Mariza chante le Fado

Chanteuse d’un fado atypique et métissé, Mariza, née au Mozambique est reconnaissable à ses cheveux ras teints en blond. Cette chanteuse portugaise, appelée souvent "la nouvelle Amalia" en référence à Amalia Rodrigues, la diva du fado, a été nommée "Meilleure révélation de l’année" et "Plus belle voix du fado" en 2000, son talent pour créer lors de ses concerts, une ambiance proche du cabaret fait de cette jeune chanteuse l’une des étoiles de la scène portugaise. Si elle s'est imposée avec "Fado em Mim" et "Fado Curvo" comme la nouvelle gloire du fado, Mariza se fait un point d'honneur de bousculer le genre. À cet égard, son second album montrait la voie. On retrouve de façon plus achevée cette volonté de différence dans "Transparente". La fadiste présente une musique métissée et pourtant ancrée dans la tradition, subtilement nourrie de son folklore et des musiciens qui l'accompagnent. Le fado, une sorte de "blues portugais" qui chante la saudade (la nostalgie), depuis le XIXème siècle, connaît aujourd'hui un renouveau, avec des chanteuses comme Mariza, Cristina Branco, Misia ou encore Mafalda Arnaut.
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EchoStar will give away free service to the first town that agrees to change its name to DISH

The town must legally (and permanently) rename itself DISH, in honor of the name of EchoStar's service. "As part of DISH Network's re-branding efforts and new advertising campaign trumpeting 'Better TV for All,' we invite a city or town to join us by re-branding itself DISH," EchoStar President Michael Neuman said in a statement. The company said that it will accept submissions up until November 1 and that every household within the winning municipality will receive a free DISH Network satellite TV receiver, free standard installation and programming for 10 years. EchoStar estimated that it would cost approximately $4 million to set up equipment and provide free programming for a town with 1,000 households. In 2000, the small town of Halfway, Oregon, agreed to change its name to Half.com in exchange for $60,000 and 20 computers from the online retail company, which is now a subsidiary of eBayUltimately, Sanderson doubts that any town will agree to change its name to DISH. But he thinks it's a good way for EchoStar to easily drum up some brand-name recognition. Separately Tuesday, EchoStar announced another contest as part of its new promotional campaign to celebrate its 25th anniversary. It is giving anyone who goes to the company's Web site and enters its "Reach for the Stars" contest the chance to have their name written on the next EchoStar satellite to be launched into space. The satellite, EchoStar's tenth, will be launched sometime next year.
Via Paul R.

The basic rights of attention owners

Attention is the substance of focus. It registers your interests by indicating choice for certain things and choice against other things. Any time you pay attention to something (and any time you ignore something), data is created. That data has value, but only if it's gathered, measured, and analyzed. Right now, you generally lack the ability to capture that data for yourself, so you can't benefit from it. But what if you could? And what if you could share your data with other people, who were also capturing their own data, or if you could exchange your data for something of value with companies and other institutions that were interested in learning more about the things that interested you? You'd be in control--you would decide who has access to what data, as well as what you'd accept in exchange for access to your data.
Our attention data is ours, each of us individually. In the wake of the behavior of credit card companies, credit unions and data brokers, it is vital that we recognize our right, and our responsibility, to govern ourselves relative to the use of our private information. There are careful distinctions between data, meta data and attention, that I am still trying to figure out. In any case, by virtue of recognizing the above-listed rights, members of the AttentionTrust (both individual and corporate) express their participation in a free, open market for exchanging their attention. Our attention establishes intention; and our intention establishes economic value.
Via Steve Gillmor

LifeStraw purifies water for under 2 dollars

More than one billion people – one sixth of the world’s population - are without access to safe water supply. Safe water interventions have vast potential to transform the lives of millions, especially in crucial areas such as poverty eradication, environmental upgradation, quality of life, child development and gender equality. The aptly-named LifeStraw is an invention that could become one of the greatest life-savers in history. It is a 25 cm long, 29 mm diameter, plastic pipe filter and purchased singly, costs around US2.00. LifeStraw is a personal, low-cost water purification tool with a life time of 700 litres – approximately one year of water consumption for one person. Positive test results have been achieved on tap, turbid and saline water against common waterborne bacteria such as Salmonella, Shigella, Enterococcus and Staphylococcu.

A9 transforms traditional Yellow Pages

Amazon said Tuesday that it's launched its own interactive maps called A9.com Maps. While the interactive graphical portion of the map looks similar to offerings from Google and MapQuest (a division of Time Warner's America Online), and slightly better than Yahoo's and Microsoft's MSN maps, A9.com has one feature that's very unique.
A9.com, currently in beta, has a corresponding street-level image next to some addresses, along with interactive maps. The feature, called Block View, shows street-level images of places -- giving users a feeling of being immersed in the address they're looking up. Check out A9.com MapsThe service has 35 million images in more than 22 U.S. cities. But not all locations in the cities have been shot. While block views may seem like bells and whistles, especially when initially introduced as part of A9's yellow pages, the feature is practical -- especially for tourists that want to see where they're going. It's far more practical than seeing the aerial, satellite images offered by Google Maps.Separately, Google disclosed in its quarterly filing Monday that its cost of revenues rose in the second quarter by $4.5 million, due to products like Google Earth, with its satellite imagery.
A9.com has a long way to go to be the top map destination on the Web. Those honors go to MapQuest, with 39 million unique monthly visitors. Yahoo Local comes in second, with 22 million visitors, followed by Google and then MSN.
Via Bambi Francisco

Google suspends ambitious Library Project

Google revealed yesterday that it will heed critics of its Google Print Library Project and delay scanning copyrighted texts until November. When announced late in 2004, the Library Project aimed to index book collections of major research libraries to make the content searchable through Google Print.However, the ambitious plan came under attack from several publishers and publishing groups, including the Association of American University Presses, which sent a letter of concern to Google back in May. In a blog post yesterday, Google Print Product Manager Adam M. Smith said that company made changes to the project designed to better meet the needs of publishers. Google now allows both its publishing partners and other book publishers to upload a list of books they don't want included in Google Print. Publishers can also request that a book be removed at any time from Google's search results.
Smith wrote: "We think most publishers and authors will choose to participate in the publisher program in order to introduce their work to countless readers around the world. But we know that not everyone agrees, and we want to do our best to respect their views too. So now, any and all copyright holders - both Google Print partners and non-partners - can tell us which books they'd prefer that we not scan if we find them in a library."To allow time to review the new options it is offering publishers, Google will refrain from scanning any copyrighted books until November, Smith wrote.
Via Cathleen Moore

What to learn from Baidu IPO?

There are a lot of lessons we can learn from Baidu's IPO, not the least of which is that we haven't learned all the lessons from the dot-com days and here are the three points I'd like to make:
First, Baidu left a lot of money on the table. Priced at $27, it opened at $66 and ended its first day at $122. That means with 4 million shares offered, the company could have raised $488 million, rather than the $108 million, which raises the question of whether Wall Street has learned to properly price IPOs, and whether future IPOs may need to use the Google-like Dutch-auction process to get a fairer and truer picture of market demand.
Second, Baidu, which earned $1.4 million last year, is currently valued at $5 billion, raising the question of whether we'll ever learn not to let greed get the best of us and whether this company's shares are likely to trade below $100 in due time. Baidu traded as high as $153 in Monday's trading.
Third, if we thought that Google, eBay and Yahoo would rule the virtual world, we may have to rethink our assumptions. After a five-year lull in the IPO market, investors may warm up to emerging companies once again.
Via Bambi Francisco

Bangkok fashion week

Thailand's focus on fashion, driven by the government-sponsored Bangkok Fashion City Project, will soon have a very visible and public presence in a five-day "Fashion Week" that runs from August 17-21 and which, say the organisers, will showcase more than 150 brands from three Thai fashion industries textiles and garments, jewellery and accessories, and leatherwear.
Kullawit "Ford" Laosuksri, the energetic and fashion-trained editor of Thailand's Elle magazine, is clear on what he believes is the right approach if Bangkok is to have more than second billing on the world fashion stage. "We have to stop comparing ourselves with Paris, with Milan. We don't have the same system. We're not the same. We don't do seasonal collections. We don't for example, do winter clothing. We need to concentrate on what I would call tropical fashion. At the moment we're doing the same as Singapore and Malaysia."Thailand's Christian Dior Somchai Kaewtong of the long stablished and highly successful Kai Boutique, and who also represents the kinder and caring face of fashion, is quick to add his voice. "In fact we're better than either of them in terms of creativity and craftsmanship. We've more than enough talent in Thailand. What we really need now is to be noticed."
Via Kelvin Rugg

Lennon is now playing on Broadway

Directed by Don Scardino, the show explores the life of John Lennon, from Liverpool to the limelight of the Beatles and his love story with Yoko Ono, using his own words and songs. To celebrate his Everyman appeal, various cast members — white, black, young, old, men, women — take turns playing him. For Don Scardino, the idea of writing and directing a musical about John Lennon was impossible to resist, even though the pitfalls of undertaking the project could not have been clearer. A Beatles fan since the group's earliest hits - now 57, he said he hightailed it to Kennedy Airport to see the group's arrival here on its first visit in 1964.
The Show, with permission from Yoko Ono, includes three rare and unpublished songs by John Lennon. Two of the songs, "India, India" and "I Don't Want to Lose You" were never published, and exist only on private recordings. A third song, "Cookin' (in the Kitchen of Love)," was recorded by Ringo Starr in 1976, but was never recorded by John Lennon.

Making Art out of sms

For this year's diploma exhibition of the Hochschule für Bildende Künste Dresden (Dresden's High School of art), Matthias Haase has presented a project using a special version of the SMS Chatwall event software. Haase installed the GSM-module, a computer and beamer equipment on a table with a projection screen, calling the installation "Bote" (messenger). Exhibition visitors can send short messages to the number shown on the screen. As a take-away gift for the visitor, the sculpture replies with an artist's "thank you" SMS, mentioning the art exhibition at the HfBK 2005. People who want to take part, but can't attend the exhibition can send an SMS to +4915204912748.

Baidu valued more richly than Google

China has the second-largest Internet audience in the world, yet less than 10% of the company's population is online (only 100 million residents surf the Web). Baidu.com, China's biggest Web search company, is the world's sixth-most trafficked Web site. During the first half of 2005, Baidu earned $1.8 million on revenue of $13.6 million. On August 5th IPO, the Beijing-based company's shares (BIDU) closed at $122.54 on the Nasdaq Stock Market, a 354 percent gain from its initial public offering price of $27. Investors valued Baidu more richly than Google, when comparing market value to last year's sales. Baidu's 2004 price-to-sales ratio was 279 -- based on revenue of $14.2 million -- well above Google's comparable multiple of about 26 -- based on revenue of $3.2 billion. How can investors justify Baidu at even five times greater valuation than Google or Yahoo? With about 32.3 million shares outstanding, the company with $8 million in revenue in its most recent quarter is carrying a market cap of more than $4 billion.

MobiTV service receives Frost & Sullivan award

In the short period since its nationwide launch in November 2003, MobiTV has made a name for itself as the only live television streaming media product currently available in the U.S. market. “Despite being a relatively new market, initial feedback suggests that MobiTV is a viable and profitable business model,” said Frost & Sullivan industry analyst Mukul Krishna. “Frost & Sullivan expects it to be one of the fastest revenue-generating applications for the consumer wireless market in the near future.” Based on Idetic’s Far Reach™ technology platform, MobiTV was specifically designed to satisfy the demand for live streamable content from more than 150 million wireless subscribers in the United States alone. Currently available at a competitive price of $9.99 a month on the Sprint PCS Vision network, MobiTV subscribers can view a host of 20 popular news, sports and entertainment channels such as MSNBC, CNBC, NBC (Mobile), ABC News, CNET, Fox Sports, and The Discovery Channel. MobiTV currently supports more than 20 different phone models and is Java- and BREW-compatible for easy integration and launch. Idetic’s development team is working to take this service to the next level through higher frame rates, enhanced picture quality, and expanding the base-channel line-up.
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