called me over, and it just happened like that. She called me over and asked me to portray her girlfriend and said, 'OK, you're going to be my prison girlfriend, and you're going to come to me, and I'd like you to touch me inappropriately.' [Laughs] We just kind of went from there."

In other news, Gaga's ex-boyfriend is suing her: 

"Songwriter and producer Rob Fusari says in a $30 million lawsuit that he helped develop 'guidette' Stefani Germanotta into the superstar she is today -- and even came up with her world-famous stage name -- but she is now reneging on a business deal that made him 20 percent owner of her company. Fusari's lawyer, Robert Meloni, who filed suit yesterday in Manhattan Supreme Court, said: 'He discovered her. It was his songs and productions and connections that got her her first deal.' ... Fusari said he played the Queen song 'Radio Ga Ga' whenever she arrived at his studio, and 'one day when Fusari addressed a cellphone text to Germanotta under the moniker 'Radio Ga Ga' his cellphone's spell check converted 'Radio' to 'Lady.' Germanotta loved it and 'Lady Gaga' was born.'"

Fusari also says he hooked her up with Interscope records. The two co-wrote her tracks "Paparazzi" and Beautiful, Dirty Rich".

VirnetX is hoping to scoop up a brace of lawsuit wins against Microsoft, after it filed a second patent infringement claim against the company yesterday....

Offloading malware protection to the cloud

GetEQUAL's Robin McGehee discusses the arrests yesterday and why GetEQUAL is taking civil disobedient action.

Says McGehee: "We believe we need to do more than lobbying, making phone calls, and giving money to people who are not making true to the promises we were given. And that's the reason that we organized with Lt. Dan Choi and Cpt. James Pietrangelo today, to take action at the White House where true pressure needs to be given. Everyone knows that without repeal language added to the Defense Authorization bill, that there is not a true course or a true plan of action that will be successful by this year's end."

Microsoft revealed a few more details about Windows 7 Service Pack 1 yesterday, confirming it would involve a small-fry update to the operating system....

Case Study: WhatsUp keeps Legoland turnstyles ringing

Some unusual insight (for the MSM) in CBS News' coverage of yesterday's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" activities:

"According to reports, Choi crashed the rally, hosted by the gay rights group the Human Rights Campaign and comedian Kathy Griffin, and asked attendees to join him in a march to the White House, turning the event into more of a protest. Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese did not march to the White House, in an illustration of the split in the gay rights movement between establishment organizations like the HRC, which generally support the Obama administration, and activists like Choi, who are pushing more aggressively for action."

One gay veteran, writing in the Huffington Post, says Choi "jumped the shark" yesterday:

"Let me be quite clear about one thing: what Dan Choi did yesterday was of questionable sincerity, most likely intricately plotted as to gain the most amount of press and attention, and undoubtedly will dominate the conversation going into the next Don't Ask, Don't Tell news cycle. It's big, over the top, political theater of the type that is destined to get tongues wagging about the issue once again and will definitely secure Lt. Choi's place as a major figure in gay activism. What it won't secure, however, is the title and rank that his entire public career thus far has been about retaining, which is why the behavior is simultaneously inspiring and baffling. There are some severely mixed signals here that need to be addressed."

Watch AmericaBlog's full video of Choi's speech during which Kathy Griffin says she'll go with him to the White House (she didn't), AFTER THE JUMP...

Canon EOS 5D Mark II 2.0.4 firmware said to fix audio, reputation originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Mar 2010 05:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Lambda Legal filed a motion in New Jersey yesterday seeking marriage equality on behalf of six couples and the surviving partner of a seventh:

 "'The New Jersey Supreme Court ordered equality for same-sex couples when it decided our marriage lawsuit in 2006, and the legislature has failed to meet that crystal-clear obligation,' said Lambda Legal Deputy Legal Director Hayley Gorenberg. 'Civil unions are a failed legislative experiment in providing equality—marriage equality is the only solution.'"

The plaintiffs are those in the original Lewis v. Harris lawsuit:

"Lambda Legal filed Lewis v. Harris in June 2002 on behalf of seven same-sex couples seeking the right to marry. The New Jersey Supreme Court issued its ruling on October 25, 2006, unanimously agreeing that it is unconstitutional to give same-sex couples lesser rights than different-sex couples, but leaving the remedy to reach equality up to the legislature. In January 2007 the New Jersey Legislature hastily enacted a civil union law. In December 2008 the Civil Union Review Commission, appointed by the legislature, issued its report documenting how civil unions fall short of the court-mandated equality for same-sex couples...In January 2010, following a hard-fought campaign led by Garden State Equality, the New Jersey Senate voted on and failed to pass a marriage equality law."

Announcement and interviews, AFTER THE JUMP...

From the customer’s perspective, it’s all the same. If it’s provided over the Internet on a pay-for-usage basis, it’s a cloud service. Within the industry, we argue about definitions more than is good for us. Customers look in from the outside and see a much simpler array of choices.

Why is this important? It matters to how we market and support cloud services (of whatever ilk). Yesterday EuroCloud UK (disclosure: of which I’m chair) had a member meeting, hosted at SAP UK headquarters, that covered various aspects of the transition to SaaS for ISVs. From the title, you’d imagine it would have little content of relevance to raw cloud providers at the infrastructure-as-a-service layer. (One of our challenges in the early days of EuroCloud, whose founders are more from the SaaS side of things, is to make sure we bring the infrastructure players on board with us). But in fact, much of the discussion covered topics of equal interest at any level of the as-a-service stack: How to work with partners? How to compensate sales teams? What sort of contract to offer customers? How to reconcile paying for resources on a pay-per-use basis with a per-seat licence fee? What instrumentation and reporting of service levels should the provider’s infrastructure include?

And then came the customer presentation, by Symbian Foundation’s head of IT, Ian McDonald. He was there as a customer of SAP’s Business ByDesign SaaS offering, whose team were hosting the meeting. But it soon became clear that his organization’s voracious consumption of cloud services runs the gamut from high-level applications like ByDesign and Google Apps through to Amazon Web Services, Jungle Disk storage and file sharing (stored on either Amazon or Rackspace), even Skype. Symbian’s developers still build their own website infrastructure using open-source platforms but that too is hosted in the cloud. The imperative for Symbian, as a not-for-profit consortium, is to stay flexible and minimize costs. An important part of that is having the capacity to scale rapidly if needed but without having to pay up-front for that capacity.

For Symbian, relying on the cloud for the entirety of its IT infrastructure gives the cost flexibility and agility of execution that it requires. It doesn’t differentiate between infrastructure and applications as a service — what matters is that they are delivered from the cloud in a usage-based billing model.

The takeaway for industry players is that we all have to work together. Earlier in the afternoon, the meeting heard a presentation by Chrysoula Christopoulou, a long-term member of the SAP Business ByDesign team and a key architect of its go-to-market and channel strategy. SAP will be bringing live its partner strategy for ByDesign this year (it already has some beta partners working with it) and it will encourage partners to offer mashups, add-ons, integration services and other extensions to ByDesign. Indeed, SAP is planning to introduce an application marketplace (they’re all the rage these days) and will be positioning ByDesign to its partners not just as an application but also as a platform.

SAP needs partners to sell ByDesign because (for the average case) the product alone doesn’t produce enough margin to cover the cost of making a sale. By adding their own extensions and services, the theory is that partners can spread that cost of sale across a larger total value. I think the Symbian story demonstrates that ByDesign partners should consider casting their net wider and as well as building on ByDesign they should also offer services that bring together a complete portfolio of cloud services. Most ByDesign customers won’t have the same in-house resource of smart developers that Symbian, because of the nature of its business, has on tap. Therefore there’s probably a big opportunity for partners to provide that expertise as part of their service offering. Of course they still have the challenge of providing it at cost-effective prices that are more in line with the price points of cloud services — the old SI models of long-term projects and sky-high bills don’t work in the cloud. The opportunity is around understanding the cloud environment and helping customers make the most of it — becoming the customer’s trusted advisor as they embrace the cloud, from top to bottom.

Watch, AFTER THE JUMP...

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