Well we now see passage of a bill banning toys with kids meals (like McDonald's happy meals) and a requirement that fruit be served with all childrens meals in San Francisco just a few days away. And I've seen it coming for a long time now. In the name of protecting us government is slowly eroding our liberties. Unless we wake up we will soon be controlled in many of our everyday activities. And it's all started with the popular anti-smoking movement. People need to realize that once government starts controlling such actions they just keep adding more and more. Next it will be more food controls and then who knows. As much as I don't like smoking and think that many of our fast food companies promote and develop bad eating choices and habits I have no desire for big brother to take control in the name of protecting me from myself. http://amplify.com/u/egzl

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The Truth about Government's Attempt at Economic Recovery

As we all go to our voting places today to cast our ballets. (Well the 30-40% that vote anyway.) It's important that we consider the fact that no matter who wins these elections and no matter which party takes control of our Senate and Congress that we will fail to see any positive change in our economic condition due to anything government will do. I say that with the conviction that our economic strife will work it's self out in spite of and not because of the actions our politicians take.

Most of the current economic problems we're having are related to the complete change in the basic operation of not just our economy but the worlds economy. As we move to a global market from a local market the entire system is strained by the much lower wage scale of the developing countries. Until that begins to equalize you will have high unemployment in the developed countries as long as no economic controls are it place to compensate for that wage scale differential.

And of course the basic move in the US from a local mortgage market to a national mortgage market just became the trigger issue that finally collapsed an already failing system . What we saw in the housing market was the uncontrolled greed by a generation of bankers and wall street brokers that have no moral compass beyond profit. By allowing Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac to effectively turn the market in to a government controlled pyramid scheme the normal market conditions were kept from adjusting prices and thus a major housing price bubble developed.

With all the other strains on the economy that became the breaking point. But to believe that the same government and private sector businesses that allowed the problem to develop, flourish, and finally fail can now solve the problem is to believe in fairy tails.Only we the people can solve this problem.

Government control always results in something closer to socialization than a free market. One only has to study the 70+ year Russian experiment to see how that model turns out. But as long as the public demands, and politicians attempt to provide, government solutions to our economic problems we will see debt rise and unemployment beyond the blotted numbers of bureaucrats such attempts produce continue to grow while our economy continues to stagnate. If this continues long enough the increased debt will cause uncontrolled inflation and an even worse economic collapse.

So remember what we need now is a movement to demand that the free market be allowed to operate as a free market. And while we need better regulations and controls it's doubtful that our government is capable of providing them at this point. There is no movement to control wage scale differentials and there is no reason to believe that one will develop. The weak watered down controls passed will be the best that we will get and with the added budget pressure of the health care reform bill debt will only increase even if we don't pump more money into trying to force employment to rise.

That means that it will be up to each of us to understand that we need to accept that government isn't a solution to this problem and that it's not going to go away for some time to come. We've got to begin to look for ways to create more jobs and demand that businesses accept their social responsibly to seek more than the quick immediate profits that come from outsourcing everything from reading our x-rays to producing our goods. It's going to be public pressure on our business and financial leaders that produces results not government intervention. Only when we learn to demand of business to clean up it's act are we going to solve this economic mess we are in.

So join me in demanding that our business and financial leaders assume a socially responsible course of business that provides jobs and markets here in America. And tell our politicians thanks, but no thanks, when it comes to bailouts and handouts that only increase our debt without resolving any of the underlying problems that destroyed our economy.

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Google Now Suing Microsoft Over Bid on Hosted E-mail

Just what we need is another law suite. If it isn't patent infringement it's unfair business practices or improper bids. When will we see businesses compete again out side of the court room. Things have gotten so out of hand everything ends up in court. Not only does this under mind normal business but it makes everything take forever. Just look at the Air Force tanker bid to see how legal challenges can make a contract take so long to get accepted it is almost pointless when it is. So what's the answer? Can we find away to get businesses to not bring suite over everything and anything? I know that I'm tired to businesses taking their sour grapes to court rather than trying to find a way to get business the old fashion way, earn it.

Amplify’d from www.zdnet.com

Google sues U.S. government over hosted e-mail bid against Microsoft

Google is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) over a bid for a new hosted e-mail system which Google claims unfairly benefits Microsoft.

The suit, filed in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims on October 29, calls out the DOI for not considering Google Apps in its Request for Quotation (RFQ). The DOI RFQ specified that the DOI was looking for a new, unified e-mail, calendaring and collaboration solution, but limited the acceptable options to Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) Federal suite only. The contract is worth $49.3 million over five years.

Google is making the argument that this is “unduly restrictive of competition,” noted TechDirt, which has a copy of the 37-page complaint embedded on its Web site.

According to the complaint, the DOJ specified that it needed a private-cloud solution for security reasons. BPOS Federal is a dedicated, locked-down version of BPOS that is basically like a privately hosted version of Microsoft’s Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, Communications Online and Live Meeting. Google Apps for Government is a multi-tenant hosted solution.

The DOI justified its restriction of acceptable products to Microsoft because of Microsoft’s unified/consolidated e-mail and enhanced security features. (It sounds like the DOI also was seeking FISMA certification for the solution, which is something Microsoft is promising for BPOS but isn’t likely to deliver until some time in 2011 with its Office 365 BPOS successor.)

Google has complained before about being barred from bidding on a government contract against Microsoft. Google complained earlier this year that the state of California blocked the company from being considered in an e-mail system bid. The State ended up awarding the contract to Microsoft and its partner CSC despite Google’s objections, and claimed Google was unable to meet its requirements. Read more at www.zdnet.com

 

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Can Even Google Absorb Over 40 Companies in One Year

With Google's acquisitions at 40 and counting for the year the question is can even Google absorb this many companies and make all the pieces fit together. If you've ever watched any company take over another company then you know that it can be a difficult time. Well Google has taken acquisitions to a new level and says that they will do the same for 2011. So the question is will Google make all of these new holdings fit together and still stay focused and profitable? With a stock price of $600 a share they sure can't afford to stumble. I for one predict that soon Google will feel the strain and be unable to utilize all of the companies and their assets successfully. What do you think? Will Google pull it off or is it a case of over confidence?

Amplify’d from www.zdnet.com

Google's 40 acquisitions in 2010: What about integration?

Google, despite its privacy and image struggles, continue to crank out extraordinary profits. Still, 97% of the company’s revenues in 2009 were from of its advertising business, making diversification and both horizontal and vertical expansion key strategic goals. To that end, Google has acquired 40 companies this year in areas from mobile advertising to social gaming. While the company has more than enough cash to keep on buying, one has to wonder if it has the management moxie to manage the integration of all of those businesses.

Remember the early days of Google Apps? Way back in 2006, Google bought Upstartle and the XL2Web product from 2Web Technologies and slowly brought Upstartle’s Writely (which became Google Docs) and the XL2Web-based Google Spreadsheets to Google Apps over the next year (thanks, Wikipedia!). The interfaces were disjointed and it took a while for Writely to stop feeling like Writely and start feeling like Google Docs. 2006 was hardly a big acquisition year for Google either, but anyone who has ever been through a merger or acquisition knows how incredibly difficult integration of systems, technologies, and staff can be.

Now, with 40 acquisitions this year alone (and still counting), one has to wonder how long it will take for these purchases to bear fruit and contribute to a growing, diversifying Google brand. Google is young with a lot of very talented but very young managers, buying a lot of very young companies. While you don’t get much more 21st Century than that, eventually the confluence of these companies will either create a Google that is more than the sum of its parts or a business so bogged down in management issues that it can neither innovate nor make use of its newly bought capabilities.

2010 is almost over and 2011 is just around the corner. But with Google pledging to maintain its current pace of acquisitions, 2011 will be a make or break year in terms of integrating and monetizing all of these new investments.

And if Wall Street, with Google idling along at well over $600 a share, is just ducky, then I probably should be too. However, as someone heavily vested in Google Apps and Android, both as an end user and as an advocate and consultant, it concerns me that Google could so easily lose its focus or its ability to push these platforms forward as it tries to figure out how to get the next Farmville on your Google start page. Read more at www.zdnet.com

 

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The Time is Near When Functional Artificial Organs Will Available

As this latest article shows we are approaching the day that failing organs will be replaced by man made organs. That will solve the problems of both availability and rejection that currently keep organ replacement from helping more than a small percentage of the people it could. And while that day is still in the future researchers are closing in on answers that will in the end produce results. These truly are amazing times.

Amplify’d from www.sciencedaily.com

Miniature Human Livers Created in the Lab

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2010) — Researchers at the Institute for Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center have reached an early, but important, milestone in the quest to grow replacement livers in the lab. They are the first to use human liver cells to successfully engineer miniature livers that function -- at least in a laboratory setting -- like human livers. The next step is to see if the livers will continue to function after transplantation in an animal model.

"We are excited about the possibilities this research represents, but must stress that we're at an early stage and many technical hurdles must be overcome before it could benefit patients," said Shay Soker, Ph.D., professor of regenerative medicine and project director. "Not only must we learn how to grow billions of liver cells at one time in order to engineer livers large enough for patients, but we must determine whether these organs are safe to use in patients."

To engineer the organs, the scientists used animal livers that were treated with a mild detergent to remove all cells (a process called decellularization), leaving only the collagen "skeleton" or support structure. They then replaced the original cells with two types of human cells: immature liver cells known as progenitors, and endothelial cells that line blood vessels.

The cells were introduced into the liver skeleton through a large vessel that feeds a system of smaller vessels in the liver. This network of vessels remains intact after the decellularization process. The liver was next placed in a bioreactor, special equipment that provides a constant flow of nutrients and oxygen throughout the organ.

After a week in the bioreactor system, the scientists documented the progressive formation of human liver tissue, as well as liver-associated function. They observed widespread cell growth inside the bioengineered organ.

The ability to engineer a liver with animal cells had been demonstrated previously. However, the possibility of generating a functional human liver was still in question. Read more at www.sciencedaily.com

 

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Moore's Law Gets a Boost

Amplify’d from www.sciencedaily.com

Advance Could Change Modern Electronics

ScienceDaily (Oct. 31, 2010) — Researchers at Oregon State University have solved a quest in fundamental material science that has eluded scientists since the 1960s, and could form the basis of a new approach to electronics.

The discovery, just reported online in the professional journal Advanced Materials, outlines the creation for the first time of a high-performance "metal-insulator-metal" diode.

"Researchers have been trying to do this for decades, until now without success," said Douglas Keszler, a distinguished professor of chemistry at OSU. "Diodes made previously with other approaches always had poor yield and performance.

"This is a fundamental change in the way you could produce electronic products, at high speed on a huge scale at very low cost, even less than with conventional methods," Keszler said. "It's a basic way to eliminate the current speed limitations of electrons that have to move through materials."

A patent has been applied for on the new technology, university officials say. New companies, industries and high-tech jobs may ultimately emerge from this advance, they say.

The research was done in the Center for Green Materials Chemistry, and has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Army Research Laboratory and the Oregon Nanoscience and Microtechnologies Institute.

Conventional electronics made with silicon-based materials work with transistors that help control the flow of electrons. Although fast and comparatively inexpensive, this approach is still limited by the speed with which electrons can move through these materials. And with the advent of ever-faster computers and more sophisticated products such as liquid crystal displays, current technologies are nearing the limit of what they can do, experts say.

By contrast, a metal-insulator-metal, or MIM diode can be used to perform some of the same functions, but in a fundamentally different way. In this system, the device is like a sandwich, with the insulator in the middle and two layers of metal above and below it. In order to function, the electron doesn't so much move through the materials as it "tunnels" through the insulator -- almost instantaneously appearing on the other side.

"When they first started to develop more sophisticated materials for the display industry, they knew this type of MIM diode was what they needed, but they couldn't make it work," Keszler said. "Now we can, and it could probably be used with a range of metals that are inexpensive and easily available, like copper, nickel or aluminum. It's also much simpler, less costly and easier to fabricate."

The findings were made by researchers in the OSU Department of Chemistry; School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science; and School of Mechanical, Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering.

In the new study, the OSU scientists and engineers describe use of an "amorphous metal contact" as a technology that solves problems that previously plagued MIM diodes. The OSU diodes were made at relatively low temperatures with techniques that would lend themselves to manufacture of devices on a variety of substrates over large areas.

High speed computers and electronics that don't depend on transistors are possibilities. Also on the horizon are "energy harvesting" technologies such as the nighttime capture of re-radiated solar energy, a way to produce energy from the Earth as it cools during the night.

"For a long time, everyone has wanted something that takes us beyond silicon," Keszler said. "This could be a way to simply print electronics on a huge size scale even less expensively than we can now. And when the products begin to emerge the increase in speed of operation could be enormous." Read more at www.sciencedaily.com

 

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Attention tWitteR I Don't Think I'll be Following Your Suggestions on Using tWeET and tWitteR!

To all the lawyers, CEOs, CFOs, Directors, Managers, and other people in charge at tWitteR you can contact me at 859 S Fern Wichita Ks 67213 with any legal papers due to my improper use of the terms tWitteR, tWeEt, or any another terms you feel you have legal right too. I Consider this notice as a public disclosure of and a proper attempt to notify you of my intent to use the words tWeET and tWitteR as I chose to use them. Therefor I will only consider changing my use if notified with in 10 days of this posting. Wonder if I'll get any response?

Amplify’d from www.businessinsider.com

Hey, Twitter, Enough Of This Crap About "Here's How You Can Use The Word Tweet"

Twitter has issued new rules about how the rest of us can use the words "Twitter" and "Tweet," MG Siegler of TechCrunch tells us.

And the rules are right out of a handbook on how to take yourself way too seriously.

For example:

Make sure that if mentioning “Tweet,” you include a direct reference to Twitter (for instance, “Tweet with Twitter”) or display the Twitter marks with the mention of “Tweet.”

And:

Naming your Application or Product, Applying for a Domain

Do: Use Tweet in the name of your application only if it is designed to be used exclusively with the Twitter platform.

Don’t: Use Tweet in the name of your application if used with any other platform.

In other words, if you're TweetDeck, a company that was created shortly after the company called Twitter and helped to make Twitter the powerhouse that it is today, you have to change your name to, say, StatusUpdateDeck, because Twitter's lawyers now say they own the word "Tweet."

Now, Twitter's lawyers will no doubt say that what they're doing here is just laying claim to company property, the same way "Xerox" or "Kleenex" or "Google" might do.

Yes, Twitter's lawyers will say here that they're only trying to control the CAPITALIZED forms of these words, but that's still weenie-like.  As MG Siegler notes: "This would seem to be all about Twitter gaining the trademark to the word “tweet”, which they’ve been trying unsuccessfully to do. They also later note, “Please remember to capitalize the T in Twitter and Tweet!” As a commenter notes, it’s funny that they don’t even capitalize it in their own logo!"

Yes, by imposing ever-greater rules on how application providers can interact with the service, and by co-opting some of the most popular third-party applications, Twitter has already screwed over some of the folks who initially supported it and begun its transformation into a "CORPORATION." But those moves were foreshadowed and expected, and they were arguably necessary to the company's long-term financial success.

Trademarking the word "Tweet," meanwhile, has nothing to do with the company's long-term financial success (unless part of the financial model is expected to be suing people for trademark infringement.)  It's just annoying.

If you want to trademark the company-name "Twitter," fine.  But lay off "Tweet."  And stop trying to dictate how people can and can't use words that have been communal property for centuries.  It's way too early--and your company is still way too cool--to let lawyers take over. Read more at www.businessinsider.com

 

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Small Isn't Always Small but Small can Often be Big

One of the areas of greatest confusion for accounts dealing with businesses is if they are small or not and thus entitled to some of the many benefits for small businesses. It would seem that such a choice would have rules and regulations that define "small business" such that someone could, if not easily, at least definitively tell if a business was small or not. But as in many case dealing with tax law nothing could be further from the truth. For as this article from CPA2Biz.com points out not only is it hard to determine if a business is "small" but many times a business is "small" for one benefit but not for another. I often see businesses that get breaks due to number of employees but fail to get breaks for asset size or business classification. This problem has existed almost since the beginning of businesses income taxes in this country. This is one area that needs to be addressed and would offer immediate relief from many burdensome record keeping and tracking requirements that having such diverse definitions require. So take a look behind the scenes by reading this article and you will see just how our federal tax law addresses this issue by draping a spider web of confusion over the whole issue. And remember the states all get into the act as well each with their own mess of definitions, rules, and crazy inclusions and exclusions. In the end it's all of us that pay the price for this mess that most likely only a small percentage of even small business owners know about just how bad it is. So take a Tylenol or two and check out the Alice in Wonderland rules of what is a small business 101.

Amplify’d from www.cpa2biz.com

The Many Sizes of ‘Small’ Tax policies geared to provide relief or incentives to small businesses beg the question of just what a “small” business is. October 28, 2010 by Annette Nellen, CPA, Esq.

For decades, the tax law has included special rules to provide various benefits or incentives to small businesses or to exclude them from a burdensome rule. Yet, the federal tax law has no single, uniform definition of small business. Instead, as recently illustrated by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, such businesses may be defined based on gross receipts, assets, capital, entity type, number of shareholders or amount of some outlay, such as start-up expenditures. Even with the same base, such as gross receipts, small is defined with varying dollar amounts. We frequently hear elected officials talk about helping small businesses with no reference point or measure offered to define the term.

This article examines the variety of ways that “small” is defined and used in Small Business Administration (SBA) rules, which defines “small” with a broader brush, are also discussed. Two state proposals calling for exemptions for small businesses are noted along with whether improvements can be made to our current system of identifying small businesses.

“Small” is used in the federal income tax law is to provide a benefit or incentive to small businesses. For example, eligible small employers can receive a tax credit for providing health coverage to employees (§45R). Another reason for identifying small business is to except them from some rule deemed too burdensome or unnecessary for small businesses. For example, C corporations with an average annual gross receipts over a three-year period of $5 million or less are excepted from the required use of the accrual method (§448).

State tax proposals from Congress and the Multistate Tax Commission (MTC) call for exceptions for small businesses, but do not define the term, leaving it open for discussion in reaching a final proposal. The Main Street Fairness Act (H.R. 5660 (111th Congress)), would allow states that have adopted the Streamlined Sales and Use Tax Agreement (SSUTA) to collect sales from remote vendors. One catch is that the simplified system must include a uniform small seller exception.

The MTC’s draft Model Sales-and-Use Tax Notice and Reporting Statute follows the Colorado approach to improving use tax collection. It would require remote vendors to notify buyers of use tax obligations and to issue an annual report of purchases to buyers and the state government. An exception would be included for small sellers. (MTC memo (PDF) of July 15, 2010 on the model statute.)

The varied ways that “small” is used in the federal tax system is illustrated well by the Small Business Jobs Act of 2010 (P.L. 111-240) enacted September 27, 2010. Provisions of this Act directed to small businesses can be categorized as shown in the table below.

The Act highlights that the term “small” business can mean many things. It also illustrates that a business may be considered small for one rule, but not another. For example, a retail business with gross receipts greater than $10 million but not exceeding $50 million is not considered small under the Unicap rules (§263A), but is small under the special credit rules (§38).

The six different techniques for describing “small” used in the Act illustrate only a subset of the range of parameters used in or considered for federal taxes. Additional parameters are listed below (not an exhaustive list).

Capital: Section 1244, Losses on Small Business Stock, defines small as $1 million or less of capitalization.

Gross receipts: Average annual receipt thresholds used to define small range from $5 million (§448 providing an exception from the required use of the accrual method) to $7,500,000 (§55(d) providing an AMT exception for corporations) to $10 million (§263A exception from the required use of the Unicap rules for retailers).

Assets: The Small Business/Self-Employed Division of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) serves (1) individuals filing Form 1040 and (2) other business with assets totaling under $10 million. The Division alludes to the limitations of an asset measure by stating:

“Some businesses may meet the under $10 million asset test for SB/SE yet be more like a large or midsize business in every other way. … Other businesses may have assets over $10 million yet be more like a small business. These customers may be serviced by the Small Business/Self-Employed Division.”

Personal property placed in service in a given year: The §179 expensing election amounts have ranged from $10,000 in 1992 to $500,000 for 2010 and 2011. After the temporary increase to $500,000 expires after 2011, the amount will be $25,000. President Obama has proposed that the expensing amount be $250,000 with the phase-out beginning at $800,000 (General Explanation of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2011 Revenue Proposals (PDF), Feb. 2010, page 8).

Number of employees: To qualify for the full health insurance credit, an employer should have no more 25 full-time equivalent employees. In contrast, an employer must have no more than 100 employees to qualify for a SIMPLE IRA plan (§408(p)).

Sole proprietors or Schedule C filers: IRS Publication 334 is entitled Tax Guide for Small Business (For Individuals Who Use Schedule C or C-EZ), implying that small business means a sole proprietor.

SBA definitions of “small” serve to identify businesses eligible for SBA assistance programs. SBA rules define a “small business concern” as independently owned and operated, not dominant in its field and within the SBA’s size criteria. Size criteria vary depending on the industry. Generally, for each industry, as identified by North American Industry Classification System NAICS codes, a maximum gross receipts or employment number is used to define small. For example, a new car dealer is small if it has 200 or fewer employees. Most manufacturers are small if they have 500 or fewer employees. A family clothing store is small if its gross receipts do not exceed $35.5 million. A small business can operate in any legal entity form.

The SBA is in the process of reviewing its standards to determine “whether existing size standards have supportable bases relative to the current data.” In October 2010, it released revised standards for retail businesses (Fed. Reg. October 6, 2010, page 61597 (PDF)). Some of the existing standards were almost 30 years old. For most of the retail trades addressed, the gross receipts level was double or tripled. For example, the size standard for computer and software stores was increased from $9 million to $25.5 million.

The SBA reaches its definitions of small by considering factors such as average company size and start-up costs, as well as industry competition and the size distribution of firms. Public comments are also considered (SBA FAQ). Thus, unlike federal tax rules, “small” for SBA programs is not one size fits all and has data supporting its definitions.

The nature of a particular industry — whether it is capital intensive or labor intensive, the price of goods and the frequency of sales, is not considered in tax law definitions. This can lead to odd results. For example, the expensing amount of §179, ignoring temporary increases, is $25,000. While this may enable a small service business, to expense the cost of a few computers, it provides little assistance to a small manufacturer in need of new or additional equipment.

The current state proposals seeking a definition for a small seller exception seek to protect small businesses from burdensome rules rather than to provide a tax incentive. Should the same definition of small business be used for each situation? What are appropriate factors to determine if a compliance rule, such as filing annual reports of customer purchases, would pose a significant burden on a business?

While there is a tendency to use gross receipts as the measurement of small, the burden of filing information returns for customers likely correlates better with the number of sales transactions. For example, assume Sellers A and B each has $1 million of gross receipts. The average sales transaction for A is $800 and for B is $30. Clearly, Seller B has a greater compliance burden than does Seller A.

Colorado’s remote vendor notice rule uses a threshold of $100,000 of in-state gross receipts based on customers with more than $500 in annual purchases.

Additional approaches for identifying businesses that may warrant relief from burdensome tax rules include providing an exemption for the first few years of operations or defining small based on number of employees.

The varied and numerous definitions of “small” used in the federal tax law makes the law complex and inequitable. Some businesses that view themselves as small may not be treated as such under all small business tax rules. Lessons can be learned from the SBA approach to defining small. Defining “small” based on industry characteristics should bring greater logic to the reason for even having special rules for small businesses and better target small business tax provisions to best help small businesses. Read more at www.cpa2biz.com

 

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Make Twitter Work Better With Twitter Lists

As so many find Twitter can be a crazy place to visit and even crazier to keep up with. So much random noise to drown out the great stuff that is what brings you to Twitter in the first place. So what can you do to make things better. Simple use Twitter lists and a good Twitter Suite to manage your Twitter flow. As this article shows there are many simple ways to use lists to help you find and react to the your followers and any meaningful Tweets. So take a minute read the article and get your lists in order. You'll enjoy Twitter much better and get a lot more results for all that time spend Tweeting.

Amplify’d from www.knowthenetwork.com

Tuning Twitter with Twitter Lists

You’re a seasoned Twitter user and proud of the relationships you’ve built on Twitter but as your community has grown you’ve encountered a common problem.

It get’s noisy very quickly.

I follow 2200+ people and eventually someone will ask…

How do you keep up?

How do you follow so many people?

or I’ll hear, I need to unfollow people so I can listen closer to XYZ.

My answer to all 3 issues is the same. So come close and I’ll let you in on a little secret.

Learn to use twitter lists well and you’ll unlock the power to pay attention and take your twitter network to the next level.

What are they?

It is simply a list of Twitter users.

Lists can be focused on subjects, locales, or relationships. They can be whatever you want them to be.

Want to listen to more locals? Looking to highlight industry voices? Take the time to create a list.

How to use them?

Use private twitter lists for listening

Use public twitter lists for recommending others

Private Twitter Lists

My private listening lists are my diamond mine. You can’t see them but they are crucial to my twitter experience. They are how I tune Twitter.

Here is my approach.

Inner Circle – This is my friends list. I take great care in managing it because I watch it closely.

Outer Circle – People that I’ve interacted with and have proven to share high value tweets.

Curated – I’ve got a handful of people that consistently find the best tech/social info from around the world.

Public Twitter Lists

I create public lists to recommend high quality groups of users (and I listen on these as well).

All About Twitter – Everything I need to know about twitter news and features can be found in this list. It is my ultimate Twitter knowledge base.

News – Headlines and breaking News from around the world and local sources.

Major Players – Movers & shakers online

My my public lists have a variety of uses and purposes. For more good examples see Scoble’s Public Lists or Yahoo News public lists

Step 1: Create them

Step 2: Use them

At this level of Twitter usage you should be using a twitter client on your computer. I recommend using Seesmic Desktop 2 or Tweetdeck and both clients make it easy to add your Twitter lists as a new column. Read more at www.knowthenetwork.com

 

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Time Travler Maybe but Using a Cellphone... Not

I'm always amazed at what can surface sometimes on the net to catch our attention and the clip from the movie apparently showing someone using something that looks like a cellphone as they walk along the street is no exception. You can see the clip here Time Travler

And while I don't know about time travel as there are some possible ways it could be achieved but they are all pretty difficult to see ever happening. Of course you only have to look at the PC and the internet to see that amazing things do happen and become everyday events.

But I guess my biggest problem is if this is a person talking on a cell phone who are they talking to and what service provider are they using. Look, face it, there would have been no one else to talk to and no cell phone companies to use back then. So if this person is a time traveler they would have to be using some kind of communication device that would let them talk to someone in the time they came from. Something more like a walkie-talkie or Star Trek tri-corder than a cell phone. So time traveler maybe but they are not talking on a cell phone.

Moonwalk Tapes Restored for "Lost" Apollo 11 Mission

Finally after 6 years for work the tapes from the Apollo 11 moon walk mission are ready to be released and they should be better than any pictures we've seen before. Sadly these restored pictures are still from tape files in Australa that are not the original tapes from the mission. Hard as it is to believe the original NASA tapes were sent back to NASA headquarters where they were reused. Talk about an IT mistake of historical proportions. For the saving of a few dollars in tape what well could have been one of the most historical tapes in history was recorded over. This should be a story shared with every new IT graduate.

Amplify’d from www.cosmosmagazine.com

'Lost' Apollo 11 Moonwalk tapes restored

SYDNEY: After a three-year search for the lost Apollo 11 tapes and an exhaustive six-year restoration project, digitally remastered footage of the historic Moonwalk is almost ready to be broadcast.

Thanks to the efforts of a dedicated tape restoration team, the enhanced footage surpasses the quality of the live broadcast that stunned an international TV audience on the day of the historic event in 1969.

A five-minute highlights reel (see below) exhibits a number of the Moonwalk's most remarkable moments including Neil Armstrong's descent onto the lunar surface; the raising of the 'Stars and Stripes'; and the famed phone-call between astronauts Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin and President Nixon.

Clear record of the Moonwalk

"What we have now is the clearest record of the Apollo 11 Moonwalk TV for future generations," said Colin Mackeller, an Apollo 11 historian who edited the footage and was a member of the restoration team.

All but the first few seconds of the final two and a half hour restoration comes from video received in Australia.

On the day of the Moonwalk, three tracking stations - NASA's Goldstone in California, and Honeysuckle Creek and Parkes Observatory in Australia (featured in 2000 movie The Dish) - were tasked with recording the live footage transmitted from the Moon.

The images were captured by a single small video camera, attached to the lunar module, but the camera used an unusual format, slow-scan television (SSTV), which is incompatible with commercial television broadcast.

As a result, the SSTV transmission had to be converted in real-time into a standard broadcast signal before being sent to the NASA flight centre in Houston for distribution to the TV networks.

"NASA were using the Goldstone station signal, which had its settings wrong, but in the signals being received by the Australian stations you can actually see Armstrong," said John Sarkissian, an astronomer at Australia's science research body CSIRO, who led the restoration project.

When the Apollo 11 Tape Search and Restoration Team was formed in 2003, the intention was to track down the tapes onto which the unconverted SSTV was first recorded. It was hoped that with modern conversion techniques a picture could be produced that hadn't been degraded by the accumulative effects of conversion and satellite transmission.

However, a three-year search for the SSTV tapes proved fruitless. It transpired that NASA had taken all the original tapes and erased them for use on subsequent missions.

"After an exhaustive search, we were sad to conclude that all the tapes were shipped back to the US after the mission and were re-used, probably in the early 1980s. No-one had ever expected to access the slow-scan TV, and so those few tapes weren't singled out to be preserved", said Mackellar.

Preserved for future generationsRead more at www.cosmosmagazine.com

 

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"I don't like people who can't make up thr minds. Well, I do a little. No, I don't. Some I do. I need time to think." ~ @paulapoundstone http://amplify.com/u/e4uo

Super Size it Virus Surprises Scientists

Scientists have found a second even more amazing super sized virus. It truly approaches being something between being a virus and being a life form. What they finally learn from this virus about life forms remains to be seen but it should result in some interesting discoveries.

Amplify’d from www.livescience.com

Newfound Virus is a Giant with Lifelike Properties

Scientists have found the ocean's largest virus. Fortunately, this microbial monster is a menace only to a particular single-celled organism.

Based on the size of its genome, or complete DNA sequence, the microbe dubbed CroV is the second to be considered a "giant virus." The only virus with a larger genome lives in fresh water.

CroV's enormous, and surprising, genetic code further blurs the boundary between viruses and cellular life, according to the researchers who described it.

CroV is equipped with genes that allow it to repair its genome, synthesize sugars and even gain more control over the machinery that it hijacks within the host cells to replicate itself.

"They take over the cell, and they basically run the cell," said Matthias Fischer, who described CroV for his doctoral dissertation at the University of British Columbia. He added that the production of new CroV viruses within an infected cell resembles an assembly line.

Viruses are essentially genetic material wrapped in a thin protein coat, and they must use the goods of a host in order to make more of themselves. Traditionally, viruses were considered nonliving. However, these discoveries about CroV add more weight to the argument that viruses are alive, Fischer said.

Big virus, tiny host

Fischer found that CroV's genome contains approximately 730,000 base pairs, the building blocks of DNA. By comparison, the largest virus on record, Mimivirus, has a genome of about 1.2 million base pairs. Prior to confirmation in 2003 that Mimivirus was indeed a virus, the largest known virus had a genome of around 331,000 base pairs, according to Fischer.

Despite its size, CroV is a threat only to the relatively small. It infects a common, single-celled grazing creature called Cafeteria roenbergensis. In fact, the virus is approximately a twentieth the size of its host. (For a person who stood 5-foot-6, or 1.7 meters, this would translate roughly into being infected by a virus the size of a softball.)

C. roenbergensis's diet of bacteria and viruses may explain the strange collection of genes possessed by the giant virus that infects it. Perhaps the oddest of these include the genes that code for the entire pathway to create a key component to a bacterial outer membrane

CroV may have acquired these genes by picking up DNA from the remains of a bacterium eaten by a cell the virus later infected, according to the researchers. Something similar also may have occurred with Mimivirus, which infects a bacteria-eating amoeba and also appears to contain genes of bacterial origin. This is a possible explanation for the origin of 10 to 20 percent of the giant virus genes.

Other genes within CroV are even more mysterious. The researchers could not recognize 51 percent of the genes they encountered in the new virus. This is actually a low proportion – about 90 percent of the genes within certain viruses are unknown, Fischer said.

"Every virus you pull out has a new set of genes that is unique to this virus, that has never been seen before," he said.

This makes it unlikely that many viral genes have cellular origins. It is currently hypothesized that viral genes are ancient, and have never been part of cellular organisms, he said. Read more at www.livescience.com

 

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Redbox Offering Free Rental Codes to First Million Customers

If you want to get a free movie rental check out you local Redbox rental location. But I'll bet it doesn't take long to reach that million rentals so hurry.

Amplify’d from dealspl.us

Redbox - FREE Rental Codes

Deal Price: Free redbox.com offers Redbox - FREE Rental Codes for Free.

at redbox.com Redbox Coupons

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Just thinking that it would be nice if some random feeds were put into our conversation feed. If we could chose subjects or #hashtags to guide what was caught up and fed to us it would fit in with what we were are following anyway. It would be kind of like #Bumpinto and would give us a chance to possibly find others to follow just from post we otherwise would miss. I so like the though of random serendipitous events helping to shape who we find on Amplify. http://amplify.com/u/dyzb

What do you all think of the popular link shortening service Bit.ly's announcement that it will allow users to shorten links and automatically turn those links in to QR codes?

Those Bit.ly QR codes of course lead back to the original link. And all you have to do to add a QR code in Bit.ly is change the end of the bit.ly link to .qr. That causes Bit.ly to generate a QR code automatically.

This makes it easy to reach the thousands of smart phone user who have downloaded QR reading software already and the thousands who should join them in the near future as QR codes seem to have really taken off.It sure seems to me with this change QR codes have take a giant step and Bit.ly has sure staked a claim on part of that future.

You can bet that most if not all of the other URL shorting services will be joining in rather than lose out. http://amplify.com/u/dyp9

Bread for myself is a material question. Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. ~Nicholas Berdyaev RT credit @wisdomalacarte http://amplify.com/u/dyon