Still Ain't No Fortunate Sons

When he fronted Creedence Clearwater Revivial, John Fogerty wrote one of the most subtle but appropriate political protests during America's follies in Viet Nam ...

Here it is, almost four decades later. The White House is still full of men who didn't serve in a fighting war. Meanwhile, the social strata of casualties coming back to the USA usually aren't seen at the same restaurants, unless they're waiting the tables:

Some folks are born made to wave the flag,
Ooh, they're red, white and blue.
And when the band plays "Hail to the chief",
Ooh, they point the cannon at you, Lord,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no senator's son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no,

Some folks are born silver spoon in hand,
Lord, don't they help themselves, oh.
But when the taxman comes to the door,
Lord, the house looks like a rummage sale, yes,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no millionaire's son, no.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, no.

Some folks inherit star spangled eyes,
Ooh, they send you down to war, Lord,
And when you ask them, "How much should we give?"
Ooh, they only answer More! more! more! yo,

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no military son, son.
It ain't me, it ain't me; I ain't no fortunate one, one.

It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate one, no no no,
It ain't me, it ain't me, I ain't no fortunate son, no no no.

CyberSlang Is Becoming Entrenched Everywhere

I disapprove of this trend, myself, but those who like to say English is a 'living language' are getting their wish granted in cyber-spades ...

Chandra M Hayslett of the Newhouse News Service reports on grammatical shortcuts which have escaped the realms of text-messaging and e-mail:

Tia Burnett couldn't believe what she was seeing when students turned in work that looked more like an instant-message conversation than an English assignment.

Some of her students at Orange High School in New Jersey's Essex County started sneaking abbreviations -- "u" for "you," "2" for "to" and "4" for "for" -- into their papers and other class assignments.

Burnett quickly put a stop to it.

"I would remind students not to use abbreviations in writing. This is casual e-mail language," said Burnett, who is in her first year as language-arts supervisor for grades 7-12.

Teachers, administrators and businesspeople say abbreviations commonly used in e-mails, instant messaging and text messages are creeping into assignments and formal writing, and some believe it is hurting the way students think.

Tom Moran, English supervisor at East Brunswick High School in Middlesex County, N.J., said the pace of electronic communication has "infected" some students' writing.

"E-mails are usually composed at lightning speeds, without any concern about editing, clarity or word choice," Moran said. "This is fine, since most e-mails are not meant to stand alone as polished pieces of prose. The problem arises when students begin thinking at that speed without pausing to consider what, exactly, they are saying."

The volume of electronic communication is growing at a startling pace. During the first six months of 2006, 64.8 billion text messages were sent, nearly double the first half of 2005.

The effects vary, scholars said.

In Canada, two university professors concluded there is no adverse impact on syntax or the formation of sentences. In their study, University of Toronto linguistics professors Derek Denis and Sali Tagliamonte found that although students may be text-messaging, most messages don't contain abbreviated words.

"In our corpus of over a million words, all the IM forms accounted for only about 2 percent," Denis said, noting they studied 70 teens during 2004 and 2005. "Though these teens are using more informal language than in their speech, they are also using more formal variables as well."

"This tells us that teens are using English vibrantly, creatively and are able to use it correctly."

That may be the case for Canadian teens, but Rutgers University lecturer Alex Lewis says he teaches freshmen basic writing mechanics and grammar in his expository-writing course.

"These kids spend an enormous amount of time writing, but their formal understanding of writing is limited," Lewis said.

Naomi Baron, professor of linguistics at American University in Washington, pointed out that some IM and texting abbreviations have histories that predate the computer revolution -- "w/" for "with," for instance -- and are likely to remain a part of language.

"I would not be surprised to see some of these abbreviations around several decades from now," Baron said. "Similarly, an abbreviation such as 'LOL' (laugh out loud) or 'BTW' (by the way) might stick, while others, such as 'OMG' (oh my God) or 'IMHO' (in my humble opinion) might pass -- through the luck of the draw."

English: The Hardest Language to Learn

English may be the universal language in this era, but it wasn't based upon a logical assessment of its nomenclature ...

Here are an abundance of examples as to why English is so hard to learn:

1) The bandage was wound around the wound.

2) The farm was used to produce produce.

3) The dump was so full that it had to refuse more refuse.

4) We must polish the Polish furniture.

5) He could lead if he would get the lead out.

6) The soldier decided to desert his dessert in the desert.

7) Since there is no time like the present, he thought it was time to present the present.

8) A bass was painted on the head of the bass drum.

9) When shot at, the dove dove into the bushes.

10) I did not object to the object.

11) The insurance was invalid for the invalid.

12) There was a row among the oarsmen about how to row.

13) They were too close to the door to close it.

14) The buck does funny things when the does are present.

15) A seamstress and a sewer fell down into a sewer line.

16) To help with planting, the farmer taught his sow to sow.

17) The wind was too strong to wind the sail.

18) After a number of injections my jaw got number.

19) Upon seeing the tear in the painting I shed a tear.

20) I had to subject the subject to a series of tests.

21) How can I intimate this to my most intimate friend?

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren't invented in England nor French fries
in France. Sweetmeats are candies while sweetbreads, which aren't sweet, are meat.

We take English for granted. But if we explore its paradoxes, we find that quicks and can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guinea pig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is it that writers write but fingers don't fing, grocers don't groce and hammers don't ham? If the plural of tooth is teeth, why isn't the plural of booth beeth? One goose, 2 geese. So one moose, 2 meese?

Doesn't it seem illogical that you can make amends but not one amend? If you have a bunch of odds and ends and get rid of all but one of them, what do you call it? If teachers taught, why didn't preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? Ship by truck and send cargo by ship? Have noses that run and feet that smell? How can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wiseman and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out and in which, an alarm goes off by going on.

English was invented by people,not computers, and it reflects the creativity of the human race,which, of course, is not a race at all.

And why doesn't "Buick" rhyme with "quick"?

Virtual Life At a Keystroke

Online communities like these are popping up everywhere ...

If you've yet to have an experience, allow Giles Whittell of London's Times to give you a sampling:

At the Hot Licks Dance Club it helps to be able to dance. If you don’t have the moves, people tend to ignore you; but if you do — and especially if you’ve made an effort with your outfit — it can be very friendly indeed.

Or so it claims. The Times, however, cannot confirm this. Visiting the club in tight, blue leggings and a white T-shirt stretched over rippling muscles, your correspondent paused at the edge of the dancefloor, soaking up the Blade Runner ambience and hoping to be noticed.

At least 20 couples were grinding away to the Commitments’ thumping rendition of Mustang Sally. “I” was alone, but so was a slender young woman dancing provocatively in a dark cloak near the stage. I strolled over and was about to say hello when she cut me off.

“Sorry, gotta go,” she said. And then she turned away and took off, literally, like Superwoman.

It was an apt introduction to the take-no-prisoners nightclub scene in Second Life, of which Hot Licks is a tiny part. This is a place where novices can feel as gauche as pimply adolescents — but everyone can “fly” and regular visitors believe they are pioneering the biggest technological innovation since the world wide web.

Second Life is not a real place. It is entirely digital, and so is everyone there. Known as avatars, they talk in speech bubbles and walk like Buzz Lightyear. They are virtual representatives of real people who choose their online gender, name and basic appearance when registering on Second Life’s internet home page. I called mine Bill.

The whole of Second Life exists online: gigabyte after gigabyte of software script, most of it written by residents, all of it loaded on to 3,000 internet servers humming quietly in warehouses a few miles south of San Francisco. Each server is a stackable box of silicon brainpower, and between 150 and 200 new ones are added every month as Second Life’s population climbs towards 400,000.

It is here that the next online revolution may have begun. Second Life, and other virtual worlds like it, are growing as fast as the internet itself was 13 years ago. So far their users are mainly young and computer-savvy, happy to write their own software or buy it from other users to enhance their virtual lives.

But if virtual world operators succeed in wooing the masses as the worldwide web has, our experience of cyberspace will be transformed.

In Second Life last night, among waterfalls and lights on an idyllic island off the coast of nowhere in particular, American Apparel, a Los Angeles-based clothing brand, staged the grand opening of its first virtual mega-store. There was real music, courtesy of the brand’s own radio station, but there were also virtual tacos, virtual goody bags and virtual beer. Free virtual T-shirts were handed out to virtual guests and there were even discount coupons for real people determined to buy real T-shirts for themselves.

“We’ve been talking about virtual reality for years,” said Raz Schionning, the man behind the megastore. “Finally we’ve reached the point where anyone with a decent computer and enough (internet) bandwidth can see what that reality might look like.”

Virtual worlds have existed since the mid-1990s, and at least ten million people pay monthly fees to play multiplayer online games in them; but such games offer little in the way of socialising that cannot be done faster and cheaper in internet chatrooms.

Second Life, as new users quickly learn, is not a game at all. Its founder, Philip Rosedale, is an avowed Utopian with a physics degree from the University of California and surfer-dude looks. He has said he is “building a new country,” and there is something to the boast.

Its avatars can buy “land,” build and do whatever they like on it, and set up businesses that make real money. They can also get dressed, get married, get divorced and get lucky.

As in the real world, there is a lot of sex in Second Life, and most of it goes on behind closed “doors.” It requires consent, but also special software to endow your alter ego with the desired genitalia and make him or her move realistically. This software has to be specially written or bought for “in-world” currency (typically less than £1’s worth), then wrapped in a clickable “sex ball” which appears onscreen as an icon.

Children are not supposed to be involved. They have their own Teen Second Life, screened for “mature” content, although in practical terms there is little to stop them teleporting themselves to where they shouldn’t be. As for grown-ups, some sign up for mere carnality and some purely for business, but most seem to harbour more complex wish-fulfilment fantasies. In Second Life, after all, the fat can be thin, the shy can be brash, the gay can play straight and everyone can pretend to be Rockefeller.

“I’m constantly inspired by what people are building there,” said Jon Kossman, a British Second Lifer and professional podcaster who spends $125 (£67) a month renting 30,000 virtual square metres of land, some of which he hopes to sublet to capitalise on a virtual property boom among his fellow podcasters.

“Building,” in any virtual world, means creating your own software tools, which can show up on screen as anything from a sex ball to a skyscraper. If this is geeky, all the world’s geeks are gravitating to Second Life. Launched three years ago with 1,000 residents, almost all from the US, it now has 370,000 and is adding up to 8,000 more a day, a tenth of them from Britain. If this were real, it would be one of the fastest-growing cities in the world.

New arrivals register their real names and birthdays on the website and choose names, genders and generic “looks” for their avatars. They then congregate on a sandy promontory with the sound of a soft sea breeze wafting out of their computers.

I chose Bill, then Towradgi (from a list of uniformly peculiar surnames) and a brown-skinned “nightclub guy” body in preference to “boy next door” and “cybergoth.” Bill was presented to the virtual world with a defiantly female torso, so I selected “edit appearance” from a drop-down menu and replaced my breasts with muscles.

Soon afterwards, I learnt to “fly” and was instantly in danger of becoming addicted. Soaring over an island-scape reminiscent of the artificial archipelagos being built off the coast of Dubai, I scribbled: “You could waste a lot of time on this.”

Yet waste is not always the right word. Last weekend the American Cancer Society held its second annual online “Relay For Life” in Second Life and raised $40,000 in real money in two days, $800 coming from the sale of a single virtual car called the Dominus Shadow.

MTV has hosted fashion shows in Second Life. Major League Baseball built an entire stadium there in which to broadcast this season’s Home Run Derby on miniature “big” screens. McDonald’s has opened burger restaurants in other virtual worlds. Newsweek has broadcast from a virtual studio, and Nike sells virtual sneakers that make avatars run faster.

Recalling this, I saw a way to break the ice with an attractive female avatar in a grey dress in one of Second Life’s myriad shopping malls.

Bill: “Hi.”

Her: “Hello.”

Bill: “Do you know if they sell Nikes here?”

Her: “This is my first visit. I’m looking for a handbag.”

Lacking even the software for a handshake, we ended it there; but some expert users are thriving so conspicuously in Second Life that real life hardly compares. Nathan Keir, an Australian programmer, created a bingo-like game called Tringo, that has since been licensed to Nintendo for sale in the real world. Chris Mead, from Norwich, makes £1,000 a week from “in-world” sales of software that lets avatars cuddle. Jon Kossman hopes to build a virtual monorail through his podcasters’ district and then charge passengers for tickets; and Anshe Chung (who releases only her avatar’s name) employs 17 real people to manage a virtual property empire worth $250,000. In all, virtual currency worth nearly $6 million changed hands in Second Life last month.

None of those involved needed permission from Rosedale or his company, Linden Lab. They just bought land at $1,250 per 16-acre island and went to work; but all of them are of consuming interest to business and marketing gurus, who see in virtual worlds a vision of the future in which work is disguised as play.

“These online environments are structured such that they reward and seduce you to perform complex, tedious tasks,” writes Nick Yee, of Stanford University. “How difficult would it be for developers to embed real work into these environments?”

Not as difficult, one suspects, as it will be to control rogue avatars bent on spoiling other people’s fun (or work) as virtual worlds expand. For now, though, Second Life has the security question covered. Paid “liaisons” enforce strict rules against intolerance, harassment, assault, disclosure of real-world information about avatars without their consent and “disturbing the peace”. Orwell had nothing on this. But then, as Orwell knew, Utopia is not the same as anarchy.

Seattle Prepares to Lead the Wireless World Again

Harbingers of future trends in wireless technology are on the scene again in the Pacific Northwest ...

It's kept Seattle Times hi-tech reporter Tricia Duryee busy:

A roundtable discussing the newest trends in the wireless industry recently drew a hearty crowd to a Seattle law office on an otherwise overcast day.

But the 60 people there were hardly gloomy.

In fact, they brought an enthusiasm that spurred such responses as "of course" when attendees were asked whether they, too, were starting a wireless venture.

It turns out half of the people in the room were starting companies, allowing the event to serve as a microcosm of today's Seattle startup scene.

The wireless industry has always been strong here, something amplified by a quarterly report on venture investing issued by VentureOne and Ernst & Young.

The Puget Sound region has been home to McCaw Cellular Communications, which later became AT&T Wireless (and today is Cingular Wireless), and Bellevue is where VoiceStream Wireless was founded and later became T-Mobile USA.

But there is a new generation of wireless companies in development. This time, upstarts are less concerned with networks and more centered on applications.

The trend is said to be a reflection of the second wave of the Internet, called Web 2.0, and it doesn't hurt that Seattle has a lot of software engineers.

"I think a Web 2.0 company that has thought about its wireless strategy is something fundamental," said Dan Rosen, a startup consultant and former venture capitalist.

"If you think about it, Web 2.0 is about the realization of using the Web in your daily life, and most of our life is spent wirelessly," he said.

A number of startups locally are building off the dual expertise of wireless and software.

The Venture One/Ernst & Young report shows Washington communications companies -- many developing wireless networks and services -- are on track to receive at least as much money this year as last, despite a downtick this past quarter.

National figures also show a slight increase in activity in the communications sector.

Home sweet home

Two companies participating in last week's roundtable are developing wireless applications.

Seattle's Ontela is creating a wireless service that helps camera-phone users upload pictures to the Internet, and mPoria provides a shopping service on the mobile phone.

But countless other wireless companies have started here, including M:Metrics, which researches wireless consumer habits; Melodeo, which creates mobile podcasting software, Medio Systems, which is creating a mobile search application; Bellevue's SNAPin, which is developing self-help tools for the mobile phone; and Sotto Wireless, which helps companies cut their landlines by providing cellphones that work off a Wi-Fi network when indoors.

"This is a wonderful confluence of things. There's still a lot of carrier presence in Seattle, compared to anywhere else," said Tom Huseby, a partner at Bellevue's SeaPoint Ventures.

In addition to Cingular's offices and T-Mobile's headquarters, Alltel maintains an office in Bellevue after buying Western Wireless.

Clearwire, a company started by pioneer Craig McCaw, is building a wireless data network called WiMax from its headquarters in Kirkland.

Huseby said that when that level of wireless expertise is mixed with rich software skills, innovation starts to occur.

"We basically have 1 ½ carriers, which is more than any other location; we have the McCaw mafia rattling off the walls, and then we have Microsoft, which has been a magnet for software engineering," Huseby said.

Innovation is only one side of the equation. There also must be money to fuel the startups, a resource flush here with multiple investment organizations focused almost exclusively on wireless.

For instance, former Western Wireless executives including CEO John Stanton have started Trilogy Equity Partners. Rally Capital is led by Dennis Weibling, formerly of Nextel Partners, which was a Nextel Communications affiliate before both were purchased by Sprint. And there's also Eagle River, McCaw's investment arm.

In addition, Huseby's SeaPoint scouts wireless deals for funds in California. Bellevue-based Ignition Partners, which has a number of partners from the wireless world, is fairly active.

Recent occurrence

If wireless products and services are being created and getting funding, it's only a recent occurrence.

The broader communications sector, which includes fiber-optic networks, wireless networks and services and telecom companies, was hugely affected by the technology bust in 2000, even though it received far less publicity than the downturn of the Internet business.

In 2000, almost $23 billion in venture capital was invested in communications deals, according to VentureOne. The following year, that fell to $8.6 billion.

In Washington state, that sector was hit even harder -- $715 million was invested in 2000, plunging to $150 million the following year.

The downward momentum continued until bottoming out in 2004 and 2005.

VentureOne research manager Jessica Canning said investment soared during the bubble because everyone assumed the increase in Internet traffic would need a network to support it.

"It really was the telecom and Internet bubble that hit at the same time," she said.

Although things have improved, it is still early to call the increase a full recovery.

In the U.S., the communications sector received $2.4 billion during the first three quarters of this year. That will likely meet or surpass the $3.1 billion invested in 2005.

If you look at what is doing well within that sector, you will see increased investments in wireless equipment and service providers.

So far this year, $969 million has been invested nationally in wireless deals, beating the $931 million raised for all of 2005.

The equivalent figures are not yet available for Washington state, but the broader communication sector is faring well.

So far this year, three companies here raised $44.3 million. Although none received investments in the third quarter, the year is still on track to outpace 2005 when four companies received $50.5 million.

Clearwire, considered a wireless-network company, has raised more than $2 billion but was not included in the report.

Competition a challenge

Huseby said one challenge with more companies entering the space is that it increases competition.

Typically, if a company is building a mobile application, it is trying to sell it to the wireless carriers.

"It's getting harder to sell anything to the carriers," he said.

That raises the question as to whether the short-term increase in investments and interest by entrepreneurs will be sustainable.

"Just because there's a lot of startups, doesn't mean there's going to be a lot of successes," Huseby said.

Stay Trim, Stay Alive

While most of us would think that the Associated Press' medical writer, Lindsey Tanner, has shown an amazing grasp of the obvious with this report, most of us would still be well-served to heed it sooner or later:

CHICAGO — One of the largest, longest studies of aging found one more reason to stay trim and active: It could greatly raise your odds of living to at least age 85.

In fact, chances of being healthy in old age are better than even for people who at mid-life have normal blood pressure, good grip strength and several other physical characteristics associated with being fit and active.

These include normal levels of blood glucose and fats in the blood called triglycerides - both also associated with avoiding excess calories and eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables.

Other habits long linked with good health and well-being -- avoiding smoking and excess alcohol, and being married -- also improved chances of surviving well into the 80s.

The study involved 5,820 Japanese-American men from the Hawaiian island of Oahu, who were followed for up to 40 years, but the researchers said the results likely apply to women and men of other ethnic heritage, too.

"There appears to be a lot we can do about modifying our risk and increasing the odds for aging more healthfully," said lead author Dr. Bradley Willcox, a scientist at the Pacific Health Research Institute in Honolulu.

"It's good news because it really gives you something to zero in on if we want to be healthy at older age," Willcox said.

The results appear in a recent Journal of the American Medical Association.

The study shows "that you can still live healthy until age 85 if you live right," said Dr. Carl Lavie, medical director of preventive cardiology at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans.

Most factors the researchers identified as contributing to longevity have long been associated with healthy living but the study does a good job of "putting it together in one package" and showing the combined benefits, said Lavie, who was not involved in the research.

While Japanese-American men tend to be thinner and healthier than the general U.S. population, Lavie said it makes sense to think that the same factors that influence their survival would also affect other people.

The study notes that people aged 85 and older are the fastest-growing age group in most industrialized countries and are among the largest consumers of health care resources.

Figuring out how to help people remain healthy as they age is thus a major research priority, the study authors said.

It's also a priority for doctors with middle-aged patients who want to know how to survive into old age, said Dr. Gary Schaer, a cardiologist at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago.

"This kind of paper directly affects how I take care of patients," Schaer said. "It's a really important study."

Study participants were in their 50s on average when the research began; 3,369 or 58 percent died before age 85. Health was evaluated at the start and then at eight follow-up examinations.

Eleven percent - 655 men - reached a milestone the researchers dubbed "exceptional survival." That was reaching age 85 without any mental or physical impairment, including cancer, heart disease, stroke, lung disease, Parkinson's disease and diabetes.

The men who had none of nine disease risk factors at mid-life had a nearly 70 percent chance of living to age 85 and a 55 percent chance of reaching the exceptional milestone.

By contrast, those with six or more risk factors at mid-life had a 22 percent chance of living to age 85 and a less than 10 percent chance of exceptional survival.

The nine mid-life risk factors were: being overweight, meaning a body-mass index of 25 or more; having high blood glucose levels, which can lead to diabetes; having high triglyceride levels, which contribute to heart disease; having high blood pressure; having low grip strength - unable to squeeze at least 86 pounds of pressure with a handheld device; smoking; consuming three or more alcoholic drinks daily; not graduating from high school; and being unmarried.

"These risk factors can be easily measured in a clinical setting and are, for the most part, modifiable," the researchers said.

The study was paid for by grants from the National Institutes of Health and the Hawaii Community Foundation.

Coming Soon: The Oakland Cyber-A's

It was only a matter of time before a sporting venue took hi-tech to the proverbial 'next level' ...

Jordan Robertson, business writer for the Associated Press has found that, when the Oakland A's build their new baseball stadium, they intend to go where no geek has gone before:

SAN FRANCISCO — If Cisco Systems Inc has its way, the Oakland Athletics' new ballpark in Fremont will be the stadium of the future.

Fans will swipe electronic tickets stored on cell phones. Bleacher bums will view instant replays at their seats with laptop computers. And digital advertising displays will be able to switch images based on the buying habits of the people walking by through data embedded in their cell phones.

That was the vision that A's owner Lew Wolff laid out to Fremont City Council members this week in a pitch for Cisco Field, a planned ballpark featuring the company's technology, Fremont Mayor Bob Wasserman said Thursday.

"It's fabulous - the technology is something else," Wasserman said. "It went over my head. It only takes about 10 seconds to go beyond me when you're talking about technology. I can't say I understand it all, but it's going to be quite a ballpark."

Wolff's pitch came just weeks after Cisco CEO John Chambers delivered a less-than-subtle presentation at Oracle OpenWorld about the advances that could be possible at a new ballpark in the San Francisco Bay area.

Chambers led a lively presentation last month demonstrating how Cisco technology and intelligent networks would enable fans at the hypothetical stadium to buy and upgrade tickets through smart cell phones, access real-time scorecards at their seats and buy pictures of themselves from crowd cameras and pay to show them on the Jumbotron.

The A's were the hypothetical team featured in all of the video and images in the demonstration.

Cisco and the A's both have declined to comment about the reported agreement, which would create a 32,000- to 35,000-seat ballpark surrounded by homes and shops on a 143-acre parcel currently held by Cisco.

Wasserman said a news conference is scheduled for Tuesday at the San Jose headquarters of Cisco, the world's largest networking equipment maker, to announce the partnership.

Wireless access is becoming an increasingly common feature at ballparks, but analysts said a park built with the reported features would be a big step forward.

However, while the ballpark could be the ultimate consumer showcase for a company that derives most of its sales from corporate customers, the strategy also could backfire if the entire system doesn't work properly or fans don't warm to the idea, said Sam Wilson, a communications equipment analyst with JMP Securities.

"These things work both ways," he said. "If everything works flawlessly, it's a great showcase. But if everything doesn't work flawlessly, it's the exact opposite. It's a laughingstock."

Cisco, which makes the routers, switches and other devices used to link networks and direct traffic on the Internet, is trying to shed its image as solely a maker of networking infrastructure gear.

The company also hopes to capitalize on products and services that utilize the network. One example is TelePresence, a technology similar to video conferencing that Cisco introduced last month that aims to deliver a three-dimensional feeling that the participants are all in the same room.

Earlier this year, Wolff confirmed that the A's, who share the Oakland Coliseum with the NFL's Oakland Raiders, were exploring a move to Fremont, about 25 miles south of Oakland on the east side of San Francisco Bay.

Wasserman said talks between the city and the A's are still at an early stage, and that the earliest the A's could begin playing there is 2011.

Three Blind Mice: A Thing of the Past?

It's been quite a week for lab mice ...

The latest chronicling of their fortunes comes from Rick Weiss of the Washington Post, who reports on efforts to restore eyesight to the blind:

WASHINGTON -- Blind mice regained some ability to see after getting transplants of cells taken from the eyes of other mice, strengthening the prospect that it may someday be possible to restore vision in some people who have lost most or all of their eyesight, scientists reported Wednesday.

Researchers in London and Michigan who did the work warned that it would be years before similar efforts might be tried in people who have lost their vision from macular degeneration, the kind of blindness addressed in the mouse study.

But they said the new study showed for the first time that light-detecting retina cells -- which in this case were taken from other animals but which scientists have begun to grow from human embryonic stem cells -- can orient themselves properly after being injected into a blind eye, connect to other nerve cells and communicate appropriately with visual centers in the brain.

"It's still at the research stage, but it's very promising," said Anand Swaroop, a professor of ophthalmology, visual science and human genetics at the University of Michigan Medical School's W.K. Kellogg Eye Center in Ann Arbor.

Swaroop led seminal work in recent years that identified the cells in the eye's retina that grow into "rod" cells during fetal development -- the cells that are responsible for black-and-white vision. He was one of nine researchers involved in the new work, led by Robin Ali of London's Institute of Ophthalmology and described in today's issue of the journal Nature.

The new work is not the first to show evidence of restored visual acuity after the injection of immature retinal cells into failing eyes. But in previous studies, including one released in September involving rats, failing eyesight was salvaged by transplanting cells whose job is to nourish light-detecting cells. That approach might help people who are going blind because of the gradual loss of their own nourishing cells, but it would be of no use to those who have already lost vision because of the failure of their light-sensitive cells, known as rods and cones.

By contrast, the new work involved transplants of immature rod cells themselves. That means it holds the potential to restore vision even in those who have already lost those crucial cells, scientists said.

"This opens the whole possibility of restoring vision for people who have already become blind," said Robert Lanza, who is pursuing related work with embryonic stem cells at the biotech firm Advanced Cell Technology in Worcester, Mass. "It suggests you can really reconstruct the retina, something no one was sure we could biologically achieve."

The new work began with the retrieval of cells from the retinas of newborn mice, whose eyes are in an early stage of development that is equivalent to two or three months of fetal development in humans.

Using a cell-sorting technique developed in Swaroop's Michigan laboratory, the team isolated a certain kind of cell that is not a stem cell -- that is, it is no longer capable of becoming any number of different kinds of cells but is committed to becoming a rod cell -- but is not yet fully developed.

The researchers injected about 1,000 of these cells into the retinas of mice that had an inborn defect that leads to blindness in much the same way as macular degeneration, the leading cause of blindness in humans 55 and older. There the cells completed their development into light-detecting rods.

Autopsy exams showed that the cells had made connections to surrounding nerve cells that feed visual signals to the brain. In followup studies, blind mice were exposed to light a few weeks after their cell transplants. The animals' brains responded to the light and their pupils narrowed, showing that those nerve connections were appropriate and functional.

Lanza said he has been able to coax human embryonic stem cells to become cells that look very much like the immature rod cells used in the study. Mature rod cells are not malleable enough to work, Ali's team found, and totally immature stem cells present a risk of tumor growth.

While one option is to retrieve the useful cells from aborted fetuses, Lanza believes researchers will be able to grow them en masse from embryonic stem cells.

Among other important studies yet to be done, Swaroop said, are ones to determine how long the transplanted cells live and whether any of the transplanted cells could pose a risk of tumor formation.

Mice in Flight: Nature Says It's Not Right

Recent lab results have shown that rodents, at least, have found that red wine in cooler climes can extend their life ...

Now, according to Reuters, they're finding that the caveat to extending their life is that they should be judicious in their roaming:

WASHINGTON - Jet-lagged mice die younger, researchers said on Monday in a study that suggests that working unusual shifts and flying back and forth across time zones takes a permanent toll on health.

Tests on more than 100 mice showed that old mice forced to live on a confusing schedules of light and darkness, simulating rotating shifts or international travel, died sooner than those on gentler schedules.

Young mice treated in a similar way did just fine, the researchers at the University of Virginia added in a report published in the journal Current Biology.

Gene Block, a professor of biology, and colleague Alec Davidson said they stumbled onto the findings by accident.

Genetically engineered mice in another experiment died when they were put under lights six hours earlier than usual, but no mice died if the light schedule was delayed.

So they tested three groups of mice, with about 30 old mice and 9 young mice in each group.

One group had its light/dark cycle shifted forward by six hours -- the equivalent of waking people up six hours early -- every week for eight weeks.

A second group had its schedule shifted back by six hours, and the third group's schedule was unaltered.

They found that 83 percent of old mice survived under the normal schedule, 68 percent lived after eight weeks of shifting steadily backward, but fewer than half -- 47 percent -- survived when the lights regularly came on six hours earlier.

When they sped the schedule up, changing the light schedule every four days, even more mice died.

The mice were not obviously stressed by this -- their daily levels of a stress hormone called corticosterone did not increase.

"Alternatively, the general frailty of older animals rather than age-related changes in the circadian system may make them less able to tolerate changes in the light schedule," the researchers wrote.

Other studies have shown that hormones associated with wake/sleep cycles, such as melatonin, as well as so-called "clock" genes, can affect aging and immune system processes.

Stay Cool, Live Longer

It's been a good month for lab rats ...

First, we hear that they've been fed a steady diet of red wine and have found that it helps extend their life spans. Now, on top of that, a bit of a chill seems to prolong their mortality even more.

Jia-Rui Chong of the Los Angeles Times has details on the latter development:

A new study on genetically engineered mice appears to offer a novel way to live up to 20 percent longer: chill out.

Scientists engineered mice to have body temperatures 0.5 to 0.9 degrees lower than normal mice. Female experimental mice lived a median of 662 days, about 112 days longer than normal female mice. Male experimental mice survived a median of 805 days, 89 days longer than their normal counterparts.

"We have identified that a small but continuous reduction of temperature can have a beneficial effect in life span and aging," said the study's lead author, Bruno Conti, a biologist at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif. "It is equivalent to seven or eight years of human life, so it is not bad."

Scientists have known for decades that restricting calories in a diet prolongs life span, and animals with restricted calories tend to have lower body temperatures. Conti wanted to know if decreasing body temperature alone could have a beneficial effect on longevity.

Earlier studies looked at animals such as roundworms whose body temperature depends on their environment. Conti said this is the first study to alter the temperature of warm-blooded animals.

The 79 experimental mice did not appear significantly different from the 67 normal mice, eating about the same amount of food.

Conti acknowledged the technique is "not terribly practical" for human beings yet.

But, he added, "If we figure out how the thermostat works, one could think there could be the development of a pharmacological approach."

Red Wine: The Nectar for a Longer Life?

Rob Stein of the Washington Post raises a glass to the good life doing its bit for a long life ...

WASHINGTON -- A substance found in red wine protected mice from the ill effects of obesity, raising the tantalizing prospect that the compound could do the same for humans and may also help people live longer, healthier lives, researchers reported Wednesday.

The substance, called resveratrol, enabled mice that were fed a high-calorie, high-fat diet to live active lives despite becoming obese -- the first time any compound has been shown to do that. Tests found it activated genes that protect against the effects of aging, essentially neutralizing the harmful effects of a bad diet on the animals' health and life span.

Although much more work is needed to explore the safety and benefits of the substance, which is sold over the counter as a nutritional supplement, the findings could lead to the long-sought goal of extending the healthy human life span, experts said. Preliminary tests in people are under way.

"We've been looking for something like this for the last 100,000 years, and maybe it's right around the corner -- a molecule that could be taken in a single pill to delay the diseases of aging and keep you healthier as you grow old," said David Sinclair, a Harvard University molecular biologist who led the study. "The potential impact would be huge."

The findings triggered excitement among scientists who study aging. They hailed the findings as groundbreaking.

"This represents a likely major landmark," said Stephen Helfand, who studies the molecular genetics of aging at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "This really pushes the field forward. It's quite exciting."

But the researchers noted that a person would have to drink at least 100 bottles of red wine a day to get the levels given to the mice -- or take mega doses of the commercially available supplements, which may not be safe in humans.

Sirtris Pharmaceuticals is working on a high-dose resveratrol pill, and the company is also testing whether the extract can safely be used to treat people with diabetes.

Sinclair has a financial stake in the research. He is co-founder of Sirtris Pharmaceuticals.

The research, being published in today's issue of the journal Nature, helps explain observations that have long intrigued researchers, including why French people tend to get fewer heart attacks and why severely restricting the amount of calories that animals ingest makes them live longer.

"This gives us hope that the idea of harnessing the power of calorie restriction is not a fantasy and can be brought to reality," said Leonard Guarente, who studies the biology of aging at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "This could produce a whole new approach to preventing and treating the diseases of aging."

Previous research has shown that laboratory animals fed very low-calorie diets live significantly longer, which has prompted some people to try strenuous "caloric restriction" diets as a possible fountain of youth, even though the effectiveness in humans remains unproven.

In the hope of finding a drug that could harness the natural life-extending capabilities activated by caloric restriction, Sinclair and his colleagues identified a number of promising compounds, including resveratrol, which is found in red wine, grape skins and other plants. The compound, which increases the activity of enzymes known as sirtuins, prolonged the life span of every organism scientists have tested it on, including yeast, worms, fish and fruit flies.

To examine for the first time whether resveratrol could also extend longevity in mammals, Sinclair and his colleagues studied year-old mice, which are the equivalent of middle-aged humans. One-third of the mice were fed a standard diet. Another third ate the equivalent of a junk-food diet, very high in calories with 60 percent of the calories coming from fat. The last third lived on the junk-food diet combined with resveratrol.

After a year, the researchers found that both groups of mice that ate the junk-food diet got fat, and those that did not get any resveratrol experienced health problems, including the early signs of diabetes and heart disease. They tended to die prematurely.

But the mice that got resveratrol remained healthy and lived as long as the animals that ate a normal diet and stayed thin -- adding the equivalent of about 10 or 20 human years to their life span. Moreover, the hearts and livers of the animals getting resveratrol looked healthy, the activity of key genes appeared normal and they showed some of the biological changes triggered by caloric restriction. They also appeared to have a better quality of life, retaining their activity levels and agility.

"It is really quite amazing," Sinclair said. "The mice were still fat but they looked just as healthy as the lean animals."

The researchers cautioned that the findings should not encourage people to eat badly, thinking resveratrol could make gluttony completely safe.

"For now, we counsel patience," wrote Matt Kaeberlein and Peter Rabinovitch of the University of Washington in an article accompanying the study. "Just sit back and relax with a glass of red wine ... if you must have a Big Mac, fries and apple pie, we may soon know if you should supersize that resveratrol shake."

But the findings indicate that resveratrol, or molecules like it, could have myriad benefits, and several scientists who study aging said the results tempted them to start using the supplements.

"I'm usually a very cautious person," said Cynthia Kenyon of the University of California in San Francisco. "But I'm seriously thinking about taking resveratrol myself. It seems pretty wonderful."

Helfand said, "I actually told my mother she should take it. I even went out and got her some."

The researchers are continuing to study the remaining living mice to gauge the full benefits, as well as other mice fed a normal diet or a calorie-restricted diet along with resveratrol to see whether the substance extends life in normal-weight animals. So far the results appear promising, researchers said.

"This appears to have a lot of potential," said Rafael de Cabo of the National Institute on Aging, which helped conduct and fund the study.

Online TV Trends Attract Innovative Start-Ups

The momentum continues to build for TV stations to make use of the versatility that being online can offer ...

Brian Bergstein of the Associated Press reports on the numerous new players who are stepping forward to provide their vision of what's possible:

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- Eyebrows went up when Google recently agreed to spend $1.65 billion for YouTube, the most popular Web site for free video clips. But that figure could be blown away if some emerging companies achieve their much broader visions for the future of online TV.

These companies are building flexible online networks that can host content, serve up ads and dish out interactive features. These new Internet TV platforms are designed to host full-fledged channels that content creators can control.

One of the best positioned is Brightcove, which recently took the wraps off an Internet video network that handles virtually everything for content creators.

Aiming to serve everyone from garage auteurs to major media companies, Brightcove offers free publishing tools and runs video wherever publishers want it.

That could be on the central Brightcove site, which is accessible through the video-search functions at Google, Yahoo! and AOL. Or content publishers can use Brightcove to run video on their own separate, branded sites. Or they can syndicate it to third-party Web sites, such as blogs or MySpace pages, where the content might run alongside user-generated material.

All those videos can be sold as paid downloads or streamed for free, with ads. Brightcove will sell ads and pool them among its customers, or it will plug in commercials that content creators sell themselves.

"They can launch a business in our system in a week," said Brightcove's founder and chief executive, Jeremy Allaire, who formerly was chief technical officer at Flash graphics creator Macromedia before Adobe Systems bought it.

It's not a new idea that the abundant bandwidth of the Internet could become the delivery mechanism for thousands of TV channels.

But after a slow ramp-up, more than half of U.S. Internet subscribers now have broadband rather than dial-up. And the explosive growth of video-sharing sites has helped convince advertisers the medium has legs (though the term most commonly used is eyeballs).

These trends have helped Brightcove draw $28 million in funding from such companies as Time Warner's AOL, The Hearst Corp., General Electric and IAC/InteractiveCorp.

Brightcove's flexibility has attracted diverse publishers trying to expand their broadband video presence. National Geographic, the Travel Channel, Warner Music, The New York Times and The Washington Post are all customers.

So is Barrio 305, a Miami-based Internet-only channel devoted to the tropical hip-hop music flavor known as reggaeton. Brightcove pumps Barrio 305's videos to free sites in addition to Barrio 305's own pages.

"We can bypass these traditional media agencies, and we can get out directly to our audience," said Antonio Otalvaro, one of the three brothers who founded Barrio 305. "Our primary audience is online. They're not watching TV."

Brightcove is not alone in holding video publishers' hands as they step to the Net.

NBC Universal recently launched an Internet video-distribution system that is working with NBC affiliates and even rivals such as CBS and News Corp.

Another key player, Maven Networks, is headquartered in the same Cambridge office complex as Brightcove.

Like Brightcove, Maven is hosting video for customers and giving them quick, mouse-click methods of positioning content and setting up ad campaigns. Unlike Brightcove, Maven doesn't want to double as a video portal or dip into the ad business. Maven gets paid when viewers check out one of its customers' videos.

Maven CEO Hilmi Ozguc is a tech veteran who sold an online ad company to Excite@Home, which flamed out when its big dreams got ahead of the U.S. broadband penetration.

Maven's customers include CBS-owned College Sports Television and The Weather Channel.

"The whole industry is being transformed," Ozguc said.

Global Warming Is Going to Be Expensive

It's unfortunate that the general populace usually doesn't pay significant attention to an issue until it hits them in the wallet ...

Thomas Wagner of the Associated Press has found that just such an argument is now on the cusp for global warming:

LONDON -- A comprehensive report on the global economic cost of climate change, to be released by the British government Monday, is expected to be the world's most serious effort to quantify the long-term effect of doing nothing.

The Independent newspaper reported Friday that the long-awaited review would say global warming could cost the world's economies up to 20 percent of their gross domestic product if urgent action is not taken to stop floods, storms and natural catastrophes.

Author Sir Nicholas Stern met privately with Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Cabinet ministers Thursday to brief them about his findings. Stern, a government adviser on climate change, is a former chief economist of the World Bank.

Quoting unidentified officials at the briefing, The Independent said Stern warned the world would have to pay 1 percent of its annual gross domestic product now to avert catastrophe but that doing nothing could later cost five to 20 times that amount.

"Business as usual will derail growth," the paper quoted Stern as saying as he briefed the government on his 700-page report, covering a period up to the year 2100.

The report was mandated by Blair's treasury chief, Gordon Brown, who is expected to replace Blair when he steps down as prime minister next year. Brown recently said he would use the report to alert governments around the world that they have been too slow to recognize -- let alone fight -- the threat of climate change.

Blair and his Dutch counterpart, Jan Peter Balkenende, wrote an open letter last week to their fellow European leaders on global warming.

"We have a window of only 10 to 15 years to take the steps we need to avoid crossing catastrophic tipping points," the letter said. "These would have serious consequences for our economic growth prospects, the safety of our people and the supply of resources, most notably energy."

Earlier this week, the European Union's environment agency said member states such as Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain were not doing enough to fight global warming, jeopardizing the bloc's commitments to cut down gas emissions by 8 percent by the year 2012 under the Kyoto treaty.

Sweden and Britain are the only EU-15 nations that can meet their targets without implementing any additional measures, the European Environment Agency said.

The international agreement was reached in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 and it expires in 2012. President Bush has kept the United States out of the Kyoto international treaty to reduce greenhouse gases, saying the pact would harm the U.S. economy.

Wireless Mice Keep Getting Better

As is his wont, Craig Crossman of the McClatchy-Tribune News Service has noted another trend that makes cyberspace navigation that much easier ...

The computer mouse has seen many technological improvements, but I maintain there are three that stand out.

- The first was the use of light to replace the clumsy little rubber ball that would deposit dirt and other matter into the friction wheels so that they would eventually stick and cause your cursor to move erratically on the screen.

The first optical mouse required a grid mouse pad, but thankfully today's models work on most any desktop, and the better ones use lasers for more accurate tracking on a variety of surfaces.

- The second significant advancement was losing its tail. While corded mice still exist, the cordless ones offer the best mousing experience.

- The third was the addition of more than one button. Today, the two-button mouse is pretty much the standard, with Apple Computer ironically being the last one to embrace it. Today's mice come with all kinds of buttons in different places, doing all sorts of things, many of them user-definable.

Finally, the scroll wheel was added. Usually positioned between the two buttons, you can roll it to scroll the contents of any open window up and down.

Logitech advance

Logitech has taken all of these milestones and improved on them even more in its newest mouse, but it has also come up with what I believe is a revolution in this new computer mouse's scroll wheel. It's SmartShift Technology, and you can find it as well as the other good things in the Logitech MX Revolution mouse ($99.99).

Talking to Logitech, I discovered that the scroll-wheel mechanism took a team of engineers about a year and a half to perfect. After using it for just a day, I say their effort was worth every moment.

The wheel is actually part of a sophisticated drive mechanism that's part mechanical and part electronic.

The wheel is weighted and balanced so that if you give it a good flick with your finger, it will spin for around 7 seconds. The included software translates that movement into a super-smooth vertical panning that lets you accelerate through multiple pages in a word-processing document or hundreds, even thousands, of lines in a spreadsheet in only a few moments.

Logitech calls this the Hyper-Fast scrolling mode. But that's just the beginning.

Briefly depressing the scroll wheel puts it into an ordinary ratchet mode where you feel little bumps as you rotate it. In this mode, each bump moves the window's contents a defined number of steps.

And here's where Logitech puts it all together. The software can detect which application the active window belongs to when the mouse cursor passes over it. At that moment, the little USB transceiver sends a signal to the MX Revolution and puts it into the scroll mode you want to use within that application.

Speed or precision

For example, you may want Hyper-Fast mode to whiz through a spreadsheet, and the ratchet mode in Photoshop for precise movement.

After setting it up, all you do is your work, and the MX Revolution will automatically switch scroll modes as you switch windows.

I think Logitech pulled out all the stops with this mouse. It has lithium-ion rechargeable batteries so when you place it in its matching stand, the segmented green battery display animates to show it's charging and how much power it has.

A new button prompts a search of any word or phrase that's highlighted when pressed. On the Mac, it can be configured to summon Spotlight or use a search Web site of your choosing.

In China, Sharks Just Say Yao

Western-style modernization is rolling along, full speed ahead in China ...

Lately, they've even experienced the phenomenon of 'celebrity protester' in the form of their most famous athlete on the world stage, the National Basketball Association's Yao Ming. David Barboza of the New York Times reports:

SHANGHAI, China -- There's no Jane Fonda in China. No Bono, Julia Roberts, Richard Gere or Mel Gibson. And there's no tradition here of celebrities standing up to authority, or of celebrities trying to sway public opinion with dramatic gestures or impassioned pleas.

But last week, Yao Ming, the 7-foot-6 Shanghai-born NBA star, went slightly out on a limb when he declared at a Beijing news conference held by WildAid, the conservation group, that he had had it with shark's-fin soup, pledging never to eat it again. And then Yao stated that "endangered species are our friends."

Swearing off shark fin may not sound like much to Westerners, but here in China, this most expensive delicacy has a long and honorable history.

Emperors loved shark's-fin soup because it was rare, tasty and difficult to prepare. The soup is served at wedding banquets by families eager to show appreciation to their guests. And Hong Kong and Beijing government officials -- not to mention thousands of businessmen hoping to close the next big deal -- swear they absolutely have to treat their guests to shark's-fin soup as a show of respect and honor.

"This is the very basic dish for business dinners in Hong Kong," said Tan Rongde, 56, a banker. "If you don't order that, you will lose face."

Chinese celebrities usually are wary of high-profile causes, or of getting in the line of fire. Questioning authority or taking on a Chinese corporate giant -- let alone fomenting controversy by advocating gay rights or independence for Tibet -- generally poses risks.

They know the perils of self-expression.

There was the time in 1989 when Du Xian, a popular television anchor, was allowed to broadcast news of Tiananmen Square after martial law was declared. But tears welled in her eyes during the broadcast, and she was never seen on air again.

And when Zhao Wei, a popular singer, donned a Japanese military flag for a fashion shoot -- disrespecting not just government policy but perhaps the sensibilities of Chinese still angry over the war with Japan -- her career began to fizzle. At a concert, she was tackled by a construction worker who said his grandparents had been killed during the war.

So how can Yao Ming -- an adored star who once played for the Shanghai Sharks, of all teams (his girlfriend, the 6-foot-2 basketball star Ye Li, is a member of the Shanghai Octopuses) -- campaign against a national treasure?

"Putting our ecosystem in great peril is certainly not a part of Chinese culture that I know," Yao said in an e-mail message Friday from Guangzhou, where he was preparing for a game. "How do you maintain this so-called tradition when one day there is no shark to be finned?"

But how is Yao's move playing at home, in a country that says a banquet is not a banquet without shark's-fin soup?

He double-dribbled, suggests Zhu Dongqing, 46, a construction-company manager, as he sat along fashionable Nanjing Road in Shanghai. Zhu said Chinese wouldn't readily give up the soup, which sells for up to $100 a bowl in Hong Kong.

"Chinese people, we just eat shark's fin," he said. "It's part of our culture. Yao Ming, it's a good idea. It's good to protect the environment. But if my children want to go out and eat shark's fin because they think it tastes good, I'll still take them."

Others said Yao, who plays for the Houston Rockets, was doing the right thing, but they'd still love to try one of the world's most expensive soups.

"If one day I could eat shark's fin, of course I'd eat it," said Chen Yanran, 18, a Shanghai music student, who may not know that the actual shark-fin part of the soup has no taste at all; it's just like rubber. "It's a delicacy, and expensive, something the average Chinese can't eat."

The Chinese press mostly ignored Yao's stance. The official Communist paper, People's Daily, did not note it.

His hometown paper, The Oriental Morning Post, buried the story as a paragraph in a corner with no photograph.

Even so, he still managed to ruffle a few fins.

The Shark's Fin Association -- a group based in Hong Kong intent on blending flavorless shark fin with meat, greens and even herbal medicine -- said in effect that Yao should stick to basketball.

Chiu Ching-Cheung, the association chairman, said he and others would team up against Yao. "We will unite with other shark's-fin associations to communicate and deprecate it," he said of Yao's position.

Chiu said his association wrote a letter to Yao and that he went Monday to Yao's hotel in Guangzhou to hand-deliver it.

"The guards refused to let me in," he said. "Tens of meters of space outside the hotel were cleared and guarded. I understand that Yao is a national treasure, but this kind of protection is unnecessary."

Yao Ming does have an unlikely ally: a group of shark's-fin soup chefs.

Several chefs hinted that they secretly backed Yao Ming's stand.

"I support Yao" said Liu Wei Liang, a chef at Lei Garden in Hong Kong, where he has been cooking shark's fin for 20 years. "Killing sharks is not a good thing. But if the restaurant did not provide this type of food, the customers feel they will lose face in treating their guests."

He went on to pledge, "If the hotel agrees, I will stop."

Yao Ming isn't quite the first celebrity to join the cause. Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse and Goofy also went shark's-fin-soup free.

The new Hong Kong Disneyland dropped the soup from its wedding-banquet menu last year after protests from environmental activists.

Software That Simplifies Disc Burning

Craig Crossman of the McClatchy-Tribune News Service has found a product that makes cutting your own discs even easier mainstream function for the average computer user ...

Burning CDs and DVDs has become commonplace. It's almost like printing a page on your printer.

In fact, the only real difference between printing a page and burning a disc is that with disc publishing, you still have to physically handle the disc media to set it all up.

You have to open the disc drive, insert the disc, close it, then remove it after it's burned. If you need to label it, you remove your regular paper from the printer so that you can insert the label stock. Then you print it.

Finally, you have to peel the backing from the label and stick it onto the disc, which means you have to handle everything once more before the final printed disc is completed. Oh, and don't forget to put regular paper back in the printer.

I don't know about you, but if I had to do all that just to print a single page, I'd probably hire someone else to do it.

Print and move on

So wouldn't it be great if publishing a burned and labeled disc was just as easy as printing a page? That way you could just click "Print" and move on.

Thanks to Primera and its new Bravo SE Disc Publisher, you can. And what makes this even better is that it doesn't use labels, you can publish up to 20 discs unattended and it's really affordable.

The Bravo SE Disc Publisher works in much the same way as the larger, more expensive Bravo models from Primera. Using a little robotic arm, the entire process operates hands-free. From a stack of blank inkjet-printable discs, the arm picks up and places a disc inside the integrated Pioneer DVR-111 DVD1R/CD-R recorder. Primera uses the most current, state-of-the-art optical drives in their publishers for the fastest burning available.

After the disc is burned, the robot moves the disc to the built-in 4800 dpi direct-to-disc inkjet color printer. After it's printed, the robot picks the disc from the printer and places it into the publisher's output bin and begins the process over again. You just walk away while the Bravo SE Disc Publisher creates disc after disc.

The Bravo SE Disc Publisher includes the special burning and printing software for both Windows and Macintosh systems.

Layout help

Also included is a page-layout application that helps you to create and design the images to be printed. For Windows, there's PTPublisher SE duplication software. Developed by Primera specifically for the Bravo SE Disc Publisher, PTPublisher SE offers a professional disc duplication solution that is easy to use.

A professional labeling program called SureThing CD Labeler Primera Edition is also included for graphic design. For the Macintosh, there's CharisMac Engineering's Discribe V5.0 duplication software along with design templates for Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop.

With either platform, you can use virtually any graphic-design application you already have and just import the final image into the duplication software that comes with the unit. You can elect to publish all the same or even different discs in a single, unattended run.

With the Bravo SE Disc Publisher, Primera makes it a no-brainer for businesses and organizations of all types when they have a need for in-house, high-quality disc duplication and publishing.

Keeping things in-house means no more deadline hassles. Changes can be made frequently and at any time.

The Bravo SE Disc Publisher will actually pay for itself in no time flat from the money you'll save by no longer having it done at costly publishing services.

The Bravo SE Disc Publisher sells for $1,495. The Bravo SE AutoPrinter, a non-burning, automated printing-only solution is also available and is priced at $995.

Combat Spam with a Disposable E-mail Address

Returning again to a hi-tech hotbed for the latest tools and trends in cyberspace, we note Charles Bermant, a tech columnist with the Seattle Times has discovered a simple, but interesting solution to a common problem ...

The spam threat has imposed a chill factor on our online lives. We are afraid to share e-mail addresses on new sites because once it is passed on it can destroy an environment it has taken years to protect.

As a result, we just don't visit some potentially exciting places because we could catch something.

A solution has emerged in the form of Anonymizer's new Nyms service. Here, you create custom "disposable" e-mail addresses for each online destination. So if my address is cbermant@seattletimes.com, I would enter cbermant.amazon@nyms.net when I needed to buy some books. Any mail sent to that address would filter through the Nyms service and end up in my standard e-mail box.

One day (again, this is just an example), Amazon.com may sell or pass on its database. After that time I would start receiving spam or unwelcome marketing messages. But I would have recourse. The spam arrives addressed to my Amazon alias and would be immediately detectable.

Not only do I know who "sold me out" I can immediately deactivate the specific address -- exterminating any of the spam that may arrive through that source.

"This program allows you to take control," said Lance Cottrell, who wrote the software to solve his own spam problem. "We allow people to take proactive control of spam rather than having to clean it up on the back end."

This control includes the ability to set the lifespan for a certain address. You may be attending a conference and need to enter your e-mail in order to receive needed directions. But you are protected at the end of the show when the sponsors need to recoup some of their losses by selling their mailing lists.

It also raises the safety quotient for blogs or bulletin boards, allowing you to safely leave your name on a public post. If you strike up a trustworthy correspondence as a result of this connection you can clue them into your real address. Otherwise you just pull the plug when the spam starts coming.

The program requires a Windows download utility. It is operable through the Web for Mac users.

Nyms takes some extra effort and setup time, and you always have to think twice whenever leaving a new address. On the other hand, you might waste the same amount of time cleaning spam out of the inbox or just complaining. So it is just a choice about how you want to spend each day.

The price of entry is well below the pain threshold, a one-year subscription costs just under $20. To sign up, visit www.anonymizer.com.

Bluetooth Technology Outpaces the Market

Eric Benderoff of the Chicago Tribune has noticed that while the future is now in wireless communication technology, the present still isn't ready for it ...

The short-range wireless technology called Bluetooth will hit an impressive milestone later this year, when the billionth product that uses the technology will be shipped.

But it would be nice if all those gadgets could talk to each other as we have been led to believe.

In a nutshell, Bluetooth technology connects devices, allowing a mobile phone to bond with a wireless earpiece for hands-free driving. Or to connect a keyboard and mouse to a PC without wires.

Numerous product manufacturers build Bluetooth capabilities into their gadgets, and now it's being included on digital cameras, photo printers and nearly all mobile phones.

It's very convenient. But in my tests with Bluetooth products, some work fine while others don't work at all.

When I reviewed Bluetooth headsets, a Logitech pair worked wonderfully with an iPod and a computer, but a pair from Jabra worked with a laptop only after hours of tinkering. Yet those Jabra headsets worked seamlessly with a Nokia phone.

Source of frustration

This will-it-or-won't-it-work with Bluetooth is an endless source of frustration -- and I really like the technology.

So what's the problem?

How about 20 different Bluetooth profiles? More than one profile is often bundled into a particular product, but if one profile is missing from the other product, the devices don't talk to each other.

Compare this approach to that of Wi-Fi, the brawnier wireless technology used to create home Internet networks. There is one protocol for Wi-Fi, and all Wi-Fi devices use this. There are variations of the standard, mostly due to improvements, but even older Wi-Fi gear works with newer equipment.

Imagine if you went to a coffee shop to work on your laptop and you couldn't get on the network because your computer had a different Wi-Fi profile. Would you be annoyed? Of course, but that won't happen.

With Bluetooth, it happens all the time. I can't send a contact from my Sony Ericsson phone to my wife's BlackBerry, for instance, but I can send that info and pictures from my phone to my Apple laptop.

This is because my wife's relatively new BlackBerry has a Bluetooth profile for hands-free talking but not for data transfers. My older phone, on the other hand, has several profiles.

So to help consumers understand what products will work together, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group, based in Bellevue, makes products with Bluetooth in them and has launched a new icon program.

Odds are you've seen the existing Bluetooth icon, which is blue and has a stylized B in the center that looks like wires crossing.

Various icons

Now, on product packaging, you could see as many as five different icons alongside the blue one to illustrate what Bluetooth can do. Those logos include a headset, a mouse and two arrows going in opposite directions.

A headset logo means that product's Bluetooth function works for hands-free calling; a mouse means you can input data into a computer or a phone using Bluetooth; and the two arrows imply "transfer" between devices.

Does that make it easier to understand? Motorola is working on the problem.

Here's my recommendation: Tune the profiles to one.

If your phone has Bluetooth, you should be able to use a wireless earpiece to talk. If your phone has a music player, you should be able to use Bluetooth headphones to listen. If your phone has a camera, you should be able to send those images to a digital frame, a printer or a PC.

But until that day comes, if you buy a new Bluetooth product to work with the one you already have, keep the receipt.

Personal Broadband Moves Closer to Reality

Tricia Duryee of the Seattle Times provides us with an update on progress in the field of wireless online connectivity ...

The next stage of the Internet is on the verge of arriving.

Starting as early as next year, WiMax broadband networks will start to be pieced together in a more visible way -- service providers such as Sprint Nextel and Clearwire are building towers, Intel is manufacturing chips, and Samsung and Motorola are supplying devices.

Consumers soon will be able to get what some are calling "personal broadband," or high-speed Internet access everywhere they go.

For now, the vision, being laid out this week at the WiMax World industry conference in Boston, is far-reaching and broad. With WiMax, the Internet is expected to be integrated into all types of devices, including music players, cameras, copy machines and much more. Teenagers will never be far from MySpace.com, and cameras will upload video straight to YouTube.

Although it sounds futuristic, it has never been as close to reality as it is now.

In the past couple of months, Clearwire and Sprint Nextel said they were both committed to rolling out competing nationwide WiMax networks.

Clearwire, the Kirkland company led by wireless entrepreneur Craig McCaw, has raised $2 billion to build a national network, with half of the funds coming from partners Motorola and Intel. Sprint Nextel also has forged blue-chip partnerships with Motorola, Intel and Samsung.

Clearwire and Sprint Nextel have thrust us into the mainstream," said Fred Wright, Motorola's senior vice president of broadband products. "The global excitement [for WiMax] is like the beginning of the Internet." Motorola itself is conducting 18 WiMax trials around the world.

Currently, a fixed version of WiMax is available in scattered markets across the globe, giving users access to the provider's network from a single location at one time. But most players are waiting to deploy networks until mobile WiMax is available, with a user's online connection handed off from tower to tower, much as a cellphone does today. Equipment for that technology may be ready early next year.

Clearwire is one company that's not waiting. It has deployed an early version of WiMax in 31 U.S. markets and some European cities.

Last year's WiMax World was filled with tentativeness, said Clearwire Co-Chief Executive Ben Wolff. "People were asking, 'Is this going to turn into something or not,' " he said. "This year, instead of people talking about what they are going to do, we can say we are actually doing it."

On Wednesday, the first day of the conference, Wolff addressed about 5,000 attendees to update them on the privately held company.

He said since McCaw founded the company in 2003, Clearwire has been offering WiMax-like networks to compete with DSL and cable broadband services. Customers buy a modem that can fit in a briefcase and which plugs into the wall. The service is considered portable because it can be accessed anywhere in a service territory, as long as the modem can be plugged in.

Since its start, Clearwire has attracted 162,000 subscribers.

But Wolff and many other industry leaders are placing billion-dollar bets that WiMax has a much richer future than replacing DSL and cable. Clearwire wants to provide mobile WiMax, with the expectation that it will spur more applications. In addition, the modems will be much smaller, and PC cards to connect to the WiMax network should be available shortly for the laptop.

What's less clear is why yet another wireless broadband network is being built when others already exist.

Wi-Fi, for one, is popular in coffee shops, airports and other locations, and wireless carriers have started to deploy 3G, the third-generation cellular network that offers DSL-like speeds.

How is WiMax different? And if there is demand for Internet on the go, then why don't cameras, copy machines and music players have 3G chips by now?

It's the price, said Scott Richardson, vice president of Intel's mobility group. The 3G market is mostly corporate, whereas WiMax will be aimed at the consumer, Richardson said. "The cost [of 3G technology] is significantly higher than Wi-Fi, which prevents mass adoption by consumers," he said.

Intel's goal is to make one chip with both Wi-Fi and WiMax capabilities for $20 each. At that price, it can easily be tacked on to a laptop or consumer device.

What consumers will do with always-on broadband Internet access is another question entirely. And it's one that industry leaders are reluctant to answer. The canned response for now seems to be that it is too early to say: WiMax will spawn new applications not even be dreamed of today.

"That's an easy way to say, 'I'm not going to say,' " said Motorola's Wright. "But I absolutely believe that Clearwire knows what it will do with this equipment and technology."

Wolff said his company does have plans, but "we are shy about saying what will happen in the future in case we are not able to pull it off."

There are still a lot of unknowns.

"You can't start making applications before there is a network to invent on," he said.

Some of that should become clearer soon. Through its partnership with Intel and Motorola, Clearwire is building a test mobile WiMax network in Portland. In a live video feed at WiMax World on Wednesday, Intel showed the sun rising, while one of an employee in a Clearwire hat supervised the installation of a Motorola access point.

Intel's Richardson said the network will be tested by a small number of people at first, but then will be opened to Intel's 14,000 employees in the area.

Is Wireless Connectivity Development Moving Faster than Market Demand?

Mike Langberg of the San Jose Mercury News takes note that wireless online access may be the wave of the future, but its commercial implications will no doubt temper the process ...

You can't feel radio waves moving through the air, despite what you might hear from a few wild-eyed people in tin-foil hats.

That's a good thing, considering how many wireless bits of data will soon be flying around Silicon Valley.

Everyone from corporate giants such as Intel and Cisco to ambitious startups to local governments are chasing a big opportunity: unplugging the Internet.

The goal is to provide a high-speed connection wherever you roam with a laptop computer, smart phone or future gadgets such as wireless digital music players.

But there's a problem with such big opportunities: Everybody sees them, resulting in a tidal wave of potential overbuilding.

I count at least five current and possible wireless Internet projects in the area:

- Smart Valley Wireless, a coalition of 40 local cities and other government agencies, received seven bids in late June to blanket the region with Wi-Fi wireless service.

- Google recently began testing a free Wi-Fi network covering Mountain View and expects an official "wire cutting" ceremony soon.

- MetroFi is looking to expand its free ad-supported Wi-Fi network, which covers Cupertino, Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, including a recent deal to provide Wi-Fi in downtown San Jose.

- Intel in early July invested $600 million in Clearwire, which is using a rival technology called WiMax and will tap Intel's money for nationwide expansion that could include the Bay Area.

- Cellular carriers Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Cingular continue to aggressively market their high-speed wireless data services.

Chance of survival

None of these services is irrational by itself, but it's highly unlikely all of them together could find enough users to survive, at least according to two experts.

"Broadband [Internet access] is a business where scale is very important," said Monica Paolini, founder of wireless research firm Senza Fili Consulting and who lives in Seattle. "You need to use every weapon to reduce cost."

But it's difficult to achieve scale when demand is low and struggling competitors are driving prices down below the cost of doing business.

Andy Seybold, editor of the wireless industry newsletter Outlook4Mobility, says voice "pays the bills."

Seybold, who lives in Santa Barbara, is somewhat famous in the wireless industry for repeatedly insisting that any standalone wireless network devoted to data is "doomed to complete failure."

Clearwire shows how tough it can be to build a wireless business.

The company, backed by cellular pioneer Craig McCaw, started operations three years ago and now covers U.S. markets with a combined population of 4.8 million. Yet Clearwire, based in Kirkland, had attracted only a paltry 88,000 subscribers as of March 31.

Building networks

Building wireless networks is expensive, forcing Clearwire's backers to accept losses of $175 million through the end of last year. Clearwire has said its plans include nationwide expansion and serving "a range of different categories of subscribers, from individuals, households and small businesses to market segments that depend on mobile communications, including police and fire personnel, traveling professionals, field salespeople, contractors, real estate professionals and others."

Those market segments sound much the same as what Smart Valley Wireless, MetroFi and others are pursuing.

Intel is pushing WiMax hard because it expects to sell many of the chips for WiMax-enabled computers and other devices. But there's a huge chicken-and-egg dilemma: Computer makers aren't eager to adopt WiMax without WiMax networks and wireless companies don't want to build WiMax networks when there aren't yet any WiMax-ready computers.

Then there's the looming competitive threat of high-speed data service from cell carriers.

Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Cingular now sell unlimited wireless data service for about $50 to $60 a month at about half a megabit per second. So the demand has been limited to businesses willing to pay the bills for workers in the field.

But the cell-based data services will get faster and cheaper during the next few years, just as the competing Wi-Fi and WiMax networks are looking for a way into the market.

Consumers will almost certainly get inexpensive, robust, widely available wireless data service once all this gets sorted out. But anyone looking to profit by investing in these networks will need to be smart and lucky to come out on top.

Sharing Online Content on Your Mobile

Tricia Duryee of the Seattle Times has found a new company in that city that will give you and anyone you deem to have access to your online portfolio ...

What: Treemo.

What it does:The Seattle company, headquartered in Ballard, is creating an online and mobile phone site where photos, videos and audio are shared.

Who: Chief Executive Brent Brookler left Seattle-based Mobliss a year ago to start the company. Mobliss, which assisted Cingular Wireless with "American Idol" voting, was acquired by Japan-based Index in 2004 for $15 million.

The idea: Brookler said Treemo is a way for people to share content on the Web and on phones. Other companies are creating similar services, in which content on the phone is uploaded to the Internet. But Brookler said Treemo allows you to share content to another person's phone, as well. "That's a niche that's lost," he said.

The details: To use Treemo, users must set up an account online, where they will receive an e-mail address. From the phone, the user snaps photos and uploads them to that e-mail address. From there, they can be pushed to a network of friends, who can either view them on their phone or on a PC.

Play to win: Treemo is launching a contest today called Tagged! Users who take pictures and associate it with a designated keyword will be entered to win cash prices.

Business model: The seven-person company is running on $1 million invested by angels and friends and family. The service is free and storage is limited to 1 gigabyte. The company plans to generate revenue through advertising and selling larger amounts of storage. Brookler declined to say how many users it has attracted since launching three weeks ago.

The softer side: Brookler said the company is environmentally and socially responsible, which is why the first contest has to do with recycling.

Iraqi Laughter Carries Effective Message

Al Jazeera isn't the only Middle Eastern television station having an impact in the Arab world these days ...

Nancy A Youssef of the McClatchy Newspapers has found that, even in violence-ravaged Iraq, comedy can carry the most potent messages:

BAGHDAD, Iraq -- The year is 2017, according to the opening credits of the fake news broadcast, and the last man alive in Iraq, whose name is Saaed, is sitting at a desk, working as a television news anchor. He sports an Afro, star-shaped sunglasses and a button-down shirt.

The Americans are still here, the government is still bumbling and the anchor wants his viewers to drink their tea slowly so they don't burn themselves. "You cannot go to the hospital during the curfew," he warns. For Iraqis, the remark is outrageously funny, if only because it's so close to being true.

After a summer of the worst violence since U.S. troops toppled Saddam Hussein's regime, tens of thousands of Iraqis are finding solace and amusement in a new television show whose dark satirical humor makes it an Iraqi version of Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show."

The nightly send-up of a newscast includes weather, sports and business segments and features six characters, all played by the same actor.

With seemingly no sacred cows, it provides insight into how Iraqis see their country's problems, through its lampooning of the Americans, the Iraqi government, the militias and the head of Iraq's state-owned media company.

Even the show's name is a joke. The title first appears on the screen as "The Government," but then the word is split in half, producing an Iraqi slang phrase that means, "Hurry Up, He's Dead."

The show is being produced to run only during Ramadan, the month when Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset, and it airs just as Baghdadis are breaking their fast.

During one episode last week, Saaed announced that the minister of culture will print and distribute 200 copies of "Leila and the Wolf," the Arabic version of "Little Red Riding Hood." But in these copies, Leila is the Iraqi people and the American forces are the wolf. The books will help children learn about occupation, Saaed explained.

In the next day's episode, Saaed joyfully announces that the Americans are finally leaving Iraq. Referring to the U.S. secretary of defense, Saaed, sitting behind his news desk, says: "Rums bin Feld said the American forces are leaving on 1-1," referring to Jan. 1.

He's giddy, raising his arms in the air. Then he realizes he's made a mistake. The soldiers are leaving one by one, not on 1-1. He computes in his head what leaving one by one means and announces that the soldiers will be gone in 694 years. He starts to cry; Iraqis watching the show howl.

The show is written by a glum but sarcastic man from Baghdad's Sadr City district named Talib al-Sudani, 40, a poet and writer who cannot talk about his show without dropping in commentary about the lack of services here.

Al-Sudani pitched the idea to Baghdad's local Sharkia station, which has made its reputation producing reality shows similar to those seen on U.S. television. Last year's big hit helped young couples pay for their weddings.

These days, however, Sharkia's offices are largely empty. "Hurry Up, He's Dead" is filmed in Dubai; it would be too dangerous and impractical, with curfews and loud helicopters flying overhead, to film in Baghdad.

The station bought the show idea from al-Sudani for less than $4,000. He sends his scripts via the Internet. Occasionally, he's asked the station to drop a scene after realizing that, for a man still living in Iraq, he's gone too far. He insists he doesn't support one faction of the government over others.

"I don't support this government. I don't support any government," he said.

Saaed Khalifa, 43, an Iraqi actor who fled to Syria after the fall of Saddam's regime, plays all the main characters on the show. "I accepted this part because I wanted to prove myself as an actor and an Iraqi man loyal to his country," he said.

Khalifa is coy about whether he's Sunni or Shiite, perhaps in keeping with the theme of the show that it ultimately won't matter.

Al-Sudani said one advantage of filming in Dubai is that the modern skyline helps him make another point about the Baghdad of the future: that while Iraq may have a future, it may not have many people to enjoy it.

Al-Sudani doesn't plan to see if that ever happens.

"I am planning to book a one-way ticket out of here."