By Goran Mijuk Investor Warren Buffett on Tuesday stated his field trip to Europe to seek potential acquisitions wasn’t due to the weakness of the U.S. economy, saying he still loves to invest at home. The U.S. billionaire, whose investment automobile, Berkshire Hathaway Inc., has a war chest of about $35 billion, stated he was on the […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net
Archive for May 26th, 2008
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05
2008
 
Microsoft’s Live Search scraps book digitization projectPosted by: admin in Social Media and TechMicrosoft’s Live Search Team is ending its book search efforts, according to a blog post Friday. Its Live Search Books and Live Search Academic sites will be discontinued next week, and books and academic publishings will show up in regular search results rather than separate sites. “We recognize that … A friend sent me the lead paragraphs of a business story from The New York Times with a note of disbelief. The article begins:
My shocked friend couldn’t believe that it was still legal to sell shark fin soup here in America, despite the catastrophic proportions of the shark slaughter going on throughout our oceans. Thanks to the efforts of conservation organizations, more people than ever are aware of the peril that the world’s shark populations face. However, it is amazing that the decimation of worldwide shark populations, and the horrific ways these top predators are being killed, has not led to the kind of public action campaigns that brought swordfish back from the brink a decade ago. I guess sharks have some pretty massive image issues. But to have them finned alive, and then tossed back in the sea to starve or drown, is beyond the pale — especially when the fins they’re killed for are so easy to duplicate. Long before I had any knowledge of the shark problem, I did on two occasions eat shark fin soup. On first tasting it, I discovered that it’s quite a simple dish, consisting of thousands of slivers of the cartilaginous fin suspended in a delicate meat-and-mushroom broth. The texture was alluring, but hardly inspirational. On another occasion, I was served the soup again, it tasted the same, and I came to the exact same opinion: amusing in texture, delicate in flavor, but not deep or complex. Then I learned that the second time I’d tasted the soup it was actually made from imitation shark fin, which is produced from either gelatin or mung bean vermicelli, shaped to resemble the shards of fin. The likelihood that most Americans will begin consuming big amounts of shark fin soup, an extremely pricey luxury item, is trim. But there are other threatened species we routinely consume, like Atlantic cod and, every New Year’s Eve, decadent amounts of wild sturgeon caviar. People who are as shocked to hear of these fish’s threatened status might want to try touch-tone tele-ethics: The folks at Monterrey Bay Aquarium will send their signature “Seafood Watch” list of the ideal and worst choices for seafood to anyone who uses their Blackberry or internet-capable phone to log onto mobile.seafoodwatch.org. It’s a great resource to have at hand when browsing the menu at a fish restaurant. For those of us without mobile internet, the Blue Ocean Institute has a Fish Phone that works with text messaging. Just text the message “fish ” to 30644, and they’ll immediately text you back with the sustainability status of that fish. I texted “Fish halibut,” and received the message “Pacific Halibut (Green) few environmental problems, MSC certified as sustainable; Atlantic Halibut (RED) significant environmental concerns.” I texted “Fish shark,” and I got back, “Imported (RED) significant environmental concerns; U.S. (YELLOW) Some environmental concerns; Health Advisory: High Mercury.” Now anyone — even Mr. Icahn — can check out fish status anywhere, anytime. How cool is that? LifeWire provides original and syndicated content to web publishers. Jay Weinstein, a chef trained at the Culinary Institute of America, is a New York based food writer, editor, and cookbook author. His food articles and recipes have been featured in The New York Times, Travel & Leisure, Newsday, Time Out New York, National Geographic Traveler, and numerous other publications. His latest book, The Ethical Gourmet, focuses on ecologically sustainable fine foods. He’s currently working on a book about sustainable use of water.  There’s a new live-blog platform in town: Scribblelive. Like CoverItLive (review), which we’ve used at Webware to cover events in real time (latest: Google press day), it’s free and lets you very quickly set yourself up with a blog that shows your updated posts to readers almost the moment you write them. It’s clearly a very early-stage product, but I wanted to cover it because of the philosophical differences from CoverItlive. CoverItLive is a writer’s platform with a capable control panel. It lets you create a live blog element you can embed in any other site or blog. Scribblelive is quite the reverse: It lets you contribute to your blog from outside the system, but you can only (so far) view the live blog itself on Scribblelive.com. 
The Scribblelive writer's console is easy and clean, and you can edit updates even after they’re live (click to enlarge). I anticipate that Scribblelive will eventually get an embeddable player, because that’s the thing that’ll make the platform attractive to bloggers who want to keep readers on their sites. At the moment, it feels like a more live version of Tumblr. I still like the more developed CoverItLive, with its embeddable player, nice blogging console, and fancy features like a polling engine and media library. But there’s a lot to be stated for the easy and open design of Scribblelive. Adding a colleague as a co-blogger is as easy as sending them a secret link. And you can post to your live blog via an e-mail address. (You’re supposed to be able to send images in via e-mail, but that didn’t work for me.) Soon to come, according to TechCrunch, is posting via Twitter. Scribblelive also lets you edit previous posts just by typing over them. CoverItLive lets you edit, but only after a live blog is done and closed out. Scribblelive has one important feature CoverItLive lacks: it runs advertisements, as interstitial live blog items. The ads are clearly labeled and not disruptive. This ad engine might help the venture make a few bucks in the early days. If you want to swiftly set up live blog, it doesn’t get much easier than Scribblelive. If you already have an established blog and want to set up a post that’s live, though, use CoverItLive. Major Yahoo holder wants sale to Microsoft: report By Benjamin Pimentel, MarketWatch Last Update: 6:37 PM ET Might 22, 2008 SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A leading portfolio manager at Legg Mason Inc., a major shareholder in Yahoo Inc., reportedly wants Microsoft Corp. to purchase the Web portal instead of forging a partnership or a joint venture. Fund manager Bill Miller said […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net  So much for Scrabulous being an end-all diversion on Facebook. Try Morrent instead, a easy tie-in to the popular BitTorrent software uTorrent that runs right in Facebook (read: sans software) and lets you monitor your torrent downloads and uploads from wherever. Aimed mainly at folks who want to check up on their downloads at work or away from their primary machines, Morrent is more than just a convenient status window–it doubles as a remote control. You can pause and re-prioritize downloads. You can also begin downloading new torrents by uploading them back to your home machine. While the same results could be had by accessing your home machine using a remote access service like LogMeIn, I dig the fact that Morrent makes whatever you’ve downloaded, or are in the progress of downloading, available for others to see (privacy nuts can turn this option off too). This can turn your Facebook network into a great way to see which files are hot without relying on a third-party torrent-tracking service. Note: As always, we do not encourage illegal downloading of files transferred via BitTorrent technology. (Via TorrentFreak and Lifehacker) 
Keep track of BitTorrent downloads in Facebook with Morrent. You can even upload new torrents from wherever you’re. (Credit: Morrent)
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05
2008
Popular blogger ignites uproar over Twitter harassmentPosted by: admin in Social Media and Tech This post was updated at 10:49 AM with comment from Ariel Waldman. Some Web enthusiasts find microblogging service Twitter to be addictive because you can say totally anything you want–as long as it’s 140 characters or less. So what happens when “saying anything” translates into harassment? One avid …
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05
2008
Developers, critics sound off on Facebook’s profile redesignPosted by: admin in Social Media and Tech
A look at the tabbed interface that Facebook will be rolling out soon as part of its profile redesign. (Credit: Facebook) On Wednesday, after months of nothing but ambiguous screenshots, Facebook finally talked about its upcoming site redesign. It’ll make it easier for members to see immediate, dynamic updates …
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05
2008
Zuckerberg: Facebook founder, Harvard dropout…and koala-eating jet-setter?Posted by: admin in Social Media and TechFacebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the youngest person ever to score a spot on Forbes magazine’s annual list of billionaires, is known as a quiet, businesslike fellow. Self-confident, definitely. Arrogant, possibly. It’d still be a stretch to imagine him partying on yachts, scheming his way into secret societies, and … |
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