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joanne of the lovely mma gives her predictions for tomorrow's ufc 85, coming live to you from merry old england.

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social rating sites are invaluable in our era of information overload. and in applying social ratings to media coverage of the 2008 presidential campaign, a partnership between nonprofit social news site newstrust and the huffington post?s offthebus project is taking an innovative approach: ?news hunts.? instead of bookmarking news articles with del.icio.us or voting on them with reddit, news hunters collaboratively evaluate hundreds of news articles about a specific topic based on journalistic criteria, including fairness, evidence, sourcing, and context. hunts last for one week, findings are published on both newstrust?s and offthebus?s websites, and then the smart mob of news hunters moves onto another topic. the result is a synchronized effort to identify best news coverage, as well as help readers learn more about each candidate and make informed decisions. this week?s hunt is dedicated to evaluating the quality of news coverage about john mccain. visit newstrust’s wel page to join in.

from the telegraph:

“erika la tour eiffel, 37, a former soldier who lives in san francisco, has been in love with objects before. her first infatuation was with lance, a bow that helped her to be a world-cl archer, she is fond of the berlin wall and she claims to have a physical relationship with a piece of fence she keeps in her bedroom.

but it is the eiffel tower she has pledged to love, honour and obey in an intimate ceremony attended by a handful of friends.

she has changed her name legally to reflect the bond.

she revisits the mive structure as part of a doentary on five on objectum-ual wo. there are around 40 people in the world who have declared themselves os, all of them wo and many of them also asperger’s syndrome sufferers.

the os term was first coined by eija-riitta berliner-mauer, a 54-year-old woman who has been “married” to the berlin wall for 29 years.

before returning to paris for her first wedding anniversary, mrs la tour eiffel visits the berlin wall, where her affection for what many germans see as a symbol of repression leads to an uncomfortable encounter with a member of the staff at the checkpoint charlie museum.

“i just don’t understand how some people can bring someone into the world like a child - an object - and then not love them,” she said….”

read the full article

tags: france travel eiffel tower paris woman marries eiffel tower

filed under: cellphones

section: computers, software / applications

in addition to the release of the generally available public release, ibm has announced for-pay software support help to accompany its lotus symphony office productivity software.  lotus symphony is a direct compeor to the market leading microsoft office suite, and joins a legion of alternative productivity suites, including google apps.  the software itself, which includes full-feature word processing, presentation design, and spreadsheet application, is free, though many companies have expressed concerns about the long term sustainality of free software.  ibm’s move lends credence to symphony as a genuine alternative, by following a more conventional for-profit business model in the deliver of software.

the market for this type of software is increasingly compeive, as corporate it departts make crucial buying decisions regarding office 2007.  major overhauls to the program interfaces, coupled with steep hardware requirets and ever-more complex access licensing can make an office 2007 deployt just as painful and expensive as moving to an alternative solution.  by stepping up the service offering, ibm is signaling that their symphony suite is a genuine compeor, rather than a corporate experit.  ibm also has a very strong (and entrenched) offering in office collaboration software with their lotus notes package, which integrates email and collaborative communications.  the new symphony software integrates easily with existing notes deployts, and even contains apis allowing it to be used in composite notes applications.  microsoft offers similar functionality with the integration of sharepoint and exchange server products, but is again disadvantaged by a bersome pricing scheme.

pricing for the new service is flexible between $25 and $50 per user, with a maximum cap of $25,000 for the help desk support.  this equates to 10,000+ users in a best-case scenario, with additional users being free.  contrast this with microsoft’s licensing, which is infinitely variable - there is no cap, though larger companies are able to negotiate lower licensing fees.  companies who already have a lotus notes/ino deployt can add symphony for free, and drop the cost of doent creation software altogether.  another advantage of symphony is native support for the open doent format (odf) iso 26300, which can free companies from the lock-in to microsoft’s proprietary office formats.  in a time of corporate mega-mergers and cost cutting, microsoft could find that ibm’s symphony is a sweeter tune to the ear of cost conscious cios.

read [reuters]

full story » | written by aaron kraus for gadgetell. | comt on this article »

danny argues that google is unfairly inating the firefox toolbar. i think he's right. microsoft is not even among the choices, and google is the default. google, of course, represents the majority of mozilla's revenues (mozilla is the company behind firefox).

danny's most interesting point is how hard google fought to keep microsoft from making live search the default in internet explorer. but google's actions with firefox are making it increasingly likely microsoft will act to change that stance. that's what i meant when i said microsoft is "lying in the weeds" a few months ago.

well, the no. 1 image search for my name pretty much sums it up. link.

furl has a new look and feel!   

we would love to hear what you think of our new ui. to take our survey, please click here.

huge thanks to our beta testers for providing crucial feedback to us.  additional changes will go live over the next few weeks as we incorporate your feedback into the new ui.

finally, we have resolved a few bugs with this latest release.  most notably, email functionality across the site is back up and running.  thanks to all of your for your patience!

regards,
the furl team

what does a baby do with money, let alone extra money?

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