Presidential race buffets fight for Senate control (The Arizona Republic)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories Stories, RSS and RSS Feed via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/257170866?client_source=feed&format=rss

Expendables 2 Pussy Riot National Hurricane Center Zeek Rewards elvis presley elvis presley vanessa bryant

Random Words of Ownership | PWxyz

This past week, Michael Kelley, the Editor in Chief of Library Journal, called attention to statements from Random House that suggest that libraries own the books they acquire from distributors such as Overdrive or 3M. Evidently, as far as Random is concerned, distributors are not compelled to enforce license agreements with libraries for Random House titles. Michael quotes Skip Dye, head of library relations at Random, ?Random House?s often repeated, and always consistent position is this: when libraries buy their RH, Inc. ebooks from authorized library wholesalers, it is our position that they own them.? Skip goes on to say, ?This is our business model: we sell copies of our ebooks to an approved list of library wholesalers, and those wholesalers are supposed to resell them to libraries. In our view, this purchase constitutes ownership of the book by the library. It is not a license.?

These are startling words, and they suggest a wide series of consequences. If libraries truly own Random House titles, then the only legal restraints on their use beyond acknowledgement of the normal restrictions of copyright are the constraints that libraries have acquiesced to in their contracts with library e-book distributors. In line with the statement from RH, libraries should theoretically be able to sell e-books once they are done with them, donate them to other libraries, or engage in digital inter-library loan.

One caveat in Skip?s language is ?approved list of library wholesalers? ? if RH is selling only to wholesalers that it knows a priori will impose restrictions on e-book use and disposition, then it is being disingenuous. For example, if 3M contract language acknowledges that a library has a right to move its titles to another platform, does the license interfere with the ability of a library to donate or sell its ebook collection to another party? Could, in other words, the State of Kansas sell the Internet Archive a set of ebooks for the IA to make available through Open Library? Would Random object to that transfer? And, even more critically, just who is eligible to be an approved purchaser of books? Would Random House turn away the Internet Archive as a potential buyer of ebooks? As an Internet Archive director, I wrote to Skip Dye, offering to buy a bulk quantity of Random titles for Open Library?s lending service. I await word.

There are further interesting questions. If libraries own the books they purchase from an approved RH retailer, then do consumers own the e-books they buy from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and other online bookstores? Random House is partnering with Bookshout, a new service that permits readers to aggregate their e-books in a vendor-neutral bookshelf, regardless of which retailer the titles were acquired from originally. This would suggest that RH?s policy might well extend to consumers. If Bookshout is able to aggregate e-books from a range of retailers, then would it be possible for the Internet Archive to create a library bookshelf, in which individual consumers donate their used digital titles to the Open Library? If IA was able to verify that consumers own those titles, in a manner logically consistent with the approach that Bookshout is taking, would not IA be similarly supporting reader?s rights?

Random House could initiate large-scale e-book sales direct to consumers whenever it chose. Direct sales would force Amazon to acknowledge that its e-book provisions to consumers were truly sales, not licenses, and dramatically weaken Amazon?s market position to publishers? advantage, as well as consumers?. E-book retailers would have to compete on services to a far greater extent than they do now, providing robust collection management facilities, annotation and social reading support, integration with external e-book services, and making available a robust set of APIs for individual or group-based collection management.

There?s also a side to this question that targets Random House particularly. RH moved to agency pricing in 2011, and was not named in the Department of Justice action against five other publishers that allegedly colluded to set retail prices. The Justice Department has made it clear that agency pricing, per se, is not inherently illegal, and Random is therefore free to continue its pricing strategy without antitrust entanglement. But, if Amazon and other ebook retailers are acting as agents for Random ? contractually acknowledging Random?s price settings and collecting local sales taxes for the publisher ? and if the contract language between Random House and e-book retailers presumes sales and not licensing, then it would appear that consumers should be free from the constraints that Amazon may be unnecessarily ? perhaps even inappropriately ? imposing on consumers.

There?s one final argument as to why Random would want to move towards ownership language for e-books. In online music sales, recent court decisions such as Eminem (FBT Productions v. Aftermath Records) clearly indicate that digital revenue booked as sales actually constitutes licensing per the contract agreements with the artists. The distinction is consequential because licensing affords far higher royalties ? up to 50 percent ? than straight sales. Significant class actions are being resolved in favor of recording artists, and these rulings put studios in arrears with many of their artists for considerable sums. This may provide further incentive, particularly for authors with older contracts, for publishers to book transactions as sales. And if RH is controlling pricing through retail price management, the financial exposure of e-book sales being evaluated as licenses by courts could be even greater.

Both individual readers and libraries need to start demanding clarification in what publishers mean when they say that consumers ?own? e-books. There?s a striking disjunction between action and language. Words have meaning, and language has consequences. It?s time to hold corporations accountable, and re-assert ownership over our own bookshelves.

Source: http://blogs.publishersweekly.com/blogs/PWxyz/2012/10/21/random-words-of-ownership/

alyssa bustamante protandim weightless ellen degeneres jcpenney yeardley love nba all star reserves rock center

Congo rebels call for negotiations with Kinshasa

BUNGANA, eastern Congo (AP) ? Fighting may resume soon in eastern Congo if President Joseph Kabila's government does not negotiate with the M23 rebels, said the insurgents' president, Bishop Jean-Marie Runiga, Saturday.

"We see that the Congolese army troops are moving, they are preparing a final assault against us. If the government does not come to the negotiating table we will have to defend ourselves," said Runiga at a press conference in Bunagana, a town in the Democratic Republic of Congo at the border with Uganda that is controlled by the M23.

The fact that the M23 rebels control a town so securely that it can hold a public press conference with journalists travelling from the provincial capital of Goma, is an indication of the group's success. The M23 say they have also established an alternative government over the areas of eastern Congo that it controls.

Asked by the Associated Press if they thought of taking the initiative and attacking themselves, the M23 president said that they "could take Goma at any moment. ... If we want to wage war, we can. We have the strength."

Runiga has been spending the past weeks in Kampala, where he said he worked with Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni to try to open a dialog with the Kabila government in Kinshasa.

"Museveni invited us to negotiate with Kabila and asked us to stop fighting. That is why there has been a ceasefire for two months. But Kinshasa does not want to negotiate or to try to find a solution to the crisis quickly. They rather talk with Rwanda," said the M23 president.

A leaked United Nations experts report accuses Rwanda and Uganda of supporting the rebels. It reportedly charges that the Rwandan minister of defence, General James Kabarebe, is directing the M23 rebels.

Runiga said the report is wrong and deplored that neighboring countries are blamed for what are mainly internal Congolese problems. He said the M23 is the result of bad governance in Kinshasa.

"The U.N. report was created by Kinshasa intelligence services. It is a strategy to make people forget that the country is not well managed," he said.

According to Runiga the M23 is receiving new Congolese army defectors every day and does not need the military support of Rwanda and Uganda.

He announced that the military branch of the M23 group has been renamed the Congolese Revolutionary Army (Arm?e R?volutionaire

Congolaise) and its leader, Colonel Sultani Makenga, has been promoted to general to reflect the growing number of troops under his command.

Runiga strongly denied accusations by a recent Human Rights Watch report that the M23 rebels recruit children into their ranks.

"There are children without parents who come to us to join our ranks but we turn them back and pay for their school fees," he said.

The M23 is a rebellion that was created by Congolese army deserters in May. The members are mainly ethnic Tutsis. Its leaders demand that agreements made with the Congo government when they were integrated in the army in 2009 are respected.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/congo-rebels-call-negotiations-kinshasa-150235039.html

hobbit trailer greenhill nj plane crash plane crash new jersey beef o bradys bowl the hobbit the hobbit an unexpected journey

marjorie timidity: NAPA of Central Missouri - Billiards

Billiards has been around for a long time. ?So has competition. ?Billiard leagues combine these to make the sport competitive and fun. ?In the book PRECISION POOL by Gerry Kanov and Shari Stauch, they say "This is a sport, a game, a form of recreation enjoyed by millions of people. ?But it can be a difficult and frustrating ?sport for untold millions-and you- if you're not enjoying it. ?Accept the Challenges, embrace the difficulties, revel in the mastery of each new skill, no matter how trivial at first glance. There's not a professional player in all the pool circuit that will tell you they've mastered the art of cue sports. ?What they have mastered is the love of pool, and the thrill of discovery in a sport that will endlessly challenge them for as long as they weild a cue.We wish the same for each of you!"

I agree. ?If you are not having fun playing pool then you should find something else to do. ?You are always learning. ?You are always watching. ?You are always practicing. ?That is what NAPA is all about. ?You the player, becoming better, becoming more competitive, becoming part of a team, and becoming a leader, a teacher, a mentor. ?If you love something then it is easier to to tolerate frustration, enjoy competition, encourage friendship, and promote the game and the league.

I will be giving tips each week to help every level of player from those just beginning to those who think they have mastered the game. ?I will invite each of you to also give me your comments, suggestions, and remarks to make the blog, and the league, better.?

I look forward in starting this series and continue it as long as there is interest.

Source: http://napa-missouri.blogspot.com/2012/10/billiards-has-been-around-for-long-time.html

ice t downton abbey new york knicks president day lin j.r. smith espn jeremy lin

Source: http://marjorie-timidity.blogspot.com/2012/10/napa-of-central-missouri-billiards.html

halo 4 jewel san francisco earthquake san francisco earthquake terminator salvation terminator salvation deron williams

Poetry in motion: Gemini Observatory releases image of rare polar ring galaxy

Friday, October 19, 2012

When the lamp is shattered, The light in the dust lies dead. When the cloud is scattered, The rainbow's glory is shed.

These words, which open Shelley's poem "When the Lamp is Shattered," employ visions of nature to symbolize life in decay and rebirth. It's as if he had somehow foreseen the creation of this new Gemini Legacy image, and penned a caption for it. What Gemini has captured is nothing short of poetry in motion: the colorful and dramatic tale of a life-and-death struggle between two galaxies interacting. All the action appears in a single frame, with the stunning polar-ring galaxy NGC 660 as the focus of attention.

Polar-ring galaxies are peculiar objects. Astronomers have found only a handful of them, so not much is known about their origins. Most have an early-type spiral system, called a lenticular galaxy, as the central showpiece. But NGC 660, which lies about 40 million light-years distant toward the direction of Pisces the Fishes, is the only polar-ring galaxy known with what is called a late-type lenticular galaxy as its host. All, however, display a ring of stars, dust, and gas that extends tens of thousands of light-years across space along an orbit nearly perpendicular to the main disk.

Models of how polar-ring galaxies for offer two general formation scenarios: 1) a piercing merger between two galaxies aligned roughly at right angles, or 2) when the host galaxy tidally strips material from a passing gas-rich spiral and strews it into a ring.

What you see in this new Gemini Legacy image, then, is not a single dynamic body but either the "bloody" aftermath of one galaxy piercing the heart of another or the remains of a furious tidal struggle between two galaxies that shattered one galaxy's "lamp," scattered its dust and gas, and formed a colorful, 40,000-light-year-long ring of visual glory.

Born of Violence

Brian Svoboda of the University of Arizona, who recently studied the chemical and temperature environment of NGC 660, believes that unique morphology arises from a previous interaction with a gas-rich galaxy. The geometry of NGC 660 ?? an enormous edge-on polar ring (some 40,000 light-years across) ?? contains more gas (and associated star formation) than its host, which strongly suggests a violent formation. "One of the main characteristics of NGC 660 is that the ring is not truly polar, but is inclined ~45 degrees from the plane of the disk," Svoboda points out. "The simulations for the piercing mergers cannot reproduce these low inclination polar rings; however, the tidal accretion scenario can."

NGC 660's polar ring resolves into hundreds of objects, a considerable part of which are blue and red supergiant stars. The youngest detected stars in the ring formed only about 7 million years ago, indicating a long, ongoing process.

"Gemini's incredible definition of the active star forming regions strewn through the polar ring in NGC 660, juxtaposed against the exquisite crossing dust lanes, is simply beautiful. It really is the most incredible picture I've seen of the galaxy," Svoboda exclaims. "None of the other images I've seen, including those from the Hubble Space Telescope, show the star forming regions with such clarity."

Weighing the Evidence

If NGC represents a merging of two galaxies, astronomer would expect to find a collapsed core and a burst of star formation, which they do see. But the monkey wrench is the uniquely high gas content of both NGC 660's disk component and its polar ring.

"A tidal accretion event will place gas in the polar ring without strongly interacting with the original gas rich host, Svoboda explains. "Tidal interaction is consistent with an influx of gas into the nuclear region creating the starburst that we observe now." Further evidence, he says, is NGC 660's lack of a double nucleus (i.e. two super-massive black holes), which one would expect from a merger.

Astronomers have not detected any "tails" extending from NGC 660, a key signature of many tidal interactions. Usually, when galaxy passes close to another, tidal forces eject stars, gas, and dust into a graceful tail of extragalactic debris and stretched them far into space. But both polar-ring models have produced systems without tidal tails while creating active star formation in the polar ring.

While it can't be proven with a great deal of confidence, in the case of NGC 660, Svoboda says, "I think that there is good evidence to suggest that the origin of the polar ring lies in the tidal accretion event scenario." Particularly he notes that the ring may be about 1 billion years old, so the stripped galaxy could have moved out of the field by the time of our observations now.

Life from Death?

Unseen to the eye, but bright at radio wavelengths, is a compact source (less than 32 light-years in extent) at the host's core. Believed to be a super cluster of stars in a dense cloud of dust and gas, this powerful radio emitter contains perhaps a few thousand hot, blue youthful stars.

Galaxies usually have a majority of old red stars at their cores, but one of the violent scenarios that created NGC 660 has triggered a furious burst of star formation at the galaxy's core. Either way, the gravitational interaction between the two galaxies created shock waves that plowed into giant clouds of gas, causing them to collapse into behemoth blue stars, many likely containing more than 100 times the mass of our Sun. These monstrous, short-lived, stars exploded shortly thereafter as supernovae, which generated more shock waves, creating a domino effect that has ever since perpetuated the creation of youthful stars at NGC 660's core. NGC 660, then, is not only a polar-ring galaxy but also a starburst galaxy. These systems are among the most dense and intense star-forming environments known.

Probing Dark Matter

The ring in a polar-ring galaxy rotates at a speed comparable to that of its host galaxy. By determining how fast a polar ring rotates at different distances from the center of the system, astronomers can search for evidence of elusive and mysterious dark matter in NGC 660's halo. Radio observations have shown that while the ring's velocity close to NGC 660's core is normal, the velocity in the ring's outer parts remains consistent; theoretically the rotational velocity should have dropped off significantly due to the region's gas-poor environment. This finding points to the existence of huge amounts of dark matter in NGC 660.

Astronomers believe dark matter influences the dynamics of all galaxies. Yet understanding dark matter remains one of the astronomy's greatest challenges. Further observations of the enigmatic environment of NGC 660 may shed more light on this ? well ? dark matter.

###

Gemini Observatory: http://www.gemini.edu

Thanks to Gemini Observatory for this article.

This press release was posted to serve as a topic for discussion. Please comment below. We try our best to only post press releases that are associated with peer reviewed scientific literature. Critical discussions of the research are appreciated. If you need help finding a link to the original article, please contact us on twitter or via e-mail.

This press release has been viewed 23 time(s).

Source: http://www.labspaces.net/124648/Poetry_in_motion__Gemini_Observatory_releases_image_of_rare_polar_ring_galaxy

oberon donald driver donald driver robin thicke mariana trench transcendental meditation trayvon martin

To Turn The Crowd Into Venture Capitalists, FundersClub Raises $6 ...

If you need more proof that FundersClub wants to radically change startup funding by letting non-VCs invest, it just closed a $6 million seed round, the largest ever from a Y Combinator company. There are still questions about its legality, but investors include A-listers YC, First Round, Chris Dixon, and Aaron Levie. Their support shows Silicon Valley is ready to disrupt itself by inviting the crowd to the cap table.

Democratizing Capital

For those unfamiliar, FundersClub is a website that picks promising startups and lets people invest in them over the web in return for real equity.?Anyone who?s an ?accredited investor? (earns over $200,000 a year or has a net worth over $1 million) can browse startups with open rounds ranging from a few hundred thousand to a few million dollars. They learn about the businesses, pick ones they believe in, and plop down as little a $1,000. The average investment so far is $2500. All the legal paperwork and money transfer happens right there online.

If one of the startups gets acquired or IPOs, the investors can cash out their stake and FundersClub collects a percentage. That makes this a whole different ball game than the crowdfunding in exchange for rewards like on Kickstarter, and it doesn?t require the JOBS Act.

Since FundersClub only makes money if the startups it hosts succeed, it has a strong incentive to pick the best companies. FundersClub essentially serves as curation layer that attracts investors, in some ways similar to what Y Combinator does. Similar to a venture fund, FundersClub also offers the startups on its platform advice and connections to potential employees, so it does have some value-add beyond routing money.

So far it?s been a hit. FundersClub has seen 3,400 investors register. About 340 have actually invested, ponying up a total of around several million to close rounds for five startups including several YC companies. FundersClub raised a pre-seed round of $529,000 for itself on its own platform, and one company raised its target of $100,000 in 48 hours. FundersClub currently?has one round open for a 500 Startups company seeking investment, and has a few more readied.

It could get even easier to funnel money to startups get?if the legal ban on general solicitation is lifted and companies can actively advertise that they?re raising on FundersClub. And traffic and investment could explode if the JOBS Act passes, allowing anyone to fund startups through FundersClub, not just accredited investors.

But Is It Legal?

There?s one major problem for FundersClub. ?I?ve talked to experts in the crowdfunding space who believe there?s a chance it may be violating the Securities Exchange Act of 1934 if it handles money for investors without being a licensed, registered broker dealer. That?s a felony that could trigger huge fines or even get FundersClub?s founders jail time. There are laws against attempting to circumvent SEC regulations, meaning it?s not okay for FundersClub to just find a loophole.

Essentially each of its little venture funds is a single-purpose vehicle for delivering money to a specific company. The SEC has never held up that these are legal. It even saw through and prevented Goldman Sachs when it tried to raise money specifically to invest in Facebook.

FundersClub firmly believes it?s legal because it never handles the money directly, instead raising money for a venture fund that funnels into a startup. The money is kept in separate custodial accounts for each FundersClub fund. It isn?t disclosing details on exactly how the financial back-end works right now, but apparently there?s a reason it hasn?t been shut down.

In a worst-case scenario where the SEC does come down on FundersClub, all its existing crowd investors could get a put right to sell their shares back to the startups or FundersClub. It costs a lot of money, and requires months of training and background checks, but FundersClub may need to consider becoming a registered broker dealer. It could definitely slow down the company and force it to deal with additional regulation, but otherwise it may be exposing itself, its investors, and the startups it hosts to risk.

These legal issues may be why several competitors like New York?s Crowdfunder have not actually started accepting crowd investment yet. Some are waiting and praying for the JOBS Act to pass. The well-known AngelList never touches the money itself to avoid legal trouble.?For now, FundersClub could be gaining a big head start and become the name brand for equity crowdfunding in exchange for expending?significant?effort to navigate the legal risks.

I do hear it has expert legal counsel in the space and contacts at the SEC that believe it?s in the right, so in the end things could turn out fine. For now, though, we?ll have to wait and see how things play out.

Funding FundersClub

So is FundersClub a smart enough idea to be worth investing in despite the risk it could get shut down? Some very smart firms think so. In on the round are?First Round Capital, Y Combinator, Draper Associates, Felicis Ventures, Spark Capital, Digital Garage, Intel Capital, the YC-affiliated funds (Andreessen Horowitz, Start Fund, SV Angel, and General Catalyst Partners), Investmon S?rl; NetPrice; Global Venture Alliance (GVA) and Plug and Play Tech Center.

Smart angels are taking the bet too. The individuals in on FundersClub?s seed round are?Founder Collective Partner?Chris Dixon, Box CEO and Co-Founder Aaron Levie, Pejman Nozad, Facebook VP of biz dev and monetization?Dan Rose, Milo Founder Jack Abraham, and former Yahoo CTO Farzad Nazem.

The $6 million will aid FundersClub to foot the significant legal costs of pioneering in the heavily regulated financial space. It will be able to hire more employees to do due diligence on which startups it should host and convince these entrepreneurs to list on FundersClub. The cash should accelerate development of the site as well, which is currently quite basic.

The seed money could also help FundersClub secure relationships that could bring in huge new sources of investment for the companies it hosts: banks, hedge funds, and private equity firms. We hear investors in these are eager to add startups as a risky asset class to their portfolios. But these institutions don?t have Silicon Valley deal flow. FundersClub could do the research and have feet on the ground in the valley getting access to funding rounds. Since these institutions work with billions of dollars, they could fund fleets of FundersClub startups.

There?s also another audacious item on FundersClub?s roadmap. It wants to offer a new form of structured liquidity to late stage startups. FundersClub would buy up packages of shares from long-time employees and investors that want to cash out before the company gets bought or IPOs. FundersClub could then sell rights to those shares to its crowd investors. Big startups would pay FundersClub for the service of providing a liquidity release valve that assists with retention and delays an IPO. Crowd investors would still be taxed FundersClub?s fee when they cash out upon exit.

Not A Replacement For VC

The mentorship and network that comes with taking on prestigious venture capitalists and angels invaluable. That?s why investment from the crowd will never replace the old model. But sites like FundersClub could let startups take money with fewer strings like board seats or decision pressure attached.

Having an army of investors in addition to a boardroom full of them also has its benefits. These people are incentivized evangelists, product testers, and bridges to customers or talent.

The weight of the crowd with the wisdom of veteran VCs could be a winning combination for startups. That means FundersClub could be a winner for its new investors if its founders can avoid SEC trouble. Now that it has the money though, FundersClub needs to make absolutely sure its legal so it can go on to bring innovation to the world of startup investment.

FundersClub is a web service that gives investors unprecedented access to investment opportunities and the tools to review and invest online with ease and speed. By facilitating investment with industry standard fund vehicles that have been used offline for decades, paired with a web-based screening, payments, and legal documents handling system, FundersClub is able to pool checks from many investors to make aggregated investments on behalf of individuals and institutions that were previously inaccessible to them.

? Learn more

First Round Capital is a venture capital firm that primarily makes early round investments. They look to play an active role in the operations of most the companies they invest in.

? Learn more

Y Combinator is a venture fund which focuses on seed investments to startup companies. It offers financing as well as business consulting along with other opportunities to 2-4 person companies looking to take an idea to a product. Y Combinator looks for companies with ?good? ideas over companies with experience and a business model. The company made its first investments in Summer 2005. Y Combinator selects companies to finance and consult with twice a year. They are located in...

? Learn more

Draper Associates is the personal investment vehicle of Tim Draper and a member of the DFJ Network.

? Learn more

Felicis Ventures is a boutique venture fund focusing on the areas of mobile, e-commerce, consumer enterprise, education and health. It was founded late 2005 by Aydin Senkut, who was Google?s first Product Manager and later ran Strategic Partner Development for Google in Asia. The partners have a passion for product, thinking out of the box to solve hard problems and dominate critical markets. Its goal is to back the iconic technology companies of today and tomorrow. To do so,...

? Learn more

Spark Capital is a venture fund based in Boston, Massachusetts. Our investment focus is on the conflux of the media, entertainment and technology industries. Over the last decade, telecom, wireless, and cable operators have spent enormous amounts of capital building up their broadband infrastructure. The next decade will be spent monetizing this infrastructure. Spark Capital hopes to exploit this opportunity by investing in companies that it believes will benefit from the rapid transformation of media and content driven by...

? Learn more

Digital Garage, since its establishment in 1995, is a pioneer in the various domains of Internet business in Japan, including portals, media representation, e-Commerce, mobile communication and blogging. Digital Garage has established partnership to customize the Japanese versions of Technorati, Twitter and LinkedIn.

? Learn more

Intel Capital, Intel?s global investment organization, makes equity investments in innovative technology start-ups and companies worldwide. Intel Capital invests in a broad range of companies offering hardware, software, and services targeting enterprise, home, mobility, health, consumer Internet, semiconductor manufacturing and cleantech. Since 1991, Intel Capital has invested more than US$9.7 billion in over 1,100 companies in 48 countries. In that timeframe, 189 portfolio companies have gone public on various exchanges around the world and 258 were acquired or participated...

? Learn more

Andreessen Horowitz is a $2.5 billion venture capital firm that was launched on July 6, 2009. Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, John O?Farrell, Scott Weiss, Jeff Jordan, and Peter Levine are the general partners of the firm.

? Learn more

Start Fund, created in January 2011, is a joint venture between Yuri Milner and SV Angel. The fund was created to invest in Y Combinator startups and made its first set of investments in January 2011.

? Learn more

SV Angel is the micro VC firm located in Silicon Valley and founded by angel investors, Ron Conway and David Lee. SV Angel provides capital investments to early stage companies focused on the Internet, e-commerce, and information technology markets. SV Angel is a venture fund which has raised investment from external investors or limited partners in industry parlance. In April 2010, the fund announced its size of $20 million. Per the firm, SV Angel initially expected to raise a...

? Learn more

General Catalyst Partners is a venture capital firm that invests in exceptional entrepreneurs who are building the technology-based companies that will lead innovation and transform industries. Founded in 2000, General Catalyst Partners leverages its principals? extensive operational, business development and technological expertise to provide portfolio companies with a catalyst for success through business-building and partnership development assistance. General Catalyst has offices in Cambridge, MA and Palo Alto, CA. For more information, please visit: http://www.generalcatalyst.com.

? Learn more

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, PlugandPlayTechCenter.com is a community of over 280 technology startup companies in the areas of Web 2.0, software (SaaS), systems, semiconductor and telecomm verticals. Since its inception in January 2006, the center has helped the startups raise in excess of $750 million in venture funding. Entrepreneur-centered with strong relationships with the most influential venture capital firms of Silicon Valley and Ivy League universities in the nation, Plug and Play has become a great place...

? Learn more

Chris Dixon is a Partner at and co-founder of Founder Collective. He is also a contributing writer for TechCrunch. He previously was the CEO and Co-founder of SiteAdvisor, which was acquired by McAfee, and Hunch, which was acquired by eBay. In addition to his work with Founder?s Collective, Chris is a personal investor in early-stage technology companies, including Skype, TrialPay, DocVerse, Invite Media, Gerson Lehrman Group, ScanScout, OMGPOP, BillShrink, Oddcast, Panjiva, Knewton, and a handful of other startups that...

? Learn more

Aaron Levie co-founded Box with friend and Box CFO Dylan Smith in 2005. The Box mission is to provide businesses and individuals with the simplest solution to share, access and manage their information. Aaron is the visionary behind Box?s product and platform strategy, which is focused on incorporating the best of traditional content management with an easy to use user experience suited to the way people collaborate and work today. Box is one of the fastest growing companies in...

? Learn more Amidzad Partners, Binary Venture Partners, Powerset, Causes, melodis, Bix, Webs, InMage Systems, sabio labs, Vudu, OpTrip, Aquantia, Lending Club, Parascale, TwitVid, Fotomoto, HotPrints, Qwiki, Room 77, Backplane, Revel Touch, Social Stock, Keen, TapIn.tv, TokBox, mywaves, picaboo, Danger, AddThis, litescape, Zoosk, Jaxtr, Quantenna Communications, financial crossing, Infoaxe, Zetta, 1000memories, Badgeville, SoundHound, Clever Sense, Path, Ark, Filepicker.io, Peek.com, Social Gaming Network, Vostu

Pejman is one of the most successful angel investors in Silicon Valley, whose steady rise and involvement in building some of high tech?s most notable startups was praised by Forbes Magazine as ?the Silicon Valley Cinderella? story. (http://www.forbes.com/forbes/2012/0409/feature-pejman-nozad-tech-silicon-valley-cinderella.html) Pejman started his Silicon Valley career in sales and business development by joining the Amidi Group in 1994. In the span of few years, he became a top grossing salesman and launched a number of successful initiatives for the Amidi Group. Amidzad was...

? Learn more

Dan Rose is VP of Business Development and Monetization at Facebook. As head of global business development and corporate development, Dan is responsible for Facebook???s worldwide strategic partnerships and M&A. As head of product marketing for the company???s monetization efforts, Dan leads marketing strategy for Facebook???s innovative advertising products. Dan joined Facebook in 2006 after seven years at Amazon.com where he held various positions in business development and general management, including his last role where he helped incubate and...

? Learn more

Jack Abraham is the Founder & CEO of Milo, a leading local shopping engine that was acquired by eBay in December of 2010 where he now serves as the company???s Director of Local. Believing that commerce would expand beyond just Amazon and eBay, Jack left the Wharton School in early 2008 with funding from professor Len Lodish and moved to Palo Alto with his co-founder John Evans to experiment with ideas of the future of shopping. Shortly thereafter they discovered...

? Learn more

Farzad Nazem joined Yahoo in early 1996 as senior vice president of engineering and surfing and was named chief technical officer in January 1997. In that position he was responsible for overseeing all areas of engineering, including site operations and product development. Nazem has more than 18 years of experience in executive and technical positions. Prior to Yahoo, he was vice president of Oracle Corporation?s Media and Web Server Division. Previously, Nazem held various technical positions for SYDIS, Inc....

? Learn more

Source: http://techcrunch.com/2012/10/19/fundersclub-seed-round/

gainesville 2012 royal rumble the grey machine gun kelly saul alinsky annapolis wwe royal rumble

Noteshelf (for iPad)

If you're going to use an iPad for work or school, you need a note-taking app (or two) that meet your needs and that you enjoy using. If you find an app that offers all the bells and whistles you think you need, but you dread launching the darn thing, you won't use it. The iPad app Noteshelf ($5.99) gets more than halfway there on both accounts, but doesn't quite follow through and deliver everything an avid note taker might need, nor deliver it in a package that you'd necessarily want to look at day in and day out.

Signature Features
Noteshelf offers three signature features. First, it organizes notes into visual notebooks, which sit on a shelf that looks stunningly similar to Apple's iBooks app. If you like the idea of seeing your notes in a book, which you can title and design, this feature may help you keep track of your notes. It's really a more of a design trick than anything else, seeing as most note-taking apps give you some kind of mechanism for sorting or organizing notes?it's just that they're not always visual.

Second, Noteshelf supports not only handwriting and sketching, but also typed text, which not all note-taking apps do.

Third, this note-taking app has a well designed zoom tool, which serious note-takers know is a necessity for handwritten and sketched notes on the iPad. Touch-screen writing tends to get sloppy without it.

While these three signature features do create a decent foundation for Noteshelf, none of them are unique. For example, Penultimate uses the same visual notebook method of organization as Noteshelf, but costs one-sixth of the price. Penultimate, however, was specifically designed to handle handwriting and sketching and does not even include a keyboard in the app. Our favorite iPad note-taking app overall has been Note Taker HD? (4.5 stars and an Editors' Choice), and it allows for both typed text and sketching or handwritten text. It also has a zoom mode, and one that's just as good if not better than Noteshelf's. Note Taker HD comes with a few advantages over Noteshelf, too, which I'll explain in a moment.

Noteshelf's Shortcomings
With its signature features, Noteshelf seems like a capable enough note-taking application, but when I got down to actually using it, I found it to be missing a few critical components.

Like any well-rounded note-taking app, Noteshelf lets you import images, which you can paste into a note and mark up. Unfortunately, once you affix an image to a note, you can't select it to move it or crop it. The app doesn't have a pan tool at all (in the slideshow images, you may notice a hand icon, which is in fact a wrist protection feature and not the panning button it appears to be).

Without a pan tool or selection tool of some kind, it's next to impossible to move anything around the note page. Say you import an image, then mark it up with pen notes and highlighter marks. Now perhaps you'll add a text box to type a label for the image or additional notes about it. The note may start to get cluttered, and if you could only just shift some of the page elements a few inches this way or that, you could probably fit everything you want on the page. But in Noteshelf, you can't easily drag page elements to a new place.

I hinted earlier that Note Taker HD has a few advantages over Noteshelf, and the ability to more easily manipulate (crop, move) PDFs and images that you import is one. Another is support for left-handed people.

While I don't want to have unrealistic expectations for an iPad app, I did notice that Noteshelf flattens your notes immediately?meaning if you import an image, mark it up, and then go to erase one of your marks, you'll also be erasing the image that's beneath the marks. I really wouldn't expect to see layering enabled on a simple mobile note-taking app, and Noteshelf actually does get around this problem by supporting multiple undos. So you can erase or you can hit undo.

Penultimate, you'll remember, does not have any typed text support whatsoever, but one thing it has that Noteshelf doesn't is a "clear page" button. In Noteshelf, if you want o clear a note page entirely, you'll have to select the eraser button and rub the entire screen (or hit undo as many times as it takes).

Which App to Choose?
If your notes will include a mix of typed text and handwritten or sketched notes, I'd recommend Note Taker HD over Noteshelf. It costs a dollar less and has more. If you don't need to include typed notes, I would suggest going with the 99-cent app Penultimate.

More iPad App Reviews:
??? Opera Mini 7 (for iPad)
??? Apple iOS 6
??? Noteshelf (for iPad)
??? Mercury Web Browser Pro for iPad
??? Dolphin Browser for iPad
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/GtbwNpHdx4E/0,2817,2409857,00.asp

government shutdown iraq war over iraq war over maurice jones drew megyn kelly richard hamilton richard hamilton