the-reference.com

Bendtner didn’t play and that’s fine with me. His arrogance is starting to wear on me (and, apparently, on the other players). He’s a good player but needs to learn his place. This is what led to his bust-up with Adebayor. He’s still the junior man on the totem pole and needs to remember that. It was nice to see him warm up and then sit the bench. He needs that lesson in humility.

(Credit:
BBC)

After Arsenal’s blistering defeat to Tottenham last week, I figured it would be a test of their mettle to see how they responded against Newcastle, which put up a good fight against Arsenal earlier in the season. Despite a slow start, Arsenal has clearly moved on.

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As for Eduardo…what can I say? He is turning out to be an exceptionally astute signing by Wenger. His first bending ball into the post set up Adebayor’s goal. The only surprising thing about his play today is that he didn’t score in his typical slow-motion/time-stops-while-he-slots-the-ball-home signature moves.

I would have liked to have seen Fabregas and Walcott score, as neither has been confident in front of goal. Walcott played reasonably well today but couldn’t get rid of the ball fast enough when he was anywhere near the goal. Very disappointing.

Diaby played better, and Senderos was good enough. Adebayor…? He played very well and is starting to earn my confidence, though I really would have liked to have seen him pass the ball to Eduardo on his second goal. Yes, he ended up putting it in, but Eduardo was clear to his right before Adebayor shimmied his way over to the right before taking the shot.

All in all, not a great display by the Gunners but a good enough response to their defeat at the Spurs’ hands. My one big dilemma is whether to cheer for Manchester United or Tottenham tomorrow. I’d like to see Tottenham get put back in its place, but I’m also aware that beating Tottenham will be easy compared to beating Manchester United should they meet up later in the competition. Decisions, decisions.

Wednesday morning the video-hosting company rolled out its own tool for adding text bubbles, links, and call-outs to uploaded videos. The feature is available as part of its TestTube service, which showcases some of the technologies the company is testing, but is not ready to unleash on the general YouTube populace.

Adding video annotations to YouTube videos isn't hard, but it could be a whole lot easier. Most users will know what to do right away.

One thing to note is that annotations don’t yet make their way with the source video when embedded, something I’m sure will be changed later down the line. For now you can check out this example video I made shortly after unboxing the new Flip Video Mino.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

There are also slots to input the exact start and stop time down to the second. It’s not an exact science. Ideally I’d like to see YouTube add some better timeline control to let you simply drag a start and stop point as if you were editing the video itself. To push it live you just hit the publish button and any changes are reflected immediately.

Bugged by the overlay ads popping up on some YouTube videos? The purity of those home videos is about to get a little more cluttered with the inclusion of video annotations.

As far as actually adding annotations there’s a simple two-pane editor with your video on one side and a list of each annotation on the left. You physically have to play the video and pause it to track down the right times to start and stop an annotation.

Unlike some other Web video annotation services, you can only add them to a video if you’re the creator–something I’m betting will change in later iterations with a possible toggle to view community annotations. In the meantime, if you come across a video with annotations that you’d care not to see, you can simply click the new arrow button on the right side of the player.

A malicious spam e-mail is spreading that claims to have a link to a sex video of Obama but is instead spyware that steals sensitive data from the computer, security firm Sophos warned on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes a Trojan horse known as Mal/Hupig-D is installed. The Trojan targets Windows machines and steals passwords and bank account data, Cluley said.

Clicking on the link downloads an executable file that plays an amateur porn video, but Obama is not in it.

Is it the work of the Republicans? Probably not; it has the trademark bad grammar and excessive punctuation of traditional phishing attempts, many of which originate outside English-speaking countries.

Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet: Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama isn’t a terrorist…or a porn star.

The subject line says “Obama sex video!!!” and the e-mail appears to come from “infonews@obama.com, Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, says on his blog.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made over time is not wanting to nurture innovations where I either didn’t get the business model or we didn’t have it.

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I’m not saying open-source is a bad thing, but it doesn’t pay the bills in this company, so we can’t embrace that way of doing things. … We give out free soda pop to everybody who works here. We make our stuff free, people gotta give back the soda pop — it’s just inconsistent with what we do around here.

Now compare this to a previous Ballmer statement:

In one of the most revealing (and honest) quotes I’ve ever seen from Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, Mary Jo captures the big man revealing his blind spot toward open source, SaaS, the Internet, etc.:

Could it be, Mr. Ballmer, that you are classically overlooking a major opportunity for Microsoft because you simply don’t understand the open-source opportunity? Now would be a good time for a touch of humility and a smidgeon of good counsel from those around you.

The TBT ban took effect Wednesday. Hismar offers shipbuilders and ship owners a viable alternative, according to Rokilly.

(Credit:
Hismar)

Hismar is set to be demonstrated on September 23 at the Shipbuilding, Machinery, and Marine Technology International Trade Fair in Hamburg, Germany.

The Hismar (short for Hull Identification System for Marine Autonomous Robotics), whose development was funded by the European Commission, attaches to a ship magnetically. It pressure-washes the hull with sea water, and it sucks up loosened growth and debris into a filter system that can process 150 liters of water per minute. The ship does not have to be in dry dock to work. The robot can work both above and below the waterline of a ship afloat.

Since cleaning a ship’s hull of marine growth and debris reduces drag, the robot can reduce a ship’s overall fuel consumption. Ultimately, it could save companies money, while reducing the shipping industry’s impact on the ocean environment, according to Tony Roskilly, a professor at the School of Marine Science and Technology at Newcastle University and the Hismar project leader.

The robot self-navigates the surface area of a ship’s hull with a mapping system that identifies “every weld, thickness change, rivet, and indentation on the ship’s surface.” As a result, the robot is also capable of reporting back info on a hull’s condition. It can identify things like small cracks or corrosion, according to Roskilly.

Hismar also offers an alternative to coating a ship’s hull in chemically treated paint to prevent marine growth. Tributyltin (TBT) has been a common biocide used for ship hulls since the 1960s. It’s been found to be so dangerous to ocean life that the International Maritime Organization, the United Nations international shipping regulatory agency, has outlawed the chemical’s use.

A team of roboticists led by the United Kingdom’s Newcastle University are developing an automated robot to clean the hulls of ships.

The robot would also prevent far-traveling ships from bringing nonindigenous species and ocean contaminates from one region to another.

Hismar’s inventors claim that the robot can keep a ship free of marine growth and debris.

(Source: Engadget Mobile)

Helio has just introduced a killer deal: For only $99 a month, you can get unlimited everything. That includes daytime minutes, nights and weekends, text and multimedia messaging, Web and e-mail with 3G, GPS, and a whole lot more. So if you’re a heavy mobile user and you happen to be a Helio fan, this is definitely a sweet deal. The only downside seems to be the lack of Bluetooth tethering (the ability to use your phone as a modem), but that’s a small price to pay. However, this seems to be a “limited time” sort of thing, so if you want in on this deal, you should sign up pronto.

Helio offers Unlimited plan for $99 a month.

(Credit:
Helio)

Microsoft, Apple, Google, and Intel all declined comment. Late on Wednesday, Yahoo confirmed it had received an inquiry from the government “a while ago.”

The Washington Post first reported the story on Tuesday evening, listing Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Genentech as among the companies that were being looked at. Microsoft and Intel are also believed to have received requests for information, according to sources as well as to a New York Times report.

to The issue is believed to center on whether certain companies agreed not to hire from one another.

A Department of Justice probe into hiring practices among high-tech firms appears to have stretched out to include some of the best-known names in the industry.

Updated 4:05 p.m., with comment from Yahoo.

More recently, Apple and IBM duked it out after Apple hired IBM executive Mark Papermaster. He eventually took up work at Apple, but only after a lawsuit and eventual settlement. IBM also sued over a recent Dell hire, David Johnson.

Word of the probe took some in the tech industry by surprise, given several prominent cases of tech firms suing one another over worker poaching. Two of the companies said to be involved in the probe–Microsoft and Google–waged a fierce, multistate court battle after Microsoft executive Kai-Fu Lee was hired by Google. (The two sides eventually settled.)

CNET News’ Tom Krazit contributed to this report.

“We have been contacted (by the DOJ), and we are cooperating,” A Yahoo representative said.

Dan Rubin (Black Seagull/Sidebar Creative), Eris Stassi (Interaction Designer, Apple) and Didier Hilhorst (Interaction Designer, Ideo) shared a saccharine PowerPoint full of hearts and talk about how good design should elicit a response like good sex. Bad design (like ATM machines) can be like a bad, abusive relationship. Essentially: Emotion is essential to good design. (Just keep the limbic system from above in mind).

Blood Sweat and Tears: Great Design Hurts

The panel posited that all the caring and emotion we put into design could lead to the negation of emotion when we create machines that are smart enough to design themselves. But will machines be good designers (and who decides what good means)? Is emotion smart? And then there’s the nurture or nourishment question: Will our relationship to the machines/systems be that of pets or food? While this might all be uncomfortable to think about, humor was still alive and well. As Merkoski put it, “There had to be a beeper before there was a cell phone. . . We might just be the beeper.” So since we’re getting sci-fi, here’s to the pseudo-scientific:

A General Theory of Creative Relativity

Enjoy.

John Gruber (Daring Fireball) and Michael Lopp (Apple), made the case for cultivating discomfort as a designer: “Are you willing to be an asshole?” We took a trip back through the iconic designs (like IBM) of Paul Rand and examined the allure of the Apple logo (whether rainbow-striped or white, what makes it sexy is the bite. It’s original sin.). What stood out to me here, however, was discussion of emotion as a physical thing; just a limbic response, a bunch of bouncing chemicals. Because that leads to…

The captivating Jim Coudal (”Big Cheese”, Coudal Partners), launched into his theory (which essentially serves as a window into the Coudal Partners process), whereby e=mc2 means e (your energy/effort) is equivalent to m (the mass of information available to you) times c (the flash of inspiration), squared (the power of enthusiasm/belief). Or something approximate to that. Coudal showed this video from Steve Delahoyde’s (Coudal) series called “Regrets.” Essentially, it’s a highly creative video about the ability to balance e, m and c, and a desire to hold on to the power of enthusiasm.

Frog Creative Director David Merkoski took the stage with Alonzo Canada (Jump Associates), and Helen Walters (Editor of Innovation & Design, BusinessWeek.com) for a panel moderated by Johanna Blakley (Deputy Director, The Norman Lear Center). Here we fast-forwarded to a debatably near future–into the realm of the new singularity–because it’s not a matter of when it will happen, it’s a matter of thinking about it now; and that doesn’t just mean watching The Matrix again.

From Frustration to Elation: Getting Emotional by Design

Does Tomorrow’s World Need Designers?

Since the SXSW conference buzzword was convergence, Chelsea Holden Baker of Frog Design looks back at convergent themes of three panels in three synthesizing steps, and a little bonus at the end:

From phones to mobile Internet devices, digital cameras, music players, and mini notebooks–and on the home theater side–formats that whither and die just a couple of years after their much ballyhooed introductions. Every day there’s more junk.

Most of this glittering assortment of wowie-zowie tech trinkets are destined to take up landfill space in five years or less. That’s apparently OK; nobody expects to keep an
iPhone all that long, and besides there’s always something new, jam-packed with the latest tech to buy. Why would anyone expect to just buy something good enough to use for a decade or more?

Audio is the exception to that mindset. It seems like I’ve met a gazillion baby boomers still using the hi-fis they bought around the time of the first Woodstock. One Audiophiliac reader bemoaned the fact that his 20-year-old $600 speakers were now beyond repair. He got 20-something years of use out of the speakers–and that’s not enough.

Woodstock-era audio, still going strong.

I covered some of this in my The 30 Year Old iPod blog a few months ago. But when I see all of this techno junk grabbing headlines day after day I stop and wonder: how many of you still use your first cell phone? I wonder why buyers aren’t rising up to complain about their $1,000 notebooks crapping out before their time.

You see it every day, a passing parade of new-tech gizmos crowding the market.

(Credit:
McIntosh Labs)

When it comes to audio people think it should last forever, though some of the best stuff comes close. For example, the “other” McIntosh, the audio company, still factory services amplifiers built when Nixon was president. Gee, I wonder if Apple would fix your dad’s Apple II?

That’s why investing in quality audio gear makes sense. Sure, it may seem wildly expensive, but when you stop and realize just how long you’ll own a great, two-channel music system, it isn’t all that outlandish. For example, those $1,875 a pair Magnepan 1.6/QR speakers I raved about the other day are an incredible value–even if they’ll “only” last 20-plus years. How much do you think you’ll spend on computers over that time period?

The service called Xohm is set to launch this month in Baltimore. More cities are expected to go online in the fourth quarter.

Last week, the company started providing more details about what the service will be able to do and where it will be offered next.

But the Xohm project has hit a few speed bumps along the way, as Sprint has struggled to get its core business back on track. Initially, the company had said it would launch the service in the first half of the year. It’s been testing the mobile WiMax service since the end of last year in Chicago and the Washington-Baltimore area. In June it gave a firm launch time frame of September.

Sprint has been moving forward with its Xohm deployment as the company seeks the necessary regulatory approvals for its merger with Clearwire.

Sprint is also making the application programming interfaces for XOHM available so that developers can create new services for Xohm devices.

The location-aware technology will be available on a wide range of products using the Xohm network from laptops to mobile handsets to
car navigation systems and even digital camera’s.

Barry West, president of the Xohm or Sprint Nextel, also revealed some other details last week during an interview with the Web site MuniWireless. He said that Sprint is at least a month ahead of its internal schedule for deploying WiMax access points with nodes already running Baltimore, Chicago and Washington, D.C., the site reported. The company has also begun installing equipment in Boston, Philadelphia and Dallas/Fort Worth. But he wouldn’t give a specific timeframe for launching the new sites.

Earlier this year, Sprint said it would merge its WiMax business with Clearwire’s business, which is already operating a fixed-WiMax network in parts of the U.S. The combined company, which will be called Clearwire, will be majority-owned by Sprint and has taken investment from cable operators Comcast and Time Warner Cable as well as from big tech companies such as Intel and Google.

The specific location-based services that will be available at launch include: uLocate Communications, which will offer its Buddy Beacon technology for tracking friends as well as its Where platform for accessing local information about restaurants, news, events and weather; Yelp, which provides local business reviews of restaurants, doctors, and more; Eventful, which offers local event listings with a map view; Topix, which provides local news; Navteq, which offers real time local traffic information; Accuweather, which offers local weather; and Google, which will offer its local search.

Sprint announced last week that it has signed deals with several partners to provide location services to make it easier for subscribers to find nearby restaurants, movie theaters, and other points of interest as well as plot routes on maps and get detailed information and directions on the go.

He confirmed the average download speed of the service is expected to be between 3 to 5 Mbps. And the company plans to have a range of devices available when Xohm launches in September including, modems from Zyxel and ZTE, a PC card from Samsung, and Nokia’s already announced WiMax tablet.

New details about Sprint Nextel’s soon-to-be-launched WiMax service are coming to light as the company prepares to launch its first city this month.