10 posts tagged “news”
It's amazing what you find on DIgg! :-) Who would have known Robert Ballard was really looking for sunken US subs. I wonder what kind of questions would have been raised if he HADN'T found the Titanic...hhhmmm.
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Titanic search was cover for secret Cold War subs mission
The man who located the wreck of the Titanic has revealed that the discovery was a cover story to camouflage the real mission of inspecting the wrecks of two Cold War nuclear submarines.
When Bob Ballard led a team that pinpointed the wreckage of the liner in 1985 he had already completed his main task of finding out what happened to USS Thresher and USS Scorpion.
Both of the United States Navy vessels sank during the 1960s, killing more than 200 men and giving rise to fears that at least one of them, Scorpion, had been sunk by the USSR.
Dr Ballard, an oceanographer, has admitted that he located and inspected the wrecks for the US Navy in top secret missions before he was allowed to search for the Titanic.
Only once he had used his new underwater robot craft to map the submarine wreck sites was he able to use it to crisscross the North Atlantic seabed to pinpoint the last resting place of the luxury liner. It meant he had only 12 days to find the Titanic.
“I couldn’t tell anybody,” he said. “There was a lot of pressure on me. It was a secret mission. I felt it was a fair exchange for getting a chance to look for the Titanic.
[READ MORE]Today is the long-awaited launch of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV. It's a game that has as much controversy as it does innovation. But there will be no controversy talk here. Today's message is strait - Rockstar has some ingenious marketers working for them.
For those unfamiliar with the series, Grand Theft Auto is the original sandbox-style game. That means a player's character can move anywhere about the landscape in front of them. You aren't restricted to one specific area of the city. If you see a building, you can drive to it. You can park in any parking garage. Pedestrians walk the streets and react to your character. It's a all-encompassing world for gamers to play with.
It's here in this virtual world that new advertising opportunities emerge. For example, because this is a virtual city, there are also virtual billboards. Why not have real ads for real companies on them? Crackdown (another sandbox-style game) did this. The streets were littered with real ads displayed on in-game billboards. It's a new take on an old idea. Today, we gloss over ads on the highways but when we're gaming we don't expect to see them. This new media outlet definitely stands out and is a symbol of the kind of out-of-the-box thinking marketers need to use.
And that brings me to Grand Theft Auto IV. A staple of the series has been the in-game radio stations. They play music from real-world bands that are mostly unknown to the general population. Well it's now possible to purchase the music you hear in-game. While playing Grand Theft Auto IV, if your character hears a song you like, you character can send a text message from his phone in the game to the radio station playing the song. All information necessary to purchase a DRM-free copy of the song from Amazon.com is then sent to your Rockstar Social Club account. Neat huh?
I wonder what other interactive opportunities GTA IV will bring. And outside of the GTA universe, what kinds of new ideas will we see develop to merge the digital and the real? There's already Second Live and a host of other massively multiplayer online role playing games. Now mainstream multipayer games are following suite, finding new ways to bring people together in a digital world.
Matrix anyone? :)
Over 700 people in over 200 cars made it out to show their love for Scions at Scion Exposed 5.0 in Orlando. The event welcomed both Scion owners and enthusiasts. “Enthusiast” is a term for those who don’t own Scions but want them desperately (like me). At the event were games, live music, food, contests, prizes and special guests like Troy Sumitomo, owner of the automotive design studio, Five Axis and creator of the Scion FUSE concept vehicle.
Sumitomo also brought along his xA Speedster, a modified Scion xA that can raise its hood and allow the driver to plug in a gaming steering wheel so you can play Xbox 360 racing games from the drivers seat! You can also play on one of two rear-facing monitors that come out of what once was the trunk.
The Scion owners at the event entered various competitions with cash prizes up to $2,500. Door prizes also went out to those attending and included a set of Pirelli tires, first generation Kenstyle body kit for Scion xA or xB, a custom beach cruiser bicycle painted by DuPont Hot Hues, Guitar Hero III for PLAYSTATION®3 (PS3™), an iPod Nano, and a GPS/Navigation system.
The whole deal was hosted by Southeast Toyota Distributors.
Their Scion Exposed events in the southeastern U.S. have drawn Scion enthusiasts from as far as
Quebec, Canada! Other events present at
this year’s Scion Exposed was an
Xbox 360 and PS3 gaming competition sponsored by GameStop; paper airplane
contest for children; an artist (Preston Farabow) creating a sculpture from
Scion parts; and a vintage P-51 Mustang from World War II performing areal acrobatics.
Awesome! :-)
To all my friends:
If you're in the Orlando area the weekend of Saturday, April 19th, drop by the Avion Jet Center for Scion Exposed. Even if you don't own a Scion, come. It'll be an awesome event! There's music and food and prizes and a vintage WWII P-51 Mustang! Oh, and I will be there too. :)
July 18-20, 2008 - Atlanta, Georgia - TAIKAI USA 2008
The Atlanta Bujinkan Dojo announces TaiKai USA 2008!
The
Atlanta Dojo, America’s original school of Japan’s oldest martial art,
invites you to attend a very special training opportunity. Bujinkan Master Teachers Bud Malmstrom, Moti Nativ, Roy Wilkinson and Sheila Haddad join forces to share their 110 years of combined Bujinkan experience and perspectives on taijutsu.
Location: TAIKAI USA 2008 will be held at the Hyatt Regency Suites Atlanta NW.
The Hyatt Regency Suites is located at: 2999 Windy Hill Rd in
Marietta, Georgia. You can call them to make your reservation at:
770-956-1234 (International callers dial: +1-770-956-1234), or Click Here
to visit their website. We have negotiated a discounted rate for
TaiKai attendees of $99/night! This is an all-suite hotel, and their
regular suite price starts at $199, so this is an excellent deal.
This rate is good for up to 4 persons sharing a suite, and each living
room has a couch that folds out into a bed. Just tell them you’re
with TAIKAI USA!
Please Note: Be sure to make your hotel reservation as soon as you can to get this special rate. Their cutoff date is June 26th. After June 26, or once the hotel fills up, they will no longer offer the $99 rate.
Kunoichi Kai! Saturday, July 19th, will also be the debut of Kunoichi Kai! Kunoichi Kai is a special training opportunity for women only, and will be led by Sheila Haddad. This will be a one of a kind ’seminar-within-a seminar’, and will focus specifically on training for women in the Bujinkan, giving us the name ’Kunoichi Kai’. (What is a kunoichi? Click Here for more info)
The men will be training on their own on Saturday, instructed by Bud, Moti and Roy, and both groups will rejoin each other to train together on Sunday. This is the first ever Kunoichi Kai seminar, and it will be a unique training opportunity for the Bujinkan women to receive specialized training of this kind. Ladies, this seminar will undoubtedly make a difference in your training - Don’t miss it!
Or at least that's what it seems like. I don't remember the tracks being stained like that. For those of you who don't know what happened, someone apparently walked on to the train tracks at the Deerfield Beach station and let the train run them over. That's the account I overheard from one man waiting for the train with me just now.
"He just walked up and laid down on the track." One man said.
I talked to a security guard who told me this is the third walk on death this year. He wasn't able to corroborate the other guys story though.
When the southbound train finally arrived, it was packed! Everyone had a story of places they needed to be. The lady next to me missed her happy hour. The guy in front of me is going to be late to a hockey game. I can only imagine how many people missed their flights because of the delay. Madame missed happy hour told me she'd been on the train for about two hours waiting at one station. To put things into perspective, it takes around two hours to run the whole line from north to south (I think). From the point we're at now there is still an hour trip to the line's end.
In this tragic moment, I can't help but think the impact one man had on so many lives. Because one man walked onto the tracks on Deerfield Beach today, countless lives were changed. Maybe a little, maybe a lot. Sad.
I vehemently despise Castro and what he's done to Cuba. Sure, I'm Cuban, but you don't have to be guajiro to understand the horrible things he's done to Cuba and its people. But I'm not going to get into that bigger discussion because 1) I'm not up to date on Cuba/USA policies and 2) I don't have that much time at work. What I will share is this blog post I found.
Smuggling isn't a new thing. It's been part of Cubans escaping Cuba for years (maybe decades). But now the Coast Guard is asking Cubans in the United States to stop. Why? Because the ones doing the smuggling are criminals. What might have started as a just cause for freedom has turned into a black market flesh trade. Fork over $10,000 and you can have freedom. Sometimes it's freedom via the United States and sometimes it's freedom from life at the bottom of the ocean. (A recent failed smuggling attempt cost an estimated 40 people their lives after setting sail from Perico, Cuba.)
I agree with the Coast Guard, smuggling's got to stop. But something has to be done with Cuba too. I'm not saying attack them. I'm not saying give Castro complete relief from economic sanctions.What I think is that it's time to move on. The Cold War is over, but 90 miles from Key West it's like the battle rages on. If we're trading with China, isn't it time we start to apply something more than disparaging sanctions to our international relations with Cuba? Come on.
My grandfather would kill me for saying that.
I may not be up-to-date on Cuba/USA relations but logic dictates that if a market for smuggling exists, then stuff still needs a lot of fixing. Both in Cuba and in the relationship between our two countries.
Yes, believe it or not, Chinese people are protesting. The issue: China seeks to put a Maglev train near a city close to Shanghai and citizens think it's too close. Since the train uses high-powered magnets, they fear harmful effects from exposure to energy radiating from the system. Also, the train is being built less than 25 meters from some homes. If it derails, guess where it'd crash? Yup, in somebody's front porch.
Protests are slowly gaining steam with protester counts rising from 250 to 2,000. Take note - these are peaceful, silent protests. And when police arrive, protesters leave without incident. Still, I think this shows people's will can't be ignored, even in a communist country like China.
The news was first reported on the 3D CAD News Blog (photos of the protests included). You can check it out here. What's more amazing is citizens from China are actually commenting on another blog, AEC News dot com. It's great to see the internet being used like this. Giving people, who otherwise would not have a voice, a chance to speak out in a situation where they feel wronged.
One last comment. The end-goal of protesters isn't to get China to reverse their decision. It's to embarrass the German company producing the train into withdrawing their bid. Good luck citizens of Xujiahui (the town in question near Shanghai)! You have my support!
Most of us take for granted the news we receive daily. Information is so easy to access that no one thinks about how difficult it can be to obtain. Reporters embedded with units in Iraq during the recent war, news anchors following the campaign trail, the reports we read and dismiss so casually take are compiled on sweat, sleepless nights and stress.
I'll be the first to accuse the media of bias. After all, who watches the watchers? News organizations are our fourth check to the government. They police the police. They keep American's on their toes. But who keeps them honest? Us, Americans, the people who watch television and read newspapers. (And this goes for every other nation in the free world too.) It's up to us to keep the media honest. Vote with your time and attention. Newspapers, networks and stations exist primarily off advertising. Stick with the broadcasts you believe are fair and don't watch what you believe is trash. Why? Because some shows can garner more revenue from people who oppose the show's content (think Howard Stern).
All of this comes to mind as I watch NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams. That one broadcast is slowly rebuilding my faith in news and media organizations as a whole. In my opinion NBC is the network all standards should be based upon. The quality of their reporting and programming is a model of the pursuit for journalistic excellence. NBC even admits when its wrong, as was evident regarding journalistic coverage in the tight race between Obama and Clinton this week:
There will be numerous deconstructions over the days to come. Theories about how African-American candidates for office have confounded pollsters (see: Bradley, Wilder, Gant, Jackson) will receive a thorough airing, and deservedly so. We in the media will beat ourselves (and deservedly so) for reaching conclusions before the voters have spoken. A further prediction? Give us a few weeks — we will promptly forget the lessons of this debacle in polling, predictions and primary politics. We will all live to screw up another day, though our performance in New Hampshire will be hard to beat. - Brian Willams (Full Essay)
William's is even real enough to acknowledge it will all happen again. But the fact he took a moment to say what's up adds a lot to his (and NBC's) credibility. Andy Franklin, NBC News senior producer, had a similar post here.
Today, I work on the other side. I do marketing. Advertising, public
relations and any other type of communication is my specialty. But the
more I work with reporters the more I want to be one. They are
overworked and underpaid and it's a thankless job, but I feel the need
to fight for the truth. And it's not easy. I'm sure the battle to
report unbiased news is tough. However, I want to be the gatekeeper. I
want to make sure what people are reading is real. And I think this might be the defining moment of a person's life when they decide, "this is what I want to do."
While old news to some, it's new to me. Eve online's got a version for Mac. For those unfamiliar, Eve Online is an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Game) that puts you in command of your own spaceship. It's business as much as combat and you meet real players, go on missions, make money, and participate in the in-game economy. Everything in the game, like most MMOs, is player-created. A really amazing feat when you look at it. Here's the link the the full article.
