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Sight of ‘the sound of found’ confounds many — Perhaps if the people at MSFT would have perhaps informed someone that they were going to throw an event, it might help get attention. Geez, what is wrong with them?
What if you took over a nationally recognized civic landmark for a publicity event visible for miles … and confused the heck out of people who saw it?
Microsoft put on a light show at the Seattle Center Tuesday night for the launch of its new “decision engine,” Bing — or “the sound of found,” as the company likes to call it. A spotlight sent a bright blue shaft into the night sky, visible for miles. Other lights “painted” the Space Needle and the arches at the Pacific Science Center orange.
However, the sight of “the sound of found” apparently inspired widespread consternation — or amusement — rather than the light of discovery. Here’s a sampling of early responses from Twitter:
McQuaid: “What is going on at the Seattle Space Needle??? Anyone know why its burned out and there is a light coming from the science center??”
redheron: “Bright light down by the space needle. Anyone know what it is? Its like the luxor or something.”
- Sony-Ericsson opens an app store. Who isn’t?
- Tetris now celebrating 25th anniversary.
- Google Squared is out.
- Final Fantasy 14 coming out. When is it really final?
- Opera 10 offers new tricks to be stolen by all.
- Social networking up 83-percent.
- Android G2 headed for T-mobile.
- Apple WWDC gearing up for June 8 roll out.
- Controller wars coming.
- Apparently Google and Yahoo collude.
- Oops. Turn off your computer please!
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
Jim Rome went on a 15-minute rant today on his radio show about this obscure British “sport.” There is even a SKAB (Shin Kicking Association of Britain).
For the last four years, John E. Scannell has run Bay Quackers, a tour company whose open-air amphibious vehicles, known as ducks, roam the streets of San Francisco. As the vehicles cruise past sights and eventually plop down in the bay, passengers use a kazoo-like device to quack at passers-by.
It is, Mr. Scannell said, a purposefully absurd way of introducing visitors to a city that is often purposefully absurd…
But if a new duck in town, if you will, has its way, Mr. Scannell’s quacking days could be over. Last month, a rival company, Ride the Ducks, filed suit in Federal District Court here to stop Bay Quackers from using quacking devices on its tours.
At issue is a “sound mark,” the auditory equivalent of a trademark, which Ride the Ducks says it holds on a quack created by a yellow bill-shaped kazoo (called a Wacky Quacker) and which it says Bay Quackers has violated by using a similar kazoo that creates an identical quack.
“If you blew theirs and ours, you wouldn’t hear any difference,” said Bob Salmon, vice president of marketing and sales for Ride the Ducks, whose company has been using its kazoo for more than a decade. “It’s a very important part of our product. We’re very interactive with people on the street, and the way that we interact is using our Wacky Quackers…”
The suit seeks not only a preliminary injunction on the use of the rival’s kazoos, but also destruction of “all noisemakers or other implements” that produce quacks on Bay Quackers tours.
These people should get a fracking [quacking?] life!
A TUG-OF-WAR in Shenzhen turned nasty when one of the contestants had his hand severed in a freak accident.
The man, surnamed Shi, a deputy general manager at a night club was celebrating the Dragon Boat Festival with colleagues on a beach at 4.30am, according to the Southern Metropolitan Daily.
Shi, 1.8 meters tall and 34-years-old, was the anchorman in his five-man team and had coiled the rope around his hand several times for stability, letting the rest of the rope fall to the ground.
It was a fierce competition with everyone pulling as hard as they could when excited spectators suddenly joined in, grabbing the end of the rope near Shi.
Suddenly Shi screamed and fainted and his severed hand fell to the ground.
Shi was rushed to a local hospital and then transferred to the Guangzhou Peace Hand Surgery Hospital for a seven-hour operation. Shi’s family now has to wait 10 days to see whether he will be able to use his hand at all or even if the reattachment will work. Even if the surgery succeeds, all the functions of the hand will not be restored, Liang Min, the director of the hospital, said.
Yoikes!
It’s not just relatively low retention rates that Twitter has to deal with. Turns out, according to a Harvard Business School study, that the median number of messages a Twitter user sends—ever—is one.
The researchers found that a small group is sending out most of the tweets on the service. Ten percent of Twitter users account for more than 90 percent of messages. That’s more than on the typical social network or on Wikipedia, where 15 percent account for 90 percent of entries.
The implication, according to the Harvard researchers: Twitter “resembles more of a one-way, one-to-many publishing service more than a two-way, peer-to-peer communication network.”
Twitter executives have said they working to keep Tweeters engaged with the service. Last month, a study found that 60 percent of new Tweeters abandon Twitter.com after a month.
Anymore news like this you’d think the moneyboys would stop offering all their geedus to Twitter!
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Remember the good old days when all kids had to worry about were broken bones from trying to fly from the garage roof, pretending to be Superman? Good times, good times… |
Cell phones have been accused of causing cancer before, and of lowering fertility thanks to their heat levels. However, doctors worldwide are reporting a less sensational, but potentially far more dangerous affliction striking users worldwide. Scientist are dubbing the new disease “cell phone elbow”, a use injury similar perhaps to Wii-itis, but with the potential to cause long term damage.
According to doctors, when you bend your elbow to hold your cell phone to your ear, you stretch a nerve which extends underneath the funny bone and controls the smallest fingers. According to Dr. Peter J. Evans, the director of the Hand and Upper Extremity Center at the Cleveland Clinic in Cleveland, Ohio, long chats can “(choke) the blood supply to the nerves. It makes the nerves short-circuit. The next thing you know, there’s tingling in the ring and small finger.”
Doctors are advising users who experience such tingling sensations to switch hands and, if possible, cut back on their use.
Combine this with eliminating fraud, and you are talking real money.
White House chief economist Christina Romer kicked off President Obama’s push to reform the nation’s health care system Tuesday, saying there are “billion-dollar bills lying on the sidewalk” if the nation can find a way to make the system more efficient.
The UC Berkeley economist, who chairs the president’s Council of Economic Advisers, said in a 51-page report that the broken U.S. health care system is ruinous to workers’ wages, living standards and the federal budget, and the payoff from fixing it could be huge. At the White House, she called health care reform a potential “game changer” for the U.S. economy, if it is done right.
But that’s a big if, given the increasingly vexing budget, logistical and political problems standing in the way of the president’s top domestic campaign promise.
Congressional Democrats hope to have legislation ready by August, and key leaders have been meeting privately to hash out issues.
[…]
The cost of expanding coverage to the nation’s 46 million uninsured is the biggest hurdle. Romer’s 51-page report focuses on making the stupendous price tag – an estimated $1.5 trillion over 10 years – look more affordable by highlighting the enormous waste in the current system.
[…]
Harvard economist David Cutler, who praised Romer’s report for its academic integrity, said the health care industry employs more people simply to pull patient records than it does nurses.Romer said such phenomenal waste makes it incumbent that officials reform the system.
- E3 news coverage pouring in. No real news from Nintendo, Microsoft meanwhile has a full body controller, code named Natal. Could be useful.
- Microsoft tells us that Win7 debuts on Oct. 22.
- Larry Ellison shows up at Java One to praise Java.
- Twitter spam on the rise.
- Acer to use Android OS on netbooks. Why not Ubuntu?
- Looks as if Bing is too closely hooked to porn.
- Show sponsored by Squarespace.com. Use the code word TECH for a massive discount.
Right click here and select ‘Save Link As…’ to download the mp3 file.
Microsoft, in a bid to court Nintendo Wii users while pushing the edge of gaming and entertainment, unveiled a new 3-D motion-capture camera Monday that encourages full-body interaction.
Code-named Project Natal, the camera is able to accurately transform 3-D body movements into onscreen play, one-upping the Nintendo Wii’s handheld motion controllers.
The 3-D camera also comes equipped with facial-and-speech recognition capabilities that allow for more personalized and interactive engagement with Microsoft’s Xbox 360 game console.
A grieving couple jumped from Beachy Head apparently carrying the body of their five-year-old son two days after his death from meningitis, it emerged today.
The bodies of Neil Puttick, 34, and his wife, Kazumi, 44, from Wiltshire, were spotted at the foot of the cliffs on Sunday evening. The body of their child, Samuel, was found in a rucksack nearby.
Samuel had been discharged from hospital on Friday after it became clear he was not going to survive. He was allowed to leave so he could die peacefully at home. The boy, who neighbours said had suffered serious spinal injuries in an accident about three years ago, was confirmed dead later that evening…
An Eastbourne coastguard station officer, Stuart McNab, said coastguards on a routine clifftop patrol had seen what they believed to be two bodies about 400ft down the cliff just before 8pm on Sunday and alerted police, but it was decided it would be safer to wait and carry out the recovery the next day.
McNab, who was one of the first people to be taken to the scene by helicopter, said he had found the child’s body in a rucksack along with a second rucksack filled with soft toys and a toy tractor…
A spokesman for Dover coastguard said: “It is really horrific and incredibly sad. In my four years with the coastguard I have never known anything like this.”
I won’t comment further. It’s all too sad.
Daylife/Getty Images used by permission
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Acer has announced a version of its Aspire One netbook that will run the Android operating system.
The manufacturer made the announcement at the Computex show in Taiwan, promising a release for the Android-based netbook in the third quarter of this year. Android was originally intended as a platform for smartphones, but recent months have seen great interest in porting the system over to small, cheap subnotebooks.
“Netbooks are designed to be compact in size and easy to connect to the internet wherever you go,” said Jim Wong, Acer’s president of IT products, in a statement. “The Android operating system offers incredibly fast wireless connection to the internet; for this reason, Acer has decided to develop Android netbooks for added convenience to our customers.”
The Taiwanese manufacturer said the majority of Acer netbooks will come with Android as an alternative operating system to Microsoft’s Windows.
Oh my golly gosh. Something else for Microsoft to worry about.
Former Vice President Dick Cheney reiterated his praise for waterboarding Al Qaeda terrorists on Monday, calling it a “well done” technique that gathered valuable information from unusually bad guys.
“I’m a strong believer in it,” Cheney told a National Press Club audience. “I thought it was well done”….
Notwithstanding Cheney’s enthusiasm, waterboarding was banned by the Bush administration in 2003. President Obama has said waterboarding is torture and repugnant to American values. Cheney remains unconvinced. “I don’t believe that we engaged in torture,” he argued….
He admitted he has zero “tolerance or patience” for second-guessers.
Such a fun guy. No wonder Americans are warming up to him.
Thanks, K B
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Broward Palm Beach – Selling Used Video Games Now Requires Essentially Getting Booked — A trend I’m telling you.
I’m in line at Gamestop the other day, breaking down and finally buying the much-hated NCAA Football ’09, when I hear the clerk ask the guy in front of me for his fingerprints. He’s returning a game, and the clerk breaks out some kind of form. He swipes his thumb across an ink pad stuck to the counter and then puts his mark in the appropriate box.
What the deuce? “The sheriff’s office has been making us do it,” the clerk told me. “People hate it.”
Found by Sir Felix.
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