Bill de Blasio Tries His Best to Court Business Allies Ahead of Mayoral Run

Bill de Blasio has a reputation in the city’s business community as being somewhat to the left of Noam Chomsky. It’s based on everything from his time as an aide to Mayor David Dinkins to his deep ties with labor unions to, most recently, his support for legislation that would mandate a “living wage” and paid sick leave. That image is unfair — de Blasio is as much a political pragmatist as another one of his mentors, Hillary Clinton — but it’s nevertheless a real political problem as de Blasio, currently the city’s public advocate, prepares to run for mayor in 2013.

So this morning, de Blasio gave a very interesting speech.

There were some useful policy proposals — increase the amount of money the city spends on loans to small businesses; decrease the number of petty fines imposed on small businesses; give priority in city contracting to companies that employ New Yorkers. But the significance was in the tone and the context.

De Blasio delivered his nearly hour-long address at an NYU event sponsored by the Rudin family, one of the city’s best-connected real-estate dynasties, with patriarch Bill Rudin in the front row. He ripped “heavy-handed, rapacious bureaucrats” getting in the way of development, and beat up on the city’s land use approval process and its buildings department, two eternal villains in the business community. And as a badge of business-friendly courage, de Blasio cited his support of Atlantic Yards despite the fierce opposition the project provoked in Park Slope, the neighborhood he represented in the City Council.

“When it came to the criteria that mattered above all others — good jobs and affordable housing,” de Blasio said, “it was clear that Atlantic Yards would help stanch the bleeding in an area facing huge problems of affordability.”

If only that were how things have turned out. The Barclays Center arena will open this fall, but its construction has generated far fewer jobs than promised; the housing at the site — affordable and not — hasn’t materialized at all. De Blasio blamed the economic downturn, Governor George Pataki, and even — to his credit — “my friends at Forest City Ratner,” an allusion to the thousands of dollars that the Atlantic Yards developer has contributed to his campaign.

Today’s speech probably gained de Blasio a few more business friends, and it was an earnest attempt to sketch out how, as mayor, he’d forge a partnership between private industry and government. It was an also an illustration of how he still has plenty of tricky straddling ahead of him.

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NYPD's Occupy Pepper Spraying Sparks More Lawsuits, Calls For Police Oversight

Police resist the urge to spray down the crowd at another Occupy protest in September 2011.

Last week a report from civil liberties experts at NYU, Fordham, Harvard, and Stanford confirmed what anyone who followed Occupy Wall Street had already concluded:  Police were far too rough with protesters. Two protesters already filed a lawsuit in February against the city and NYPD Deputy Inspector Anthony Bologna, whose liberal use of pepper spray was caught on film and widely circulated on YouTube. Today three more protesters filed lawsuits, but in addition to monetary damages they're hoping to force the NYPD to change its policies on the use of force during demonstrations.

According to the New York Times, the suit alleges that Damien Crisp and Julie Lawler were also pepper sprayed by Officer Bologna during a march from Zuccotti Park to Union Square on September 24, even though police had already corralled them within a length of orange netting. The suit states that Crisp was hit directly in his right eye. Aside from the initial burning in his eyes, lungs, and on his skin, he suffered from an inflamed sty for about two weeks and missed three days of work while receiving medical treatment. Lawler says she was temporarily blinded, and the effects of the spray were exacerbated because she was wearing contact lenses.

Following the initial complaints about Bologna, he offered a questionable excuse, lost some vacation time, and was reassigned to Staten Island. Plus, in what may be the most serious punishment, the city is also letting him pay his own legal fees related to the lawsuits filed in February. (There's no word yet on whether the same goes for the new complaints.)

A third plaintiff, Kelly Hanlin, managed to stay out of Bologna's path, but was pepper sprayed in the face during the same protest by an unknown officer. He wasn't restrained by netting, but was nearby attempting to film what he thought was an unnecessarily rough arrest.

None of the three plaintiffs were arrested, one of their attorneys tells Gothamist that isn't surprising. "We are seeing a lot of instances of NYPD officers using force on people, but not arresting them," says Mark Taylor. "A lot of these incidents are the police department attempting to intimidate people, trying to scare them away from demonstrating."

Taylor says that his clients are seeking monetary damages "as anyone would seek if they were wrongfully pepper-sprayed," but their primary goal is changing the way the NYPD operates. "Ray Kelly isn't going to do it, the mayor isn't going to do it, so we're asking the courts to step in," says Taylor. They want to see more judicial supervision of the department's response to protests, and held off on filing the suits partially so they'd have the experts' report to bolster their claim. The city has already ignored numerous calls to create an inspector general's office to review its policies, but with new suits filed and the report's authors threatening to ask the Department of Justice to investigate their findings, it seems that the era of asking the NYPD to do a better job of policing itself may be over.

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Scenes From Mitt Romney’s World Insult Tour

Start Slideshow US Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney places a hand-written prayer on the Western Wall on July 29, 2012 in Jerusalem's old city, Israel. Mitt Romney visits Israel as part of a three-nation foreign tour which also includes visits to Poland and Great Britain.

Over the past week, Mitt Romney journeyed to Great Britain, Israel, and Poland, courting controversy basically everywhere along the way. But what was he doing when not picking fights with the British or the Palestinians or the traveling press pool? A bunch of other things! Here are some of those things.

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Three High School Girls Amass Nearly 175,000 Signatures in Push for Female Presidential Debate Moderator

First and only woman to moderate a presidential debate.

It's now been 20 years since a woman, in this case ABC News' Carole Simpson, moderated a presidential debate — the 1992 three-way event pitting the incumbent, Bush Senior, against Bill "The Comeback Kid" Clinton and independent (chart-loving) candidate Ross Perot. For Montclair, New Jersey rising juniors Emma Axelrod, Sammi Siegel and Elena Tsemberis, 20 years is long enough. On Monday, the three students showed up in Washington D.C. intent on presenting the Commission on Presidential Debates with two Change.org petitions calling for a female moderator, and totaling nearly 175,000 signatures. But the commission's executive director, Janet Brown, refused to meet with the trio, Axelrod told NPR this afternoon. In fact, Axelrod said that, "we were turned away and we were not allowed to leave our packages there either, in case they contained dangerous material."

This setback came as a big disappointment to the girls, especially after they'd alerted the commission to their visit last Friday and after Brown told CBS News they were guaranteed a meeting with a staff member, at the very least. Also boding poorly for the girls' campaign are Brown's defensive comments that nine of the general election moderators-slash-panel members since 1988 have been women, to 12 men. But presidential debates expert and Northwestern professor Alan Schroeder tells McClatchy Newspapers he thinks the commission will ultimately choose a female moderator when it makes its announcement sometime in August, and in no small part thanks to Axelrod, Siegel, and Tsemberis' petitions.

So don't despair quite yet. We may still see a Rachel Maddow or Greta Van Susteren (or, more likely, PBS's Gwen Ifill) moderating the fall's Obama-versus-Romney showdown.

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‘Mr. Turpin Saw a Picture of an Unknown (to Him) Male on Ms. Gray’s Facebook Page’

A 40-year-old Tennessee man who looks like the offspring of Don Corleone and Jabba the Hut became irate last Sunday, smashing his girlfriend's laptop and hitting her once in the face, after he spotted a photo of a handsome man on her Facebook page. The man in the photo was Mitt Romney.

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The Daily Caller Has a Free Gun for the Person Who Catches Their Hacker

Tucker Carlson's bastion of patriotic respectability, the Daily Caller, has hit upon a flawless trifecta of birds to kill with one 9mm, via the eleventh edition of its weekly gun giveaway. (Yes, weekly.) See, yesterday, the website was hacked with hardcore porn ads that undermined the whole family-friendly vibe of the enterprise, so the new contest first serves to get to the bottom of that crime: " ... if you're the first person to find our hacker and turn his name over to us, we'll give you a gun." Additionally, "We'll give a prize" — a gun engraved with the Bill of Rights — "to the person with the funniest and most inventive ideas for how TheDC should repay this jerk."

Along with facilitating justice, the giveaway serves to assert the site's support for the Second Amendment, even in the face of national tragedy. Instead of the typical one firearm prize, they're handing out two!

Most important of all, the out-of-touch macho posturing wins Carlson & Co. attention from the scandalized, stupefied, and sympathetic alike. Welcome to the Internet.

That said, an unintended consequence could very well be riling up more hackers. Bombs away.

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Items Inadvertently Left Off Apple’s Shopping List

Make it rain, Mr. Cook.

Andrew Ross Sorkin is calling for Apple to spend some of its massive $117 billion cash pile on, among other things, Sprint, RIM, Twitter, and mobile-payment doohickey Square.

That's all fine and good, but as Sorkin notes, even a spending binge like that would leave Apple CEO Tim Cook about $20 billion to play around with.

Here's how the tech giant should spend the rest of that money:

$2 million: Create two dozen fake iPhone 5 prototypes, place strategically in bars around Gizmodo's headquarters just to mess with them

$1 million: Send lifetime supply of gift baskets to Mike Daisey, with notes that say, "Thanks for diverting attention from our supply chain to your habit of making shit up."

$7 million: Erect digital billboard outside Steve Ballmer's house showing the market cap differential between Apple and Microsoft

$3 billion: R&D for army of robot lawyers who can work 24-hour days devising new tax-avoidance schemes

$500 million: Global PR campaign to alert world to wage hikes at Foxconn factory

$990 million: Global PR counter-campaign to cover up fact that Foxconn wage hikes will be paid in RIM shares

$1.5 billion: Scrooge McDuck–style employee swimming pool filled with gold doubloons

$1 billion: New iPhone 5 feature that releases 200-volt shock every time owner says "YOLO"

$10 billion: Buy Greece, turn into austerity-themed amusement park

$1 billion: Build actual thermonuclear device to destroy Android

$2 billion: Find amber-trapped mosquito that bit Steve Jobs in 1998, use DNA remnants to clone him

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Harry Reid Heard From Some Guy That Mitt Romney Didn’t Pay Taxes for Ten Years

Did Harry Reid steal the Lindbergh baby? We are not certain.

What's Mitt Romney hiding in his tax returns? Harry Reid finally figured it out:

Saying he had "no problem with somebody being really, really wealthy," Reid sat up in his chair a bit before stirring the pot further. A month or so ago, he said, a person who had invested with Bain Capital called his office.

"Harry, he didn't pay any taxes for 10 years," Reid recounted the person as saying.

"He didn't pay taxes for 10 years! Now, do I know that that's true? Well, I'm not certain," said Reid.

Oh, wait, did we say "figured it out"? We meant "heard an insane rumor from a guy who has seemingly no way of knowing anything about Mitt Romney's taxes." Awesome scoop, Harry Reid.

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Someone Forgot Their Camera on a Plane and Caused a Bomb Scare

A United Airlines flight headed from Newark to Geneva was diverted to Boston's Logan Airport, with a twin fighter jet escort, after an item was found in an unoccupied seat's air sickness bag. Turns out it was just a camera, which is not at all scary, until you read this ABC News report that cites at least two post-9/11 terrorist plots known to include a camera somehow.

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India’s Blackout Makes Every Other Blackout Ever Look Pathetic

Passengers on 500 trains found themselves stranded.

Power outages spread throughout northern and eastern India for the second day in a row on Tuesday and now encompass a population of 600 million people. To put that in perspective, if a blackout hit all of the United States, Mexico, and Canada at the same time, it would still fall about 100 million people short of the people affected by India's electriciy failure. Then again, 300 million Indians don't have access to electricity ever, so for them, today is just another day in the life. Go home and hug your air conditioner.

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Congress Actually Had a Productive Day Today

It's not often that Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid uses the c-word in public, but today he did—twice—in reference to House Majority Leader John Boehner, who helped him stave off yet another government shutdown.

I appreciate [Boehner’s] cooperation in this matter, and I hope that we can face these challenges ahead with the same cooperation that we’ve had in the spirit of compromise the last few days on this issue.

The two men have agreed on a deal to keep the government funded for six months past September 30. Although actual draft legislation won't be voted on until Congress returns from its five week recess in early September, Politico reports that it'll be free of any "controversial riders," making its passage likely — but not assured.

While Republicans hope this will revert attention back to the stagnant economy and neither party wants to see an ugly budget dispute during election season, Congress' Tea Party conservatives are likely to balk at the deal's $1.047 trillion annual price tag. (That's nearly $200 million more than what Rep. Paul Ryan's controversial budget called for.) Already, the Tea Party Patriots have tarred Boehner for his "lack of guts." But considering that the last few government spending bills were only agreed upon at the eleventh hour, today's news is a sure sign of progress.

Also today, the House passed a law by a 261-116 margin exempting nearly 170 presidential appointments from lengthy and too-often politicized Senate confirmations. Since the bill was already approved by the Senate last summer, it will now head to President Obama's desk, one of very few bills sent to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue that did not expressly deal with renaming post offices. "It isn't often that Congress voluntarily takes steps to curb its own power," New York Senator Chuck Schumer told Politico, "but for the good of our democracy, the Senate must become more efficient."

Also, the House failed to pass an anti-abortion bill for the District of Columbia.

So score one point for bipartisan cooperation, another point for self-streamlining, and yet another for briefly ignoring the culture war. That's more points than Congress has racked up since, well, it tried to correct a legislative typo with another typo.

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News Corp. Would Prefer Its Directors Not Face Charges for Neglect

Britain's Crown Prosecution Service is still looking into charging News Corp. board members with neglect of their duties in the never-ending phone-hacking scandal, the Guardian reports. However: "Company lawyers, fearing a dramatic escalation of the hacking scandal by criminalizing the boards on which Murdoch family members sit, are understood to have protested to the authorities." Pretty please! But even the possibility is enough to officially declare that today is not a good day for the publishing side of things.

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Delayed Bike-Share Program Needs Money, Might Not Launch Until Spring

The local Citi Bike program once planned to launch 1,000 of its 10,000 rentals today, but a software problem has kept them off the street entirely. Instead, the company behind the program, Alta, has asked initial sponsor Citibank for $3.5 million of the $41 million promised on an accelerated timetable, even if their goals aren't met, the New York Post reports. And if the hold-up lasts longer, the whole thing may have to wait until next year: "No one wants to do this in November," said an anonymous insider. "You'd be looking at spring [2013]."

"That is inaccurate," said a Department of Transportation spokesperson, failing to offer much reassurance for eager renters. "While we can’t get into details, we are working on a plan to launch the system."

The organization Transportation Alternatives is hosting a party "celebrating the launch of Citi Bike" on August 23, leading some to get excited about a late-summer takeoff, but the group confirmed to Daily Intel that the party was planned before the delay: "We don't know when the bike share program will launch." So everyone is the dark, but only Citibank is paying.

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Romney’s Historical Misunderstanding, Continued

David Frum has reviewed three — count ‘em, three — books about the economic development of Italy. Frum oddly does not connect the analysis in the reviews with Mitt Romney’s Guns, Jews, and Steel argument about why rich countries are rich and poor countries are poor. (Perhaps it’s a precaution to avoid being seen as a link whore, always a danger when you’re chasing after the cheap clicks that invariably follow discussions of early-twentieth-century Italian economics.) Having no such compunction myself, I will steal his hard work to point out that the books — at least according to Frum’s review; I’m not going to read three histories of Italy just for a couple lousy blog posts — shed a lot of light on the questions that Romney stumbled into in Jerusalem.

Romney argued that culture explains why countries grow prosperous, or don’t, an explanation he not only stretches beyond all plausibility but also ignores the deeper question of what creates that culture in the first place. (Romney cited “the hand of providence.” Hmm.) Italy offers a more interesting case study. Within Italy, there is an enormous economic and cultural divide between the relatively prosperous north and the more impoverished south, the latter of whom are known as “terroni,” a kind of slang signifying lazy, poor and dirty.

But why? Southern Italy has two of the linked traits that tend to be founded in poorer countries. It’s hot and vulnerable to diseases like malaria, which exerted a massive toll not only on quality of life but on work patterns, settlement patterns, and the relationship between labor and reward. Also, and relatedly, hotter climates tend to encourage the growth of slave labor, and indeed, summarizes Frum, “The South was poor because it had always been poor, dating back probably to when the Romans imposed their system of huge grain estates worked by slave labor.”

As it happens, David Landes — the historian Romney cites as his intellectual inspiration — cites both the disease-circulating effects of heat and its tendency to spawn exploitative labor patterns as causes of Third World poverty. In his Jerusalem remarks, Romney dismissed the notion that “the physical characteristics of the land account for the differences in the success of the people that live there.” But even according to the author Romney cites, the cultural characteristics he sees as totally determinative are themselves the historical residue of the physical characteristics of the land.

Romney is obsessed with a theory of world history he does not appear to grasp. And this seems to confirm a general pattern of Romney picking out very good books and completely misunderstanding them.

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Layoffs Hit Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily Despite Reassurance Against ‘Haters’

Earlier this month, News Corp.'s expensive iPad newspaper experiment The Daily was reported to be "on watch" and "at a crossroads" as the company spun off its less successful publishing business. To that, editor-in-chief Jesse Angelo insisted that his staff ignore "the latest misinformed, untrue rumors of our imminent demise." In a public memo, he urged employees to pay attention to the publication's 100,000-plus subscribers, "not the haters," and added, "As something new and different, we are an easy target for erroneous wishful thinking. But make no mistake, we will be nimble and we will compete." Being nimble, it turns out, includes laying off 50 of its 170 employees.

All Things D reports, "Employees who produce the paper’s editorial page and sports coverage will be heavily hit by the layoffs, and the Daily will run skeletal versions of those sections from now on. But the cuts will affect other parts of the Daily, including its design and production staff."

Soon after the news broke, The Daily published another memo from Angelo that alludes to staff cuts, but not before noting changes to the product:

He then adds that the sports section will rely mostly on photo galleries and content from Fox Sports, not original reporting, while the editorial section will be absorbed by news.

In a longer note, News Corp. confirms "50 full-time employees, 29 percent of the full-time staff, will be released." Angelo adds, "Unfortunately, these changes have forced us to make difficult decisions and to say goodbye to some colleagues who have worked hard to make The Daily successful. These moves were driven by the needs of the business."

"We have consistently remained one of the top-ranked paid news apps since our launch, we have steadily grown our subscriber base, and we have the world's largest media and publishing company behind us," said published Greg Clayman. "Like all good digital products, however, we must change and evolve to remain fresh, competitive and sustainable." But in a horrible instance of bad timing, Clayman was reported this morning to have recently closed a deal on a $1.16 million townhouse.

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Former Vogue Writer Joan Juliet Buck Claims Asma al-Assad ‘Duped’ Her

Writer Joan Juliet Buck.

You may recall that, earlier this year, writer Joan Juliet Buck broke her silence about profiling Syria's "first lady," Asma al-Assad, for Vogue magazine's March 2011 "Power Issue." When the Arab Spring progressed and the realities of Bashar al-Assad's dictatorship became obvious, Vogue removed the piece from their website in May 2011 and eventually issued a statement about it. Meanwhile, Buck says she was instructed to not discuss the matter with the press. Later, Vogue neglected to renew her contract for 2012, even though she'd written four cover stories the year before and worked as a contributor for dozens of years. Freed from any obligation to keep quiet, Buck has since denounced Vogue's decision to run the piece, explaining that she felt uncomfortable with the assignment to begin with and then begged her editors to hold the story once the Arab Spring began (shortly before it was published). In the latest issue of Newsweek, Buck writes a lengthy piece that gives a blow-by-blow account of the debacle.

Titled "Mrs. Assad Duped Me," Buck explains that she was assigned to write a profile of Asma in late 2010. Her Vogue editor — who remains unnamed — told her, "We don’t want any politics, none at all," and instructed her to stick to cultural topics like museums and art. Buck finally agreed, because, as she put it, "when else would I get to see the ruins of Palmyra?" 

Her Newsweek article includes all of the ominous details that her Vogue piece didn't: anonymous casket sightings, a bugged cell phone, a mysterious program that someone named "Ali" installed on her laptop when she was out of her hotel room. She explains just how weird it was to go to the al-Assad's glass-walled house for a lunch of fondue. But she still holds fast to the fact that she truly had no idea of the horrors that Bashar al-Assad was capable of committing as a dictator:

Buck is the first to assert that she is not a political journalist, and her critics are all too happy to agree (her awkward description of Syria as "sound[ing] sinister, like syringe, or hiss" has already spawned a mocking Twitter hashtag, #countriesbyvoguewriters). It's clear that she deeply regrets glamorizing the al-Assads and wishes she'd known better. And although she doesn't spend too much time pointing fingers, it would seem that her Vogue editors were more than happy to let her take the fall for decisions they made. Perhaps she's better off without her job there, after all.

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Aurora Had Zero Effect on Opinions About Gun Control

On the question of whether controlling gun ownership is more important than protecting the rights of gun owners, Americans feel almost exactly the same as they did before James Holmes shot 70 people in a movie theater, according to Pew. That's a broad, almost philosophical question though. Get into the specific proposals being made — should assault rifles and 100-bullet magazines like the ones Holmes used be legal? — and we bet you'll see some movement.

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The Married, Pregnant Couple Not Having As Much Sex As They’d Like

Today, we have an extra-special Sex Diary for you: A husband and pregnant wife, each tracking a week of their sex lives — or, more often than they'd prefer, no-sex lives — from their own perspectives. It ran in New York's Sex Issue this week along with a lot of other great sex-related stuff: Dan P. Lee peeks in on the various sexual adventures that take place throughout the city each Saturday night. Molly Young introduces us to a "throuple" — three gay men in a relationship with each other. Alex Morris examines a retirement home's hook-up culture. Molly Langmuir collects testimonials from four bisexuals. Richard Kern photographs six couples in the throes of a passionate kiss. And Matthew Wolfe attends a mixer where johns network with prostitutes. It's a fascinating smorgasbord of sex! Read it all!

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Journalist Has Twitter Suspended After Complaining About NBC’s Olympics Coverage

Attempting to silence one's critics online almost always results in a massive magnification of their complaints. Today's example comes via the British journalist Guy Adams, who spent hours on Friday bashing NBC's delayed stateside coverage of the Olympics as "disgusting money-grabbing" by "total buffoons." In one tweet from his rant, Adams wrote, "The man responsible for NBC pretending the Olympics haven't started yet is Gary Zenkel. Tell him what u think! Email: Gary.zenkel@nbcuni.com." Soon after, Adams found his account had been suspended — "for posting an individual's private information such as private email address," as Twitter later informed him. Whether the address in question was actually private is arguable, but the shaky application of the rule is only undermined by the fact that Twitter and NBC have a strategic partnership for the Games.

While Adams's account remains down, his cause has blown up.

In an e-mail to Twitter, obtained by Deadspin, Adams writes:

I'm of course happy to abide by Twitter's rules, now and forever. But I don't see how I broke them in this case: I didn't publish a private email address. Just a corporate one, which is widely available to anyone with access to Google, and is identical to one that all of the tens of thousands of NBC Universal employees share.

It's no more "private" than the address I'm emailing you from right now.

Either way, quite worrying that NBC, whose parent company are an Olympic sponsor, are apparently trying (and, in this case, succeeding) in shutting down the Twitter accounts of journliasts who are critical of their Olympic coverage.

Am I to presume, for example, that they decided to complain about me because of my recent article in the Indy's news page about their various failures?

His account of the saga can be seen here, and includes confirmation that NBC Sports filed a complaint to have his account removed for posting the "personal information of one of our executives." (Adams also appears to have retweeted a link to an illegal stream of the Opening Ceremony, but that message was not cited as a suspend-able offense by NBC or Twitter.)

According to Twitter's rules, private and confidential information includes "non-public, personal email addresses," while Zenkel's is clearly corporate, not personal. If it was ever private, it's not now. 

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New York Passes Law Requiring Minors to Obtain Parental Consent for Body Piercing

"Of course I'll sign this Susie, I know how much you want to look like Lisbeth from The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo." Governor Cuomo signed the bill on Monday that his office says will better protect teens from infections and blood-borne disease. It's already illegal to tattoo a person under 18. This new law requires body piercing studios to check teenagers' identification, and prohibits a shop from piercing a minor (other than on the ear) without a parental consent form signed in the presence of the shop owner or piercer. It's getting so much harder to rebel these days.

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Ann Pettway Gets Twelve Years for Baby-Stealing

A child named Carlina White was taken from a Harlem hospital when she was just 19 days old and raised for more than two decades by her kidnapper as Nejdra "Netty" Nance (left). Today, Nance's not-mom Ann Pettway was sentenced to twelve years in prison for the bizarre crime despite prosecutors request for a twenty-year sentence. "It should have been longer," said Nance's biological father, while her birth mother was more resigned. "It's not going to make up for the time she was gone," said Joy White, "so it doesn't matter how much they give her."

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Clinton Defends Aide, Says Bachmann's Attacks 'Have No Place in Our Politics'

As the controversy over Michele Bachmann's call for an investigation into whether the Muslim Brotherhood has infiltrated our government unfolded, Hillary Clinton remained noticeably silent on the issue, probably to send the message that the secretary of state is too busy to address such nonsense. However, when asked to comment today while speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, she lept to Huma Abedin's defense, confirming that she has no reason to suspect her longtime aide is a spy for the Islamic organization.

Clinton referenced John McCain's speech on the Senate floor denouncing Bachmann, though she didn't mention any politicians by name. Politico reports that instead she linked the controversy to efforts in developing nations to respect minority religions:

Who could have guessed that Clinton would have so little tolerance for a vast right-wing conspiracy theory?

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Maybe This Is Why Mitt Romney Hates Rafalca

According to ABC News, Rafalca and his dumb horse ballet could potentially delay Mitt Romney's running-mate announcement. Rafalca is competing on August 2 and 3 and, if he does well, could compete again on August 8 and 9, thus potentially keeping Ann Romney overseas until then.

The candidate is unlikely to announce his running mate — unarguably one of the most important moments of his campaign — without his wife, whom he often refers to as his “sweetheart,” by his side.

Sure, that's probably true. Candidates do typically have their their wives with them when they introduce their running mates. Both couples hug each other and pose for photos so America can see how much they all like one another, and it's a nice, happy scene. Nevertheless, we highly doubt that anyone would care if Ann Romney isn't standing there the moment Mitt Romney announced his pick, unless he's picking Ann Romney.

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Life in Ohio, a Continuing Series

Ohio's so grim that a resident attempts to break into prison:

Hamilton, Ohio— A woman in southwest Ohio has been arrested for trying to sneak into a county jail and telling authorities to arrest her.

Deputies with the Butler County Sheriff's Office arrested 36-year-old Tiffany R. Hurd when she was caught trying to climb over a barbed-wire fence at the rear of the Butler County Jail in Hamilton, near Cincinnati.

Actually, this incident sounds more like a Yakov Smirnoff joke.

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Queens Man Allegedly Orders Another Man's Package on JetBlue Flight

It was off the menu. The incident happened on a mid-July flight from the Dominican Republic to JFK when 29-year-old Othniel Polanco allegedly reached over to the 18-year-old sleeping passenger sitting next to him, put his hand inside the guy's shorts around the knee and groped the man's genitals. The victim punched Polanco in the face when he woke up. According to the Daily News, Polanco initially denied the act but admitted in a complaint that he had "crossed a boundary." He now faces charges for sexual assault.

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Lawsuit: 9/11 Charity Pair Riding Around In 'N-SEAL' Truck Are Actually Crooks, Not Former SEALs

Niemczyk.

The vanity plate was a hint. 

New Jersey's Attorney General's office sued two men on Monday for defrauding the public by raising tens of thousands of dollars for an unregistered 9/11 charity, donations that they allegedly used as a personal slush fund. The pair — 66-year-old Mark Niemczyk and 40-year-old Thomas Scalgione — drove around the state in a truck emblazoned with the names of 9/11 first responders who died in the World Trade Center attacks, reports NBC New York. According to New Jersey 101.5, Niemczyk allegedly presented himself as a former Navy SEAL when he solicited donations in the truck that at one time bore the plate "N-SEAL."

Both of the accused previously dabbled in crimes of dishonesty: Niemczyk pleaded guilty to welfare fraud in 1989, while Scalgione has been convicted of theft, forgery, and fraudulent use of credit cards, according to the Attorney General's office.

Scaglione has denied the allegations, saying that he and Niemczyk operate "a legitimate group" and will fight to clear their names. When NBC New York confronted Niemczyk about the charges (unaware that they were speaking with him at the time), Niemczyk spoke of himself in the third person, saying  "Whatever money I know he collects goes out."

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The Long and Winding Road: Careerist Confusion on Wall Street

The kind folks from Wall Street Oasis, a website and forum for aspiring and current financiers of all stripes, invited me to moderate a panel at their inaugural conference over the weekend. The panel, titled "Exit Opps," consisted of four financiers — two from hedge funds, one from private equity, and one from a big bank — who spoke about the various paths entry-level financiers can take after their first jobs.

What struck me most about the conference was the undercurrent of confusion. Despite hearing a surfeit of wisdom from a roster of successful panelists, none of the audience members I spoke to afterwards seemed certain of the steps that would help them become Masters of the Universe. In fact, judging from my (admittedly brief) interactions with conferencegoers, it seems that the financial industry's basic career ladder has been replaced with something much less stable and much harder to navigate.

Climbing the ladder on Wall Street used to be a relatively straightforward process, at least for entry-level financiers with good pedigrees. A young Ivy League graduate would do a two-year stint as an investment banking analyst before either (a) heading to business school, after which he'd return to the bank as an associate and continue the upward march to VP, MD, and partner, or (b) decamping to the "buy side," the prestigious world of private equity firms and hedge funds, where the pay was more lucrative and the hours more relaxed.

There were other ways to make it — Lloyd Blankfein, for example, practiced tax law until he came into Goldman through the J. Aron side door — but the traditional path to the brass ring was well-worn and venerated.

These days, though, as Gabriel Sherman reported earlier this year, the brass ring appears to be smaller and tarnished, and the path to it seems more labyrinthine than ever. In the course of an afternoon at the WSO conference, I heard people asking questions about making lateral moves between analyst programs, the possibility of returning to the sell-side from the buy-side, the advantages of equity research over investment banking, and the wisdom of quitting banking after two years to do something else entirely.

In her book Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street, Karen Ho writes at length about the liquidity of the Wall Street job market. Among her points is that the financial industry is quicker than most sectors to hire and fire its employees when prevailing winds change:

That kind of instability — the worry that I might be laid off if my specific corner of the market becomes less profitable — has always existed on Wall Street. (Bond traders, for example, had a field day in the eighties, but saw their skill sets go out of vogue in the nineties.)

What seems different today is that even the most basic assumptions of Wall Street careerism — that buy-side is better than sell-side, that front-office is better than middle-office, that bulge-bracket banks are better than boutiques — have come into question.

Take, for example, the news last week that Jefferies — a small bank that few outside the finance world have likely heard of — set aside more money in per-employee compensation during the first six months of this year than Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, or Morgan Stanley.

Imagine that you're a Harvard senior who has investment banking offers from both Jefferies and Morgan Stanley. If your goal is to maximize your earning potential, you might still go to Morgan Stanley even if it pays slightly less, under the assumption that working at a more prestigious firm will give you more lucrative buy-side offers in the future.

But if you're a Harvard senior who takes the long view, you might instead think: If I take a job at Morgan Stanley and end up in a unit that shrinks or is targeted by a regulatory shift (or if the bank, god forbid, decides to break itself up), I might be out of a job. And then, if I can't find a lateral move right away, I'll have a résumé gap, and I'll miss the private equity recruiting cycle, and then I'll never get that offer from Blackstone, and I'll end up doing equities in Dallas.

And you might decide — for purely selfish reasons! — that a Jefferies offer doesn't look so shabby after all.

There is, without a doubt, still huge demand for finance gigs among many high-achieving twentysomethings, even though (as I've reported before) the Occupy movement and the growth of the tech sector have made some would-be financiers think twice.

What's changed is that in the age where the Wall Street prestige hierarchy is in such flux and the outlook for big banks so uncertain, even those die-hards who do decide to become the next Steve Schwarzmans are increasingly uncertain about how to do it. And older financiers, whose own paths to riches are quickly becoming obsolete, seem to have very little idea what to tell them.

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Democratic Party Adds Gay Marriage to Platform, Still No Word on Federal Law

Just four years ago, the Democratic presidential candidates were divided on whether or not same-sex marriage should be legalized. Now in another sign of how quickly the party has "evolved" on the issue, the Democratic Party plans to include support for gay unions in its official party platform, which will be formally approved during the convention. While the party is hoping the move will invigorate its base (not to mention wealthy donors), there's concern that it will hurt Democrats in more conservative areas of the country. Plus, it's unclear if the platform will actually present specific steps for promoting marriage equality across the country.

Today Rep. Barney Frank, who sits on the party's drafting committee, told the Washington Blade that a platform including a gay marriage plank had been unanimously approved by a 15-member panel at a weekend hearing in Minneapolis. An anonymous Democratic National Committee staffer said that the current version includes a rejection of Defense of Marriage Act and positive language on the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. The platform is still in the draft stage, and may change before it's presented in September.

LGBT activists are praising the move, but some in the party are concerned that it could backfire. It's likely to complicate the races for Democrats facing tough battles in red-leaning states, including Senator Claire McCaskill of Missouri,  Senator Jon Tester of Montana, and Tim Kaine, who's running for Senate in Virginia. It may also wind up energizing supporters of traditional marriage more than those who support same-sex unions.

The shift wouldn't have been possible if President Obama hadn't supported same-sex marriage two months ago. As the New York Times notes, the 2008 platform contained similar language opposing DOMA, but it had to stop short of supporting gay marriage, since candidate Obama was only in favor of civil unions. President Obama still says the issue should be left for the states to decide, as they've been doing. Gay marriage is legal in six states and will be voted on in three more states in November. North Carolina recently passed an amendment banning same-sex unions, which should make for an awkward convention in the state.

The move marks the first time a major party has come out in favor of same-sex marriage, and is certainly significant step toward bringing gay rights into the mainstream. However, it's possible that like President Obama's announcement, this will be more of a symbolic victory. Democrats are hoping that once again, announcing their general support for gay marriage will give the party both a morale and a fund-raising boost. There's no word on whether the final version might include support for a federal law to allow gay marriage, but since President Obama has yet to come out in favor of such a measure, it seems unlikely.

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America in 2012: City of Houston Releases Video on What to Do During an Office Shooting

The city of Houston and the Department of Homeland Security have teamed up to produce this pretty intense public-service video on how to respond in the event that a gunman goes on a rampage at your office, and even though the massacre in Aurora didn't take place in an office setting, this does seem like well-timed advice. According to the video, the three best options are, in order: run, hide, or fight. Do not just continue working as normal.

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Sergeant Found Not Guilty of Most Serious Charges in Suicide of Pvt. Danny Chen

The first of eight people to be tried by a military court in the suicide of Chinese-American soldier Danny Chen was acquitted today of negligent homicide, reckless endangerment, communicating a threat, and hazing, the New York Times reports. Sergeant Adam Holcomb was found guilty of two lesser counts, including maltreatment and assault. Chen, a 19-year-old from the Lower East Side, was fulfilling a longtime dream by serving in Afghanistan, but died in October of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head while on guard duty after months of torment by his company.

In letters home, Chen chronicled the relentless, and often racist, bullying he faced from other soldiers, hazing that prosecutors argued drove him to commit suicide. "People crack jokes about Chinese people all the time," Chen wrote. "I'm running out of jokes to come back at them." (Jennifer Gonnerman reported on the tragic story for New York in January.)

On the night he died, Chen was made to crawl to a guard tower while being hit with rocks by his superiors because he forgot his water and was not wearing a helmet. In the days prior, according to testimony, he told a fellow soldier that he was thinking about killing himself because of the harsh treatment.

But defense lawyers argued that Chen's problems predated Sergeant Holcomb, concluding in the closing statement, "Private Chen killed Private Chen."

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Why carriers can’t create common APIs (but need to keep trying)

The Wholesale Application Community (WAC) will go down in mobile history as one of the most ambitious, but failed, attempts at collaboration by our dear telco friends. Locaid’s CEO Rip Gerber explains why these powerful carriers — all facing common threats — couldn’t get their WAC together.

Over the past two decades, I’ve built and sold a few companies that have exploited the simple fact that the bigger an industry behemoth grows, the harder it gets for it to serve its customers. At my last company, Intellisync, my teams built products that wireless carriers needed but couldn’t deliver. Today, I run Locaid, a company that simply ?lls a void between giant carriers and giant enterprise developers. It’s hard enough for a single giant to innovate, so why do they always assume a coalition of giants will fare better? They never do.

Coalitions seldom succeed unless the members are motivated by a supreme crisis. Throughout history, a major threat or act of war was often needed to compel independent and competing parties to join forces for common gain: the United States, NATO, the international ban on whaling. Business can be war too, but the stakes aren’t usually high enough to keep a collective of companies aligned under a common agenda. Except for OPEC or Hollywood agencies, coalitions tend to generate more fodder for the press than progress.

Last week, another coalition tombstone was etched. As Kevin Fitchard explained (and eerily predicted) in his recent article: the Wholesale Application Community (WAC) will go down in mobile history as one of the most ambitious, but failed, collaboration attempts of our dear telco friends.

WAC, if you don’t know, was an industry alliance of 47 of the largest worldwide mobile operators. It was formed in 2010 to help wireless carriers compete in an open, unwalled mobile world. Rather than force developers to work with each individual operator to get APIs, the carriers would design a “single API” for location, billing, messaging and more. This would be the “iTunes for carrier stuff.”

Why couldn’t these powerful carriers — all facing common threats from open, data rich, ubiquitous platforms such as Apple, Google, Facebook and Amazon — get their WAC together?

Membership impatience. Collectively, the carriers endeavored for more than two years to launch a “single API,” and failed to develop much of anything. Now the carriers are individually frustrated with the GSMA and WAC. Rightly so. You won’t find the AT&T and Verizon chief technology officers publicly bashing the GSMA. But within their carrier walls, you can hear their screams at LTE and 4G speed. Don’t be surprised if splinter groups of carriers leave the WAC’s original 47 members behind to form their own common API solutions. And they should. Developers want tools and APIs that are easy and ubiquitous. A group of 47 single-minded designers won’t ever create a slick, friendly interface.

APIs aren’t backhaul. Deploying servers and towers is easy after developing decades of monopolistic experience. But building APIs is hard. Those of us that do it well (such as Apigee, or my company, Locaid) have spent years and tens of millions of patient investor money connecting behemoth, byzantine carrier networks to create easy-to-use APIs for developers. You cannot create an API by committee. And while the carriers have done a yeoman’s job of offering up more APIs – either directly or through partners – for high-demand services such a billing, messaging, location, it’s not an effort conducive to a group. The task is made more difficult for carriers because top developer talent wants Apple, Google or the latest VC-backed wunderkind on their resume — not AT&T or Vodafone. Carriers are trying to attract top developers, but that takes time. “Coding at carrier” isn’t hip in the college dorms just yet.

Policy versus products. Ultimately, WAC was a policy-setting machine, not an execution machine. And it certainly wasn’t a market-making initiative, which is what the carriers all desperately want. Some of us in the API enabler market have more sales people selling carrier API data than all 47 WAC carriers combined. It takes focus, design and execution to win share. And if you can’t launch product, you won’t survive. Hence, RIP WAC.

WAC will be resurrected. The concept of carriers working together comes around every few years. WAC will rise again (under a new brand no doubt). But even if carriers can get their network technology people to agree on standards, code, enablers, SLAs, etc. (good luck with that), and even if the carriers’ legal teams can agree on liability, privacy, etc. (more good luck to them there), they still have a major issue: carriers will have a hard time selling APIs. These are telcos. The sales teams, commission incentives, even the product offers, need to be dramatically restructured to become “developer friendly” services. Carriers can get there, but the journey will take time.

It’s a shame, really. The carriers want what WAC promised, and two-by-two they will eventually get there. WAC and carriers are populated with smart, innovative folks, and they should be admired for their ambition and fight. But carrier machinery — processing billions of bits per second at five nines of reliability — isn’t built to move at developer speed. Not out of the gate.

This is a great opportunity for developers. The message from the market is now loud and clear: “WAC is dead! Long live WAC!” The holy grail of “one API” remains. Venture capitalists and strategic investors have been funding the market-driven API agenda to date, and they will continue to do so because it’s the right thing to do. And it will be up to nimble, focused innovators to fill the need, one API at a time.

Rip Gerber is the founder and CEO of Locaid. The company offers Location-as-a-Service that connects developers to Tier 1 carriers via a single API.

Image courtesy of Flickr user buddawiggi.

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Android this week: HTC One X+ leaked; LTE Photon Q coming; Galaxy S III sales humming

Last week it was Android tablets, this week was about Android smartphones. Sprint announced a QWERTY keyboard version of the Photon Q with LTE, while Samsung’s Galaxy S III continues to set sales records. Can the leaked HTC One X+ slow Samsung’s momentum?

Tablets such as the Nexus 7 had the spotlight last week, but this week was more about Android smartphones. At this point, most of the new handsets — with a few exceptions of the lower end models —  are finally launching with Android 4.0, Google’s platform that was announced in October of 2011. The improved platform combined with the latest hardware innovations are continuing to propel Android handset sales forward.

The top seller this year may already be Samsung’s Galaxy S III, which only launched in late May. This week, Samsung announced 10 million sales of its flagship phone and that surely helped the company’s overall handset sales figure. Samsung hit record profits — $4.5 billion — in the second quarter of 2012 and according to IDC estimates, sold 50.2 million handsets during that time period.

Putting those figures in perspective: Samsung’s total mobile phone sales for the quarter were nearly double that of Apple, which announced 26 million handset sales in April, May and June. And 20 percent of Samsung’s phone sales were comprised of the Galaxy S III. Another interesting statistic? Samsung sells 190,000 Galaxy S IIIs per day on average. We know that Google is now activating one million Android devices per day, meaning that the Galaxy S III is a sizeable chunk of those activations.

Of course, there’s room for other smartphones in the market too; this week one new phone was announced, while another was leaked. Sprint announced a 4G LTE update to the original Motorola Photon Q, coming in the near future. At 960 x 540 resolution, the 4.3-inch screen won’t have the most dense pixel count, but nearly all other components are appealing: A 1.5 GHz dual-core processor;, Android 4.0.4; 8 megapixel camera; five-row keyboard; and world phone capabilities with support for CDMA, EVDO, GSM and LTE.

Sprint hasn’t yet announced pricing and availability details, but the phone is real. The same can’t be said of the HTC One X+, which is rumored to be a handset coming to T-Mobile. The carrier opted to pass on the original HTC One X in favor of the smaller One S, which is a solid smartphone. But like all other One devices in the U.S., it doesn’t have the quad-core Tegra 3 processor, which has no integrated LTE support.

According to leaked information found by TMoNews, the HTC Era 42 is a One X with a Tegra 3 processor, possibly clocked at 1.7 GHz. Given that T-Mobile is the last of the big four U.S. carriers to migrate to an LTE network, it makes sense that a Tegra 3 version of the HTC One X could be coming. It would provide HTC a better chance to compete against Samsung’s Galaxy S III juggernaut.

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How an advanced photographer uses the iPhone and iPad

If you had told me even a year ago that more than 60 percent of the photos I take would never touch my Mac, I’d have laughed. But it’s true. Here’s a walk through my heavily iOS (and Mac) powered digital photography workflow.

I find myself straddling a line with my photography. One foot sits on the side where I don’t need anything advanced; the other foot enjoys taking photographs of sporting and musical events that require decent cameras and fast lenses. Today I’m going to share with you how Apple products have completely taken over my work flow.

Once the iPhone 4s came out with its great camera, and because of my own general laziness, I don’t bring my “real” camera out anymore unless I specifically need it. I feel the most important part of any photography workflow is to capture the moment first, and a technically correct photo second. Obviously, if you’re shooting an event professionally you’ll want both. For most of us, though, if we are skilled at photographic composition we can take a perfectly fine photo with the iPhone most of the time. And Apple is set to improve the sharing capabilities drastically — in iOS 6, which will be available to the public this fall, I can take a photo and have it posted to Facebook almost immediately thanks to the deep integration with the social network.

The iPhone as a camera also really impresses me. Below are two iPhone photos I snapped that I was pleasantly surprised with how they turned out. I was surprised for two reasons: For the shot of the kid, I was able to snap a credible photo, edit it, and post to Facebook all from my iPhone in about two minutes. For the shot of The Wall, I was amazed at how well a photo taken at night, from about 300 feet, came out on a cell phone camera.

Neal Vitullo and the Vipers, Warwick City Hall

Roger Waters, Fenway Pahk.

There are two post-processing tools I use: Lightroom 4.0 and Aperture 3.3. Each is a great program, and you’d be well-served with either. I like Lightroom’s workflow a little better, and the fact that unlike Aperture, my photos aren’t contained in a single database. Aperture, however, allows me to also sync my photos directly to iOS, and take advantage of Photo Stream. Because I float between the two editors, I also keep a clean copy of my master images in a separate folder.

Plug Ins:

There are two Topaz Labs plug-ins I love: Denoise, and B&W Effects. Denoise is indispensable for reducing noise from high-ISO pictures. My DSLR images of rock bands tend to be in the 32000-64000 ISO range, which generates a ton of noise.  Denoise allows me to drastically reduce, if not eliminate, the noise.

I’m color blind, so I tend to convert my images to black and white since I might not be able to tell if the photo is a little extra blue. I also grew up shooting black and white (even developing photos by hand in our bathroom with my dad), so for me, B&W holds a lot of nostalgia. B&W Effects by Topaz has a wide range of presets that allows me to get close to the image I want. It also has eight Collections that encompass a broad smattering of styles.

I sync almost all of my photos to my iPad. Usually, it’s to show them off if someone wants to see my work. Or, I’m showing the pictures of a family event with the participants. One feature for sharing I absolutely adore is Photo Journals in iPhoto for iOS. I can group the photos I want into a Journal, then share them via iCloud and just mail off a link to the Journal. I was hoping that this feature would make it to OS X iPhoto when Mountain Lion shipped, but, alas, it didn’t. In fact, for most post-processing, I find that iOS iPhoto does a remarkable job with light adjustments and cropping.

Another valuable I keep in my camera bag is the Camera Connection kit. Often after a shoot with my DSLR, I’ll import the photos from my SD card into my iPad and quickly determine the keepers on the larger screen.

It’s amazing at how quickly technology has altered the photography field. It seems like just yesterday I was hanging strips of negatives up to dry. If you had told me even a year ago that more than 60 percent of the photos I take would never touch my Mac, I’d have laughed. I can’t wait to see what the next year brings.

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After Kickstarter success, Ouya CEO just getting started

Ouya, a $99 Android-based video game console, has picked up more than $5 million in the biggest Kickstarter campaign to date. It’s also received plenty of doubts from skeptics as well. In an interview, Julie Uhrman, the CEO and founder, said Ouya is the real deal.

Kickstarter’s records have been smashed by Ouya, a $99 Android-based video game console that promises to bring affordable games to the television. The project, which originally set out to raise $950,000, is now up to $5.7 million pledged from more than 47,000 backers with 10 left to go.

Built using standard components like a Tegra 3 quad-core processor and hackable, Ouya will create a new platform for developers looking to bring both casual and hardcore games to the living room. The console, which is being designed by famed designer Yves Behar, will work with a standard controller that includes a touchpad. Developers will be able to use an SDK to create an array of titles, which will all have a free component to them.

While the project isn’t expected to debut until March 2013, it has started revealing some partnerships, including a deal Friday with OnLive, which will offer its cloud-based streaming games at launch on Ouya. Ouya has also announced its first exclusive title Human Element, a zombie game from developer Robotoki.

I talked by phone last week with Ouya’s CEO and founder Julie Uhrman, who first conceived of Ouya while leading digital distribution and business development for gaming site IGN. We talked about the rising skepticism about the project and how Ouya is working to deliver the goods.

Ryan: Talk about the deal with OnLive. How did that come about and does that change the nature of your console?

Julie: There’s a lot of content and games that we want for Ouya and we listen to our audience. They wanted OnLive so I made it a point to go out get them. OnLive signals some of the types of partnerships we can have on Ouya. The idea is we can have streaming and downloadable content. Because it’s open and built on Android, all different kinds of content would be available: games, videos, streaming and music content. Ouya is about being open and bringing the best content to gamers and anyone who enjoys entertainment. We don’t think OnLive’s content cancels out any publishers or developers, it enhances the platform.

Ryan: Some people are skeptical of Ouya and wonder if it will pan out. Will this project deliver on time?

Julie: We have every confidence that we will do this. The technology isn’t rocket science, it’s standard stuff combined in a new way and wrapped in a beautiful package. It’s been incredibly embraced by gamers and developers. We get hundreds of emails from developers wanting to develop for the platform; the idea of openness of Ouya has resonated. Until we have things on store shelves, we can’t prove things and there will be questions but most (developers) say they want Ouya or something like this to succeed. We have vetted our process, capped the amount of units we are shipping on day one and we have great advisors, who have built great hardware and software. We feel very confident we will deliver in March.

Ryan: So where did this idea come from? What was your vision?

Julie: I was part of the game industry for a long time and I saw AAA developers leaving for mobile. But if you interview gamers, the number one platform is the TV. The most time is spent in the living room, even for mobile games. The experience is better on a TV but all the excitement and growth was in mobile. I grew up on TV games and I wanted to bring it back and I saw an opportunity for a device that has Android as its operating system. The value proposition is there. People don’t have to spend hundreds of dollars on a console. Ouya is $99 and games are free to play. What’s not to like?

Ryan: But building an ecosystem is hard work. Trying to court and keep developers and convince them there’s money to be made here is not easy. What are you planning to do to ensure that Ouya is appealing to developers?

Julie: The one thing that is always important to remember is this is still a product in development. We are focused on creating a great product. Kickstarter is opening up a two-way dialogue with folks who will benefit and we’re incorporating their feedback. People are incredibly excited. The developer conversations are incredibly well. You aint seen nothing yet.

Ryan: What has Kickstarter meant to you and what does the added money allow you to do?

Julie: It’s been a phenomenal platform for us and allowed us to create a dialogue with an audience of gamers and developers. We knew this was the only way to get to market quickly, raise money and bring this idea to fruition. Our goal was to hit $950,000 and we knew we could deliver units and even provide tools and support for developers with that. Anything over that is truly unbelievable and it means we can build more tools.

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Judge in Apple-Samsung case says patent drawings can ‘speak for themselves’

The judge in a highly-anticipated trial over smartphones and tablets sided with Apple on Friday over how a jury should look at four key patents. The ruling means the jury will act as “ordinary observers” instead of relying on detailed legal instructions to understand the patents.

A judge sided with Apple on Friday, saying she would not provide detailed  instructions to a jury about how to interpret patent drawings that lay out claims to the iPad and iPhone. Instead, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said it would be up to the jurors to use “the eye of an ordinary observer” to decide if Korean phone maker Samsung copied the drawings.

The ruling represents one of the final skirmishes before a closely-watched trial set to kick off Monday in San Jose near Apple’s headquarters. The California trial is the biggest showdown yet in a global struggle in which Apple is carpet-bombing Samsung with intellectual property claims in the hopes of removing Samsung products from store shelves and forcing it to pay massive damages.

The decision that the drawings can “speak for themselves” is significant because it means the judge will not, as Samsung had hoped, provide detailed legal instructions about how to decipher the patents. Instead, the jurors will be asked to base their decision on the overall design and to give “such attention as a purchaser usually gives.”

The drawings in question are from four Apple design patents. Each patent contains between two and 48 drawings that are used to illustrate how Apple owns features like the shape of the iPad and the black-colored surface of the iPhone (the three iPhone-related patents can be found here, here and here while the iPad one is here ). Here are some examples of the drawings the jurors will consider (note that the judge will, however, instruct them that the dotted lines indicate that Apple is not claiming that part of the design) :

The ruling that the jurors’ should decide based on the overall impression of the drawings may strengthen Apple’s case that Samsung copied its designs. But if they do find copying, Samsung could still be off the hook if the jury (again acting as an “ordinary observer”) decides the patents are obvious based on earlier tablet and smartphone designs. For instance, Samsung is arguing that Apple itself lifted design ideas from these Sony prototypes:

The design patent dispute is just the most high profile part of a case that also features a complicated mix of other intellectual property claims such as utility patents, trade dress and more. The trial, for which jury selection is to begin on Monday, will also address whether Apple infringed Samsung’s patents. Apple claims Samsung’s claims fail because they are based on so-called FRAND patents which companies must license because they part of an industry standard.

Koh on Claim Construction
(Image by nokhoog_buchachon via Shutterstock)

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Defcon’s NinjaTel cell network could solve real-world problems

The Defcon security and hacker conference in Las Vegas is home to a unique cell network built using GSM and Wi-Fi. The private network was built for fun, but it could have a serious purpose when governments try to lock down cellular communications.

At the Defcon hacker convention going on now in Las Vegas, roughly 650 attendees received a custom phone that allows them onto a secret local cell network called NinjaTel. Both Ars Technica and The Verge have stories offering screen shots and details, but I’m curious about the real world implications of this experiement.

Ars Technica says the network uses both a GSM network (not sure what frequency it’s operating in, or if it is indeed a real “pirate” network as The Verge asserts) and secured portions of the conference Wi-Fi :

For redundancy and reliability, Ninja Networks engineers took advantage of a feature added to the Ice Cream Sandwich release of Android that makes it easy to route calls over GSM or, using the SIP, or Session Initialization Protocol, over a private portion of the Defcon WiFi. As each subscriber was added to the network, a syncing app added the user to the list of contacts contain on all other phones, giving each person a way to text or call the other. An app contained on the custom phone made it easy for other users to write apps for the device.

Those with phones can only use voice or SMS, and are all visible as contacts on the network at any one time. There are peer-to-peer modes where folks can converse without going over the wider network as well as apps that let users interact with each other or other Ninja-approved devices. But outside creating some fun for hackers at a security conference, this type of network might be useful for places like Syria or Egypt where governments can control and shut down cellular networks as a means to cut off unrest.

I’ve written about a variety of projects–from Serval to OpenGSM — that could be used to create peer-to-peer or actual cell phone networks for groups of users to rely on when their own communications are spotty or compromised by hostile governments. Such networks could be a boon for democracy and freedom worldwide, but could also easily become a headache for law enforcement when in the wrong hands.

But the implementation of such networks by technologists, much like the development of the Internet, could provide a platform that helps democratize the flow of information. And trying that out, and possibly making versions of it that are ever easier to use on handsets could create yet another avenue for information sharing.

And for those who think that such technology isn’t needed in the U.S. or developed countries, just recall when the Bay Area Rapid Transit authorities shut down cell phone access on platforms because it was concerned about protests or when India wanted the ability to snoop on BlackBerry devices. So NinjaTel may be a cool one-off experiment today, but with time and work it may become the next-generation’s Internet. A massively democratic and redundant way to share information — even when governments would rather shut such information sharing down.

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