Photos: Army designates year’s best inventions
Every year, the U.S. Army designates a set of top inventions. This year's list includes a GPS-guided artillery shell and a new method for saving severely injured soldiers.Photos: Top 10 reviews of the week
CNET Reviews rates the Garmin Nuvi 880 car GPS gadget, a Panasonic Viera flat-screen TV, the Asus Eee PC 901 laptop, and more.Googler Parents Cry, Rebel as Google Blows Day Care
Two months ago, Google held a series of secret focus groups with employees who have children in Google's day care facilities. The purpose was to gauge their reaction to the company's plan to raise the amount it charged for in-house day care by 75 percent.
Parents who had been paying $1,425 a month for infant care would see their costs rise to nearly $2,500 - well above the market rate. For parents with toddlers and preschoolers, who were charged less, the price increases were equally eye-popping. Under the new plan, parents with two kids in Google day care would most likely see their annual day care bill grow to more than $57,000 from around $33,000.
At the first of the three focus groups, parents wept openly. As word leaked out about the company's plan, the Google parents began to fight back. They came up with ideas to save money, used the company's T.G.I.F. sessions - a weekly meeting for anyone who wanted to ask questions of Google's top executives - to plead their case, and conducted surveys showing that most parents with children in Google day care would have to leave Google's facilities and find less expensive child care.
Do you think you know how this story ends? You're probably guessing that because it involves 'do no evil' Google, Fortune magazine's 'Best Company to Work For' the past two years, this is a heart-warming tale of a good company reversing a dumb decision.
If only. Although Google is rolling back its price increase slightly and is phasing in the higher price over five quarters, the outline of the original decision remains largely unchanged. At a T.G.I.F. in June, the Google co-founder Sergey Brin said he had no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of 'Googlers' who felt entitled to perks like 'bottled water and M&Ms,' according to several people in the meeting. (A Google spokesman denies that Mr. Brin made that comment.) On Monday, Google began the first phase of its new day care plan, letting go of the outside day care firm it had been using...
See Also: Valley Bigwig Says Google a "Total F-ing Train Wreck." True?
Week In Review: Will Yahoo Buy AOL, Or Will Someone Else Buy Yahoo?
Confused yet? So are we.
But Yahoo, AOL, and Microsoft aren't the only companies struggling for a strategy. eBay (EBAY) got hit with a lawsuit in European court, and the auction site badly needs to win on appeal. We're hopeful but not overly optimistic that the CNET acquisition can help revive operations at flagging CBS (CBS). And while we wouldn't touch a newspaper stock with a ten-foot pole, the New York Times seems to have a vision for nytimes.com that's well ahead of its peers.
But hey, think optimistic! If Twitter just might be worth a billion dollars someday, anything is possible.
Tour de France 2008: How To Watch Live On The Web
With good reason: Versus' coverage of the Tour de France is good enough to draw even casual fans of the sport. (Question: is there a better play-by-play man in any sport than Paul Sherwen?)
Versus just signed a 5-year, $27.5 million deal to retain the Tour through 2013 -- drug problems and lack of known stars notwithstanding -- because even without Lance it's been a great subscriber draw for them. Because Versus spent its early years broadcasting the Tour fighting for subscribers, the network had a strong reason to at least try to keep video off the Web. Otherwise, why subscribe at all?
But! It appears Versus has had a partial change of heart and is at least saying on its Web site it will carry parts of the first two stages live on the Web, prior to the beginning of each day's TV broadcast. You can catch Stage 1 live from 6:30-8:30 a.m. today, and Stage 2 from 7:00-8:30 a.m. ET on Sunday.
Now that Versus is distributed in 73 million U.S. homes (out of 90-odd million cable households), the network is on basic tiers in most areas, meaning it's less dependent on Tour fans making an affirmative decision to subscribe. Putting at least part of the Tour on the Web is, then, a low-risk promotional strategy. (And if you care what happens at the end of the stage, you'll need to watch the rest on TV, anyway.)
We'll see how long Versus sticks with it. Like Euro 2008 and March Madness, much of the 14-day Tour takes place during work hours (US coverage starts at 8:30 a.m ET), which means heavy online demand from fans at work who have robust broadband but no access to TVs. (Another good reason to offer the whole Tour on the Web, even if for a fee.) Where to find the Tour on the Web after Versus cuts off? We have some ideas:
cyclingfans.com (live feed from Eurosport)
Eurosport (live audio only)
ITV (requires Microsoft Silverlight)
Myp2p.eu (Mac users install Sopcast or Flip4Mac)
Channelsurfing.net (streams work on a Mac)
Veetle.com (requires Sopcast)
www.justin.tv (expect pirated streams to show up here, but expect them also to be quickly removed)
Zattoo (outside the U.S.)
velonews.com (no video but liveblog and interactive map)
Have a better idea? Leave it in comments.
See Also:
Euro 2008 Final: How To Watch It Live On The Web
Italy vs France, Live: The Euro 2008 Webcast Uefa Doesn't Want You To Watch
Watch Tiger Woods, Live, For Free, Legally On The Web
A week in which we sang the body electric [Recap]
newVideoPlayer("/bulldogs_fuck_yeah.flv", 494, 278,""); 
Sure, the English may have invented the national founding document, parliamentary democracy, the bicameral legislature and baited their bears to extinction with bulldogs. But who taught those bulldogs how to ride skateboards? Yanks from California. We just took one of the ten best fireworks displays from IAC's Vimeo and used Apple's genius Final Cut Pro to luma-key the footage over clips of skateboarding bulldogs found with Google search on YouTube. The audio quality isn't as good as it could be, but at least we're having more fun than evil foreigners — if not the olds.
It Has Begun! iPhone Line Forms At NYC Apple Store (AAPL)
It's a week early, but a handful of people are already in line at the 5th Ave. NYC Apple Store for the new iPhone 3G, which goes on sale next Friday, July 11.
Right now, about ten people have started a line outside of Apple's flagship store on 5th Avenue in New York. Word is that the family at the head of the queue are attempting to break some kind of record which involves their baby -- which kind of sounds a little intense if you ask us.
The security guards will allow everyone to stay and indicated that as of yet there are no plans to put out barricades. Apple employees are just starting to come out of the store to talk with the people and one employee actually posed for a photo with the first in line.
See Also:
iPhone 2.0 Software Trickles Out, 'Very Good' So Far, Exchange Email A Bit Flaky
That 3G iPhone Not $199 For Everyone; Bernstein Hikes Apple Estimates
Will Apple Sweeten The iPhone Deal At The Last Minute Again?
'Unprecedented Pent-Up Demand' For Apple iPhone 3G, RBC Says
Photo: Engadget
Mahalo enables Freedom of Speech [America, Fuck Yeah]
We hold these Truths to be self-evident: Wikipedia's Tyranny of the Mob sucks. Every time I run an item about Jimmy Wales, my page gets hacked. So what about Jason Calacanis's pursuit of happiness over at Mahalo? Former Uncov blogger and army of one Ted Dziuba has posted a step-by-step pictorial guide to practicing your First Amendment rights using the search index' new open editorial system. Try this on Wikipedia, and someone from the armed and unregulated Militia of Truth will likely kill your edits on sight. But on Mahalo, only Calacanis' paid mercenaries will bother to fix pages. At $10 an hour, there's no way they'll be able to keep up. Let Freedom ring!
Ask.com closes Dictionary.com deal
Fourth-ranked search engine completes its acquisition of the parent company of Dictionary.com, Thesaurus.com, and Reference.com.Iran’s plan to kill “corrupt” bloggers [America, Fuck Yeah]
From Global Voices:
On Wednesday, Iranian members of parliament voted to discuss a draft bill that seeks to “toughen punishment for disturbing mental security in society.” The text of the bill would add, “establishing websites and weblogs promoting corruption, prostitution and apostasy,” to the list of crimes punishable by death.
Hoo boy, I can hardly wait for Michael Moore's take on this one. (Photo by AP/Saman Aghvami)