The YouTube Presidency

By Jose Antonio Vargas
The White House has gone YouTube.

Today, President-elect Obama will record the weekly Democratic address not just on radio but also on video -- a first. The address, typically four minutes long, will be turned into a YouTube video and posted on Obama's transition site, Change.gov, once the radio address is made public on Saturday morning.

The address will be taped at the transition office in Chicago today.

"This is just one of many ways that he will communicate directly with the American people and make the White House and the political process more transparent," spokeswoman Jen Psaki told us last night.

In addition to regularly videotaping the radio address, officials at the transition office say the Obama White House will also conduct online Q&As and video interviews. The goal, officials say, is to put a face on government. In the following weeks, for example, senior members of the transition team, various policy experts and choices for the Cabinet, among others, will record videos for Change.gov.

Yesterday, transition co-chairman Valerie Jarrett recorded a two-minute video that summarized the goings-on in the past week. "President-elect Obama adopted the most sweeping and strict ethics rules that have ever been in place in the course of a transition," said a bespectacled Jarrett, looking directly at the camera in a video that's yet to be posted.

President Bush, too, has updated WhiteHouse.gov, which offers RSS feeds, podcasts and videos of press briefings. The site's Ask the White House page has featured regular online chats dating back to 2003, and President Bush hosted one in January after a Middle Eastern trip.

But online political observers say President-elect Obama's innovative, online-fueled campaign will likely evolve into a new level of online communication between the public and the White House--the Internet-era version of President Franklin Roosevelt's famous "fireside chats" between 1933 and 1944,

"The Obama team has written the playbook on how to use YouTube for political campaigns. Not only have they achieved impressive mass -- uploading over 1800 videos that have been viewed over 110 million times total -- but they've also used video to cultivate a sense of community amongst supporters," said Steve Grove, head of news and politics at YouTube. "Obama told us in a YouTube interview last year that he plans to have 'fireside chats' on video, and we expect his administration will launch a White House YouTube channel very soon after taking office."

Added Ellen Miller of the Sunlight Foundation, a D.C.-based nonprofit that advocates for government transparency: "We're living, after all, in the Internet era. This is an individualized version of the 'fireside chats.' It's not delivered between 7 p.m. to 8 p.m. but whenever anyone wants to see it. I don't know if it necessarily creates transparency -- it's still a controlled, one-way message. But it creates the aura of a much more accessible presidency."

So what's next from the Obama White House?

A behind-the-scenes online video exclusive of the State of the Union Address? A text message reminding us to turn in our taxes? Who knows...

http://www.youtube.com/BarackObamadotcom

BioFuel Startup strives to meet Ambitions of New Administration

EMERYVILLE, California — "We have 203 employees — and we're growing," John Melo, CEO of alt-fuel startup Amyris, said as he stepped jauntily through the glass doors at his company's gorgeous new digs just down the street from Pixar in this industrial town outside Oakland.

In the worst financial climate in decades, the company is pushing ahead with its audacious plans to make 200 million gallons of synthetic biofuel a year at $2 per gallon by 2011.

Last week while other companies handed out pink slips and contemplated cutbacks, Amyris had a modest party — cheese, bread, and wine in their not-quite-Google cafeteria — to celebrate the completion of a new pilot plant with 2.4 million gallons of annual capacity.

"It's the first time you put all the pieces together and you let it go," Melo said. "From beginning to end, it's commercial process."

The synthetic biology startup, which uses genetically engineered yeast to rearrange the molecules in sugars to create higher-value products like diesel fuel or malaria medication, is a very bright, very green story amidst the torrent of bummer headlines: More than 500,000 people filed jobless claims last week, the highest number since 9/11; The well-regarded International Energy Agency released a new report last Thursday declaring that "current trends in energy supply and consumption are patently unsustainable;" And the S&P 500 and Dow Jones Industrial Average are down almost 40 percent this year.

The young company has become a corporate face, or a beacon on the hill, for the green revolution that President-elect Barack Obama and his administration hope will pull the U.S. economy out of recession.

Amyris, in short, could disrupt the energy marketplace the way Google sent the media world into disarray. And by staying a step ahead of the rest of the world through science and engineering, America could recreate the living-wage jobs that have left the country over the last two decades and recharge the economy.

The Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory spin off has been talked up and invested in by uber-V.C. Kleiner Perkins as the model for green growth. John Doerr and Al Gore have used the company in their clean-energy stump speeches for years. Indeed, the Amyris offices, a refreshingly open set of high-design rooms and hallways that look out on a lush courtyard garden, seem like the very incarnation of renewal.

Packing powerful science that allows the company to turn any carbon-containing sugar into liquid transportation fuel, Amyris sidesteps the energy intensive crude-oil refining process. They claim that allows them to reduce the "well-to-wheel" greenhouse gas emissions of their fuel by 80 percent over conventional diesel. Though emission accounting for biofuels is notoriously difficult — particularly calculating the secondary effects of land use changes — it's safe to say that Amyris is better for the environment than petroleum. And if the company really can make $2-a-gallon diesel, there is little doubt they'll find a market, even if the price of a barrel of oil stays under $100.

The company's continuing march towards commercialization represents the maturation of the first-generation of venture-backed companies in the recent clean-tech boom. But it's not just the sector's scientific potential that excites people in both Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C. Because clean-tech companies compete in industrial sectors, they could generate lots of real factory jobs where people are employed making actual products.

Or at least that's the story that green-tech investors and savvy politicians have sold to the laid-off workers of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

"It's not clear, in the absence of the concerted effort to make investments in the clean-tech sector, what geographies or sectors are going to pull the U.S. out of the recession," Eric Janszen, a prominent investor and author, told Wired.com earlier this year. "What tends to happen is that policymakers survey this scene and say: 'What are we going to do to get people working?' They focus on the one sector of the economy that can drag us out."

Obama's energy plan calls for five million new jobs in the low-carbon and alternative energy sector. That would mean creating 20 new General Motors-size companies, each employing 250,000 people. But green tech companies are nowhere near the scale of the economy they are supposed to replace, no matter how fast they're growing. Just 200 jobs is a lot in Silicon Valley's startup landscape.

The pilot plant, after all, isn't that big. In fact, you'd be hard-pressed to play a game of half-court basketball in it. And unlike a real fuel plant, it's not dirty or industrial-looking. Liquids gurgle inside bulbous silver tanks. Surfaces gleam. Rows of empty folding chairs face a podium at the front of the room, the leftovers from a press conference earlier in the week.

"We actually had a harvest yesterday that made the place smell and look great," Melo said, pointing out the steel 300-liter fermenters that grow the fuel-producing yeast. The heady brewery smell lingers.

In the full-size plant the company plans to build next year, the fermenters — and everything else — will need to be ten times larger. And to make an impact on climate change or the world's liquid fuels ledger, there would need to be thousands of similar plants.

Still, the pilot plant is a major step towards commercialization. While it might seem trivial to turn in-lab discoveries into real-world products, the engineering process is fraught with challenges. It's like the difference between cooking for your family and cooking for 500 or 10,000 people; it's rare that the food in the school lunch line tastes good.

Melo's team, happily, has found that their yield — the amount of fuel they get out per unit of sugar put in — has actually increased using the commercial process. But they are still a long way from a profitable process.

"We have a four-fold improvement year-to-date and we have a three-fold improvement to go," Melo said.

And getting there isn't a certainty. Scaling up green technologies takes time and money — both of which the American economy is short on. And just as politicians have latched onto the green collar job meme, investors are getting cold feet, particularly about the big, expensive commercial operations that provide large amounts of jobs. In addition, the price of oil, which drove much of the biofuel investment over the last couple of years, has fallen in response to a slowing world economy.

At a clean tech conference last week, more than 60 percent of a group of investors surveyed said they did not expect financing to be available for companies "looking to commercialize or scale" their projects. But the problems that inspired the science — climate change and rapidly-depleting oil fields —remain in play.

"The number of projects I've seen fall off, both because of the debt markets and because of the economics, the price of oil, is pretty significant," Melo said. "We're setting ourselves up for a bigger problem," Melo added.

The International Energy Agency report painted a grim picture of oil fields declining faster than expected while growth in the demand for crude has only slightly slowed.

"Even if oil demand was to remain flat to 2030, 45 [million barrels a day] of gross capacity – roughly four times the current capacity of Saudi Arabia – would need to be built by 2030 just to offset the effect of oilfield decline," Nobuo Tanaka, the IEA's executive director said in a release.

Melo said Amyris has taken in enough money — about $120 million to date — to continue growing for the next 18 months. The deteriorating economic conditions, however, have put the company's plan to go public sometime in the next two years on the back burner.

With the pilot plant complete, Amyris will now focus on building a similar plant in Brazil, where they've established a joint-venture with SantalisaVale, the second-largest ethanol producer in that country. SantalisaVale has promised two million tons of sugar cane crushing capacity, which will provide the feedstock for their full-size facilities.

Despite its green appeal, Amyris has its critics. Some environmental organizations are opposed to biofuels generally, and others, like the Ottawa-based ETC Group, target the techniques and business models that synthetic biology companies employ. They take aim at the fledgling industry in a report released last week, saying it will be as environmentally destructive as the system it replaces.

"Advocates of converging technologies promise a greener, cleaner post-petroleum future where the production of economically important compounds depends not on fossil fuels — but on biological manufacturing platforms fueled by plant sugars," the group writes. "It may sound sweet and clean, but the so-called 'sugar economy' will also be the catalyst for a corporate grab on all plant matter — and destruction of biodiversity on a massive scale."

Groups like ETC argue that biofuels, of any type, will eventually cause serious environmental damage — by eroding and degrading soils, reducing biodiversity, and increasing food insecurity — merely shifting the world's energy problem from "Peak Oil" to "Peak Soil".

And it doesn't help Amyris' case with hardcore environmentalists that Melo was brought in from British Petroleum to scale up the company.

Liquid fuels, though, underpin the world's transportation system. They are useful because they are their own storage. Electric vehicles need batteries to store energy and batteries are expensive, said Ron Cogan, editor of Green Car Journal.

"What is the answer? There is no single answer," said Cogan, who has been following alternative energy for cars since the early 1990s. "I think we're in a position where we can't afford to ignore any fuel or technology."

The incoming administration sees the interlinked urgency of the economic and climate crises. The head of Barack Obama's transition team, John Podesta, co-authored a report earlier this year through the Center of American Progress detailing a plan for a $100-billion green stimulus package.

The clean-tech investment situation is deteriorating quickly, though, and the amount of growth that must occur for the industry to transform the energy economy is huge. With deep recession and catastrophic climate change looming, the green cavalry — in the form of loans and incentives — might arrive too late. That could leave companies like Amyris with only their shiny, empty pilot plants, which are too small to hold the ambitions of the people pushing a new, clean economy.

USB 3.0 to Deliver Ten Fold Speed Increase

Fasten your seat belts -- data transfer is going into overdrive.

The ubiquitous Universal Serial Bus, better known as USB, is on track to make its first major upgrade in eight years -- a 10-fold speed increase over current USB 2.0 standard. That means we'll be able to rip music, video, photos from the vast array of peripherals we connect to our computers much more quickly, and it makes such up-and-coming devices as HD video cameras that much more practical.

USB 3.0 will also deliver greater power efficiency and the ability to recharge a wider variety of gadgets -- and it will most likely mean the death of the competing standard known as FireWire.

To get a sense of the speed increase, consider this: Under USB 2.0 it takes about 10 minutes to transfer a high-def video from a Blu-Ray disc. With USB 3.0, it will take just about a minute.

"What the user will see is really a much faster response time, less waiting, more productivity," says Patrick Moorhead, vice president of advanced marketing at AMD, one of the supporters of the USB 3.0 standard.

But none of this will happen tomorrow. The first USB 3.0 devices probably won't show up until the end of 2009 or early 2010, say analysts. Users can get a glimpse into future devices sporting SuperSpeed USB as early as the annual Consumer Electronics Show in January, and wired.com will be there.

"The first places that you will see this show up is where you get the biggest benefits---HD video cameras and hard drives," says Moorhead.

The USB Implementers Forum, a non-profit group founded by companies to promote the standard, will announce Monday the final set of specs that will clear the way for the adoption of USB 3.0 by device and component manufacturers.

Don't look for new devices that support the stand

"USB 3.0 will take USB 2.0 to the next level and take away performance as an issue for data transfer in many devices," says Brian O'Rourke, an analyst with research firm In-Stat. "USB 3.0 will make it even more pervasive across devices than it is today."

Since the USB specification was first introduced in 1996, it has changed the way we interact with our computers. USB has allowed everything from keyboards, mouse, PDAs, printers, digital cameras and personal media players -- pretty much the entire spectrum of consumer electronics -- to be connected to a host PC using a single standardized socket.

It has also made the process truly plug-and-play. Devices can be connected and disconnected without having to reboot the host computer and the technology offered perks such as allowing for many devices to be charged using the USB socket with no need for individual device drivers to be installed first.

Not surprisingly, USB's ease of use and capabilities has meant it has become nearly ubiquitous. More than 2.6 billion USB-enabled devices were shipped in 2007, estimates research firm In-Stat.

And USB's star will continue to rise, says the firm. Nearly four billion USB-enabled devices are expected to ship by 2012. Its ubiquity has meant that some manufacturers use USB ports and plug for recharging devices such as bluetooth headsets and phones without utilizing its data-transfer capabilities.

But USB 2.0 is getting a bit long in the tooth, with its slow speed, inefficient power usage and relatively small wattage. The new standard takes aim at all of those shortcomings.

Pour on the Speed

At a glance:USB 3.0
Faster: Ten times faster than USB 2.0 and six times faster than FireWire 800

Greater power efficiency: New interrupt driven protocol optimizes power management.

Better Power Output: Power output bump to 900 milliamps from 100 milliamps allows more devices to be charged faster via USB.

Backward Compatible: New Connectors and cables will work with work with devices running the older USB 2.0

The new spec will support data transfers at 4.8 gigabits per second (Gbps), nearly ten times faster than the current standard's 480 megabits per second and six times faster than FireWire 800. It's also 400 times faster than the 12Mbps offered by the original spec, USB 1.0.

USB 2.0 is also known as "Hi Speed USB," while USB 3.0 will have the confusingly similar moniker "SuperSpeed USB."

The new USB 3.0 connectors and devices will be compatible with older USB ports (on devices using USB 2.0 and 1.0) but they will be limited to the older ports' slower speeds.

Power and Efficiency

USB 2.0 uses a polling based architecture, which means the host computer has to constantly check the bus to see if any devices are attached and if so, whether they are doing anything. As a result, that keeps the host computer busy, drawing power even when it's not needed.

"It's a problem when you attach a USB device to a laptop running on battery," says Steve Kleynhans, vice-president, client computing for research firm Gartner.

USB 3.0 offers better specifications for power management. "We will move to an interrupt-driven architecture where your PC can ignore the connected device till the latter actually does something," says Kleynhans. "That can really lower the power consumption."

It also has better power output, 900 milliamps compared to 100 milliamps with USB 2.0. That means up to four devices can be charged from a single USB port and charged faster.

Standardizing the specifications for USB 3.0 hasn't been easy. Two months ago, Intel released part of the draft specifications for USB 3.0 to developers resolving a dispute between it, Nvidia and AMD over it.

Nvidia and AMD claimed that Intel was not sharing the specifications that potentially compete with it. Intel denied it.

"There was some debate between us," says Moorhead, "but we have buried the hatchet and we are all in the same boat now."

USB Implementers Forum chairman Jeff Ravencraft declined to be available for comment.

While USB 3.0 devices are coming soon, consumers won't immediately see all the benefits. "You can get the USB 3.0 speeds only when one 3.0 device connects to another," says Gartner's Kleynhans. So the latest SuperSpeed USB-enabled devices connecting to older PCs running USB 2.0 or lower will experience data transfer rates that are much slower.

Killing FireWire

USB 3.0 is likely to signal the death of FireWire/IEEE 1394, a competing interface standard also known as i.Link and Lynx. Today, the industry is bifurcated between IEEE 1394 and USB 2.0. Many devices support both, though a single standard would be optimal.

"If we are all aligned, we are saving money and development time for the industry," says Moorhead.

With Apple seemingly taking step away from FireWire, it seems like USB could gain the upper hand. Apple's newly introduced MacBook computers lack a FireWire port and instead has USB. MacBook Pro still sports FireWire 800.

That leaves Sony as one of the few remaining proponents of the standard.

"FireWire stably declining in most markets and USB 3.0 will continue that trend," says O'Rourke. "We could see USB emerge as the standardization of a high-speed interconnect."

Monday's first USB 3.0 developer conference will be a big step towards that, say experts. "It's for everyone in the USB value chain, from chip makers to software makers to learn the new USB standard and get on it," says O'Rourke.

Noninvasive Trauma Monitors

Warning light: A portable, noninvasive monitor developed by researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School bounces infrared light off a patient's muscle to gather information about oxygen, pH, and red-blood-cell levels. This data, continuously displayed on a handheld screen, can warn doctors of impending circulatory-system failure long before traditional measures would. Credit: Gwenn Ellerby, University of Massachusetts Medical School

Patients with severe injuries or serious infections run the risk of circulatory shock--a life-threatening condition in which the blood can't supply tissues with enough oxygen and nutrients. If shock is recognized in time, the patient can be resuscitated with oxygen, intravenous fluids, and medications. But catching shock early is no simple matter. A small infrared sensor currently under development at the University of Massachusetts Medical School promises to detect impending shock earlier than any other noninvasive test.

Traditionally, patients in critical condition are continuously monitored for changes in blood pressure, heart rate, and pulse oxygen saturation. But the body has mechanisms to compensate for massive blood loss and systemic infection, keeping those parameters steady even while the patient's status deteriorates. "When the blood pressure starts to drop, it's too late," says spectroscopist Babs Soller, who developed the new device along with colleagues at the UMass Medical School. "The patient is already going into shock." The new device instead measures the levels of oxygen, pH, and hematocrit--the proportion of red blood cells in the blood--in a patient's muscle tissue.

"Until now, we've either had noninvasive methods which are very insensitive, like blood pressure, or we've had sensitive methods that are invasive and cumbersome," says George Velmahos, chief of trauma, emergency surgery, and surgical critical care at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was not involved in developing the device. "So the noninvasive and continuous nature of this method is key."

Soller's device beams near-infrared light through the skin over an arm or leg muscle, where it travels through fat and reflects off muscle tissue and back to the monitor. Based on the spectrum of the reflected light, computer algorithms determine the oxygen, pH, and hematocrit levels. Unlike similar infrared biomeasurement devices, the new monitor automatically compensates for differences in skin color and fat thickness between patients to optimize the results.

One of the ways that the body compensates for blood loss or impaired circulation is by prioritizing which tissues most need oxygen. Blood is shunted away from skeletal muscles and internal organs and delivered instead to the heart and brain. A pulse oximeter, which analyzes the blood before it has delivered oxygen to tissues, can't tell whether this kind of compensation is occurring. Because the new device measures oxygen within the muscle, it can give a more complete picture of how well the blood is feeding peripheral tissues. A substantial drop in muscle oxygen while pulse oxygen saturation remains steady could indicate that the patient is compensating for internal bleeding and will soon "crash."

Testing blood pulled from vessels near the heart can provide even more information, but that requires a painful, highly invasive, labor-intensive procedure. And since blood samples must be sent to a laboratory for analysis, results are often too delayed to be useful in treating an unstable patient. Soller's monitor, in contrast, noninvasively provides continuous, real-time results.

While other devices, such as Hutchinson Technology's InSpectra StO₂ Tissue Oxygenation Monitor, can noninvasively measure tissue oxygenation, Soller's is the only one that measures pH and hematocrit levels as well. Muscle pH is an important indicator of how well treatment is working, says Soller. Cells deprived of oxygen cease to function properly, leading to acid buildup, which lowers pH and causes further damage. When the patient is resuscitated, tissue oxygen levels are restored before tissue pH recovers. Without a good measure of tissue pH, doctors have no way to know whether the patient needs further resuscitation.

Measuring the hematocrit level adds yet another dimension. Administered fluids may rescue a trauma patient's plummeting blood pressure, but they can also dilute the blood, reducing the proportion of red blood cells and impairing oxygen delivery. A falling hematocrit level would alert doctors to this problem early enough to properly address it.

Soller and her colleagues have been working on their monitor for more than a decade. In October, at the 2008 Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology Congress, in Boston, they exhibited a new, fully portable version of the device that's under a pound, less than one-eighth its previous weight.

The device, whose development is funded in part by the army, could potentially be used by combat medics to predict shock in critically wounded patients, and to monitor patients who appear stable for reactions to undiagnosed internal injuries. Soller hopes that, beyond aiding in military applications, the monitor will be useful in civilian ambulances, emergency rooms, and intensive-care units, and in the operating room for surgeries associated with high blood loss.

Because the device is noninvasive, it has been through extensive preliminary testing. In one study, patients had the lower halves of their bodies strapped into a vacuum chamber, which sucked blood toward their feet to mimic massive blood loss. The monitor was able to detect changes before the patients' blood pressure and pulse oximeter readings began to drop, a promising sign that it could serve as an effective early-warning system.

Nonetheless, Soller says that approval of the device from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration may still be a long way off. A company called Reflectance Medical has been founded to help guide the monitor to market. Meanwhile, Hutchinson's InSpectra monitor, which has been commercially available since 2007, is already in clinical use.

Expanding the Mobile Web with the help of Adobe and ARM Chips

Credit: Technology Review

While it's true that more and more phones can surf the Web, it's also true that many mobile phones have only a limited ability to show much of the Web's best content. Videos that run in Adobe Flash Players, such as those by the New York Times, CNN, and Technology Review, and Flash-heavy websites simply don't work on many phones due to the software being incompatible with hardware. Today, in an effort to bring more of the Web to mobile devices, Adobe and microchip maker ARM, which powers 90 percent of mobile phones worldwide, have announced a collaboration to ensure that Adobe's software runs well on future ARM devices.

Specifically, the companies say that Adobe's Flash Player 10 and AIR (a platform for building complex Web applications) will be compatible and optimized for the ARM chips available in 2009. While ARM is used in a huge number of mobile phones, the announcement has broader implications: the chips are also used in set-top boxes, mobile Internet devices, personal media players, and automotive platforms.

The experience of publishing and viewing content on a PC is "near frictionless," says Anup Murarka, director of technical marketing of mobile devices at Adobe. "But when we get into devices like set-top boxes and phones, you run into a lot of roadblocks." While Murarka doesn't think all of the roadblocks will vanish immediately, he believes that the Adobe and ARM collaboration can help make it easier for people to post videos from their PCs or mobiles and access them anywhere.

To be sure, the agreement won't improve the Web on all devices. One big exception is Apple's iPhone. Steve Jobs has historically eschewed Adobe's Flash for the iPhone because the existing mobile version of Adobe's player, called Flash Lite, runs too slowly on the gadget. But for a vast majority of phones, the collaboration could make a difference to users. Murarka explains that the two companies worked together to optimize the software and hardware in three different ways.

First, the compiler used in Flash Player 10, which converts program code into microchip instructions, has been written to work smoothly with the ARMv6 and ARMv7 chip. This means that the software understands how these chips transport data and can tap into the right part of the chips at the right time, speeding up applications.

A second improvement, says Murarka, is that some ARM chips have been built with graphics subprocessors--pieces of silicon that are specifically designed to handle the heavy lifting of graphics rendering. Desktop versions of Flash, he says, don't use graphics processors, but the new version of Flash will take advantage of the graphics subprocessor, making graphics rendering more efficient on mobile devices and also saving battery power.

Third, the software that Adobe uses to compress and decompress videos will be optimized to run on ARM's chips. Today, content providers have to make sure that Flash videos are encoded in a specific way, in order to run on some mobile devices. This is how YouTube videos can play on the iPhone. "Flash now delivers over 80 percent of Web video," Murarka says. "By working with ARM, we can optimize that so that content that exists in video or audio form will be compatible with more devices."

A broader implication of this initiative is that both the hardware and software companies are providing the tools that programmers need to build content that works across devices, says Michael Gartenberg, vice president of mobile strategy at Jupitermedia, a research firm based in Connecticut. "The problem is [that] developers face a fragmented [mobile] landscape," he says. "And Adobe, by trying to get this content architecture on multiple handsets, is trying to make it easier for developers."

Earlier this year, Adobe announced the Open Screen Project, a collaboration with Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Qualcomm, and others aimed at standardizing Flash on mobile devices. The project led to Adobe removing licensing fees, which lets developers integrate Adobe Flash Player and Adobe AIR into any device or application without paying a fee. Many industry watchers saw the move as a reaction to Microsoft's release of Silverlight, a Flash competitor.

The announced Adobe and ARM partnership is "about the ability to get Open Screen Project onto handsets," says Gartenberg. "You've got the ARM folks supporting the technology, which is the critical first step."

Ten Minute Blood Test

Finger prick to protein: A microfluidic chip identifies 35 proteins in a drop of blood within 10 minutes. The entire analysis process is performed on the chip. First, blood cells are separated from protein-rich serum, which travels down the narrow channels. These channels are coated with protein-capturing bar codes that light up under a fluorescent microscope if the blood drop contained the protein of interest. Credit: James Heath

Measuring proteins in the blood can help doctors determine patients' cancer risk and monitor the health of the elderly and people with chronic diseases. But current methods for testing these proteins are too expensive and require too much blood to be performed regularly. A microfluidic chip in clinical trials does on a single chip in 10 minutes what normally takes multiple technicians hours to do--and with just a single drop of blood. Researchers hope to make bedside diagnostics based on blood proteins a reality by bringing down the cost of such tests by at least an order of magnitude.

The diagnostic chip is being developed by Caltech chemistry professor James Heath and by Leroy Hood, the president and founder of the Institute for Systems Biology, in Seattle. Heath and Hood have founded a company called Integrated Diagnostics to commercialize the blood chip.

"Serum proteins provide an incredible window into the biology of disease," says Paul Mischel, a professor of pathology at the University of California, Los Angeles. But today, it costs about $500 to test for one blood protein, and these tests require 10 to 15 milliliters of blood and multiple visits to the doctor.

"We decided to make things dirt cheap: it costs a nickel a protein," Heath says of the current device. Such rapid and cheap tests requiring only a drop of blood should allow doctors to monitor more proteins more frequently, enabling earlier detection of diseases like cancer and better preventive care for the elderly. The new diagnostics should also be more accurate, says Heath. Traditional blood samples sit for hours or even days before the measurement process is completed, allowing plenty of time for them to degrade.

Heath and Hood's device, described in this week's issue of Nature Biotechnology, starts the analysis process with some simple microfluidics. A drop of blood is pulled down a microscale channel by the application of a small external pressure. This first channel branches off into narrower ones, which exclude blood cells and admit the protein-rich blood serum. In typical blood tests, this separation step requires a centrifuge.

The narrower channels are patterned with what Heath calls a protein bar code--lines of DNA bound to antibodies that capture proteins of interest from the serum. After the serum and cells are flushed out, antibodies bound to red fluorescent proteins are flushed in, lighting up captured blood proteins. The protein bar codes can be read under a fluorescent microscope or a gene-chip scanner. The identity of the captured blood proteins can be determined by the location of red lines in the bar code relative to a green fluorescent reference line.

By measuring how much light radiates from a particular protein's spot in the bar code, Heath and Hood can quantify its concentration in the blood. Heath notes that the chip can measure blood proteins present over a wide concentration range, making it possible to measure not only plentiful blood proteins created by the immune system, but also rarer proteins originating in organs such as the brain. The device is as sensitive as conventional protein tests, and Heath and Hood can measure any proteins they're interested in by making custom chips with the right antibodies.

While other groups have focused on proteins that are created by many organs, making the results difficult to interpret, Hood says, "We're developing a strategy to identify blood proteins that are organ-specific." Hood says his group is currently using mass spectrometry to discover proteins specific to the liver and brain.

In their published paper, the researchers describe using the blood test to determine the risk level of people with breast and prostate cancer. Heath says that the chip is being tested in clinical trials involving both cancer patients and healthy individuals. The studies of healthy patients that the group is currently undertaking would be impractical using technologies that require a large blood draw, but using the chips, Heath says that it's possible to measure blood proteins several times a day. The researchers are using the blood chips to monitor how diet and exercise influence blood-protein composition.

"These devices should lead to a decrease in cost and an incredible benefit to patients," says Emil Kartalov, a professor of pathology at the University of Southern California's Keck School of Medicine. Kartalov, who's not collaborating with Heath and Hood, is developing similar chips, and he developed some of the separation methods used on the blood chip. Kartalov says that Heath and Hood's work is a major step forward, but that for these chips to truly go out into the field, they'll need to move beyond fluorescent proteins. Fluorescent microscopes are too expensive and too bulky to be carried onto the battlefield or into patients' homes. Kartalov says that future diagnostics will probably replace the fluorescent proteins with charged proteins, since measuring changes in electrical current is much simpler and more practical.

10 Gadgets That Transform Your Bathroom Into a Home Office

By Sean Fallon,

According to a recent survey conducted by Nokia, 53 percent of Americans have taken a work-related call or email in the bathroom. Although the data has been lost, we conducted a survey in the past that found the percentage could be even higher. So what does this all mean? I think the answer is clear...we want to work in the bathroom. Yeah, it sounds gross but consider this: many of us do our best thinking in the bathroom. Our productivity could skyrocket (in more ways than one). So, I say why fight it. Here are some gadgets to help you get started on your own bathroom-based home office.

Boom Arm Starbase Workstation: Okay let's start with the basics. You are going to need a way to mount your laptop so that it is easily accessible from the toilet. This swing arm should do the job nicely—plus it is height adjustable and comes with a built-in cupholder. Yeah, that's right—a cupholder. You're already working in the bathroom, eating and drinking are not far behind. [easychairworkstation via Link]

The Loo Read: Having a full-on desk in there is going to take up too much space, but you still need a flat surface to spread out paperwork now and then. In that case, the Loo Read has you covered. It may even be sturdy enough to support light or ultraportable laptops. [Link]

Fish n' Flush Toilet: As for the throne itself, you are going to need something a little better than your standard toilet. This particular version uses half its reservoir to create a fish tank—which is perfect for reducing stress at work. Although, I would go easy on the coffee and beef for a while. Reducing the amount of available water in the tank means less capacity for flushing. [Fish n' Flush via Link]

Moody Aquarium Sink: If you would prefer, the aquarium concept is also available in a sink version. [Home Click via Link]

Dell Latitude XFR D630: I suppose it goes without saying, but if you are going to work in the bathroom you will need a laptop that can handle the occasional splash of water. The Dell Latitude XFR D630 can do that and much more. In fact, it meets Department of Defense MIL-STD 810F standards for operation in extreme temps, moisture and altitude. Plus, the specs are decent with a Core 2 Duo processor, 14.1-inch / 500nit screen, 802.11n, and high-end thermal management for the processor and RAM running on XP. [Dell via Link]

MarineAV 70-inch LCD TV: If you are going to get a waterproof display, you might as well go all out with Marine AV's 70-inch TV. It features full 1080p resolution, a 1,500:1 contrast ratio, 600cd/m2 brightness, 8ms response time, 178 degree viewing angle, and AV, S-Video, Component, HDMI, PC (VGA) inputs. [MarineAV via Link]

Wall Mirror TV/PC: There are plenty of mirror TVs out there, but manufacturers are also starting to throw PCs in to the mix as well. The "ARCO" falls into this category with an all-in-one PC, TV and LCD embedded behind mirrored glass. [AVING via Link]

Sonim XP1 Cellphone: A waterproof cellphone in another must-have. The Sonim is rugged enough to handle a beer dunking / car mauling quite easily and even being smashed for weeks on end. The XP1 is a Europe-only release, but an American version is already on its way. [Sonim]

Potty Putter: Indoor putting surfaces are a staple of any office, and so it shall be with your bathroom version. The Potty Putter allows you to sink putts and deuces at the same time. [Baron Bob via Link]

Toilet Vacuum: It's always a good idea to have a desk vac around to handle small cleaning jobs around the office, and none would be appropriate than this toilet-shaped version. [Link]

Bonus: If you are looking for a little inspiration on what a home office bathroom should look like, consider the following examples:

Bathroom Office: Here is an example of a basic setup. The equiptment is old school, but the comfy looking executive toilet is a nice touch.

Roto-Rooter's Pimped Out John: Last year Roto-Rooter ran a contest that rewarded the winner with the ultimate bathroom gadget setup. It came complete with an Xbox 360, 20-inch LCD TV, laptop, TiVo, refrigerator with beer tap, bike pedal exerciser and more. [Kotaku]

Cheating the Angels

Barrels: schlaeger (CC Licensed)

At the New York WhiskyFest this week, nobody wanted to talk much about technological innovations in the industry. Most of the whisky professionals I asked assured me that there was no such thing as innovation at their tradition-steeped distillery -- they were doing everything the same way it had been done for generations, thank you very much. Some distillers seemed put out that their companies had recently embraced such cutting-edge twentieth-century technology as labelling barrels with bar codes. The marketing side of the business is innovating to beat the band -- look for a new Irish whiskey called Feckin and a new rye called (rī)¹ coming soon to bars near you -- but the production side remains defiantly old-fangled.

The Fest-goers I talked to were largely abuzz about one recent and highly controversial innovation. Diageo, the largest spirits company in the world, producer of Johnnie Walker, Bushmills, single malts like Lagavulin and Talisker, and many other beverages, recently announced an innovation that could save the company millions of dollars every year. It's a simple plan; you've probably done something similar in your own kitchen. They plan to wrap the barrels they use to age their whiskies in giant sheets of plastic wrap.

The "angels' share" is the poetic industry term for the portion of whisky that evaporates from the barrels in which the spirit is aged. As whisky matures over years and even decades, it gains flavor and color from the wood in which it's stored. The commonly cited figure is that 65 percent of a whisky's flavor comes from the wood, although I've never been sure what study produced that number.

In warmer weather, the volume of liquid expands, seeping into the surrounding wood, from which it leaches flavor compounds such as vanillin; when the weather cools, it contracts back out of the wood, bringing some of that flavor with it. To the dismay of the distillery accountants, some of the liquor that's soaked into the wood leaves the wrong way, winding up on the outside of the barrel, where it evaporates. The typical loss is about 2 percent every year, which adds up: at the Fest I tasted from a barrel that, due to excessive aging in excessive heat, had lost all but a couple of bottles' worth of its precious whisky.

Sealing barrels in non-porous cling film will prevent this loss -- when a barrel is finally unwrapped, the scheme goes, it will be as full as it was 30 years before when it was filled. According to an article in the Glasgow Daily Record, the process "is not thought to affect the taste of the whisky," but it's not only the strictest traditionalists in the whisky world who express doubts about that.

Since so much of a whisky's flavor comes from the interaction between spirit and wood, any tinkering with that process is bound to affect the final product. During normal evaporation, as the angels' share gradually disappears from the barrel, it is replaced by air. The effect of this progressive interaction between oxygen and liquor is not fully understood.

Another unpredictable situation may arise as a quantity of liquor collects between the outside of the barrel and the inside of the plastic wrap, keeping the barrel surface unwontedly moist.

But far be it from Popular Science to frown on innovation. The proof, of course, will be in the tasting.

A Cure for AIDS?

Holy crap. These guys in Germany just cured AIDS!

Of course, the procedure is so expensive, complicated, and risky that it's not replicable as a large-scale public health strategy, but we'll ignore that for a minute. Here's how they did it. Drs. Gero Hutter and Eckhard Thiel are blood cancer experts at the Charite Medical University in Berlin. Their patient, an American ex-pat, was suffering from leukemia as well as a full-blown case of AIDS. His case was so desperate that his doctors decided to get craaazy and give him a bone-marrow transplant--(this isn't the crazy part)--using blood stem cells from a donor who was immune to HIV (this is). About 10 years ago, doctors discovered that a few of their gay male patients never developed AIDS, despite engaging in risky sex with hundreds of partners. It turned out that they had a rare mutation called Delta 32 that blocks a molecule in HIV from adhering to the cell surface. Delta 32 must be inherited from both parents; it occurs at a rate of roughly 1 percent in European populations (it's more common in Northern Europe and much much, rarer--basically unheard of--in Africa and Asia), so it was difficult but not impossible for the doctors to find a donor in Germany who fit the bill. The patient was asked to stop taking his antiretroviral AIDS medication for the duration of the procedure with the understanding that he'd have to restart the meds fairly soon after the transplant was complete and the level of the virus in his bloodstream started to rise. But to everyone's surprise, it never rose, not at all. It has now been close to two years since the transplant, and there are still no traces of HIV in the patient's blood or brain tissues. So: success! A cure! For this guy, at least.

Now back to the caveats. A bone marrow transplant is dangerous and painful--it involves wiping out the patient's entire immune system with chemotherapy and radiation and carries a 30 percent mortality rate. The prospect is so daunting that one doctor joked to the New York Times that he'd rather just take antiretrovirals for the rest of his life. It's also not always possible to find a donor who is a good match for the recipient (if the donated cells are not taken from someone with similar human leukocyte antigens, a crucial part of the immune system, they are likely to be rejected or cause severe graft-versus-host disease) and is also happens to be resistant to HIV. This would be particularly tricky in Africa, where the mutation doesn't occur naturally. And carriers of Delta 32 might actually be more susceptible to certain other diseases, like the West Nile virus.

But even though this particular procedure doesn't offer a new standard of care for AIDS patients worldwide, it offers a lot more than just hope (although hope is nice). For one thing, researchers now have a clear path to a cure. If the steps taken by Hutter and Thiel can be refined, simplified, and made less risky, they could become a viable protocol for thousands of other people with AIDS. Eventually, this might entail bone-marrow transplants in which not all of the body's immune cells are killed, or "snipping" the segment of DNA that codes for HIV receptors out out of blood cells and transplanting them into AIDS patients. Eventually, patients' own cells could actually be engineered to resist HIV. These advances are probably decades away, but this breakthrough is confirmation that, once they're made, they could amount to something big.

Three held in bank heist inspired by "Ocean's Eleven"

Henry K. Lee, Chronicle Staff Writer
hlee@sfchronicle.com

(11-14) 06:07 PST SAN JOSE -- Three men who allegedly staged an inside-job San Jose bank robbery after watching the movie "Ocean's Eleven" will be in court today.

---

Images

View Larger Images

---

• Entrepreneur blogs about charity's money woes 11.17.08

Brian Tirao Deguzman and Allen Tam Vu, both 25, and Armando Anaya Mendez, 22, were arrested Wednesday evening for allegedly stealing $100,000 from the Wells Fargo branch inside the Safeway store at 3202 Story Road.

Deguzman is the branch manager and Mendez is an employee. Police said Vu played the role of the robber and was escorted into the back of the bank and given the money by the others.

The suspects said they hatched the robbery plan after watching "Ocean's Eleven," in which Danny Ocean, portrayed by George Clooney, and his cohorts, including those played by Brad Pitt and Matt Damon, devise a plan to rob three Las Vegas casinos at the same time.

All three suspects are being held in lieu of $1 million at Santa Clara County Jail and are scheduled to appear today in Superior Court.

The holdup is at least the fourth such case in Northern California in which current or former bank employees have been implicated.

In July, a Union Bank employee took $15,000 from his vault, put it in his teller drawer and had a friend "rob" him, federal prosecutors said.

Similar "inside job" bank robberies occurred at a San Francisco credit union on Aug. 6 and at a Salinas bank on July 5 in which current or former tellers were implicated and charged in federal court, authorities said.

Eco-Friendly Billboard for Times Square

In Times Square, a Company’s Name in (Wind- and Solar-Powered) Lights

By GLENN COLLINS

The first eco-friendly billboard is coming to Times Square, entirely powered by the sun and the wind — but there is one small catch.

Enlarge This Image

Marilynn K. Yee/The New York Times

An eco-friendly billboard will be installed above the Chase sign at 7th Avenue and 42nd Street.

Enlarge This Image

Gigante Vaz Partners NYC

The billboard, seen in a rendering, will have four 45-foot stacks of wind turbines to power it.

When there’s no sun, and no wind? The $3 million billboard goes dark: there is no backup generator.

“We think if that happens, it’s just fine,” said Ron Potesky, a senior marketing vice president for Ricoh Americas Corporation, the office equipment and document-storage supplier that owns the sign.

The billboard — traditionally called a “spectacular” on the Great White Way — weighs in at 35,000 pounds. It will be 55 feet off the ground at 3 Times Square, wrapping around the northwest corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street.

Fitted with 16 wind turbines and 64 solar panels, the sign will be “a first for Times Square,” said Barry E. Winston, a Times Square billboard consultant not involved in the Ricoh project, who has been a sign expert for more than 50 years.

Wind turbines for the vast sign, which is 126 feet wide and 47 feet high, have arrived in a warehouse in Deer Park, N.Y., where preliminary testing is being done. Construction will begin this month, for a lighting ceremony on Dec. 4.

Ricoh would not say how much it was paying for its three-year lease, but based on recent deals, the lease would most likely cost in the low six figures, as much as $200,000 a month, according to sign rental experts who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they are contractually forbidden to make public statements.

Such a cost would not be unusual for a sign across the avenue from 1 Times Square, where the ball drops on New Year’s Eve.

By generating its own electricity — enough to light six homes for a year — the sign could save as much as $12,000 to $15,000 per month, according to Ricoh, which estimated that the sign would prevent 18 tons of carbon from being spewed into the air yearly.

The “passive” sign is not studded with light-emitting diodes like so many others in Times Square, but will be lighted by 16 300-watt floodlights. It will feature custom-printed opaque vinyl sheeting bearing the red-and-white Ricoh logo. The sign will be green, nevertheless, a message “to customers, other companies and the world that resources and energy can be used creatively,” Mr. Potesky said. “The point is that there are ways of being environmentally friendly to the planet, even on a billboard.”

Unlike the tall propellers in a typical wind farm, the cylindrical Ricoh drum turbines have no sharp blades. They will provide 90 percent of the sign’s power; the rest will come from the solar panels on the sign, feeding electricity to eight collection batteries up in the sign. The drums are so perfectly balanced, Ricoh says, that their rotors could be turned by the wind from a single household electric fan.

Mr. Potesky said the turbines would most likely generate enough power to keep the sign lighted even after four days without wind or sun. But the company is prepared for the sign to go dark. Mr. Potesky said the only other such sign in the world is one Ricoh put up in 2003 in Osaka, Japan, “using somewhat less advanced technology,” he said, referring to its 26 small propellers and 39 solar panels.

“On dark and rainy days, that sign went dark during the night,” he said.

Passers-by will be able to see the 26 blades spinning in each of the sign’s 16 turbine drums, piled in four 45-foot-high vertical stacks. When operating at their average speed of 10 miles an hour, they put out 22 kilowatts.

Stalklike propeller turbines require unidirectional, or “clean,” wind to function. But the revolving drums on the Ricoh sign can use turbulent, multidirectional winds common to Midtown, said Mary S. Watkins, chief executive of PacWind Inc. in Torrance, Calif., which makes the custom turbine arrays.

PacWind studied meteorological records and did a wind analysis, she said, determining that Times Square has 10-mile-an-hour winds, on average, ranging from no wind to gusts of 85 m.p.h. The turbines provide usable power from winds as weak as 5 m.p.h. and rotate safely in winds up to 100 m.p.h., she said, because the aluminum blades are aerodynamically designed to regulate themselves, slowing automatically in high winds.

The company has designed wind turbines for applications ranging from the sublime to the seemingly ridiculous — including a turbine created for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to capture 400-mile-an-hour winds for a lander on Mars, and a turbine that powers the 20,000-square-foot garage of Jay Leno in Los Angeles.

Ms. Watkins said the Times Square turbines were designed to keep ice from forming on the blades in winter. Birds have not proved to be a problem as the company has installed 50 of its drum turbines across the country, she said, “because they see the turbines not as spinning blades, but as a solid object.”

A version of this article appeared in print on November 15, 2008, on page A18 of the New York edition. More Articles in New York Region »

Warner Brothers releases new Half-Blood Prince trailer!

Exclusively for fan sites for the next week, Warner Brothers has just given Potter fans a great surprise: a brand new trailer for Half-Blood Prince!


Windows HD: Large | Extra Large

Windows Standard:
Small | Medium | Large

Flash:
Small | Large

QuickTime HD:
Small | Medium | Large

QuickTime Standard:
Very Small | Small | Medium | Large

iPod: Click here

If you want to catch it on the big screen, you can see it with the upcoming film Twilight, which hits theaters on November 21st (the same day HBP was scheduled to be released prior to the delay - see the connection here?).

The World's Most Expensive Earphones Go On Sale!

They're complete with 118 diamonds...

The world's most expensive earphones have gone on sale for a massive $5,200.

Made by specialist Belgian jeweller Casa Di, the blingtastic ear pieces are made from 18 carat gold and are encrusted with an impressive 118 diamonds.

Each earphone weighs a relatively heavy 18grams and come with 59 diamonds each. The limited-edition run are on sale at selected jewellers around the globe.

Earlier this week Gigwise published a blog on how the return of bling to hip-hop could rescue the globe from its financial crisis. CLICK HERE to read it in full.

The world's most expensive earphones:

Previous Next

Fear and Loathing in the Office Suite

Penny Pincher: Microsoft Word is pricey. But do free programs make the cut?

As part of my ongoing, personal economic bailout plan, this week I began tinkering around with a couple of the free, online office suites that are available. After all, why shell out a few hundred clams for Microsoft Office when others are giving it away for free? Unfortunately, after a week of getting to know Google Docs and Zoho Writer, here I am typing this week’s column from the comfort and safety of a bought-and-paid-for copy of Microsoft Word. Why? Because I came to realize something about myself over the course of this week: At 30 years old, I’m already an old fart.

More on that later.

The week’s experiment went off like so: I used Firefox on a Mac to put Google Docs and Zoho Writer through their respective paces. I played around with their Excel and PowerPoint equivalents as well, but I don’t often use those programs anyway, so I concentrated more on the word processors. I also gave Microsoft Live Office a whirl, but without the ability to actually edit or create documents, the word “useless” doesn’t even begin to describe the Microsoft experience. So, I won’t be mentioning it from here on out.

The first thing that struck me about the Google and Zoho apps is that they’re absolutely bulging with features. Just like in Word, you can create docs, type text, style it however you want, insert and resize images, add tables, do bulleted lists and print. Both make it a snap to share and collaborate with others, and both allow you to work offline via Google Gears. Google Docs even places a nifty little shortcut icon on your desktop, which goes a long way to making it feel like you’re using a “real” program, for lack of a better word. (Zoho also puts a shortcut on your desktop, but it’s a generic bookmark). Both programs let you import and export a variety of document formats, including Word, OpenDocument, RTF and PDF. Zoho even supports Microsoft’s new .docx format. They also allow you to use familiar keyboard shortcuts, such as Ctrl+S, Ctrl+P and good old Ctrl+Z.

Of course, neither app is without its problems. Zoho, for example, has a "thesaurus" function, but I can’t figure out for the life of me how to actually sub in a word short of manually cutting and pasting it in. Zoho also removed random spaces here and there in some of the docs I imported. Google, on the other hand, doesn’t have the ruler up top for adjusting margins (at least, I couldn’t locate it) and doesn’t support adding links to images. Both apps exported to Microsoft Word with varying degrees of success. Google’s tabbing and image alignment was slightly off, while Zoho placed some hideous, un-editable lines at the top and bottom of every document I exported. Ideally, Microsoft Word would never have to enter the picture, but let’s be realistic: When I submit an invoice to someone or file a story with my editor, am I going to send an invitation to view the file on Zoho, or am I just going to send through a Word doc?

For both Google and Zoho, the offline experiences leave a lot to be desired. The spreadsheet and slideshow programs aren’t made available offline by either—just the word processor, which itself has been severely crippled in both cases. Neither lets me create a new document offline, nor can I spell check an existing one. In Zoho Writer, images I’ve placed into documents are sometimes stripped out when in offline mode, which is completely frustrating. My biggest problem with offline mode is that I have no idea where my documents actually are. They seem to exist only within my browser window, and with the export function unavailable I have no way of backing them up or putting them on a thumb drive to share with a friend (Remember, I’m offline, so can’t email them).

These are all pretty small qualms, though, and ones I’m sure will be smoothed out in the coming months or years. In reality, the depth of features made available by both office suites is nothing short of incredible. Take a spin on Zoho’s PowerPoint counterpart, Show, and it doesn’t take a crystal ball to see that these online apps are the future.

Still, I’m not sold, and it’s my own frame of mind that’s to blame. For me to completely abandon Microsoft Office would require a major shift in the way I think about personal computing—one I’m not sure I’m capable of making. For me, the PC and the Internet are still two very distinct entities. I don’t think kids growing up today can even conceive of a computer that doesn’t go online. For them, there’s little difference between typing a paper in Microsoft Word and typing search terms into Google. It’s all the same playing field. I’m the opposite, and maybe that’s because I remember the day my family got its first 14.4-baud modem. Even though opening Firefox, IE or Safari is now as seamless a process as opening up Word or Excel, I still think of “going online” as something completely separate to what’s happening on my PC locally.

I like having the computing power on my actual computer. With Microsoft Word, Adobe Photoshop and whatever else I have installed, I feel like I can get things done whether I have an Internet connection or not. I also like my documents in a folder that I always have immediate access to. I really can’t imagine a future in which I’m required to go online to run a program or retrieve a document. And, what about outages? This past summer, Gmail suffered a major system-wide collapse, which left me without email or access to my contacts for hours. The same thing happened just yesterday to my Hotmail account—and yes, I really do still have a Hotmail account. If the same thing happened to Zoho and I suddenly couldn’t get a hold of an important story or presentation, I’d flip out. And there’s that whole issue of privacy. I’m sorry, but I’m not sure I want the Excel sheet I keep all of my finances on sitting out on some server somewhere, or being sent across the Internet into a Web browser.

If all of this makes me old school, so be it. Now, excuse me while I chase the neighborhood kids off of my lawn…

G37S vs. TL SH-AWD- How To Properly Balance Maturity and your inner Hooligan

There comes a point in your life when change becomes essential. No longer is it acceptable to eat dinner directly from the cookware. Beanbag chairs are frowned upon. And, most of all, your friends are tired of being stuffed into the dank, musty backseat of your two-door coupe.

Sure, a coupe sometimes boasts an incrementally more structurally rigid body shell than a sedan, but it's a moot point when you consider how stiff modern cars are. You'd have to be Formula 1 world champion Lewis Hamilton to discern the difference.

Sportiness transcends sheer door count when it comes to the desirability of a sedan these days, and two examples of this are the 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD and the 2009 Infiniti G37 Journey. Sedans only in form and more coupelike in dynamic function, these two cars take their sporting credentials seriously.

Thinking About the Sport Sedan
Infiniti makes an all-wheel-drive version of the G37, an all-season sedan that would appear to be the logical counterpoint to the all-wheel-drive Acura TL SH-AWD. But if you're talking pure performance, the honor goes to the 2009 Infiniti G37 Journey, the baddest G sedan in the land. And if you're choosing a pure sport sedan, this is the one you'd pick.

To wit, consider that the Journey is the only G37 sedan that can be had with the Sport package, which arms it with some serious hardware — summer tires and 18-inch wheels, a limited-slip differential, shift paddles for the transmission, bigger brakes, quicker steering and tauter suspension underpinnings. Our bright red G37 sedan test car came equipped with this Sport package as well as the Premium package and Navigation package, and its price totaled $41,265.

As with other Honda and Acura offerings, our $43,995 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD technically had no options because it is sold as a discrete model. In this case, this TL comes comprehensively equipped with everything from a navigation system to summer tires.

These cars represent two different approaches to growing up. The sport sedan that will come out on top in this comparison test must balance the inevitability of maturity with the cravings of your inner hooligan.

2nd Place: 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD
If you can avoid eye contact with the TL's Medusa face and make it into the TL's cabin without being turned to stone, you'll find its interior is a cut above the G37 both in spaciousness and in appearance.

The airiness of the TL's cabin derives from your sense of greater overall width, and its multifunction screen is set further back than the G37's touchscreen, so you don't feel as crowded by the dashboard. The various plastics and contrast-stitched leather are easier on the eye and to the touch. The rows upon rows of buttons on the center stack seem like an intimidating mess at first, but with seat time, however, their grouping and function makes sense.

In terms of thrust, the Acura never bests the Infiniti's ability to make a quick escape, despite the traction advantage afforded by the TL's all-wheel-drive system. Acura has found 305 horsepower at 6,200 rpm and 273 pound-feet of torque at 5,000 rpm within the TL's 3.7-liter V6, but it's not enough to get the TL to keep up with the Infiniti in a straight line.

Perhaps the reason lies in the fact that the TL is saddled with 250 pounds more and two fewer gears in its transmission, and the result is a 6.7-second run to 60 mph (6.2 seconds with 1 foot of rollout like on a drag strip) and a quarter-mile sprint of 15 seconds at 94.3 mph. Hardly slow, but well off the pace set by the Infiniti G37.

Exercising the TL
With nearly 60 percent of the TL's 3,961-pound curb weight resting on the front tires, we were expecting the Acura's handling balance to tip on the side of relentless understeer. Surprise — we were wrong.

The first time you bend the TL into a fast corner, you immediately realize that the TL SH-AWD doesn't simply punish the outside front tire relentlessly as you'd expect from its forward-biased weight distribution. Steering response from the front of the car is taut and sharp, and the TL sports an eagerness to change direction that belies its weight bias. It turns out that driving all four wheels has its advantages when it comes to handling.

Beyond simply improving traction, the TL's all-wheel-drive system effectively utilizes the rear wheels to manipulate the car's cornering attitude. This reduces understeer and improves outright grip to the tune of 0.93g on our skid pad. The TL SH-AWD still likes to be driven tidily, but you can fling the TL around with zeal and come away grinning.

The rest of the chassis bits are willing participants as you explore these outer reaches of the TL's performance envelope. Body roll is minimal, and the quick-ratio steering faithfully communicates what the front tires are up to. Around center the steering feels slightly artificial, but as electric-assist power steering goes, you could do worse than the TL.

We've noticed that the brakes in modern Hondas tend to wilt at the first sign of hard driving, yet the TL's brakes buck this trend. They haul the Acura to a halt from 60 mph in a scant 106 feet. This performance is matched by the G37, but the TL exhibits less brake fade than the Infiniti. Perhaps this marks the turning of a new leaf for future Honda offerings.

During the TL's best slalom run of 67.8 mph, we observed that this maneuver highlighted some lag in the all-wheel-drive system's ability to react to sudden maneuvers. Out in the real world, however, the system's manners are unimpeachable, and AWD proves to be a key element in the TL's keenly capable and confidence-inspiring character.

1st Place: 2009 Infiniti G37 Journey
When you first slide behind the wheel of the 2009 Infiniti G37 Journey after soaking in the TL's cabin, your wow meter might droop a bit. The G37 lacks the breezy spaciousness and rich ambience of the TL, instead exuding a more traditional vibe. Likewise, the G's sheet metal is all soft, anonymous curves, as if the Pillsbury Doughboy penned them with a crayon made out of Silly Putty.

Don't be deceived. The G37 is a wolf in sheep's clothing.

The basics of the G37's 3.7-liter VQ-Series V6 might be familiar from various Nissan and Infiniti offerings, but summer camp at Club Ninja has toned the power plant's muscles. Now with 328 hp at 7,000 rpm and 269 lb-ft of torque at 5,200 rpm, it'll wind all the way to the fuel cutoff at 7,600 rpm. It's a shade raucous up there, but you'll hardly notice since you'll be busy passing everything in sight.

With this engine paired to a brilliant new seven-speed automatic, the G37 sports the mechanical equivalent of a gazelle's legs. It tears to 60 mph in just 5.4 seconds (5.2 seconds with 1 foot of rollout like on a drag strip) on its way to a quarter-mile sprint of 13.7 seconds at 102.8 mph.

Character of the G
Where the TL's chassis hardware is employed to ends that are highly effective yet somehow clinical, the G37's bits turn the Infiniti into an ass-kicking hoot. The G37 feels nimbler than its stout 3,704-pound curb weight would suggest, an impression confirmed by a quick 69.2-mph slalom speed. Its ultimate grip of 0.91g on the skid pad trails the TL slightly, however.

The quick-ratio steering that comes as part of the Sport package works so well that it hardly attracts attention to itself, which is just the way it should be. It reinforces just how silly the optional four-wheel active steering system is (our test car didn't have it).

The combination of an automatic transmission and a car with sporting pretenses is usually a big letdown. Not so in the G-model. Like the TL, the G37 has shift paddles on the steering wheel and does the sporting blip of the throttle on downshifts. Yet the G37 won't spoil your fun even in auto mode, because this G37 facilitates fast driving as well as simple outright speed.

You can simply leave the transmission in Drive if you like, because as you increase your entry speed in corners, the transmission instantly recognizes the situation and begins to hold gears with an aggression that's rare among slushbox hardware. When fun time is over and you want to cruise, the G37's transmission reprises its Clark Kent persona. But by then the secret is out. In its adaptability, the G37 clearly has an enthusiasm for hard driving.

Likewise, the default setting of the G37's stability control system even allows for several degrees of slip angle on the tires before intervening. It's a nice feature, since the classic rear-drive layout gives this Infiniti an attitude you can adjust with your right foot. This thing is serious fun.

No Dangling Chads Here
Yet all this extreme sport sedan stuff doesn't get in the way of civility where the 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD and 2009 Infiniti G37 Journey are concerned. Both cars exhibit a certain suppleness when the roads prickle their backs, with the edge going to the more supple TL. The backseat in both cars provides the kind of legroom that makes long road trips a realistic proposition.

We have two very accomplished sport sedans in the TL and the G37, and their differences in character are more a matter of personal preference than in capability. The scoring was close enough between the two that the G37's $2,730 sticker price advantage took on increased significance.

Ultimately, though, the 2009 Acura TL SH-AWD couldn't claw its way back from the drubbing given to it by the sheer speed of the 2009 Infiniti G37. It doesn't hurt that the G37 really shrinks around its driver when you want it to and expands when you don't. In this respect, the G37 is the four-door sports car you always wanted, the car that lets you change and grow up without forgetting where you came from.

Rage Against The Machine - Klilling in the name of (live)

370Z in the Flesh

Hey Insiders, we just had the 2009 Nissan 370Z Party and it was a blast. Inside Line just revealed the new Z to the public a full week before its official debut at the 2008 Los Angeles Auto Show.

Surely you were there, be just in case you missed it, the full story with loads of photos will be on this page sometime Monday. But until then, here are some videos of the event.

We've got VIP interviews, vehicle walk-arounds and crowd reactions.

It will be as if you were there, except without the free taco.

Hussman Funds Weekly Market Comment-

The stock market is not in "Uncharted Territory"

Citigroup to slash more than 50,000 jobs

Looks like financial services employees may need to make career changes

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Citigroup said Monday it planned to cut more than 50,000 jobs, the latest move by the struggling bank to cut costs in order to weather the credit crisis plaguing Wall Street

In an investor presentation on its Web site, the company said it would reduce its staff levels to approximately 300,000 employees. As of the end of September, the New York City-based bank had about 352,000 workers.

It was not clear from the presentation what parts of the company the cuts would come from, but there was speculation last week that Citigroup was looking to layoff people in its investment banking and wealth management divisions.

Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, who was appointed last December, is expected to talk about the job cuts in more detail at an employee town hall meeting held Monday morning.

The latest cuts are yet another example of how Citigroup is desperately trying to cut costs in the wake of the credit crisis. Over the past four quarters, the New York City-based bank has trimmed its payroll by 23,000 workers.

Citigroup, the nation's second largest bank by assets behind JPMorgan Chase (JPM, Fortune 500), has been one of the hardest hit financial institutions during the credit crisis.

Over the last four quarters, the company has lost more than $20 billion, due in large part to its ill-timed bets on the U.S. housing market.

Its stock, which is down 68% so far this year, has lost about a third of its value in the last two weeks alone amid broader investor nervousness about the economy and the U.S. banking sector. Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) stock edged lower in pre-market trading Monday.

There has also been speculation that big changes could come at the top of the organization. Last week, the The Wall Street Journal reported that the company is considering replacing chairman Sir Win Bischoff. Citigroup's board sent a memo to all employees calling the report "irresponsible and completely inaccurate" however.

Star Trek Bootleg Trailer

Posted by Fiona 16 November, 2008

Take a look at bootleg trailer for J.J. Abrams’ “Star Trek” which stars Eric Bana, Karl Urban, Simon Pegg, Anton Yelchin, John Cho, Winona Ryder, Bruce Greenwood, Rachel Nichols, Jennifer Morrison, Clifton Collins Jr. and Tyler Perry,

The film is set to be released May 8, 2009.

Check out “Star Trek” Movie Page for more info about the movie.