text:
Bob Moats
Detroit area resident, Bob Moats, has been writing short stories and plays for as long as he can remember. He has lost most of his original stories, typed or handwritten, in the nu...view moreDetroit area resident, Bob Moats, has been writing short stories and plays for as long as he can remember. He has lost most of his original stories, typed or handwritten, in the numerous moves he has made from his hometown of Fraser, Michigan to Northern Michigan, to Las Vegas and back to Fraser, where he now lives. Moats became one of the causalities of unemployment a year ago, and had time on his hands to finally pursue a life long dream of writing a full blown crime novel. Thus was born the first book, "Classmate Murders".What followed was a series of seven books starting with "The Classmate Murders" which introduces the main character, Jim Richards, who has to admit he has become a senior citizen, reluctantly. Richards, one day, receives an email from a childhood sweetheart asking for his help, but by the time he reaches her, she has been murdered. His life turns around and he is pulled into numerous murders of women from his high school who he hasn't seen in forty years. Along with a friend of his, Buck, a big, mustached biker, they go off to track down the killer before he can get to one former classmate, Penny Wickens, a TV talk show host who Jim has just fallen for while protecting her. The killer is also murdering the women right out from under police protection, driving homicide detective Will Trapper crazy, and he slowly depends on Jim to help. There's humor, suspense, wild chases across suburban Detroit with cops, classic cars and motorcycle clubs; murder, mayhem, a good amount of romance and a twist ending.Jim and his crime fighters, continue in the other books, traveling to Las Vegas twice, back to Detroit and out to New York to solve murders involving dominatrix; mistresses; Bridezillas; magic and strip clubs.Book titles: Classmate Murders; Vegas Showgirl Murders; Dominatrix Murders; Mistress Murders; Bridezilla Murders; Magic Murders; Strip Club Murders and Made-for-TV Murders.view less
Skip carousel


text:
A woman walks into a convenience store outside Portland, and asks the guy behind the counter to get her some fags.
The guy frowns and looks at her more closely. There's a kind of manic look behind her eyes. She wants him to get her what?
"Smooth, if you've got 'em, love."
The guy's new to the job. He's just beginning to think he should have borrowed his girlfriend's copy of Fifty Shades of Grey because he's out of his depth here. Then he relaxes. That voice… he didn't notice the accent. She's a foreigner. That's why she doesn't make sense. Spanish he could've handled — passably —but understanding this lady is going to be a challenge. She's talking British!
Okay, I'm sure you've heard that confusion before, but for all that advances in communication and globalization is shrinking the world, many language differences stubbornly exist between various forms of English. Most of them, we already know about. Okay, so the British usually call their cigarettes 'fags'. Despite the contrived little scene I painted there, I think most real Americans know that. Same as Brits are familiar with the word 'diaper' even though we never use it ourselves.
But there are more subtle differences that aren't so well known. Some are easy enough to work around, and some are definitely not. I'll give my favourite examples tomorrow.
This isn't merely an amusing source of anecdotes for Greyhart Press (although it is that too!) because some of our authors are British, I'm British and I have a hand in all the books, and yet about 75% of our readers are American. We sell in Canada too, and one of our authors is Canadian (Hi, Elaine!).
Traditional publishers usually solve the problem of how to sell British authors in America by producing a separate American (or International) edition. It's not just spelling 'color' rather than 'colour'. As an example, here's a list of some of the other changes made to the Harry Potter books. But in traditional publishing you get to put physical books in stores, and can be fairly sure about which version gets distributed to which region. That's not always so easy with eBooks.
Interestingly, it doesn't work the other way around. It is very rare for adult American fiction to be translated into British English by major publishers, but they are nearly always given a different cover. Here are some examples.
Here at Greyhart (until now) we've always produced single editions of our books for sale worldwide. Here's why:
Not just money to pay for additional editors but time and energy. We're a small publisher working at full capacity. To produce two (or more) versions of every book would inevitably mean we would publish fewer books each year, and make less revenue from each. That's not good for anybody (unless you really hate our books!)
It's insulting!
When I set up Greyhart Press I was more worried about the Briticism thing. I asked a lot of American readers whether they were put off by books written in British English. I got a remarkably consistent response that went something like this:
No! We're adults! Don't insult us by assuming we fit the caricature of idiots who've never heard of the UK.
And another thing…
Brits writing scenes set in America had better get the details right. Most of them can't do it; they come across phony and I have no intention of reading phony writing.
Despite the fact that big traditional publishers don't trust adult Americans to be able to read British English, for the most part the idea that changing the spelling and idiom is not important (or, at least, not as important as writing exciting stories and memorable characters) has been borne out by our experience. We think… It's difficult to know for sure because we don't usually get direct feedback from our readers (though we're always grateful when we do, good or bad).
So far there has been just one incident where a reviewer on amazon.com complained that one of our books was full of spelling mistakes. In fact, it didn't have any mistakes, unless you were using an American dictionary. Amazon took up the complaint and forced us to correct and republish the book, which was a bizarre experience. This part of Amazon is based in India. So we had this international merry-go-round where Indians (who didn't seem to know much American English) were pushing me to correct a British English story to satisfy an American English reader (at least, I interpret that as the most likely explanation… the complaint might have been simply malicious) but none of the Amazon guys could actually point to a word that was misspelt.
Getting egg on our face.
JK Rowling might have gotten away with it for her Harry Potter books, but teaming a British author with an American editor and vice versa can go horribly wrong, especially if the author is trying to finalize books in several languages simultaneously. An example I often came across when I first looked into this was Sugar & Spice by Saffina Desforges.
This was a British crime thriller that did very well indeed in the UK but wasn't selling so well in the US. So the author 'Americanized' the words and switch the setting from England to America. Some people said the rework was successful , many did not. I found this amazon.com review interesting because the reviewer said it was a great story but was so put off by the translation that they bought and enjoyed the British version, which they went on to recommend. The reviewer is then attacked in comments to the review.
Wait a minute!
Americans can't buy the British version, because that's on amazon.co.uk. Right?
No, there is another version of Sugar & Spice also on amazon.com but this version is in British English and set in England.
The author complained online that they had attracted hate mail for trying to con readers into buying two versions of the same story. I'm convinced that wasn't the case. The book has been highly successful but I felt sorry for the author to get embroiled in this.
It does illustrate the potential for getting egg on your face. That's even more true with eBook publishing. In some cases there simply is not the option to sell one version of an eBook in one country and another version elsewhere. And I don't want us to attract hate mail by being accused of conning readers.
So what do we do?
For adult fiction, I have no current plans to publish other than a single international version.
What that means for each book's editing varies from story to story. Between our editors and beta reader teams, most books will be read by individuals from a range of countries. That can alert us to terms that don't translate well between countries. We might leave it in, at a little subtle contextual explanation, or make an alternative word choice.
Often we will find that a reader will flag up a word as not one used in their country but on closer inspection, there it is in the dictionary. What we often detect is that a word might be valid in American and British English, but usage is more common in one than the other.
I'll start giving my top-10 examples tomorrow (I did… click here)
Juvenile / Children's Fiction
The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that I keep adding the qualifier 'adult' in this post.
That's because despite all I've just written, we are in the process of rolling out an experiment: how to publish a British and a separate international version (which really means, American) of the same book. We will tread very carefully, but we're going to give it a go because I don't believe the admonishment to treat people as adults works as well for fiction written for children. Where we can't separate British from international distribution, we will distribute only the international version.
Outside of Greyhart Press, almost all the books I read are children's books.I read them to or with my son. Unlike adult books, many children's books written in American English are translated over here into British English. Admittedly, with YA books we're pitching at a slightly older reader, but I don't want linguistic differences that an adult reader might skip over to trip up more inexperienced readers. I want them to be immersed in the story. What we won't do is change the settings. Most of the stories we are preparing are set on far-off worlds in any case.
We already have a YA imprint called the Repository of Imagination, which is currently only selling the 'robot-runs-amok-in-Cardiff' story called Crank Tech One: Destruction by Colin R. Parsons. Currently it's only on sale in the UK Kindle store (there's also a paperback sold in the UK by Tallyberry Publishing). We're just about to invite US and Canadian beta team readers to take a look at the US and international version which will be out for eBooks and paperback by Christmas.
We're doing the same for Alien Legends: A Selection from the Repository of Imagination by Gill Shutt. (If you're interested in joining the beta reader team for either book, do please get in touch…)
In fact, there is a lot of work quietly going on to get the imprint fully underway.
I'm a little nervous, but we want our books to be as good as we can make them.
We shall soon see how it turns out.

subset: commoncrawl


text:
I love old recipes. They are not only a window to the past, but a way to stay connected to the people you love. And for me? It's the most important way of communicating. It's my love language. My maternal Grandmother used to make a recipe similar to this one at Thanksgiving each year. She's still with us, but it's getting harder and harder to cook each year. I think she'd be happy that this recipe is being preserved, even if I've tweaked it a bit! 🙂
First of all, can we talk about how it's called a "salad"? That cracks me up! I think they were called such because a lot of gelatins from years past had savory foods stuck in them. But this one? This one is glorious. It's sweet. But, not overly so. It's ruby red color shines like a gem, like shiny red balls on the tree, like Rudolph's nose in the night. It's covered in a delicious creamy topping, like a snowy cap. I meannnnn. It's so good. It's got cranberries, raspberry, pineapple, nuts, cream cheese.
It's a breeze to make. There's more downtime than active time. This pairs well with both a holiday turkey and ham, and you can take my actual word with that! This also makes a fine dessert. And breakfast. Or snack.
|Prep Time
|10 minutes
|Cook Time
|10 minutes
|Passive Time
|2 hours
- 2 3 oz. packages raspberry Jello
- 1 cup boiling water
- 1/2 cup cold cranberry juice
- 1 8 oz. can crushed pineapple
- 1 14 oz. can whole cranberry sauce
- 1/4 cup crushed pecans optional
- 4 oz. cream cheese softened
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- Lightly spray a 9-inch square pan with cooking spray. In a medium glass bowl, mix the Jello and 1 cup boiling water together. Stir for about 2 minutes or until completely dissolved. Stir in the cold cranberry juice, pineapple and cranberry sauce. Add the pecans. Mix well and pour into the pan. (I actually added the pecans next, and only to half the pan, because my boys do not like nuts) Cover with plastic. Refrigerate until firm. Cream together cream cheese, sugar and sour cream until smooth. When the Jello mixture is firm, spread the cream cheese mix on top. Sprinkle a few pecans on top.


text:
It's been a bad month for train derailments. Canada and France recently suffered two of the worst railway accidents in each country's history. And Wednesday in northern Spain, a passenger train crashed at the bend of a tight corner, killing more than a third of its 200 passengers. The train was reportedly traveling at twice the 50 mph speed limit for the curve.
Train derailments, especially the dramatic and deadly ones, are fairly uncommon. Although more than 300 derailments happened in the U.S. in 2012, "most derailments are track-caused, and do not indicate by any means failure of a carrier" says Warren Flatau, a spokesperson for the Federal Railroad Administration, which oversees the United States railroads. "Just like roads, it's a harsh environment exposed to the elements."
Only a sliver of all derailments are caused by misjudging speed around turns, he says, and that's largely because railroads have stringent speed limits in place nationwide. To set those limits, railroad engineers have to calculate how fast a speeding train can take a corner.
More From Popular Mechanics
A train traveling on a straight track can't tip over as long as the train's center of gravity is directly above its wheels (the imaginary line from the center of gravity to the ground is called the line of force). But the line of force changes when a train takes a corner. Depending on three factors—the weight of the train, the sharpness of the curve, and the speed that the train is traveling—the train will encounter a new force, centripetal centrifugal force, which pushes against the side of the train.
Because a new force is now acting on the train alongside gravity, the line of force tilts to become an average between the downward pull of gravity and the sideways centrifugal push. So if a train car slightly turns to the left, the line of force might shift a bit toward the right-side wheels. If the train is too light, the curve is too sharp, or the train is traveling too fast, the centrifugal force can push the line of force out beyond the wheels. In that case, the train is no longer balanced on the tracks and can topple over.
The center of gravity is also subject to change from train car to train car. A bottom-heavy locomotive, for example, will have a harder time derailing than a cargo car with a lot of weight toward the top.
To calculate an appropriate speed limit, railroad engineers have to weigh in all the aforementioned factors. "It's not done on a wholesale basis," Flatau says, "basically what we're looking at is track structure and track geometry." None of this is guesswork: "There are tables and tables that spell out the elevation and curvature to give a maximum allowable curving speed."
The resulting speed limit also includes a safety factor—a margin of error to eliminate the danger of any other unknown forces that could act on the turning train, such as wind, bad track conditions, and so on. "There is a science behind all of this," Flatau says. "It's one that railroad practitioners have been perfecting for the better part of two centuries."
We're still waiting for an investigation to reveal why the conductor of the ill-fated Spanish train took that corner so fast. But by doing so, he was tempting fate—and physics.


text:
The Thomas Beale Cipher
Apparently there are 16 hidden messages throughout this 10 minute film. Eight are easy to spot, six are more difficult and the last two can only be solved by Tom Hanks while viewed on the set of the Da Vinci Code (so you're kinda out of luck on those).
Good Advice from Andy Samberg
Hey, if he's smart enough to bail from SNL's sinking ship, he's got to have a solid note of advice somewhere in there.
Killjoy Scientists Have Bred the Fun Out of Medical Marijuana
Just in case you missed this earlier today, Israeli scientists have grown a strain of weed that is all CBD and no THC. That's like having a mullet that's business in the front and the back—no fun at all.
This Is a Bubbler, I Think?
This is the "Dosher Rich Moss x Fumed Conturex Wishbone Natural Bubbler"—jeez, even the name is complicated. It's 16-inches long, weighs over a pound, and features a double-wishbone suspension for the low, low discount price of a mere $850. Thanks but I'll just stick with rolling papers. [High Priority Glass via Weed Porn Daily]
Potty Years
Oh what, now you're too good for toilet humor? This is comedic (brown) gold I tell ya!


text:
These sources have minimal bias and use very few loaded words (wording that attempts to influence an audience by using appeal to emotion or stereotypes). The reporting is factual and usually sourced. These are the most credible media sources. See all Least Biased Sources.
- Overall, we rate the Napa Valley Register Least Biased due to a balanced editorial page and High for factual reporting based on proper sourcing.
Detailed Report
Factual Reporting: HIGH
Country: USA
World Press Freedom Rank: USA 45/180
Founded in 1863, the Napa Valley Register is a print newspaper from Napa, California.
Read our profile on United States government and media.
Funded by / Ownership
The paper is owned by Lee Enterprises, which according to Open Secrets has donated 88% of it money to Republican politicians since 1990. Revenue is derived through advertising and subscription fees.
Analysis / Bias
In review, the Napa Valley Register covers local news with journalists and reporters throughout the Napa Valley. For national news they use the Associated Press. All news is reported with minimal loaded words and bias. The Napa Valley Register always sources their information properly. Editorially, there is a balance between right and left-leaning opinions with just a very slight edge to the right.
Failed Fact Checks
- None in the Last 5 years
Overall, we rate the Napa Valley Register Least Biased due to a balanced editorial page and High for factual reporting based on proper sourcing. (D. Van Zandt 3/30/2018) Updated 6/22/2020)
Source: http://napavalleyregister.com
Last Updated on June 22, 2020 by Media Bias Fact Check
Left vs. Right Bias: How we rate the bias of media sources


text:
The number of home buyers signing contracts to buy existing homes jumped nearly six percent in May to the highest level since April of 2010, according to a new report from the National Association of Realtors.
Back then buyers were rushing to beat the deadline for the home buyer tax credit. This spring buying surge was particularly strong out west where the NAR's Pending Home Sales Index jumped 14.5 percent. Investors are driving the market out West, racing to buy distressed properties and take advantage of today's very hot rental market.
Realtors say they expect total home sales for 2012 to be up around 10 percent from a year ago, but they caution that low inventory and tight credit, for buyers and builders alike, are holding the market back.


text:
Forecasters: Isaac On Verge of Becoming Hurricane
Isaac was on the verge of becoming a full-blown hurricane Tuesday as it rolled over the Gulf of Mexico toward Louisiana, where residents of the low-lying coast left boarded-up homes for inland shelter while people in New Orleans waited behind levees fortified after Katrina.
Forecasters predicted the tropical storm would power up to hurricane strength, which starts at winds of 74 mph, later in the day and be at least a Category 1 hurricane by the time it's expected to reach the swampy coast of southeast Louisiana early Wednesday. The forecast track has the storm aimed at New Orleans, but hurricane warnings extended across 280 miles from Morgan City, La., to the Florida-Alabama state line. It could become the first hurricane to hit the Gulf Coast since 2008.
Early Tuesday, Isaac was a large and potent tropical storm packing top sustained winds of 70 mph. The storm system was centered about 125 miles southeast of the mouth of the Mississippi River at 5 a.m. EDT and moving northwest at 12 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.
Although Isaac's approach on the eve of the Katrina anniversary invited obvious comparisons, the storm is nowhere near as powerful as Katrina was when it struck on Aug. 29, 2005. Katrina at one point reached Category 5 status with winds of more than 157 mph, and made landfall as a Category 3 storm.
Still, forecasters at the National Hurricane Center warned that Isaac, especially if it strikes at high tide, could cause storm surges of up to 12 feet along the low-lying coasts of southeast Louisiana and Mississippi and up to 6 feet as far away as the Florida Panhandle.
Threatened locales include Houma, a city southwest of New Orleans, where people filled up a municipal auditorium-turned shelter.
Simon and Crystal Naquin decided to bring their teenage sons to the shelter because they were afraid the camper they call home might flood, situated as it is between a navigation canal and lower Bayou Caillou.
Simon Naquin said he rode out hurricanes when he was younger, but doesn't do that anymore since seeing the damage wrought by hurricanes Andrew, Katrina and Rita.
"Now that I got kids, I've seen too much to say, `Stay,"' said Naquin, who shared a twin air mattress with his wife while their sons read and snacked on jambalaya amid a pile of blankets and next to a stash of water bottles and food.
Not far from the subdued atmosphere of the shelter, the lights were low and the music loud at Sue Sue's on the Bayou Sports Bar, owned by the husband-and-wife team of Sonny Diehl, 63, and Sue Diehl, 62.
The couple moved to Houma after they rode out Katrina at a New Orleans hotel.
"I think we take it more seriously down here," Sue Diehl said. "And everybody prepares. They get together, they help each other. It's a great community."
"Everybody helps everybody," Sonny said. "Not so much in New Orleans."
In New Orleans, Mayor Mitch Landrieu did not activate a mandatory evacuation Monday. Instead, officials urged residents to hunker down and make do with the supplies they had.
Federal officials said the updated levees around New Orleans are equipped to handle storms stronger than Isaac.
But with landfall expected Wednesday, Katrina's seventh anniversary, anxiety was high, especially in the Lower 9th Ward, wiped out by Katrina after floodwalls burst and let the waters rush in.
"I don't really trust the levees," said Robert Washington, who planned to evacuate along with his wife and five children. "I don't want to take that chance. I saw how it looked after Katrina back here."
He leaned over the banister of his porch railing and looked out onto empty lots where houses stood before Katrina. His neighborhood, just a few blocks away from where the floodwall protecting the Lower 9th Ward broke open, remains largely empty.
A few streets over, Arthur Smith was unpacking supplies from his car and taking them into his renovated house.
"We have the lamp oil, the water, non-perishable food items, the radio that works without a battery," he said, listing some items on his checklist.
He was planning to either evacuate or hunker down with his 76-year-old mother and sister. He said that decision would be made Tuesday morning once Isaac's forecast became better defined.
This program aired on August 28, 2012. The audio for this program is not available.


text:
British Columbia, Canada
As the cornerstone of our company, Phenom Engineers always aspire to be the best in the industry. Whether coding, building, hacking, designing, or testing
See all jobs in Vancouver
Welcome to Vancouver
Discover what makes working at Phenom Vancouver unique.
the video
Close the popup
Disable Audio Description
Enable Audio Description
Look inside Phenom
Read stories about our Vancouver office.
New Vancouver office
Phenom software engineers find 'virtually endless' opportunities and the chance to do something…
Read more
Social contribution
They call themselves Spartans and 'hit the ground running' to mobilize any project they face the society and work to inprove…
Read more
#1 office in Vancouver
Curious about how the blockbuster game was created? Learn how Engineering works with our new office…
Read more


text:
Today we read in Genesis the story of the tower of Babel. In
this story, we learn how the human race was scattered over the face of the
earth because, in our pride, we wished to build a tall tower reaching unto
heaven. Thus, the confusion of our language was a great mercy of God, as it
kept us from banding together for evil, so that, scattered abroad, we could
learn humility and return to God.
A Christian cannot (should not) think of the expulsion from paradise without thinking of the remedy - the holy Cross.
Likewise, we should not think of the confusion of tongues without thinking of the remedy - the coming of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost.
While the division caused by the confusion of tongues was
for our benefit, it was not in line with God's plan for us. Made in His image,
we are made to be united to Him and to one another, as the Father, Son and Holy
Spirit are one within the Godhead.
And thus, the Holy Spirit comes down on the day of Pentecost to unite us to Christ and to one another in the Church. Moreover, we each received this very same gift on the day of our baptism, being united to Christ's Body in the Church, and we renew this union each time we partake of the Holy Mysteries.
Father Tom Soroka, speaking of this in his daily scriptural commentary (http://ancientfaith.com/podcasts/thepath), quotes in particular the following hymn from the Pentecost service:
"Of old the tongues were confounded / because of the audacity in the building of the tower, / but now the tongues are made wise / because of the glory of Divine knowledge. / There God condemned the impious because of their offense, / and here Christ hath enlightened the fishermen by the Spirit. / At that time the confusion of tongues was wrought for punishment, / but now the concord of tongues hath been inaugurated // for the salvation of our souls" (Aposticha for Pentecost).
Let us give thanks to God for His great mercies! And let us strive to come together, through prayer and repentance uniting ourselves to the Holy Church, and thereby to each other, that we may see fulfilled Christ's last with for us: "that they may be one, as we [the Holy Trinity] are" (John 17).
Gen 10:32 - 11:9
These are the tribes of the sons of Noe, according to their generations, according to their nations: of them were the islands of the Gentiles scattered over the earth after the flood. 1. And all the earth was one lip, and there was one language to all. 2. And it came to pass as they moved from the east, they found a plain in the land of Senaar, and they dwelt there. 3. And a man said to his neighbor, Come, let us make bricks and bake them with fire. And the brick was to them for stone, and their mortar was bitumen. 4. And they said, Come, let us build to ourselves a city and tower, whose top shall be to heaven, and let us make to ourselves a name, before we are scattered abroad upon the face of all the earth. 5. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the sons of men built. 6. And the Lord said, Behold, There is one race, and one lip of all, and they have begun to do this and now nothing shall fail from them of all that they may have undertaken to do. 7. Come, and having gone down let us there confound their tongue, that they may not understand each the voice of his neighbor. 8. And the Lord scattered them thence over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city and the tower. 9. On this account its name was called Confusion, because there the Lord confounded the languages of all the earth, and thence the Lord scattered them upon the face of all the earth.
Reader Nivholas Park 2008. St Nicholas Russian Orthodox Church, McKinney, Texas
Original Post: http://stnicholasdallas.blogspot.com/2008/04/once-when-he-descended-and-confounded.html
New commentaries are posted on our BLOG: http://www/.orthodox.net/redeemingthetime
Daily Lenten Meditations on the service texts and scripture readings: https://www.orthodox.net//dailylent
Compendium of materials about Great Lent:
Use this for any edifying reason, but please give credit, and include the URL were the text was found. We would love to hear from you with comments!
We confidently recommend our web service provider, Orthodox Internet Services: excellent personal customer service, a fast and reliable server, excellent spam filtering, and an easy to use comprehensive control panel.


text:
Throughout high school and college, Alicia slept in cars, tents, friends' couches, benches, on the bus, on the train and in group homes. Almost anywhere but a shelter.
"My experience with shelters is that you'd go when it was raining. You'd go to San Francisco, wait in line and sleep on the floor, if you slept at all," the serious, soft-spoken Oakland woman, who's now 22, said last week. "It's scary enough to be a young person there. But if you're queer you just feel a lot more vulnerable. You definitely avoid them."
Alicia is still homeless but lives at a youth shelter in Oakland. She asked that her real name not be used to protect her identity.
As the cost of housing continues to soar in California and elsewhere, an increasing number of young people have become homeless, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts. Among those homeless, one group has it especially tough: Young people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
"There's a myth of San Francisco as the 'gay mecca,'" said Jodi Schwartz, executive director of Lyric, a nonprofit community center in San Francisco that serves LGBT youth. "It can be. But just for some."
The reality, she said, is that many LGBT young people end up on the street or in unstable housing. Many are there because they've been rejected by their parents, peers or society in general due to their sexual orientation or gender identity.
LGBT young people ages 13 to 25 are 120 percent more likely to become homeless than their straight peers, according to a national survey
One measure of how many are affected comes from Lyric. Of the 600 mostly LGBT young people enrolled in Lyric's programs in San Francisco, 56 percent are homeless or have unstable housing situations and all are low-income.
Across California and the nation, thousands of LGBT young people can be found on the street, in shelters or couch surfing with friends or relatives, said Schwartz and other experts.
LGBT young people ages 13 to 25 are 120 percent more likely to become homeless than their straight peers, according to a national survey of 26,000 young people released in November by Chapin Hall, a University of Chicago research and policy center. And of the nation's 1.6 million youth 18 and younger who were homeless at some point last year, 40 percent were LGBT, even though they represent only 7 percent of that youth population overall, according to True Colors Fund, a New York nonprofit that advocates on behalf of homeless LGBT youth.
In California, the number of homeless children in K-12 schools overall has jumped 20 percent from 2014-15 to 2016-17, according to data collected by the California Department of Education. Based on questionnaires filed by their families, more than 200,000 young people were living on the streets, in motels, in cars, in shelters or crowded into apartments with other families due to financial hardship.
While state data does not identify whether any of these students are LGBT, youth homeless experts said gay students are disproportionately represented.
What drives LGBT youth to homelessness "is complicated, nuanced and difficult to classify," said Barbara Duffield, executive director of SchoolHouse Connection, a youth homelessness policy nonprofit in Washington, D.C.
Sometimes LGBT youth are abandoned by their families, or they run away from home because they feel unwelcome or abused after telling their parents they're gay. And sometimes their sexual identity makes them feel disconnected, which can lead to other contributing factors for homelessness, such as drug abuse, depression, family conflict or chronic absence from school.
According to a 2012 study by the True Colors Fund, Palette Fund and Williams Institute at UCLA, 46 percent of LGBT youth who were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless left home because of family rejection due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Forty-three percent were forced out by their parents because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Thirty-two percent left because of physical, emotional or sexual abuse at home, and 17 percent aged out of the foster system. Neglect, substance abuse, mental illness and lack of affordable housing were among the other reasons LGBT young people became homeless.
Nationwide, 25 percent of LGBT teens are thrown out of their homes at some point after coming out to their parents, according to a 2015 True Colors Fund survey of 138 agencies that provide services to LGBT homeless young people. Although that's less common in urban, gay-friendly areas like San Francisco and Los Angeles, it still happens, Schwartz said.
But, she added, it's not sexual or gender identity alone that leads young people to live on the street or in shelters. It's a kaleidoscope of factors, she said.
"Every young person has a unique set of experiences and realities," she said. "The more a young person has going on — if they're poor, homeless, disconnected, feel oppressed because of their race or if they're LGBT — you're going to see increased barriers."
Alicia was in the foster care system starting at age 6 months, when Child Protective Services took her from her mother due to neglect. She was in and out of foster care and group homes in the East Bay Area most of her childhood, running away periodically to avoid abusive living situations.
When she was about 12 years old she felt she might not be heterosexual, but kept it to herself.
"I had to be very calculated about everything, especially about how I presented myself. I wanted to present myself as super tough and not a burden on anyone," she said. "I didn't want to give people another reason not to like me. I felt like I could never really be myself…I had to keep my guard up constantly. I felt pretty alone."
After graduating from an alternative high school, Alicia was awarded a scholarship to study at Mills College in Oakland. At the private women's school, Alicia said she found a "supportive queer community" and thrived academically, with double majors in history and urban education.
But she kept her homelessness a secret. She couch-surfed, slept in cars and occasionally slept in a tent in nearby Emeryville. Because she never felt safe sleeping outdoors at night, she'd work graveyard shifts at stores and restaurants and sleep on park benches, buses or trains during the day — a much safer option, she said, considering that young homeless people, especially girls, are sometimes sexually assaulted or coerced into trading sex for food or money. Homeless people who are LGBT are especially vulnerable because they're more likely to be victimized and engage in unsafe sex and have a harder time finding a supporting network of peers, according to the True Colors Fund.
Alicia studied in the college library and computer laboratory, showered at the school gym and generally took life one day at a time. But by last year, the street life began to wear on her health, both physically and emotionally. When a close friend died, she decided she needed a permanent solution. Living on the street would eventually kill her, she said.
She called Covenant House, a youth shelter in Oakland, and after three months on the waiting list was offered a bed. Covenant House is part of a national nonprofit system of youth shelters with several shelters in the Bay Area and Los Angeles. At the Oakland facility, residents can stay up to two years and receive medical and mental health services, job training, help finding permanent housing, links to education, help with financial planning and other services intended to get young people off the streets permanently.
Ninety-four percent of Covenant House residents find stable housing and employment once they leave, said Noel Russell, Covenant House development officer.
"It works," she said. "But we just need more beds. We have 100 people on our waiting list and there's thousands of young people in the Bay Area sleeping on the street every night. … No child chooses that. No child deserves that."
The first thing Covenant House offers new arrivals is sleep and regular meals — two things homeless young people are not in the habit of enjoying. Alicia said she was so accustomed to not sleeping or eating she could barely do either for the first few weeks she was there.
But after a while she settled in, and staff suggested that because she enjoyed studying, she should apply to graduate school. She did and was admitted to the UC Berkeley School of Social Welfare, where she is working toward a master's degree in social work. Her goal: to become a social worker so she can help other homeless young people.
While she's proud she survived and feels confident she'll eventually find a well-paying job and permanent housing, she feels she missed out on a childhood and suffered unnecessarily for years. She can't ride a bike, she never learned basic things like how to floss and she often can't relate to her classmates. When they talk about their favorite Christmas rituals, for example, she remains silent.
"Absolutely nothing that happened to me is acceptable, and it shouldn't happen to anyone else," she said. "It's not OK to think a kid can sleep on the street and nothing will happen to them. … We all have a responsibility to do something about it."
To get more reports like this one, click here to sign up for EdSource's no-cost daily email on latest developments in education.
Share Article
Comments (3)
Leave a Comment
Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked * *
Comments Policy
We welcome your comments. All comments are moderated for civility, relevance and other considerations. Click here for EdSource's Comments Policy.
amma 3 years ago3 years ago
Thank you for writing this article, it is very disheartening that young people have to be faced with this kind of unfair treatment from their parents. I hope that in the future we are able to see the error of our ways
lee becker 5 years ago5 years ago
Why are the parents rejecting their children? I think the state's program should include proper guidelines for the parents of the homeless children.By law, the parents are responsible for the welfare of their children.
William W. DeLaney III 5 years ago5 years ago
Unstable housing is the type of homelessness I actually experienced. I guess most people think that "homelessness" means sleeping rough every single day of every single week. I am gay, not crazy: I'm not going to be restricted to sleeping rough if I can avoid it, but sometimes the places you've paid what little borrowed money you have in advance to stay in are so toxic with screaming and violence and so full of mold … Read More
Unstable housing is the type of homelessness I actually experienced. I guess most people think that "homelessness" means sleeping rough every single day of every single week. I am gay, not crazy: I'm not going to be restricted to sleeping rough if I can avoid it, but sometimes the places you've paid what little borrowed money you have in advance to stay in are so toxic with screaming and violence and so full of mold that makes you sick and cockroaches that crawl up your leg in the shower, you feel safer sleeping and showering in a public place in the daytime and roaming the street at night. Then we return to the rotten-smelling trailer where the room we have already paid for is, and we find our few belongings sitting on the porch in the rain.
So "homelessness" can take many different forms. Hardly anybody really wants to sleep rough, especially when it rains.


text:
A software bug caused email queues of some Exchange Online customers in the Americas to clog up on Thursday, leading to delivery delays that lasted in some cases almost seven hours.
The problem, which began at close to noon U.S. Eastern Time and wasn't fully resolved until past 6:30 p.m., initially caused 30 percent of Exchange Online hub servers in the Americas to experience backed-up mail queues.
[ Discover what's new in business applications with InfoWorld's Technology: Applications newsletter. | Stay abreast of key Microsoft technologies in our Technology: Microsoft newsletter. ]
Most of those affected servers returned to normal queue levels after about an hour, but one server required more extensive repair work, according to a Microsoft explanation posted to a company discussion forum on Friday.
"Microsoft is working to fix and deploy the underlying software problem to prevent the problem from occurring again," the message reads.
Thursday's problem, which Microsoft said affected about 1 percent of Exchange Online users, was the latest in a series of glitches that have affected the cloud email service's uptime and speed in the past week.
Microsoft doesn't disclose the number of Exchange Online end users, but last year a Microsoft official told IDG News Service that there are 40 million paid end-user seats of Microsoft Online Services, of which Exchange Online is a part.
Speed and uptime continue to concern CIOs and IT managers who have signed up for enterprise cloud applications, which are hosted by vendors.
When outages occur, IT staffers field complaints from their end users but have no control over repairs and must wait for the vendor in question to fix the problem, hoping that their job security isn't endangered by the downtime.
Microsoft is far from alone in facing downtime for its enterprise cloud services, as this problem has hit virtually all major cloud software vendors at one point or another.
However, for Microsoft, the timing of Exchange Online's recent problems is particularly bad, because the issues have sandwiched the company's announcement on Wednesday that it won a big contract from the city and county of San Francisco, which chose Exchange Online over competing cloud-hosted email options from Google and IBM.
Moreover, Microsoft plans to release this year a major upgrade to its Business Productivity Online Suite, which includes Exchange Online, called Office 365. With Office 365, Microsoft plans to sharpen the competition against Google's Apps hosted collaboration and communication suite.
A big part of Microsoft's competitive pitch, especially against Google, is that Microsoft has a longer track record in enterprise software provisioning, which the company argues makes it a better choice for CIOs and IT managers looking for cloud-based applications.
Seeing Microsoft struggle with uptime for Exchange Online erodes the confidence it's trying to build in the market, according to Rebecca Wettemann, a Nucleus Research analyst.
"I'd argue that Microsoft should be held to a higher standard than anyone else, and this certainly doesn't bode well for Microsoft's image as a cloud provider, especially as it tries to push customers toward the still-cloudy promise of Azure," she said via email, referring to Microsoft's cloud platform-as-a-service offering for building, hosting and managing applications on Microsoft data centers.
"Email outages for a few hours are frustrating. If my entire productive world is online, downtime has an even more significant productivity and economic impact," Wettemann added.


text:
This database enables consumers to make better purchasing decisions on the products they are shopping for. Whether a user is looking to find the best deal on an LCD TV, or researching the top-recommended used vehicles, ConsumerReports.org provides ratings and reviews, recommendations and buying advice for thousands of products and services.
Listing Details
Love having access to Consumer ReportsThis is a great service! Saves me over $20 per year. I haven't run in to anything I don't have access to! Thanks Pioneer!
Submit review See all 2 reviews


text:
First-person shooters are suffering a crisis. Where once XBLIG was happy to see a FPS, going so far as to forgive bad design or controls just for the sake of playing one, now the problem is over-saturation. Too many trying to copy too much, bouncing from military shooter to zombie wave shooter. Too many falling short of the accepted norm, skimping on content or releasing unpolished messes. Too many recycled ideas and endless pseudo-sequels. Then, like a blood-red bacon… ahem, beacon, of hope, enter Blood & Bacon (240 MSP).
This game is an antibiotic for what ails indie FPSes. No half-baked concoction, no stiff controls, no detrimentally-repetitive waves, and perhaps most importantly, no zombies. Well, no traditional zombies. Instead it's undead livestock, refreshing enough to feel different, and dead enough not to upset animal rights groups. Yes, it's a wave shooter (with a 100+ 'Days' to fight through), but only in name and format. Trust me, you haven't played a wave shooter like this.
Nor have you seen this much blood. When the screen gets busy (and it will, with you versus hundreds of enemies possible), so does the exploding viscera. Blood & Bacon is on a liquid-only diet, the self-professed bloodiest game on Xbox Live. It's hard to argue against that boast. It helps that the weaponry on tap is geared towards said carnage, running from the typical shotgun and rifles to an uzi, grenades, and one very 'effective' gun that you earn later on that is best saved for larger crowds.
Rounds and the roster of baddies start off simple, and gradually increase in number and challenge. Enemy types shuffle in and out, never quite the same combination, continually changing the approach and challenging you to mix tactics. Powerups to boost your speed and / or killing potential, as well as ammo and self-revives, prove to be invaluable. By the time you reach the first multi-phased boss, and the even sinister-er Princess Blubbergut (…the experience is memorable, and defies explanation), you'll have left Easy Street behind and wandered into a rural quagmire, no one there to hold your hand.
Well, save for the online co-op, which is where Blood & Bacon reaches its fullest, Left 4 Dead-est potential. Teamwork here is not a suggestion but a necessity, working together to lead and dispatch tougher, armored foes, and tackle the higher levels. Careful management of the health pumps and keeping your partner standing takes precedence. Victory is not handed over lightly, but the sheer satisfaction that comes from beating a particularly tough wave or exhausting boss fight, alone or with a friend, far outweighs the struggle.
Definitely not for the squeamish.
That hard-fought progress is what keeps you coming back, complimented by the smaller things that build the larger whole; story elements, the excellent voicework and soundtrack, controls / camerawork, and plenty of interesting (and well hidden) easter eggs to be found. Simply stated, there's nothing here that upsets or feels unfinished, and any faults you may find will be temporary. With the promise of patches and free DLC support (a new map, enemies, have been mentioned) for many months down the road, you can rest easy knowing the game will be updated and expanded upon.
When it's all said and done, Blood & Bacon stands as nothing less than the resurrection of the wave shooter, all pork and no gristle, full of the exacting attention and care you don't typically see in indie development. It's even more impressive to say that after several hours of playtime, I still haven't had my fill of things to do or see. The game brings with it a new look to the first-person genre on the indie channel, making more than good on great expectations and raising the bar for other developers. An absolute must play.
EDIT 9/1: A 'lite' version of the game, re-titled B&B Fatfree, has been released for $1. Comprising the first '50 days' (of the full 100) of the game, it still contains all of the greatness I stated above.


text:
May 30, 2012 -- If you're reading this at work, brace yourself. A new study shows that typical offices have hundreds of types of bacteria in them, and men's offices have the most.
Researchers report finding more than 500 different types of bacteria on common surfaces in offices in three major U.S. cities. And, perhaps less surprisingly to some people, they found that men's offices are more contaminated than women's.
"Humans are spending an increasing amount of time indoors, yet we know little about the diversity of bacteria and viruses where we live, work, and play," says lead researcher Scott Kelley, PhD.
The San Diego State University biologist and his team swabbed five common office surfaces -- chairs, phones, desks, computer mice, and keyboards -- in 90 different offices, 30 each in San Francisco, New York, and Tucson.
The research team, which was partially funded by the Clorox Corporation, found bacteria on nearly every surface they tested. Most of it came from the office workers themselves. Coughing and sneezing accounted for a good deal of the bacteria, as did shedding from the skin. However, a substantial amount came from deeper inside the body.
"We also found a surprising number of bacterial genera associated with the human digestive tract," the researchers write in the study, which appears today in the online journal PLoS ONE.
If all this sounds rather alarming -- or simply gross -- the researchers point out that there is likely little cause for concern for the vast majority of people who spend eight hours a day in an office: "[M]ost of the human-associated bacteria we found ... would only be a potential problem with severely immune compromised individuals."
On top of that, the researchers say that the dry, cool atmospheres of most offices do not lend themselves to bacterial growth.
Men Are Greater Source of Bacteria Than Women
As for the main suppliers of the bacteria, Kelley and colleagues say that men are responsible for a higher germ count than their female co-workers. Part of that may be explained by the fact that men are, in general, larger than women, which means they have more surface skin to provide a breeding ground for bacteria. However, the researchers cite previous scientific literature to offer another possible explanation.
"Men are known to wash their hands and brush their teeth less frequently than women, and are commonly perceived to have a more slovenly nature," the researchers write.
And the Germiest Spots Are ...
Office co-workers are not the only source of bacteria. Dirt is another main supplier of contamination. And the most common surfaces on which bacteria were found? Telephones and chairs.
The researchers also found that the San Francisco offices they tested were less contaminated than those in New York and Tucson. They were not sure why this should be the case.
The researchers hope that these types of bacterial profiles of office spaces will help public health officials get to the bottom of disease outbreaks that can occur in office settings.


text:
Reynolds number
Reynolds number [for Osborne Reynolds], dimensionless quantity associated with the smoothness of flow of a fluid. It is an important quantity used in aerodynamics and hydraulics. At low velocities fluid flow is smooth, or laminar, and the fluid can be pictured as a series of parallel layers, or lamina, moving at different velocities. The fluid friction between these layers gives rise to viscosity. As the fluid flows more rapidly, it reaches a velocity, known as the critical velocity, at which the motion changes from laminar to turbulent (see turbulence), with the formation of eddy currents and vortices that disturb the flow. The Reynolds number for the flow of a fluid of density ρ and viscosity η through a pipe of inside diameter d is given by R=ρdv/η, where v is the velocity. The Reynolds number for laminar flow in cylindrical pipes is about 1,000.
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2023, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Physics


text:
Cute Frames is a responsive pin board styled theme with unique frames for post formats: aside, image, link, quote and featured images. It supports sidebar, footer widgets, Jetpack infinite scroll.
- version 1.0.0 – Hello world!
Date created: 03/29/2013
Last updated: 06/03/2013
WordPress: Version 3.5.1
Tags: fixed-width, three-columns, threaded-comments, sticky-post, microformats, right-sidebar, blue, brown, green, orange, pink, purple, red, white, yellow, light, custom-menu, editor-style, full-width-template, blavatar, post-formats, featured-images
Ticket: http://themes.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/12847


text:
It reads like fan fiction and the rumor's original reporter—who uncovered PlayStation All-Stars six months before it was announced—concedes that nothing about it is confirmed. But Retro Studios is said to be working on, or at least to have considered, Star Fox-Metroid Fusion Saga, a mashup of third-person action gameplay with aerial/space combat.
Paul Gale Network revealed the first images of Sony's Smash Bros.-esque fighting game back in November, which has since been confirmed along the lines it was originally described. But in that story, the publication had a mobile phone picture of a screen at the time. Paul Gale Network concedes it has no secondary proof of this concept and admits this may have been discarded long ago, back when Retro was pitching ideas and Nintendo was looking to send the studio a new project.
Kotaku reached out to a Nintendo of America representative this morning and was told that the company, per longstanding policy, does not comment on rumor or speculation.
The concept involves controlling both characters in their familiar gameplay environments, with moments of switched roles; Samus' ship would be pilotable like Fox McCloud's; McCloud would be a character in a third-person sequence. A very detailed description is at the link. If it's on the level or bogus, I suppose we'll find out at E3 in a couple of weeks.
RUMOR: Is Retro Studios' Wii U game "Star Fox – Metroid: Fusion Saga"? [Paul Gale Network]


text:
How Green Was My Garden: The Underground Tapes
You have seen them on the market, seed tapes, they make gardening look so simple, just lay down a row of tape for a perfect row of carrots or onions or other traditional varieties of flowers or vegetables.
But did you know it is relatively simple to make your own seed tapes? I made my own this year for some carrots. In a few easy steps you too can quickly make easy to place seed tapes, no more blowing seeds and you can have perfectly straight rows.
The first step is materials which are just flour, water, toilet paper & seeds. Because I am an organic gardener I used 100% recycled content toilet paper, brands such as 7th Generation or Marcal Small Steps are good, and organic unbleached flour, which is available at most coops or grocery stores and organic seed, I used Botanical Interests Carnival Blend Carrot Seed.
Start by making a paste with the flour and some water, it should be the consistancy of runny yoghurt. Then pull a stretch of toilet paper in a managable length. Then you are ready to make some seed tape!
Place small dots of paste along the bottom of the toilet paper spaced however far apart your seed packet specifies. Then in each of the dots place a seed.
While the paste is still wet fold the bottom of the toilet paper up on the dots and press lightly, and fold over once again. The moisture of the paste will seal the toilet paper to form a seed tape. Two or three folds are all that is needed so if you have excess just trim the paper with scissors.
After you have completed your tapes you are ready to plant them in your garden! Prep your bed as you would if you were direct sowing seeds and just lay the tape down, covering lightly with 1/4 inch of soil, and water lightly.
Follow the instructions on your seed packet before placing in seed tape, meaning if the seeds require any special treatment, like soaking prior to sowing, do that before making your tapes.
Seed Tapes are a great way to ensure straight rows for your crops and to make certain you won't have to thin your plants after sowing seeds. For those of you with children in your life making seed tapes can also be a fun activity for the little ones to do to get them involved in the garden, and it wouldn't even matter if they ate the paste! And just like in Mission Impossible, the seed tapes will Self Destruct, leaving little evidence but your lovely harvest at the end of the season.


text:
Bruins need more from top line in Game 4 against Canadiens
Playoff games and series are harder for everyone than the regular season. Teams certainly try to account for the best players on the other side, but in general, a regular-season game plan is more about a team trying to do what it does best, and less about taking something away from an opponent.
The postseason is different and more difficult for top players. Opponents go out of their way to negate them by whatever means possible. It happens through matchups. It happens through roughing players up and wearing them down. It happens through getting under the skin of those top players.
But that, as they say, is why those top players get the big bucks and one of the majors reasons the Canadiens take a 2-1 lead into Game 3 of this best-of-7, second-round playoff series against the Bruins tonight (7:30, NBCSN, WBZ-FM/98.5) is that the Habs' key players have done more than the Bruins'.
Not completely, mind you. The Canadiens, for instance, haven't found any an answer for the Bruins' two-way line of Brad Marchand (5 assists), Patrice Bergeron (2 goals, 2 assists) and Reilly Smith (2 goals), which has outplayed the Habs' top trio. Thomas Vanek has a couple of power-play goals, but linemates David Desharnais and winger Max Pacioretty (39 regular-season goals) have been held to an assist apiece.
Still, the Habs are in position to take a commanding lead if they win tonight because the B's have found defenseman P.K. Subban all but unstoppable (3 goals, 3 assists), because goalie Carey Price (2.65 goals-against average, .920 saves percentage) has made more big saves than Tuukka Rask (2.97, .884), and because they've done such a good job at limiting the Bruins' top offensive line.
Milan Lucic, David Krejci and Jarome Iginla are a combined 2-3–5 through Game 3, which is not great, and not even as good as it looks: The one goal Lucic scored was an empty-netter that sealed Game 2, and Iginla's Game 3 goal came during a 6-on-5 manpower situation after coach Claude Julien pulled Rask. The line has combined for 19 shots through three games, but 11 came in Game 1. Krejci and Iginla have both managed only a single shot in each of the last two games.
The main concern is Krejci because his entire postseason has been weak: He managed only two assists in the Bruins' five-game, first-round elimination of the Red Wings, and he's now 0-3–3 and minus-3 through eight playoff games. Lucic (4-3–7, plus-3), who has managed a point in each game against the Habs, and Iginla (3-2–5, even) have at least been reasonably productive.
It's an uncharacteristic drought for Krejci, who has twice led the NHL in postseason scoring (23 points over 25 games during the 2011 Stanley Cup run; 26 in 22 games last year) and has led the B's in scoring three times, including this season (19-50–60). While he has experienced the occasional weak series over seven postseasons, his career playoff numbers – 29 goals, 47 assists, 76 points and plus-28 over 89 games – have established him as one of the NHL's money players.
Following Game 3, in which Krejci had an assist on Iginla's goal, but was still minus-1 with only one shot and won only 4-of-14 faceoffs (30 percent), Julien said "David, I think, is showing a little bit of frustration. He's got to battle through that stuff." Of the line as a whole, the coach said, "We need them. … It's a line that's given us a lot this year and sometimes you have to have a little bit of trust in them. Right now, that's what I've got – but things have got to get better for that line for us to be successful."
Krejci and his line aren't the only reason the Bruins trail in this series, but they have the capacity to correct a couple of major problems: The B's are 0 for 6 on the power play (all three play on the same unit) and have constantly found themselves trailing by two goals. If they can come up with something early in Game 4, it'd be a boost to the entire team, not just that line.
The good news for the Bruins is that despite their top line's slump, they're still just one win from evening the series and re-establishing home ice. If Krejci, Lucic and Iginla don't break out soon, though, it's bound to be bad news.
Mike Loftus may be reached at firstname.lastname@example.com. On Twitter.com: @MLoftus_Ledger.


text:
Sell It
It's simple to find a site that will let you sell off unwanted gift cards online for some quick cash. Most offer up to 92% of the value of the card (depending on how in-demand the card is). Some sites, like CardPool, buy the card outright and then resell it on their marketplace. Others, like GiftCardExchangeDay, let resellers bid for your card, so you can get the best possible price. Others like Raise serve as an open marketplace where you can set the price and hope other shoppers will bite.
Swap It
Get a gift card to a store you don't really shop at? If you have a little time on your hands, you can try GiftCardSwapping.com. You'll need to print out a form on the site and send your card in, indicating which cards you'd be willing to trade yours for. There's no fee to swap, but you may have to wait a while if they don't have a card in stock for the store you want in the amount you want.
Redeem It
PlasticJungle offers plenty of options beyond just selling your gift cards. Featured deals include trading them in for miles on United Airlines, My Best Buy points, and CVS gift cards.
More From Good Housekeeping
Donate It
Unused (or partially used) gift cards can go a long way when pooled together. Look to sites like GiftCardGiver to donate your unwanted funds to a good cause.


text:
Bundles! Camtasia/Crossover/+8 more for $10, Metakine 10 apps: $40, AfterShot Pro+10 apps: $49
Specials.9to5Toys.com this month has a "Name Yor own Price Bundle" which is a bit of a misnomer since you'll need to pay above the average which is currently below $10. You'll get Camtasia which allows you to "Easily Create Stunning Screen Captures & Video Recordings" and well as CrossOver which allows you to run Windows programs on your Mac for the sub $10 price. Then there are 8 more great Mac Apps. At below $10, you can't miss.
Then there is the 11 app AfterShot Pro bundle from MacLegion, below: Expand


text:
Is Obama at war with journalists?
- Ari Fleischer says White House responded to leaks appropriately
- Justice Department has argued that it followed the letter of the law in investigating leaks
- Attorney General Eric Holder is set to meet with journalists to discuss the issue
WASHINGTON — President George W. Bush's former spokesman Ari Fleischer doesn't agree with the Obama administration very often. But when it comes to the Justice Department's war on leaks of classified information, he's on the same page.
"Frankly, I think the White House has given the right answers and best answers," Fleischer says of Obama spokesman Jay Carney's defense of two ongoing leak investigations. "The problem is the answers that Jay is giving are ones that the White House press corps doesn't want to hear."
Reporters who have battled with both Republican and Democratic administrations on matters of government secrecy don't see it that way. In the wake of the Justice Department's actions, President Obama finds himself battling charges that his administration has effectively launched a war on journalists.
"There's a red line that no other administration has crossed before that the Obama administration has blown right past,'' says Josh Meyer, a former national security reporter for the Los Angeles Times and co-author of a book on the hunt for the architect of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
The debate over leak investigations that have ensnared reporters from the Associated Press and Fox News has cast light on the often tense relationship between the government and the news media in a way that's reminiscent of the Watergate years and President Richard Nixon's enemies list.
What's at stake in the pitched battle between a president and journalists is nothing less than the government's obligation to protect Americans without trampling on the First Amendment's protection of a free press.
News organizations and media experts say the rift between administration officials and the journalists who cover them had been growing long before the Justice Department obtained AP phone records and a Fox News reporter's phone records, e-mail and other personal information as part of its effort to find out who leaked secret information.
Part of the reason has been President Obama's promise to lead a more open and transparent administration — a vow some media organizations say he has failed to meet. Now the tension between the government and the media is developing into a more serious conflict, and the strain is palpable.
"The intrusion into the whole reporting process is something we haven't seen on the kind of basis that we have here,'' says Martha Joynt Kumar, a political scientist at Towson University in Maryland and an expert on relations between the president and the media. "I can't think of any other administration that has been following down leaks in the same way this one has."
Under Obama's watch, the Justice Department has filed six leak-related investigations, more than all other administrations combined. Those charged with crimes include two CIA officers, an FBI linguist, a State Department analyst, a National Security Agency official and a U.S. Army soldier.
Since fury erupted over the AP and Fox News incidents, the Justice Department has argued that it followed the letter of the law and secretly obtained records from reporters only after exhausting all other investigative means.
Obama himself has underscored the importance of investigative journalism in a democratic society, while stressing his legal obligation to pursue leakers of classified material. Carney, the president's spokesman and a former journalist, has acknowledged in the aftermath of the revelations that "questions surrounding these issues are legitimate."
Defenders of press freedom say the reason is clear: If sources believe their identities cannot be protected, they will not speak up.
"Ultimately, the biggest impact is in the message it sends to sources: If you talk to a journalist, we will get you," says Lucy Dalglish, dean of the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at the University of Maryland and former executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press. "The risk is that the public won't have access to the information it needs to make informed decisions at the ballot box about how this country should be run."
The latest debate centers on two classified leak investigations:
•The Justice Department obtained records this year for 20 phone lines belonging to the Associated Press. The department won't address the investigation directly, but, according to the AP, it's part of an administration effort to track down the source of a May 7, 2012, article about a foiled Yemen-based terrorist plot to bomb an airliner.
The report exposed a CIA informant inside al-Qaeda, taking a valuable asset out of play for the agency. The AP held off publishing the story until government officials indicated any sources were out of imminent danger.
Federal authorities first interviewed about 550 people, including officials who would have been aware of the informer in Yemen, and scoured the documentary record without success before secretly obtaining the AP phone records.
•In the second case, Justice Department officials obtained e-mails and phone records and tracked the movements of Fox News reporter James Rosen as part of an ongoing investigation of former State Department analyst Stephen Kim, who is charged with leaking a classified report on North Korea. The Justice Department has indicated it notified Fox's parent company, News Corp., of its subpoena of Rosen's records three years ago. Company officials said they have no record of such notification, The New York Times reported Sunday.
Perhaps most troubling to journalists, a search warrant affidavit filed in the Kim case said there was probable cause to believe Rosen was an "aider, abettor and/or co-conspirator" to a crime.
"You can't look at this and see it as anything other than an attempt to basically scare anybody from ever leaking anything ever again," NBC chief White House correspondent Chuck Todd said on air last week. "So they want to criminalize journalism, and that's what it's coming down to."
The White House refuses to comment directly about the probes involving the AP or Fox News because the investigations are ongoing. Administration officials note they aren't alone in their push to plug leaks. Republicans clamored for investigations after two intelligence leaks last year.
Thirty-one GOP senators, including Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate who leaked to the AP that the CIA had foiled a Yemen-based plot to destroy a U.S.-bound airliner. Lawmakers also raised questions about a June 2012 report in The New York Times that divulged Obama had secretly ordered sophisticated attacks on computer systems at Iran's main nuclear enrichment facilities.
"The president has a responsibility as commander in chief to prevent the release of sensitive information," said one senior administration official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak on the matter. "Frankly, a lot of the discussion, public discussion, has been focused on certain instances where these are investigations that were called for by Congress, as well."
Since the revelations of the AP and Fox News cases, the Justice Department has underscored that it never has charged a reporter for publishing classified material. And although Obama arguably has taken a tougher tack on leaks, the shift to a more aggressive stance dates back well before his administration.
•President Nixon's White House "plumbers" were tasked with stopping leaks of classified information to the press after The New York Times' publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971. The report was a detailed look at U.S. involvement in Vietnam over the prior decades.
•In 1983, Ronald Reagan expanded the ability of the government to require employees to take lie detector tests in leak investigations.
•In 2006, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his deputies raised the possibility that journalists could be prosecuted for publishing national security information after New York Times reporter James Risen revealed the National Security Agency's surveillance of terrorist-related calls between the USA and abroad.
When the Bush administration investigated who leaked the identity of CIA Agent Valerie Plame, administration employees were asked to sign waivers releasing journalists from any obligation to keep their sources secret.
Carney was Time magazine's bureau chief at the time of the Plame affair, and one of his reporters faced the threat of jail time if he didn't reveal a source who told him that Plame was a covert operative.
But the AP and Fox News cases mark the first time the government has acknowledged seizing reporters' phone and e-mail records or monitoring a reporter's daily movements.
In an effort to ease the strain with reporters, Obama announced last week that he had directed the Justice Department to review its guidelines for investigations that involve reporters. He instructed Attorney General Eric Holder to meet with journalists to discuss the issue. Holder is due to report back by July 12.
"I am troubled by the possibility that leak investigations may chill the investigative journalism that holds government accountable," Obama said.
The president called on Congress to pass a media shield law to help protect reporters from subpoenas in federal investigations. It is unlikely the law, as written, would have prevented federal prosecutors from secretly obtaining records.
Some reporters and journalism advocates are skeptical of White House efforts they see as little more than damage control.
"I'm not sure what conversation we could have that would really change the fundamental issue, which is at the end of the day … they're still empowered by law to pull records we don't want them to pull,'' says Stephen Engelberg, editor in chief of the investigative journalism organization ProPublica.
ABC News reporter Ann Compton said Obama's requirement that the Justice Department report back to him relatively quickly raises expectations for action.
"National security exceptions are to be expected, and I would imagine neither of these cases would escape that,'' said Compton, who started covering the White House during Gerald Ford's administration in the 1970s. "I took the president to mean ... that straightforward reporting should not be risky business.''
Contributing: Kevin Johnson and Richard Wolf


text:
This isn't about odor — honestly, if the species that invented indoor plumbing doesn't smell better, we're in serious trouble. But we have a far better sense of smell than Neanderthals did, and that reveals some crucial differences in our brains.
Markus Bastir and Antonio Rosas of the Spanish Natural Science Museum (CSIC) used high-tech medical imaging to peer inside fossil skulls of both early modern humans and Neanderthals. Although the brain itself doesn't fossilize, we can deduce a lot of its structure from the cranium, which is shaped by the brain.
They identified two major areas where human and Neanderthal brains differ. The first is in the temporal lobe, which deals with language, memory, and social functions. This lobe is bigger in humans, which isn't a particularly surprising result. A more unexpected result is the olfactory bulb, which deals with smells and is 12% bigger in humans than Neanderthals. This means we probably had a significantly better sense of smell than our Neanderthal cousins.
Our sense of smell is particularly important because it's the only sense that is directly wired to the brain - while visual or aural information has to pass through several filters, the chemical information from the nose is transferred straight to the brain. It's one of the oldest known senses in vertebrates, and it's a sense that never shuts down - even when we're asleep, we continue to breath and perceive odors. It's also closely connected with our memory systems, which is why smells can serve as powerful reminders of past events.
So why did we have the more powerful sense of smell? Some of it might have had to do with compensating for smaller hardware — Neanderthals had bigger faces and noses than we did, so our improved sense of smell might have simply leveled the playing field. It's also possible that a sense of smell was more important in Africa, where modern humans evolved, than it was in the Neanderthals' stomping grounds in Eurasia.
We can also look at the brain functions associated with the sense of smell, which neuroscientists have actually dubbed "higher olfactory functions" and include intuition, perception, and judgment. Olfactory information is also sent to regions of the brain involved in emotion, motivation, fear, memory, pleasure, and attraction. Any or all of these could be crucial to what made us uniquely human, and it all goes back to our surprisingly powerful noses. Of course, by that logic, dogs should probably be ruling the world, so this probably isn't the only explanation for humanity's success...
Via Nature Communications. Image via AP.


text:
Here's a simple problem, illustrated simply, that will have you cocking your head and wondering how it's done. You won't be the first. Aristotle (reputedly) first took a whack at this, and Galileo gave it a try as well. See what you can make of it.
Not everyone agrees that Aristotle invented this little paradox, but everyone agrees that it would be just like him to come up with something like this. The paradox involves two different-sized wheels, one inside another. Think of the edge of your tire and the edge of the hubcap. The two rotate in sync, and they rotate over a certain distance. But should they rotate over the same distance?
If you look at the animated gif above, both wheels use their entire circumference to trace the same amount of distance - the red line. Clearly one circumference is smaller than the other. Either that means that the wheels have the same circumference, which they don't, or that different circumferences "unroll" to the same length, which they can't. (If they did, since this is true no matter how small the radius of the wheel, technically a wheel with the circumference of an inch should be able to go the same distance in one roll as a wheel with the circumference of a mile. The only thing that's keeping us from being able to drive across the country with one revolution of our tires, then, is that the tires aren't small enough.)
That can't possibly be right. The smaller radius can't possibly be equal to the larger one, so what's going on? An easy answer to this is to trace, not the line, but the journey that each segment goes on to get from one point of the line to the other. Go ahead and take your finger and move it with the line showing the radius of the circle, tracing the arc that the smaller circle goes through to get from one point to the other. Now trace the arc that the larger circle goes through to get from one point to the other. It should be obvious that a point on the larger circle goes though a larger arc, and therefore a longer journey, to get to the same point.
And what's happening on the red line? To answer that, we'll invoke the wheel-and-hubcap image again. If you have parked badly, with your wheel on the street and your hubcap on the curb, exactly what do you expect to hear and feel when you pull away? If the answer is the smooth glide of a tire gripping the road, and the hideous skreech of metal slipping over concrete, you're right. The inner wheel, when made to trace out the same line as its larger compatriot, will slip. They don't make the same journey.
Top Image: dbking
[Via Mechanics, Wolfram Math World.]


text:
LOS ANGELES, July 1 (UPI) -- Eating right, exercise and other lifestyle changes may help prostate cancer patients reduce risk of aggressive tumors, U.S. researchers say.
Study leader Lenore Arab of the University of California, Los Angeles, Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center said the World Cancer Research Fund lifestyle recommendations include desirable ranges of body mass index, physical activity, foods of low caloric density, fruit and non-starchy vegetables, salt, legumes, unrefined grains and red meat consumption.
The study involved 2,212 African-American or Caucasian-American men ages 40-70 with newly diagnosed prostate cancer. The recommendations are intended to decrease overall risk of cancer, and are recommended for cancer survivors.
The study, published online in the journal Nutrition and Cancer, found adherence to fewer than four of the eight recommendations predicted a 38 percent increased risk of aggressive tumors compared with adherence to four or more recommendations. The finding was statistically significant and similar among black and white men, despite a baseline higher risk of highly aggressive tumors among black men, the study said.
"Most men are at risk of prostate cancer, but it is the level of aggressiveness of disease that is most clinically relevant," Arab said in a statement. "These findings suggest that even men with prostate cancer can take control of their disease and moderate its aggressiveness through diet and lifestyle choices."


text:
Top Items:
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Dell's Mystery 'Adamo' Could Be Thinner Than Air — When Apple released the MacBook Air, someone viewed the sleek notebook as an opportunity to make fun of clunky, old Dell on YouTube with a parody ad. But what if Dell is about to have the last laugh in the ultra-light laptop race?
Discussion: DisplayBlog, Gadget Lab, Electronista, Gizmodo, CrunchGear, I4U News, Engadget, The Toybox and Boing Boing Gadgets
Brian X. Chen / Gadget Lab: Dell's Mystery Notebook: Thinner, Lighter Than Air?
John Biggs / CrunchGear: Adamo could out-Air the Air
Luigi Lugmayr / I4U News: Adamo by Dell to tackle MacBook Air?
Joshua Topolsky / Engadget: Dell Adamo ultrathin laptop rumors surface
Joel Johnson / Boing Boing Gadgets: Dell Adamo: Even thinner than the MacBook Air?
Justin Smith / Inside Facebook:
Facebook Now Growing by Over 600,000 Users a Day - And New Engagement Stats — It was just at the beginning of December when Facebook crossed the 130 million monthly active user mark. Today, that number is up to 140 million. — While Facebook has been growing at around 300,000 …
Rodney Rumford / FaceReviews: New Legal Legislation: When You Renew Your Drivers License …
Caroline McCarthy / Webware.com: Facebook's growth goes faster and faster and faster
Samuel Axon / Obsessable: Facebook gaining 600,000 users each day
Laurel Papworth / Social Networks: Facebook: Massive Growth
Nicholas Carlson / Silicon Alley Insider: A Boston-Sized Population Joins Facebook Each Day
Taylor Pratt / Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim: Facebook Growing by 600,000 Users a Day
Rich Miller / Data Center Knowledge: Facebook Adding 600,000 Users A Day
Dan Frommer / Silicon Alley Insider:
Verizon: BlackBerry Storm Return Rates 'Lowest' Of Any Smartphone (RIMM) — Good news for BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIMM) and Verizon Wireless: People buying their latest smartphone, the touchscreen BlackBerry Storm, are not ditching them as much as we'd heard.
Discussion: IntoMobile, Between the Lines, Tech Beat, Engadget, mocoNews.net, CNN, Electronista and MacDailyNews
Simon Sage / IntoMobile: Telus Multimedia Services Make it to BlackBerry
Stephen Wildstrom / Tech Beat: BlackBerry Storm: Still Loving It
Tricia Duryee / mocoNews.net: Updated: RIM's Q3 Results Out Today; Will They Be Stormy?
Dan Frommer / CNN: Calling BlackBerry: Get Wi-Fi
The Boy Genius / Boy Genius Report:
Verizon BlackBerry Storm Return Rate
Verizon BlackBerry Storm Return Rate
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider, IntoMobile, Local Mobile Search and Engadget
Greg Sterling / Local Mobile Search: RIM Results: Q3 OK, Strong Holiday Start
Paul Miller / Engadget: BlackBerry Storm buyer's remorse? You're not alone!
Jesse Johnson / The Bivings Report:
The Use of the Internet by America's Largest Newspapers (2008 Edition) — Every year, The Bivings Group conducts a study of the web features of America's largest newspapers as a way to gauge how papers are dealing with the threat and opportunity presented by the rise of the Internet as a news source.
Discussion: Podcasting News, TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb and Romenesko
Erick Schonfeld / TechCrunch: Study: Newspaper Websites Are Still Figuring Out This Whole Conversation Thing
Marshall Kirkpatrick / ReadWriteWeb: Big Changes for Big Papers: In 2008 The Web Changed the Media For Good
Jim Romenesko / Romenesko: More newspapers are experimenting with user-generated content
Tom Krazit / CNET News:
Apple buys stake in mobile graphics chip designer — Future versions of Imagination Technologies' graphics cores could mean iPhone games far more sophisticated than 'Super Monkey Ball.' — Apple has taken a small stake in a British chip designer, revealing how the company plans to power …
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider, Tech Trader Daily, 9 to 5 Mac, The Tech Report, MacRumors and mocoNews.net
Eric Savitz / Tech Trader Daily: Apple Takes Stake In U.K. Chip Design Firm
Cyril Kowaliski / The Tech Report: Apple buys a piece of Imagination Technologies
Prince McLean / AppleInsider:
Apple finally outed as mysterious PowerVR licensee
Apple finally outed as mysterious PowerVR licensee
Discussion: imgtec.com, Infinite Loop, VentureBeat, PC World, iLounge, Macsimum News and GMSV
Chris Foresman / Infinite Loop: Further details surface on plan for next-gen iPhone graphics
Dean Takahashi / VentureBeat: Apple unveiled as investor in graphics technology maker Imagination Technologies
Dan Moren / PC World: Apple Turns Money Into Imagination
Charles Starrett / iLounge: News: Mix: Imagination, Rolando, iFrogz sale, 12 Days
Dennis Sellers / Macsimum News: New evidence that Apple is licensee of PowerVR mobile graphics technology
John Murrell / GMSV: Investment offers graphic illustration of Apple's mobile vision
Kara Swisher / BoomTown:
TechCrunch's Yertle the Turtle Tantrum Over News Embargoes — Yesterday, the one-man-band of a tech blogger, Michael Arrington, let loose with yet another outrageously indignant diatribe-this time that he and his TechCrunch site would forthwith break all news embargoes.
Discussion: InformationWeek, Valleywag and PR Squared
Owen Thomas / Valleywag: A tech blogger's quixotic war on PR
Todd Defren / PR Squared: Quick Takes on One Week's Kerfuffles
Rob Beschizza / Boing Boing Gadgets:
Techcrunch: start breaking embargoes already!
Techcrunch: start breaking embargoes already!
Discussion: Blogspotting and Gearlog
Stephen Baker / Blogspotting: My sad history with embargoes
Lance Ulanoff / Gearlog: Long Live Embargoes
BBC iPlayer now available on Mac — The BBC has created a version of the iPlayer that works with both Mac and Linux computers. — The two systems, which have been able to stream BBC programmes via the iPlayer for a year, will now be able to handle downloads.
Discussion: Macworld, Neowin.net, Guardian, MacNN, TUAW, MacDailyNews and Slashdot
Mark Hattersley / Macworld: BBC releases iPlayer for Mac and Linux
Sam Alderwick / Neowin.net: BBC iPlayer download feature available on Linux & Macs
Megan Lavey / TUAW: BBC iPlayer finally available for Mac, Linux
Google Earth Blog:
New York City in Photo-Realistic 3D Now in Google Earth — Google has updated the 3D buildings in Google Earth for New York City! This is a HUGE update with at least hundreds (if not thousands) of new 3D buildings with photo textures applied. Basically, Google has completed nearly every building …
Discussion: Lifehacker, Maximum PC all, ReadWriteWeb, CrunchGear, Google Blogoscoped, PalmAddicts, InformationWeek, Mashable! and SEO and Tech Daily
Kevin Purdy / Lifehacker: Google Earth Adds Photo-Realistic Buildings to NYC
Andy Salisbury / Maximum PC all: Google Earth's NYC Gets Photo-Realistic Makeover
Nicholas Deleon / CrunchGear: New York City 3D Google Earth maps have been updated & now they're hi-res
Philipp Lenssen / Google Blogoscoped: Google Earth Updates 3D New York
Eric Zeman / InformationWeek: NYC Goes 3-D In Google Earth
Stan Schroeder / Mashable!: New York City Now Officially Looks Awesome in Google Earth
Charlie Anzman / SEO and Tech Daily: Google downloads now offer Chrome by default
Mark Wilson / Gizmodo:
New York City Is Breathtaking Following Google Earth Update
New York City Is Breathtaking Following Google Earth Update
Discussion: DVICE and techeblog.com
Adam Frucci / DVICE: Google Earth's NYC gets pretty darn close to the real thing
Wall Street Journal:
How Apple Could Survive Without Steve Jobs — Apple Inc. set off shock waves Tuesday by announcing Steve Jobs will not speak at what the company said would be its final appearance at the Macworld trade show. The news sent the company's stock downward, and raised questions about whether …
Discussion: MacDailyNews, WebGuild and Slashdot
Om Malik / GigaOM:
What Is Steve Jobs Worth to Apple? About $20 Billion
What Is Steve Jobs Worth to Apple? About $20 Billion
Discussion: San Francisco Chronicle, Gadget Lab, SmoothSpan Blog, Changing Way and Tech Check with Jim Goldman
David Bunnell / San Francisco Chronicle: Steve Jobs didn't make the first Macworld, either
Brett Terpstra / TUAW:
iPhone thief thwarted by MobileMe sync — To say that MobileMe hasn't made everyone happy may be a bit of an understatement. We don't generally hear from the satisfied customers, but we have received a fair amount of email from dissatisfied users of Apple's "cloud computing" solution.
Discussion: Infinite Loop, Macworld, MobileCrunch and The iPhone Blog
Jeff Smykil / Infinite Loop: Stupid criminal thwarted by MobileMe sync
Greg Kumparak / MobileCrunch: iPhone thief nailed by MobileMe contact sync
Rene Ritchie / The iPhone Blog: MobileMe Syncs Contacts, Captures Criminals
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch:
Loopt Snags AT&T, Now Available On Every U.S. Carrier — Mobile social network Loopt goes live on three AT&T phones today, which was the last major carrier holdout. Loopt is now available in the U.S. on Sprint, Verizon, Metro PCS, T-Mobile and Boost. The service is free for a year and then a $4/month fee kicks in.
Kevin C. Tofel / jkOnTheRun:
Toshiba Offers "Industry's First" 512GB SSD Flash Drive — Each year I that attend CES, I can't help but swing by the huge HDTVs and see the new "world's biggest" set. It's a status symbol of course, but this year might be the first time I focus more on the "world's biggest" Solid State Disk capacity.
Discussion: Technologizer, PC World, VoIP & Gadgets Blog, The Toybox and Gearlog
Ed Oswald / Technologizer: Toshiba Introducing 512GB Solid State Drive
Andrew Nusca / The Toybox: Toshiba launches first 512GB solid state drive
Brian Heater / Gearlog: Toshiba Intros First 512GB SSD
Google Mobile Blog:
Optimized search results pages for Android and iPhone — Whether you're using Google search through the search widget on the Android home screen, the built-in search box of the iPhone's Safari browser, or google.com on either device, you'll now end up with search results optimized for your phone.
Discussion: jkOnTheRun, WebProNews, Phone Scoop and Google Android News …
Kevin C. Tofel / jkOnTheRun: Google Search Results Optimized Again for iPhone, Android
Chris Crum / WebProNews: Google Improves Android and iPhone SERPs
Eric M. Zeman / Phone Scoop: Google Optimizes Search Results for iPhone and G1
Ashlee Vance / Bits:
Can a Deflated Adobe Remain Independent? — Shares of Adobe performed so well over the past ten years that the company's value soared to the point of putting off many potential suitors. But a recession, troubled financial markets and slowing economic growth have helped erase more than half …
Mark Milian / L.A. Times Tech Blog:
Where To iPhone app sells for $70,000 — A couple of months ago, when iPhone application developer Tap Tap Tap announced that it was shopping around its flagship Where To software, we wondered how much an iPhone app, albeit a successful one, might be worth. — Now we know.
Discussion: VentureBeat and The FutureBlog
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat: FutureTap nabs Where To, in first public acquisition of an iPhone application
Ortwin Gentz / The FutureBlog: How to purchase an iPhone app
Caroline McCarthy / The Social:
Twitpay brings micropayments to Twitter — The New York Times has a nice little writeup about Twitpay, an experimental new app that lets you send payments using Twitter. — Here's the premise: Sign up, put some cash in your Twitpay account through another payment service like PayPal …
Discussion: Bits and broadstuff
Alan Patrick / broadstuff: TWITTER AS A MICROPAYMENT SYSTEM
Matt Marshall / VentureBeat:
Ad network Glam sees record 4th quarter, puts entire workforce on "variable" pay — Glam Media, one of the newfangled content and advertising networks assumed by many industry observers to be vulnerable to financial meltdown, says it still hasn't seen any marked decline in online display advertising.
Discussion: TechCrunch
Michael Arrington / TechCrunch: Glam Slashes Exec Compensation By Up To 60%, Everyone Else by 3%-15%
Stephen DiMarco / Compete Blog:
Amazon.com is Fueling a Strong December for Online Retailers — Whether you're an analyst, economist or a just a red-blooded American consumer, your eyes are probably fixed right now on the retail industry. We're all looking for a glimmer of hope that consumer spending during the holidays …
Discussion: TechFlash, ReadWriteWeb and WebProNews
Frederic Lardinois / ReadWriteWeb: Report: Economy May be Slow, but Online Sales are Going Strong
Doug Caverly / WebProNews: Report: Online Retailers Moving In Right Direction
Mac OS X 10.5: Software Update stops responding during "Configuring installation" — Symptoms — When attempting to update software using Software Update in Mac OS X 10.5, the update process may stop responding while "Configuring installation" is visible in the update window.
Tom Krazit / CNET News: Apple offers advice on 10.5.6 upgrade problems
Mel Martin / TUAW: Apple tech note responds to 10.5.6 problems
Todd Bishop / TechFlash:
Microsoft job listings reveal Zune expansion plan, and Musiwave's role — At this point, it's clear that Microsoft plans to expand its Zune initiative beyond the current music device, software and service. The question is how. With the Zune Phone rumors fading into the background …
Discussion: Digital Noise and wmpoweruser.com
Chris Snyder / Epicenter:
Ustream: There Is Life After Puppy Cam — Ustream.tv came out swinging from all angles this year in the live video market. Techies streamed Macworld in January and politicos on both sides got an inside look at the RNC and Obama's victory speech. And, topping it all off amid an economic crisis …
Om Malik / GigaOM:
Even Silicon Valley Isn't Shopping — For many Web 2.0 start-ups, build-it-to-flip-it has been a mantra of sorts, with most hoping to get big payouts when Google, Yahoo or AOL cuts them a big check. Unfortunately, the credit crisis has turned those dreams into layaway plans.
Matt Hickey / CNET News:
How do you like them Apple-branded apples? — (Credit: Blog! Nobon) — Some of you may have heard of a thing called the Apple iPod. Today, an apple farmer out of Japan brings you the iPod Apple. By placing hand-cut stickers of the Apple logo or a silhouette of an iPod on the fruit …
Cyrus Farivar / PC World: Japanese Farmer Grows Apples With Apple, IPod Logos
Lambert V. / technabob: apple branded apples
Zach Epstein / Boy Genius Report:
2009 is the year of the Moto for Verizon; more upcoming handsets revealed — When our ninjas get going they don't stop until the job is done. Yesterday your pals here at BGR gave you an exclusive preview of four tasty upcoming Motorola handsets - codenamed FLASH, RUSH 2, CALGARY and INFERNO.
Discussion: Unwired View, Fast Company, Electronista, SlashPhone, PhoneReport v2.0, CrunchGear and Gizmodo
Kim Poh Liaw / SlashPhone: Rumor: More Upcoming Motorola Phones for Verizon Wireless
Meraj Chhaya / PhoneReport v2.0: Motorola leaks WM, Android phones, 5 others
Matt Burns / CrunchGear: More upcoming Motorola '09 phone hotness
Greg Sandoval / CNET News:
Universal Music seeing 'tens of millions' from YouTube — YouTube's traffic machine may finally be turning into a cash machine. — For the first time, there are signs that YouTube is driving significant revenue for itself and some of the video site's partners.
Discussion: TechSpot
Justin Mann / TechSpot: Universal sees YouTube profit grow substantially
Paul Buchheit / FriendFeed Blog:
Simple Update Protocol: Update — Several months back, we announced SUP (Simple Update Protocol), a proposal for making RSS and Atom feed updates faster and more efficient. Since then, a number of services have added SUP support, we've SUP-enabled our feed fetcher, and there are now thousands …
Discussion: VentureBeat and CostPerNews
MG Siegler / VentureBeat: FriendFeed says 'SUP to some new services
Sam Harrelson / CostPerNews: Real Time Web Coming Fast: Are You Ready?