fcc-westky.org

But the enormity of the merged companies and culture differences between the two groups will make this acquisition challenging, Gartner analyst Ben Pring said at the time it was announced.

In May, HP announced it would buy EDS for $25 per share, or $13.9 billion. Under the deal, EDS will operate as a new business unit (called EDS) and will continue to be led by Ronald A. Rittenmeyer, its current chief executive officer. The EDS buy will pit HP squarely against IBM and make it second only to Big Blue in the realm of outsourced computer services.

The deal won approval from U.S. antitrust authorities on June 30.

A proposed acquisition by Hewlett-Packard of computer services company EDS has won approval from the European Commission.

[via TechCrunch]

I had plenty of fun outfitting my virtual self with nearly ludicrous makeup styles, but clearly there’s some potential for someone who knows what they’re doing. The same thing could be applied to certain post-processing techniques in online photo editors such as Picnik and Fotoflexer, or online painting tools with paints and other supplies that you could buy in stores.

It is worth noting there was a lack of “emo” makeup styles–which foiled my plans at emo-izing a picture of Toby Mcguire for the sake of making a Spiderman 3 joke in this post. You’ll have to settle for this “embarrassed” Hugh Jackman-ish one instead.

Taaz is a fun new service aimed at women who want to try out makeup or hairstyles without real-life experimentation. You simply need to upload a photo of your face and map the outlines of your eyes and mouth. It’s a fairly standard process that’s been used in some other services, including Budweiser’s Bud2Bud service that creates customized e-mails using text-to-speech and matching facial animations.

(Credit:
CNET Networks)

This clearly works better for women, but there are some hairstyles that work for both sexes (some more than others).

Once your face has been uploaded and analyzed you can adjust the skin, eyes, mouth, and hair using real skin makeup products that accurately match the real life counterparts. It’s completely experimental, and when you find a style you like there are options to print it or share it with others. Printing out your creation is especially helpful, as it gives you a detailed shopping list of what products you picked in case you want to bring it to a department store or shop for them online.

The New York Post’s Keith Kelly reported on Thursday that Jossip, a small New York-based blog network that operates a number of media- and entertainment-focused titles, is up for sale.

Kelly wrote that Jossip has hired investment bank Sperry, Mitchell, & Co. to explore potential buyer interest, though he cited a “wild rumor” that media giant Conde Nast may already be interested.

The Post’s Kelly reported that Jossip “is believed to be making money” but that founder and editor David Hauslaib suggested that he would rather pursue a joint venture or minority investment than an outright acquisition.

The blogs in Jossip’s network include the eponymous Jossip, a New York-focused media and entertainment gossip blog; the Los Angeles-centric celebrity rag Mollygood; gay lifestyle title Queerty; and African-American culture blog Stereohyped.

It’s not clear what kind of value Jossip would have to a buyer. The network’s central blog has indeed broken notable stories–such as CBS Interactive’s acquisition of Wallstrip. But it’s still much smaller than chief rival Gawker, and the Jossip network is tiny, compared to Gawker Media, which operates more than a dozen titles, including some blogospheric titans like Gizmodo. Plus, the celebrity blog market is just about totally clogged.

So for the time being, this bit of Jossip is…gossip.

What Validus has done is make power distribution equipment suitable for “high density” data centers–that is, racks of servers or blade servers that consume a lot of electricity (and generate a lot of heat) in a relatively small space, he said.

For all its promise, a lack of DC equipment poses barriers to bringing DC power into data centers, according to a study by The Uptime Institute. The research firm last year listed a number of barriers to DC power in the data center, including monitoring equipment, appropriate IT equipment, and DC power-modeling software.

Its product lineup includes a device that takes power from the grid and distributes it as high-voltage direct current. A distribution board acts as a point for wiring and to connect energy storage. And a power conversion unit steps down the voltage to 48 volts.

Start-up Validus on Monday is scheduled to announce the availability of a DC-based electricity distribution system tailored specifically for data centers.

In practice, the lower power consumption may give corporate data center operators the ability to pack in more gear in the same amount of space, he said.

Kraus said that data center equipment vendors offer an option for direct current power supplies, which customers could choose for hardware upgrades or new installations. He said he expects to announce some partnerships with equipment companies in the coming months.

The company, which raised $10 million in venture funding last December, has an initial Fortune 50 company customer that’s looking to reduce energy consumption at its corporate data center, according to CEO Rudy Kraus.

By going DC, a company can save up to 40 percent on its energy consumption on equipment and cooling, the company says.

The idea of using direct current, rather than alternating current, to reduce power consumption has been around for a long time. The telecom industry relies primarily on DC power equipment, Kraus said.

A power distribution model for supplying DC to servers and other data center gear.

Can going back to direct current–favored by Thomas Edison–make data centers more modern and energy-efficient?

Ultimately, the company envisions on-site power generation at data centers, where solar panels, wind mills, or fuel cells supply direct current electricity into buildings with DC wiring.

(Credit:
Validus)

The effect of using direct current is to reduce the number of voltage changes and conversions between AC and DC, which makes the overall system more efficient. Kraus said DC power is also more reliable and flexible.

Now sure, the Cambridge i765 is far more compact, doesn’t require a mess ‘o’ wires, and is easier to set up, but sonically the Onkyo HTIB is miles ahead for music, and there’s simply no comparison for movies. The Onkyo’s bona-fide surround and powerful subwoofer are so much more satisfying than any table radio could ever be. Hey, the table radio and HTIB are nearly the same price, choose sound quality or a lifestyle solution. Just don’t kid yourself that they sound the same, they don’t.

You get a lot for your money.

Or you could buy an Onkyo HT-SR700 HTIB ($500 SRP, but street prices are closer to $350). It comes with a 5.1 channel A/V receiver, five satellite speakers, and a 230 watt, 10-inch subwoofer. Granted, you still have to add a DVD player, maybe a Philips DVP5982 that comes with HDMI/1080p connectivity for around $60. Got an iPod? Toss in a $6 mini-plug to stereo RCA cable so you can play your iPod over the HT-SR700’s speakers and sub. Or treat yourself to Onkyo’s dedicated dock, the DS-AS2 ($109 SRP).

(Credit:
Onkyo)

I’ve heard ‘em all and I’m here to tell you there’s a hierarchy of fidelity. The pipsqueak
iPod speakers (pretty much everything under $100) sound tinny, screechy, with zero bass and can’t play at all loud. They’re all different shades of awful. Sure, some $300 iPod speakers are way better, more or less on par with a decent sounding table radio, I’m thinking here of my favorite Boston Acoustics Receptor, Tivoli, and Cambridge SoundWorks models. Then again, the better radios and iPod speakers are priced upwards of $500 or more, and for that kind of dough you could pick up a HTIB.

For a great tabletop radio, let’s take a look at Cambridge SoundWorks i765 iPod/Video Entertainment System ($500). It comes with a nifty integrated iPod dock, plays CDs and DVDs, has a terrific AM/FM radio, and sound pretty good, for a table radio (my CNET review will be posted later this month).

The Social Times notes that MySpace.com’s developer platform is also slated to go live next week, and it wonders whether it’s still on track because it also implements OpenSocial.

I’ve contacted MySpace representatives for comment and will update this post when I hear back.

For those cranky pundits already hunting for the next Facebook, Orkut has been the subject of much scrutiny.

Avid followers of Google’s OpenSocial developer initiative have been eagerly anticipating the standard’s debut on Orkut. After all, this is the closest thing to an in-house Google developer platform, and if it works well, this could help Orkut emerge as a whole lot more than “that social network that’s big in Brazil and India.”

Google product manager Amar Gandhi announced in a blog post on Tuesday night that there have been “a couple of modifications” to the company’s release of OpenSocial compatibility for its Orkut social network.

“We apologize for delaying the launch a few weeks,” Gandhi wrote. “We feel that this prelaunch testing period will ensure that users are introduced to apps in the best way possible.”

In other words, there appears to be some red tape. Instead of immediately rolling out the Orkut platform, which it was originally scheduled to do right around now, Google will be conducting a “prelaunch testing period” for select applications. That will last about four weeks.

The bag’s made from water-resistant nylon; uses weather-sealed YKK zippers on all outside openings; has monopod straps, protective rubber bottom treads, and a front-mounted phone/audio pouch; and includes Tenba’s fast-deploying WeatherWrap rain cover.

I haven’t used or tested Tenba’s bags at all, but if anyone has, please let me know what you think. This one looks pretty freakin’ sweet.

Tenba makes a lot of bags for all kinds of cameras and equipment. Featured in the video above is the new $103.95 Shootout Sling, which for a bag fetishist such as myself is simply dreamy. It’s designed for immediate access to your camera and to keep gear organized (a given), but is also quite capable of swallowing a dSLR with a mounted 300mm telephoto lens, just by removing some of the interior padded walls. Watch the video to see what I mean.

I’m a heavy e-mailer on my
iPhone, and one of the things that really bugs me about the built-in mail client is that it falls just short of being ready for business use. For instance, it lacks the option to flag messages, have different signatures for different accounts, or simply turn on and off an out-of-office auto-responder. But what really irks me on a daily basis is the search tool that got added in OS 3.0. Don’t get me wrong, this was a really important thing to add–but there’s a big problem with it: it’s limited to the subject line and who the sender or recipient was.

The bad:
• Limited support for e-mail services
• Possible obsolescence by an Apple software update
• No landscape view
• Copy and paste toggle is clunky
• Can take a very long time to do the first in-box download, and you have to leave the app running while it’s happening
• App can crash when doing long downloads or when opening up attachments

Of course having the same account in both ReMail and the mail app means that it takes some extra storage on your phone, but what’s surprising is how little it uses. A 140MB Gmail in-box I sucked in for my test account squeezed down to just 25MB. It works like that for one main reason–the app doesn’t download attachments until you open them. Though the nice thing is that after it’s been opened, it stays cached on the device so you can open it again.

Other small annoyances include no landscape view, and a slider you have to toggle every time you want to copy text from a message. I didn’t mind this at first, but it’s a real drag when you realize you want to copy something halfway down a message and have to go all the way back up to the top to turn that mode on.

(Credit:
CNET)

That level of search is certainly a good start, but it doesn’t compare to newly-released app ReMail (download), which can index an entire e-mail account and do full-text search within all your messages. You want to find a word or phrase in an e-mail body? It can do that, and it’s fast. Better yet, it doubles as its own e-mail app, so you can open up and read messages; copy parts to stick in new messages; or forward, reply, and delete–all without leaving the interface.

The good:
• Fast, highly-customizable search
• Autocompletion of search terms
• Saved search terms
• Built-in e-mail functions that let you create news messages right inside the app
• Local cache of data for offline reading

Former Gmail engineer Gabor Cselle, who makes the app, is pushing ReMail as a tool for commuters. One thing that makes ReMail especially well-suited for that is that you can access your entire in-box–even offline. That’s compared to the iPhone’s built-in Mail app, which has to hit the servers to continue a search if what you’re looking for falls outside of what it has recently saved on the device. This can also be a boon when traveling internationally, since you can access and search your account without being connected to, or having to sync up with any servers.

ReMail searches inside of mail messages. Here it's picking out the word "nice" from a handful of messages, including different ones from the same thread.

As fantastic as the app is, there are a few annoying bits that will keep it from fully replacing the Mail app, including the fact that it’s currently limited to one account at a time. You can go in and switch it with another account, but then your old index gets deleted. Another pain point is that it doesn’t work with Microsoft Exchange, just Gmail and IMAP. That’s fine for casual users, but business users won’t be able to get all that full-text search goodness on their work accounts, which for me, would have been one of the big draws. Cselle told me that Exchange and other account types, like POP, would be added later down the line, but for now he just wanted to get it out there.

For $4.99, this is a very, very solid way to search through e-mail. Though like many other innovative applications that have come along to try to improve on what Apple’s done, it runs the risk of being made obsolete by the very product it’s trying to fix. I wouldn’t put it past Apple to have full-text e-mail search as part of its next major OS update–if not sooner, considering it’s already such a big part of its desktop application counterpart. Though if you’re willing to invest in this app in the meantime, you’ll never have to trudge through e-mails again.

“Does the money make me more attractive than I really am?”

Indeed, the CEO of the site, Brandon Wey, decided to take on the name Brandon Wade. Because, he told the Times, it sounded more Hefneresque.

Do you see any hope, people? Any hope at all?

And so humanity trudges on, in desperate search of its own salvation in the arms and bank account of another.

Seekingarrangement.com is profiled at some glorious length in Sunday’s New York Times and one could scarcely think of a more appropriate subject for Easter Sunday. Here we have luminous Hefners in search of, hopefully, bed-hopping bunnies.

Well, this human instinct seems to lead (mostly) men, who have to pay to be on the site, and women, who don’t, to seek each other out for mutually beneficial relationships.

But the hero of the piece is Sam.

Sam always has a fixed budget and even has quarterly reviews to assess progress. Naturally, he has certain exigencies–no tats, no implants, no veggies, for example.

Sam’s goal is not rhythm. It is algorithm. He treats Seekingarrangement.com as the perfect scientific experiment. He establishes a trust in his sugar baby’s name that pays $5,000 a month. Each daddy/baby relationship is a fixed-term contract. The money continues to flow even if the river of the lady’s love experiences an unexpected drought.

The site itself explains it in far more lyrical (and historical) terms: “In the past, Kings, Shahs and Emperors have had multiple lovers or concubines. It is human instinct to be attracted to beauty, as it is to be attracted to wealth and power.”

The Times’ story is full of enchanting students who need money and pampering with the so-called finer things in life. You know, Fendi purses, Pucci dresses, and broccoli boiled in gold leaf. Of course, these finer things also may include hanging out with an old, balding, paunchy dude who just happens to have a black American Express card.

These arrangements are described in quite loving detail in the Times: sugar daddies who begin to feel real affection for their babies; sugar daddies who get jealous when they discover that their babies actually have nonpaying boyfriends at college; sugar daddies who have sour breath that kills their baby’s sweetness.

So perhaps you might be one of the 300,000 who populate Seekingarrangement.com, a site that tries to bring together those who have money (and are, by virtue of the virtues of capitalism, older) and younger things who wish to earn money in exchange for being, in the site’s immaculate vernacular, sugar babies.

I know those are words have pummeled the lips of many of you out there, bursting to be heard. You swallow them with your pride, just in case the answer might be, well, yes.

(Credit: CC IfindKarma/Flickr)

But here is the bad news for everyone out there–those working for Google and those not–who believe that life can be boiled down to rational constructs: Sam has found little evidence that spending more money brings a better quality of relationship.

Um, this lady doesn't seem impressed with the Sugar Daddy concept.

Full coverage
Microsoft’s big bid for Yahoo Click here for the latest on the software giant’s attempt to buy the Net pioneer.

A spokesman for Simpson Thacher declined to comment beyond Ruegger’s statement and declined to disclose the name of the client in conflict.

There are a lot of moving parts in Microsoft’s unsolicited buyout bid for Yahoo. One of the latest arose last week when the software giant switched its legal team back to its old standby, Sullivan & Cromwell, from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, which dropped out as legal adviser due to a conflict with another client.

However, the conflict centered on the “timing of a clearance” and the client declining to issue a waiver to Simpson Thacher to continue representing Microsoft, the source said. And because Microsoft’s bid was unsolicited, the issue of a potential conflict could not be addressed beforehand, the source noted.

Other Simpson clients include DoubleClick, which the firm successfully represented before the Federal Trade Commission involving the proposed Google merger. And while the FTC cleared the way for the merger, DoubleClick will still be represented by Simpson before the European Commission during the proceedings this year.

“We hold Microsoft and its team in the highest regard,” Pete Ruegger, Simpson’s chairman, said in a statement. “However, in order for us to fulfill our ethical obligations to each of our clients, it became necessary for us to withdraw from this representation.”

It’s tempting to start connecting the dots, but one source familiar with the change said the conflict in question had nothing to do with Simpson’s client AOL LCC, which the law firm advised on the Goowy Media acquisition. That deal closed on January 30, two days before Simpson’s client, Microsoft, announced its unsolicited bid for Yahoo.

Yahoo reportedly is in talks with AOL, News Corp., and others about them coming in as a white knight to outbid Microsoft.

Microsoft, from the get-go, however, did not involve Simpson Thacher for any antitrust representation in its Yahoo bid, according to a report in Lawyer.com.