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Thursday, May 3, 2012
Oswald?s Mill Audio: You've Never Heard Music Sound This Good [Video]
Facebook Helps Third-Party Mobile Apps Grow Today?So It Can Monetize Their Content With Ads Tomorrow
The fundamental misunderstanding of Facebook's mobile prospects is that it's?trying to compete with iOS and Android?for in-app payment revenue via HTML5. It's not. What Facebook really wants is the content produced by apps on every platform, which it can monetize with ads. Payments revenue?is a very nice bonus, but not critical.?That's why Facebook announced today that it's making money on mobile for everyone else by pouring traffic into their apps. Facebook says?it drove 160 million visitors and 1.1 billion visits to third-party apps last month, up from 60 million visitors and 320 million visits in February. And now?seven of the top 10 grossing iOS apps and six of the top Android apps integrate it to power discovery and virality.?By showing that it can drive traffic to mobile apps, devs will keep integrating Facebook and sending it news feed stories that the social network show ads next to.lindsay lohan on snl real housewives of disney awakenings phantom of the opera agoraphobia andrew lloyd webber obscura
Wednesday, May 2, 2012
When to Buy a Mac [Dealzmodo]
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Report: Press freedom holds steady worldwide
NEW YORK (AP) ? As decades-old authoritarian regimes crumbled or eased their grip in countries as widespread as Myanmar, Egypt, Libya and Tunisia, freedom of the press gained precarious new footholds last year, according to a survey by a watchdog group released Tuesday.
Freedom House's annual survey of freedom of the press around the world found that for the first time in eight years, global media freedom showed no overall decline. The report came out just before Thursday's observance of the U.N.-declared World Press Freedom Day.
As usual, Western democracies ranked high in the Washington-based group's freedom of the press report.
But Freedom House marked down the United States slightly for heavy-handed police crackdowns on journalists covering various Occupy Wall Street protests in 2011.
In January, Reporters Without Borders dropped its ranking of the United States to 47th in the world in its annual Press Freedom Index, due to the Occupy media suppression, from 20th in the world a year before.
Italy rose slightly in Freedom House's rankings as media magnate Silvio Berlusconi resigned as premier. Freedom House ranked Italy as only "partly free" due to Berlusconi's far-reaching influence, a rare example in Western Europe of a nation not rated as having a "free press."
Britain also was marked down slightly for riot-related press restrictions, and legal "super-injunctions" that bar the media from reporting the very existence of an injunction against coverage of celebrities and wealthy individuals.
The Arab Spring unleashed the media in nations such as Egypt, Tunisia and Libya, according to the report by Karin Deutsch Karlekar and Jennifer Dunham.
"The newly opened media environments in countries like Tunisia and Libya, while still tenuous and far from perfect, are critical for the future of democratic development in the region and must be nurtured and protected," Freedom House's president David J. Kramer said.
China and authoritarian nations in Africa and the Middle East censored news of the Arab Spring, Freedom House reported. In Uganda, Angola and Djibouti, "the authorities cracked down, sometimes violently, on journalists covering the demonstrations."
China, Russia, Iran and Venezuela are cited in Freedom House's report for "detaining and jailing critics, closing media outlets, and bringing cases against journalists."
State control of television and radio is a key means of media control in many nations including Russia, Venezuela, Zimbabwe, China and Vietnam, Freedom House said.
Several democracies degraded the environment for press freedom and were marked down in the report.
"Heightened harassment of journalists trying to cover protest movements contributed to a decline in Chile's status, from 'free' to 'partly free,'" Freedom House said.
Mexico, where dozens of media have been killed in the past decade amid a surge in drug gang violence, "continued to be one of world's most dangerous places for journalists," the report said. Mexico fell to the "not free" status in Freedom House's 2010 report.
"And following a sharp numerical slide in 2010, Hungary was downgraded to 'partly free' due to concerted efforts by the conservative government of Prime Minister Viktor Orban to seize control over the legal and regulatory framework for media,'" the report aid.
Of 197 countries surveyed on a wide variety of freedom of press issues, Freedom House found 66 nations rated "free," 72 "partly free" and 59 "not free."
Largely because of China, "which boasts the world's most sophisticated system of media repression," Freedom House found that 40.5 percent of the world's peoples live in a "not free" media environment, while 45 percent had a "partly free" press and just 14.5 live in counties with a "free press."
Freedom House listed eight nations as the "worst of the worst" for press freedom: Belarus, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Iran, North Korea, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.
Freedom House is a U.S.-based non-governmental organization that conducts research and advocacy on democracy, political freedom and human rights. It was founded in 1941, with first lady Eleanor Roosevelt and defeated Republican presidential candidate Wendell Willkie as its honorary chairpersons.
___
Online:
http://www.freedomhouse.org/article/freedom-press-2012-breakthroughs-and-pushback-middle-east
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Edwards trial: Aide's wife breaks down on stand
Cheri Young began to cry when asked why she went along with the cover-up of Edwards' affair.
The wife of an ex-aide to John Edwards broke down on the witness stand Monday as she recounted how the candidate asked the couple to hide an affair he was having and justified using wealthy donors' money to do it.
Skip to next paragraphTestifying at Edwards' campaign corruption trial, Cheri Young said she huddled around a phone in her Chapel Hill home during December 2007 with her husband, Andrew Young, and Edwards' pregnant mistress, Rielle Hunter.
On the call, Edwards emphasized the need to preserve his campaign and keep the affair from his cancer-stricken wife, Elizabeth, Cheri Young said. It was a couple weeks before the 2008 Iowa caucuses, and two suspicious tabloid reporters had already tracked Hunter from a doctor's appointment to the Youngs' home.
Edwards made the plan sound "as if it was for the good of the country," Cheri Young said.
Asked by a prosecutor why she went along with it, Young put her hands together, pressed them to her chin and bowed her head as if in prayer. As she began to weep, U.S. District Court Judge Catherine C. Eagles dismissed the jury to give her time to compose herself.
About 25 feet away, Edwards sat back in his chair and put two fingers to his pursed lips. As Young dabbed her tears with a tissue, the former U.S. Senator glanced at his watch.
Once the jury returned, Young answered the question.
"I felt like everything had been dumped in my lap," she said. "Everybody was on board but me. ... I didn't want the campaign to explode and for it to be my fault. I ultimately decided to live with a lie."
During the call, Edwards suggested that it would only be a one-day story if Andrew Young took responsibility for the baby.
"'Nobody cares about two staffers having an affair,'" Young recalled Edwards saying.
Hunter had earlier been paid as a videographer by one of the organizations linked with Edwards, who is accused of deliberately using money from two wealthy donors to hide Hunter as he sought the White House.
Edwards has pleaded not guilty to six counts related to campaign-finance violations. He faces up to 30 years in prison and $1.5 million in fines if convicted on all counts.
At issue are payments from a wealthy Texas lawyer, Fred Baron, who served as Edwards' campaign-finance chairman and an elderly heiress, Rachel "Bunny" Mellon. Andrew Young, who testified last week under an immunity agreement, has acknowledged that he kept about $1 million in payments from the two campaign supporters.
Earlier in her testimony, Cheri Young said she had doubts about taking the "Bunny money" and using it to cover up the affair. She said Edwards hatched the plan to have her deposit the money into an account controlled by her and her husband. Concerned about violating the federal $2,300 limit on individual campaign contributions, Young said she reluctantly agreed after insisting on hearing Edwards himself say the scheme was legal.
"I heard Mr. John Edwards tell me on the phone that he checked with the campaign lawyers and that this was legal," she said.
Cheri Young took the witness stand late Friday after a full week of testimony by her husband, a former fundraiser and close aide to Edwards.
Though Andrew Young testified last week that the couple spent much of the money provided by the donors to build his family's $1.5 million home, the couple also supported the pregnant mistress out of their checking account, paying for her medical care, a BMW, a $2,700-a-month rental house and a monthly allowance of thousands of dollars in cash.
Cheri Young said she agreed to handle the money because if the public found out about Edwards' affair with Hunter, the campaign and her husband's job were in danger.
"I cannot tell you how disgusted I was. Why me? This was my husband's fight," she said. "Now I had to fix it."
After reporters for the National Enquirer tracked Hunter down in December 2007 and the Youngs agreed for Andrew to issue a public statement accepting paternity, they embarked with the pregnant mistress on a cross-country odyssey of private jets and luxury retreats, all paid for by Baron.
Eventually they settled into a $20,000-a-month rental mansion Baron paid for in Santa Barbara, Calif. Cheri Young said Hunter chose the location because that was where her "healer and spiritual advisor" lived.
Cheri Young said Hunter also had her write checks totaling thousands of dollars to the New Age healer, Bob McGovern, whom the mistress said she wanted to be with her when she gave birth.
There was also tension between the Youngs' family and Hunter.
"We were not allowed to touch the baby," Cheri Young testified. "My kids were not allowed anywhere they might breathe on the baby."
Edwards had also stopped returning the Andrew's calls, prompting the Youngs to fly to Texas to meet Baron at his home. They met with Baron and his wife, Lisa Blue.
Cheri Young said she told Baron she wanted to go home, but he told them they could never return to North Carolina or live close to the politician. Baron's wife, a lawyer and psychologist, had recently visited the Edwardses and she advised them to steer clear of Elizabeth, who was angry with the Youngs over their role in her husband's affair.
"'Mrs. Edwards is not well," Young recounted Blue as saying. "'I'm a doctor and she is not mentally healthy. There is a very good chance she would be a harm to you and your family.'"
Blue is expected to testify later in the trial. Baron died of cancer in October 2008.
After a mid-afternoon break, a lawyer for Cheri Young told the judge she was suffering from a migraine. The judge dismissed the jury early, telling them Young was expected to retake the stand Tuesday.
After Young completes her testimony, the next witness called by prosecutors could be Josh Brumberger, a young aide who was with Edwards on the night in 2006 when Hunter walked up to the candidate in the bar of a New York hotel and introduced herself. Brumberger was later pushed aside by Edwards after he tried to dissuade his boss from continuing with the affair.
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