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Satellite-jamming becoming a big problem in the Middle East and North Africa

The Arab Spring has had yet another consequence—satellite jamming, and the practice is serious enough to threaten the satellite operators' business. Two operators, Arabsat and Nilesat, complained about the jamming in the Satellite 2012 Conference in Washington, D.C. last week, according to an article in Space News. Arabsat is a 21-country consortium that provides broadcasting to over 100 countries in the Middle East, Africa, and Europe. Nilesat is an Egypt-based operator that carries 415 channels to the Middle East and North Africa. The satellites also provide broadband, telephone, and VSAT service.

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from Ars Technica http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/03/satellite-jamming-becoming-a-big-...

Congress Approves Startup-Focused JOBS Act


The House of Representatives voted to pass the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS Act) Tuesday, a bill that aims to make it easier for startup businesses to raise capital, partially via online crowdfunding.

The measure passed 380-41 and is headed to the White House for President Obama’s signature.

It’s the second time the House passed the JOBS Act. It sailed through the House earlier this month on a bipartisan basis after being introduced by Republicans, but found opposition in the Senate.

The Senate passed a version of the bill amended to place more safeguards on the crowdfunding process last week, but the House’s go-ahead was needed before the bill could be sent to the president.

The JOBS Act would create a new class of business known as “emerging growth companies,” a category that would include most startups. These companies would be allowed to attract investors online through crowdfunding — much the same way that groups raise money via platforms such as Kickstarter.

They would also be able to sell up to $50 million in shares before having to register with the Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as have up to 1,000 shareholders — double the current maximum.

The version of the bill passed by Congress requires startups to deliver financial reports to investors in an effort to increase transparency and prevent potential fraud. That restriction wasn’t part of the original bill, but added in the Senate through an amendment sponsored by Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Scott Brown (R-Mass).

Supporters of the JOBS Act, including entrepreneur and #FixYoungAmerica organizer Scott Gerber, argue that it will generate a much-needed boost for startups and the economy at large.

“The passage of the JOBS Act in Congress is a major step for the #FixYoungAmerica initiative and a victory for our nation’s entrepreneurs,” Gerber says. As a result of the tireless efforts of Congressman Cantor, Congressman McHenry, President Obama, and members of both the House and Senate, a whole new generation of aspiring young business owners will have access to a new pool of capital that they will be able to utilize to rebuild the American dream, and revitalize the national economy.”

The legislation’s opponents, such as Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) have argued that it involves excessive and dangerous deregulation of businesses.

“The bill’s supporters have characterized it as a jobs bill, but this bill is really designed to change disclosure, accounting and auditing standards and to exempt many firms and corporations from the Securities and Exchange Commission oversight,” Durbin says.

President Obama has expressed his support for the bill, and he’s expected to quickly sign it into law.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, franckreporter

More About: Business, congress, jobs act, Politics, Small Business, Startups, US


from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/03/27/congress-approves-jobs-act/?utm_source=feedbur...

Matt Ruff discusses his alternate history novel The Mirage

Rick Kleffel's always-great Agony Column podcast interviews Matt Ruff about his extraordinary "golden rule" alternate history novel The Mirage, in which the Arabia is the cradle of democracy, the USA is a collection of basket-case Christian theocracies, Germany has been partitioned in a two-state solution that makes Berlin the capital of Israel, and a war on terror is launched when Christian "crusader" terrorists crash jetliners into Baghdad's Twin Towers. The Mirage is very likely to be the best novel I read in 2012, and Ruff is very coherent and interesting in discussing his work.

Matt Ruff is anything but a tortured soul himself, and that makes the creation of a novel like 'The Mirage' all the more remarkable. He's easygoing but clearly very meticulous, very particular about his writing. He's got a lot to say about his new novel, and what is refreshing is that he can sy it and still have the entire novel left for the reader as a fresh new experience.

Generally, I don't arrive at an interview with specific questions in mind, but my producer at KUSP had asked me, essentially, just what the heck did Matt think he was doing? Ruff of course knew exactly what he was doing and why. But he head a lot of new stuff to tell me about the novel, in ways I thought really opened up the book for me.

The origins of the book are not based in the politics. In fact to the degree it can be, this is not a very political novel. Even though this book sports a great plot, and a fully-fleshed alternate reality, this is really a book about perceptions, and that includes the reader's perceptions. Plus, it's fun.

03-26-12: A 2012 Interview with Matt Ruff (MP3) (Thanks, Matt!)

from Boing Boing http://boingboing.net/2012/03/26/matt-ruff-discusses-his-altern.html?utm_sour...

Sky Anytime+ now available via all broadband providers

Image
We knew it was coming, but now it's finally landed. Yep, those Sky+HD subscribers who get their internet from elsewhere are now free wander into the formerly fortified town of Anytime+. For the first time, all Sky+HD users with broadband can access the full range of online programming, which includes content from the BBC and ITV. Not a Sky customer, but like the sound of this? Sky's already thought of that, and should have something to ease your pain anytime now.

Sky Anytime+ now available via all broadband providers originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 25 Mar 2012 04:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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from Engadget http://www.engadget.com/2012/03/25/sky-anytime-now-available-via-all-broadban...

The MIT Media Lab Goes Viral: 11 Projects Aimed at Changing the Way We Communicate

The MIT Media Lab is broken down into 26 different research groups. From “Macro Connections” to “Camera Culture,” each team is focused on an innovative end goal. Throughout this past year, one group, “Viral Spaces,” has focused on proximal networking, hoping to facilitate discourse between real people in real places. From Junkyard Jumbotron’s large digital displays to Peddl’s brand-new balanced marketplace, here’s a look at 11 of the projects aimed at changing the way we communicate.

Brin.gy — The open-source project allows people to announce bits of information about themselves and then find others based on that information. Utilizing “Human Discovery Protocol,” users can form dynamic groups of people with similar expertise, those interested in buying the same product, people in the same location, or a mixture of all three.

Geo.gy — Geo.gy is a location shortener service that uses HTML5 to detect your location and then provides you with a short URL to a pointer on a map. Through Geo.gy, users can add text to a post, tweet or SMS. Sure, Twitter allows for geolocation already, but when someone re-tweets your tweet, your location information is lost. Not with Geo.gy, however.

Ghosts of the Past — Curious to see what the past looked like from exactly where you’re standing? Ghosts of the Past allows users to create, save and geotag panoramic canopies. Anyone who visits the same space after you can then see what you’ve seen, joining with you to create, what the team calls, “time-lapsed socialization.” Using full-circle panoramas and an iPad 2, memories are overlaid on top of physical space.

Junkyard Jumbotron — Working with laptops, smartphones and tablets — anything that runs a web browser — Junkyard Jumbotron allows users to take several random displays and stitch them together into one large, virtual display, simply by taking a photograph of them.

Meld — By presenting your social graph as a moving picture, Meld breaks away from the text-centric social networks we use today, and offers a more holistic view instead. You can now visually explore your social life.

NewsFlash — NewsFlash is a collaborative way to experience news from around the world. It’s as simple as pointing your phone at a headline or photograph and then snapping a picture. What happens is, the data emanates from the screen and is captured by your cellphone camera, later allowing any number of people to see the article at once. Users can also take their scanned article on the go, so your NewsFlash history stays with you, even as you move away from the display.

Peddl – Both iPhone and web-enabled, Peddl has become one of the easiest ways to buy and sell things with the people around you. Using two key phrases — “I want [this], and it’s worth [that]” and “I have [this], and it’s worth [that]” — Peddl has created a balanced marketplace. Even better, using Peddl, sellers can instantly connect to buyers and are able to communicate directly through text or by phone without ever having to provide their telephone number or email address.

Recompose — Recompose is a new system for manipulation of an actuated surface. (Or, in less formal words, “So cool.” Just check out the video below.) By using the body as a tool for direct manipulation, alongside gestural input for functional manipulation, the team shows how a user can be given unprecedented control over an actuated surface.

Social Energy — Focused on the idea that most people don’t have a sense of how much their actions can affect a building’s energy use, the Social Energy team is testing the hypothesis that “if people have a convenient way to record their energy use and learn ways to improve it, they will change their habits.” They’ve created visualizations of HVAC use throughout the Media Lab, and have been allowing people to not only see a heat map of their lab area, but compare their energy usage to those in other areas throughout the Lab.

T+1 — T+1 is an application that allows groups to organize their interests and schedules. With T+1, users receive instructions and send their personal information through their mobile device at specific times. At each time step, T+1 gathers together users’ interests, opinions and locations to compute and optimize the structure and format of group interactions for the next interval. The team writes that they hope to deploy the platform in settings ripe with academic and political discussions to analyze how user opinions and interests evolve over time.

X-Ray Audio — Using X-Ray Audio, drivers can join voice chat rooms and hear the voices of other drivers around them. Users can move their listening position further up or back down the road with the use of voice commands, as well as up-vote any helpful drivers they encounter. By creating a voice conference attached to a locale, the team says they’re enabling people to continue the experience of a close-quarters discussion over any distance. Just watch the video below to see X-Ray Audio in use for yourself.

from BostInno http://bostinno.com/2012/03/25/the-mit-media-lab-goes-viral-11-projects-aimed...

53 New Digital Media Resources You May Have Missed

Digital Tree


Have you missed any of our new digital media resources? Well, take a break from playing Angry Birds Space on your new iPad to catch up now with our weekly features roundup!

This week we’ve covered ways to improve your vacation using social media, how to protect yourself and your work on Pinterest and 10 places you’re not allowed to see on Google Maps. We also have an exclusive infographic on what’s working in digital non-profit fundraising, ways technology will transform the traditional classroom and seven reasons why you should purchase a ticket to Mashable Connect 2012 (as if there are only seven reasons!). We even poked our heads in at Aviary’s hip NYC nest.

What are you waiting for? Don’t miss your chance to benefit from these resources!


Editor’s Picks



Social Media


For more social media news and resources, you can follow Mashable‘s social media channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.


Business & Marketing


For more business news and resources, you can follow Mashable‘s business channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.


Tech & Mobile


For more tech news and resources, you can follow Mashable‘s tech channel on Twitter and become a fan on Facebook.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, johnwoodcock.

More About: Business, COMMUNICATIONS, Features Week In Review, Social Media, Tech

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/03/24/53-digital-media-resources/?utm_source=feedbur...

How to Leverage Your Personality Type to Nail the Interview


Mona Abdel-Halim is the co-founder of Resunate, the makers of the Apply widget for startups. You can start attracting top talent for free by getting an Apply widget for your company at Resunate.com/employers. You can also connect with Mona and Resunate on Facebook and Twitter.

With the competition in today’s job market, you’re considered lucky if you are offered an interview.

But once you’ve made it to the interview round, there’s more to consider than just dressing the part and ensuring you remember to bring extra copies of your resume. To really nail the interview — and ultimately, get the job — you need to demonstrate to the employer why you’re the best person for the job. This can be difficult for many job seekers to do.

One way to showcase your talents is through knowing and understanding your personality type. This knowledge enables you to position your natural personality preferences as job strengths and indicators of success.

You may have taken personality assessments such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® instrument before. This is a psychometric tool taken by more than 2 million people annually that sorts your natural preferences, referred by four abbreviated letters. They include:

  • Extraversion (E) or Introversion (I)
  • Sensing (S) or Intuition (N)
  • Thinking (T) or Feeling (F)
  • Judging (J) or Perceiving (P)

There are sixteen possible Myers-Briggs® personality types that help to illuminate your natural preferences. Knowing your personality type can help you understand the type of workplace culture where you’d be most comfortable. This can serve as a guide for the direction you should take in your career in order to be the most successful — and satisfied — on the job.


Personality Type & Your Interview Performance


Depending on your personality type and the position at hand, you can emphasize your strengths and learn how those preferences could help you at this particular organization.

For instance, if you have a preference for thinking and you’re vying for a high pressure position with a lot of decision-making, you should communicate your ability to think logically, conduct an objective analysis and consider the impacts and consequences to arrive at the best solution.

No personality type is an indicator that you won’t succeed; rather, your type indicates how naturally things come to you and how much you may be within your comfort range.

According to The Myers & Briggs Foundation, “Work environments influence how comfortable you are at your job. Someone with a preference for Introversion, for example, who is required to do a lot of detail work or think through a problem, may find it disruptive to be in an environment that is too loud or where a lot of interaction is required. When you know this about yourself, you can make arrangements to do your work in a more suitable location or at a time when there is less activity and interference.”


Personality Type & The Interviewer’s Perception of You



When it comes to communication with your interviewer, self-awareness is another vital aspect of a successful interview.

Let’s say your preference indicates extraversion, which means you are energized by interacting with people and develop ideas by discussing them with others. You might not have a problem talking about yourself, but you may end up saying things before you’ve had a chance to think them through. Once you know and understand your personality type, you can pay attention to your potential blind spots (such as responding quickly, sometimes without thinking) during the interview and ensure that you’re presenting your best, most professional self. This can also help with the elusive “likeability” factor that many hiring managers and recruiters ultimately look for in a job candidate.

Haven’t discovered your personality type yet? While you may think you know your preferences, taking a personality assessment can help you become more aware of how you prefer to work and how you’ll get along with others, which is not only valuable during a job interview but also for your career in general.

Employers will be impressed if you know and understand your personality type. It indicates to them that you are aware of yourself and, thus, more easily retained at the job. It also provides much-needed insight on yourself to highlight your strengths and explain why you’re the best person for the job. Not only is it a great way to position yourself for career advancement, but it can help you discover how to work better with co-workers and management, knowing their preferences and how they align with yours. This can ensure that if you land the job you don’t become one of the many in the workforce gainfully employed but dissatisfied with their job.

Do you know your personality type? How has it played a role in your career or job search?


Social Media Job Listings


Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, gehringj, AlexRaths.

More About: interview, job search series, personality

For more Business coverage:

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/03/24/how-to-leverage-your-personality-type-to-nail-...

Why Entrepreneurs Should NOT Buy Homes

house1

Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is Managing Director of Formula Capital and has written 6 books on investing. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and FAQ MEYou can follow him @jaltucher.

Many people have said to me in the past few months, “I’m going to buy a home.” Or, “What do you think of the idea of me buying a home?” Everyone thinks: Well the housing crisis is now over so I should buy a home. They think: It’s probably a good investment. They think: Time to put down “roots”. 

I’ve owned a home. A couple of times. I bought a home once after I sold a business. I then lost that home. I then went almost completely insane trying to sell it. Two things: If you are about to do a startup or if you are in the middle of startup-phase then you definitely can’t afford to waste the time or money to buy a house for reasons I explain below. Second, when you sell your startup — everyone wants to buy a house with the proceeds. Don’t. It’s just part of the American mythology. You know the myth: the white picket fence, the yard, the pool, the walls that you can paint, the keeping up with the Jones family. Just don’t. You’ll go broke. At least, if you are as stupid as me. I might be dumber than most though.

The other story I have of owning a home is still too personal. It’s filled with about as much pain as I can fit onto a page. Oh, I have a third one also from when I was growing up. But I don’t want to upset anyone in my family so I’ll leave it out. Oh, I have a fourth story that I just forgot about until this very second. But enough about me. Let’s get right to it.

There are many reasons to not buy a home: [By the way, I also put this in the category of Advice I want to tell my daughters, including my other article: 10 reasons not to send your kids to college.]

Financial:

A)     Cash Gone. You have to write a big fat check for a down payment. “But its an investment,” you might say to me. Historically this isn’t true. According to Robert Shiller from Yale, in Irrational Exuberance, 2nd edition, inflation-adjusted housing returned 0.4% from 1890 – 2004. And that’s just housing prices. It forgets all the other stuff I’m going to mention below. Suffice to say, when you write that check, you’re never going to see that money again. Because even when you sell the house later you’re just going to take that money and put it into another down payment. So if you buy a $400,000 home, just say goodbye to $100,000 that you worked hard for. You can put a little sign on the front lawn: “$100,000 R.I.P.”

(you might as well set this cash on fire)

Much better for an entrepreneur is to invest in yourself. Take 1/20th of the down payment amount. Start a business. Your investment might go to zero (which it might also do with a house) but it might also go up 10,000%. Eventually, as an entrepreneur, if you are persistent enough, you will get one of those 10,000% returns. And you will be able to be persistent because you didn’t waste all the money and time that a house would’ve cost you.

B)      Closing costs. I forget what they were the last two times I bought a house. But it was about another 2-3% out the window.  Lawyers, title insurance, moving costs, antidepressant medicine, therapy. It adds up. Two- to three-percent. Do you like flushing your money down the toilet? But, people say: isn’t that what you are doing with rent money? Absolutely not. See below.

C)      Maintenance. No matter what, you’re going to fix things. Lots of things. In the lifespan of your house, everything is going to break. Thrice. Get down on your hands and knees and fix it! And then open up your checkbook again. Spend some more money. I rent. My dishwasher doesn’t work. I call the landlord and he fixes it. Or I buy a new one and deduct it from my rent. And some guy from Sears comes and installs it. I do nothing. The Sears repairman and my landlord work for me.

When you are an entrepreneur, two things: A) you need every last dime for your business. Not for your dishwasher. And B) you need every last second for your business. Not for your dishwasher.

D)     Taxes. There’s this myth that you can deduct mortgage payment interest from your taxes. Whatever. That’s a microscopic dot on your tax returns. And guess what, that whole thing about how rent will go up with inflation? Well your property taxes will go up even faster than inflation. So you lose.

E)      You’re trapped. Let’s spell out very clearly why the myth of home ownership became religion in the United States. It’s because corporations didn’t want their employees to have many job choices. So they encouraged them to own homes. So they can’t move away and get new jobs. Job salaries is a function of supply and demand. If you can’t move, then your supply of jobs is low. You can’t argue the reverse, since new adults are always competing with you. That’s one reason for the myth. The other reason is that we have a 15 trillion dollar mortgage industry. That’s a lot of money vested on you believing that owning a home is “the right thing to do”.

And, the benefits of being an entrepreneur is that all choices are open to you. Mobility is not just an option, it’s often a necessity. You aren’t tied down to one factory. The world is your opportunity.

F)      Ugly. Saying “my house is an investment” forgets the fact that a house has all the qualities of the ugliest type of investment:

  1. Illiquidity. You can’t cash out whenever you want.
  2. High leverage. You have to borrow a lot of money in most cases.
  3. No diversification. For most people, a house is by far the largest part of their portfolio and greatly exceeds the 10% of net worth that any other investment should be.

Investing in yourself is also illiquid. But it involves less money, and allows you more choice. So do that instead.

Personal reasons to not own a house.

A)     Trapped, part 2. Some people like to have roots. But I like things to change every once in a while. Starting March, 2009 I was renting an apartment directly across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. It was fun. I’d look out the window and see Wall Street. How exciting! Before that I lived in The Chelsea Hotel with Chubb Rock. Last year we decided to relax and move a little north. Now I look out the window and see the Hudson River. And it’s quiet and I can walk along the river in the morning with no noise. It took us two weeks to pick a place and move. No hassles. I like to live a hassle-free life.

I’m constantly involved in other activities that I care about and love. What do I want the hassle of owning a home for? What if, god forbid, I want to focus on my next start-up?

(click image for my favorite Chubb Rock video)

B)      Walls. You can’t change the walls when you rent. A lot of people seem to want to tear down walls. Or paint them. Sometimes when you rent you can’t do these things. Well, make sure you have a landlord that lets you tear down walls. There must be some ancient evolutionary tic that makes us want to tear down walls or put nails in them or paint them. I don’t get it. I like the walls to stay right where they are.

C)      Rent. People will argue that the price of the mortgage, maintenance taxes, etc is all baked into the price of rent. Sometimes this is true. But usually not. And often maintenance and taxes will go up faster than your rent.

D)     Psychology. Look at your personal reasons for wanting to own. Do you feel like you can’t accomplish something in life until you own a house? Do you feel like its part of getting married and “Settling down”, i.e. creating a nest for your future children? For you, is it a part of becoming an adult. Is this what your parents taught you? Examine the real reasons you want to own and make sure they are coming from a good spot in your heart.

E)      Your time. Do you really want to spend all that time working on your house? Is this where your time is best spent towards creating a happy and fulfilled life for yourself?

F)      Choices. I feel when I rent I always have the choice to leave. To live wherever  in the world I want whenever I want. Adventure becomes a possibility even if I never take advantage of it.

G)     Stress. For me (not for everyone) owning a home equals stress. I saw what my parents went through at their worst moments owning a home. I saw what I and others went through in the Internet bust when I first owned a home. I saw what people went through in 2008. People were killing themselves. I don’t like that sort of stress. This is how I deal with stress.

H)     Cash is king. I like cash in the bank. I like having access to it.  I don’t like it all tied up in one illiquid investment. I want to fill a bathtub with all the dollar bills I would’ve used as a down payment on a house. I want to bathe in that bathtub. I’m going to do that later today in fact.

By the way, this is going to sound like a contradiction: but I think housing is a great investment right now. I think housing prices have gone down far enough and I can list the reasons why housing as an abstract investment concept is going to go higher from here. Suffice to say there are many stocks/REITs you can buy, with leverage if you want to take advantage of the rise in housing. But those are liquid investments. You can get your money back.

There’s also probably many companies you can build where you will get 10,000% returns where you can take advantage of the rise in housing that is about to occur.

But I’m never going to buy a home again. And sit there in the middle of the night thinking, “Why the hell did I do this to myself again?”


from TechCrunch http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/24/entrepreneurs-should-not-buy-homes/?utm_sour...

Researchers Say Memories Can Be Relived, Not Just Recalled [VIDEO]

Have you ever wanted to relive one of your most treasured memories? Not just think about the memory, but actually relive it? According to new research coming out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, you can.

Neuroscientists at MIT have discovered that memories are physical and can be reactivated. This means that instead of just recalling a memory, scientists can now help you reconstruct them artificially by activating certain parts of your brain.

This reactivation theory isn’t new — it was just never proved before now. In an early 1900s experiment on epilepsy patients, neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield found that if he stimulated certain parts of the hippocampus — the part of the brain in charge of short and long-term memories — some of his patients would vividly recall past events.

Neuroscientists at MIT were able to test Penfield’s experiment further and prove his findings in a study conducted on lab mice. For this study, scientists first found the cells that became activated while a lab mouse was learning something. Then, they determined the genes that activated those cells. Finally, they paired those genes with another gene for a light-activated protein. After setting up this technique, the scientists were able to shine tiny pulses of light onto those neurons to activate the protein.

This process allowed the scientists to actually recreate the memory — artificially, that is.

As Steve Ramirez, co-author of the study, put it, “We wanted to artificially activate a memory without the usual required sensory experience, which provides experimental evidence that. . .even ephemeral phenomena, such as personal memories, reside in the physical machinery of the brain.”

Scientific jargon aside, this basically allows scientists to use light to replay moments in your mind.

Scientists are hopeful this technique could help in studying brain disorders. “The more we know about the moving pieces that make up our brains,” Ramirez says, “the better equipped we are to figure out what happens when brain pieces break down.”

What do you think of this new research? Would you like to relive a memory? Let us know in the comments.

More About: research, Science

from Mashable! http://mashable.com/2012/03/24/researchers-memories-physical/?utm_source=feed...