Social networks like Facebook and MySpace have reputations as time-sucking procrastination tools, but a new study from the University of Minnesota states au contraire.

Social networks build beneficial technological, creative, and communication skills, the study says, leading the researchers to actually describe social networks with the adjective “educational.” Who knew?…

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Social networks like Facebook and MySpace have reputations as time-sucking procrastination tools, but a new study from the University of Minnesota states au contraire.

Social networks build beneficial technological, creative, and communication skills, the study says, leading the researchers to actually describe social networks with the adjective “educational.” Who knew?…

Source [The social]

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This post is by Sheryl Canter, an on the web writer and editorial manager at Environmental Defense Fund.

At a congressional hearing last Wednesday, Howard Frumkin, a senior official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), stated there was strong scientific evidence of major health problems due to climate change in the next few decades, including:

• Heat waves that put children and the elderly at risk
• Danger of droughts and floods from extreme weather
• Increased food-borne and water-borne infectious diseases
• Worsened air pollution due to higher temperatures
• Migration into new areas of vector-borne diseases like malaria

At least he got to say it. Last October, CDC testimony on the health risks from global warming was censored by the White Home.

Rep. Hilda Solis (D-Calif), who chaired the hearing, said she suspected that “a layer of screening” continues to limit what CDC officials are allowed to say.

While insisting that CDC had no position on EPA’s pending regulatory decisions, Frumpkin said, “…there is strong evidence that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas … and there is strong evidence that climate change affects public health in many ways.”

For more visit Source:[green.yahoo]

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SoundCloud is a service for musicians to distribute their music to one another, and eventually the public. It’s not a marketplace like iTunes or Amazon though; instead it’s a sharing network for musicians looking to hawk their demos and get feedback on early tracks. You might be saying to yourself “doesn’t MySpace do all that?” Well sort of, but the big difference is that SoundCloud is its own social network and offers more control over where tracks go as well as what bits of metadata come along for the ride.

If you don't know the tempo of a song you can tap it out as the song plays.

The entire experience revolves around a fairly simplistic player (example embedded below). There’s no volume control, but you can begin, stop, and jump around the track freely. It will also analyze the entire track for its waveform, and anyone listening to it can leave a timed comment that will pop up at that point in the song. If you’ve ever used Viddler the functionality is identical. The folks behind SoundCloud are hoping it will lead to groups possibly leaving feedback about certain parts of a song (kind of an audio version of ConceptShare).

As I mentioned before, one of the standout features is metadata and the user control over it. You can fill out an incredible amount of it for each track, including the catalog number, the release date, and what key it’s in. There’s also a tempo control in beats per minute (BPM) that you can set manually or simply tap a button as the song plays to determine it on-the-fly. It’s just plain fun.

The site is currently in private beta and is continually adding features. If you’re a fledgling artist looking for a good platform to start sharing early cuts with your bandmates it certainly beats e-mail attachments hands down. We’ve got 100 invites for Webware readers, so if you’d like to check it out go here to claim yours.

Disclosure: The track below is from my brother’s band Speechwriters LLC. It was used because I was given explicit permission to share it with the SoundCloud community in order to test the site for this review.

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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In olden days, when you clicked on an e-mail link in your browser, it had to have an e-mail client to launch. That method doesn’t work if you use a service such as Gmail or Yahoo Mail as your main account.

Firefox 3 to the rescue. Watch our video on how to do this tip, then come back here for the written steps.

Go to Tools and options (Firefox and Preferences on a Mac).

Select Applications.

Search “mailto”.

In the drop-down menu Choose Yahoo Mail.

What? You don’t use Yahoo Mail? Thanks to Lifehacker.com for publishing the instructions for how to use Gmail.

Open your Gmail in Firefox.

You’ll need this string of code to enter.

javascript:window.navigator.registerProtocolHandler("mailto","https://mail.google.com/mail/?extsrc=mailto&url=%s","GMail")

Press add application.

And now when you click an e-mail link, it will ask you which Web mail program you’d like to use.

Get a few more non-video Firefox tips at Webware.com.

Fore more visit Source: [webware]

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Say Street Corporation Announces Increase to Quarterly Dividend BOSTON, Jun 19, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — State Street Corporation today increased its quarterly dividend $0.01 per share, to $.24 per share, payable July 15, 2008, to stockholders of record as of the close of business on July 1, 2008. Following today’s action, the quarterly dividend rate is 9% higher than […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

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Bon appetit for Cooking.com: The kitchen appliance retailer announced Wednesday that it has pulled in $13 million in venture funding in a round led by Azure Capital Partners. ORIX Venture Finance also contributed venture debt to the round, and Azure partner Michael Kwatinetz is now on the company’s …

Source [The social]

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Bienvenue sur Skyrock.com, the French answer to MySpace–and Facebook's huge competitor over there.

(Credit: Skyrock)

There’s good news for Facebook in France. According to new numbers released Thursday by ComScore, the social network grew a staggering 2,877 percent from April 2007 to April 2008 in …

Source [The social]

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Brokers threatened by run on shadow bank system Regulators eye $10 trillion market that boomed outside traditional banking By Alistair Barr, MarketWatch Last Update: 6/19/2008 6:29:00 PM SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) — A network of lenders, brokers and opaque financing automobiles outside traditional banking that ballooned during the bull market now is under siege as regulators threaten a crackdown on the so-called […] For more visit Source:www.investment-blog.net

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