Google announced that Picasa for the Mac is now available in public beta form through Google Labs. Picasa is a free desktop application for fucking with, and passing around your digital photos. It's great for organizing your obscene webcam snapshots and doctored images of celebrities.

The Mac version is supposed to be relatively seamless. So whenever you get tired of iPhoto, maybe you should take a looksy.

So why did it take so damn long for Google to move it over to the Mac? The company is claiming that the wait was timed to coincide with The Macworld Expo (which happened today). They know how to keep the acne-ridden, pocket-protector-wearin' brace-faced people drooling with anticipation.

[Source]

So Google wants to get bigger, huh? News to me. Looks like they're about to buy Web 2.0 aggregation website Digg.com.

Check out this quote from Valleywag:

…we hear [Google’s Marissa] Mayer is pushing hard for an acquisition of Rose’s Digg, for a price below $200 million…A source familiar with the talks says Google and Digg reached an agreement last month; it’s not clear whether the offer was verbal or a formal termsheet. So why the delay? One possibility: Digg may have been exploring whether it could hire a rock-star CEO and raise more money.

I doubt the army of Digg users will be down with this, but it I dont see any reason why it wouldn't happen. Google is surely after the technology and algorithms that make Digg so effective. But a power so great can't be taken, it can only be given.

[ValleyWag]

Its getting closer and closer to June 30th, the when the Screen Actors Guild's Contract runs out and negotiations start. Maybe this means a strike, maybe it doesn't, but the film industry isn't taking any chances.

The Alliance of Motion Picture & Television Producers (AMPTP) says a de facto strike is already happening "limiting the green-lighting of features and disrupting pilot production" On talent attorney said "No one is doing anything that finishes after June 30, (and) nobody's starting anything now. There is the impact of a strike already."

There's a pretty fantastic lineup of films that will finish production before the contract deadline, but will they be enough to last another work stoppage?

Here's some for-sures.

DreamWorks' - John Hamburg's "I Love You, Man"; Peter Jackson's "The Lovely Bones"
Paramount - "G.I. Joe"; Martin Scorsese's "Shutter Island with Leonardo DiCaprio
Warner Bros. - Steven Soderbergh's "The Informant"; "Observe and Report" starring Seth Rogen; and "Ninja Assassin"
Universal - Will Ferrell starring "Land of the Lost"
Disney - "When in Rome"; "High School Musical 3"
Columbia/MGM's - Newest Bond Film "Quantum of Solace"

That's not gonna be enough to satisfy the masses... not even close.

[Reuters]

McDonald's said it has temporarily discontinued serving sliced tomatoes on it's sandwiches in the United States. This is so health officials can pinpoint the source of a Salmonella outbreak.

"This is a precautionary measure only. McDonald's has not experienced any related issues to date," the company said in a statement. The move came after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned consumers in the U.S. that the Salmonella outbreak was linked to the consumption of certain raw red plum, red Roma, and red round tomatoes, and products containing them.

On Saturday, FDA said there had been 145 reported nationwide cases, including at least 23 hospitalizations, related to the outbreak.

[Reuters]

This is the prototype for the next "$100 laptop" project. The design is incredible, the colors, the functionality, and both halves are separate screens!

More details here, I just thought as many people as possible should see this.

Folks at Intel, AMD, and some of the world's largest PC producers have started to receive subpoenas from the Federal Trade Commission in regards to an antitrust investigation of the microchip making giant.

Intel has been accused of setting their pricing policies so as to maintain a monopoly on the microprocessor market, and William E. Kovacic, the FTC's new chairman, has authorized the commission to look into it. Deborah P. Majores, his predecessor, had been blocking an official inquiry for several months, pissing off other senior officials in the commission and some Washington lawmakers.

This doesn't make much sense since Majores was the one who jump-started the Bush administration's antitrust settlement against Microsoft in 2001.

But you can find all the details at NewYorkTimes.com

Haha, this one too!

The two companies finally took the lid off their DRM-free music service promotion, which begins with a Super Bowl commercial starring Justin Timberlake.

The promotion is called Pepsi Stuff, and begins on Feb. 1st. Here's how it's going down:

* Pepsi will distirbute 4 billion specially marked packages that contain points;
* The points are good for free music downloads on the Amazon.com service;
* Participants bank their points at pepsistuff.com;
* 5 points is good for one free song
* The points are also good for "TV downloads, electronics gear, clothes, DVDs and CDs and other merchandise sold on Amazon, totaling $1 billion in prizes."

All of the big record labels selling music through the service are allowing their music to be used in the promotion, with the exception of Universal Music Group. However, UMG has licensed it's music for the service.

In order to get some of the labels to be involved with the promotion, Amazon had to agree to step up the marketing campaign. Hence the kickoff of the campaign begins with the Super Bowl. I guess that's a fair compromise, and explains why Amazon, who normally doesn't normally go big with advertising, is buying one of the most expensive TV time slots in the world.

This new contender in the music-distribution game may be exactly what the people asked for. Introducing it through a contest-based promotion will give people the opportunity to explore the site and get free content, provided they are all Pepsi drinkers. Sound like the ultimate beta test.

Billboard.biz
Pepsi, Amazon Unveil Long-Expected Promotion

Last month an Intel saleswoman tried to persuade a Peruvian official to drop the country’s commitment to buy a quarter-million of the One Laptop Per Child's laptops and, instead buy Intel PCs.

Intel and the OLPC haven't really ever had a smooth partnership, but this incident was apparently the last straw for Nicholas Negroponte (OLPC's founder). He demanded that Intel stop selling their rival computer in what he sees as an effort to undermine OPLC's sales.

So what happened? Intel withdrew it's support for the organization.

OLPC has been kind of a controversial issue from the beginning and some the most powerful software and chip-making companies -Microsoft and Intel- have been resisting getting involved because it could be a strong competitor in a market that they were hoping to develop. This is why OPLC contains chips from AMD and runs a cutesy, bare-bones operating system.

Anyway, bravo to Intel. I can't wait to see how they deal with this PR nightmare. For the record, my title almost read "Intel hates foreign children."

Sensationalized ideas aside, this is a rather selfish move for the chip-making giant. There's still other markets out there.

Money Times
Intel withdraws from laptop charity after row
New York Times
Intel Leaves Group Backing Education PCs

So here's a new concept: make a balloon, put a fan on the outside and a turbine on the inside, raise it to 1000 ft. elevation (where the wind never stops blowing), and use it to avoid paying for electricity ever again.

Sound simple? Well it's not that simple.

This contraption, invented by Fred Furgeson (you can google him at the lower-left side of this page:), the Magenn Power Air Rotor System's (MARS') turbine will rotate at whatever speed the wind may push it. It plays by it's own rules! Anywho, that means between 2 and 28 meters-per-second. Held up by helium and the Sky Captainesque shape, the structure is held tightly to the earth by a copper tether that is attached to two generators on both front and back. Also the spinning motion gives the MARS perpetual lift and helps it maintain it's rightful place directly (almost) above it's grounded point of origin (there's gotta be a better way to say that).

Now this sounds super and all, but keep in mind that the MARS is the size of a small house. It will be easier to maintain than other forms of electrical harvest (wind farms and whatnot), and helium leaks are only at half a percent in the structure. This seems like a fantastic idea now, but I'll bet by 2010 we'll be seeing Martin Lawrence or some other B-actor (yeah, I said it) promoting this on late-night infomercials for 5 easy payments of $19.95.

I wonder if you can apply the same technique to water and set one of these puppies up in the middle of the East Australian Current. Probably not, but that gives me an idea for a screenplay...

Source 1
Source 2

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