The FBI is looking to develop a web application that can monitor social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, in order to gain better real-time intelligence about current or potential future security threats or situations.

This plan was inadvertently revealed by the FBI’s Strategic Information and Operations Center (SOIC) in a market research request for a “Social Media Application.”

The eagle-eyed New Scientist picked up on the request, which aims to “determine the capabilities of the IT industry to provide a social media application.”

Government agencies like the FBI are usually reluctant to openly discuss how social networks are used as an intelligence tool.

In the Request for Information document, the FBI lays out the requirements for the application that it is seeking to build. In the background portion of the document, the SIOC writes:

The FBI has conducted market research and determined that a geospatial alert and analysis mapping application is the best known solution for attaining and disseminating real time open source intelligence and improving the FBI’s overall situational awareness.

We’ve embedded the six-page document below, but here are some of the highlights:

• Provide an automated search and scrape capability of both social networking sites and open source news sites for breaking events, crisis, and threats that meet the search parameters/keywords defined by FBI SIOC.
• Ability for user to create, define, and select parameters/key word requirements. Automated search of national news, local news, and social media networks. Examples include but are not limited to Fox News. CNN, MSNBC, Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• Provide instant notifications of breaking events, incidents, and emerging threats that have been vetted and meet the deÔ¨Åned search parameters.
• Ability to immediately access geospatial maps with coding in addition to providing critical infrastructural layers. Preferred maps include but are not limited to Google Maps, Google 3D maps, ESRI, and Yahoo Maps.
• Ability to instantly search and monitor key words and strings in all “publicly available” tweets across the Twitter Site and any other “publicly available” social networking
  sites/forums (i.e. Facebook, MySpace, etc.).

The entire document is worth reading, if only to see the request for a “tweet lingo” dictionary within the app.

Monitoring social media activity isn’t limited to the FBI. Earlier this month, House subcommittee members urged the Department of Homeland Security to more closely monitor social media traffic.

While privacy advocates have bristled at the idea of social media monitoring, the government position is that if information is public, it’s fair game for scraping and monitoring.

The FBI’s RFI specifically targets “publicly available information” — rather than anything users keep private.

What do you think about how government agencies and law enforcement are using social media monitoring tools? Let us know in the comments.

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Social Media Application Request for Information

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Social Media Application

Ladies, do you feel more respected this morning?

In case you missed the breaking news, the rapper Jay-Z, father to the most anticipated baby of the decade (at least until Kate and William get around to things) made a poetic announcement yesterday. (Really, he announced it in a poem.)

He will no longer use the word "bitch" to describe women.

I'll let him describe his epiphany:

Before I got in the game, made a change, and got rich/ I didn't think hard about using the word bitch/I rapped, I flipped it, I sold it, I lived it/Now with my daughter in this world I curse those that give it.

There's more, including:

No man will degrade her, or call her name/I'm so focused on your future, the degradation has passed/ I wish you wealth, health and insight/Forever young you may pass/Blue Ivy Carter, my angel.

Sweet.

In a hypocritical and late to the party kind of a way.

Jay-Z is not the first man to realize he has been a misogynistic jerk only after he has a daughter.

Okay, maybe the academic studies don't use those words exactly, but one, from the University of Maryland titled "Like Daughter, Like Father: How Women's Wages Change When CEOs Have Daughters," found that the birth of a girl to a male CEO closes the wage gap at his company by .5 percentage points, and if that daughter is the CEOs first child the gap closes by 2.8 percentage points.)

Why? Researchers theorize that "a switch flips" in the CEO daddy's head, "making him more sensitive to gender issues."

That same switch might flip some of a father's political views, too. A study of the voting records of US Congressmen found that those with daughters voted more liberally on issues of reproductive rights, flexible work policies and funding for education. And data on British families found that fathers with three sons and no daughters were far more likely to vote for conservative candidates than were fathers of three daughters and no sons.

"Daughters make people more left-wing, while having sons, by contrast, makes them more right-wing" the author of that last study, Andrew Oswald of the University of Warwick said when it was released in 2009.

I'm not sure whether calling women names is a left-wing or right-wing thing, and I am glad that, for whatever reason, Jay-Z has decided to stop. It would have been better though, if he'd never started in the first place; never written lyrics like "I don't love 'em I fuck 'em, I don't chase 'em I duck 'em, I replace 'em with another one"; or if he had been so moved years ago out of respect for, say, his mother, or his wife, or 50 percent of the population.

Since no apology was offered anywhere in this latest poem, then I feel no need to accept one. But I do congratulate the Carters on the birth of their little girl. And I wish them a little boy someday, too, so that Jay-Z has the chance to raise him into a man who respects women from the start.

For entertainment studios around the world, Kim Dotcom probably looks a lot like King Henry VIII. To them he is rich, rotund, and chopping their businesses off at the head.

Two of those attributes, at least, are factually true. The third is in legal dispute.

Kim Dotcom, the founder of recently indicted file sharing company Megaupload, was born Kim Schmitz. A German native who legally changed his surname to Dotcom ten years ago, he has a speckled past. This includes accusations of credit card fraud and criminal hacking, as well as a confession of embezzlement. Now Kim lives in a New Zealand mansion allegedly worth $30 million and owns high-end vehicles like a Rolls-Royce, a Maserati, and a Lamborghini.

It’s all legitimately-acquired wealth, according to Megaupload spokesperson Bonnie Lam.

In accordance with German’s “clean-slate” law, Dotcom’s record has been wiped clean of his previous offenses, and he has paid his due after his convictions, Lam said.

“He has matured, learned from his past mistakes and is a successful businessman,” Lam told Cnet. “Kim is one of many shareholders at Mega and not involved in most day-to-day business decisions.”

He is, nevertheless, a colorful character. Dotcom co-produced and appears in a popular promotional video for Megaupload that came out in December, 2011 (that’s him in the screen shot above). The video, which included such popular music stars as Macy Gray, Will.i.am, Kanye West, Kim Kardashian, Serena Williams, Snoop Dogg and a host of others, was targeted by Universal Music Group for unspecified reasons, briefly removed from YouTube, and then reinstated to the popular video-sharing site shortly afterward. Megaupload filed its own suit against Universal immediately after the incident. The video has now been seen almost 12 million times.

Dotcom, who is married and a father of three, was charged this week with five counts of copyright infringement, along with money laundering. He was arrested at his own birthday party on Thursday, along with other employees of Megaupload and its various properties, including Megaporn, Megavideo, Megaclick, and Megarotic. When the police came calling, he barricaded himself inside the mansion’s safe room with what appeared to be a sawed-off shotgun.

Megaupload is the company’s flagship site, founded in 2005. It lets people upload, store and transfer files around the globe, a service that can be used for legitimate purposes (transferring a large data file to a business associate, for instance) but which, the FBI alleges, is also used for distributing copyrighted video and audio. The company’s headquarters are said to be in Hong Kong, though its servers exist in other countries as well. The US FBI took action after discovering servers in Virgina holding unlicensed copyrighted material. Indeed, the US calling this a “Mega Conspiracy.”

The indictment served yesterday listed assets owned by Dotcom and his fellow employees, which tallied to around $175,000,000. Expensive vehicles, artwork, electronics, and a laundry list of bank accounts were named.

On Friday, police in New Zealand raided Dotcom’s home and seized many of these assets, including a Rolls Royce, numerous Mercedes-Benz cars, cash and allegedly guns. Dotcom is known for enjoying his fast cars and attending the Gumball 3000, an automobile “rally” that has drawn celebrities such as Snoop Dogg, Johnny Knoxville and others.

In response, the loose hacker collective known as Anonymous retaliated by taking down the Department of Justice and FBI websites with a denial-of-service attack.

Dotcom has been in trouble with the law for money before. In 2001, the Megaupload founder pocketed 1.5 million euros after promising to invest 50 million euros into failing company LetsBuyIt.com. He pulled the fraud off by purchasing 375,000 euros worth of stock in the company, made his investment announcement, and watched the stock price soar. After the stock had climbed a considerable amount, Dotcom cut and ran, having never possessed enough money to make the 50 million euro investment in the first place. In 2003, Dotcom admitted to embezzlement and was flown from Thailand to Germany for the trial.

According to New Zealand-based website 3 News, New Zealand’s government initially denied Dotcom’s application residency when he failed a “good character” test. However, he then donated to the Christchurch Earthquake Fund and invested $10 million in government bonds, and his application was subsequently approved.

Now Dotcom is facing even more financial charges. He and his alleged co-conspirators are accused of paying third parties to upload copyrighted material.

Dotcom remains positive, however. When faced with three of his coworkers before the press in a New Zealand court room, he invited pictures and video. When a lawyer asked the press to stop, Kim Dotcom interjected with, “We have nothing to hide.”

If you're just starting out with a DSLR camera, you're probably pretty overwhelmed with all the different settings you have available. This cheat sheet from weblog Living In the Stills will help you keep it all straight.

We talked about a lot of these things in our Basics of Photography Night School, but when you're out and about and don't have time to flip through a full guide, this cheat sheet can give you a quick glance at what different aperture, shutter, ISO, and other settings will do. You still need to have a basic understanding of what certain terms mean—like exposure or depth of field—but you won't have to know off the top of your head which values correspond to which ends of the spectrum. Check out a larger version of the cheat sheet below, and hit the link to read more about it.

 

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) are two bills that sound like they have a mildly positive aim but, in reality, have serious potential to negatively change the internet as we know it. While the Obama administration has come out against SOPA, effectively shelving it indefinitely, the very similar PIPA bill is still alive and well. Both SOPA and PIPA put power in the hands of the entertainment industry to censor sites that allegedly "engage in, enable or facilitate" copyright infringement. This language is vague enough to target sites you use every day, like Facebook and Google, making these bills a serious problem. Here's what you need to know about the bills and what you can do about them.

What Are SOPA and PIPA All ABout, and Why Should I Care?

The idea behind these bills sounds reasonable. They came about in order to try and snuff out piracy online, as the entertainment industry is obviously not excited that many people are downloading their products without payment or permission. The issue is, however, that it doesn't really matter whether you're in support of piracy, against it, or just don't care. The methods are ineffective. Here's what they are and why they're problematic.

SOPA and PIPA were initially designed to do two things. The first was to make it possible for companies to block the domain names of web sites that are simply capable of, or seem to encourage copyright infringement. This would have been bad for everyone because such a measure doesn't actually prevent piracy. The reason that blocking a domain name isn't effective is because any blocked site can still be accessed via its numeric IP address. For example, if lifehacker.com were blocked, you could still find it by visiting a number-based address. In fact, before the bills were even supposed to come to a vote, tools were created to automatically route domain names to their IP addresses to completely render this measure of SOPA and PIPA useless. As a result, the IP-blocking provisions have been removed from both bills.

 

The other, still-active measure present in the SOPA and PIPA bills would allow rights holders to cut of the source of funding of any potentially infringing web site. This means any other companies doing business with this site would have to stop. Whether that means advertising, links in search engines, or any other listings would have to be removed.

There is, however, an important difference between SOPA and PIPA. SOPA targeted any site that contributed to copyright infringement, even if it was simply facilitating the act by providing a tool that could be used for illegal purposes (regardless of intention). PIPA, on the other hand, requires the targeted site to have no significant use beyond copyright infringement. Basically, PIPA can only be used to censor a site if it's more likely to be a source of illegal content than not. This is still problematic because a tool designed to accept user-generated content is, to some extent, at the whims of its users. If infringing content is found, rights holders already have the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) to help them request the legal removal of that content. They also have the ability to sue infringers for damages, as we've previously seen with the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) when they, for example, sued a 12-year-old for downloading music. SOPA and PIPA provide a means to censor the tool that provided a means for the infringing content to exist on the internet rather than the content itself. This puts a lot of power in the hands of rights holders and has significant potential for abuse.

This is, of course, our interpretation of these bills. Because we love the internet and oppose censorship, we have an obvious bias. While we believe the right thing to do is to oppose these bills, you should make an informed decision on your own. For more information, please read the exact content of both the SOPA and PIPA bills.

What Can I Do About SOPA and PIPA?

Currently Twitter, Google, Reddit, Kickstarter, Tumblr, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, eBay, Zynga, Facebook, and several other sites have spoken out in opposition of SOPA and PIPA. In fact, many sites are censoring their logos (e.g. Google) or completely taking down their sites (e.g. Wikipedia) in protest on January 18th, 2012. There is incredible opposition to these bills because they don't just affect users like you, or small startups, but even very large companies with a large stake in the great things the internet and modern technology have to offer. If you'd like to join in your protest, there are a few things you can do.

 

First, call your congressperson on the phone. This is especially important if you live in a state with SOPA and/or PIPA supports or sponsors. Nonetheless, if your congresspeople do not support these bills you should still contact them to voice your support for their position.

Second, get the word out. Post this article, the American Censorship Day web site, or any other information about SOPA/PIPA on your social media accounts. Send emails to friends and family. If you oppose the bill, help others to understand why you believe they should oppose and encourage them to read more so they can make an informed choice.

 

Let's End the Fight and Start a Discussion

Finally, if you know a supporter or person in favor of SOPA and/or PIPA, have an open discussion. Myself and many others believe that the root of this problem stems from a lack of communication on both sides. Despite what my articles may suggest, I'm not a supporter of piracy. I do believe there is a compromise that both sides can reach with enough discussion, education, and understanding. It's important to remember that both the supporters and opposers of SOPA and PIPA have legitimate concerns. This should not be a fight but rather a cooperative discussion to find a solution. Whichever side you're on, please encourage a conversation that will move us towards change that is good for everyone rather than extreme measures that won't help anyone.

 

 

Hundreds of websites (TechCrunch included) have gone dark or visibly changed their appearance as a protest against the Stop Online Privacy Act and its Senate doppelganger, the PROTECT IP Act. It’s a powerful statement and many are saying that it is already producing effects: Senators are changing positions, awareness is rising, and the opposition is becoming a dinner-table topic.

But is this activism?

I’m not asking whether it’s a good thing (it certainly is) or whether it is effective in guiding policy (it certainly might be), but whether it is right to call it activism.

It’s not just a question of semantics; the distinction is material. Activism is like-minded individuals working to support or oppose a cause. What we are seeing today, in large companies and organizations acting together to sway an outcome, might better be termed collective bargaining.

It just seems a bit strange that after months of outrage by individuals, what seems to cause notice is action by larger units: Google, Wikipedia, Reddit, and the like. Although we as individuals may have contributed to their decisions, ultimately the choice was theirs. And while we are all thankful to these organizations for doing what they feel is appropriate to signal their disapproval, it’s significant that we individuals are largely without means of effectively banding together online.

I wrote before that “people, not things, are the tools of revolution.” I know this to be true. But things, and means, are also important. Do we have the means to affect our country’s policies and decisions via the internet?

One thing that this whole SOPA thing (and COICA before it, and others before that, and surely more to come) shows is the complete disconnect between the informed, online community and the legislative and governing bodies. The incredible increase in our capability to propagate and discuss issues and events has not been matched by a corresponding receptive capability on the part of our representatives and officials. This must change.

The state of feedback between the governed and the governors is deplorable. Very little of the innovation driving internet companies is being applied to this problem, and as we have seen, it is a very serious problem.

There is much to be said about the whole Washington ecosystem of lobbyists, career politicians, favors, vendettas, and all that. What is relevant to us right now, however, is not the vagaries of a representative democracy, but creating a reliable, official, and secure means for citizens to make their opinions felt by those in office. We may discuss and blog and comment and promote all we want and our senators might be none the wiser. We need something other than votes and campaign contributions that will make these people hear what their constituents are saying. The internet has very little that can be called activism.

We can consider today, with its blackouts and wide visibility, a success. But it doesn’t seem to me that we can call it activism when so much of it has to do with powers outside our own making choices that just happen to coincide with ours. The internet is a powerful tool for communication and advocacy, but right now it is divorced from the decision-making process. The best we have is things like White House petitions and automatic email systems for contacting your senators. The level of engagement is wholly inadequate. As citizens we should expect more, and as evangelists of technology we should be making the tools to take the next step.

Apple has released a list of hardware component suppliers (and many of their human rights and environmental violations) as part of its 2012 Supplier Responsibility Progress Report.

This list, the company says, accounts for more than 97 percent of its of Apple’s procurement expenditures
for materials, manufacturing, and assembly of iPads, iPhones, iPods, MacBooks and various other personal computing products worldwide.

In this year’s report, Apple says it conducted more audits of manufacturers than ever — 229 audits altogether for various partners along Apple’s supply chain. The number of audits represents an 80 percent increase over audits conducted in 2010 and includes more than 100 first-time audits.

While the company says it has educated more than a million employees at Apple’s manufacturing partners around the world about worker’s rights, on-the-job safety and more, the audits unearthed some ugly facts about the companies making iDevice components.

In Chinese partners, Apple’s investigations found issues with payment of workers, benefits for workers and environmental practices. Some suppliers were found dumping wastewater at a farm near the plant, using unsafe machinery, forging payroll records and even administering pregnancy tests to some workers.

Perhaps most troubling of all from a human rights perspective is the continuing instances of child and involuntary labor in Apple’s supply chain. Although Apple says it maintains a a zero-tolerance policy for such labor and that the 2011 audits found that instances of child labor “were down significantly,” the company can only verify that no underage workers were found at final assembly suppliers.

“I would like to totally eliminate every case of underage employment,” Apple CEO Tim Cook told reporters.

“As we go deeper into the supply chain, we found that age verification system isn’t sophisticated enough. This is something we feel very strongly about and we want to eliminate totally.”

In a email sent today to Apple staff, Cook wrote, “We are taking a big step today toward greater transparency and independent oversight of our supply chain by joining the Fair Labor Association.

“The FLA is a leading nonprofit organization dedicated to improving conditions for workers around the world, and we are the first technology company they’ve approved for membership. The FLA’s auditing team will have direct access to our supply chain and they will report their findings independently on their website.”

While Apple certainly seems to be trying to tackle these overarching issues of international business and manufacturing, we are nevertheless disturbed at many of the things we’re reading in this report. After all, 78 percent compliance with involuntary labor requirements still means 28 percent noncompliance, which translates to coercion and debt bondage being part of how your your iPhone was made.

Still, all our electronics come from plants such as these. At least Apple is making an effort to be transparent about this process, to find violations, to correct those violations, and in some cases, to stop doing businesses with companies that consistently ignore human rights and environmental regulations.

Here are some other highlights of the report, as well as some graphs we created showing percentage of compliance, based on data from the report:

Overwork

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93 facilities had records that indicated more than 50 percent of their workers exceeded weekly working hour limits of 60 in at least 1 week out of the 12 sample period. At 90 facilities, more than half of the records we reviewed indicated that workers had worked more than 6 consecutive days at least once per month, and 37 facilities lacked an adequate working day control system to ensure that workers took at least 1 day off in every 7 days.

Inadequate pay

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42 facilities had payment practice violations, including delayed payment for employees’ wages and no pay slips provided to employees. 67 facilities used deductions from wages as a disciplinary measure. 108 facilities did not pay proper overtime wages as required by laws and regulations.

Slave & child labor

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Two facilities were repeat offenders in the category of involuntary labor. Apple’s report states, “We terminated business with one supplier and are correcting the practices of the other supplier.”

[In] 15 facilities… we discovered foreign contract workers who had paid excessive recruitment fees to labor agencies… Some of our suppliers work with third-party labor agencies to hire contract workers from countries such as the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, and Vietnam. These agencies, in turn, may work through multiple subagencies in the hiring country, the workers’ home country, and, in some cases, all the way back to the workers’ home village. By the time the workers have paid all fees across these agencies, the total cost can equal many months’ wages, forcing workers into debt…

We discovered a total of 6 active and 13 historical cases of underage labor at 5 facilities. In each case, the facility had insufficient controls to verify age or detect false documentation. We found no instances of intentional hiring of underage labor.

Health & safety

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126 facilities did not have the appropriate administrative documentation or approval for at least one item in the health and safety protocol. Examples included workers who performed certain tasks without the legally required licenses, expired elevator permits, and lack of labeling of maximum load for shelving. 78 facilities had at least one instance where a workstation or a machine was missing the appropriate safety device such as a gear guard, pulley guard, or interlock. 58 facilities had workers who were not wearing appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE), such as earplugs, safety glasses, and dust masks. In some instances, the facility had not provided the appropriate
safety equipment. In others, the workers neglected to use the equipment or were using it improperly. Also, 72 facilities lacked procedures for PPE management.

Next Story: Asemble your own MLG Pro Circuit Controller from Mad Catz (video)

Venezuela's consul general in Miami has been declared to be persona non grata and must leave the United States, a State Department spokesman said Sunday.

Spokesman William Ostick declined to comment on specific details behind the decision to expel Livia Acosta Noguera, who has headed Venezuela's consulate in Miami since March 2011.

The Venezuelan Embassy in Washington was informed of the decision Friday, Ostick said in a written statement, and the State Department said Acosta must depart the United States by Tuesday.

It was unclear Sunday whether she remained in the United States.

There was no immediate response from the Venezuelan government.

Last month, a group of American lawmakers said they had "grave concerns" about Acosta and called for an investigation after the Spanish-language TV channel Univision aired a documentary alleging that she was among a group of Venezuelan and Iranian diplomats who expressed interest in an offer from a group of Mexican hackers to infiltrate the websites of the White House, the FBI, the Pentagon and U.S. nuclear plants.

The evidence that the plot was real, according to Univision, are secret recordings with diplomats who ask questions about what the hackers can do and promise to send information to their governments.

Univision interviewed a purported Mexican whistle-blower -- a student at the National Autonomous University of Mexico named Juan Carlos Munoz Ledo. The student told Univision he was recruited by a leftist professor who wanted to wage cyber attacks on the United States and its allies.

Munoz told Univision he secretly recorded a meeting in 2008 with Acosta, who was then the cultural attache of the Venezuelan Embassy in Mexico. According to a recording Univision aired as part of its report, Acosta is heard saying that she can send the information gathered by the hackers straight to Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Chavez has called the report "lies."

One of the Iranian diplomats told Univision that although he, indeed, was presented with a hacking plot by the Mexican group, he turned it down, in part because he thought they were CIA agents.

In a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton last month, Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, David Rivera, Mario Diaz-Balart and Albio Sires asked the State Department to require Acosta's "immediate departure" from the United States if the Univision report proved true.

One group of Venezuelans in Miami said Sunday that they supported the U.S. government's move.

"The consul of Venezuela in Miami had not only conspired with Iranian officials to attack the security of the United States, but also had converted the Venezuelan Consulate in Miami into a spy center to monitor the activities of Venezuelan activists especially in South Florida, with the intention of neutralizing us," said a statement from the group, which included several organizations of Venezuelan exiles.

A State Department spokesman said last month that the United States did not know about the alleged plot, but that it found the Univision allegations "very disturbing."

However, "we don't have any information, at this point, to corroborate it," State Department spokesman Mark Toner said.

On January 6th reports of Symantec (makers of Norton Anitvirus) being hacked surfaced. The group of hackers behind the attack behind the attack were from India. In a statement issued by a member from the Lords of Dharamraja group (badass name!), the guys said:

As of now we start sharing with all our brothers and followers information from the Indian Militaty (sic) Intelligence servers, so far we have discovered within the Indian Spy Programme (sic) source codes of a dozen software companies which have signed agreements with Indian TANCS programme (sic) and CBI

Ignoring the typing error, gaining access to Indian Military’s Intelligence servers is pretty damning for the agency. The hack got covered since the hackers claimed to have acces to Norton’s source code. Earlier today I came across scans of a set of documents that are internal communications between the Indian Military. The documents claim the existence of a system known as RINOA SUR. While I did not find what SUR stands for but RINOA is RIM, NOkia and Apple. And this is where things start to get very interesting, according to the set of documents, the RINOA SUR platform was used to spy on the USCC—the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission. Let’s take a moment for that to digest. Here’s an image from the documents underlining the relevant part:

The documents contain snippets of emails sent by members of the USCC. Apparently, RINOA SUR platform has been declared a success and the Indian Navy has shown interest in the same. The leaked military documents suggest, RINOA were arm twisted into providing backdoor access in exchange for operating in India:

While the Indian government recently gave the nation’s premiere spy agency—RAW—permission to access any citizen’s electronic communication, the Department of Telecommunications has reached out to the Interpol for help in decrypting communication via services like RIM’s BlackBerry.

Since walking out of Downing Street in June 2007, Mr Blair, the most successful Prime Minister in Labour’s history, has struck a number of lucrative deals that have earned him millions of pounds.

Tony Blair is a burgeoning brand. He is an adviser, sometimes paid, sometimes unpaid, to foreign governments - and in some cases dictators; a hugely in demand, highly paid public speaker; an international business consultant; and a philanthropist with two charities in his name and another devoted to improving the plight of Africans.

He is also a Middle East peace envoy with an office in Jerusalem and author of a best-selling memoir, the proceeds of which he gave to charity.

Mr Blair is paid in the region of £3 million a year to advise both JP Morgan, the US investment bank, and also Zurich International, the global insurer based in Switzerland. On top of that he runs his own consultancy firm - Tony Blair Associates - which advises the oil and gas rich governments of Kuwait and Kazakhstan.

It is a confusing mix of business, politics and philanthropy that is administered by a complex system of companies, operating out of plush offices in Grosvenor Square in Mayfair in central London.

There are two parallel companies both with similar structures. One is called Windrush Ventures and another is called Firerush Ventures.

The structures are seemingly complex, consisting of a number of limited companies, limited liability partnerships (LLPs) and limited partnerships (LPs).

Windrush Ventures Limited is the management company that runs the Windrush Ventures Group. It is described in emails sent by Mr Blair’s staff as the “trading name” of The Office of Tony Blair.

Within the group there is - besides Windrush Ventures Limited - a Windrush Ventures No.1 Ltd, Windrush Ventures No.2 LLP and Windrush Ventures No.3 LP. The LP - because it is a liability partnership rather than a limited company - does not have any legal obligation to publish accounts. Firerush Ventures has a similar set up.

It is the publication of accounts, running to 22 pages, of Windrush Ventures Limited, which casts at least some light on the scale of Mr Blair’s income - and his corporate tax arrangements.

Lodged with Companies House on Dec 30, in the quiet period between Christmas and New Year, they are audited by KPMG and signed off by Catherine Rimmer, one of Windrush venture’s directors. Ms Rimmer, a former Downing Street aide, is officially Mr Blair’s strategic director. Incidentally, Windrush Venture’s highest paid director, presumed to be Ms Rimmer, earns £200,000, according to the accounts.

What the accounts show is that in the 12 months to March 31 2011, Windrush Ventures recorded a group turnover of a little over £12 million. In other words, Mr Blair’s management company was being paid £12 million - most of it coming from the secretive Windrush Ventures LP - for “the provision of management services”.

The accounts show that about £3 million of it went on office and staffing costs. What happens to the rest of it is not entirely clear. Windrush Ventures employs 26 people with a total wage bill of almost £2.3 million at an average salary of £88,000. It has office rental costs of £550,00 and a further £300,000 is spent on equipment. With a profit of £1 million - on which he pays tax of £315,000 - that leaves Windrush Ventures with about £8 million of “administrative expenses” unaccounted for. There is no obligation under company law to say what happens to that money.

The accounts also show that in the previous year, Windrush ventures received about £8.5 million and paid tax after expenses were deducted of £154,000. That means that in the past two years, Windrush ventures was paid £20 million for management services and paid a total of £470,000 in tax. There is no suggestion that the accounts are anything other than legitimate.

It is not clear what monies go through Windrush and what income is channelled through Firerush. Mr Blair is tight-lipped about the corporate structure - even going so far as to refusing to say why the companies are so named. There have been reports that Firerush is the structure set up to handle income from Tony Blair Associates, which if true - and on the scale of the Windrush accounts - would suggest the Blair Empire, including his charities, have incomes far beyond what anybody had realised. Firerush’s accounts have only partially been published and reveal little, although fuller accounts are anticipated later in the year.

As recently as September, Mr Blair protested that if he was really only interested in making money, he would not devote so much of his time to charitable causes and other unpaid activities.

“I probably spend two-thirds of my time on pro-bono activity, I probably spend the biggest single chunk of my time on the Middle East peace process which I do unpaid,” he said in an interview with an Indian television company. “So if what I was interested in doing was making money I could make a lot more and have a very gentle and easy life.”

In all, he reckoned he had 150 staff working for him in various guises across his charities and consultancies.

That interview was in response to a Sunday Telegraph investigation into Mr Blair’s friendship with Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, whom he visited at least six times after leaving Downing Street. At least twice, Mr Blair flew to Libya on a private jet paid for by Gaddafi.

An email from JP Morgan, seen by the Sunday Telegraph, suggested one of those visits was linked to a multi-billion dollar loan deal the bank was trying to set up between the Libyans and a Russian oligarch - although Mr Blair has denied any knowledge of the deal.

Mr Blair’s is undoubtedly a jet set lifestyle. But there are home comforts too. In the UK, his property portfolio of seven homes is worth £14 million and includes a £4 million Georgian townhouse in central London and a country estate not far from Chequers.

In office, he was the labour’s most successful prime minister. Out of it, he appears to be doing even better.

 

I spent most of my childhood with books about dinosaurs that played up the ancient beasties as overgrown lizards. The connection between dinosaurs and birds, while kind of flipping obvious once somebody points it out, was not much discussed among laypeople until I was in my teens. (That would be the 1990s, FYI.) 

But, among scientists, the idea of a dinosaur-bird relationship is nothing new. In fact, Thomas Henry Huxley was making that connection back in the 1860s. On the Dinosaur Tracking blog, Brian Switek tells the fascinating story of how Huxley started to realize that dinosaurs and birds were related—a discovery that's all the more impressive because he figured it out without the help of some of the key transitional fossils we have access to today.

Huxley did not suggest that birds were the direct descendants of dinosaurs. So much geologic time was unaccounted for, and so few dinosaurs were known, that Huxley could not point to any known fossil creature as the forerunner of birds. Instead he made his argument on anatomical grounds and removed the issue of time. Dinosaurs were proxies for what the actual bird ancestor would have been like, and flightless birds (such as the ostrich and emu) stood in for what Huxley thought was the most archaic bird type. (We now know that Huxley got this backwards—the earliest birds could fly, and flightless birds represent a secondary loss of that ability.) As Huxley went about collecting evidence for his case, though, he also gave dinosaurs an overhaul. They were not the bloated, plodding, rhinoceros-like creatures that Richard Owen had envisioned. Dinosaurs were more bird-like than anyone had imagined.

In October of 1867, Huxley met with John Philips, an English geologist and a curator of Oxford’s museum. As Huxley related in his 1870 paper “Further Evidence of the Affinity Between the Dinosaurian Reptiles and Birds,” Philips wanted to discuss details of marine reptiles called ichthyosaurs in his museum’s collection, but as he and Huxley made their way over toward the displays they stopped to look at the bones of the carnivorous dinosaur Megalosaurus. Then Huxley spotted something peculiar:

As Prof. Phillips directed my attention to one after the other of the precious relics, my eye was suddenly caught by what I had never before seen, namely, the complete pectoral arch of the great reptile, consisting of a scapula and a coracoid ankylosed together. Here was a tangle at once unravelled. The coracoid was totally different from the bone described by Cuvier, and by all subsequent anatomists, under that name. What then was the latter bone? Clearly, if it did not belong to the shoulder-girdle it must form a part of the pelvis; and, in the pelvis, the ilium at once suggested itself as the only possible homologue. Comparison with skeletons of reptiles and of birds, close at hand, showed it to be not only an ilium, but an ilium which, though peculiar in its form and proportions, was eminently ornithic in its chief peculiarities.

Earlier naturalists had made a mistake. They had misidentified the shoulder girdle, and one part of what was thought to be part of the shoulder was actually part of the hip. Another strange piece, previously thought to be a clavicle, also turned out to belong to the pelvis. This rearrangement immediately gave the dinosaur a more bird-like character.

If you look at the bottom of the image at the top of this post, you can see how much the re-arrangement of megalosaurus' parts changed our conception of what the whole creature looked like. Where other scientists saw a lumpy, obese crocodile, Thomas Henry Huxley saw a saber-toothed chicken.

Many of my friends, when it's time for an upgrade, ask me "What smartphone should I get?"
My typical answer is, "What carrier do you have?" and we proceed to go online and look at that carrier's selection of Android devices. I pick out a few, depending on their needs and preferences, usually mid-range in price, some with a happy mix of the best hardware and the best price, and some that appeal to their needs and taste.

But what they're really asking is, "Tony, should I get an iPhone, or an Android?" When I picked out high-end phones for them, they thought "Android it is," and proceed to go out and buy the cheapest, or even free phone, and then blame me when it's not delivering them iPhone quality.
So I should preface by saying that if you want something that's going to compete with the iPhone's quality, you're going to have to pay a similar price. Android is an awesome OS, and works amazingly when you have good hardware behind it.

So please listen when when you hear Android fanboys like me raving about how awesome Android devices are, how much better they are than iPhones, how much more they can do, or any of those things that I'm sure you've heard us go on about at some point or another. Just know that we're not saying that you should go out and buy the cheapest phone just because there's a little green Android on the info plaque at the store. Android is a lot of awesome things, but it is not magic, and it will not transform a low-end piece of junk into something that can rival the quality of a $600 iPhone.

So when you ask what phone to get on Verizon, and I say, "Get yourself a Droid 3," that does not mean you should go look around at the store to see what is prettiest. You asked me for a reason, so please don't blame me when you are stuck with an LG Ally that can't even play Angry Birds without force closing you to death. If you're trying to decide between an iPhone and an Android, you need to look at Androids that are going to cost about the same amount as the iPhone. I promise, you'll be glad you did.

So let's get on to the facts. Below we have one free Android handset from each of the most popular U.S. carriers, with some specs listed. Let me know if you start to see a theme.

Hit the names for the full technical specifications, courtesy of our friends over at Phone Arena.

Verizon

LG Enlighten
Android Gingerbread 2.3
3.2 inch screen
800 MHz single-core processor
3.2 Megapixel rear camera
150 MB internal storage
Slide out physical keyboard

 

Sprint

LG Optimus S
Android Froyo 2.2
3.2 inch screen
600 MHz single-core processor
3.2 Megapixel rear camera
140 MB internal storage

AT&T

LG Phoenix
Andoid Froyo 2.2
3.2 inch screen
600 MHz single-core processor
3.2 Megapixel rear camera
150 MB internal storage

T-Mobile

Samsung Dart
Android Froyo 2.2
3.14 inch screen
600 MHz single-core processor
3 Megapixel rear camera
160 MB internal storage

Now that you have an idea of what exactly you're going to be stuck with for the next 2 years because you wanted a free phone, let's take a walk down memory lane.
Let's go back to the G1, the first Android phone. Keeping in mind the specs you read above for what you're getting in your free phone nowadays, read on and see what you would have had 3 years ago.

T-Mobile G1

Android Cupcake 1.5
3.2 inch screen
528 MHz single-core processor
3.2 Megapixel rear camera
192 MB RAM 250 MB ROM
Slide out physical keyboard

Do you see something wrong here? As technology advances, the software becomes more complex, and requires better, faster, more robust hardware to run properly. But what you have now, running newer versions of Android, isn't much of a step-up from the original G1. So they've dumbed down the OS and taken things away, just so they could say it runs Froyo or Gingerbread. It's disgusting that people fall for this and never realize that if they don't pay premium costs, they will not end up with a premium handset. Now let's meet the Galaxy Nexus, arguably the best handset on the market today. The Galaxy Nexus runs around $189.99 with a new contract.

Samsung Galaxy Nexus

Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0
1.2 GHz Dual-core processor
4.65 inch screen
1 GB RAM 32 GB Internal storage
5 Megapixel rear camera 1.3 Megapixel Front facing camera
Talk time of 17 hours

That about sums it up. The whole idea here is that you're going to get what you pay for, so decide now if that $29.99 Android phone with specs from 2009 is worth it.

Spiderman might soon lose his dominance in harnessing spider silk superpowers. Scientists from the University of Wyoming, the University of Notre Dame and Zhejiang University in China have managed to genetically modify silkworms to spin stronger silk using spider genes. The new material could be used for everything from bulletproof vests to replacing tough plastics.

Researchers have long been fascinated with spider silk, a natural material that is stronger than steel. Harvesting the stuff can be tricky, however, since spiders are poor candidates for farming. Not only are they territorial, eating each other when confined to a tight space, but they are hard to handle and produce a very small amount of silk.

Silkworms, on the other hand, have helped clothe humans for millennia without too much trouble. Crossing their genes with those of a spider could mean stronger materials that require less energy to produce. This experiment has been tried before, but Professor Don Jarvis’ team’s success lies in the high quantity and strength of silk produced by their squirmy subjects.

This is not the first time Wyoming’s researchers have experimented with spider genes: Transgenic goats, whose milk contains spider silk proteins, are already breeding on campus.

Currently, the modified silkworms contain only one kind of spider-silk-producing gene and the team hopes to have success with more genes in the future. If it works, spider silk farms might become a new source of materials for greener textiles, plastics and medical implants.

Patrick Carney blames the band for ruining rock and roll in interview with Rolling Stone.
By James Montgomery

Having already spent a portion of 2011 taking Twitter shots at Lady Gaga, Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney is kicking off 2012 with another feud ... only this time, he's setting his sights on Nickleback.

In the new issue of Rolling Stone, Carney laments the current state of rock music (which, admittedly, is rather dire) and places the blame squarely on the shoulders of the Canadian quartet, whom he believes have ruined the genre with their "watered-down, post-grunge crap."

"Rock and roll is dying because people became OK with Nickelback being the biggest band in the world," he says. "So they became OK with the idea that the biggest rock band in the world is always going to be sh--. Therefore, you should never try to be the biggest rock band in the world. F--- that! Rock and roll is the music I feel the most passionate about, and I don't like to see it f---ing ruined and spoon-fed down our throats [with] this ... horrendous sh--. When people start lumping us into that kind of sh--, it's like 'F--- you,' honestly."

Maybe he hasn't heard "Bottoms Up." Of course, in the interview, Carney was equally harsh on himself, saying he "suck[s] at the drums" and admitting that he agrees with most folks who call him awkward. But the most savage of his criticisms are definitely directed toward Nickelback. (A spokesperson for the band did not respond to MTV News' request for comment.) We may be witnessing the birth of our first great rock feud. Though 2012 is just five days old, it looks like it's going to be a big year indeed.

The slow drumbeat to legalizing marijuana in America continued Friday evening when Salon.com columnist David Sirota appeared on Current TV’s The Young Turks.

Sirota mentioned a recent Gallup poll in which half of Americans support legalizing marijuana, with 77 percent also backing medical marijuana. With those figures, Sirota and host Cenk Uygur slammed White House and Washington figures still viewing marijuana legalization as a radical idea.

“I think if you look at those numbers like that, what you see is the mainstream, centrist position, is to support legalizing marijuana,” he said. “And the extremists are those who continue to fight the drug war.”

Comedian Louis C.K. recently self-released a video of his stand-up special, “Live at the Beacon Theater,” for $5 online. He personally paid for the production costs up front in an experiment to see if this was a cheaper, more efficient, and less restrictive method of getting his content to his fans. In doing so, he cut out paying the middlemen — including the marketing team — and avoided the red tape of working with studio executives.

In twelve days, Louis C.K. earned more than $1 million from people downloading the special — far more than the $170,000 it cost to produce the video. Louis C.K. gave his thoughts in a post on his site:

“I would have been paid [less than $200,000] by a large company to simply perform the show and let them sell it to you, but they would have charged you about $20 for the video … This way, you only paid $5, you can use the video any way you want.”

Coming from the online marketing world of The Search Agency, I was particularly interested in how he was able to reap a significant ROI without using any of the traditional or online marketing efforts usually made on behalf of comedians and entertainers. Google “Jerry Seinfeld” or “Jay Leno” and you’ll see the paid AdWords links.

Instead, Louis C.K. announced the release of the special on his website and followed up with a personal plea from his Twitter account: “Please don’t torrent this video. I paid for the whole thing with my own stupid money.” He also participated in a Reddit Q&A session with his fans and he discussed his video on “Fresh Air” on NPR. He didn’t appear on Letterman or Leno, he didn’t do an interview with the New York Times. He didn’t do any of the more traditional publicity executed by the PR and marketing teams in the lead-up to a big media product release.

He let his fans do all of the PR.

An alternative comedian, Louis C.K. does not have a PR team or community manager to manage social media assets. He claims to have little knowledge of social media. He told Conan O’Brien that he “hates Twitter.”  There is no official Louis C.K. Facebook page, and he personally manages and occasionally engages his 897,707 Twitter followers. At the end of the day, Louis C.K. followed the most basic best practices of social media and promotions outreach and reaped all the benefits of a best-case scenario.

Let me reiterate something — Louis C.K. is not terribly famous.  He doesn’t have a built-in fan base that will buy anything he tweets.  He has been a successful writer behind the scenes, but has not had enough onscreen time to earn mainstream fame.  His TV show “Louie” on FX was very quietly nominated for two Emmys in 2011, but the show’s highest viewership in history was recorded at 1.57 million viewers.  This is just a fraction of reigning comedy The Big Bang Theory’s lowest rating of 7.34 million viewers. Even reruns of The Big Bang Theory on cable syndication regularly defeat Louie — just last week 4.3 million viewers turned in to TBS to watch a rerun.

Without the luxury of stardom, Louis C.K. sold $1 million of video downloads by trusting his audience. He showed this by selling DRM-free videos, then gently asking them to purchase, not pirate. This openness built a relationship of mutual trust and respect with his fans.  Companies looking to create successful online marketing campaigns should try to build similarly long-term relationships with customers based on trust and direct communication.

All this success happened in the middle of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) bill controversy. Louis C.K. promoted his own video and demonstrated innovative entrepreneurship without losing significant revenue to Internet piracy. And he did this without any legislative digital protection, proving that making original content available, convenient, and reasonably priced can be enough to quell illegal downloads. Louis C.K. said on his website that “if anybody stole it, it wasn’t many of you. Pretty much everybody bought it.” Perhaps the burden should fall on companies to create products that appeal to willing buyers instead of asking legislators for protection.

Here is my list of lessons from the success of Louis C.K.’s self-released video:

1. Build relationships with customers using an approach that is engaging, personal, and honest.
2. Work toward long-term relationships with your customers so that they will trust your brand as long as you deliver high quality content and products.
3. Create a reasonable price. When the price point is attainable, both fans and people on the fence are willing to pay for the product rather than hunt for a pirated version.
4. Read up on the Stop Online Piracy Act. Stay informed when the bill returns to the House of Representatives this year. Check out Sergey Brin’s Google+ post and I Work for the Internet.

The thing is — Louis C.K.’s online marketing campaign wasn’t really a campaign. It was a public agreement that he made with his audience. He promised to create and release an honest product, and the audience promised to continue supporting his future projects. The consumers didn’t just buy a DRM-free download of Louis C.K.’s standup special — they bought into a trusted relationship with the comedian.

No strangers to being pampered on the road, the rich and famous in recent years jumped into the luxury-hotel game—just in time to watch the economy slide into recession.

But neophyte hoteliers such as entertainer Gloria Estefan, eBay Inc. founder Pierre Omidyar and Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates can rest easier: As business travel starts to pick up, high-end hotels are rebounding, offering their famous owners some solace that their purchases will be more than costly trophy assets.

The high-end luxury hotel market is rebounding, with some celebrities who have invested in hotels are benefiting, Kris Hudson reports on the News Hub.

The four-star, 94-room Costa d'Este Beach Resort in Vero Beach, Fla., owned by Ms. Estefan and her husband, Emilio, a music and movie producer, opened ahead of the recession in 2008 after several years of delays due to hurricane damage in its area. "A lot of people said, 'You should scrap that,'" Mr. Estefan said. "But I'm very persistent. We took a big risk."

But now, he says "people are coming back" and revenue per available room, a key measure of hotel profitability, is up 16.7% during the first 11 months of 2011 compared with the same period a year earlier.

All hotel categories are seeing improvements, but high-end hotels are faring better than most. Luxury and upscale hotels in the U.S. posted gains in revenue per room of 21% and 13%, respectively, in the first 10 months of this year in comparison to the same period in 2009, according to Smith Travel Research.

The surge is in part because the fortunes of affluent business and leisure travelers have sprung back faster than for the masses, according to analysts.

Emilio and Gloria Estefan, shown here in a marketing photo, are a big part of the branding for Costa d'Este Beach Resort in Vero Beach, Fla.

Hotel ownership long has appealed to celebrities and business titans, who find that their fame and personal touch brings guests to the properties, as they do with restaurants. Actor Robert De Niro owns the Greenwich Hotel in Manhattan, for example. But the real-estate boom brought a string of high-profile purchases, including Dell Inc. founder Michael Dell buying two Four Seasons hotels in Hawaii and Mr. Omidyar financing a new chain of ultraluxury hotels.

Celebrities and business moguls tend to invest in hotels "for reasons other than economic returns," including the artistic element in the design and the feeling of being a host, said Bjorn Hanson, dean of the New York University Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism and Sports Management. "That said, I am certain even famous hoteliers are relieved by the industry's recent rebound."

Indeed, some properties that were facing debt defaults just a year ago are now landing mortgage refinancing deals.

In 2009, Beanie Baby tycoon Ty Warner's four hotels, including the Four Seasons New York, weren't generating enough cash flow to qualify for an automatic extension of their mortgage without Mr. Warner making concessions. He ultimately paid $35 million of the loans' balance to win a two-year reprieve.

Now, with cash flow up 300% since 2009, Mr. Warner's Ty Warner Hotels & Resorts obtained new loans for the hotels on Nov. 29, according to people familiar with the loans.

The Four Seasons New York now has a five-year, $240 million mortgage provided by Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley at a 4.75% interest rate, these people say. The other hotels—located in California and Mexico—have a $100 million, five-year mortgage from the same banks at 6% interest. Mr. Warner's representatives didn't return calls for comment.

The rich and famous were drawn to the hotel business in part through their own experiences. "Half of my life is spent in hotels," said Kate Pierson, a founding member of the B-52s pop band, whose hits included "Love Shack." "I just knew what I'd like to see."

In recent weeks we discovered BitTorrent pirates at the RIAA, Sony, Fox, Universal and even law-abiding organizations such as the Department of Homeland Security. By now it should be clear that people are using BitTorrent pretty much everywhere, and not only for lawful downloads. Today we can add the U.S. House of Representatives to that list, the place where lawmakers are drafting the much discussed “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA).

YouHaveDownloaded is a treasure trove full of incriminating data on alleged BitTorrent pirates in organizations all across the world.

Unauthorized downloads occur even in the most unexpected of places, from the palace of the French President, via the Church of God, to the RIAA.

Although we don’t plan to go on forever trawling the archives, we felt that there was at least one place that warranted further investigation – the U.S. House of Representatives. Since it’s the birthplace of the pending SOPA bill, we wondered how many of the employees there have engaged in unauthorized copying.

The answer is yet again unambiguous – they pirate a lot.

In total we found more than 800 IP-addresses assigned to the U.S. House of Representatives from where content has been shared on BitTorrent. After a closer inspection it quickly became clear the House isn’t just using it for legitimate downloads either, quite the opposite.

Below we’ll list a few of the 800 hits we found on YouHaveDownloaded, which in turn represent just a fraction of total downloads since the site only tracks a limited percentage of total BitTorrent traffic. Again, this is real and confirmed data that is just as good as the evidence used by the RIAA when they sued tens of thousands of people for file-sharing.

Something that immediately caught our eye are the self-help books that are downloaded in the House. “Crucial Conversations- Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High,” for example, may indeed be of interest to the political elite in the United States. And “How to Answer Hard Interview Questions And Everything Else You Need to Know to Get the Job You Want” may be helpful for those who aspire to higher positions.

Books tend to be popular in the House because we found quite a few more, including “Do Not Open – An Encyclopedia of the World’s Best-Kept Secrets” and “How Things Work Encyclopedia”. But of course the people at the heart of democracy are also downloading familiar content such as Windows 7, popular TV-shows and movies.

And there was another category we ran into more than we would have wanted too. It appears that aside from self-help books, House employees are also into adult themed self-help videos. We’ll list one of the least explicit here below, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Although the above is interesting, as the House is the place where lawmakers are currently trying to push though SOPA, this revelation might actually help their cause. If even people at the House are “stealing” content, we really need SOPA to counter it, they may say.

The question is though, whether SOPA will be able to break the habits of millions of Americans, as there will always be alternatives available. And even if it manages to put a dent in the current piracy rates, is that really worth it considering the potential damage SOPA can do to the open Internet and legal businesses?