http://www.webremix.info/ Webremix : all the web new, remixed webremix.info http://story.venezuelastar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/33155218/ GAINESVILLE, Fla. -- The Florida Gators are no longer concerned about getting back to the NCAA tournament.Their two-year drought it over. But there's a new buzzword surrounding coach Billy Donovan's ... Mon, 15 Mar 2010 22:05:17 GMT http://story.venezuelastar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/2411cd3571b4f088/id/33155218/ 2010-03-15T22:05:17Z http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=72191 Twitter works great for the "twitterati," but in many ways it has failed to penetrate the mainstream web. For many people who aren't attached to their phones 24/7 or aren't multitasking between work and a stream of micro-thoughts of questionable depth, Twitter is a buzzword, something the media loves to chatter about but signifying nothing. So on Monday, Twitter took a step toward the mainstream as CEO Evan Williams announced the @Anywhere platform, which will pull Twitter feeds into media web sites. He announced the new system at the start of an on-stage dialogue with Umair Haque, director of the Havas Media Lab. After that announcement, most of the audience seemed to find the conversation boring as attendees streamed out during their talk. Big-Name Partners Williams showed a quick demonstration of @Anywhere with web sites showing "hovercards." Mousing over these brings up some Twitter posts and a way to link to a user's Twitter account. Other possibilities are linking to an author's Twitter feed by clicking on a byline. @Anywhere is launching with 13 big-name partners, including Digg, The New York Times, MSnbc.com, eBay, Amazon.com and Microsoft's Bing search engine. The idea is to find ways to discover good content on Twitter that users will want to subscribe to. "Discovery is one of the hardest challenges," Williams said. "It's putting these in context where you're already aware of them ... Twitter is a very easy way to keep in touch." A company blog post pointed out that Twitter has fewer constraints than social networks like Facebook. "When we designed Twitter, we took a different approach -- we didn't require a relationship model like that of a social network," it said. "You could follow any account and be followed by any account. As a result, companies started interacting with customers, celebrities connected with fans, governments became... Mon, 15 Mar 2010 20:54:44 GMT http://www.cio-today.com/story.xhtml?story_id=72191 2010-03-15T20:54:44Z http://www.telco2.net/blog/2010/03/telco_20_news_review_11.html Telco 2.0 Top Stories Strategy & Finance: Vendors weather the crisis thanks to China, Safaricom & friends, VZW Mobile Money: Telenor...buys a bank Regulation: British intelligence: music wants to be free, maaan! Broadband Connectivity: OFCOM moves on 800, 2600MHz bands at last Advertising 2.0: How Apple missed out on Admob - and how Google spent $750 million to spite Steve Jobs [Ed: There's a major session on 'Living with Google - Where to collaborate, where to compete?' at the 9th Telco 2.0 Executive Brainstorm, 28-29th April, London] ABI closes the books on 2009 and concludes that despite the global recession, mobile CAPEX held up well, if you count a 5% dip as "well"; key drivers of this included 243,000 base stations for China, Huawei's lavish vendor financing, and Verizon Wireless' LTE supercontract. Telenor, in its role as Pakistan's second biggest operator, reckons that we're heading into the emerging-markets shakeout - they think Pakistan just has too many GSM networks, perhaps because of all that lovely vendor financing. Well, in a sense, they would say that, but it certainly fits with our experience at TelecomFinance. Also, when we included "Buy a bank - they're going cheap" as an option in the Mobile Money vote at the last Telco 2.0 event, it was meant to be a joke. Telenor Pakistan, though, has done just that, buying into a micro-finance bank and introducing mobile payments for utility bills. Bizarre twist in the UK's Digital Economy Bill debate - are the secret services coming out against three strikes? It started with a leak of the BPI's weekly internal news digest, which contained an odd reference to a survey commissioned by TalkTalk and whether it was funded by MI-5. The Cambridge Computer Lab security blog has more, including the fact that the intelligence community is having talks with the prime minister's staff about this - it seems that the spies are worried that, if three-strikes provisions come in, essentially everyone will start encrypting all their traffic, and they won't be able to spy on it. Also, they won't be able to infer that the presence of encrypted traffic is in itself suspicious. Who would have guessed that the intelligence services and the record industry would end up on opposite sides of an Internet-freedom debate? Of course, it is possible to see who else is supplying or downloading a file on a P2P network even if encryption is used - so an evil peer attack is possible - but it's also possible to push your P2P trafffic through something like Tor, or just use Rapidshare instead. Meanwhile, the German supreme court struck down the EU data-retention directive after a long and bitter campaign. Which is almost a pity, what with this new stealth product at IBM. Their M2 Insight Engine seems to be a platform for processing really huge data sets, based on the open-source Apache Hadoop system, and you'd think crunching telco subscriber data would be an ideal application. But IBM's suggested use-cases including something called Computational Journalism... While the row about the Digital Economy Bill rages, the UK is making no progress at all on replacing the copper network. Computer Weekly joins the new Final Third First campaign for universal broadband, making the excellent point that it's not just the countryside that has problems - BT's urban residential network is gradually rotting (which is very obvious to at least one Telco 2.0 crew member, whose inner-London ADSL line achieves a spectacular 700kbps downlink). CW also makes the excellent point that no-one is really responsible for the quality of wholesale broadband lines and that it's quite possible that BT management is living in a fools' paradise because their metrics don't cover actual throughput rather than modem line rates. In tangentially related news, the UK Information Commissioner is trying to get the political parties to activate the legal provisions that could make it possible to send data thieves to prison...unfortunately, one of the parties' director of communications is a possible candidate for this punishment, so good luck with that! And OFCOM has moved on the spectrum issue, officially approving the re-use of the GSM900 and PCS bands for 3G, and making a variety of detail changes (increasing the permissible transmitter power for underwater use so long as the transmitter is automatically suppressed when it surfaces...). It seems that a version of the Kip Meek plan will go before parliament before the general election - a tight timescale - with the auctions provisionally scheduled for the summer. The plan foresees the release of the 800 and 2600MHz bands, with a 180MHz cap on individual holdings of spectrum and a 40MHz cap on individual holdings below 1GHz. 20MHz (in four 5MHz channels) of the 800 band will come with a universal service requirement of 99% population coverage. All the allocations are technology neutral. A key block of contiguous 2.6GHz spectrum - 50MHz worth - is allocated for TDD systems and is going to be fast-tracked, so it's "gentlemen, start your engines" for the WiMAX vendors. There's some good news for new entrants - if you can get to 70% population coverage, you have a right to a regulated national roaming agreement for the rest. One operator that's interested in more spectrum would be Qualcomm's FLO wholesale mobile-TV network, which has signed up CNN as a new customer. A little shot of whisky for sender-pays data: some operators (3UK is mentioned) are apparently thinking of linking priority data service with app stores, so you might (without noticing it) pay for priority access when you buy an app. 3UK is currently throttling down BitTorrent traffic from its dongle fleet on cells that are currently congested only. Google's announcement of FTTH demonstration projects has unleashed a frenzy of interest from the broadband-starved. The latest move is that the U.S. Senator and comedian Al Franken (there are plenty of senators who are also clowns, but only Al is doing it on purpose) is going to lobby Google for fibre in two cities in his home state of Minnesota. Meanwhile, the FCC has released an app that lets you test the quality of mobile data service. It looks like Apple could have grabbed AdMob for $150 million less than Google eventually spent, had they moved quickly enough to close the deal during the 45-day lockup period. Apparently, Google's top motivation in buying the mobile-ad specialist was simply to stop Apple getting it. Here's a story with an incredibly high buzzword density: a version of Google Reader optimised for the Apple iPad. It has a very clean and rather Apple-like user interface and is implemented entirely in HTML/Javascript (of course, you're not allowed to use Flash on the 'pad even if you wanted to for some perverted reason). There's a whole gallery of mockup newspaper applications on the iPad here. There's also a fascinating piece about the thing's genesis and Fujitsu, the importance of voice control, and the possibilities of Google Android on the netbook/tablet/smartbook platform. Perhaps the perfect representation of the zeitgeist - an iPhone app for unemployment. iPhone and Android users finding themselves out of work can now do a location-based search for jobs registered with the Jobcentre Plus system, and apply through the Jobcentre call centre. Sprint is providing wholesale M2M service for pay-as-you-go car insurance. Basically, the idea is that you accept to be monitored whereever you go, and only pay for the miles you actually drive; it's also a possibility that your premiums might be dynamically adjusted. The only question that remains is why anyone would actually want that - Telco 2.0 was recently offered a quote by a PAYG car insurer that was literally double the best competing price, but we suppose you've got to pay for a really spectacular assault on your privacy. Meanwhile, Californian electricity company PG&E wants to deploy smart meters; the EFF has privacy concerns, and it's off to the courthouse. Mobile search usage data - Telemap has published statistics on what its users actually search for, and it turns out that they mainly search for pizza, Chinese takeaways, and coffee. Clearly, we're still not breaking out of the early-adopter geek market. Has the app hype peaked? We ask only because someone's asking if they will "save the world". They probably do have a point about election monitoring. Meanwhile, Googlephone sales have been revised down yet again. And growth at Twitter appears to have run out of steam. The management of MySpace are faced with a major challenge, as the network looks more and more like another Friends Reunited; they've changed CEO twice this year. T-Mobile USA announced that it's joined a cloud platform that aggregates location data from multiple sources under a common API for applications developers, Veriplace, which also includes AT&T and Sprint. There's a Nokia N900 up for grabs for the winner of a contest for the best Mozilla Fennec add-on. More here. And the Electronic Frontier Foundation has the full text of the Apple iPhone developer license agreement - highlights include a clause that bans you from saying anything about the agreement and another one that denies liability for any damages greater than $50. As usual, the gap between Apple's image and the reality is impressive. Interesting Voice 2.0 app - Twisted Pair lets you trunk push-to-talk systems over the Internet, so you can do your own PTT on networks that don't have it and extend your private-mobile-radio network's PTT service to all your mobile devices. They also deserve some kind of award for the company name... We were a little nonplussed by the Orange-Barclaycard deal - was there really very much value in what was, after all, basically an Orange-branded Visa card? Here's something more like it - Barclays is promising to have an Orange-backed NFC product out this year. In other emerging finance news, Kickstarter is a crowdsourcing site for tech startups - rather than hoping to catch a VC player, you put up a project and try to get many users to contribute your funding. Felix Salmon, however, sounds a note of warning - it's not usually good news when something that isn't a bank decides to dabble in a little banking, nor is it often good news when something that isn't an insurance company tries to write insurance, especially if they aren't covered by the same regulation that covers banks or insurers. David Burgess is blogging his OpenBTS deployment on Niue further; there's a third post here, in which they climb the tower, set up the Asterisk box, and discover a radio environment stranger than they could possibly imagine. It's been 25 years since the first .com domain name was registered; and ten years since World Online's botched flotation rang in the .com crash. The best mobile app ever? And the Internet has been nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. Mon, 15 Mar 2010 11:00:05 GMT http://www.telco2.net/blog/2010/03/telco_20_news_review_11.html 2010-03-15T11:00:05Z http://websphere.sys-con.com/node/1316847 I was honored to be invited to participate in a series of articles being hosted over at DeveloperWorks call Innovations Within Reach. The goal is to bring together some of the latest information on the emerging technologies space when it comes to enterprise software. For instance, the previous article before mine deals with IBM WebSphere Cloudburst appliance which hopes to bring the sophistication of a private cloud environment in the form of a simple purple box. Sometimes color matters I suppose. I took the opportunity to use the platform to define elasticity as we've been using the term. The moral here is that a buzzword is just a buzzword until it gets a specific definition, and I hope this is adequate. I'd love to here more opinions via comments and see if we can't get some momentum behind specific characteristics that are implied when someone decides to use the elastic adjective when describing an enterprise solution. read more Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:13:26 GMT http://websphere.sys-con.com/node/1316847 2010-03-12T19:13:26Z http://www.pajiba.com/career_assessments/robert-pattinson-career-assessment.php Subject: Robert Thomas Pattinson, 23-year-old English actor Date of Assessment: March 12, 2010 Positive Buzzwords: Sparkles, Edward, fangirls Negative Buzzwords: Sparkles, typecast, shampoo The Case: Oh, Sparkles. I long to run my hands through your unruly, untamable, and thoroughly unwashed... Fri, 12 Mar 2010 17:00:00 GMT http://www.pajiba.com/career_assessments/robert-pattinson-career-assessment.php 2010-03-12T17:00:00Z http://gawker.com/5490302/sloganeering-towards-fallujah The Way We Live Now: Boldly Embracing Change. We must Move Forward and Evolve With Strength and Reward Success and other such buzzwords, if we are to survive as a nation in which people "buy" things. Not that you can. More » Wed, 10 Mar 2010 20:46:04 GMT http://gawker.com/5490302/sloganeering-towards-fallujah 2010-03-10T20:46:04Z http://allafrica.com/stories/201003100296.html The buzzword all over the world today is global recession, also known as global economic meltdown. In reminiscence of the post-World War 2 experience, all hands are on deck to ensure it does not deteriorate into a depression, when everything goes burst in a socio-economic sense. Wed, 10 Mar 2010 09:50:20 GMT http://allafrica.com/stories/201003100296.html 2010-03-10T09:50:20Z http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/09/just-cause-2-trailer-analyzes-anatomy-of-the-rocket-launcher-ju/ Though we've thoroughly enjoyed Just Cause 2's "Anatomy of a Stunt" videos, we're not sure the one you see posted above is accurately titled. Though the name "Rocket Launcher Jump" does capture some of the components of the stunt, it fails to mention a few other important buzzwords; namely "speedboat," "ramp," "explosion," "death," "aerial," and "unimaginably awesome." Do yourself a favor and check out the video above, which we've chosen to remoniker "Unimaginably Awesome Speedboat Ramp Jump Aerial Rocket Launcher Explosion Death." Just Cause 2 trailer analyzes anatomy of the 'Rocket Launcher Jump' stunt originally appeared on Joystiq on Tue, 09 Mar 2010 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Tue, 09 Mar 2010 23:00:00 GMT http://www.joystiq.com/2010/03/09/just-cause-2-trailer-analyzes-anatomy-of-the-rocket-launcher-ju/ 2010-03-09T23:00:00Z http://feeds.style.com/~r/style_file/~3/kD2MvJgEafA/ Uniform dressing has been the buzzword on the European runways, but that doesn't mean savvy designers haven't found ways to tweak the suiting standards. We're loving Paris' creative plays on the double-breasted jacket. Stella McCartney sheared the sleeves off of hers to create a sleek camel coat-dress (left). Hussein Chalayan ... Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:33:12 GMT http://feeds.style.com/~r/style_file/~3/kD2MvJgEafA/ 2010-03-08T22:33:12Z http://www.style.com/fashionshows/review/F2010RTW-SMCCARTN/?mbid=rss_runway Stella McCartney's show began with a fake recording of Tiger Woods' alleged call to his mistress, the one in which he asks her to remove her name from her voicemail because his wife has found her number on his phone. Things ended, as usual, with a Beatles song; this season it was "Mother Nature's Son." They made for perplexing, if thought-provoking, bookends to a collection of daywear that for the most part looked tailor-made not for celebrity groupies but for the smart, powerful businesswoman. It was clean, polished, and chic—three buzzwords of the season. An unfettered charcoal coat, a notched lapel its only decoration, opened the show, and was followed by streamlined, hip-grazing tunics. When they were worn with narrow, tapering trousers or even stirrup pants, along with pointy kitten heels, they looked like modern, easy answers to the much maligned boardroom pantsuit. Just as often, though, they came without bottoms, which meant that there was a lot of leg on McCartney's runway. Plenty sexy, but perhaps not so user-friendly as a sleeveless coat-dress in camel or her beautifully spare double-breasted white coat. For evening, the designer experimented with sheer organza overlays (a motif that also turned up at Givenchy). She draped them on top of a one-shoulder iridescent paillette dress or a nude bustier number embroidered with scarlet roses. In other words, they were quite a bit trickier than her fabulously minimal daywear. —Nicole Phelps Mon, 08 Mar 2010 22:28:36 GMT http://www.style.com/fashionshows/review/F2010RTW-SMCCARTN/?mbid=rss_runway 2010-03-08T22:28:36Z http://www.buddytv.com/articles/american-idol/american_idol_playing_it_too_s-35076.aspx The biggest buzzword from last week's American Idol: frustration. I mean, how many contestants got the "we're frustrated and disappointed at you" remark from the judges? Jermaine Sellers got that. Andrew Garcia got that. Haeley Vaughn got that. Lacey Brown got that. Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:30:00 GMT http://www.buddytv.com/articles/american-idol/american_idol_playing_it_too_s-35076.aspx 2010-03-08T10:30:00Z http://www.style.com/fashionshows/review/F2010RTW-GIVENCHY/?mbid=rss_runway "I was thinking of the ski world, and the scuba world," said Riccardo Tisci. "And the colors of the Bauhaus." True, his collection incorporated snowflake-patterned knits, neoprene diving fabric, and black, red, and beige as a color code. But the way he melded those materials into his collection spoke more of this Fall's reworking of the aesthetics of the nineties, personalized with Tisci's taste for high-drama Parisian glamour. Sporty piste-cum-surfwear this definitely was not. A better way of looking at it was as one of the season's rechannelings of the work of Helmut Lang and Martin Margiela, two towering heroes of modern fashion design whose retirement from the scene has left a gaping hole in women's wardrobes. Tisci's tailoring, like Phoebe Philo's at Celine, is a way of filling that gap with sharp camel coats, tuxedo suits, and lean black pants. In Tisci's case, it's also accompanied by tape-bound throats; red glitter gloves, bags, and lips; and sexy workings of scarlet, black, and nude lace. That's all fully in line with his own gothic taste, but also reminiscent of Margiela's styling, back in the long-lost day when "edgy" was the buzzword of the nineties. The scuba-ski dynamic meant traditional alpine patterns reengineered into formfitting bodysuits, sunk into neoprene lower garments that unfurled at the waist by means of zippers (the look happens to cross-reference with a section of Nicolas Ghesquiere's collection this Fall). For evening, the fold-down device was transposed to inform the shape of black velvet and satin evening shifts and tunics. To end with, Tisci returned to working with feathers—a feature he's made his own in his couture collections over several seasons. Last in the line: a puff of white ostrich on an organza T-shirt, paired with narrow black pants, poetically trailing a pair of diaphanous "wings" as it exited. It was quite beautiful—and then again, in spirit, inescapably Helmut Lang. —Sarah Mower Mon, 08 Mar 2010 07:02:54 GMT http://www.style.com/fashionshows/review/F2010RTW-GIVENCHY/?mbid=rss_runway 2010-03-08T07:02:54Z http://soa.sys-con.com/node/1294121 There’s a difference between automation and orchestration, and knowing which one you’re really doing is half the battle in achieving a truly dynamic data center. Randy Heffner on CIO.Com wrote an excellent article on SOA and its value, “SOA: Think Business Transformation, Not Code Reuse.” The problem I had with the article was not in any way related to its advice, conclusions, or suggestions. The problem I had was that I kept thinking about how perfectly much of his article could be applied to data center orchestration, operational transformation, and automation. Simply replace “SOA” with “orchestration”, “software reuse” with “automation”, and “business” with “operational” and you’ve pretty much got what needs to be said. Here, I’ll show you what I mean: The worst CIO CTO misunderstanding about service-oriented architecture (SOA) orchestration is thinking of it as only another technical initiative for automation software reuse. Although SOA's reuse orchestration’s automation potential is real and good, its business operational impact goes much further: In Forrester surveys, 38 percent of Global 2000 SOA orchestration users say they are using it for strategic business operational transformation. SOA's Orchestration’s true source of power is in its business operational design models, not its technology — and this means that SOA orchestration provides a broad foundation for a much larger shift in business operational technology (BT) architecture that goes far beyond SOA orchestration itself. By correctly understanding orchestration SOA, CIOs CTOs can lead their organizations on a solid and well-managed path toward a strategic technology future and greater business value. This is true for SOA, and it’s true for cloud computing, where it is the orchestration of the data center infrastructure that brings the value to the table through making more efficient the operational processes codified to automate and integrate systems. AUTOMATION is HOW, ORCHESTRATION is WHY This very short (perhaps too short) post on differentiating between automation and orchestration last year kicked off a very interesting (and also short) discussion on Twitter with the core theme appearing to be “why differentiate in the first place?” Why, indeed. I can answer that question with a question of my own: why differentiate between “software reuse” and “SOA”? After all, aren’t they the same thing? They are not the same, as Randy very eloquently pointed out above. The biggest difference is that discrete components like services and automation are designed from the top-down; that is, they are not necessarily taking into consideration the business side of the processes. Automation is akin to expert systems: it is the codification of a set of steps to perform some action. That action may be conditional upon variables extracted or shared by other systems within the environment, but they are environmental and focus on specific properties such as CPU utilization, number of connections, or even the user invoking the automation. Automation can answer the question “how do I do this?” Orchestration, however, resides on the process level and more specifically on the business process level. Business process in this case relates to the operational IT processes which seek to achieve a specific business goal in its execution. Orchestration can answer the question “why do I do this?” The subtle but significant difference between automation and orchestration is important if you’re looking to realize the maximum benefits from an implementation. Automation will reduce time spent on tedious tasks, yes, but orchestration can streamline processes by discovering – and one hopes ultimately eliminating – redundancy, and aligning the technical aspects of IT with the business. Oh how you hate that “align IT with the business” line, don’t you? It’s fluff, you’re thinking; just another buzz phrase. In some cases when it’s used, yes, it’s just a phrase. But in the case of orchestration there isn’t a truer set of buzzwords that have been strung together in quite some time. ORCHESTRATION is BUSINESS, AUTOMATION is OPERATIONAL That’s because the goal of orchestration is to make operational decisions based on business goals and needs in real time. Instead of thinking about bandwidth in terms of how much an application might need, you start making decisions based on what it uses and what it costs and what the prioritization of the business function the application serves. Yes, you probably do factor those variables in today, but orchestration makes them an integral part of the decision making process and uses automation to make the adjustments required without human intervention. Orchestration is the art of tying together those integrations in such a way as to automatically execute against business logic based on operational and business requirements. In the case of orchestration, the whole is greater than the sum of the parts because the integration and collaboration that happens in an orchestration is enabled by automation, but not made from it. Just as JBOWS (Just a Bunch of Web Services) don’t make a SOA, neither does a bunch of disconnected scripts automating IT tasks make an orchestration. It is the integration and flow of systems from the top down, with a view from the business layer of the stack, that makes an orchestration valuable to both business and IT folks alike. SOA is an architecture, not an implementation. So, too, is orchestration an architecture and not an implementation. I think some folks from an EDS (HP) said it best in their vision paper: “Orchestration for the Business-Driven Data Center” Orchestration technology is not the same as systems management, provisioning, workflow management or “run- book” automation (a type of workflow management). These disciplines seek to automate the tasks required to manage elements of the IT infrastructure, such as servers, network devices, storage or databases. The primary goals of automation are to improve response times, reduce errors, reduce IT staffing needs, avoid redundant manual procedures and improve consistency. These are operational goals specific to the mechanics of managing technology. Orchestration, by contrast, focuses on business goals such as improving business up-time, improving customer satisfaction and retention levels, reducing order processing and delivery times, and reducing missed business opportunity costs. DOES IT REALLY MATTER WHAT I CALL IT? Well, no. Not really, unless you’re implementing discrete automation points and calling it orchestration. The reason it matters then is that you may not know that you could be realizing more benefit out of the automation if you really were doing orchestration. If you’re doing orchestration and calling it automation, well, a rose by any other name, right? What you call it isn’t nearly as important as recognizing that there are differences between the two and then applying that knowledge such that you can achieve the best benefits from what you’re trying to do. Cause knowing is half the battle, right? The other half requires lasers…and for those, you’re on your own. Related links & articles: Infrastructure 2.0 and the New Data Center Culture Orchestration for the Business-Driven Data Center [PDF] The Thing Private Clouds Can Do that Public Clouds Can’t WILS: Automation versus Orchestration Putting the Cloud Before the Horse Cloud Balancing, Cloud Bursting, and Intercloud The Infrastructure 2.0 Trifecta Users use Applications. Applications use Clouds. Alice in Wondercloud: The Bidirectional Rabbit Hole A Fluid Network is the Result of Collaboration Not Virtualization Technorati Tags: MacVittie,F5,cloud,infrastructure,infrastructure 2.0,orchestration,automation,SOA,services,web services,business,agility,application delivery,web,internet,blog read more Tue, 23 Feb 2010 17:15:00 GMT http://soa.sys-con.com/node/1294121 2010-02-23T17:15:00Z http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90785/6898320.html The Chinese government is strengthening its effort to monitor officials whose wife and children live abroad, as such officials are prone to abuse power. The term "naked official" has been selected as one of China's top ten buzzwords of 2009 by Chinese linguists. It refers to the officials whose family members have moved overseas, while they themselves work in the country alone usually with the other country's visa in hand. The "naked official" phenomenon has attracted great attention in Ch ... Sun, 21 Feb 2010 22:40:36 GMT http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90785/6898320.html 2010-02-21T22:40:36Z http://story.venezuelastar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/3a8a80d6f705f8cc/id/32282732/ Cloud computing is one of the most hyped technology concepts in recent memory, and, like many buzzwords, the term "cloud" is overloaded and overused. A while back Ars Tue, 16 Feb 2010 06:11:08 GMT http://story.venezuelastar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/3a8a80d6f705f8cc/id/32282732/ 2010-02-16T06:11:08Z http://www.topix.net/home/mortgage/2010/02/real-frugality-means-carefully-using-your-limited-resources?fromrss=1 By KARA McGUIRE Frugality. That's been the buzzword of the Great Recession.Sliding home values, stumbling stock portfolios and a shaky job market brought with them a consciousness about spending that many of us had misplaced during years of consumer overindulgence. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 17:47:21 GMT http://www.topix.net/home/mortgage/2010/02/real-frugality-means-carefully-using-your-limited-resources?fromrss=1 2010-02-15T17:47:21Z http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/15/gas-powered-games-announces-kings-and-castles-antics-ensue/ "We're doing something different this time," Chris Taylor, of Supreme Commander developer Gas Powered Games, said about the development of the company's new game, Kings and Castles. He's not really talking about the game -- it's another real-time strategy game, being developed for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 -- but rather of the development process. The developer plans to be as open as it can while working on the game, promising frequent updates on Facebook and Twitter (from Taylor's account, @DeathBot9), as well as on the game's website. "Synergy will be leveraged, and paradigms will be established," Taylor said in the press release. "More importantly, buzzwords will be utilized." From the tone so far, you might expect the updates to be on the silly side. The first effort in this initiative: a video blog in which Taylor does stuff on a farm for some reason. See it after the break. Continue reading Gas Powered Games announces 'Kings and Castles,' antics ensue Gas Powered Games announces 'Kings and Castles,' antics ensue originally appeared on Joystiq on Mon, 15 Feb 2010 09:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Mon, 15 Feb 2010 14:30:00 GMT http://www.joystiq.com/2010/02/15/gas-powered-games-announces-kings-and-castles-antics-ensue/ 2010-02-15T14:30:00Z http://kristiannielsen.livejournal.com/11316.html It is conference time for me. I just came home from FOSDEM 2010 where we had a booth and I gave a talk. At the end of the month there will be a company meeting in Iceland for Monty Program, followed by Open Source Days 2010 where I will also be speaking. And then in April there is the MySQL User Conference. With two additional talks given at local user groups end of last year, I think I've about filled my quota for now, I feel quite fortunate that it turned out that I will not also be presenting at the UC! (I do not have a natural talent for speaking, and tend to need to spend quite a lot of time in preparations.) Having a booth at FOSDEM turned out really well I think, as I got to talk to a lot of different people that passed by the booth. I also had a very nice dinner with the PostgreSQL people where I learned a lot about the internals of that database. As well as dinners with people from the MySQL world, also with lots of interesting discussions. Thanks to all of the people that I met at FOSDEM. It was fun and inspiring to meet you, looking forward to the next time! One thing strikes me as I am piecing together the mandatory "MariaDB feature list" for my next talk. It seems people tend to focus a lot on the extra features MariaDB has over MySQL. But there is another aspect that I think is just as important: MariaDB is creating an open framework where community developers can work together on new development. This is something that has been missing in the past. It is easy to focus on a concrete list of features, whereas the idea of an abstract framework is much harder to present as more than buzzword talk. But I will try to get it into my next talk, as I think ultimately both are of equal importance. Mon, 15 Feb 2010 11:44:58 GMT http://kristiannielsen.livejournal.com/11316.html 2010-02-15T11:44:58Z http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100212/auto_show_100214/20100214?hub=TopStoriesV2&s_name= While 'green' is the buzzword for carmakers at the Canadian International Auto Show -- and hybrids and electric cars are everywhere -- the average joe still can't afford to buy into the eco-friendly car market. Sun, 14 Feb 2010 12:23:33 GMT http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20100212/auto_show_100214/20100214?hub=TopStoriesV2&s_name= 2010-02-14T12:23:33Z http://fare.livejournal.com/154579.html A Boston Lisp Meeting will take place on Monday, February 22nd 2010 at 1800 at Harvard Pierce 209. Adam Chlipala will speak about A Sane Approach to Modern Web Application Development. Additionally, we will have two 5-minute Lightning Talks, each followed by 2-minute Q&A. Speakers to be announced. Note that lacking a sponsor at this point, no buffet will be offered after the meeting. 1 Adam Chlipala on A Sane Approach to Modern Web Application Development Most web applications today are programmed with tools that feel in this domain as assembly language feels in many traditional domains; everything is a string, or at best a globally-accessible (and mutable!) document tree. Some recent language designs improve the situation, including explicit handling of key entities like page generators and database tables, with language-level detection of violations of the proper protocols for using these entities. I claim we should go even further and provide opportunities for encapsulation of web application components. Just as we are used to building encapsulated data structure implementations, we should be able to encapsulate entire ``sub-webs´´ of applications, possibly parametrized by additional data and code, and with the ability to ``own´´ and enforce access control on cookies, subtrees of a web page's structure, etc. Further, within a statically-typed setting, it should be possible to implement (safely) the metaprogramming patterns that have become the standard in mainstream web frameworks; we should be able to generate sub-webs specialized to database schemas, choices of form fields, etc., and the compiler should tell us that the generator always produces valid code. In this talk, I will present the Ur/Web domain-specific programming language, which satisfies both of these requirements, in addition to offering compatibility with buzzwords like ``AJAX´´ and ``Comet.´´ Adam Chlipala is currently a postdoc in computer science at Harvard University. His research interests are in applications of advanced type systems, including mechanized theorem-proving and the design and implementation of functional programming languages. He finished his PhD at Berkeley in 2007, with a thesis on verifying compilers and program analysis tools in the Coq computer proof assistant. At Harvard, he is continuing work on compiler verification, and he led a reimplementation of the Ynot library for Coq, which adds support for the construction and mostly-automated verification of higher-order, imperative programs, via separation logic. He also has a longstanding interest in tool support for web programming, and he is now developing a commercial web site (to be made public Real Soon Now) using his Ur/Web language for safe metaprogramming of AJAX applications. 2 Lightning Talks At every meeting, before the main talk, there are two slots for strictly timed 5-minute "Lightning Talks" followed by 2 minutes for questions and answers. The slots for next meeting are still open. Step up and come talk about your pet project! Contact me at fare at tunes.org. 3 Time and Location The Lisp Meeting will take place on Monday, February 22nd 2010 at 1800 (6pm) at Harvard Pierce 209. Note that it's a new location. This is at Harvard University, in the Pierce building, part of the SEAS department. The nearest T stop is Harvard Square station on the Red Line. We suggest you enter Pierce Hall from Oxford Street. The entrance is the one on the right, and it has ``Pierce Hall´´ written above it. From there, you go up the stairs one level and arrive almost directly outside Pierce 209, the meeting room. Beware that the building normally closes at 6pm (time that the meeting begins) though we'll try to leave that particular entrance open for late-comers. SEAS maps and direction: http://www.seas.harvard.edu/our-school/map-directions Many thanks go to Adam Chlipala for arranging for the room, and to Harvard University for welcoming us. 4 No Dinner We haven't been able to renew sponsorship from our usual partners for 2010, and are not planning to have after-meeting buffet anymore at this point. A group will probably form to have dinner somewhere around Harvard Square. 5 More about the Meeting The previous Boston Lisp Meeting on Monday, January 25th 2010 had about 20 participants. Ryan Culpepper spoke about PLT Scheme Macros. http://fare.livejournal.com/tag/boston-lisp-meeting We're always looking for more speakers. The call for speakers and all the other details are at: http://fare.livejournal.com/120393.html Volunteers to give Lightning Talks are also sought. http://fare.livejournal.com/143723.html For more information, see our web site http://boston-lisp.org/ For posts related to the Boston Lisp meetings in general, follow this link: http://fare.livejournal.com/tag/boston-lisp-meeting or subscribe to our RSS feed: http://fare.livejournal.com/data/rss?tag=boston-lisp-meeting Please forward this information to people you think would be interested. Please accept my apologies for your receiving this message multiple times. My apologies if this announce gets posted to a list where it shouldn't, or fails to get posted to a list where it should. Feedback welcome by private email reply to fare at tunes.org. Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:59:02 GMT http://fare.livejournal.com/154579.html 2010-02-13T18:59:02Z http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Aman-remains-the-buzzword-at-poetry-evening/articleshow/5558597.cms The well-attended Indo-Pak mushaira, organised under the aegis of Aman ki Asha, not only focused on the burden of history that clouds the two sides, it articulated hope and harmony too. Wed, 10 Feb 2010 23:16:03 GMT http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Aman-remains-the-buzzword-at-poetry-evening/articleshow/5558597.cms 2010-02-10T23:16:03Z http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1279485 We asked Tom Pick "What are key marketing trends and predictions for 2010? What actions should marketers take in 2010?" Tom Pick is an online marketing executive with Minneapolis-based B2B marketing and PR agency KC Associates, and writes the award-winning Webbiquity. Tom Pick Blog Webbiquity Twitter TomPick "Marketers need tools to measure social media results the same way as other marketing programs." Tom Pick's Marketing Prediction for 2010 With increased time spent on social media marketing, C-level executives will pressure their teams to demonstrate measurable ROI from these programs. And because of the necessarily labor-intensive nature of social media, companies will seek to automate efforts where possible, such an analytics. Recognizing this need as well as the convergence of social networking and mobile devices, Google will continue to expand and refine the social media and mobile device/browser tracking capabilities recently added to Google Analytics, putting the same type of pressure on social media monitoring vendors as it has on traditional web analytics providers. Tom Pick's Marketing Action for 2010 As social media marketing matures from hot buzzword status to just another element of the marketing mix, marketers will need to develop more strategic, comprehensive models of how it fits within their overall marketing plan as well as how to apply uniform metrics so that social media results can be measured in the same way as other marketing programs. It’s unlikely that any analytics provider—even Google—will emerge with a single, all-encompassing “Swiss Army Knife” style tool for social media measurement, so marketers will need to continue to seek out and integrate results from multiple specialized point-solution tools. Win a one-hour high-level website SEO review by Tom Pick To enter this giveaway, just use this precrafted tweet or include the link to this post or this page with '#CLICKPRIZE'. Include @clickdocuments and @TomPick in your tweet. Recommended Resources The Brandbuilder Blog by Oliver Blanchard Social Media Today B2B Marketing Zone Over to you... Get 2010 started on the right foot with a bit of inspiration and no-nonsense marketing straight-talk from 38 other B2B marketers, e-mail marketers and social media gurus. Click and download FREE eBook from Marketo and ClickDocuments Related Blog Posts 2010 Content Marketing Trends and Predictions read more Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:00:00 GMT http://web2.sys-con.com/node/1279485 2010-02-09T11:00:00Z http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/variety/headlines/~3/cIdYz_4pcj4/VR1118014713 Berlin Film Festival Features: Buyers, sellers hit market in cautious, upbeat mood -- For U.S. sellers coming to Berlin, the buzzwords are "optimism" and "caution." For buyers from the rest of the world accustomed to the glut of midpriced U.S. fare, however, the days of plenty appear well and truly over. Sun, 07 Feb 2010 20:26:39 GMT http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/variety/headlines/~3/cIdYz_4pcj4/VR1118014713 2010-02-07T20:26:39Z http://www.topix.net/science/computer-science/2010/01/clouds-tablets-to-be-among-the-tech-buzzwords-of-2010?fromrss=1 Home : Sci-Tech : Clouds, tablets to be among the tech buzzwords of 2010 Clouds, tablets to be among the tech buzzwords of 2010 Viewer Canada AM: John Ruffolo on 2010 tech trends The national leader of the technology, media and telecommunication industry group at Deloitte reveals the top 10 high-tech predictions for 2010. Tue, 19 Jan 2010 18:44:43 GMT http://www.topix.net/science/computer-science/2010/01/clouds-tablets-to-be-among-the-tech-buzzwords-of-2010?fromrss=1 2010-01-19T18:44:43Z http://story.zimbabwestar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/4a6d634cbccbbfe2/id/31356513/ It is a crass violation of the right of the people to freely express their views and is antithetical to democratic practice when you draw up a boundary within which the new constitution should be craf... Fri, 15 Jan 2010 14:02:39 GMT http://story.zimbabwestar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/4a6d634cbccbbfe2/id/31356513/ 2010-01-15T14:02:39Z http://origin.www.style.com/fashionshows/review/2010PF-JUSTCAV/?mbid=rss_runway If Spring's Just Cavalli girl took an unexpected detour through grunge territory, her pre-fall counterpart is back in Roberto Cavalli's rock 'n' roll comfort zone. His signature leopard motif was reinterpreted as an abstract print and splashed on ruffled silk day dresses, and his shrunken leather biker jacket featured a pierced grommet trim. The slashed-jeans look, meanwhile, got an update via shredded chiffon layered over printed denim flares. The target customer is described in the notes as "a well-traveled woman who has one wardrobe for everyday and another for evening." Fair enough, though it puts the designer a little out of step in a season when versatility and day-to-night are buzzwords. —Romney Leader Thu, 14 Jan 2010 21:54:23 GMT http://origin.www.style.com/fashionshows/review/2010PF-JUSTCAV/?mbid=rss_runway 2010-01-14T21:54:23Z http://www.crn.com/hardware/222300833?cid=CRNFeed If there was a buzzword bigger than "tablet" at this year's CES, then it had to be 3-D. Wed, 13 Jan 2010 20:29:00 GMT http://www.crn.com/hardware/222300833?cid=CRNFeed 2010-01-13T20:29:00Z http://www.telco2.net/blog/2010/01/telco_20_news_review_2.html Telco 2.0 Top Stories Devices: Google gadget goes for half a grand, CES roundup Technology Disruptions: CES: swarm of iPhones eat AT&T's network Strategy & Finance: Nokia CEO: democratise the smartphone Advertising 2.0: Apple buys an ad broker Strategy 2.0: Netflix invests in content, fails Well, we've just had CES and the buzz was of course about the Google gadget. Connected Planet asks whether Google might subsidise apps or content on the "Nexus One". Although there's certainly something appealing about the idea of flipping the business model, getting rid of the handset subsidies, and instead pushing the app ecosystem, it seems unlikely - the device is pricey, at $530 a go with no carrier subsidy, so you'd have to push out a lot of subsidised applications in order to make it a financially attractive proposition that way. (Also, this is roughly the model Nokia is pursuing for Ovi.) If the iPhone was anything to go by, that $530 includes a substantial profit margin - but the problem is surely how much subsidy to applications the user could absorb. iFixit has a teardown out, so the genuinely intrepid can have a crack at costing out the BOM and estimating the margins themselves. We'd guess that the Snapdragon chip doesn't come cheap. Apparently, the device is actually made by HTC, so you might expect that they'll get the the lion's share of the price after the upstream suppliers like Qualcomm, Broadcom, etc. have got theirs. The capacity crunch is real: shamefaced apologies from AT&T after the fearsome concentration of iPhones at CES brought their data network to a halt. Not that this is new - we well remember helping a restaurant manager by getting their GSM/GPRS merchant terminal to fall back to GSM dialup a couple of 3GSMs ago when the BlackBerries and Nokia Communicators (remember them?) were thrashing Telefonica's GPRS net to death. LG launched a Linux-powered iPhone-like entity; they're using Intel's Moblin distribution running on Intel's Morristown chipset. We'd guess Intel had something to do with this, eh. Apparently it's "half-way between a smartphone and a netbook", but it's most certainly not a "smartbook" - must be a netphone then. There was also a great deal of froth about "slates", which is the new buzzword for "tablet PCs"; Computer Weekly has a nicely calming post pointing out that devices a bit smaller than a laptop with a reduced keyboard and a big touchscreen are far from new. However, T-Mobile UK wants you to have a 7" tablet in your living room as a "family hub". Nokia CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo, meanwhile, was pushing the Nokia Life Tools apps-for-the-emerging-markets programme and the need to "democratise the smartphone" - the contrast with Google's half-a-grand gadget is telling and presumably deliberate. Their Calling All Innovators program is about to start up again; this year's has dated British cartoons and more importantly a special section for developing-world business innovations with its own $1m prize. Palm, on occasion, likes to suggest that its WebOS devices are a cheaper, more democratic approach to smartphones. At CES, they announced that the applications developer ecosystem is being opened up to anyone who habitually counts "0, 1, 2...", that there will be prizes, and that their app store is going to take a Symbian Horizon-like twist - as well as the official one, other app stores will be able to use Palm's database of application metadata. As well as proliferating app stores, we've got proliferating app warehouses, and probably an app containership somewhere. However, another announcement from Palm shines a different light on WebOS. The core concept of WebOS was that the entire user interface was a Web browser, and all the applications were implemented as HTML/CSS/JavaScript widgets, which could be either local or remote, and which used a Web service API to control the device's lower-level functions. This offered the promise of eventually getting the various flavours of widgetry to converge, so that the standard graphical environment for mobile would be HTML and the standard applications programming language would be JavaScript. That, in turn, would mean that all a device needed to participate in the apps ecosystem would be a proper Web browser and a BONDI-compliant local API. And all would be love. Unfortunately, whatever JavaScript may be, it's not the language you'd immediately pick for performance. And, of course, on a mobile device with relatively limited processing power and battery life, you need to take this seriously. As a result, Palm has announced an API for plug-ins written in C and C++ - perhaps the first time we've had C embedded in a Web page made of HTML and JavaScript, rather than JavaScript embedded in a Web page being executed by a browser written in C. Apparently games devs, who need to mangle graphics really fast, are the target market. Alternatively, you could always do the app for a platform that uses Qualcomm's coming 1.5GHz Snapdragon. Soon, we'll have mobiles that are powerful enough to manage the space shuttle's glide approach while doing 3D computational fluid dynamics...for a total of three minutes before the battery runs out. There will, however, be no WiMAX smarties on the Clearwire network this year. Motorola announced another Android gadget and declared it was confident that they would lead it back to profitability; AT&T mobility chief Ralph de la Vega, meanwhile, made clear that AT&T is diversifying its smartphone range, with Android and two Palm WebOS devices coming to join the iPhone. Palm's CEO, it seems, doesn't care about the iPhone and wants you to know it. Mind you, we never thought the first generation iPhone would take off, with a grimy touchscreen that invariably won't work and no radio to speak of, and Telco 2.0's Alexander Harrowell has still never to handle one. (He claims it's a deliberate policy to remain rational about these things. Others claim he's just cheap.) Interestingly, Apple just bought an ad broker, like Google. So far, the Apple strategy has been clear - sell devices, because that's where Apple makes money, and then extend from there by getting iPhone users to replace other consumer electronics with Apple kit. The apps are part of the strategy to get users through the door, which is why Apple is happy to distribute most of the revenue. Another extension is selling content through iTunes. We don't really know what Google's strategy is for Android, but it's a fair guess that it's similar to all other Google strategy - more content to sell ads next to, more users to see the ads. It's hard to see how an ad broker fits in, unless the real message here is that both Apple and Google want to have a presence throughout the mobile Internet value chain, and land-grab mode has been engaged. If you really want a cool device, here's the Thales Teorem, a smartphone whose USP is that it encrypts your communications to the standard required for French official secrets - which presumably means "good enough to keep the Yanks out". 20,000 top officials are going to be issued with the devices. Pretty it's not, but this is the sort of thing you need to launch the independent nuclear deterrent. It's an advance on the 1970s, when President Valery Giscard d'Estaing allegedly kept the launch codes on a light gold chain around his neck... The French government wants to tax Internet advertising revenues in order to subsidise the online music industry. Apparently they want to collect the tax on the basis of who clicked on the banner ad - which seems to mean they want to demand extremely detailed record keeping from every advertiser in the world...although they will have WLAN on trains that go 300 miles an hour, so they can probably remain smug. It looks like Netflix has proven a Telco 2.0 insight correct; we've often said that if content is king, distribution is King Kong. Netflix succeeded through being a pure distribution company - using the Web for signalling and red vans as a media bearer, as it were. Then they decided to buy into the content business. Big mistake; it's cost a fortune and it fouled up their relationships with the big content providers, and they're now selling up. Robin Jewsbury goes to CES, and reports that femtocells are big news. We've known for some time about MagicJack, a Voice 2.0 play that routes your calls via their own cut-price CLEC when you're in range of a femtocell; now they've launched. He also, interestingly, mentions that Ubiquisys's femtocell was being demonstrated on the UK Trade & Investment stand by BBC Research engineers. Hmmm. Meanwhile, the other UK operators are demanding that Brussels investigate the T-Mobile/Orange joint venture, and TDC may soon be back on the stock market after four years in private-equity hands. Orange has taken a daring step into the mobile finance future...well, not really. It's launched a Barclaycard with its logo. The US national broadband plan has been delayed a month to give the FCC more time to filter a huge pile of public submissions. "Fibher Nowe!!!" scrawled on a torn-up phone bill doesn't count, so 90% of it can probably be filtered without losing any Shannon information. This post of Brough Turner's suggests Wi-Fi in the TV white spaces may be more than useful. The FCC is also demanding an explanation of how Verizon Wireless's early termination fees came to double. And it turns out that Kodak's wireless picture frames, and any other devices that use framechannel.com as the back-end, are accessible from the Internet by anyone who can guess their MAC address and set a fake user-agent header. Worse, it's possible to make them reset and issue a new activation code, so the attacker could down the frame, create a new account, and put whatever pictures they wanted on it. Back in the big wide world China became the world's biggest exporter, as well as the world's biggest market for cars. Up until now, the biggest exporter had been Germany for years - although, as the Germans point out, China does a great deal of low-value bulk for export, and imports a lot of very expensive German capital goods to do so. With that in mind, it's interesting that Huawei has just outsourced to India, although it's got a lot to do with India slapping a huge tariff on Chinese SDH networking gear. The Financial Times, meanwhile, takes a look at Alcatel-Lucent, and reports that unlike Nortel it's still here. Industry CAPEX is forecast to rise 1.5% in 2010. There's been another boss swap at BT Global Services. IBM is keen on industry vertical projects like smart grids and friends: "We were seeing a variety of projects that you would classify as physical meeting virtual world. These were clearly not back-office oriented but rather out where the business was conducted, like transportation services or power networks. We saw a significant acceleration in the number of these of physical world projects for a number of reasons, not the least of which is due to the fact that the cost of microprocessors had dropped dramatically. Microprocessors, embedded devices, RFID pricing have all come down to the point where computing at a different scale had reached an inflection point. The physical world projects started to accelerate and be much more front of mind. All eras, technology or otherwise build on eras of the past. It's our view that problem-solving via IT techniques can transcend limitations of our past." And a scientific paper suggests that exposure to GSM radio traffic rendered mice less likely to get Alzheimer's disease. Mon, 11 Jan 2010 13:34:50 GMT http://www.telco2.net/blog/2010/01/telco_20_news_review_2.html 2010-01-11T13:34:50Z http://ajaxian.com/?p=8413 If you have ever wanted to create your own "language" (or DSL if you want to play 2008 buzzword word bingo) then you may have delved into the worlds of yacc/bison (and their siblings: lex/flex) to get this done in a more declarative manner. Jison lets you play in this world thanks to Zach Carter: Jison [...] Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:35:20 GMT http://ajaxian.com/?p=8413 2010-01-11T11:35:20Z http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/windows-mobile-7-coming-to-mwc-in-february-not-just-evolutiona/ We'd heard some rumblings, but apparently Robbie Bach let the cat out of the bag at an analyst briefing this week, stating that we should expect a showing of Windows Mobile 7 at the Mobile World Congress show in Spain, which begins on February 15th. He also added that the OS (which he's played with, surprisingly) will "set the bar forward not in (just) an evolutionary way," and that Microsoft is going to be "more engaged" with OEMs in its "go to market approach." We love a good buzzword or three, but the hope here is that Microsoft has learned its lesson from iPhone and Android and is ready to compete in the next-gen smartphone game in a big way -- a WinMo 7 showing just four months after the release of Windows Mobile 6.5 certainly smacks of that. [Thanks, Matthias] Windows Mobile 7 coming to MWC in February, not just 'evolutionary' originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Jan 2010 11:15:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Fri, 08 Jan 2010 16:15:00 GMT http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/08/windows-mobile-7-coming-to-mwc-in-february-not-just-evolutiona/ 2010-01-08T16:15:00Z http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/3m-m2256pw-10-finger-multitouch-display-hands-on-with-video/ Multitouch may be losing the buzzword game to "slate" at this year's CES, but 3M's doing its best to keep things interesting with its new M2256PW multitouch display, which we've now had a brief chance to play with it ourselves. While the monitor itself is 3M's usual understated fare, the multitouch functionality does indeed work as promised, and 3M's in-house application demos do a respectable job of showing off some of the possibilities that double-digit multitouch opens up. Interestingly, while 3M's press materials only boast about 10-finger multitouch, the monitor seems to be equally capable of handling twenty fingers just as well. Of course, this one won't come cheap, with it apparently set to demand upwards of $1,500 when it lands sometime in the first quarter. Head on past the break for a quick demo video, and hit up the gallery below for a closer look. Gallery: 3M M2256PW 10-finger multitouch display hands-on (with video) Continue reading 3M M2256PW 10-finger multitouch display hands-on (with video) 3M M2256PW 10-finger multitouch display hands-on (with video) originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 07 Jan 2010 16:50:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | | Email this | Comments Thu, 07 Jan 2010 21:50:00 GMT http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/07/3m-m2256pw-10-finger-multitouch-display-hands-on-with-video/ 2010-01-07T21:50:00Z http://www.circleid.com/posts/20100104_email_related_predictions_for_2010/ As my recent series of posts has indicated, I am seeing a lot of future changes in the email industry. What do I think we can look forward to in email in 2010? Authentication In the realm of real authentication, the protocol most are using is is DKIM. While people will probably continue to publish SPF records (and Microsoft will continue to cling to the hope it becomes widespread) its relevance will continue to decrease. As less people pay attention to SPF, records may be unmaintained and become stale further decreasing their use and relevance. In contrast to SPF, DKIM will continue rolling out. More senders (both the ESPs and the ISPs) will be signing outgoing mail with DKIM. More receivers will be checking DKIM signatures and monitoring domain reputation. I think we're on the cusp of critical mass and signing will become less of a bonus and more of a given. Right now, it seems that senders who are signing with DKIM are seeing a bit of a reputation bump just because they're signing. I expect this positive effect will wane, but for now anyone who is signing seems to be seeing improved delivery. Domain based reputation Domain based reputation is on the upswing and I see that continuing through 2010. I don't, however, see domain based reputation replacing or even becoming more important than IP based reputation. A few people have predicted that domain reputation will replace IP reputation, and they're wrong. Domain based reputation will augment but not replace IP based reputation. It is easy and efficient to check the reputation of a connecting IP address and a receiver can make a preliminary delivery decision without having to accept the full email. Where domain based reputation will have the biggest effect is for IP addresses with mixed mail streams or IP addresses with no reputation. Small senders often have to share IP addresses with other senders and domain based reputation will allow them to establish their own reputation separately from the reputation of other senders using the same IP. The other real bonus will be when moving mail from one IP to another. Domain based reputation may decrease the time required to warmup an IP address. Engagement The buzzword for 2010 is engagement. ISPs will be measuring engagement and making delivery decisions based on how much their users want particular email. In the past ISPs have used measurements like complaint rates and bounce rates to measure how wanted email is. These numbers correlate with how wanted mail is, but are relatively easy for senders to game. In 2010, ISPs are going to actually start filtering based on how wanted mail is. "Wanted" mail will no longer be measured using the proxy measurements, as those have proven to be easy to game. Instead, ISPs will directly measure how much recipients want a particular mail. These changes will force senders to stop sending mail that does not generate complaints and start sending mails that recipients are eager to receive. Social Networking I don't see social networking replacing email marketing at any time. I do see, though, email marketing giving recipients opportunities to share information with social networks. Smart senders will provide easy links so that recipients can share information with their social networks. When marketers do well, they'll have happy recipients who want to share the information. When marketers do poorly, however, they will have to deal with unhappy recipients. It only takes a few people publicizing a company failure to generate negative buzz. Conclusion In 2010 email marketing is going to get much more challenging for everyone. Recipients, and their ISPs, are expecting more and better things from email marketing. Senders who are currently meeting expectations may struggle to meet those increasing standards within their current marketing frameworks. Successful marketers will be able to make the switch from sending mail that doesn't annoy customers to sending mail that recipients truly want. On the ESP side, they may find they had to provide more guidance and consulting support for customers. They may also need to change some policies and improve their problem detection systems. This is the year of engagement, and senders can't fake engagement the way they can other metrics. Marginal senders will struggle to adapt to the new conditions. Better senders will need to change some things, but will improve their marketing to meet the new standards. Overall, though, the changes will drive all senders to really send mail people want. This leads to more engaged recipients. More engaged recipients leads to better delivery and better ROI for those marketers as well as a better inbox experience for recipients. Written by Laura Atkins, Founding partner of anti-spam consultancy & software firm Word to the Wise Tue, 05 Jan 2010 04:12:00 GMT http://www.circleid.com/posts/20100104_email_related_predictions_for_2010/ 2010-01-05T04:12:00Z http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/04/webos-paid-apps-coming-to-europe-in-march-2010/ Okay, so this is quite the lag from October's North American availability, but at least when the paid portion of Palm's App Catalog rolls out across Europe it shouldn't experience the stuttering start it suffered back in the US of A. Palm has excitedly blurted out the news on its developer network blog, but not without the requisite garnishings of buzzwords like "leverage," "freedom," "choice," "control," and "speed," as well as something about "faster cycle times" -- all of it designed to get more developers onboard. Kinda ironic the company is boasting about fast cycle times when it can't transition its paid Catalog to Europe in less than six months, but hey -- the Pre already has that one killer app, and it's free, so what do you care? [Thanks, Ben] webOS paid apps coming to Europe in March 2010 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 04 Jan 2010 07:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Palm Developer Network Blog | Email this | Comments Mon, 04 Jan 2010 12:22:00 GMT http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/04/webos-paid-apps-coming-to-europe-in-march-2010/ 2010-01-04T12:22:00Z http://story.venezuelastar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/3a8a80d6f705f8cc/id/30883971/ MIAMI - It was a rough year for Ponzi schemes. In 2009, the recession unraveled nearly four times as many of the investment scams as fell apart in 2008, with "Ponzi" becoming a buzzword agai... Tue, 29 Dec 2009 04:32:05 GMT http://story.venezuelastar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/3a8a80d6f705f8cc/id/30883971/ 2009-12-29T04:32:05Z http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091228/ap_on_bi_ge/us_ponzi_nation AP - It was a rough year for Ponzi schemes. In 2009, the recession unraveled nearly four times as many of the investment scams as fell apart in 2008, with "Ponzi" becoming a buzzword again thanks to the collapse of Bernard Madoff's $50 billion plot. Mon, 28 Dec 2009 22:58:33 GMT http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/topstories/*http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091228/ap_on_bi_ge/us_ponzi_nation 2009-12-28T22:58:33Z http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/RS-bill-to-allow-ministers-to-take-along-any-number-of-companions-by-air/articleshow/5368013.cms AT A time when “austerity” has become the buzzword for the Manmohan Singh government, the passage by Parliament of a Bill providing for free air-travel within the country to companions and relatives of ministers. Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:24:01 GMT http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics/nation/RS-bill-to-allow-ministers-to-take-along-any-number-of-companions-by-air/articleshow/5368013.cms 2009-12-22T23:24:01Z http://feeds.style.com/~r/style_file/~3/PknaodjZg-4/ Actress Brittany Murphy died unexpectedly yesterday, and her famous friends have taken to Twitter to express their condolences. Ex-boyfriend Ashton Kutcher called her a "little piece of sunshine," later adding, "see you on the other side, kid." [E! Online] Buzzwords for 2009 include Octomom, death panel, and Tea Party. Not to ... Mon, 21 Dec 2009 20:53:44 GMT http://feeds.style.com/~r/style_file/~3/PknaodjZg-4/ 2009-12-21T20:53:44Z http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/860/f/415777/s/7fcf403/l/0Len0Brian0Bru0Cvaldai0Iforeign0Imedia0C20A0A912210C15731190A60Bhtml/story01.htm The latest buzzword in Moscow is modernisation. Everyone in Russia's chattering classes is using it, from President Dmitry Medvedev to assorted economists, commentators, bankers and businesspeople. Mon, 21 Dec 2009 09:22:00 GMT http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/860/f/415777/s/7fcf403/l/0Len0Brian0Bru0Cvaldai0Iforeign0Imedia0C20A0A912210C15731190A60Bhtml/story01.htm 2009-12-21T09:22:00Z http://www.iol.co.za/widgets/rss_redirect.php?artid=vn20091220081736150C853953&setid=1&sectid=13&url=iol&vne=0&csect=South+Africa Despite suggestions that South Africa is slowly emerging from the recession, consumers are getting smaller gifts, educational toys and necessities, such as clothes and shoes this festive season. Sun, 20 Dec 2009 11:14:30 GMT http://www.iol.co.za/widgets/rss_redirect.php?artid=vn20091220081736150C853953&setid=1&sectid=13&url=iol&vne=0&csect=South+Africa 2009-12-20T11:14:30Z http://linux.sys-con.com/node/1225739 There is a ton of discussion, stories, articles, videos, conferences and blogs about the benefits and value proposition of cloud computing. Not to mention, discussion or debates about what is or what is not a cloud or cloud product, service or architecture including some perspectives and polls from me. Now SANta does not really care about these and other similar debates I have learned. However he is concerned with who has been naughty and nice as well watching out for impersonators or members of his crew who misbehave. Via ABC news In the spirit of the holidays, how about a quick look at how SANta leverages cloud technologies to support his global operations. Many in IT think that SANta bases his operations out of the North Pole as it is convenient for him to cool all of his servers, storage, networks and telecom equipment (which it is). However its also centrally located (See chart) for the northern hemisphere (folks down under may get serviced via SANtas secret Antarctica base of operations). Just like ANC (Anchorage International Airport) is a popular cargo transient, transload and refueling base for cargo carriers, SANta also leverages the north and South Pole regions to his advantage. SANtas Global Reach via Great Circle Mapper Now do not worry if you have never heard about SANta dual redundant South Pole operations, its one of his better kept secrets. Many organizations including SANtas partners such as Microsoft that have global mega IT operations and logistics centers have followed SANtas lead of leveraging various locations outside of the pacific northwest. Granted like some of his partners and managed service providers, he does maintain a presence in Washington Columbia river basin which provides a nice PR among other benefits. Likewise, many in business as well as those in IT think that SANta leverages cloud technologies for cost savings or avoidance which is partially the case. However he also leverages cloud, hosting, managed service provider (MSP), virtual data centers, virtual operations centers, Xaas, SaaS or SOA technologies, services, protocols and products that are transparent and complimentary to his own in house resources addressing various business and service requirement needs. What this has to do with the holidays and clouds is that you may not realize how Santa or St. Nick if you prefer (feel free to plug in whoever you like if Santa or St. Nick does not turn your crank) extensively relies on flexible and scalable resilient technologies for boosting productivity in a cost effective manner. Some of it is IT related, some of it is not. For example, from the GPS and Radar along with recently added RNP and RNAV enhanced capabilities to his increasingly high tech bio fueled powered sleigh, not to mention his information technology (IT) that powers his global operations, old St Nick has got it together when it comes to technology. SANtas Bio Fuel Powered Sleigh The heart or brains of the SANta operation is his global system operations center (SOC) or network operation center (NOC) that rivals those seen at NASA among others with multiple data feeds. The SOC is a 24x365 operations function that covers all aspects from transportation, logistics, distribution, assembly or packaging, financials back office, CRM, IT and communications among other functions. SOCs and NOCs that enable SANta to get those SOCKs above fireplace filled! Naturally, like the Apollo moon shots whose Grumman built LEM Lunar lander had to have 100% availability in that to get off of the moon, their engines only had to fire once, however it had to work 100% of the time! This thought process is said to have had leveraged principles from SANtas operations guide where he has one night a year to accomplish the impossible. I should mention, while I cannot disclose (due to NDA) the exact locations of the SOCs, data or logistics centers, not to mention the vendors or the technology being used, I can tell you that they are all around you! The fully redundant SOCs, data and call centers as well as logistics sites (including staff, facilities, technology) leverage different time zones for efficiency. SANtas staff have also found that the redundant SOCs, part of an approach across Santa entire vast organization has helped to guard against global epidemics and pandemics including SARs and H1N1 among others by isolating workers while providing appropriate coverage and availability, something many large organizations have since followed. Carrying through on the philosophy of redundant SOCs, all other aspects of SANtas operations are distributed yet with centralized coordinated management, leveraging real-time situation awareness, event and activity correlation (what we used to call or refer to as AI), cross technology domain management, proactive monitoring and planning yet with ability for on the spot decision making. What this means is that the various locations have ability to make localized decisions on the spot. However coordinated with primary operations or mission control to streamline global operations focus on strategic activity along with exceptions handling to be more effective. Thus it is not fully distributed nor fully centralized, rather a hybrid in terms of management, technologies and the way they work. For example, to handle the diverse applications, there are some primary large processing and data retention facilities that backup, replicate information to other peer sites as well as smaller regional remote office branch offices close to where information services are needed. To say the environment is highly virtualized would be an understatement. Likewise, optimization is key not just to keep costs low or avoid overheating some of SANtas facilities that are located in the Arctic and Antarctic regions that could melt the ice cap; they are also optimized to keep response time as low as possible while boosting productivity. Thus, SANta has to rely on very robust and diverse communications networking leveraging LAN, SAN, MAN, WAN, POTS and PANs among other technologies. For example, his communications portfolio is said to involves landlines (copper and optical), RF including microwave and other radio based commutations supporting or using 3G, 4G, MPLS, SONET/SCH, xWDM, Microwave and Free space optics among others. SANtas networking and communications elves are also said to be working with 5G and 100GbE multiplexed on 256 lambda WDM trunk circuits in non core trunk applications. Of course given the airborne operations, satellite and ACARS are a must to avoid over flying a destination while remaining in positive control during low visibility. Note that Santa routinely makes more CAT 3+ low visibility landings than most of the worlds airlines, air freight companies combined. SANtas has GUI and Management Displays in his Sleigh My sources also tell me that SANta has virtual desktop capability leveraging PCoIP and other optimizations on his primary and backup sleighs enabling rapid reconfiguration for changing workload conditions. He also is fully equipped with onboard social media capabilities for updates via twitter, Face book and Linked In among others designed by his chief social networking elf. Consequently, given the vast amount of information needed to support his operations from CRM, shipping, tracking not to mention historical and profiling needs, transactional volumes both on the data as well as voice and social media networks dwarf the stock market trading volume. Feeding SANtas vast organizations are online highly available robust databases for transactions purposes, reference unstructured data material including videos, websites and more. Some of which look hauntingly familiar given those that are part of SANtas eWorld Helpers initiative including: Sears, Amazon, NetFlix, Target, Albertsons, Staples, EMC, Wall mart, Overstock, RadioShack, Landsend, Dell, HP, eBay, Lowes, Publix, emusic, Riteaid and Supervalu among others (Im just sayin...). The actual size of SANta information repository is a closely regarded secret as is the exact topology, schema and content structure. However it is understood that on peak days SANtas highly distributed high performance, low latency data warehouse sees upwards of 1,225PBytes of data added, one that is rumored to make Larry Ellison gush with excitement over its growth possibilities. How does SANta pull this all off is by leveraging virtualization, automation, efficient and enabling technologies that allow him and elves (excuse me, associates or team members) to be more productivity in their areas of focus that is the envy of the universe. Some of their efficiency is measured in terms of: How many packages can be processed per elf with minimum or no mistakes Number of calls, requests, inquiries per day per elf in a friendly and understandable manner Knowing who has been naughty or nice in the blink of an eye including historical profiles Virtual machines (VM) or physical machine (PM) servers managed per team member Databases and applications, local and remote, logical and physical per team member Storage in terms of PByte and Exabyte managed to given service level per team member Network circuits and bandwidth with fewest dropped packets (or packages) per member Fewest misdirected packages as well as aborted landings per crew Fewest pounds gained from consumption of most milk and cookies per crew From how many packages can be processed per hour, to the number of virtual servers per person, PBytes of data managed per person, network connections and circuits per person, databases and applications per person to takes and landings (SANta has the top of the list for this one), they are all highly efficient and effective. Likewise, SANta leverages the partners in his SANtas eWORLD Helpers initiative network to help out where of course he looks for value; however value is not just lowest price per VM, lowest cost per TByte or cost per bandwidth. For SANta it is also very focused on performance, availability, capacity and economic efficiency not to mention quality with an environmentally friendly green supply chain. By having a green supply chain, SANta leverages from a responsible, global approach that also makes economic sense on where to manufacture and produce or procure products. Contrary to growing popular belief, locally produced may not always be the most environmentally as well as economically favorable approach. For example (read more here), instead of growing flowers and plans in western Europe where they are consumed, a process that would require more energy for heat, lights, not to mention water and other resources. SANta has bucked the trend instead relying on the economics and environmental benefit of leveraging flowers and plants grown in warmer, sunnier climates. Granted and rest assured, SANta still has an army of elves busily putting things together in his own factories along with managing IT related activities in a economically positive manner. SANta has also leveraged this thinking to his data and information and communications networks leveraging sites such as in the arctic where solar power can be used during summer months along with cooling economizers to offset the impact of batteries, workload is shifted around the world as needed. This approach is rumored to be the envy of the US EPA Energy Star for Server, Storage and Data Center crew not to mention their followers. How does SANta make sure all of the data and information is protected and available? Its a combination of best practices, techniques, technologies including hardware, software, data protection management tools, disk, dedupe, compression, tape and cloud among others. Rest assured, if it is in the technology buzzword bingo book, it is a good bet that it has been tested in one of SANtas facilities, or, partner sites long before you hear about it even under a strict NDA discussion with one of his elves (opps, I mean supplier partners). When asked of the importance of his information and data networks, resources and cloud enabled highly virtualized efficient operations SANta responded with a simple: Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas to all, and to all, a good night! As you sit back and relax, reflect, recreate, recoup or recharge, or whatever it is that you do this time of the year, take a moment to think about and thank all of SANtas helpers. They are the ones that work behind the scenes in SANtas facilities as well as his partners or suppliers, some in the clouds, some on or underground to make the worlds largest single event day (excuse me, night) possible! Or, is this SANta and cloud thing all just one big fantasy? Happy and safe holidays or whatever you want to refer to it as, best wishes and thanks! BTW: FTC disclosure information can be found here! Me on a break during tour SANta site tour Cheers and seasons greetings gs Greg Schulz - StorageIO, Author "The Green and Virtual Data Center" (CRC) read more Fri, 18 Dec 2009 12:15:00 GMT http://linux.sys-con.com/node/1225739 2009-12-18T12:15:00Z http://allafrica.com/stories/200912170884.html ONE of the biggest buzzwords in today's vocabulary is networking, a term which in the last century loosely described relationships between members of different social systems. Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:56:50 GMT http://allafrica.com/stories/200912170884.html 2009-12-17T15:56:50Z http://soa.sys-con.com/node/1220387 Cloud Computing, last year's emerging focus area, will move from being merely a buzzword to a deployment reality -- as service providers address the challenges of providing managed cloud services and organizations realize the flexibility that these solutions can provide. In fact, cloud services ranks number one on the “Top Ten key IDC predictions that will shape the ICT industry in APEJ in 2010.” read more Tue, 15 Dec 2009 02:15:00 GMT http://soa.sys-con.com/node/1220387 2009-12-15T02:15:00Z http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2009/12/13/innodb-is-a-nosql-database/ As long as the whole world is chasing this meaningless “NoSQL” buzzword, we should recognize that InnoDB is usable as an embedded database without an SQL interface. Hence, it is as much of a NoSQL database as anything else labeled with that term. And I might add, it is fast, reliable, and extremely well-tested in the real world. How many NoSQL databases have protection against partial page writes, for example? It so happens that you can slap an SQL front-end on it, if you want: MySQL. Related posts:On the unhelpfulness of NoSQL My favoritWhat is the scalable replacement for InnoDB? A while baA Review of Beginning Database Design by Clare Churcher Beginn Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin. Sun, 13 Dec 2009 16:08:41 GMT http://www.xaprb.com/blog/2009/12/13/innodb-is-a-nosql-database/ 2009-12-13T16:08:41Z http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15605 By Ramzy Baroud So this is how democracy works? In 2004, France banned headscarves and school principals chased after young "defiant" Muslim girls who continued to cover their heads in school. Now, following a national referendum, Switzerland has banned the construction of minarets, because minarets also somehow symbolize oppression. Thanks to the dedicated action of the far-right Swiss People's Party, the Alpine skies will be free from the snaking menace, which would spread intolerance and taint the splendor of Swiss architecture. In between these two peculiar events, the targeting of Muslims in Western countries and the subjugation of entire Muslim nations all over the world has never ceased. Not for a day. Moreover, the collective targeting of small or large Muslim communities in Western countries, and the deliberate abuse and degradation of Muslim individuals and Islamic symbols (from the Holy Koran to the Prophet Mohammed) has also never ceased. Bizarrely, most of these actions have been done through "democratic" channels and justified in the name of democracy, on the basis of upholding the principles of secularism and Western values. Many thoughts come to mind here; all unreservedly angry. I remember when the word "democracy" used to resonate so loudly among Arabs and Muslims around the world. The more they were denied it, the more they yearned for it. University campuses in Cairo, Gaza and Karachi took their student union elections so very seriously. Innocent blood was spilled in clashes around campuses as students desperately tried to express their right to vote, to speak out and to assemble. Those were the days, when al-demoqratia, Arabic for democracy, was the buzzword in the Middle East and beyond. Even Palestinian political prisoners held their elections, ever so faithfully, surrounded by highly fortified towers and under the deriding gaze of armed men in the unforgiving heat of the Naqab desert. Arab and Muslim masses were keen on democracy to the extent that there was a near consensus that democracy, although a Western conception, could be distinguished from the many ills invited by Western interventions, imperialism and wars that scarred and continued to impair the collective Muslim psyche. An entire school of Muslim thought was in fact established around the concept that democracy and Islam are very much compatible. Such a notion goes back to Egypt's Azharite scholar Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, who argued in the first half of the 19th century that the principles of European modernity were compatible with Islam. "Al-Tahtawi's work influenced the philosopher Muhammad Abduh [1849-1905], another Azharite who is often described as the founder of Islamic modernism, which is captured in his statement that in Europe he found Islam without Muslims, while in Egypt he found Muslims without Islam," wrote German anthropologist, Frank Fanselow. If one sets his prejudices aside to ponder this for a moment, one would realize the intellectual valor it takes to consider and even embrace commonalities with the very powers that have instilled so much harm and fear. Even in their darkest, least proud moments, Muslim intellectuals and nations displayed impressive open-mindedness. They are hardly ever credited for that. More recently, in Egypt, people tried hard to vote, in the face of beatings, public humiliation and imprisonment. In Palestine in 2006 the price was even higher - starvation. Gaza continues to endure under a medieval Israeli siege, ultimately because of an election. Muslim communities in the West have long been considered the luckiest; after all, they live in the abodes of democracy. They drink from the fountain of rights and freedoms that never runs dry. However, these idealized assumptions missed the fact that Western democracy was conditional. And unconditional democracy can only be a farce. Much has been said to explain the West's faltering on its own commitment to democracy. No, the tragedy of September 11, 2001, is hardly the defining moment that created the growing chasm that made the West fearful of Islam. Despite all that has taken place since then - the constant spewing out of right-wing hatred, evangelical fanatic preaching and all the rest - America is still more tolerant than Europe. Nor was the growing anti-Muslim sentiment in Europe a response in solidarity to America's woes. Honestly, the French are not fond of Americans, nor are the Germans necessarily that passionate about the Swiss. But this didn't stop a German Christian Democratic state interior minister, Volker Bouffier, from making a "recommendation" to Muslim communities in his own country: "Naturally the Muslims in Germany have a right to build mosques. But they should make sure not to overwhelm the German population with them." How do you overwhelm people with minarets? Is this a post-post-post-modernistic logic that we are yet to be informed of? There are only four minarets in the entire country of Switzerland, a country with a population of approximately 7.6 million people. How overwhelming can that be? And aren't religious freedom and the freedom of collective and individual expression basic rights guaranteed by democratic values? But this is hardly about a 4.8-meter tall minaret in the northern Swiss town of Langenthal. It's about the fact that the one who suggested the structure is a Muslim furniture salesman by the name of Mutalip Karaademi. He didn't know, of course, that his modest idea of adding a minaret to the community's mosque would generate a nationwide referendum, and an international "controversy". Karaademi was not trying to "Islamificate" the Swiss. He just wanted his community to have a place for worship (as opposed to the unused paint factory it currently uses for prayer), to be able to express its collective identity without fear. Ironically enough, the Muslim community in Langenthal is mostly Albanians, refugees who fled Kosovo seeking escape and deliverance. What a strange paradox: Muslims escaping to the West, physically and figuratively, only to find double standards, self-negation and, at times, pure hypocrisy. For now, however, a new consensus is forming: democracy can be invoked and used against Muslims only, and not for Muslims. It can be manipulated to deny them their identity in Europe and their freedom in Palestine, to ensure their subjugation in Iraq and in Afghanistan, and to meddle in their internal affairs everywhere else. Al-demoqratia, indeed. - Ramzy Baroud (www.ramzybaroud.net) is an author and editor of PalestineChronicle.com. His work has been published in many newspapers, journals and anthologies around the world. His latest book is The Second Palestinian Intifada: A Chronicle of a People's Struggle (Pluto Press, London), and his forthcoming book is My Father Was a Freedom Fighter: Gaza's Untold Story. (Pluto Press, London), now available for pre-orders on Amazon.com. Thu, 10 Dec 2009 05:43:29 GMT http://palestinechronicle.com/view_article_details.php?id=15605 2009-12-10T05:43:29Z http://story.venezuelastar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/3a8a80d6f705f8cc/id/30374387/ a meaningful deal coming out of the Copenhagen talks . The betting world is also expecting new measures on "inheritance tax" (1/8).In the buzzword stakes, there's an even chance of Darling talking abo... Wed, 09 Dec 2009 11:10:15 GMT http://story.venezuelastar.com/index.php/ct/9/cid/3a8a80d6f705f8cc/id/30374387/ 2009-12-09T11:10:15Z http://www.livescience.com/technology/091208-cloud-computing.html Cloud Computing is becoming a popular buzzword and there's a reason why. Tue, 08 Dec 2009 17:05:35 GMT http://www.livescience.com/technology/091208-cloud-computing.html 2009-12-08T17:05:35Z http://www.france24.com/en/20091207-daily-mail-richard-titus-community-engagement-digital-media-tiverton-local-people "Hyperlocal" is a buzzword…and also a tempting new market for media groups eager to reap a little profit. Richard Titus, chief executive of AND (Associated Northcliffe Digital), explains why community engagement is the way forward for digital media. Tue, 08 Dec 2009 12:44:35 GMT http://www.france24.com/en/20091207-daily-mail-richard-titus-community-engagement-digital-media-tiverton-local-people 2009-12-08T12:44:35Z