Skype video chat coming to Facebook? The code seems to be there [TNW Industry]

Could we be about to see Skype video chat built into the Facebook website? One app developer claims he?s found code that points to that very feature.

Back in September there were whispers that ?Deep integration? between Facebook and Skype was on its way. That seemed to be borne out by Skype introducing support for Facebook contacts in its latest beta release. What making Skype calls from Facebook though?

In a blog post today, Facebook app developer Tal Ater claims to have stumbled upon a Javascript object on the Facebook website called VideoChat with a number of properties that specifically mention Skype.

Facebook was previously reported to be testing a video chat feature back in May 2009, when similar code (not featuring mentions of Skype) was found. At the time Facebook said it had no plans to release the feature to users.

The new code (which can found on Facebook?s servers here and mirrored by Ater here), features mentions of SkypeIDs, a pretty clear signal that Skype integration is at least being considered. The code is apparently only loaded sporadically, leading Ater to speculate that Facebook is ?bucket testing? the code across a small section of its userbase.

We?ve contacted Facebook for comment on this and will let you know when we hear more.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://thenextweb.com/industry/2010/11/28/skype-video-chat-coming-to-facebook-the-code-seems-to-be-there/

cyber monday deals 2010 blac chyna bowl projections big 12 championship tickets

Weekend Open Forum: Where do you buy online?

Tech enthusiasts were among the first consumers targeted by dedicated online retailers and since brick and mortars charged hefty margins, online shopping was made even more attractive from the get go. Early etailers included the ubiquitous Newegg, which now exceeds $2 billion a year in sales, Buy.com, TigerDirect, and many sites dedicated to photography and audio equipment. As you might recall, PC manufacturers like Dell and Gateway were also quick to take full advantage of online ordering and made a huge asset out of it.

As online shopping became more mainstream, and for many a necessity, dozens of star retailers on many different categories have emerged. You have Zappos for buying shoes, Steam/Impulse for games, iTunes for music, Expedia/Orbitz or any other of the numerous travel sites, Fandango for movie tickets, and the list goes on. Amazon has also remained a pioneer in the industry and today you can buy nearly anything you could possibly want from their site, either direct or from smaller retailers using Amazon's impeccable logistics.


As the holiday shopping season gets rolling, our question for you is: How much do you rely on online retailers and where do you prefer to buy stuff? Not only tech, but things in general like clothes, gifts for family and friends, food, flowers, anything you are used to buy online these days. Even if it's a local store, we want to hear about it. Discuss.

* Graph used for illustration purposes only. Source: Lifehacker, Permuto, US Census Bureau.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41326-weekend-open-forum-where-do-you-buy-online.html

fanny brice randy shannon walmart cyber monday bryan cranston

Health Law Faces Threat of Undercut From Courts

The judge, Henry E. Hudson of Federal District Court in Richmond, has promised to rule by the end of the year on the constitutionality of the law?s requirement that most Americans obtain insurance, which takes effect in 2014.

Although administration officials remain confident that it is constitutionally valid to compel people to obtain health insurance, they also acknowledge that Judge Hudson?s preliminary opinions and comments could presage the first ruling against the law.

?He?s asked a number of questions that express skepticism,? said one administration official who is examining whether a ruling against part of the law would undermine other provisions. ?We have been trying to think through that set of questions,? said the official, who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case freely.

While many newly empowered Republican lawmakers have vowed to repeal the health care law in Congress, a more immediate threat may rest in the federal courts in cases brought by Republican officials in dozens of states. Not only would an adverse ruling confuse Americans and attack the law?s underpinnings, it could frustrate the steps hospitals, insurers and government agencies are taking to carry out the law.

?Any ruling against the act creates another P.R. problem for the Democrats, who need to resell the law to insured Americans,? said Jonathan Oberlander, a University of North Carolina political scientist, who wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine last week that such a ruling ?could add to health care reform?s legitimacy problem.?

So far, there has been only one ruling on the merits among nearly two dozen legal challenges to the health care act. Last month, a federal district judge in Michigan upheld the law. But another judge, Roger Vinson of Federal District Court in Pensacola, Fla., has joined Judge Hudson in writing preliminary opinions that seemingly accept key arguments made by state officials challenging the law.

Unlike the judge in Michigan, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, both Judge Hudson and Judge Vinson were appointed by Republican presidents.

?We are not operating under the assumption that those two judges are inevitably going to rule against us,? the administration official said. ?But of course we?re planning for the possibility that judges will reach different conclusions.?

The novel question before the courts is whether the government can require citizens to buy a commercial product like health insurance.

Because the Supreme Court has said the commerce clause of the Constitution allows Congress to regulate ?activities that substantially affect interstate commerce,? the judges must decide whether the failure to obtain insurance can be defined as an ?activity.?

Lawyers on both sides expect the issue eventually to be decided by the Supreme Court. But the appellate path to that decision could take two years. In the meantime, any district court judge who rules against the law would have to decide whether to block enforcement of one or more of its provisions, potentially creating bureaucratic chaos.

Such a decision would prompt a flurry of appeals, as the Justice Department almost certainly would ask the judge and then the appellate courts to stay, or delay, the injunction pending the outcome of higher court rulings.

Administration officials, as well as some lawyers for the plaintiffs, agree that Judge Hudson seems unlikely, based on his comments from the bench, to enjoin the entire law. The judge volunteered at a hearing last month that his courtroom was ?just one brief stop on the way to the Supreme Court.?

If he does not enjoin the law, the immediate impact of a finding against the insurance mandate would be limited because that provision, and others that might fall with it, do not take effect for more than three years.

Virginia?s attorney general, Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II, a Republican who filed the Richmond lawsuit, argues that if Judge Hudson rejects the insurance requirement he should instantly invalidate the entire act on a nationwide basis.

Mr. Cuccinelli and the plaintiffs in the Florida case, who include attorneys general or governors from 20 states, have emphasized that Congressional bill writers did not include a ?severability clause? that would explicitly protect other parts of the sprawling law if certain provisions were struck down.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=7060646b65027ec99a53ad6b31868745

juan manuel marquez vs michael katsidis steven pieper ernest borgnine cwtv

Blog - Card Trick Leads to New Bound on Data Compression

Here's a card trick to impress your friends. Give a deck of cards to a pal and ask him or her to cut the deck, draw six cards and list their colours. You then immediately name the cards that have been drawn.

Magic? Not quite. Instead, it's the next best thing: mathematics. The key is to arrange the deck in advance so that the sequence of the card colours follows a specific pattern called a binary De Bruijn cycle. A De Bruijn sequence is a set from an alphabet in which every possible subsequence appears exactly once.

So when a deck of cards meets this criteria, it uniquely defines any sequences of six consecutive cards. All you have to do to perform the trick is memorise the sequences.

Usually these kinds of tricks come about as the result of some new development in mathematical thinking. Today, Travis Gagie from the University of Chile in Santiago turns the tables. He says that this trick has led him to a new mathematical bound on data compression

Gagie achieves this new bound by considering a related trick. Instead of pre-arranging the cards, you shuffle the pack and then ask your friend to draw seven cards. He or she then lists the cards' colours, replaces them in the pack and cuts the deck. You then examine the deck and say which cards were drawn.

This time you're relying on probability to get the right answer. "It is not hard to show that the probability of two septuples of cards having the same colours in the same order is at most 1/128," say Gagie.

He goes on to consider the probability of correctly predicting the sequence of cards pulled at random from a deck of a certain size and after a few extra steps, finds a lower bound on the probability of doing this correctly.

This turns out to be closely related to various problems of data compression and leads to a lower bound than has been found by any other means.

"We know of no previous lower bounds comparable to [this one]," he says.

That's impressive, a really neat trick in itself.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1011.4609: Bounds from a Card Trick

Print Favorite Share facebook twitter
-->

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.technologyreview.com/click.phdo?i=023b7ec7200686447ca34d68f025ac14

bee movie jenni lyn watson best buy cyber monday sugar bowl 2011

As San Francisco?s Mayor Departs, a Handful of Votes Will Usher in a New One

Six.

Already accustomed to some of the most combative ? and liberal ? politics in the land, San Franciscans have recently been rapt by a palace intrigue as to who will run the city, a debate set off by the recent election of the city?s popular two-term mayor, Gavin Newsom, as California?s lieutenant governor.

Mr. Newsom is due to step down in early January, leaving the job of naming his successor to the city?s Board of Supervisors, a highly opinionated 11-member group whose political beliefs range from left-leaning to leftist. All are Democrats, but they come in various shades of blue, including a bloc of five progressives who view traditional Democratic positions as too conservative (a navy blue, perhaps); four moderates (who are solidly teal); and two political wild cards (sea foam, anyone?).

None of those add up to a majority, which does not bode well for a speedy transition of power, say veterans of the local political scene.

?There seems to me to be millions of ways to get to six,? said Peter Ragone, a Democratic political consultant and an adviser to Mr. Newsom. ?And none of them actually work.?

At stake is not only the spacious mayoral digs in San Francisco?s ornate City Hall, but also the possibility of running the city for nearly a year until voters formally elect a new mayor for a four-year term next November. It is also a position that, because of the city?s role as conservative punching bag, has often put its occupants in the national limelight, including Mr. Newsom, who found fame as an early supporter of same-sex marriage, and Dianne Feinstein, who has followed her time as mayor with a long career in the United States Senate.

The job is not necessarily going to be fun. The city is wrestling with an estimated $400 million budget deficit, a stagnant economy, potentially crippling public pension payments and one of the highest costs of living in the nation.

?You?re not going to be welcomed into the job of interim mayor as a conquering hero,? said Tony Winnicker, a mayoral spokesman. ?It?s a job fraught with peril.?

Mr. Newsom, who has often tangled with the current board, even injected a bit of his own political maneuvering into the process when he recently suggested that he might delay his inauguration as lieutenant governor ? planned for Jan. 3 ? for several days to allow four new supervisors to be sworn in, thus creating, in his opinion, a more moderate board. (The board cannot formally name a new boss until the old one steps down, though discussions about the process are already under way at weekly board meetings.)

Mr. Newsom has since backed away from that possibility. Well, almost.

?He?s 99 percent likely to be sworn in,? Mr. Winnicker said.

Amid all that uncertainty, the list of potential candidates has continued to grow, and it includes some stolid, serious caretakers (Ed Harrington, the city?s public utility chief, for instance) and overtly sentimental and stylish characters like former Mayor Willie L. Brown.

Then there are the members of the board, several of whom harbor mayoral ambitions, including Supervisor Bevan Dufty, a moderate from the gay-friendly Castro district, who has already declared his candidacy for the 2011 election.

One name recently floated was that of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a well-known progressive, outspoken gay-rights advocate, stand-up comedian and former member and president of the board who has run unsuccessfully for mayor twice before.

Mr. Ammiano, a San Francisco resident who was elected to the Assembly in 2008, declined to comment. But Mr. Ragone said that Mr. Ammiano could be elected with the support of the board?s five-person progressive bloc ? plus a moderate ? to make it to six. But he added, ?it?s a risk for him,? as he could be appointed by the board and then lose in the fall.

That is also the calculation under way for the city?s progressive bloc, which has slowly and steadily built political power in the city over the last decade, said Corey Cook, a politics professor at the University of San Francisco. In 2003, progressives nearly elected one of their own, Matt Gonzales, as mayor, but he lost to Mr. Newsom.

Now Mr. Newsom is leaving, Mr. Cook said, ?and the question is whether this is really the opportunity for the progressives on the board to finally find a way of electing a mayor.?

Also complicating the process is the very nature of the board, a cauldron of personalities that Mr. Cook likened to the Supreme Court. ?It?s just hard to imagine there being any consensus,? he said.

Indeed, it has already taken two meetings ? complete with long and sometimes oddball public comments ? to decide the rules for picking the succession procedures, which will allow each board member to nominate one person for the job ? any voting resident of the city ? but forbids them from nominating themselves. If they are nominated by another board member, sitting supervisors will be asked to leave the board?s chambers and be sequestered without a laptop or cellphone, so as to prevent influence peddling or vote trading. (Or Web surfing, for that matter.)

The man overseeing that process, the board president?s, David Chiu, said he was impressed so far by the board?s professionalism in taking up the succession issue, noting that the votes on the procedures were all unanimous.

That streak, however, is likely to be broken when actual nominees are being voted on. A long stalemate could put Mr. Chiu in the job, at least temporarily; under the city charter, the board president is named acting mayor in the event an interim mayor is not selected.

But last week, Mr. Chiu would not comment on his own ambitions, saying he only wanted the best for the city.

?I think the most important thing is to ensure public safety for the city, readiness in case of any emergencies and to make sure the city government continues to function,? Mr. Chiu said, sounding vaguely mayoral. ?And working with my colleagues to ensure that an orderly transition occurs.?

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2d157d17aaf9be3cb3c789a77e614cfd

sugar bowl 2011 bcs projections uncle buck oklahoma state football

As San Francisco?s Mayor Departs, a Handful of Votes Will Usher in a New One

Six.

Already accustomed to some of the most combative ? and liberal ? politics in the land, San Franciscans have recently been rapt by a palace intrigue as to who will run the city, a debate set off by the recent election of the city?s popular two-term mayor, Gavin Newsom, as California?s lieutenant governor.

Mr. Newsom is due to step down in early January, leaving the job of naming his successor to the city?s Board of Supervisors, a highly opinionated 11-member group whose political beliefs range from left-leaning to leftist. All are Democrats, but they come in various shades of blue, including a bloc of five progressives who view traditional Democratic positions as too conservative (a navy blue, perhaps); four moderates (who are solidly teal); and two political wild cards (sea foam, anyone?).

None of those add up to a majority, which does not bode well for a speedy transition of power, say veterans of the local political scene.

?There seems to me to be millions of ways to get to six,? said Peter Ragone, a Democratic political consultant and an adviser to Mr. Newsom. ?And none of them actually work.?

At stake is not only the spacious mayoral digs in San Francisco?s ornate City Hall, but also the possibility of running the city for nearly a year until voters formally elect a new mayor for a four-year term next November. It is also a position that, because of the city?s role as conservative punching bag, has often put its occupants in the national limelight, including Mr. Newsom, who found fame as an early supporter of same-sex marriage, and Dianne Feinstein, who has followed her time as mayor with a long career in the United States Senate.

The job is not necessarily going to be fun. The city is wrestling with an estimated $400 million budget deficit, a stagnant economy, potentially crippling public pension payments and one of the highest costs of living in the nation.

?You?re not going to be welcomed into the job of interim mayor as a conquering hero,? said Tony Winnicker, a mayoral spokesman. ?It?s a job fraught with peril.?

Mr. Newsom, who has often tangled with the current board, even injected a bit of his own political maneuvering into the process when he recently suggested that he might delay his inauguration as lieutenant governor ? planned for Jan. 3 ? for several days to allow four new supervisors to be sworn in, thus creating, in his opinion, a more moderate board. (The board cannot formally name a new boss until the old one steps down, though discussions about the process are already under way at weekly board meetings.)

Mr. Newsom has since backed away from that possibility. Well, almost.

?He?s 99 percent likely to be sworn in,? Mr. Winnicker said.

Amid all that uncertainty, the list of potential candidates has continued to grow, and it includes some stolid, serious caretakers (Ed Harrington, the city?s public utility chief, for instance) and overtly sentimental and stylish characters like former Mayor Willie L. Brown.

Then there are the members of the board, several of whom harbor mayoral ambitions, including Supervisor Bevan Dufty, a moderate from the gay-friendly Castro district, who has already declared his candidacy for the 2011 election.

One name recently floated was that of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a well-known progressive, outspoken gay-rights advocate, stand-up comedian and former member and president of the board who has run unsuccessfully for mayor twice before.

Mr. Ammiano, a San Francisco resident who was elected to the Assembly in 2008, declined to comment. But Mr. Ragone said that Mr. Ammiano could be elected with the support of the board?s five-person progressive bloc ? plus a moderate ? to make it to six. But he added, ?it?s a risk for him,? as he could be appointed by the board and then lose in the fall.

That is also the calculation under way for the city?s progressive bloc, which has slowly and steadily built political power in the city over the last decade, said Corey Cook, a politics professor at the University of San Francisco. In 2003, progressives nearly elected one of their own, Matt Gonzales, as mayor, but he lost to Mr. Newsom.

Now Mr. Newsom is leaving, Mr. Cook said, ?and the question is whether this is really the opportunity for the progressives on the board to finally find a way of electing a mayor.?

Also complicating the process is the very nature of the board, a cauldron of personalities that Mr. Cook likened to the Supreme Court. ?It?s just hard to imagine there being any consensus,? he said.

Indeed, it has already taken two meetings ? complete with long and sometimes oddball public comments ? to decide the rules for picking the succession procedures, which will allow each board member to nominate one person for the job ? any voting resident of the city ? but forbids them from nominating themselves. If they are nominated by another board member, sitting supervisors will be asked to leave the board?s chambers and be sequestered without a laptop or cellphone, so as to prevent influence peddling or vote trading. (Or Web surfing, for that matter.)

The man overseeing that process, the board president?s, David Chiu, said he was impressed so far by the board?s professionalism in taking up the succession issue, noting that the votes on the procedures were all unanimous.

That streak, however, is likely to be broken when actual nominees are being voted on. A long stalemate could put Mr. Chiu in the job, at least temporarily; under the city charter, the board president is named acting mayor in the event an interim mayor is not selected.

But last week, Mr. Chiu would not comment on his own ambitions, saying he only wanted the best for the city.

?I think the most important thing is to ensure public safety for the city, readiness in case of any emergencies and to make sure the city government continues to function,? Mr. Chiu said, sounding vaguely mayoral. ?And working with my colleagues to ensure that an orderly transition occurs.?

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2d157d17aaf9be3cb3c789a77e614cfd

best buy cyber monday sugar bowl 2011 bcs projections uncle buck

Google accidentally blocks mobile porn searches

Users recently noticed that Google's mobile search stopped serving up unfiltered search results, and a flood of complaints to the company's support forums followed. Earlier this week, many mobile users found that they could no longer turn off SafeSearch, which blocks web pages containing explicit sexual content, when searching with Google, according to BNET.

After two days of complaints, a Google employee stated that the company is aware of the issue. Then users began to complain about the delays in support. The next day, engineers found the problem and started rolling out a fix that could "take a few hours to complete."

The problem was widespread and extended not only to Google's own Android phones, but also to Apple's iPhone and Research in Motion's BlackBerry. Of course, some users speculated that the action was intentional and Google wanted to censor search results. Most realized that this argument was invalid, given that if you switched to the normal version of the search engine everything worked just fine; the issue only affected the mobile version.

It's good news that Google fixed the problem in just a few days. Nevertheless, users need to remember that relying solely on the search giant for all our Internet needs is not a good idea.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41322-google-accidentally-blocks-mobile-porn-searches.html

ernest borgnine cwtv bee movie jenni lyn watson

Chrome extension and Kinect control the browser with gestures

A group of students at the MIT Media Lab Fluid Interfaces Group, devoted to move UI design past the typical keyboard-and-mouse interface, has turned the Kinect motion controller into a tool for Web browsing. They wrote an extension for Google Chrome called DepthJS (yes, it uses Javascript) so that surfers can manipulate the browser with just gestures.

The group has demonstrated fairly simple website navigation in their video, embedded below (via Engadget). Making a fist is for selecting while a swatting motion allows scrolling.

"DepthJS is a web browser extension that allows any any web page to interact with the Microsoft Kinect via Javascript," according to the video's description. "Navigating the web is only one application of the framework we built - that is, we envision all sorts of applications that run in the browser, from games to specific utilities for specific sites. The great part is that now web developers who specialize in Javascript can work with the Kinect without having to learn any special languages or code. We believe this will allow a new set of interactions beyond what we first developed."

For those of you that came here just to watch the video, here's a bonus one:

In the video above, the Munich-based software company Evoluce shows Windows 7 applications being controlled through Kinect. There's multitouch support, which we've seen before, based on the company's Multitouch Input Management (MIM) driver for Kinect. The user can easily zoom and resize images as well as draw using two hands at once.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://www.techspot.com/news/41320-chrome-extension-and-kinect-control-the-browser-with-gestures.html

jenni lyn watson best buy cyber monday sugar bowl 2011 bcs projections

As San Francisco?s Mayor Departs, a Handful of Votes Will Usher in a New One

Six.

Already accustomed to some of the most combative ? and liberal ? politics in the land, San Franciscans have recently been rapt by a palace intrigue as to who will run the city, a debate set off by the recent election of the city?s popular two-term mayor, Gavin Newsom, as California?s lieutenant governor.

Mr. Newsom is due to step down in early January, leaving the job of naming his successor to the city?s Board of Supervisors, a highly opinionated 11-member group whose political beliefs range from left-leaning to leftist. All are Democrats, but they come in various shades of blue, including a bloc of five progressives who view traditional Democratic positions as too conservative (a navy blue, perhaps); four moderates (who are solidly teal); and two political wild cards (sea foam, anyone?).

None of those add up to a majority, which does not bode well for a speedy transition of power, say veterans of the local political scene.

?There seems to me to be millions of ways to get to six,? said Peter Ragone, a Democratic political consultant and an adviser to Mr. Newsom. ?And none of them actually work.?

At stake is not only the spacious mayoral digs in San Francisco?s ornate City Hall, but also the possibility of running the city for nearly a year until voters formally elect a new mayor for a four-year term next November. It is also a position that, because of the city?s role as conservative punching bag, has often put its occupants in the national limelight, including Mr. Newsom, who found fame as an early supporter of same-sex marriage, and Dianne Feinstein, who has followed her time as mayor with a long career in the United States Senate.

The job is not necessarily going to be fun. The city is wrestling with an estimated $400 million budget deficit, a stagnant economy, potentially crippling public pension payments and one of the highest costs of living in the nation.

?You?re not going to be welcomed into the job of interim mayor as a conquering hero,? said Tony Winnicker, a mayoral spokesman. ?It?s a job fraught with peril.?

Mr. Newsom, who has often tangled with the current board, even injected a bit of his own political maneuvering into the process when he recently suggested that he might delay his inauguration as lieutenant governor ? planned for Jan. 3 ? for several days to allow four new supervisors to be sworn in, thus creating, in his opinion, a more moderate board. (The board cannot formally name a new boss until the old one steps down, though discussions about the process are already under way at weekly board meetings.)

Mr. Newsom has since backed away from that possibility. Well, almost.

?He?s 99 percent likely to be sworn in,? Mr. Winnicker said.

Amid all that uncertainty, the list of potential candidates has continued to grow, and it includes some stolid, serious caretakers (Ed Harrington, the city?s public utility chief, for instance) and overtly sentimental and stylish characters like former Mayor Willie L. Brown.

Then there are the members of the board, several of whom harbor mayoral ambitions, including Supervisor Bevan Dufty, a moderate from the gay-friendly Castro district, who has already declared his candidacy for the 2011 election.

One name recently floated was that of Assemblyman Tom Ammiano, a well-known progressive, outspoken gay-rights advocate, stand-up comedian and former member and president of the board who has run unsuccessfully for mayor twice before.

Mr. Ammiano, a San Francisco resident who was elected to the Assembly in 2008, declined to comment. But Mr. Ragone said that Mr. Ammiano could be elected with the support of the board?s five-person progressive bloc ? plus a moderate ? to make it to six. But he added, ?it?s a risk for him,? as he could be appointed by the board and then lose in the fall.

That is also the calculation under way for the city?s progressive bloc, which has slowly and steadily built political power in the city over the last decade, said Corey Cook, a politics professor at the University of San Francisco. In 2003, progressives nearly elected one of their own, Matt Gonzales, as mayor, but he lost to Mr. Newsom.

Now Mr. Newsom is leaving, Mr. Cook said, ?and the question is whether this is really the opportunity for the progressives on the board to finally find a way of electing a mayor.?

Also complicating the process is the very nature of the board, a cauldron of personalities that Mr. Cook likened to the Supreme Court. ?It?s just hard to imagine there being any consensus,? he said.

Indeed, it has already taken two meetings ? complete with long and sometimes oddball public comments ? to decide the rules for picking the succession procedures, which will allow each board member to nominate one person for the job ? any voting resident of the city ? but forbids them from nominating themselves. If they are nominated by another board member, sitting supervisors will be asked to leave the board?s chambers and be sequestered without a laptop or cellphone, so as to prevent influence peddling or vote trading. (Or Web surfing, for that matter.)

The man overseeing that process, the board president?s, David Chiu, said he was impressed so far by the board?s professionalism in taking up the succession issue, noting that the votes on the procedures were all unanimous.

That streak, however, is likely to be broken when actual nominees are being voted on. A long stalemate could put Mr. Chiu in the job, at least temporarily; under the city charter, the board president is named acting mayor in the event an interim mayor is not selected.

But last week, Mr. Chiu would not comment on his own ambitions, saying he only wanted the best for the city.

?I think the most important thing is to ensure public safety for the city, readiness in case of any emergencies and to make sure the city government continues to function,? Mr. Chiu said, sounding vaguely mayoral. ?And working with my colleagues to ensure that an orderly transition occurs.?

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=2d157d17aaf9be3cb3c789a77e614cfd

sugar bowl 2011 bcs projections uncle buck oklahoma state football

Skype video chat coming to Facebook? The code seems to be there [TNW Industry]

Could we be about to see Skype video chat built into the Facebook website? One app developer claims he?s found code that points to that very feature.

Back in September there were whispers that ?Deep integration? between Facebook and Skype was on its way. That seemed to be borne out by Skype introducing support for Facebook contacts in its latest beta release. What making Skype calls from Facebook though?

In a blog post today, Facebook app developer Tal Ater claims to have stumbled upon a Javascript object on the Facebook website called VideoChat with a number of properties that specifically mention Skype.

Facebook was previously reported to be testing a video chat feature back in May 2009, when similar code (not featuring mentions of Skype) was found. At the time Facebook said it had no plans to release the feature to users.

The new code (which can found on Facebook?s servers here and mirrored by Ater here), features mentions of SkypeIDs, a pretty clear signal that Skype integration is at least being considered. The code is apparently only loaded sporadically, leading Ater to speculate that Facebook is ?bucket testing? the code across a small section of its userbase.

We?ve contacted Facebook for comment on this and will let you know when we hear more.

Powered by WizardRSS | Best Membership Site Software

Source: http://thenextweb.com/industry/2010/11/28/skype-video-chat-coming-to-facebook-the-code-seems-to-be-there/

fanny brice randy shannon walmart cyber monday bryan cranston