This week Adobe released version 5 of its Creative Suite software compilation. CEO Shantanu Narayen has naturally hit the interview trail to promote his company’s wares, but the biggest news from him is actually a delay of sorts. We’d previously heard that Android , WebOS and BlackBerry versions of Flash 10.1 would be available in the first half of 2010, but Adobe’s chief now places delivery to those platforms in the second half of the year. At least consolation may be found in his teasing of new Flash-enabled tablets — most likely to be running Android or Chrome OS — which we’re told to expect to see within the same time frame.
Our friends at GigaOm’s Earth2Tech blog are putting on their next Green:Net conference. Today they’re announcing that Bill Gross, the CEO and founder of Idealab, will join their list of speakers at Green:Net 2010 . Green:Net 2010 will see top green entrepreneurs, technologists and market-leading companies convene on April 29 in San Francisco. The intersection of the internet and the green tech boom represents an incredible opportunity to define new markets, solve big problems and apply the talent of the internet industry to the most important cause to date: saving the planet. Maximize the value of your time by meeting with thought leaders, technologists, investors, press, new startups and their future customers.
Lon S. Cohen is a freelance writer and is @obilon on Twitter. He’s also the Director of Communications at @ALSofGNY . This post was co-authored by Steve Cohen, who is the Founder of Baywood Consulting Group and the former CIO of M&T Bank. He can be contacted at baywoodconsultinggroup@gmail.com .
The Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA), North America’s leading arbiter of Islamic law, has issued a statement saying that full body scanners violate Islamic modesty laws. “The FCNA emphasizes that a general and public use of such scanners is against the teachings of Islam, natural law and all religions and cultures that stand for decency and modesty,” the Council’s statement said. In light of Britain’s “ no scan, no fly ” policy, and with President Obama on the verge of mandating full body scanners in every airport, this is a particularly interesting development. The FCNA’s demands are relatively simple, they say. Either change the software of the scanners to display only questionable materials on an outline of the body, or allow devout Muslims to request a pat-down instead.
Filed under: Ford , Lincoln , Mercury Lincoln Concept C – Click for high-res image gallery At the National Automobile Dealers Association convention in Orlando, FL on Sunday, Ford’s President of the Americas Mark Fields announced the first new product for Mercury in several years. The fate of Ford’s middle brand has been in doubt for over a decade as models like the Tracer, Sable and Cougar have been discontinued. In what’s surely welcome news to Lincoln/Mercury dealers, Fields informed NADA that Mercury would get a new small car based on the new global compact platform that underpins the forthcoming 2012 Focus and Grand C-Max. The new baby Mercury will be one of 10 different vehicles that come off that platform and it’s expected that a small Lincoln based on the Concept C that debuted at the 2009 Detroit Auto Show will also join it. The Mercury Mountaineer is not expected to be replaced when the new Explorer debuts later this year, leaving Mercury with the Milan , Mariner and the new compact.
Remember back in December when Vice President Joe Biden hosted a one-sided “piracy summit” , ridiculously declaring that “all of the stakeholders” were present (despite there not being a single representative from the technology industry, nor anyone representing consumer interests or ISPs). The “stakeholders” were entirely the entertainment industry. And, even better, despite promises of openness and transparency, the press was kicked out so top execs from most of the major entertainment industry companies could collude talk directly with many of the top administration officials, including Joe Biden, Attorney General Eric Holder, Commerce Secretary Gary Locke and others. You knew that this wasn’t just a random meet and greet and that something would come out of it. And, indeed, less than two months later, we have Eric Holder announcing a special “IP task force” within the Justice Department designed to take on “the rise in intellectual property crime.” Given how many former RIAA/MPAA lawyers ended up at the Justice Department , perhaps this is no surprise.
BlueKiwi , a French startup that helps companies manage customer conversations, says it’s starting a big push into the US market. As part of that effort, it’s announcing new pricing that could be hard to resist — companies can build a BlueKiwi-powered community for free. The company’s tools center around managing customer forums, and finding ideas within them. That sounds like something a lot of other companies including are doing, but Vice President of Marketing Erica Lee said BlueKiwi’s strong point lies in not just creating forums, but also helping companies “take those specific conversations and put them into a process.” In other words, ideas don’t just sit in a forum, and they don’t just pile up uselessly after customers submit them. Instead, BlueKiwi helps companies identify which ideas are getting the most attention from users, then puts them into an “ideation process” where ideas can be discussed, implemented if they’re good, then reported back to the community.
Late last week, tech biz bloggers were shocked — and a few were cruelly happy — to read that TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington had fired 17-year-old intern, entrepreneur and Internet fameball Daniel Brusilovsky . Arrington said the teenage overachiever had accepted a computer from a company in exchange for coverage on TechCrunch. Brusilovsky also admitted, Arrington said, to asking a different startup for a MacBook Air, which led that company to complain to Arrington. Not only did Big Mike cut Brusilovsky from staff, he removed all of Daniel’s posts — I counted 70 of them in Google’s cache — and posted a candid and legally-vetted description of the events, titled “ An Apology to Our Readers .” So of course the hot topic of discussion among local journalists over the weekend was, is TechCrunch’s reputation shot now? TechCrunch isn’t a newspaper, so its staff aren’t bound by the well-established and very strict boundaries given to print news writers.
Filed under: Recalls , Safety , Videos , Toyota Toyota’s Jim Lentz explains the sticky pedal situation – Click above to watch the video after the break Toyota President and COO Jim Lentz decided to go ahead and visit one of the automaker’s own dealerships to see one of its recalled gas pedals go through the shim-fix for himself, and he helpfully brought a video crew along for the ride. After giving a brief rundown of what’s happened thus far – a much more thorough version of which can be found here – Lentz turns the duties over to one of the dealership’s service technicians, who runs through the actual process of fixing a defective pedal. Now, for a few observations: First, we wouldn’t want to take his place behind the camera, but all Lentz needs is a basketball for that left hand of his and he’d be a veritable Harlem Globetrotter. Second, the fix doesn’t look all that difficult, and it takes the technician just a few minutes to add the shim after the affected pedal has been removed from the vehicle. Lastly, for another take on the pedal-shim operation, see our previous video on the subject here .
You may already be familiar with Via Technologies through its motherboards or especially as the producer of the NANO 3000 series CPUs challenging Intel’s Atom CPU. This time Via offers us a Pico-ITXe Expansion module, code-named VIA EPIA-P710-D. Working together with the World’s First Pico-ITX-e Board, measuring merely 10cm x 7.2cm, it claims to offer an ideal, flexible platform for the creation of fleet management devices. VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced its latest technology platform for fleet management device designs. The VIA EPIA-P710-D is a Pico-ITXe expansion module that allows system integrators to easily create cutting-edge fleet management devices that incorporate a range of the latest communication and intelligent management technologies.
Yesterday afternoon, just before President Obama’s first State of the Union address, the websites of the House of Representatives and those of multiple congressional members were defaced with anti-Obama messages. Among the defaced sites were those of Charles Gonzalez (20th District of Texas), Spencer Bachus (Alabama’s 8th District) and Joe Wilson (South Carolina’s 2nd District). These sites are currently down for maintenance. Sponsor Here is the messages that greeted visitors to house.gov yesterday afternoon: FUCK OBAMA!! Red Eye CREW !!!!! O RESTO E HACKER !!! by m4V3RiCk ; HADES ; T4ph0d4 — FROM BRASIL All the affected sites used the Joomla content management system, but it’s important to note that not every Joomla site hosted on the House’s servers was affected by this attack. According to the Wall Street Journal , all of these sites are managed by GovTrends , a private vendor.
Barack Obama’s rise to fame in the years leading up to the 2008 presidential election caused many to compare the then young Illinois senator to John F. Kennedy. Like Kennedy, Obama mobilized an enormous following across racial boundaries and of all ages with his charismatic and inspirational speeches of hope for a brighter future. But according to New York Times contributor and multi Pulitzer Prize winning author Thomas Friedman, while Kennedy continued to inspire after his eventual election, Obama has not. Sponsor In a New York Times op-ed column from this weekend, Friedman calls on Obama to reignite the nation’s innovative and entrepreneurial flames and to make 2010 “the year of Start-Up America.” Friedman says doing so would be Obama’s “moon shot,” a reference to President Kennedy’s campaign to send American astronauts to the moon in the 1960s.
Here’s our rundown of the week’s business and tech news. First, the most popular stories VentureBeat published in the last seven days: Apple tablet roundup: Who’s going to use the thing? — Apple’s tablet has provided no shortage of rumors. Everything from design specs to pricing have flooded the internet from various media outlets and sources. To gain a better perspective on the scope of rumors, we put together a snapshot below of the most recent speculations.
Current NASA Administrator and former astronaut Charles Bolden, speaking a few weeks ago at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society, explained how our nation’s space program is at a crossroads and pledged to continue manned missions into space. A combination of the federal budget deficit and a number of successful unmanned space endeavors—think Hubble, Mars Rovers—has dimmed Dubya’s plan to put man back in space in a big way. Bolden, however, refuses to let the Astronaut die on his watch. “I do not see this president being the president who presides over the end of human spaceflight,” he said. Bolden expressed an interest in partnering with other nations on practical manned missions, in addition to continuing to develop more effiicent space flight technologies.
Filed under: Truck , Government/Legal , Marketing/Advertising , Videos , GMC Scott Brown and his 2005 GMC Canyon pickup – Click above to watch the video after the break Never underestimate the power of a celebrity endorsement. Or, for that matter, a political one. Massachusetts senator-elect Scott Brown (R) won an unprecedented victory Tuesday in the state’s special election to replace Ted Kennedy, and he reportedly earned extra brownie points from voters for promising to keep his staid 2005 GMC Canyon pickup truck with over 200,000 miles on the clock as his daily driver in office. “I’m Scott Brown, I’m from Wrentham, and I drive a truck,” the candidate had been known to say. This was especially true after President Obama quipped that voters should “look under the hood” in reference to Brown’s candidacy.
