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Japan Plans to Create 5 Million Jobs Through Green-tech, Health, Tourism
Looking at lowering corporate tax
Read more on Industry Week

Local QB Douglas commits to Memphis
Stevie Douglas has made the rounds in the big summer camps around the region. The home-schooled senior quarterback went to LSU, Mississippi State, Memphis and Louisiana Tech. And despite his impressive stature at 6-foot-4, 190 pounds and strong arm, he didn’t get the offers he was most looking for.
Read more on The Advocate

I’m not an advocate of mucking up the iPhone’s beautifully simple aesthetic with bulky cases or vibrant skins and decals, but if you feel you must customize your phone to stand out in the crowd, these new iaPeel Skins are definitely one of a kind. And how do I know that? Well it’s simple, they actually let you design and print your own custom skin, right from your home inkjet printer.

Special included software ensures that your design is always the perfect size, and it will even create a custom wallpaper (if your device supports that) so your graphics appear uninterrupted across the display. When you get tired of the design, the synthentic material is easy to remove without leaving a sticky residue, and I particularly like the pop-up guides on the back of the printed labels which ensures a perfect application every time. As for pricing, well the starter kit for the iPhone 3G, which includes 5 skins, is $29.95, with a 5-pack of additional skins costing $26.95. And that price point seems to be consistent for all of the iPods as well.

[ iaPeel ] VIA [ Coolest Gadgets ]

If I may, I’d like to play devil’s advocate to something I wrote a few days ago. To quickly summarize, Boxee took issue with NBCU’s Jeff Zucker’s characterization that Boxee was some sort of rogue piece of software, and that Hulu is in the right whenever it blocks access to the XBMC-derived media player. How about this: maybe Hulu is right to block Boxee? Let’s see where this takes us.

Boxee’s main contention is that, in watching Hulu, it’s no different than typing www.hulu.com into your Firefox or Internet Explorer address bar. To be slightly more accurate, it’d be like clicking on a bookmark: you don’t type in www.hulu.com when you load up Boxee, but click a UI element. So right there things are a little different.

Then there’s the interface. Compare Hulu in a “normal” Web browser with Hulu as seen through Boxee:

Normal

Boxee

That’s patently not the same interface (with a hat tip to Digital Society for doing the legwork and taking the screenshots). In Boxee, you’re whisked right away to a video without having to see the rest of the Hulu site. That doesn’t make the branding guys too happy (and throws dirt in the face of the guys who developed Hulu’s UI.)

Then there’s what I’m going to call the experience, for lack of a better term. TV studios may be happy to provide content to Hulu, but they know that the idea of sitting in front of a smallish laptop isn’t an ideal way to watch TV. It’s almost like they’re fine with providing content to a service that can never really replicate the “experience” of watching TV: sitting on a big, comfy couch in front of a 50-inch HDTV. With Boxee, you’re circumventing the inconvenience, so to speak, of watching on a clunky laptop by outputting the image, thanks to your Boxee box (in the future, of course; I know the box isn’t available now), onto your big TV, complete with Bluetooth remote control. You’ve essentially replicated the “normal” TV watching “experience,” which may not be what the studios signed up for in the first place. The ol’ switcheroo.

That said, yes, I know you can connect your laptop to your TV, and your audio output to a proper sound system—I did the very same thing for about a year, and it was great—but Hulu’s puppet-masters must know that the number of people who even know how to do that, and then who have the patience to string wires from here to there, are so small that it’s not worth complaining about.

But I can still see Boxee’s point-of-view. After all, when you watch Hulu videos in Boxee you’re still subjected to the very same ads as the Firefox people are; you’re not watching anything “for free,” as it were. The presentation may be different, but you’re still sitting through 30-second Ford commercials.

And to be even more fair to Boxee, they’ve essentially offered to diffuse the entire situation by coming to some sort of monetary agreement with Hulu that would make its users paying customers. (Boxee isn’t “above” making deals with content providers, nor should it be if it wants to be taken seriously as a “real” company, which is clearly its goal.) Let’s pick a number out of thin air: $5 per month to watch Hulu content via Boxee. Is that fair? I don’t know, it seems eminently reasonable, putting aside the fact that you’d partially be paying for over-the-air television, which is free, cable-based content notwithstanding. But then I’m sure Boxee users would complain that since they’re paying customers, why should they have to sit through advertisements anymore? But that’s an argument for another day.

All I’m trying to say is, I’m pretty sure I understand where Hulu and its backers are coming from vis-à-vis Boxee (and Plex, to be sure), but Boxee seems more than willing to find some sort of solution to this mess, if you can even call it that.

Thoughts? (I’ve already spent entirely too long thinking about this issue!)

Now, if you’re in the northwest like me, you know that Canadian Canada geese, while great-looking birds and majestic creatures, are a huge pain in the ass. They bite kids, they crap all over the place, and they never stop honking. So while I normally don’t advocate shooting pain rays at animals, this is probably the best non-lethal way of making sure those things don’t come back.

Actually, the “avian denial system” would be used mainly at airports, to keep flocks of birds from interfering with takeoffs and landings. I just kind of wanted to get a dig in there against the geese.

I also happen to have a more lenient stance on its use than most people. It’s not like Dune’s pain box or something, it’s reportedly like touching a hot light bulb with your whole body, and you’re never hit for longer than a second (usually because you jump the hell out of there). Not that I want it to be deployed the next time I’m marching in support of this or that, but I don’t think it’s the death ray everyone thinks it is. What do you guys think?

Of all the Free PC Error Scan software that I have come across, I have found the Spyzooka to be the best of the all. Download its free version and enjoy a safe computer. .

Microsoft has confirmed that the European release of their much anticipated OS, Windows 7, will be shipped without their Internet Explorer web browser. The reason for this, somewhat strange, exclusion is the ongoing legal wrangle between Microsoft and the European Commission. The basic argument from the EC is that, by including IE bundled with Windows, Microsoft is creating unfair competition in the market. So, Microsoft has pulled a major strop and have announced that Windows 7 E versions (the E stands for European, see what they did there?) will be devoid of any trace of IE. Although, of course, customers will still be able to install IE if they want to – Bill and the gang aren’t that magnanimous. The EC is being equally as callow in the argument, however. They’ve reacted to the news by complaining that “rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less”. Come on guys, kiss and make up, life’s too short. I actually think the news is a good thing – there are plenty of good browsers out there, many of which are far superior to IE. This statement is backed up by the fact that IE’s market share is tumbling, whilst alternatives such as Firefox are gaining ground rapidly. Check out this brilliant Wiki which shows how, in the last five years or so, IE’s market share has fallen by over 25%, whereas Firefox’s has risen by nearly 20%. I’m a real advocate for Firefox, as you may have noticed, but don’t dismiss Google’s Chrome, Apple’s Safari or, err…Norway’s Opera. Or take our unique test to see what browser you are. Windows 7 is out on 22nd October. (via Reuters)