Friday, November 9, 2012

OMGPOP's Dan Porter On Selling To Zynga - Business Insider

OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter

OMGPOP CEO Dan Porter helped his company get acquired by Zynga for close to $200 million earlier this year.

Since then, Zynga's stock has tanked.?

At a venture-capital industry event in New York Thursday, investment banker Linda Gridley of Gridley & Company asked Porter what the whole surreal experience has been like.

While the OMGPOP deal was in cash, the stock obviously has an impact on employees' future earnings.

The hardest part, though, Porter says, is managing the expectations of his former staff?especially when he's no longer CEO.

?Before you sell, you?re this triangle, and you?re at the top, and you?re looking down at all the people you work with,? Betabeat quoted Porter?as saying. ?And then you sell, and then you spend all this time looking up above you. The staff feels that too.?

(The Betabeat article cited in this write-up has since been taken down because the interview being reported on was apparently off the record, and was thus published in error. This story is based on the article while it was still viewable by the public. BI was not party to any off-the-record agreement regarding this information.)

To keep employees happy, Porter tries to advocate for them and instill a sense of loyalty and trust. He works hard to keep good leaders in place, so those who respect them are less likely to depart.

"For me, it?s a lot of begging and pleading and reminding [employees] of those relationships and then also making sure that, you know, people see what the opportunity is,? Porter told Gridley.

Some former OMGPOP employees still have a big opportunity at Zynga?sometimes they may have even better opportunities than long-standing Zynga employees.

For others, the future at Zynga is bleak, and Porter doesn't try to sugar coat it. "I was completely honest," Porter recalls. "I was like, ?You should leave.??

Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/omgpop-ceo-what-its-been-like-selling-to-zynga-and-watching-the-stock-plummet-2012-11

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Oil prices rise after year's biggest drop

A pedestrian walks past the New York Stock Exchange the day after Pres. Barack Obama was re-elected, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012 in New York. The price of oil tumbled nearly 5 percent Wednesday, its biggest decline of the year, as traders shifted their focus back to the struggles of the global economy. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)

A pedestrian walks past the New York Stock Exchange the day after Pres. Barack Obama was re-elected, Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2012 in New York. The price of oil tumbled nearly 5 percent Wednesday, its biggest decline of the year, as traders shifted their focus back to the struggles of the global economy. (AP Photo/Henny Ray Abrams)

Oil prices rose above $85 per barrel on Thursday as postelection volatility continued.

Crude oil rose 65 cents to close at $85.09 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. That followed a decline of 5 percent on Wednesday, when traders were spooked by worries about budget negotiations in the U.S. Analysts also say that oil supplies and production are high, which tends to drive down prices.

Oil analyst Jim Ritterbusch wrote in a note that he expects this week's price volatility to subside, but there's still a bias toward new lows. The U.S. has large inventories of oil and production is at 17-year highs, he wrote.

AAA said gasoline prices at the pump rose a fraction of a penny to $3.464 per gallon.

In other trading, Brent crude, which is used to price international varieties of oil, gained 51 cents to $107.33 per barrel in London.

In other futures trading in New York:

? Wholesale gasoline rose 1.84 cents to $2.6073 per gallon.

? Heating oil fell 0.67 cent to $2.9554 per gallon.

? Natural gas rose 3 cents to $3.608 per 1,000 cubic feet. The government said supplies rose less than analysts had expected, but inventories are still 6.6 percent above the five-year average for this time of year.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-11-08-Oil-Prices/id-2badb5ef3be546afb021ab2d4ebd657d

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Aging drivers present new transportation challenge

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Baby boomers started driving at a young age and became more mobile than any generation before or since. They practically invented the two-car family and escalated traffic congestion when women began commuting to work. Now, 8,000 of them are turning 65 every day, and those retirements could once again reshape the nation's transportation.

How long those 74 million people born between 1946 and 1964 continue to work, whether they choose to live in their suburban houses after their children leave home or whether they flock to city neighborhoods where they are less likely to need a car will have important ramifications for all Americans.

If boomers stop commuting in large numbers, will rush hours ease? As age erodes their driving skills, will there be a greater demand for more public transportation, new business models that cater to the home-bound or automated cars that drive themselves?

It was the boomers who made "his" and "hers" cars the norm when they started building families and helped spread a housing explosion to the fringes of the nation's suburbs. Traffic grew when boomer women started driving to work like their husbands and fathers. With dual-earner families came an outsourcing of the traditional style of life at home, leading to the emergence of daycare, the habit of eating out more often and the appearance of more and more cars and SUVs.

This generation "has been the major driver of overall growth in travel in the United States and that has had a tremendous impact over the past 40 years in how we have approached transportation planning," said Jana Lynott, co-author of a new report by the AARP Public Policy Institute, an advocacy group for older Americans, on how boomers have affected travel in the U.S.

The report is an analysis of national surveys by the Federal Highway Administration of Americans' travel patterns since 1977. The most recent survey, conducted in 2009, included over 300,000 people in 150,000 households.

As a result of changes over the last four decades, driven in part by baby boomers, the number of vehicles in the U.S. has nearly tripled, the report said, and total miles traveled has grown at more than twice the rate of population growth.

Since 1977, travel for household maintenance trips ? a category that includes doctors' appointments, grocery shopping, dry cleaning and the like ? has grown fivefold. The average household ate out once a week in 1977. By 2009, the average household was eating out or getting meals to take home four times a week.

But what really caught transportation planners flat-footed was the soaring growth in traffic congestion in the 1980s after large numbers of women started commuting alone in their cars, said Nancy McGuckin, a travel behavior analyst and co-author of the AARP report.

Highway engineers, who hadn't anticipated the consequences of the women's movement and dual-earner families, had just finished building the interstate highway system only to find it insufficient to meet the demands of the new commuters, she said.

Now that boomers are beginning to move into a new phase of life, their travel patterns and needs are expected to change as well.

People tend to travel the most between the ages of 45 and 55, but taper off after that. "With this immense slug of the population sliding off their peak driving years, we would have to expect total travel might go down a bit," said Alan Pisarski, author of the Transportation Research Board's comprehensive Commuting in America reports on travel trends.

If millions of baby boomers start driving less, it would reduce gas tax revenues, which is used to help states maintain highways, subsidize public transit and fund other transportation repairs and improvements. Federal gas tax revenue is already forecast to decline as mandatory auto fuel economy improvements kick in.

There are signs boomers may already be slowing down. The rate of growth in travel in the U.S. began slowing in 2006. Actual miles traveled dropped sharply during the 2008 recession and now appear to have leveled off.

But boomers could defy expectations again by remaining more mobile into their retirement years than past generations.

"It doesn't matter whether they were in their 20s and 30s or approaching retirement, they are still traveling more than those who came before them or those who came after them," Lynott said of boomers.

Most boomers live in the suburbs and are expected to remain in the homes where they raised their children even after they become empty nesters. The housing bust has also trapped many older boomers in large homes whose values have fallen, sometimes below the balance of their mortgages.

A shift in the housing market with long-term implications may already be occurring as leading-edge boomers appear less interested in age-restricted communities than their parents, according to a recent report by the Urban Land Institute, a land-use think tank.

"They are not looking to retire early and are not seeking to isolate themselves among the elderly," the report said.

Baby boomer Diane Spitaliere, a 58-year-old who recently retired after working 38 years at the Federal Aviation Administration, said the idea of moving to a retirement or assisted living community "is just very unappealing to me."

If there comes a point when she is no long able to live alone in her single-family home in Alexandria, Va., she'll probably move close to family members in New York, she said.

Stuart Peskoe, an engineering manager, said he and his wife also want to continue living in their single-family home in the Boston suburbs after they retire, even though their children are grown and live in other states. They don't want to leave their friends and they want to keep the extra rooms for when the kids visit.

But he's not sure how they would get around once they lose their driving skills. There's no nearby public transportation.

The Internet and delivery services may help the couple cut back their driving trips, said Peskoe, 58. "UPS and FedEx have this pretty good deal going with Amazon and Netflix," and the local grocery store delivers online orders, he said. "More and more we don't have to leave the house if we don't want to."

Automakers are banking on boomers being able to stretch out their driving years with the aid of safety technologies? like adaptive cruise control, forward collision warning systems and blind-spot monitoring ? that are becoming more common in cars. The transportation needs of millions of boomers aging in the suburbs may build greater public acceptance of automated cars that drive themselves. Some states already permit road testing of these vehicles.

"Baby boomers have always been an active generation who want to go places, so we don't see them sitting in porch rockers upon retirement," said Gloria Berquist, vice president of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers. "They will want the freedom and mobility of a vehicle."

Demographers have noted an uptick in retirees moving to central cities where they're less dependent on being able to drive. Because there are so many boomers, if a significant number move to central cities, it could drive up housing costs and force cities to make greater accommodations for the elderly, such as more benches at bus stops or a slowing of the timing of pedestrian crossing lights.

But the history of boomers has been that they often do the unexpected.

Charles and Pamela Leonard, both 65, recently gave up their careers and traded their home in downtown Atlanta, where they could walk to restaurants, grocery stores and public transportation, for a small farm near Lexington, N.C., where they grow organic medicinal herbs.

Pamela Leonard said the couple isn't sure what they will do when they are no longer able to drive except, "I will not drive until my children have to take the car away. That was an issue with my mother, and I hope I've learned from that."

"It's very hard to know how you will deal with old age until you get there," she said. "But I think more options, creative options, are going to become available."

___

Follow Joan Lowy at http://www.twitter.com/AP_Joan_Lowy

___

Online:

AARP Public Policy Institute http://bit.ly/SxrqaG

The latest installment in the joint AP-APME project examining the aging of the baby boomers and the impact that this so-called silver tsunami will have on society

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/aging-drivers-present-transportation-challenge-172128570.html

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Server Error in '/' Application.

Runtime Error Description: An application error occurred on the server. The current custom error settings for this application prevent the details of the application error from being viewed remotely (for security reasons). It could, however, be viewed by browsers running on the local server machine.

Details: To enable the details of this specific error message to be viewable on remote machines, please create a <customErrors> tag within a "web.config" configuration file located in the root directory of the current web application. This <customErrors> tag should then have its "mode" attribute set to "Off".


 
 <!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->
 
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     <system.web>
         <customErrors mode="Off"/>
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Notes: The current error page you are seeing can be replaced by a custom error page by modifying the "defaultRedirect" attribute of the application's <customErrors> configuration tag to point to a custom error page URL.

 
 <!-- Web.Config Configuration File -->
 
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         <customErrors mode="RemoteOnly" defaultRedirect="mycustompage.htm"/>
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Source: http://www.rssmicro.com/rss.web?q=iPhone

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Happy Birthday to The Lacheys!

Source: http://www.thehollywoodgossip.com/2012/11/happy-birthday-to-the-lacheys/

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Wednesday, November 7, 2012

Shawn: We tied up injured 'DWTS' pro Derek

By Michael Maloney, TODAY contributor

Adam Taylor / ABC

Shawn Johnson and Derek Hough.

Each week, Olympian and season eight "Dancing With the Stars" champ Shawn Johnson will be sharing her experiences on "All-Stars" with The Clicker! Look for Q&As, exclusive photos and more from the gold medalist throughout the season as she competes to win her second mirror ball trophy, this time alongside pro Derek Hough.

You can follow us on Twitter?@TODAY_Clicker to get all the latest updates on Shawn's quest for ballroom glory. Shawn is also on Twitter @ShawnJohnson.

The Clicker: What did you learn about their different styles when Derek (Hough) was supervising your dance this week with Mark (Ballas0? ?
Shawn: I?m so used to dancing with Derek. We?ve danced together for ten weeks. In that time, you learn a person, his style and his habits. My habit with Mark was three years ago. Getting used to that again and jumping back and forth was a lot to wrap my mind around, but it all worked out.

The Clicker: What?s this about tying Derek to a chair?
Shawn: (Laughs) Yes. We actually tied him to a chair. He?s so hands on. Like any athlete, putting him on the sidelines is really hard. He would still work and kept testing (us even after he was tied to the chair).

The Clicker: How did Derek being tied to a chair not make it onto the show?
Shawn: (Laughs) I think we had a week full of a bunch of stuff. Getting all the stories into the video package is hard.

The Clicker: Derek says he?s coming back to dance with you.
Shawn: Yes. Derek is back starting (today) with rehearsals and everything. He?s feeling good. We just have to make sure he doesn?t push it too much. But it?s more important to have him for the end.

The Clicker: How would you feel if the finals again were you, Gilles Marini and Melissa Rycroft (as it was in season eight)?
Shawn: Each week it?s getting a little closer to being that. If it plays out that way, season eight will make you proud!

The Clicker: Back to your unique experience this week, did you have to assert yourself with Derek and Mark? They must have their own language.
Shawn: I did a little, but not really. They?re both creative geniuses. Their minds just turn and they understand it even if I don?t. I put my energy this week into working with both of them. It was exhausting! But I was living a dream for every girl in America!

In Shawn Johnson's memoir, "Winning Balance," the Olympian shares her personal story in a way her fans have never heard it before. She'll be signing copies of her book at ESPN ZONE at Downtown Disney in Anaheim, California, on Saturday, Nov. 10 at 12 p.m.

Related content:

More in The Clicker:

Source: http://theclicker.today.com/_news/2012/11/06/14967952-shawn-johnson-we-had-to-tie-dancing-with-the-stars-pro-derek-to-a-chair?lite

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Moore On Running: Great Idea, Bad Planning - Childhood Obesity ...


Time for my Health?Activist Soapbox post (day five of the National Health Blog Post Month)...

This is going to be a tough one for me to post, but I think?Dean Karnazes?(Ultra Runner) missed something when he planned his running route across the United States to "Inspire a Nation".

Most people who read a lot about running either love him or hate him, I happen to be a huge fan of?Dean Karnazes. ?I read his first book, "Ultramarathon Man", and I am currently reading his second book, "50/50". ?In fact, I have been reading 50/50 to my son at night when he goes to bed (what can I say, he loves running stuff as much as me).


Anyway, Dean teamed up with?Live! with Regis and Kelly?to run across the United States in a campaign against childhood obesity. ?He started February 25, 2012 and ran about two marathons a day until he reaches New York, NY.

From the CDC Childhood Obesity page:?
Childhood obesity has more than tripled in the past 30 years. The prevalence of obesity among children aged 6 to 11 years increased from 6.5% in 1980 to 19.6% in 2008. The prevalence of obesity among adolescents aged 12 to 19 years increased from 5.0% to 18.1%.1,2

I love that Dean is able to use his superhuman abilities to raise awareness for something so important, but I have to wonder who planned his running route.

When I heard about his plan I was so excited. ?I even thought I would try to go out and see him on one of his runs. ?You can imagine my disappointment when I saw that he would not be coming through South Carolina (ranked in the top four states for childhood obesity). ?As I looked at the?map?I realized that not only was he not coming through South Carolina, he was completely bypassing the South!

I pulled up the?CDC Overweight and Obesity Trends?and compared the two maps. ?You can see that Dean comes close to Kentucky and West Virginia, but never reaches any of the states that have the worst statistics of obesity.


I still think what?Dean Karnazes is doing is awesome. ?I just think he and the planners of this run missed a huge opportunity by running a route that takes him away from the main battle zone...

Source: http://www.mooreonrunning.com/2012/11/great-idea-bad-planning-childhood.html

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Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Obama or Romney: It's all good for India

If either Barack Obama [ Images ] or Mitt Romney wins, there is unlikely to be any significant change in America's India [ Images ] policy post 2013. Given the scale of economic problems facing the US, India is not going to be a very high priority for some time but there is little likelihood of a downgrade in India's importance, says Harsh V Pant.

Just a month back it had seemed as if US President Barack Obama would have a smooth sailing for a second term at the White House. He was leading in the polls, the Democrats had succeeded in painting his opponent, Mitt Romney, as a gaffe-prone bumbler out of touch with ordinary Americans and the economy was showing signs of recovery. And then something rather unexpected happened.

The first presidential debate was to be a turning point. Obama, widely considered a great orator, failed to connect with the people. His passive performance proved disastrous as Romney came out all guns blazing and changed the course of the election campaign. Romney emerged as a smart, confident politician who was able to provide credible answers and the contrast with President Obama was categorical. Those who were tuning into the election campaign for the first time seriously had no difficulty in envisioning a Romney presidency.

Since then it has been all downhill for Barack Obama. He has lost his lead in opinion polls and the race has tightened to a point where panic has set in the Democratic Party. The second presidential debate last week did not much help Obama as it was widely seen as a draw between the two candidates.

It was in this context that the final debate on foreign policy held earlier this week assumed great significance. It was the last chance for Obama to mark a contrast with his opponent at a national level. It was also an opportunity to showcase his major successes in the realm of foreign policy such as the killing of terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden [ Images ]. For Romney it was important to underline his credentials as a potential commander-in-chief. And for the rest of the world, the debate was keenly awaited to figure out how a Romney presidency would be different from an Obama one.

But the debate turned out to be a non-debate. It turned out that there was a lot of common ground between the two candidates and the actual differences were relatively minor. The main charge that Obama hurled against his opponent was that Romney lacked any vision to lead the nation. His Republican challenger tried to underline that Obama's foreign policy has been timid and ineffective at a time of growing turmoil around the world.

And interestingly though the focus of the third debate was ostensibly on foreign policy, the two candidates tried to repeatedly bring the discussion back to domestic policy issues with an eye on the American electorate. Though the topics discussed during the debate ranged from the war in Afghanistan and the rise of China to the uprisings in the Middle East, the most vociferous differences came out on the issue of Iran and Israel. Romney charged that Obama's policies have moved Tehran 'four years closer' to its goal of having a nuclear weapons capability and now, argued Romney "there are some 10,000 centrifuges spinning uranium, preparing to create a nuclear threat to the United States and for the world." He tried to reach out to the Jewish voters by arguing that Obama's 'apology tour' of Muslim countries during his first year in office led to a signalling of American weakness. Obama responded by underlining his commitment to the security of Israel. "If Israel is attacked, America will stand with Israel," declared Obama.

Other areas of dispute between the two sides were how best to help Syrian rebels topple the regime of President Bashar al-Assad as civil war gathers momentum threatening the entire region, pursuing the Middle East peace process and confronting China over its trade policies. The two candidates were on the same page on Pakistan with both viewing a nuclear armed failing Pakistan with dread. On the whole Romney did not offer a significantly different view of the US in world affairs. Foreign policy traditionally offers an advantage for incumbent Presidents, so Romney's strategy was to distinguish himself from Obama by turning the debate on foreign policy into one about domestic issues.

At a broader level, what the foreign policy debate revealed is that foreign policies of major powers have a trajectory of their own which are not really affected by the exigencies of domestic politics. One has to just look at Obama's pronouncements as a candidate and his foreign policy four years later. At the beginning of his term, New Delhi [ Images ] had concerns about Obama's rhetoric about the non-proliferation regime, his pro-China tilt, and his suggestions that the success of US endeavours in Afghanistan depended on greater American activism with regard to Kashmir [ Images ].

Yet the US-India relationship under Obama gained momentum and the initiatives of the George W Bush [ Images ] administration vis-a-vis India continued. In fact, Obama went further than any US President declaring American support for India's candidacy as a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Engagement with India was pursued with a new vigour with Washington asking India for a more robust role in East and Southeast Asia. Most significantly on Afghanistan, Washington now views India as part of the solution at a time when the source of real problem is widely considered to be in Pakistan.

Mitt Romney's position on India-related issues also remains positive and his foreign policy advisors view India's role in the emerging global and regional balance of power as favourable to Indian interests. As a consequence, there is unlikely to be any significant change in America's India policy post 2013. Given the scale of economic problems facing the US, India is not going to be a very high priority for some time but there is little likelihood of a downgrade in India's importance.

Given this reality, there is something very unseemly about Indian media's outcry that India was not mentioned during the debate. The very fact that it was not mentioned shows that US-India ties have become so mature that there is hardly any need to publicly talk about the differences. India as an increasingly important player in world politics should have the confidence to deal with the US as an equal and not take umbrage at non issues.

The focus of the election campaign in the US will now shift to battleground states where the two candidates will slug it out for the next few days till November 6. The election remains a cliff-hanger but there is nothing for India to worry about.

Source: http://www.rediff.com/news/column/obama-or-romney-its-all-good-for-india/20121102.htm

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Ozzy Experiment Sparked Sharon Osbourne&#39;s Breast Cancer Drama

Sharon Osbourne has spoken out about her double mastectomy drama a day after U.K. publication Hello! announced the news in a teaser for the TV personality?s big reveal.
Ozzy Osbourne?s wife, who battled colon cancer in the early 2000s, underwent the preventive surgery over fears she could develop breast cancer.
She kept the drama to herself but opened up to Hello! in the upcoming issue ? and on Monday she talked about her decision during the opening segment of her chat show The Talk.
She revealed she first discovered she had the breast cancer gene as part of a medical experiment on her reformed wildman husband.
Sharon recalled, ?They (researchers) wanted to know why my husband had lived so long ? seriously.
?He has nothing. The only thing they found out is he?s allergic to coffee? and alcohol? I come back with a whole shopping list? and I had the breast cancer gene and, of course, we know I had the colon cancer gene and they?re very similar genes.
?I went in and I had my breast implants removed because one of them had burst? and one breast was different than the other? so my doctor said, ?Why don?t we just do it all at once, and save ourselves any worry?? And I said, ?Put it there, we?re gonna do it!?
?It was a decision that I made myself. I wasn?t diagnosed with breast cancer, but I had the gene.?
Osbourne revealed she underwent the mastectomy and reconstructive surgery earlier this year, but didn?t want to make a fuss at the time: ?I didn?t wanna make a (big) deal about it then because it?s like why worry people and make a fuss unnecessarily.
?I?m in a very privileged position in that I can have the best medical attention and so my surgeon, she?s an amazing breast cancer specialist, reconstructed my breasts. I was very lucky.?

Source: http://www.wenn.com/all-news/ozzy-experiment-sparked-sharon-osbournes-breast-cancer-drama/

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Thursday, November 1, 2012

Livescribe Sky Wifi Smartpen


Everyone who takes notes should have a Livescribe pen?but maybe not this one, at least not yet. The new Sky Wifi Smartpen?($169.95-$249.95 direct) lets you take synchronized ink and audio notes on paper. In theory, it effortlessly uploads those notes to the Internet, where you can check them on any device capable of running Evernote. In practice, the software isn't quite finished yet.

First, paper. While many people take notes on laptops nowadays, there are still a lot of places where paper is better. Laptops are awkward when you're standing up. When you're interviewing someone, a laptop creates a visual and psychological barrier that makes them a little less likely to open up.

Phone and tablet note-taking apps such as Evernote and Skitch try to fill the gap, but they can't quite make it. There's a little too much lag, and tablet styli aren't precise enough for you to write small, and the lack of friction makes it difficult to write without looking at the screen.

Enter the Livescribe. Paired with special notebooks, this digital pen lets you take ordinary notes on paper, sync them with audio recordings, and play the notes back later. Tap on any point in your writing and you'll hear what was recorded at that moment. Livescribe calls synced ink-and-audio recordings "pencasts."

I've used a Livescribe pen for years, and it's indispensable in my line of work. Syncing the ink with audio recordings means I can go back into any point of any interview, checking to see exactly what someone said. It makes quoting people much, much easier.?

Reach for the Sky
The Sky uses the same body and paper as the earlier 0.5-by-6.2-by-0.8 inch, 1.3 ounce Livescribe Echo , although it traded out the Echo's soft-touch barrel for a less-useful shiny silver-gray one. Both pens are large and somewhat flattened, with a small 12-character LED display on the front, a Power button, and USB and headphone jacks on the top. Yes, it feels more like a marker than like a pen, but as someone who's taken notes for eight hours straight with a Livescribe, I can tell you it isn't too heavy.

The actual 'pen' part is just a ballpoint tip that fits into a slot in the front of the pen. You can buy five-packs of tips for $6.95 and they come in black, blue, or red. The tips themselves just feel like cheap ballpoints. They're a little scratchy, but they get the job done. They don't smear, and the fine points are quite fine.

With ink, you need paper. The pen comes bundled with a 50-sheet, spiral-bound notebook to get you started. I prefer the 200-page black journals, which run $25 for two, but you can also get different styles of notebooks and notepads, for about $9-$14 each. If you have a 600dpi laser (not inkjet) printer, you can also print your own paper.

Then you're ready to get started. Charge the pen via the micro USB port with the included cable, switch it on, and you're recording what you write. Tap on a little icon on the special paper, and you're recording what the pen hears, synced up. The pen's microphone is heavily biased towards nearby sounds, which is fine if you're interviewing somebody one-on-one, but in meetings, you have to turn up the volume to hear people at the other end of a long table.

The Sky comes in three models: a 2GB version for $169.95, a 4GB version for $199.95, and an 8GB version for $249.95. All three come with 500MB of Evernote storage (enough for 50-75 hours of audio) and the most expensive model comes with a year's worth of Evernote Premium, a $45 value. As far as I'm concerned, since you'll probably sync the pen at least once a day, there's little reason to get the higher-storage models. I tested the 2GB model.

Unfinished Integration
The Sky's major shift is in ditching Livescribe's old, balky desktop software in exchange for Wi-Fi-based integration with Evernote. That's a great idea, but it needs another software rev before it works properly. You lose the oddball Java apps that used to run on the Echo pen, but super-easy syncing with any device is worth the trade-off.

Here's the idea: You set up the Sky with a Wi-Fi network using an easy login process. Every time you stop an audio recording, it uploads your audio and ink to Evernote, where it appears online. If, while you're recording, you're not within range of the Wi-Fi network, everything will be uploaded as soon as you return to the network. And since Evernote works with nearly every PC, tablet, and smartphone in existence, you can read back your notes on anything.

That's the theory. In practice, it's awkward. I'll set aside the bugs, which Livescribe says will be fixed by launch. Even beyond that, audio notes arrived with the wrong times attached to them and no obvious sign of which note was associated with which page. In my tests, clicking on ink notes to play audio spawned a separate Web window, the Livescribe Player, so you can't play synced audio when offline, at all. You also can't alter the speed of the audio playback, a feature from the old desktop software that I really miss.

Individual pages appear as separate notes in Evernote, even though most note-taking sessions involve a bunch of pages. Audio recordings appear as different notes, without a clear guide as to which audio notes are connected to which pages. Since the audio notes are interleaved with the text notes, you can't flip through pages naturally. Some of my audio notes didn't show up in Evernote until hours after I took them, and then they all appeared in a batch.

Fortunately, all of the on-pen playback functionality still works fine. You can plug headphones into your pen, tap on ink in your paper notebook and hear what you recorded. You can speed up and slow down playback by tapping on icons in the notebook. But this is a step backwards in functionality: Livescribe took away useful Echo features like controlling playback speed and the optional MyScript handwriting recognition without replacing them yet. Those features may be coming, but they're not here today.

Also, struggling with Wi-Fi kills the Sky's battery. On one test day, the pen had terrible trouble syncing, and I ended up with just 4.5 hours of heavy note taking and audio recording on a single charge. Better connectivity on a different day pushed the battery life closer to six hours of audio before I needed to recharge.

If you don't have Wi-Fi, you can sync with Evernote using a cable and a desktop helper app, which wasn't available for me to review.

Hoping for Better
Livescribe is a cool technology and the Sky is a great idea. But it needs upgrades both to the pen firmware and to Evernote to realize its potential. Syncing needs to be quick and efficient, and Evernote should showcase pencasts, not separate them into their text and audio components or have to launch a helper app.

The whole idea of pencasts is the integration between text and audio; the whole idea of a notebook is a seamless, easy to flip through sequence of pages. By breaking every page into a separate note, it's difficult to cruise through the notes you took in a session. By interleaving the audio notes as separate content, it breaks up the experience. By forcing it to spawn the Web-based player to play your synced notes, it adds a step.

That said, Livescribe tells me that a lot of positive changes are coming over the next few months. This is a radical shift in direction for the company; it's sort of like having a version 1.0 all over again.

I'd advise that Livescribe owners stick with their current pens until the software here improves. If you're a student, journalist, therapist, or other frequent note-taker who also has a Mac or PC, you can pick up this pen and agree to bear with what is sure to be an improving software experience, or go with the Echo, which syncs with Livescribe's balky, but at least consistent, desktop software.

We'll revisit this review in a few months after the software is improved. I like where Livescribe is going, it justs need a little more time to get there.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/rjXCHe_uExM/0,2817,2411149,00.asp

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Samsung Galaxy Note II Smart Dock turns a big phone into an even bigger desktop

Samsung Galaxy Note II Smart Dock turns a big phone into an even bigger desktop

Many of us would already contend that the Galaxy Note II is more of a pocketable computer than a smartphone, so why not take the definition at face value? Samsung certainly is, as it just began selling a Smart Dock that transforms its phablet into a makeshift desktop. A trio of USB ports give the Note II options for a mouse, keyboard and even external storage -- and if the phone's 5.5-inch screen isn't already a large enough canvas, HDMI video (plus stereo audio out) should fill the gap. While there's no question that the Smart Dock's $100 price is relatively steep, it might be worthwhile for those still mourning the loss of Webtop.

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Samsung Galaxy Note II Smart Dock turns a big phone into an even bigger desktop originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Oct 2012 13:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/10/31/samsung-galaxy-note-ii-smart-dock-turns-a-big-phone-into-a-desktop/

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