Edwards Charged With Election Finance Fraud

Earlier in the day, a federal grand jury indicted him on charges that he violated federal campaign finance laws by ?secretly obtaining and using? contributions from wealthy benefactors to conceal his mistress and their baby while he was running for president in 2008.

He pleaded not guilty to the charges and set the stage for a trial that will most likely dredge up embarrassing details of his affair and his betrayal of his wife and those who believed in his campaign. But Mr. Edwards, a skilled trial lawyer, had rejected a chance to avoid a trial through a plea bargain, opting instead to take his chances in front of a jury.

?I will regret for the rest of my life the pain and the harm that I?ve caused to others,? Mr. Edwards told reporters outside the courthouse in Winston-Salem afterward. ?But I did not break the law. And I never, ever thought that I was breaking the law.?

The trial was scheduled to begin July 11 in Winston-Salem, but lawyers involved said they expected it would start much later.

The grand jury, which has been investigating the case for two years, indicted Mr. Edwards on six counts ? one involving conspiracy, four involving illegal payments and one involving false statements. If he is found guilty, Mr. Edwards, 57, faces a maximum penalty of 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines.

Mr. Edwards?s wife, Elizabeth, died of cancer in December. The couple had two young children and an older daughter, Cate, a lawyer, who accompanied Mr. Edwards to court. Mr. Edwards was released without having to post bail, but was ordered to turn in his passport and to avoid talking with potential witnesses.

The indictment contends that Mr. Edwards and his co-conspirators solicited $725,000 from Rachel Mellon, the 100-year-old heiress to the Mellon banking fortune, and $200,000 from Fred Baron, Mr. Edwards?s campaign finance chairman.

The money, the indictment said, was used to cover up his affair with Rielle Hunter, a campaign videographer with whom he had a child, and to pay for her prenatal medical expenses, travel and accommodations.

The fact that Mr. Edwards tried to cover up his affair is not at issue. The Justice Department says that those contributions from two wealthy patrons were campaign donations and therefore subject to federal campaign finance laws that set limits on the amounts that can be donated and received, and require public reporting. Those two donations were well in excess of the limit of $2,300 that an individual can give.

The indictment says the money was actually used for campaign purposes: If the public knew that he was having an affair, his campaign would have been over. (It was over anyway in January 2008, before he confessed to the affair in August, after he lost too many primaries to Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton. But it might have imploded even earlier if the affair had been known.)

?Mr. Edwards is alleged to have accepted more than $900,000 in an effort to conceal from the public facts that he believed would harm his candidacy,? Assistant Attorney General Lanny A. Breuer said in a statement. ?As this indictment shows, we will not permit candidates for high office to abuse their special ability to access the coffers of their political supporters to circumvent our election laws.?

The Edwards defense is that the money was used not for political reasons but for personal reasons: he wanted to conceal the affair from his wife.

The Edwards legal team, headed by Gregory B. Craig, who defended President Bill Clinton during his impeachment proceedings, says the government is trying an untested theory and applying a too-broad definition of campaign contributions.

Robbie Brown reported from Winston-Salem, N.C.

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New York City?s Gramercy Labs Collective: A more intimate kind of startup incubation

Today, growing a company is much like raising a family. Your first-born, your first angel round; your first failure, your second child; your first pivot, your first move to a new home; who to play the disciplinarian? Who to be soothing calm when the weather gets rough? Building something meaningful from the ground up is a great balancing act, and just like there?s no one right way to raise a family, there are an innumerable amount of ways to raise a company.

In the past few years, startling, industry-shifting success has come out of Paul Graham?s Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley. Since then, we?ve witnessed a number of innovative incubators such as Tech Stars, which was founded in Boulder by David Cohen and now has programs in Seattle, Boston and New York. David McClure?s 500 Start-Ups takes a similar YC approach to incubation, focusing on mentorship and early seed funding in exchange for a small equity stake. Prehype, an incubator that helps corporations create like startups, launched late last year with perhaps the most innovative approach yet: take Google?s 20% time and apply it to big companies. And this spring The Entrepreneur?s Round Table launched its own accelerator program, and it?s just announced its first 10 startups for its inaugural class in NYC.

In a time when New York City?s tech scene is thriving, enter Gramercy Labs, which launched officially in May 2011. One might call them an incubator, but that wouldn?t be providing due justice to the high level of involvement each of the founders takes in the startups. It?s best to call Gramercy Labs, founded by serial entrepreneurs Kevin Fortuna and Philip James, a startup collective. At its roots, Gramercy Labs aims to build disruptive media and e-commerce businesses around exceptional founding teams with a particular winning advantage in a proven market.

At the helm of GCL is Kevin Fortuna, who was formerly the CEO of Quigo, an advertising technology company that was sold to AOL Time Warner for $360 million in November 2007 and Philip James (pictured below), who prior to founding Snooth Media ?the IMBD for wine? in 2007, had sailed across the Atlantic, climbed Mt. Everest and graduated from Columbia?s Business School. James and Fortuna first crossed paths halfway through 2008. Fortuna was an early investor in Snooth and now sits on its Board of Directors. In late 2009, both men found themselves handing out the many different business cards for companies they sat on the boards of, founded or were advisors for. They realized they needed a unifying platform to bring together these companies and future companies. At this time, Fortuna wanted to begin a portfolio and James wanted to start a new wine related company, so soon enough, the idea behind The Gramercy Labs Collective was born.

They began working on the new wine related company, which became Lot 18, in February 2010 with 4 people and half a million in seed funding. Lot18 (which made our list of NYC?s Top 20 Start-Ups You Need to Know About) is a ?membership by invitation only website? that sells fine wines and specialty foods at discounted prices. The ?Gilt Groupe of wine? officially launched in November 2010 with a $2.8 million Series A round led by NYC-based VC firm FirstMark Capital. Recently, the company raised an additional $10 Million in Series B Funding, and in just six months since launch, Lot18 has grown from six to more than 70 employees with well over 200,000 subscribers. In the coming months, the team plans to expand into other epicurean pursuits such as food, wine accessories and vineyard destinations.

In early 2011, Fortuna and James launched their most recent company with serial entrepreneur David Wade and Editor Craig Marks of Billboard, Spin and Blender fame. Popdust is a site dedicated to becoming the premiere pop music online destination, much like Pitchfork and Stereogum are for the indie music scene. [See our full story on Popdust here.] Each Gramercy Labs startup is built on Popdust?s formula for success: essentially take a viable, profitable concept + hire a general manager with incredible business savvy (Wade) + pair with a creative, celebrity force (Marks) to establish a brand + build scalability through software.

GCL portfolio companies currently include: Snooth MediaLot18Popdust, and Fameball, a social gaming site dedicated to celebrity news and gossip that uses enviable proprietary technology to rank celebrity status. Each of the four current portfolio companies, deeply rooted in New York?s tech community, received early stage financing before being injected with Gramercy?s hypergrowth startup culture. Together, Fortuna and James leverage their expertise in creating scalable, data-driven organizations by integrating elements of distributed content, game theory, e-commerce, media and advertising. Fortuna leads the collective from the strategy, business development and fundraising side, while James, who has a masters from Oxford in Computational Chemistry leads the product and engineering side.

?What makes Gramercy different is that we try really hard to make sure every single person at our company feels more like an owner than an employee. Everyone at Gramercy has tons of autonomy, no set office hours, unlimited vacation and lots of resources. We believe that working for a Gramercy company should feel more like a mission or creating a work of art than a clock-punching job. If we do this right, excellence, efficiency and innovation will follow.?

-Kevin Fortuna

?People often talk about building nice places to work, here it?s part of our mission. We?re building companies of lasting value, and to do that we need to be able to hire and retain the smartest, most passionate people around,? says James. ?If that takes SF2 arcade consoles and day trips to Long Island wineries, then all the better.? The Gramercy Labs Collective isn?t something you apply to. (After all, you don?t apply to be a part of a family.) But if you think you?re a great fit for their family, and have a deep appreciation for wine, then both Fortuna and James want to hear from you.

Fortuna says the company must be a consumer-facing web technology that hits a ?passion point? in a rich market and has the potential to be #1 or #2 in that market. It?s also advantageous that the company be based in New York City.

?Most importantly,? says James, ?We want to be sure that we [himself and Fortuna] can give the company a unique advantage leveraging our skills and experience.?

While Fortuna and James sit on numerous boards and act as advisors to all their GLC companies, they only maintain ?day jobs? at Lot18 at the moment; Fortuna as CEO and James as its President. The two are investors and equity holders in all of the GLC companies. When asked where they see GCL in 5 years time, Fortuna responded:

?I hope Gramercy Labs will be known as a great place to start and develop a career as an entrepreneur. As much as anything, I hope we are known for measuring success the right way ? not just in terms of dollars and cents, but also by the personal connections we make and keep, by our reputation as a workplace, by building cool and useful products and services, and by doing the right thing by our investors and co-workers.?

-Kevin Fortuna

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/06/04/new-york-citys-gramercy-labs-collective-a-more-intimate-kind-of-startup-incubation/

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Blog - Suns 'n Stars

Weekend Open Forum: Finding a use for old hardware

Being tech enthusiasts, we've committed ourselves to an everlasting pursuit of owning the latest and greatest hardware. Many of you probably upgrade your graphics card more often than you get an oil change, and we wouldn't be shocked to learn that your computer costs more than your car.

Considering that, we'd love to hear about what you do with your "old" components and systems. Do you resell them to fund your habit? Donate them to friends, family or charity? Demote them to server duty? Hoard them for a rainy day project? Condemn them to a silicon tomb in your basement?

**Image courtesy of our staffer, Shawn.

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Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/44099-weekend-open-forum-finding-a-use-for-old-hardware.html

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House Rebukes Obama for Continuing Libyan Mission Without Its Consent

The resolution, which passed 268 to 145, was offered by Speaker John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, to siphon off swelling Republican support for a measure sponsored by Representative Dennis J. Kucinich, an Ohio Democrat, which calls for a withdrawal of the United States military from the air and naval operations in and around Libya.

The resolution criticizing the president passed with the support of 45 Democrats and all but 10 of the Republicans who were present. The measure from Mr. Kucinich, one of the most liberal members of the House, later failed by 148 to 265, with 87 Republicans voting in favor.

As a legislative matter, Mr. Boehner?s resolution has no practical effect, and is little more than an expression of opinion. A decision by the Supreme Court more than two decades ago suggested that Congress is not empowered to enforce a resolution or other directive that, unlike a bill, the president has no chance to veto.

But as a political matter, the resolution is an unusually blunt confrontation with an American president during a military conflict, and it underscores a bipartisan distaste among members of Congress for attempts to bypass their authority when waging war. Over all, roughly two-thirds of the House members who voted Friday backed one or two measures disapproving of the president?s actions. (Mr. Kucinich voted for both.)

Mr. Boehner?s resolution demands that the administration provide, within 14 days, detailed information about the nature, cost and objectives of the American contribution to the NATO operation, as well as an explanation of why the White House did not come to Congress for permission to continue to take part in the mission. The language suggests that the House may consider funding requests for the Libya operation in a harsh light if not satisfied with the response to its requests for information.

The issue is unlikely to be taken up by the Senate, which seems to be taking the opposite tack. Last month, Senators John Kerry, Democrat of Massachusetts, and John McCain, Republican of Arizona, both military veterans, introduced a resolution to express support for the Libyan mission.

The roughly two-hour debate on Friday concerning both resolutions provided some interesting alliances among far-left and hard-right lawmakers, and a bit of a role reversal in the discussion of executive power and the relevance of Libya to America?s vital interests.

?It seems the running shoe is on the other foot,? said Representative Howard L. Berman, Democrat of California, noting that Republicans had accused Democrats of ?cutting and running? on military operations in the past. Representative James P. Moran, Democrat of Virginia, chided Republicans, saying ?to tie the president?s hands is inconsistent with the legacy of this body, which is to do what is necessary to protect American interests.?

In contrast, Representative Dan Burton, an Indiana Republican who voted for both measures, said: ?We?re not going to go to war without the people of this country supporting it. The Boehner resolution I?m going to support, but it doesn?t go far enough.?

The United States is providing NATO with intelligence, logistical support and armed drones in what is largely a bombing campaign against Libyan government forces. The administration has contended that it is within Mr. Obama?s power to initiate American participation in the hostilities without Congress because the combat is limited to an air offensive.

Last month, Mr. Obama sent a letter to Congress emphasizing that the United States had turned control of the operation over to NATO and that it was primarily providing support to allies.

?It is the view of this administration that we?ve acted in accordance with the War Powers Act,? said Josh Earnest, a White House spokesman. ?We?ve been engaged in that consultation all along ? as I mentioned, three separate briefings have been held just this week for members of Congress. We?re committed to that moving forward.? Mr. Earnest characterized the resolutions as ?unnecessary and unhelpful.?

The War Powers Resolution says that presidents must terminate hostilities after 60 days if they have not been authorized by Congress; that deadline passed on May 20 without an explanation to Congress from the administration of why it thought it was lawful for the operation to continue.

The failure to provide an explanation, after Mr. Obama?s failure to obtain Congressional authorization for the engagement at the outset, upset antiwar factions of his own party in Congress as well as conservative Republicans seeking to rein in both executive power and federal spending.

The debate on Friday involved questions about the nature of the conflict in Libya, the country?s importance to American security interests and the role of Congress in authorizing military campaigns.

?The American people and the members of this House have questions and concerns that have gone unanswered,? Mr. Boehner said on the floor of the House. ?The president of the United States is our commander in chief, and I?ve always believed that combat decisions should be left to the commander in chief and the generals on the ground. But the House also has an obligation to heed the concerns of our constituents and to carry out our constitutional responsibilities.?

Members of both parties complained of war fatigue in their districts, and the reluctance of constituents to support another front, although some members emphasized the importance of supporting a continuing operation, even if they did not agree with the way it began.

?It is not surprising that there is a desire to simply say, ?Enough,? ? said Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, the Florida Republican who is chairwoman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. She voted for Mr. Boehner?s resolution, but against the one brought by Mr. Kucinich.

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An Ultra-High-Definition 3-D TV

Samsung has shown off a prototype of an ultra-high-definition 3-D television. The 70-inch prototype uses a novel electronic circuitry to control eight billion pixels. It's not likely to go into volume production soon, and there isn't any content to display on it, says Paul Semenza, a senior analyst at Display Search. But at last month's Society for Information Display conference in Los Angeles, the display drew crowds and garnered a best-in-show award.

Samsung is the latest TV manufacturer to demonstrate a technology that uses a type of backplane?the array of transistors used to switch the pixels on and off?based on metal oxide semiconductors. These materials offer higher performance than the amorphous silicon widely used today, without increasing costs. In April, manufacturer Sharp announced it will begin manufacturing displays based on metal oxide transistor arrays by the end of the year at its plant in Kameyana, Japan.

It wouldn't have been possible to make the ultra-high-definition display using a conventional backplane, says Sangheon Kenneth Koo, director of LCD marketing at Samsung Semiconductor. That's because making the pixels smaller requires making each of the controlling transistors smaller, too. And the amorphous silicon used in conventional backplanes doesn't conduct electrons fast enough for this kind of miniaturization.

Metal oxide semiconductors conduct electrons very rapidly, and they can be deposited using relatively inexpensive methods. The hurdle has been figuring out which mixtures of metals to use and how exactly to work with them on today's equipment, says Randy Hoffman, a senior engineer at HP. The leading material is now a mixture of indium, gallium, and zinc called IGZO.

Semenza speculates that Sharp might be planning to take advantage of the high pixel densities enabled by metal oxide backplanes to make crisper mobile displays. Based on the size of the equipment at the company's Kameyana production line, he speculates that the company may be aiming to provide a high-resolution tablet display, perhaps for the next generation of Apple's iPad. "The high-water mark for this," says Semenza, "is the retina display" in the latest iPhone, which uses an expensive backplane based on another form of silicon transistor called low-temperature polysilicon. Metal oxide transistor arrays are less expensive to make and provide the necessary performance. Sharp might be able to offer a very good performance alternative to the retina display at a lower price, says Semenza.

Volume manufacturing of metal oxide backplanes could also be a boon for richly colored, energy-efficient organic light-emitting diode displays (OLEDs). These displays have been incorporated into some mobile devices and small high-end televisions, but they tend to be expensive. Part of the problem is that they can't be made with conventional backplanes: the high currents needed for these devices burn out amorphous-silicon transistors. So, OLED makers have been using the expensive polysilicon backplanes. Replacing those with metal oxide backplanes could make OLEDs more competitive.

Other qualities of metal oxides will be attractive in future display technologies, says HP's Hoffman. Every layer in a display tends to absorb some light and decrease overall efficiency and brightness. But metal oxides are transparent, so displays with these backplanes should get more light out and operate more efficiently. Hoffman expects this to be a particular advantage in reflective displays. HP is working on a flexible display that integrates a metal oxide backplane with a full-color reflective display.

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New York City?s Gramercy Labs Collective: A more intimate kind of startup incubation

Today, growing a company is much like raising a family. Your first-born, your first angel round; your first failure, your second child; your first pivot, your first move to a new home; who to play the disciplinarian? Who to be soothing calm when the weather gets rough? Building something meaningful from the ground up is a great balancing act, and just like there?s no one right way to raise a family, there are an innumerable amount of ways to raise a company.

In the past few years, startling, industry-shifting success has come out of Paul Graham?s Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley. Since then, we?ve witnessed a number of innovative incubators such as Tech Stars, which was founded in Boulder by David Cohen and now has programs in Seattle, Boston and New York. David McClure?s 500 Start-Ups takes a similar YC approach to incubation, focusing on mentorship and early seed funding in exchange for a small equity stake. Prehype, an incubator that helps corporations create like startups, launched late last year with perhaps the most innovative approach yet: take Google?s 20% time and apply it to big companies. And this spring The Entrepreneur?s Round Table launched its own accelerator program, and it?s just announced its first 10 startups for its inaugural class in NYC.

In a time when New York City?s tech scene is thriving, enter Gramercy Labs, which launched officially in May 2011. One might call them an incubator, but that wouldn?t be providing due justice to the high level of involvement each of the founders takes in the startups. It?s best to call Gramercy Labs, founded by serial entrepreneurs Kevin Fortuna and Philip James, a startup collective. At its roots, Gramercy Labs aims to build disruptive media and e-commerce businesses around exceptional founding teams with a particular winning advantage in a proven market.

At the helm of GCL is Kevin Fortuna, who was formerly the CEO of Quigo, an advertising technology company that was sold to AOL Time Warner for $360 million in November 2007 and Philip James (pictured below), who prior to founding Snooth Media ?the IMBD for wine? in 2007, had sailed across the Atlantic, climbed Mt. Everest and graduated from Columbia?s Business School. James and Fortuna first crossed paths halfway through 2008. Fortuna was an early investor in Snooth and now sits on its Board of Directors. In late 2009, both men found themselves handing out the many different business cards for companies they sat on the boards of, founded or were advisors for. They realized they needed a unifying platform to bring together these companies and future companies. At this time, Fortuna wanted to begin a portfolio and James wanted to start a new wine related company, so soon enough, the idea behind The Gramercy Labs Collective was born.

They began working on the new wine related company, which became Lot 18, in February 2010 with 4 people and half a million in seed funding. Lot18 (which made our list of NYC?s Top 20 Start-Ups You Need to Know About) is a ?membership by invitation only website? that sells fine wines and specialty foods at discounted prices. The ?Gilt Groupe of wine? officially launched in November 2010 with a $2.8 million Series A round led by NYC-based VC firm FirstMark Capital. Recently, the company raised an additional $10 Million in Series B Funding, and in just six months since launch, Lot18 has grown from six to more than 70 employees with well over 200,000 subscribers. In the coming months, the team plans to expand into other epicurean pursuits such as food, wine accessories and vineyard destinations.

In early 2011, Fortuna and James launched their most recent company with serial entrepreneur David Wade and Editor Craig Marks of Billboard, Spin and Blender fame. Popdust is a site dedicated to becoming the premiere pop music online destination, much like Pitchfork and Stereogum are for the indie music scene. [See our full story on Popdust here.] Each Gramercy Labs startup is built on Popdust?s formula for success: essentially take a viable, profitable concept + hire a general manager with incredible business savvy (Wade) + pair with a creative, celebrity force (Marks) to establish a brand + build scalability through software.

GCL portfolio companies currently include: Snooth MediaLot18Popdust, and Fameball, a social gaming site dedicated to celebrity news and gossip that uses enviable proprietary technology to rank celebrity status. Each of the four current portfolio companies, deeply rooted in New York?s tech community, received early stage financing before being injected with Gramercy?s hypergrowth startup culture. Together, Fortuna and James leverage their expertise in creating scalable, data-driven organizations by integrating elements of distributed content, game theory, e-commerce, media and advertising. Fortuna leads the collective from the strategy, business development and fundraising side, while James, who has a masters from Oxford in Computational Chemistry leads the product and engineering side.

?What makes Gramercy different is that we try really hard to make sure every single person at our company feels more like an owner than an employee. Everyone at Gramercy has tons of autonomy, no set office hours, unlimited vacation and lots of resources. We believe that working for a Gramercy company should feel more like a mission or creating a work of art than a clock-punching job. If we do this right, excellence, efficiency and innovation will follow.?

-Kevin Fortuna

?People often talk about building nice places to work, here it?s part of our mission. We?re building companies of lasting value, and to do that we need to be able to hire and retain the smartest, most passionate people around,? says James. ?If that takes SF2 arcade consoles and day trips to Long Island wineries, then all the better.? The Gramercy Labs Collective isn?t something you apply to. (After all, you don?t apply to be a part of a family.) But if you think you?re a great fit for their family, and have a deep appreciation for wine, then both Fortuna and James want to hear from you.

Fortuna says the company must be a consumer-facing web technology that hits a ?passion point? in a rich market and has the potential to be #1 or #2 in that market. It?s also advantageous that the company be based in New York City.

?Most importantly,? says James, ?We want to be sure that we [himself and Fortuna] can give the company a unique advantage leveraging our skills and experience.?

While Fortuna and James sit on numerous boards and act as advisors to all their GLC companies, they only maintain ?day jobs? at Lot18 at the moment; Fortuna as CEO and James as its President. The two are investors and equity holders in all of the GLC companies. When asked where they see GCL in 5 years time, Fortuna responded:

?I hope Gramercy Labs will be known as a great place to start and develop a career as an entrepreneur. As much as anything, I hope we are known for measuring success the right way ? not just in terms of dollars and cents, but also by the personal connections we make and keep, by our reputation as a workplace, by building cool and useful products and services, and by doing the right thing by our investors and co-workers.?

-Kevin Fortuna

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/06/04/new-york-citys-gramercy-labs-collective-a-more-intimate-kind-of-startup-incubation/

the game season 4 episode 1 freddie mitchell simon chipmunk lebron james twitter jimmer fredette thomas tew rum issaquah school district the game tv show lasso of truth terrence j

New York City?s Gramercy Labs Collective: A more intimate kind of startup incubation

Today, growing a company is much like raising a family. Your first-born, your first angel round; your first failure, your second child; your first pivot, your first move to a new home; who to play the disciplinarian? Who to be soothing calm when the weather gets rough? Building something meaningful from the ground up is a great balancing act, and just like there?s no one right way to raise a family, there are an innumerable amount of ways to raise a company.

In the past few years, startling, industry-shifting success has come out of Paul Graham?s Y-Combinator in Silicon Valley. Since then, we?ve witnessed a number of innovative incubators such as Tech Stars, which was founded in Boulder by David Cohen and now has programs in Seattle, Boston and New York. David McClure?s 500 Start-Ups takes a similar YC approach to incubation, focusing on mentorship and early seed funding in exchange for a small equity stake. Prehype, an incubator that helps corporations create like startups, launched late last year with perhaps the most innovative approach yet: take Google?s 20% time and apply it to big companies. And this spring The Entrepreneur?s Round Table launched its own accelerator program, and it?s just announced its first 10 startups for its inaugural class in NYC.

In a time when New York City?s tech scene is thriving, enter Gramercy Labs, which launched officially in May 2011. One might call them an incubator, but that wouldn?t be providing due justice to the high level of involvement each of the founders takes in the startups. It?s best to call Gramercy Labs, founded by serial entrepreneurs Kevin Fortuna and Philip James, a startup collective. At its roots, Gramercy Labs aims to build disruptive media and e-commerce businesses around exceptional founding teams with a particular winning advantage in a proven market.

At the helm of GCL is Kevin Fortuna, who was formerly the CEO of Quigo, an advertising technology company that was sold to AOL Time Warner for $360 million in November 2007 and Philip James (pictured below), who prior to founding Snooth Media ?the IMBD for wine? in 2007, had sailed across the Atlantic, climbed Mt. Everest and graduated from Columbia?s Business School. James and Fortuna first crossed paths halfway through 2008. Fortuna was an early investor in Snooth and now sits on its Board of Directors. In late 2009, both men found themselves handing out the many different business cards for companies they sat on the boards of, founded or were advisors for. They realized they needed a unifying platform to bring together these companies and future companies. At this time, Fortuna wanted to begin a portfolio and James wanted to start a new wine related company, so soon enough, the idea behind The Gramercy Labs Collective was born.

They began working on the new wine related company, which became Lot 18, in February 2010 with 4 people and half a million in seed funding. Lot18 (which made our list of NYC?s Top 20 Start-Ups You Need to Know About) is a ?membership by invitation only website? that sells fine wines and specialty foods at discounted prices. The ?Gilt Groupe of wine? officially launched in November 2010 with a $2.8 million Series A round led by NYC-based VC firm FirstMark Capital. Recently, the company raised an additional $10 Million in Series B Funding, and in just six months since launch, Lot18 has grown from six to more than 70 employees with well over 200,000 subscribers. In the coming months, the team plans to expand into other epicurean pursuits such as food, wine accessories and vineyard destinations.

In early 2011, Fortuna and James launched their most recent company with serial entrepreneur David Wade and Editor Craig Marks of Billboard, Spin and Blender fame. Popdust is a site dedicated to becoming the premiere pop music online destination, much like Pitchfork and Stereogum are for the indie music scene. [See our full story on Popdust here.] Each Gramercy Labs startup is built on Popdust?s formula for success: essentially take a viable, profitable concept + hire a general manager with incredible business savvy (Wade) + pair with a creative, celebrity force (Marks) to establish a brand + build scalability through software.

GCL portfolio companies currently include: Snooth MediaLot18Popdust, and Fameball, a social gaming site dedicated to celebrity news and gossip that uses enviable proprietary technology to rank celebrity status. Each of the four current portfolio companies, deeply rooted in New York?s tech community, received early stage financing before being injected with Gramercy?s hypergrowth startup culture. Together, Fortuna and James leverage their expertise in creating scalable, data-driven organizations by integrating elements of distributed content, game theory, e-commerce, media and advertising. Fortuna leads the collective from the strategy, business development and fundraising side, while James, who has a masters from Oxford in Computational Chemistry leads the product and engineering side.

?What makes Gramercy different is that we try really hard to make sure every single person at our company feels more like an owner than an employee. Everyone at Gramercy has tons of autonomy, no set office hours, unlimited vacation and lots of resources. We believe that working for a Gramercy company should feel more like a mission or creating a work of art than a clock-punching job. If we do this right, excellence, efficiency and innovation will follow.?

-Kevin Fortuna

?People often talk about building nice places to work, here it?s part of our mission. We?re building companies of lasting value, and to do that we need to be able to hire and retain the smartest, most passionate people around,? says James. ?If that takes SF2 arcade consoles and day trips to Long Island wineries, then all the better.? The Gramercy Labs Collective isn?t something you apply to. (After all, you don?t apply to be a part of a family.) But if you think you?re a great fit for their family, and have a deep appreciation for wine, then both Fortuna and James want to hear from you.

Fortuna says the company must be a consumer-facing web technology that hits a ?passion point? in a rich market and has the potential to be #1 or #2 in that market. It?s also advantageous that the company be based in New York City.

?Most importantly,? says James, ?We want to be sure that we [himself and Fortuna] can give the company a unique advantage leveraging our skills and experience.?

While Fortuna and James sit on numerous boards and act as advisors to all their GLC companies, they only maintain ?day jobs? at Lot18 at the moment; Fortuna as CEO and James as its President. The two are investors and equity holders in all of the GLC companies. When asked where they see GCL in 5 years time, Fortuna responded:

?I hope Gramercy Labs will be known as a great place to start and develop a career as an entrepreneur. As much as anything, I hope we are known for measuring success the right way ? not just in terms of dollars and cents, but also by the personal connections we make and keep, by our reputation as a workplace, by building cool and useful products and services, and by doing the right thing by our investors and co-workers.?

-Kevin Fortuna

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Source: http://thenextweb.com/entrepreneur/2011/06/04/new-york-citys-gramercy-labs-collective-a-more-intimate-kind-of-startup-incubation/

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Hardware 24 - A Computex-Free Zone

Hardware 24 - A Computex-Free Zone

Posted on 1st Jun 2011 at 15:37 by bit-tech Staff with 4 comments

Paul is joined by Harry and Clive to talk about the latest in the world of PC hardware. This was before Paul jetted off to Computex 2011, so we're debating everything from Nvidia?s naming scheme to Intel?s latest chipset.

For example, why has Nvidia called its latest GPU the GeForce GTX 560? Surely that?s just confusing, what with the GeForce GTX 560 Ti? Also, what?s with the non-standard clock speeds for the GTX 560? The Zotac GeForce GTX 560 1GB Amp! is within the reference range of frequencies and yet it's faster than a stock-speed GTX 560 Ti 1GB, despite its supposedly lesser rank in Nvidia?s range.

We also moan about how this makes our jobs a lot harder, as it?s difficult to recommend one GPU over another without getting into some very techy discussion. Even we struggled to stay interested as we delved into GPU architectures, the merits of having more resources versus higher frequencies and which card is right for certain sizes of monitor. Sheesh. Maybe in future we?ll just avoid the issue and continue to recommend the MSI N560GTX-Ti Twin Frozr II/OC.

We also talk about Intel?s latest Z68 chipset. The hybrid graphics via Lucid Virtu isn?t great at the moment, but Smart Response is better.

Harry also likes the look of Intel?s 3D Tri-gate transistors, claiming that ?they will bring the rain? to AMD? in the face.? Also, here?s a much better explanation of Moore?s Law than we could manage.

Please leave any questions here, or email us at podcast@custompc.co.uk.

As ever, the bit-tech podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/bit-tech/blog/~3/UcFKfpXnEsY/

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Can Google Know Where the Gmail Attack Came from?

On Tuesday, Google revealed a new spate of attacks aimed at Gmail users, and said the attacks appeared to have come from Jinan, China. The new attacks illustrate the difficulty of stopping hackers who use simple "social engineering" tricks to steal personal data, and they raise questions about how such attacks can ever be traced with certainty.

Personal accounts belonging to U.S. government officials, Chinese political activists, military personnel, and journalists were targeted, the company said in a blog post. Google has pointed to Chinese hackers before?in early 2010 it said attackers from the country had stolen its intellectual property and tried to access the Gmail accounts of human rights activists. The Chinese foreign ministry has vigorously rejected the idea that the Chinese government was responsible for the attacks.

Google says the attackers did not exploit any security holes in the company's e-mail service. Instead, they involved tricking users into sharing their log-in information. Carefully tailored messages, apparently written by a friend or colleague, were used to direct victims to a fake log-in page where their details were captured. This technique, known as "spear phishing," was also used recently to steal information from the prominent security company RSA?information that may have been used to perform further attacks on the company's customers.

Experts say this type of attack is hard to stop; unlike other types of attacks, there is no technical fix. "I think of incidents like this more as a series of successes and failures on the part of the attacker," says Nart Villeneuve, a senior threat researcher at Trend Micro, which makes antivirus, antispam, and Internet security software. "It's more of a campaign than it is a single attack."

Before joining Trend Micro, Villeneuve was heavily involved in tracking attacks on human-rights activists?he was part of the group that revealed a complex hacking operation that spied on figures including the Dalai Lama.

Villeneuve also says it's hard to identify the real source of this type of attack in order to cut it off. To pinpoint the source of the recent incidents, Google likely looked at a variety of clues, he says. The company could examine the IP addresses used to access e-mail accounts, which can reveal a user's location. The company could also look at the servers used to host fake log-in pages and collect users' personal information.

But this alone isn't enough, Villeneuve says. Attackers can easily take over computers located somewhere else, and use them to launch an attack. "Making your attack seem like it came from somewhere else is not hard," he says.

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Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=fe1c040a5e8d7a3d86c16e07bf15bfaa

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