There are tools available to break virtually every device running iOS, from the iPhone and iPod touch to the Apple TV2. But up until recently there was no way to jailbreak an iPad 2 tablet. Now a leaked beta version of JailbreakMe 3.0 is making the rounds and some users are saying they’re able to jailbreak the second generation iPad simply by downloading a PDF file to their device, attempting to open it, and then rebooting their tablets.
Jailbreaking an iOS device allows you to install apps that aren’t available from the iTunes App Store, including tools which make deep changes to the operating system. For instance once you’ve jailbroken a device you can change the behavior of the home screen or notifications, installing custom boot logos — or even running two iPhone apps at once in side-by-side windows.
JailbreakMe 3.0 is the work of Comex, a member of the iPhone Dev Team. That’s the group that’s brought us nearly every jailbreak trick in the book so far.
Comex hasn’t yet released the tool to the public. Instead it looks like it was leaked by a beta tester. It may not work on all devices. For now it only seems to support WiFi models of the iPad, and it may cause some bugs. You’re probably best off waiting for Comex to release the official build. But if you really can’t wait, or just want to see what a jailbroken iPad 2 looks like (It looks like an iPad 2 with an icon for the Cydia Store).
An anonymous hacker used phony Bitcoins (BTC) last month to drive down the price of the online currency from $17.50 to a penny within the span of 30 minutes, Bitcoin exchange firm Mt.Gox has revealed. The hacker was able to create 2 million fake BTC by manipulating the company's trading database after gaining access to a compromised administrator account on June 19, according to Adam Barr, head of support for Mt. Gox. After a massive volume of Bitcoins entered the Mt.Gox system, the price of the online currency crashed, creating a buying frenzy. Mt.Gox said user accounts were not compromised during the exploit and has promised to replace the stolen Bitcoins at the company's expense. The fake Bitcoins and cash "existed inside Mt.Gox alone," Barr says, and could not be transferred into a wallet for use in another exchange.
However, when trading happens in real time, Mt.Gox relies on a simple database tracking each user's Bitcoin and cash balances to carry out transactions, according to Barr. Mt.Gox has given competing exchanges the numbers required to identify the stolen Bitcoins in the hopes the thief will not be able to turn his ill-gotten gains into hard currency. Mt.Gox's user database recently leaked online and the company suspects the anonymous hacker was able to gain access to the administrator account using the leaked information. It's unclear how the database was stolen, but Mt.Gox believes the hackers exploited an SQL injection vulnerability in its network that the company discovered in late June. Originally, Mt.Gox suspected its database leaked online after "someone who performs audits on [Mt.Gox's] system" had their computer compromised.
Despite using encryption, Mt.Gox is warning its users to change their passwords immediately if they didn't do so after the price crash on June 19. "Our users and the public should know that these hashed [encrypted] passwords can be cracked, and many of our users' more simple passwords have been cracked," Mark Karpeles, CEO of Mt.Gox parent company Tibanne, LLC, says in a statement. Mt.Gox users should also change their login credentials for any other online accounts that use the same password. Mt.Gox said it now uses SHA-512 encryption for user passwords to prevent a similar data breach in the future. Since the data breach, Mt.Gox has been busy rebuilding its system to handle the massive amount of business the company says it was unprepared for.
A single ticket matching all six numbers in this week's Mega Millions jackpot worth an estimated $105 million was purchased in Virginia, lottery officials said.
The winning numbers from Friday's drawing were: 12, 17, 30, 35, 47, and mega ball number 26.
The winning ticket was purchased at a Giant Food store in Herndon, Va., according to the Virginia Lottery website.
The store will get a $50,000 bonus, according to lottery officials.
The holder of the winning ticket could choose to take the entire jackpot amount in 26 annual payments or a single cash option of an estimated $68.1 million.
Friday's jackpot is one of the largest won this year.
In March, several New York state government workers won a $319 mega millions jackpot.
In January, two tickets holders from Washington and Idaho split a $380 million jackpot.
Next Tuesday's drawing is estimated to be $12 million with a lump sum cash option of $7.6 million. It will roll over to the next drawing if there is no winner.
The biggest jackpot game in the nation, Mega Millions is played in 41 states and in Washington, D.C.
Other smaller jackpots range from $2 to $250,000, depending on how many numbers are matched.
The biggest Mega Millions jackpot ever won was $390 million in March 2007.
While they typically offer discounts, most of us still don't want to play test dummy to dentists-in-training.
But since they do have to learn, not just dental basics but how to deal with live patients it can pose a problem.
Dental students across the globe could be using a very life-life robot called Showa Hanko 2, who was revealed at a press conference in Japan on Wednesday, reports New Scientist. She's so lifelike that she's made from the same material as the Love Dolls produced by Orient Industry.
According to the video, the robot was created by researchers at Showa University in Japan, and responds the same way human patients would during dental procedures - she flinches, squirms and yes, even has a gag reflex.
The robot even has voice recognition that allows students to practice the banal banter you usually have with your dentist. After the procedure is complete, the robot stores and analyzes how well the student performed and gives feedback that's available online.
According to New Scientist, Showa Hanako 2 will go on sale first in Japan later this year for an undisclosed sum.
You can’t buy love, but can you engineer it? A project at the National University of Singapore with all kinds of somewhat unsettling implications is trying to create the means for human-robot love by giving robots all the emotional and biological tools that human have.
That means artificial hormones--dopamine, seratonin, oxytocin, endorphin--that ebb and flow based on how the robot is “feeling.” It also means psychology, in this case using MRI brain scans to recreate artificial intelligence that creates affection--or a lack therof--towards a human counterpart.
ust as in human relationships, this human-robot love is based on interactions. The robot can become bored, jealous, angry, affectionate, or flat-out happy, all based on how the human object of its desire interacts with it. Most of this interaction takes place through touching--another analog to affectionate human interaction. The robot isn’t so cuddly, but give it some puppy love and it will love you back.
But spurn its advances at your own peril. If the chilling conclusion of episode one below is any indication, perhaps this isn’t such a great idea. It might just turn out that hell hath no fury like a lovebot scorned.
The Finnish game designers at Rovio, the studio that developed Angry Birds, have created 15 new Rio-themed levels that will be available to buyers of the DVD and Blu-ray versions of the Fox film, out Aug. 2 for $17 to $25.
Fox and Rovio's earlier teaming on a special version of the game for the movie's theatrical release in March was "a perfect alignment of planets," says Mary Daily, head of marketing for Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment. "They have a worldwide phenomenon in the Angry Birds game, and we have the colorful, beautiful movie all about birds. … We are going to continue the relationship."
Included in the DVD and Blu-ray releases are codes to download the new levels for various devices including Android phones and tablets, Apple iPhones, iPod Touches and iPads, as well as Windows and Macintosh computers. "This is the only way they can get it," Daily says.
Fox's Rio would be expected to be a home video success without added plumage. The film, which grossed $473 million worldwide, is one of the year's top hits, ranking No. 7 on boxofficemojo.com.
But the addition of exclusive Angry Birds Rio levels should help the home video version take flight even faster. The addictive game, in which players fire birds at targets using a slingshot, has a frenetic following. Players have downloaded more than 250 million copies since the game launched in Apple's App store in December 2009.
Both the DVD and Blu-ray editions include a digital copy that can be downloaded for use on computers or mobile devices.
On the Blu-ray disc is a "Coloring with Blu" app for Apple and Android tablets that stars the film's leading macaw (voiced by Jesse Eisenberg) with 60 pages of pictures that can be colored, then printed or shared via e-mail or Facebook.
Fox is also releasing a slightly-more expensive "quad pack" that includes a 3-D version of the movie on Blu-ray (3-D compatible disc player and TV required) along with the DVD, Blu-ray and digital copies.
The studio has seen more families opt for Blu-ray releases than expected.
A Texas teen is mistaken for a British socialite. With Selena Gomez, Leighton Meester. Director: Thomas Bezucha. (1:49). PG: mild language. At area theaters.
If you can believe that gorgeous Disney superstar —- and Justin Bieber gf -- Selena Gomez might ever be an insecure outsider, you are the perfect audience for "Monte Carlo.”
Also, if you are a 12-year-old girl, you are the perfect audience for "Monte Carlo."
So that makes it easy, really. Anyone who fits the above requirements will love Thomas Bezucha's featherweight fantasy, based on Jules Bass's novel "Headhunters." And anyone who doesn't can at least appreciate that such wholesome entertainment even exists.
Gomez is, if not entirely authentic, perfectly adorable as Grace, an unpopular diner waitress and recent high school grad who's been planning a big trip to Paris. She's going with BFF Emma (Katie Cassidy) and, at her parents' insistence, her uptight stepsis Meg (Leighton Meester).
Alas, the City of Light feels dark and dreary, because they can't afford to do much. But then Grace discovers that she looks exactly like a spoiled British heiress named Cordelia (Gomez again). When the girls overhear that Cordelia's skipping out on a charity ball in Monaco, Grace decides to secretly impersonate her. Soon they're hobnobbing with royalty, falling for first loves, and doing their very best not to get caught.
Director and co-writer Thomas Bezucha shows no particular flair for either of his jobs. But kids are unlikely to focus on the terrible editing, flat visuals, or lack of character development. They'll just see three adorable actresses--and a matching set of equally cute actors--playing dress-up in glossy, wish-fulfillment style.
Meanwhile, chaperones wary of 'tween culture will get their own wish fulfilled: the movie consistently discourages superficial values while promoting charitable attitudes. (Granted, the entire plot revolves around a fraud. But everyone learns to take responsibility for their mistakes.) Equally important, it never undermines its own heroines—a lesson, incidentally, that many grown-up rom-coms have yet to learn.
Google+, the search company's new social network Yesterday afternoon, the search company's new social network, and I've been scratching my head ever since. In press reports "see Steven Levy's Wired account of the making of Google+" people at Google shy away from the term "social network," and they bristle at the idea that Google+ is meant to be a "Facebook killer," or even that it's supposed to be a competitor to Facebook. For instance, you can have a circle of work friends, a circle of college buddies, a knitting circle, and a circle of jerks. Google would concede all of this; Google+ is currently in "field test" mode, which means that it's available to a very small number of people, and Google has offered no timeline on when it will open up for the public at large. Given the large overlap in functionality, I can't imagine that many people will use Google+ and Facebook simultaneously.
Google+'s success, then, will rest in large part on Google's ability to convince people to ditch Facebook for the new site. As best I can tell, the underlying philosophy of Google+ seems to be that, in the real world, people don't keep one all-encompassing "social network" of the kind that Facebook calls on us to build. The first thing you're called on to do when you first join Google+ is to create your own "circles" of friends. (You're given a few default groups to start with "friends," "Family," "Acquaintances" but you can rename these or create your own.) To put people in circles, you just drag and drop their names from the top half into any circle you like. Facebook's "Groups," which lets other people manage your circles through rote tagging, is somewhat easier to use, but still apparently too much work for most people.
If Google+ lets you manage these groups more easily, wouldn't it stand a good chance against Facebook? You've still got to manually corral your social network, and this can take a lot of time?especially because the initial suggestions in Google+ are populated by your Gmail contacts group, which means that there are hundreds of people to choose from (many of them duplicates). There's always the possibility that Google will make this process easier by adding some of its legendary algorithmic magic, using applied social-network theory to guess who belongs in your work circle, in your college circle, and in your personal ninth circle of hell. Perhaps if it does this well enough, people will see this as enough of a reason to share stuff on Google+ rather than Facebook. There are certainly people who want to control their networks at a much more granular level, and for those people, tools like "circles" or Facebook's lists come in handy.
Why is it still so shocking to see gay people in mainstream ads? At a time when every other demographic is practically shoehorned into marketing for the sake of diversity, gays and lesbians are still all but invisible in the TV advertising landscape. But while you might not have seen many yourself, gay-themed TV ads are definitely out there. To close out Gay Pride Month, we tracked down 50 of them from around the world and organized them into seven categories that seem to keep popping up ("Lesbians Are Hot," "Don't Tell Mom," etc.). Check out the collection after the jump.
[adweek]
That’s So Raven star Raven Symone has been in the news recently for her dramatic weight loss (35 pounds!) as well as those pesky rumors that she was pregnant and had a secret baby. The star opened up about her 35-pound weight loss and the "really funny" pregnancy rumors.
Symone appeared on The Wendy Williams Show and told Williams that stress caused her weight gain when on the show That’s So Raven.
"I stopped stressing. You have to realize at 15, there was a whole entire show I had on my shoulders. It was a very big cast and crew and if you’re sick for a day, people lose money and that’s a problem," Symone said.
So how did she turn the corner and start losing weight? "[It wasn't] just overeating because I’ve actually been eating the same. I keep a little bit more smaller portions because I learned that your body has to get rid of that stress some way. Some people break-out, some people lose their hair, some lose weight, some people gain weight, my body just reacted a certain kind of way."
Ironically, Symone will have to wear padding to make herself look bigger in her new ABC show, State of Georgia. "Ironically, my character is supposed to be the size that I was before," she reveals. "So I have to wear thicker body pads on the show."
She also opened up to The Insider about the rumors that she had a secret pregnancy and gave birth to a baby girl. There were also pictures of her rumored child, however, Symone says those rumors are "really funny" and the baby that is supposed to be hers doesn’t even look like her. She says that "even if I did date someone of Caucasian descent, my baby wouldn't turn out like that."
"I think because I was big for so long and at certain times fluctuated so much that they thought I had baby weight... just because I was thicker."
Gaga greedy?
A Michigan law firm is suing Lady Gaga, accusing her of wrongfully keeping some of the proceeds of the “We Pray for Japan” bracelets she has been selling to raise money for earthquake victims.
Gaga’s website promises that all proceeds go to charity. But the federal class-action suit, filed Saturday, charges that she inflated the shipping charges and also kept some of the $5 she charged for them.
Sales of the bracelets have helped Gaga donate $3 million to the cause so far, and she just headlined a disaster relief benefit concert in Tokyo over the weekend. No word from her camp on the lawsuit.
Bond — Mrs. James Bond
Look who got married oh-so-quietly under the radar last week: Rachel Weisz and Daniel Craig tied the knot in a small ceremony in upstate New York.
It was so small only four people attended: Rachel’s son with “Black Swan” director Darren Aronofsky, Daniel’s daughter from his previous marriage, and two friends of the couple.
Tongues started wagging about a relationship between the two late last year after they made the thriller “Dream House,” in which they play — drumroll, please — husband and wife. The film hits theaters in the fall.
One bad mommy
The new get-out-of-jail-free card: Breasts full of mother’s milk.
Police say that Mexican pop singer Paulina Rubio crashed her BMW into another car in Miami over the weekend. When the cops arrived, she refused to get out of the car and cursed at an officer.
When the officer put her in handcuffs, the police report states that she screamed for help and threatened to call her attorney. Police say she eventually calmed down and apologized.
They charged her with disorderly conduct, but didn’t take her into custody because she said she had to breastfeed her baby.
A very Brady ick factor
We liked it so much better when Florence Henderson was just Mrs. Brady, coolest mom on TV, to us.
In her new memoir, “Life Is Not a Stage,” Florence tells about her one-night stand with John Lindsay, New York’s mayor from 1966 to 1973.
She was married at the time but writes that “I was lonely. I knew it wasn’t the right thing to do. So, what did I do? I did it.”
But a guilty conscience isn’t the only thing she was left with. Turns out that Mr. Mayor “must have had quite the active life,” because Florence also reveals that he gave her a sexually transmitted disease. No details, just in case you’re eating while reading this.
Billy Ray’s back
Billy Ray Cyrus gets all red, white and blue on his new album, “I’m American,” out today. Along with seven new songs, he has remade “Some Gave All,” the title track to his multiplatinum debut album that punished, er, gave the world “Achy Breaky Heart.”
Billy Ray, who also hosts TLC’s military-themed show “Homecomings,” is a regular performer on the military circuit and said the idea for the album started with one of those trips to a combat zone.
“It was during a performance in Afghanistan on ‘Some Gave All.’ When some bombs went off in the background, a young soldier stood up and said, ‘Keep going, Mr. Cyrus. We’re used to it,’ ” he said.
“At that moment, I knew that I felt like I was going to come back and record ‘Some Gave All’ and start an entire album on a concept that was based solely on taking my hat off and saluting our troops.”
Josh’s new job
Josh Duhamel, a native of flood-ravaged Minot, N.D., has been named honorary chairman of a flood recovery fund there. His sister and her family lost their home to the recent floods.
Your next job: Mobile app developer? As market demand surges for apps to run on iOS, Android and whatever operating system will power the next wave of smart devices, companies are facing a dearth of mobile development talent. a website for freelancers, reports comparable demand: In the first quarter of 2011, there were 4,500 mobile developer jobs posted on the site an increase of 101 percent over the number of similar job postings in the same quarter last year. Market watchers say it's the ability to grasp mobile's new usage rules, and not simply the ability to master new programming skills, that separates those with an affinity for mobile development from those who just don't get it. All signs indicate there is a healthy demand for mobile app developers, but that demand isn't translating into widespread offers of full-time jobs on corporate IT teams just yet.
Since Aspen Skiing doesn't consider software development a core competency and can't accommodate a large IT staff, outsourcing mobile development seemed like the most efficient plan at least in the short run which is why the company turned to an outside consultancy to develop its mobile apps. The new hires have core development skills and some knowledge of mobile app development maybe not on a commercial scale, but they've done it in an academic environment as a project. Expertise in the specific APIs and user interface toolkits of major mobile platforms like Google's Android and Apple's iOS is a plus though a lack of such experience wouldn't necessarily mean you have no chance of becoming a successful mobile app developer, experts say. The way people interact with a laptop or a desktop is different than the way they interact with a smart device, says Hap Aziz, director of the Rasmussen College School of Technology and Design, which was among the first universities to launch a curriculum with a specific focus on mobile application design and programming. Learning by doing is the next best approach, and one likely favored by the bulk of existing IT professionals, according to Nick Dalton, owner of 360mind, an application development consultancy specializing in mobile apps.
That early training and exposure established him as a go-to resource once the Apple App Store was announced and the market for mobile app developers took off, enabling him to leave corporate IT and start 360mind. Today, 360mind employs nearly 20 mobile app developers and has moved away from building simple novelty apps to working on corporate initiatives that link both Apple iOS and Android apps to back-end enterprise systems. With no end in sight for the opportunities in mobile development, Dalton says this latest gold rush sends a clear message to fellow developers, system architects and Web designers: In today's global, outsourcing economy, you don't want to be stuck with outdated skills, he says. If you're coming from a multimillion-dollar enterprise server project where every decision takes forever, working on these small, self-contained projects around [mobile devices] is a lot of fun. Higher Ed adds mobile app development to the mix Against a backdrop of surging demand for mobile apps, Rasmussen College is one of the first higher ed institutes to launch a specialized curriculum in mobile App design and programming. Students first learn modern object-oriented programming languages such as Java and C++ and then dive into specific mobile development environments like Google's Android and Apple's iOS.
The simple answer is sex selection - typically, an ultrasound scan followed by an abortion if the fetus turns out to be female - but beyond that, the reasons for a gap half the size of the U.S. population are not widely understood. In India, where women have achieved political firsts still not reached in the United States, sex selection has become so intense that by 2020 an estimated 15 to 20 percent of men in northwest India will lack female counterparts. Proponents of population control began talking about nudging sex selection along. Six months later Steven Polgar, the organization's head of research, went public with the notion that sex selection was an effective population control method. Taking the podium before an audience of scholars and policymakers at a conference sponsored by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD), Polgar "urged," according to the meeting's minutes, "that sociologists stimulate biologists to find a method of sex determination, since some parents have additional children in order to get one of specified sex."
In the years that followed, Population Council President Bernard Berelson endorsed sex selection in the pages of Science, while Paul Ehrlich advocated giving couples the sons they desired in his blockbuster The Population Bomb. A wide range of population control strategies were on the table at the time, but by the end of the decade, when the NICHD held another workshop on reducing birth rates, sex selection had emerged as an approach that participants deemed "particularly desirable." He extolled sex selection in an article for the New Scientist, explaining that population growth was so great a threat that the drawbacks of a skewed sex ratio would have to be tolerated, grim as they were. And sometime in the mid-1960s, Population Council medical director Sheldon Segal showed the institute's doctors how to test human cells for the sex chromatins that indicated a person was female - a method that was the precursor to fetal sex determination. In 1975, AIIMS doctors inaugurated sex-selective abortion trials at a government hospital, offering amniocentesis to poor women free of charge and then helping them, should they so choose, to abort on the basis of sex.
The doctors touted the study as a population control experiment, and sex-selective abortion spread throughout India. But he neglected to mention that shortly after his stay in India he stood before an audience at the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development and described sex selection as a method of population control. The organization has also funded research on sex selection and sex ratio imbalance at the local level. Lingering anxiety over taking on issues involving abortion, activists and demographers have told me, now has UNFPA reluctant to address sex selection head-on at the international level - a reluctance that has left the organization's enemies to twist the issue to fit their own agenda. In China, India, Korea, and Taiwan, the first generation shaped by sex selection has grown up, and men are scrambling to find women, yielding the ugly sideblows of increased sex trafficking and bride buying.
Some people are natural-born speakers. They were those eager young souls who volunteered to read aloud in grade school and now welcome any opportunity to present in front of a group. For the rest of us, public speaking is a real-life nightmare. The very thought of standing up in front of a group, all eyes on you, is a terrifying endeavour. At one time I fell into the latter of these two groups. I was always social, but I avoided the on-stage spotlight for many years. Sweaty palms. Belly butterflies. You name the anxiety sign, I had it. Then, a few years ago, things started to change.
I say started to change because it didn't happen instantly. I was approached by an agency in 2007 to give a presentation about strategies for social media success. My initial reaction was no, definitely no. However, I recognized that it was a great opportunity to increase awareness about my new consulting business and, well, the pay wasn't too shabby. Eventually, I said yes. After signing a speaking contract, I counted down the days until I faced one of my biggest fears. Four years later, with more than 120 keynote speeches under my belt to audiences ranging from 30 to 3,000 people, I truly love delivering a presentation. Here are three things that helped me find my strength on stage.
1. Deck out your presentation deck with audio, video, and pictures
During my early days keynoting events I did some social media consulting work with Tony Robbins. As part of the project, I traveled to a few of his seminars and got a unique perspective watching his motivational magic on and off stage. While Tony himself is a magnetic character, with hands the size of my head, I saw how he incorporated music and video to turn his presentation into a show. He played energetic tunes, hilarious clips, showed touching photos, and each element was timed perfectly to keep the audience moving, laughing, and listening.
Think about it like this. Data slide, data slide, data slide, funny video. Repeat.
It sounds simple enough, but it's amazing how many presenters are great speakers but their slides are dry and boring. I learned a lot from Tony, so I now sprinkle YouTube clips and powerful images throughout every speech I do* (*I use Keynote presentation software on a Mac and rely on Snapz Pro X to record video online).
2. Make timely tweaks to keep things fresh
Whether you're presenting to a small group or large audience, there is often someone in charge who wants to check out your slides before you deliver your speech. While I'm fine sharing my deck, I warn this person that my slides are a work in progress. I am constantly tweaking information before I go on stage. There is nothing an audience appreciates more than hearing you say that you just found a new stat that very morning or you grabbed a relevant screenshot the night before. For example, I just spoke at a mobile learning conference, and I included a Twitter quote I saw from an attendee just hours before my speech started. I don't recommend that you change every slide at the last minute, but sprinkle in a few final tweaks to keep your deck fresh and your audience engaged.
3. Tell a few good stories to make your slides human
I watch my audiences closely and I can always tell when they're interested. Their heads are up, their eyes are ahead, and they're waiting anxiously for more. These moments always happen when I tell stories. I didn't learn this right away, but after a couple of years on the speaking circuit I started to notice the exact times when I had the most people engaged. My stories aren't long-winded, but simple little anecdotes to make the content more compelling.
For example, when I talk about how the tablet is changing the way we live, work, and play, I talk about the day my 2-year-old son walked up to our television set and tried to push on the screen to "make it do something." Clearly he was spending too much time on the iPad, so he assumed all screens were touch screens. This quick story always resonates with the new parents in the room.
Aside from building a killer deck, a good pre-speech routine can help to fight your nerves. Get some exercise. Eat some healthy food. Avoid caffeine at all costs. Once you get a few presentations under your belt, you never know, you just might like it too.
[fastCompany]
In an auction featuring memorabilia from the Beatles, Madonna and Elvis Presley, it was Michael Jackson who proved to be king.
The red and black jacket, winged shoulders and all, that the late pop star wore during his zombie-ridden "Thriller" video fetched a $1.8 million bid at this weekend's Julien's auction in Beverly Hills, California, according to the auctioneer's website.
The winning price was exponentially above the estimated bid of $200,000 to $400,000. Part of the proceeds will go toward the Shambala Preserve where Jackson's two Bengal tigers, Thriller and Sabu, have been living the past five years.
The jacket had been given to Dennis Tompkins and Michael Bush, the singer's longtime costume designers, to use as a reference for concert performances of the "Thriller" song. It includes an inscription to them on the jacket's lining, and the sleeve is signed, "Love Michael Jackson."
Its sale came exactly two years after the then 50-year-old Jackson was killed by a surgical anesthetic called Propofol, which a Los Angeles coroner ruled killed the singer in combination with several sedatives found in his blood.
The jacket wasn't the only piece of history from the late King of Pop that was part of the auction. The signature fedora Jackson wore during his Bad Tour was sold for $16,250, a handwritten note to friend Elizabeth Taylor went for $5,625 and a signed pillowcase fetched $3,584. And a bidder paid out $330,000 -- more than 10 times what Julien's had expected to get -- for one of the famous, shiny, crystal-covered gloves that Jackson wore during the 1980s.
"Michael Jackson has an unbelievable fan base," Darren Julien, the auction house's president, told CNN earlier this month.
Other pieces of history, from other members of music royalty, were also featured at the auction. While gold records and instruments were common items, others were more practical -- like Frank Sinatra's boots (selling for $2,500) and his 1986 Jaguar car ($19,000). as well as the U.S. Army-issued sewing kit of Elvis Presley's that went for $1,536.
The King of Pop's closest competition at the auction was the Beatles, which had a number of items for sale. A signed postcard from Liverpool's finest sold for $5,504 and Paul McCartney's bass guitar fetched $14,080. But oft-diminished drummer Ringo may have gotten the last laugh, with the cape he wore in the movie "Help!" selling for $37,500 -- about five times the estimate.
Insomniac Inc., promoter of the largest electronic music festival in the U.S., is trying to build its reputation.
The festival’s representatives have long been trying to get people to stop calling the events “raves,” which are often associated with drug use. Controversy about whether raves should be allowed in public venues, following the overdose-related death of a 15-year-old girl at Electric Daisy Carnival 2010 in Los Angeles, essentially forced the festival out of the city.
Last night, at the event’s debut in Las Vegas, attendees said they didn’t feel like they were at a rave.
“They’re pulling it away from that scene. It’s definitely more of a carnival now,” said Ian Buchan, 20, who drove to Las Vegas from Polar, Wisconsin, with friends.
Insomniac is known for creating a fairytale atmosphere at its electronic music events, but festival goers said the unique environment is often overshadowed by the frenzy, such as unruly crowds in jam-packed venues.
Last night, hundreds of stilt walkers dressed as mystical creatures — goblins, nymphs and tree people — wandered through the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Carnival rides and enormous, surreal art displays in the form of strange plants, such as fire-breathing trees and glowing mushrooms, towered between stages. As DJs spun tracks on stage, costumed performers emerged to dance elaborately before the audience.
The attractions were numerous, and attendees said they were able to appreciate them more than usual.
“It’s not congested at all, people are just walking to main-lining acts and not having much of a problem. They’ve clearly solved the problem at this venue,” said Daniel Ramirez, who drove to the event from Los Angeles. He thinks future raves should be held at venues as large as the Speedway.
Others at the festival said the security was much more thorough, and that items they are normally able to sneak in were confiscated.
Only during Dutch electronic music DJ Tiesto’s 1 a.m. set did things get a little tense, as a large number of the nearly 100,000 attendees gravitated toward his stage to dance for more than an hour and witness a 15-minute fireworks display. At one point, the DJ told the audience to jump up and down in unison, and attendees did so without causing the earth to move.
By the end of the first night, a handful of hospitalizations had been reported, and no deaths. The second night of the three-day event starts tonight at 8 p.m. and goes through sunrise.
“I’m CEO, Bitch.”
While the story of this title appearing on Mark Zuckerberg’s early Facebook business cards has been around outside the company since at least 2009, when Ben Mezrich’s The Accidental Billionaires was released, it really exploded into legendary status last year. That’s when the Acadmey Award-winning film, The Social Network (based on Mezrich’s book), launched the phrase into pop culture by having Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker utter it as the exclamation point at the end of a key speech meant to inspire Jesse Einsenberg’s Zuckerberg.
“This time you’re gonna hand them a business card that says, ‘I’m CEO, bitch!’ — that’s what I want for you,” Parker says. Later in the film, Zuckerberg opens a box of business cards that have the title on them.
Of course, that’s Hollywood. That’s not what really happened. But the phrase, and the business cards were very real.
David Kirkpatrick’s book The Facebook Effect, confirmed the existence of the business cards last year. The key excerpt:
As the Facebook boys started dealing increasingly with real business professionals, a reputation for rambunctiousness spread throughout the valley. “It’s Lord of the Flies over there,” one executive told an executive recruiter. Zuckerberg had to be careful which business card he handed out at meetings. He had two sets. One simply identified him as “CEO.” The other: “I’m CEO…bitch!”
Early Facebooker Andrew Bosworth (“Boz”) later confirmed this even further when he answered a question about the card on Quora last summer. But Bosworth downplayed the card:
I believe it was intended as a joke for his friends and speaks to how unclear it was even in his own mind at the time that he would someday become such an important (and scrutinized) leader in our industry.
But yesterday, Bryan Veloso, a Facebook Designer from 2005 to 2006, gave a more more interesting and enlightening answer on Quora. And he should know — he designed the actual card. According to Veloso, the idea for the “I’m CEO, Bitch” card stems from the fact that Zuckerberg actually used to utter the phrase. And as Veloso tells is, he did so to be more “aggressive” and to emulate the style of one man: Steve Jobs.
The key part:
As for Mark’s, it’s no secret that Mark looked up to Steve Jobs at the time. When Aaron Sittig and I were the only designers in late 2005, he would hold his design meetings with us in that classic “aggressive” Steve Jobs-style. It was during one of those meetings where I remember him first uttering the phrase, “I’m CEO, bitch…”
Veloso goes on to note that the cards was in many ways a “happy accident” in that he felt comfortable making thanks to his relationship with Zuckerberg at the time. He also says that eventually the cards were pulled towards the end of his tenure at Facebook. “In this designer’s view, these retired cards were an excellent representation of the company culture at the time. Their replacement reflected the changes a young Facebook needed to go through in order to be where it is today,” he writes.
Indeed.
So, no, the card was not inspired by a drunken nightclub party with Victoria Secret models. But it was very real. And you can thank Steve Jobs for that.
Selena Gomez flashes her string-of-pearls smile and black-olive eyes as 3,000 fans give her a rock-star welcome Monday at the King of Prussia Mall. Gomez, the recording sensation, star of the Disney TV series The Wizards of Waverly Place, and anchor of the Fox mistaken-identity comedy Monte Carlo (opening Friday), is buoyed by the shout-out. With self-assurance and self-doubt in dizzyingly equal proportions, Gomez, 18, is walking the tightrope from teen idol toward mature stardom in five-inch heels, struggling against the perception she's just a "Disney girl." If fan love alone were all it required, Gomez would be there already. "I come from Disney World and am not taken seriously," Gomez explains matter-of-factly Monday afternoon before her triumph at the Mall.
"It inspires me when moms tell me they want their girls to be sassy and stand up for what they believe in, like [her Wizards character] Alex." Gomez deals with "the negativity and rejection" that she faces from casting agents and from the haters on Facebook the old-fashioned way - with affirmations. "It's such a funny thing, how nothing's funny when it's you," go the lyrics to Gomez's "Who Says," her epically relatable song about bouncing back from put-downs. After Barney, she did some Disney shows before ultimately getting cast in Wizards at 14. Gomez dated Nick Jonas of the Jonas Brothers and Taylor Lautner (Twilight's Jacob) before keeping company with pop sensation Justin Bieber. When designers approached her to launch her Dream Out Loud line of clothing, Gomez was psyched. The kids in Ghana want to go to school, want homework, want to learn."
If she had the power, she says, "I'd build schools in Ghana." While her own songs are for the most part mood-elevating, Gomez isn't the type of music lover who uses songs to lift her spirits. I'll listen to Death Cab for Cutie or 'More Like Her' by Miranda Lambert." Gomez's edge in Ramona and Beezus and in Monte Carlo, where she has a dual role as a down-home Texas girl mistaken for a spoiled heiress, distinguishes her from the sunshine overdrive of many teen stars. "In Ramona and Beezus, we saw this other side to her," observes Siminoff, who is betting that Gomez has the resources to play three-dimensional characters. "Not everything is a happy ending," Gomez reflects.
Six people were killed when a tractor-trailer truck slammed into a Chicago-to-California Amtrak passenger train at a railroad crossing east of Reno, Nevada, authorities said late Saturday.
The death toll was released just as federal authorities said they were trying to account for passengers missing from the passenger train that was struck Friday at a railroad crossing near Lovelock, Nevada.
"No names are being released pending positive identification and notification of families," the Churchill County, Nevada, sheriff's department said in a written statement.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which is investigating, is trying to account for passengers listed on the manifest but not located after the crash, Earl Weener of the NTSB told reporters during a news conference late Saturday night in Sparks, Nevada.
In some cases, it is believed people got off the train earlier or bought a ticket but did not take the train, he said.
"There are a number of reasons that the manifest and that number don't jibe," Weener said.
The 10-car train, which was on its way to Emeryville, California, was carrying 204 passengers and 14 crew members, Amtrak said in a statement released Friday.
It was not immediately clear how many people were injured. Amtrak said that numerous people aboard the train had been taken to area hospitals for treatment.
Amateur video taken after the crash showed huge plumes of black smoke billowing from the train as a fire burned. Passengers and crew members stood outside.
One voice on the video can be heard telling people to get away from the smoke. Another tells a woman, out of view, to "hang and jump." A third voice asks someone, "Are you OK?"
"Next thing I know, we get hit by something. A big ball of fire comes in. I jumped out the window," passenger Justin Rhine told CNN affiliate KOLO-TV in Reno. "I saw people flying on the other side of the train."
Skid marks show the driver of the truck slammed on his brakes, sliding more than 300 feet before hitting the train, sparking a fire, Weener said. The fire burned the truck and two train cars, he said.
The initial investigation found the signal light and crossing guard arms were working, and that there was good visibility of the train tracks from the road, he said.
The truck was the lead in a three-truck convoy as it approached the train tracks, Weener said.
The two following saw the train signal and slowed to stop, "waiting for him to come to stop," he said.
Though the driver of the truck has not been identified, Weener said the truck belonged to John Davies Trucking of Battle Mountain, Nevada.
[cnn]
