07 November 2008
Yahoo's Historical Hit: The Obamas On Election Night
NewsCred
Barack Obama's longtime campaign photographer David Katz took 82 pictures of the soon-to-be first family election night. Later, Katz uploaded them to Yahoo's (YHOO) photo-sharing site, Flickr. Gawker's Ryan Tate puts it in perspective:
In some prior election year, thebehind-the-scenes footage of a president-elect's first moments mighthave been captured by a photographer for, say, Life, or at leastdistributed through a glossy magazine like that. It must have been somesmall comfort to Barack Obama to be able to rely instead on a longtime photographer of his own, David Katz,at such an intimate moment, and at such a tender one, a day after thedeath of his grandmother. As for distribution? Photography's bridge tothe 21st century, Flickr.
The set is so popular it's crashed Flickr, so go see the best shots at Gawker.(And, of course, Yahoo isn't making any money off this -- when we'relucky enough to get the photos to load, we're not seeing any ads.)
Learn Spanish / Aprender Inglés (Nuevo!)
Here we go!
Background
Founded in 1999, SpanishDict is a leading online Spanish-Englishdictionary, translation, and language learning website. A family-runoperation, SpanishDict aims to provide the highest quality Spanisheducational materials available anywhere. Our site seeks not only todevelop rock-solid resources for learning Spanish, we also hope tocultivate a fun and active community where members can ask and answerquestions, practice with each other, and experience the joy of using anew language.
Features
Some of the site's most popular features include:
- Dictionary- SpanishDict searches multiple bilingual dictionaries with a combinedbreadth of over 200,000 entries. For tens of thousands of theseentries, audio pronunciations of the words are provided.
- Community -The online SpanishDict community is comprised of both native andnon-native Spanish speakers who share the love of the Spanish language.
- Forum - Members use this popular method of information exchange to post questions and answers about the Spanish language.
- Conjugator - The SpanishDict verb conjugator conjugates over 1000 irregular verbs in addition to virtually all regular verbs.
- Translator- The SpanishDict translator translates sentences and paragraphs,displaying the translation results of three top translation sites on asingle page.
- Lessons- Learn Spanish on SpanishDict.com is taught by a professionallytrained Spanish teacher, each lesson uses images and charts to visuallyintroduce new vocabulary and concepts.
- Chat - The chat is another popular way for members to practice their Spanish in lively conversation.
06 November 2008
Amy Goodman, Columnist
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Amy Goodman is the co-founder, executiveproducer and host of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent,award-winning news program airing on more than 450 public broadcaststations in North America.
Goodman graduated from Harvard with a degree in anthropology in 1984.She began her career in community radio in 1985 at Pacifica Radio's NewYork station, WBAI, where she produced WBAI's Evening News for 10years.
In 1991, Goodman traveled to East Timor to report on the Indonesianoccupation of East Timor. There, she and colleague Allan Nairnwitnessed Indonesian soldiers gun down 270 East Timorese men, women andchildren during a memorial procession. Indonesian soldiers savagelybeat Goodman and Nairn, fracturing Nairn's skull. Their documentary,"Massacre: The Story of East Timor" won numerous awards, including theRobert F. Kennedy Prize for International Reporting, the Alfred I.DuPont-Columbia Award, the Armstrong Award, the Radio/Television NewsDirectors Award, as well as awards from the Associated Press, UnitedPress International and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.
In 1996, Goodman helped launch Pacifica Radio's Democracy Now!.Two years later, Goodman and producer Jeremy Scahill went to Nigeria.Their award-winning radio documentary "Drilling and Killing: Chevronand Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship" exposed Chevron's role in the killingof two Nigerian villagers in the Niger Delta, who were protesting yetanother oil spill in their community. In 1999, Goodman traveled to Peruto interview American political prisoner Lori Berenson. It was thefirst time a journalist had ever gotten into the prison to speak toher.
In March 2004, Goodman obtained theinternational broadcast exclusive of the return of Haitian PresidentJean-Bertrand Aristide from his imposed exile in the Central AfricanRepublic to Jamaica, accompanying the Aristides with the delegationthat retrieved them. Her coverage of the Haitian story scored more than3.5 million hits on Democracy Now!'s Web site, ultimately forcing the story into the mainstream press in what Goodman describes as "trickle up" journalism.
In addition to writing her syndicated editorial column, Goodman is co-author, with her brother David Goodman, of the book Static: Government Liars, Media Cheerleaders and the People Who Fight Back (Hyperion, 2006). The pair also co-wrote the national best-seller The Exception to the Rulers: Exposing Oily Politicians, War Profiteers, and the Media That Love Them.The book was chosen by independent bookstores as the No. 1 politicaltitle of the 2004 election season and ranked as one of the top 50nonfiction books of 2004 by the editors of Publishers Weekly.
Truthdig - article: "Organizer in Chief"
05 November 2008
John McCain congratulates President Obama
04 November 2008
Faves.com still alive, but on life support
I got a chance to chat today with Mike Koss, the angel investor andformer Microsoft developer who heads the Seattle Internet incubator Startpad.org.
It was a good news, bad news conversation. Koss was excited to show off a neat litte application called G02.me thathe built over the past few weeks using Google's App Engine. The serviceshortens URLs to 16 characters, rather than the 25 characters fromcompeting service TinyURL, and provides some unique features like theability to see the most popular links on the G02.me home page.
And the bad news? As suspected, Koss' other Internet company -- Faves.com-- is on the ropes. The social networking startup, formerly known asBlue Dot and backed with about $2 million in angel financing, laid offits remaining two employees about a month ago.
Obama mourns grandmother on election eve
(Reuters) - A subdued Barack Obamaon Monday mourned his grandmother as a "quiet hero" who helped raisehim, telling a campaign rally that her death had made the final nightof his White House campaign "bittersweet."
As the Democratic candidate arrived in North Carolina for hissecond-to-last rally before Tuesday's election, he announced thatMadelyn Dunham, 86, had died peacefully at her home in Honolulu after abattle with cancer.
03 November 2008
Is Your Username Taken? Usernamecheck Will Tell You.
from TechCrunch by Robin Wauters
Mostpeople tend to register the same username when signing up for services,for obvious reasons. Your username is your personal identity and mostpeople don't need more than one. It's also easier to remember. But onething that is becoming increasingly difficult to remember, with so manynew Web services sprouting up ever day, is which services you havesigned up for exactly.
A recently launched application called Usernamecheck gives you a great overview at which Web 2.0 services your 'default' username has already been registered.
With All This, Why Be President?
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The view from the Oval Office on Jan. 20, 2009: A nation inrecession, a runaway federal budget deficit, spiraling national debt,two costly and frustrating wars, and the mastermind of the Sept. 11attacks still at large.
Oh, and nearly 50 million Americanslack health insurance, Medicare and Medicaid are eating a growing shareof the federal pie, and Social Security's bankruptcy looms just beyondthe horizon.
So why would anyone want this job?
It's not only today's enormous challenges that will confront the 44thpresident, but also the near-certainty that some still-unknown crisiswill erupt in the next four years.
"It's really the mostdifficult transition since Abraham Lincoln, to be honest with you,"said Paul Light, professor of public service at New York University andan expert in presidential transitions. "Lincoln, between the time hewas elected and inaugurated, witnessed seven states secede from theunion."
Given the urgency of the problems, there may be littletime for a honeymoon. And the difficulties are so numerous that thenext president will have to choose carefully which ones to tacklefirst.
"He is going to have to be very careful about thepriorities he sets," Light said. "You can't just keep throwingpriorities at Congress."
In the closing days of a historicelection campaign, the candidates themselves have framed the contest asa question of readiness to meet these tests.
"The nextadministration is going to be tested, regardless of who it is,"Democrat Barack Obama said recently. "The next administration is goingto inherit a whole host of really big problems."
Speakingrecently on Comedy Central's "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," Obamatried to answer why he'd want the job at a time like this.
"I actually think this is the time to want to be president," hesaid. "If you went into public service thinking that you could have animpact, now is the time where you could have an impact. ... Every oncein a while you have these big challenges and big problems. It gives anopportunity for us to really move in a new direction."
Republican John McCain also has stressed the difficulties facing the incoming chief executive.
"We know that the next president is likely to inherit a significantrecession," he said. "It means that unemployment is going to be higher.There are going to be greater demands on social services. It means that... dealing with our short-term deficit and our long-term debt is goingto be more difficult."
Indeed, the nation's finances are at a critical point.
The Congressional Budget Office recently projected a $600 billionbudget deficit for the 2009 budget year -- and that was before Congressauthorized the Treasury to spend $700 billion on an economic bailout.
Unemployment is higher than it has stood in five years, with nearly750,000 jobs lost this year. The economy contracted in the lastquarter; if it does so again in October through December, the nationwill officially be in a recession.
The national debt hassurpassed $10 trillion, nearly twice where it stood at the start of theBush administration, and the cost of simply paying the interest on thatdebt next year, $260 billion, will be more than one-third of what willbe spent on national defense. Medicare will cost $414 billion andSocial Security $650 billion, leaving little room for any discretionarycutting of a $3 trillion-plus federal budget that both presidentialcandidates pledge to tame.
The $10 billion going each month towars in Iraq and Afghanistan might be better spent on urgent prioritiesat home, Obama says, but withdrawing U.S. forces from Iraq in the 16months after the election could be a hard promise to keep -- and thewidening conflict in Afghanistan, both candidates agree, demandsstepped-up U.S. engagement.
It seems clear that an economicstimulus plan will stand at the front of the line in the nextpresident's priorities, depending in part on what a lame-duck Congressis able to enact before Inauguration Day.
Norman Ornstein, ananalyst at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington-based thinktank, is advising the Bush administration on the transfer of power, aproject he says the Bush White House is doing in earnest.
"Part of the motivation is the understanding that this is a wartimetransition, and understanding that it is a vulnerable time and madeeven more vulnerable by the financial meltdown," Ornstein says.
"There is an awful lot on the plate. Not to mention the unknowns."
02 November 2008
Formula One - Lewis Hamilton - world champion
ARGUABLY the most dramaticend to a world title race in Formula One history culminated in LewisHamilton becoming the sport's youngest world champion.
Asthunder boomed over Interlagos, and on a track becoming wetter by thesecond in the closing laps, Hamilton was on the verge of missing out.Runningin sixth and with title rival Felipe Massa running away with theexpected race win, Hamilton's heart was about to be broken for a secondtime, as it was at this track a year ago.
But he can thank Toyota for taking the title as they failed to call in Timo Glock to take on wet tyres.
With the German still on dry rubber and running in fourth at the time, he slowly started to drop back.
Justone kilometre from the conclusion of the Brazilian Grand Prix, and atthe penultimate corner, Hamilton passed Glock to claim fifth place –and with it the title.
Sporting drama does not come any greater than that witnessed in Sao Paulo today, leaving Hamilton to join a pantheon of greats.
Overthe team radio, when it became apparent he had taken the title, anemotional Hamilton said: "I'm speechless – that was so pretty close.
"You guys have done an amazing job all season. This is for you and my family."
Henow becomes Britain's ninth world champion after Mike Hawthorn, GrahamHill, Jim Clark, John Surtees, Sir Jackie Stewart, James Hunt, NigelMansell and Damon Hill, the last 12 years ago.
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