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WWDC Steve Jobs Keynote Live at TheAppleBlog [jkOnTheRun]

Today is the big keynote address from Steve Jobs at the WWDC and our sister blog TheAppleBlog will be live blogging the keynote and you can follow along in real time to get the scoop on the next iPhone. You can also follow along on Twitter.

BlackBerry Storm Arrives in China for Enterprises [GigaOM]

Research In Motion is bringing the BlackBerry to enterprises through China Telecom, but why offer the Storm as part of this deal? If RIM wants to compete with the iPhone in China, it should be targeting consumers with the Storm, not enterprises that need a keyboard.

Patent Wars Aren’t About Destroying the Enemy, They’re About the Loot [GigaOM]

The patent fights erupting in the smartphone industry aren't going kill of any of the major players, nor are they likely to prevent smartphone users from having multitouch on non-Apple devices. For patent holders, the goal is to force competitors to pay if they succeed.

Urban Wolf a Near-Perfect 21st Century Thriller [NewTeeVee]

This Crackle-distributed web series, shot in Paris, starring a Hong Kong actor, and deliberately produced with the barest minimum of dialogue, is a truly international production that's also a fresh and exciting 21st century thriller.

8 Websites You (Really Do) Need to Stop Building [GigaOM]

A comic from The Oatmeal cuts at the core of the social web: entrepreneurs in love with their unoriginal ideas. Titled “8 Websites You Need to Stop Building,” it skewers the likes of, for example, “Websites that let me know what my friends are up to."

Adobe Releases Creative Suite 5 [WebWorkerDaily]

Adobe today announced that it is now shipping the latest version of its Creative Suite product line, CS5. The latest release includes over 250 new features across in new versions of Adobe's flagship creative tools, including Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Acrobat, Fireworks, Flash and Dreamweaver.

Wanted: New Cloud Startups for Structure 2010′s LaunchPad [GigaOM]

Structure, GigaOM’s flagship conference, returns on June 23rd and 24th with deep insight into the cloud computing industry. Here are some reasons why you should submit your startup for the LaunchPad, where our selection of the 10 best startups or major product launches take the stage.

Last Night's Action: Yanks Sweep A's

Yankees 5, A's 0: CC Sabathia had no trouble with the A's. The Associated Press even posted a photo of the Yankees ace yawning in the dugout. He pitched eight innings of scoreless, one-hit ball before Jonathan Albaldejo finished the shutout. Curtis Granderson had two homers and Jorge Posada added another as the Yankees finished a four-game sweep. They moved 1 1/2 games up on the idle Rays in the American League East. They play three day games against the Blue Jays starting Friday.

Mets 4, Braves 2: Hey, a Mets win! Johan Santana left after five innings. The Mets said ~~they were saving him for the playoffs~~ he is day-to-day with a strained pectoral muscle. David Wright, who had done very little against the Braves this season, hit a home run. The Mets move on to Chicago on Friday.

Twitter for iPhone/iPad Getting Push Notifications Soon

We’ve just gotten an email from Twitter stating that staffers are testing push notifications amongst themselves and the company will be rolling this feature out to all users soon.

Push notifications would enable users to get instant, real-time updates for…

Watch Out for That 3D Optical Illusion on the Road! [Traffic Safety]

You're cruising down the road, nearing a school zone, when BAM! Out of nowhere, a little girl chasing her ball across the street appears. Your heart races, you slam on the brakes, and then her image dissolves. What? More »

Officially Official: Ford F-150 SVT Raptor gains SuperCrew, loses 5.4L V8 for 2011

Filed under: Truck, Ford, Off-Road

2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor SuperCrew - Click above for high-res image gallery

Ford's off-road beast, the F-150 SVT Raptor, has only been on sale for a year, but it's already getting a few upgrades for the 2011 model year.

Many reports and a few spy shots indicated that Ford had been prepping a four-door SuperCrew version of the Raptor (you know, for when the family wants to do the Baja run with you), and the automaker has officially confirmed the details (again). The SuperCrew's wheelbase is a full 12 inches longer than the standard Raptor, meaning it should provide a more comfortable ride along the way, and the 5.5-foot box can still haul everything you need when you get there.

Speaking of capability, all Raptors now come standard with more power on tap - the 6.2-liter V8 will be the only available powertrain for 2011 (sad trombone for the people who rushed out to get the 5.4). As we reported earlier, it stands to reason that the 2011 Raptor will get a price increase to account for the larger mill, but it's a small price to pay for an extra 101 horsepower and 69 pound-feet of torque over the 5.4-liter V8.

From there, the other enhancements for 2011 are purely cosmetic. Raptors can now be had in a new color - Ingot Silver Metallic (pictured) - and matte black accent graphics are available on the hood. These new graphics can be ordered separately from the box side decals, too. Inside the cabin, Ford now offers a standard 4.2-inch LCD display (called the "productivity screen") in the center of the revised instrument gauges, similar to what was introduced on the 2011 Super Duty.

Dealers will start taking orders for 2011 Raptors as you read this with the first examples hitting dealerships later this year. Ford's detailed press release is available after the jump.

Gallery: 2011 Ford F-150 SVT Raptor SuperCrew

[Source: Ford]

Continue reading Officially Official: Ford F-150 SVT Raptor gains SuperCrew, loses 5.4L V8 for 2011

Officially Official: Ford F-150 SVT Raptor gains SuperCrew, loses 5.4L V8 for 2011 originally appeared on Autoblog on Fri, 03 Sep 2010 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Laser-Powered Helicopter Hovers for Hours [Republished]

Lasers have recently shown they can down a UAV–but they can also keep the drones up in the air. LaserMotive has kept a 22-gram model helicopter hovering for hours at a time on just a few watts of laser power. More »

Green diary rescue & open thread

At Grist, Randy Rieland writes:

Ready for your morning bowl of crazy? Five years ago, Congress set aside millions of acres of public land in the Southwest for the development of solar farms. This was primo real estate for solar, considered one of the best spots in the world. So far not one solar panel has been erected.

Oh, you want us to build something? This discouraging news comes courtesy of the AP's Jason Dearen, whose investigation shows that the understaffed U.S. Bureau of Land Management (BLM) focused almost all its time on approving oil and gas projects and leased the land on a first-come, first-served basis, often to outfits with little or no experience in actually building solar farms.

Case in point: Cogentrix Solar Services, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs. Cogentrix had zero solar experience, but holds leases on nearly half the Nevada acreage for which applications have been filed. Another sickening stat: In the last five years, the BLM has approved more than 73,000 oil and gas leases on public land, but hasn't given final approval to one solar lease. Not a one. Writes Dearen:

BLM's solar leasing system ended up allowing developers to lay claim to prime sites -- many located in the deserts that span California, Nevada, and Arizona. All developers had to do was fill out an application, pay a fee and file development plans. But many were so vague that it was difficult for BLM to separate the serious projects from the speculative ones.

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Green diary rescue appears Thursdays and Sundays. Inclusion of a particular diary does not necessarily indicate my agreement with it. The rescue begins below and continues in the jump.

• • • • •

Haole in Hawaii posted another photo diary of Hawai'i Underwater: "These photos were taken during a handful of dives over the past two weekends including a night dive last night at Pupukea Marine Reserve. I hope you enjoy your visit."

Deep Harm had looked at rotten eggs in Rodents, maggots and steaming piles of hypocrisy at egg farms: "The inspectors found manure piles up to 8 feet high, holding doors open and giving wildlife access. "Wildlife" included live rodents, wild birds and a plague of flies, live and dead, including their larvae (maggots). 'Additional problems included overflowing manure pits, improper worker sanitation and wild birds [a potential source of avian influenza] roosting around feed bins,' reports The New York Times. The investigators also found salmonella bacteria in chicken feed and in barn and walkway areas, and in water used to wash eggs at a Hillandale facility. It isn't clear, yet, which came first: the salmonella or the egg."

Visual Website Optimizer: Another Way To Run A/B Tests On Your Site

A/B testing, which entails running multiple versions of a site at once and tracking which one performs best with users, is a key part of launching a new version of any website.Visual Website Optimizer, which I'll just call VWO from here on out, helps users manage this often complex process. The service shares some similiarities with a Y Combinator-funded startup called Optimizely, which launched in July. Among some of VMO's features are multivariate testing (you can adjust more than one item on your site and VMO will run them in various combinations to determine which ones have a positive effect), heatmaps showing off where users are clicking (which are useful for visualizing where your visitors are clicking for different variations of a site), and split URL tests, which gives you the option to redirect traffic to two alternate versions of your website.

New York’s Newest Law Aims to Protect Online Daters

It’s something you’d expect to hear from your mother, not your government, but New York’s newest laws are all about exercising common sense when looking for love online.

Sounding like something between a schoolteacher and a public service announcement, the…

The Touch Screen Haters Club [Image Cache]

I've always wondered why some people absolutely loathe touch screen devices, but now I realize that it was insensitive to not even consider that physical limitations play a role in that hate. More »

Ev Williams: Twitter Will Actually Help Information Overload [GigaOM]

Given the opportunity, Twitter CEO Evan Williams will happily extemporize at a high level about the ideas that drive his company (which is now up to 145 million users). Williams contended tonight that the medium of Twitter is (gasp!) actually well-suited to handle information overload.

Twitter For iPhone Push Notifications Are Being Internally Tested; Rolling Out Soon

To many users, Twitter for iPhone (the artist formerly known as Tweetie) is perhaps the perfect Twitter client (though I'd argue that the new Twitter for iPad is right there with it). But the one thing it has been lacking and that users knock it for is the lack of Push Notifications. Well, good news. They're coming. Soon. Twitter is currently internally testing the feature, we've confirmed. Interestingly enough, we learned of its existence when the latest version of the app went out yesterday (the universal binary that included Twitter for iPad). It appears that users who have iOS 4.1 installed (which just hit Gold Master for developers, but won't be official out until next week) get the option to enable Push Notifications for Twitter. They don't appear to be working yet, but the feature is definitely there.

Notifo for iPhone Gets Free User-to-User Messaging, Real Time Twitter Notifications

Last time we wrote about Notifo, we called it a "simple mobile notifications platform for anything" -- and really, that's probably the best way to describe it. Take your iPhone, install the Notifo app, hook it up to your favorite services (like Twitter, or GitHub) or any of the "Projects" (read: plugins, like Growl alert forwarding, or Chrome-to-Notifo ), and bam! You've got push notifications coming down to your iPhone from just about anything you could imagine. All that notification sending takes two things: users to send the messages to, and a message pushing backend to handle all the heavy lifting -- the same two things, as it just so happens, that one would need to create a basic instant messaging service. And so they have.

Flying YouTube Packets Proves Visualization Can Make Anything Pretty [Visualization]

Next time you're watching an inane YouTube video, close your eyes and imagine these graceful dots instead—each representing a packet sent between your computer and YouTube's servers. The video represents only 4 seconds of a RickRoll, slowed 12x. More »

Miami International Airport Partially Evacuated, Bomb Squad Called [Breaking]

Two terminals at Miami International Airport were evacuated around 9 p.m. and evacuees "put into a large room," reportedly because of a "Texas man" with something suspicious (deep-fried beer?) in his luggage. The concourses may be closed all night. [Pic] More »

Open Thread and Diary Rescue

Tonight's Diary Rescue comes to you courtesy of the hard work and diligence of the following Rescue Rangers: Louisiana1976, ItsJessMe, YatPundit, sunspark says and srkp23. dadanation is thought to have done double duty both rescuing and editing, but we all have our doubts...

thE rescueD diarieS

Young diarist Earley Post tells us that regarding corporate influence in politics, "What if...?" iis the Wrong Question. (Louisiana 1976)

amybdean graces us with an eloquent essay steeped in memory all the while looking towards the future: Labor Day’s Legacy: A More Inclusive America. (dadanation)

Ojibwa keeps on teaching: Indians 101: The Tuscarora & the Iroquois League. (srkp23)

faithfull brings to light a most unsettling reality in West Virginia due to Nike in Mountaintop Removal - JUST DO IT! (dadanation)

americandad provides a Wisconsin congressman with a Wisconsin (and American) history lesson in May God smite us with Rep. Paul Ryan's "cancer"! (sunspark says)

thE usuaL suspectS

jotter has High Impact Diaries: September 1, 2010.

sardonyx brings us tonight's Top Comments: Blameless Edition.

thE requisitE disclaimeR

Please use this as an Open Thread as well as your chance to promote your favorite diaries of the day. Respectful engagement is most welcome here. Please keep in mind that each Diary Rescue's daily purview extends from 3pm PST yesterday to 3pm PST today

Open Thread: How Do You Stream Internet Content to Your TV?

One of Apple's announcements yesterday was a completely redesigned Apple TV. It's competing in a crowded and still confusing field of products that stream video from the Internet to your TV. Boxee and Roku are two smaller companies trying to crack it; and Google TV was unveiled in May. The ultimate goal of all of these products is to make Web-to-TV very easy for consumers, but the market is still searching for the right formula.

We'd like to poll the ReadWriteWeb community on this topic. Let us know how you currently get online video (and other media content) onto your TV. Also, which of the emerging products do you think has the best chance to be the consumer offering of choice?

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The key points of the new Apple TV are: a much lower price (now $99, compared to $229 for the first generation product), streamlined form (80% smaller), streaming functionality, no more local storage, Netflix and YouTube access, and 99c TV show rentals.

Other ways to access Web content on your TV include: modern Internet-connected TVs; online gaming devices like Sony PlayStation 3 and X-Box 360; P2P software; Set-top boxes like TiVo (specifically, its Premiere offering released in March); streaming software for computers, such as playon; wireless USB display adapter sets; special cables to hook a computer up to a TV.

Of course, there's still the matter of accessing good content. All of the online TV players have been busy doing deals with TV and movie distributors, a process which is far from being worked through. Meanwhile, many consumers have used P2P services like BitTorrent to get such content for free.

The video below from the Google TV announcement shows the (potential) benefits of streaming Web content to your TV:

I myself use a combination of Sony Playstation 3 and the P2P client Vuze in order to stream the occasional TV show and movie to my TV. Although it converts online video to a PS3 compatible format, it's still not a completely satisfactory solution. Sometimes the sound doesn't work, or the video is choppy, and so on. So I'm looking forward to purchasing one of the upcoming devices from Apple, Boxee, Roku or Google.

Do you stream content from the Internet into your TV? If so, tell everyone how you do it in the comments below.

Discuss

Nvidia's GeForce 400M Series Roids Up Notebook Graphics of All Classes [Graphics Cards]

Nvidia gave us a taste of what its Fermi-based notebook graphics cards would be like with the GeForce GTX 480M, but now it's time to meet the whole family. That's seven Fermi GPUs, running the gamut from face-melting to face-singeing. More »

West Wing Week: "Dispatches from Iraq"

This week the President announced the end of America’s combat mission in Iraq and West Wing Week takes you there, on the ground, with an in-depth, behind-the-scenes look at the change of mission. We spent a week on the ground with our troops and civilians , some coming home, some staying for the next mission, training and supporting the Iraqis now that they have the lead in protecting their own country. West Wing Week proudly joins the President and countless others who have saluted our troops over the past week -- it's never too late for you to join in too.

Click here to see the video.

Wednesday, August 31, 2010

The President addresses the nation on the end of the combat mission in Iraq from the Oval Office.

Tuesday, August 31, 2010

The President talks with the troops at Fort Bliss, Texas.

Arun Chaudhary is the official White House videographer