There is a great turtle farm here on Grand Cayman. It has returned
tens of thousands of sea turtles to the ocean and 10% of the turtles
are supplied as food for soups, hamburgers, etc.
New case from mobile.brando.com.hk is a perfect iPhone companion for the sun
I'm always looking for that killer story idea - you know - the one which has all the elements of interest and buzzwords... Like iPhone, green, gadget, etc. When I learned there was a new solar leather case for the iPhone 3G out of Hong Kong, I had to get my hands on it. I received this case a few weeks back and to be honest, I didn't think the current weather in Connecticut was good to be testing anything outdoors. Tom Keating suggested I place the case under an indoor light for a few days to see what happens. Sadly, nothing.
As you know, I have a passion for writing and doing whatever it takes to get the story - and getting it right. And I wanted this one to be good and I realized I needed to find a way to test this case in a way that allowed its strengths and weaknesses to be showcased so my readers could make an informed purchasing decision. I scoured the map and weather.com for hours and finally decided the Cayman Islands were the ideal place for this sort of review.
Next I had to explain to my coworkers that this assignment would have to be lengthy as we won't have appropriate sun for testing on the northeast coast of the US for about six months. My editors were easily convinced but the finance team may have slipped me a dirty look or two - I am not quite sure as I was out the door and on the flight so fast that heads spun.
So does the case work? Yes. It has a battery built-in which can be charged with a mini USB cable for a total of 1,500 mAh. Three hours is about all you need for the case to be fully charged and this is about enough power to charge the iPhone to about 50% capacity.
What worked best for me was to leave the case on the dashboard in the sun and plug in the iPhone when I was driving. The sun down here is strong and I found the case gains charge rapidly - even with indirect sunlight. It is a bit clunky and I prefer to take the phone out of the case when I use it. This is accomplished by gently rocking the phone from side to side while pulling upwards. It is worth mentioning the case will block the camera lens but not the speakers of the iPhone.
In actual operation, the charger works splendidly... It has bright blue LEDs to tell you charge level. Sadly, the manual was translated as poorly as any I have ever seen. This is really not that important though because for a $48 case it is pretty easy to use and you don't really need to be a rocket scientist to work it. Moreover you get about a 50% charge from this case when it is fully charged.
For under $50 getting a leather case, battery and solar panel that works with the iPhone is a great deal. The case is slim for what it does but still a bit clunky as it doesn't easily slip into a pocket.
Still, I feel s case requires more evaluation under strong equatorial sun and I expect to ensure the proper operation of this case in a manner with the quality you have come to expect in my blog.
As I posted this story, the website mentioned the device is now discontinued. More ironic this could not be and I am awaiting confirmation from the company on whether this information is accurate.
It is official and Greg has the details.
When you have 425,000 employees, some will definitely do things which embarrass headquarters. Such is the case with this UPS driver who seemed to try to make a basket with this package. No word on how many points he will get for this one but odds are he received at least one pink slip followed by the words, "Don't let the door hit you in the rear on the way out."
He is pretty lucky in fact the resolution of the video is not great enough for him to be recognized.
This is yet another example of how the web can take over a company's branding and messaging in ways they cannot control. Viral videos like this have to be the worst nightmare for those in public relations and I would estimate this video is worth millions of dollars in negative publicity.
I came across an article which details why Bernard Madoff should be ex-communicated from the Jewish people. Excommunication is not something I hear about too often but perhaps that is a mistake. I think organized religion should have the responsibility of policing its people.
Although I hear Madoff did not attend a Synagogue (no surprise) excommunication would send a powerful message. No Rabbi would marry him or bury him - he will go down in history as a villain the likes of which the world has rarely seen.
As I Jew I feel very comfortable in saying this and moreover I think the reason Madoff should be kicked out of our re
ligion is not because he swindled Jews but because he stole from people on a scale never before seen. He is an embarrassment to people everywhere and rattled the confidence of investors at a time when they didn't need one more thing to worry about.
Of course the excommunication argument over theft presents a slippery slope argument. Surely murder is a worse crime than theft.
But I am still for excommunication and I think the reason is the scale of the crime and the bad light it shines on other people of the same religion.
Having said that, I am for excommunication in all religions, Christians, Moslems and others. If a person does something to shine a major negative light on any religion, they should be excommunicated.
I realize religion does not have the same power it used to have in the US, in other parts of the world, it can be used as a major deterrent. I believe for example advocating murder on the behalf of any religion should result in excommunication. The fact that this hasn't happened is utterly shocking but maybe Madoff can make all religions realize they have a greater moral responsibility. The rituals of religion are often observed to a fault but to me it is the morality which is most important.
Sadly I don't hear the emphasis on morals in religion as often as I would like.
By the way, although I found this article on a news service while on vacation, the author of this excommunication letter is Rabbi Joshua Hammerman, religious leader of Temple Beth El in Stamford, Conn., and the person who performed a memorial service on my late uncle Norman Tehrani this summer.
I hope this idea snowballs into a grander vision of religion pressuring the human race to embrace a greater moral responsibility.
----
Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
I call upon the leadership of the American Jewish community, specifically the Council of Presidents of American Jewish Organizations -- which includes both lay and rabbinic groups -- to initiate action leading to the excommunication of Bernard Madoff.
Such a move would be unprecedented in the annals of American Jewry, and by its scope and power, perhaps in all of Jewish history. But never before has one man done such damage to individual Jews, Jewish organizations and Judaism itself. His actions were a betrayal of trust of an unprecedented degree. An overwhelming and overpowering statement of condemnation is essential. A clear message needs to be sent to others who might also be involved in similar schemes, to the Jewish public seeking moral leadership and to the public at large.
There have been many who have done more harm to Jews. To my knowledge, Madoff has not killed anyone (update: Rene-Thierry Magon de la Villehuchet committed suicide on Tuesday, after the hedge fund he operated lost $1.4 billion because of Madoff). But the foundations and charities he has harmed irreparably will prevent people from getting needed health care or educational assistance, will likely keep Jewish youth from rediscovering their identities and aged Holocaust survivors from recording their stories. Mark Charendoff of the Jewish Funders Network described it to "The Forward" in near apocalyptic terms, as "an atomic bomb in the world of Jewish philanthropy." An apocalyptic crime calls for an unprecedented response.
But the greatest damage done by Madoff has been to Judaism itself.
David Harris of the American Jewish Committee wrote in a letter to the New York Times of his concern that the Times' coverage of Madoff had placed a "striking emphasis on his being Jewish." But the Times is hardly alone in drawing that connection: Google "Madoff" and "Jewish" and 295,000 Web links already appear. The ADL called this a spike in online anti-Semitism. So we have a situation where Jews are being blamed for a crime that has disproportionately harmed Jews. I can understand why Jewish organizations are jittery about anti-Semites having a field day on this matter, but the most effective way to address it is through a clear repudiation not only of Madoff himself, but of the anti-Judaic nature of his acts.
Abraham Joshua Heschel said that in a free society, some are guilty; all are responsible. On so many levels, beginning with that commandment about not stealing, Jewish tradition abhors what Madoff has done. Unless we Jews raise our voices louder than anyone else in condemnation of these acts , we are not only giving credence to all the false images being perpetrated by the anti-Semites, but we are perpetuating what the ancient sages dubbed a "hillul ha-shem," a desecration of God's name.
Rabbis have employed excommunication often over the centuries, particularly in chasing down husbands who refuse to grant religious divorces to their wives; but usually the impact has been localized. In medieval times, it was used as a political weapon against alleged heretics, like Spinoza and some Karaites. In our time this tool has lost its clout, simply because the Jewish community lacks unity, and because rabbinic sanction has little impact outside the ultra-Orthodox world.
But Madoff's crimes cut across the Jewish spectrum - like a hatchet, not a scalpel. Hadassah reportedly lost $90 million; the Robert E. Lappin Foundation of Boston, which sent twenty of my community's teens to Israel for free two years ago, was forced to shut down. Imagine if all the organizations represented by the Council of Presidents were to come together and say, flat out, that Madoff has done irreparable harm to Jews and Judaism and that he is not welcome in any synagogue, JCC or Federation event anywhere. No rabbi will marry him or bury him. No organization will make excuses for him. He is to be cut off. Period.
The mechanism for excommunication would need to be devised from scratch, along with the precise consequences. There would need to be a degree of rabbinic and lay cooperation that we've rarely if ever seen among Jews in this country. We are in uncharted territory. But to this point, the response of the organized Jewish community to this scandal has been tepid at best, likely because many fear the anti-Semitic backlash that, ironically, will only be exacerbated by continued tentativeness. Most of those directly impacted by the scandal were blameless save for their blind faith, but too many traveled in the same social circles that honored this man for all the wrong reasons; too many proclaimed his genius. Those images are what will remain unless American Jewry recognizes that there is something rotten that must be exorcised from our culture and from our midst. Some have said that what we need is the equivalent of a moral bailout. What we certainly need is resolute action.
Ultimately, it's not because of the anti-Semites that this needs to be tackled head-on. Our own children are watching us. If the communal response to Madoff is concerted, unified and reasonable, this could be American Jewry's finest hour. If not, it will be the continuation of our worst nightmare.
IMPLICATIONS OF MADOFF FRAUD ON PHILANTHROPIC COMMUNITY
NEW YORK, NY, December 23, 2008: Cathy Lanyard, Executive Director of American Friends of ALYN Hospital, a non-profit organization, held a press conference today to discuss the "Implications of Bernard Madoff on Fundraising and Non-Profit Organizations."
Madoff's alleged $50 billion Wall Street fraud, one of the largest in U.S. history, has devastated non-profit organizations across the United States, particularly Jewish charities. Coping with pain and anger after disclosure of the alleged multibillion-dollar Ponzi scheme, charities are feeling the affects of distrust and betrayal. The Madoff fraud should serve as an enormous wakeup call to all charities to revisit and redefine best practices.
American Friends of ALYN Hospital announced that it is spearheading a philanthropic coalition. Lanyard invited charities and nonprofit organizations to join ALYN Hospital in ushering in a new era of trust in philanthropy. The coalition will oversee best practices and accountability within nonprofit organizations and philanthropies.
"Charities must adhere to better financial standards and oversight. The same scrutiny one would utilize when investing personal finances should be utilized for investing the fund's money," Lanyard said. "Despite the fact that we didn't have a penny invested with Madoff, the manner in which we protect and safeguard donor funds has been scrutinized, questioned and discussed with our donors endlessly. Large and small charities all over the U.S. are affected by this scandal, and we need to explore options for survival and use this as an opportunity to redefine best practices. This is not an issue solely for the Jewish philanthropic community - it affects all charities. "
About ALYN Hospital
ALYN Hospital is one of the world's leading specialists in the active and intensive rehabilitation of children who have physical challenges and disabilities as a result of congenital muscular, neuromuscular and skeletal disorders, invasive cancer surgery, fires, accidents and terrorist attacks. ALYN treats children from birth to young adulthood, regardless of religion or ethnic origin and is the only facility of its kind in Israel. Absolutely everything needed to rehabilitate a child is under one roof at ALYN and a talented staff combines expertise with love and state-of-the-art technology to help each patient reach his or her highest possible level of mobility and independence.
I have mentioned in the past that Google has a tremendous advantage in search over Microsoft and Yahoo! because it is able to focus better as it has less going on. If that were true, now that Google has become as much of a web portal as Yahoo, a new competitor Cuil, which made a big splash in the search engine market some months ago, should be kicking Google in the rear.
As TechCrunch reports, the new search engine is really not doing well at all and comes up short on searches for TechCrunch. By the way, I wasn't impressed when I "Cuiled" TMC or Tehrani.
The company got $33 million in funding which I would argue is woefully inadequate to compete with Google. You would need to add at least a zero to the above number for me to think there was any competitive chance. And even then you are way behind Google which has been analyzing search behavior for almost a decade and has enough of a data repository to make it very difficult to catch.
Will Cuil find the hundreds of millions it needs to compete with Google over the long run? In this market, the answer is probably not and as some sample searches point out - if it can't find results accurately on the web, the company is likely not going to find the financial benefactors it needs either.
And this is perhaps a major shame as now more than ever there are cries in the tech industry that Google is becoming too powerful. But the web is the ultimate democracy (well except in some countries where certain sites are outlawed) and the population votes with its mice on what sites it wants to visit.
The Web's Gain is Google's loss
This is an important time of year for cybersquatters as one of them just lost a $33.2 million dollar case against Verizon. The details are as follows... A company called OnlineNIC was ordered by a court to pay $50,000 per bad-faith name registrations too similar to Verizon's domain names.
Here is an excerpt from a Wall Street Journal article on the matter:
Complaints about cybersquatting -- or setting up a Web site using a trademarked name and then profiting by selling the name to the trademark owner -- surged to a record in 2007, according to World Intellectual Property Organization, a watchdog group.
Anyone can register domain names for a nominal fee, but cybersquatters claim popular domain names with the intention of selling them at a profit when the real owners of the names come calling. More recently, Internet entrepreneurs have set up Web sites using famous names -- or even versions with typos in them -- and setting up per-click ads leading to the entity's official site.
And this is why the news is good for all of us. In many cases when you accidentally type in a wrong URL, you see a site similar enough to what you are looking for then click on the links on the page. In some cases you just see a page of links which you may not realize are ads.
Often these links are Google ads enabling the cybersquatter to generate revenue by tricking people and at the same time making online advertising less effective.
Google for its part publically says it is trying to get rid of the ability for cybersquatters to make a living by showing their syndicated ads. Still, it is fairly easy to type a name in a web browser which is similar to a popular site such as Sprint for example. I typed in Spront and was presented with an entire screen of ads. When you click on one, you see in the bottom left hand corner of your browser window that it is a Google ad... But for some reason when you mouse over the ads this information is hidden from you.
What you see when you you go to site Spront.com -- Text copied from the site appears at bottom
Google and other ad syndication networks make a literal fortune from cybersquatters and typical web users get a worse browsing experience because of it. Case in point - I randomly clicked on one of the ads on the Spront page and got a German ecommerce site selling condoms.
So if $50,000 is the penalty for registering domain names in bad faith, we can expect cybersquatters to look for a new line of work and in doing so, we will all get a much better browsing experience and advertisers will stop getting junk clicks from the likes of Google and other ad syndication networks.
In a related story, Meg Whitman is going after the following domain names registered by another individual: megwhitmanforgovernor.com, megwhitman2010.com, meg2010.com, whitmanforgovernor.com and whitman2010.com. That's a cool $250k if she wins (she doesn't seem to be suing for money though) which would be a great contribution to her campaign fund.
Text appearing on Spront.com
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Trying to find a reason to purchase an Android-based phone instead of an iPhone? If so, check out this article which describes the state of Android, the future and finally some applications you just can't get on an Apple-powered phone. At least not today.
If by the way, Android phones from HTC are not your cup of tea, rest assured Sony Ericsson, Motorola, Samsung and maybe others will be coming out with their own Android devices as well. Oh, and don't forget the ZZZphone.
To me, the plethora of Android devices may be confusing for customers and for application developers. I am unsure how applications for example will look on various screen sizes and form factors. I also wonder if not having tight control over the hardware will be a drawback for Android.
Remember that Apple has always controlled its hardware which means higher prices due to lack of competition but the flipside has always been a more than seamless operating experience.
So if you are leaning towards a Google Phone, the question you may want to ask next is when will Wal-Mart start carrying it? After all, word is out that the world's superstore will be getting the iPhone to sell this very weekend. Hey, I am no genius, but wouldn't this have been a better idea to do before Christmas?
Objectivity is the subject of today's thoughts - primarily because I came across a pretty harsh criticism of me being biased towards a particular vendor. I was going to link to the posts where an anonymous individual decided to skewer me but I then realized that the poster could be a short seller of the stock of the company in question or perhaps a disgruntled former or present employee.
Seldom, I do get criticism from people saying I am biased towards or against companies. They say I brownnose or they say I am in the pocket of this company or that. Sometimes they even say a company is not a customer and that is why I mention negative rumors I hear, etc.
Here is the reality. Every person on this earth has an opinion and if after writing thousands of blog entries I get an annual critic, I am doing pretty well.
Every company in the communications space is a customer of TMC. Yes just about every one. And lately we are seeing more and more tech companies working with us as well.
But in the end this is not as important as the millions of readers TMC has amassed over the years. On my blog alone I get about half a million pages viewed per month. TMCnet in total receives about 40 million pages viewed per month from readers around the world. The average visitor spends 30 minutes on TMCnet and up to three million people visit TMCnet each month.
The web is the ultimate democracy and millions of technology decision-makers worldwide have decided TMCnet and our associated print publications and events are where they want to go when receiving their education.
We have weathered the toughest of competitors and a nuclear winter in telecom media which surely should have qualified for a TARP bailout.
Still, loyal readers like you keep coming back.
Yes, this is an ad-supported site but like I have pointed out in the past, our first loyalty is to our readers because wherever you find readers, you find advertisers.
TMC was founded by my father in 1972. It has a strong association with him and with me and it is my duty to ensure we are doing right by the industry and helping you in making the best purchasing decisions you can.
As you may recall, I was an MIS director and I have a computer hardware engineering degree from the University of Connecticut. I understand more about the nuts and bolts of the industry than most journalists.
This of course does not mean I won't make mistakes and when I do I will try to explain where I went wrong. But what it does mean is in a world where we have lost trust in politicians, the investment community, our banks and other pillars of our markets, TMC has been building solid and lasting relationships with readers like you for over a quarter of a decade. Few other media companies anywhere have stayed under the same ownership for that long.
As always, we appreciate you choosing TMC as your source for information and we are humbled by your patronage. And yes, you will hear occasional critics... But for a site where the writers pen thousands of original stories a month, we think we are doing alright.
Is there no end to the Apple competitors developing iPhone apps? Moreover... Once the genie is out of the bottle, can they get it back in again. I think not. HP's latest photo printing app should be a quite useful way to print your photos from your Apple smartphone and Microsoft's Seadragon is a fantastic way to rapidly view volumes of photos on the iPhone in high resolution.
To be honest, lots of reporters are making a big deal out of the news that competitors are developing these iPhone apps - and I guess I just did as well. But it really isn't such a big deal as the iPhone has passed the critical mass threshold and needs to be taken seriously.
The funny thing about me writing this post by the way is that in the past there was no one who was more anti-Apple than me (sorry Steve). I used to be an MIS Director and I brought desktop publishing to TMC in the eighties. At the time, the graphics world was on Macs and I decided Apples have no future so we used PCs.
People tell me they are amazed how resilient TMC has been over the years - thriving while our competitors fold. I think part of the reason for our recent success is due to our experience of getting desktop publishing to work on PCs in the eighties. It was a daunting task as the applications were immature and the artists unsure of how a PC works. It taught me personally that if you put your mind to it, you can accomplish anything.
The amazing thing is twenty years later I find myself being more pro Apple than I ever thought possible. I didn't think that much of the iPod but it certainly made me more comfortable with Apple.
It is really the iPhone which pushed me over the edge and made me take the whole company seriously. I really feel Apple can take 25% or more marketshare in the PC wars because of the success of the iPod, iTunes and iPhone. This is up from 10% or so worldwide today.
Microsoft has to be concerned about this growing threat as application developers go where the money is and over time we can see a critical mass of developers developing on Macs first and PCs second or not at all.
In the mean time, I am off on vacation - but before I leave, I just downloaded the HP iPrint application and was blown away that it immediately found the HP printer on my network (thank you Bonjour technology) and started printing. It even tells you when there is a problem with the printer. Some areas for improvement include being able to print other sizes besides 4x6 inches and perhaps the ability to auto-adjust images so they print better. The few shots I printed looked grainier than they should be.
I think this application will probably work great on a photo printer - the device I have is an L770 - which is more of a network printer.
![blackberry-watch-real-2[1].jpg](http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/rich-tehrani/assets_c/2009/10/blackberry-watch-real-2[1]-thumb-autox70-6851.jpg)
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