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  • “My Boobs Are More Important Than The Law” – Model

    Sophie Dalzell is a 20-year-old topless model from Manchester, England, whom in which skipped a court date where she was charged of drunkenly assaulting two female police officers when flying to Belgium to get breast augmentation surgery back in January.

    “My boobs and my appearance are more important than the law,” Dalzell, whose job it is to appear on late night, adult TV programs, told The Manchester Evening News.

     “My career depends on it.”

    Dalzell already has 11 convictions stacked up against her, charges concerning various assaults and vandalism.

    The self-proclaimed glamour model is protesting her court-ordered 400 hours of community service. Her reasons being that picking up trash is “too hard and tiring.”

    For Dalzell, her workload consists of two workdays per week, of which she is paid $850 per photo shoot, “and the rest of the time I just chill out.” “It’s not fair”, she said, in regards to the court forcing her to clean up trash and rake leaves for free.

    The weight of carrying out community service for Dalzell is too much; she says “I hate everything about it,” and “it’s a waste of a full day and it’s just too hard for me.”

    Picking up litter is a no go for Dalzell – she instead plans to spend her summer on the resort island of Ibiza, and “deal with the consequences when I get back.”

    Dalzell already completed half of the 400 hours she was ordered to perform in 2012 for that drunken assault pre-boob job. Now that she’s over the hump, the remaining 180 hours are chipping away at her tolerance for order.

    Despite her convictions, Sophie says “I haven’t done anything wrong,” and that the courts are “just jealous” because she escaped the rural county of Cumbria and has “done something with my life.”

    Image via Twitter

     

  • True Blood Returns This Sunday For Final Season

    It’s summertime and with the hot weather and lazy days returns the HBO blood-filled drama True Blood. However, by the end of this summer, we won’t see any more new episodes. The seventh and final season of the series that pits vampires versus humans begins this Sunday at 9 pm.

    Entertainment Weekly sat down for an interview with Anna Paquin and Stephen Moyer (Sookie Stackhouse and Vampire Bill). The pair, who have become estranged lovers on the show, got married in real life in 2010. Then had twins in 2012.

    They’re on the cover of this week’s EW, lying in a wooden coffin. Paquin is in the buff, and Moyer has his fangs out.

    Paquin spoke about how much playing Sookie Stackhouse has changed her life, “Because it has lasted ­seven years and because of the relationships, not just between us but the way they all evolved as a family, it’s been extraordinary to have that experience that is completely life-changing in all of the best possible ways — and with the person you want to spend the rest of your life with. We will always have this.”

    Season 6 ended with our heroine Sookie in the arms of Alcide. However, Bill is clearly still in the picture and thinks that Sookie needs his protection from the hoards of infected Hep-V vampires. Of course, Alcide thinks that he can protect Sookie and doesn’t take kindly to Bill thinking otherwise. Sookie has already sworn off Bill, and she refuses her former lover’s help.

    Joe Manganiello, who plays Alcide, spoke about the upcoming season, “The town is under attack, everyone has kind of retreated into Bon Temps and is hunkered down trying to defend themselves against these rabid, Hep-V vampires, so [Alcide] is now a part of the town.” He added, “There will be some sexiness going on at Gran’s house, and lots of blood and death and craziness — nobody stays happy for too long in Bon Temps.”

    From the trailer, it looks like all the effort that both humans and vampires have attempted to make in the past six seasons trying to live in a peaceful world together, has been shattered. Now, with the hungry infected vampires aiming towards Bon Temps, a blood bath will surely follow.

    Image via True Blood, Facebook

  • Bowe Bergdahl: Was It A Mistake To Free Him?

    Obama is facing backlash for his decision to free Army Sergeant Bowe Bergdahl in exchange for the release of five top Taliban leaders from Guantanamo. The initial reaction was relief, but now many are questioning the President’s decision.

    Bergdahl had been in Taliban custody for almost five years before his release. When Bergdahl was released on Saturday, soldiers came forward and stated that Bergdahl abandoned his Army unit in Afghanistan in 2009 during a combat deployment.

    Bergdahl disappeared from his observation post on June 2009. Three men from his 30-man platoon said that they found his night-vision goggles, body armor, helmet, and rifle neatly stacked inside his tent.

    Before his disappearance, several soldiers said that Bergdahl had expressed his dissatisfaction with the Army, and had made statements about walking to India or China. Fellow soldiers have called Bergdahl a deserter, and say he should be charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice.

    The military is now investigating Bergdahl’s reason for leaving his post. According to Army General Martin Dempsey, the U.S. military is being accused of turning their eyes away from misconduct. However, Dempsey said that Bergdahl’s case is “premature.” “Like any American, he is innocent until proven guilty. Our Army’s leaders will not look away from misconduct if it occurred,” he said.

    Obama officials are defending their decision to release Bergdahl by saying that he could have soon been killed by his captors.

    Pentagon Press Secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said that the Pentagon does not qualify whom they try to recover. “It doesn’t matter how he was taken captive. It doesn’t matter under what circumstances he left. It doesn’t matter what his persuasions were, political or otherwise. We have an obligation to recover all of those who are missing in action.”

    The soldiers insisted that Bergdahl is a deserter, and many lives were lost while searching for him over the past five years. “More than a handful of soldiers got Purple Hearts looking for him,” former Army Spc. Cody Full, a former roommate of Bergdahl said.

    According to Full, Bergdahl mailed home all his personal effects before moving to the observation post in Afghanistan. “Why would you mail your stuff home unless you were not going to ever need it again?” he asked.

    The investigation was not completed, since Army officials were not yet able to talk to Bergdahl. He is being treated at a military hospital in Germany. In the investigation, military officers have gathered information that Bergdahl may have walked off voluntarily, but they are still open to the idea that he may have been taken prisoner while using the latrine.

    Andy Andrews, whose son was killed while looking for Bergdahl said, “Where is the honor in any of this?” His wife said, “Honorable soldiers risked their lives for someone who was a deserter, a traitor. It devalues their lives.”

    Many are now asking if the five Taliban leaders were released in exchange of a hero, or a deserter.

    If hard evidence of desertion is found, Bergdahl could face court-martial. If convicted, Bergdahl could face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a dishonorable discharge.

    The five Guantanamo detainees swapped for Bowe Bergdahl

    Image via YouTube

  • Filmmakers Ask FAA to Let Them Make Movies with Drones

    The Motion Picture Association of America has facilitated the requests of seven different “aerial photo and video production companies” to be granted exemptions from the Federal Aviation Administration so that they can finally lawfully operate their unmanned aircraft systems.

    In other words, the FAA may allow filmmakers to shoot movies with drones.

    The film and television industry has been pushing this for some time, but this constitutes the first set of formal requests, and the first time that the FAA has explicitly said that they are considering it.

    “If the exemption requests are granted, there could be tangible economic benefits as the agency begins to address the demand for commercial UAS operations. However, all the associated safety issues must be carefully considered to make sure any hazards are appropriately mitigated,” said the FAA in a statement.

    The companies are petitioning the FAA to grant certain exemptions, for instance ones that regulate general flight rules, pilot certificate requirements, manuals, maintenance and equipment mandates.

    Waiving certain FAA regulations would allow filmmaking companies to fly UAS (drones) in “narrowly-defined, controlled, low-risk situations.” Filmmakers could employ drones to capture aerial shots, instead of having to settle for a much costlier method for acquiring the shot, like a helicopter.

    As drones become more popular, the Federal government is going to face more challenges to their rules banning commercial operation. We’ve already heard stories of the FAA pretty much putting the kibosh on small businesses and everyday citizens attempting to make things easier with drones. Earlier this year, a brewery had its beer delivery drones grounded by the administration. A couple months later, a flower delivery company made news when its small fleet of drones were forced to park it on terra firma.

    And it’s not just the little guys–big business is getting into the drone game. Amazon is reportedly working on its 7th and 8th generation drones for its ‘Amazon Prime Air’ program.

    Of course, filmmakers, with the MPAA’s backing (and even Amazon) have a much better chance to snag exemptions than Joe Flower Deliverer. The FAA says they are considering exemption requests from three other industries: precision agriculture, power line and pipeline inspection, and oil and gas flare stack inspection.

    Image via VidMuze, YouTube

  • Air Purifiers Recommended For Pregnant Women Due To Low Air Quality

    Bad air quality can be bad news. Conventional thinking of the past would say that an air purifier is for a person who has allergies, or smokes, or has a house with mold. But researchers are now saying that local bad air quality is enough to warrant the purchase of an air purifier, especially for pregnant women.

    WRCBtv in Chattanooga interviewed Dr. Christopher Innes, an OB-GYN, who explained how air pollution these days can cause complications in pregnancy: “Small babies being born, early delivery, and sometimes even hypertension in moms which could necessitate early delivery.” Plus there is an increased Asthma risk.

    What should pregnant women do? Check the air quality index every day before going outside. “It’s impossible not to go outside, not to go to work, not to go to school, not to go to the store. But just limit it on those days.” For indoors, “little portable air purifiers may help. Change your air filters in your home frequently.”

    WRCBtv.com | Chattanooga News, Weather

    Research is already underway for a better air filtration system. The National University of Singapore, according to Channel NewsAsia, has developed an air purifier twice as effective as current conventional ones.

    It may look like just a regular fan, but it actually targets PM2.5, particles smaller than a human hair. “I was at home trying to innovate and protect my children from high haze exposure indoors,” said Dr Jeff Obbard, head of the team that created the purifier. “And I realised quite quickly that there were no air purifiers left in stores so I started playing around at home with the fans I had and basically came up with a basic system there and then and thought perhaps I can develop this further at the university.”

    For those who can’t afford the latest and greatest air purifier, any number of stores will sell you a conventional one. But one thing is for certain, as air quality continues to spiral down, demand for a better air purifier will go up.

    Image via Wikimedia Commons.

  • Here’s What’s In ASP.NET vNext, The Next ASP.NET

    At the TechEd event in Houston earlier this week, Microsoft unveiled ASP.NET vNext, once known as Project K. It’s the next version of ASP.NET, which has been redesigned from the ground up.

    Microsoft says the goal is to create a “lean and composable” .NET stack for building modern cloud-based apps. Here’s the presentation:

    Microsoft’s Scott Hanselman talks more about ASP.NET vNext here:

    “ASP.NET vNext, and this is very, very early, we’re releasing a 0.1 release – alpha release,” says Hanselman. Microsoft lists the following features of this version:

    • vNext includes new cloud-optimized versions of MVC, Web API, Web Pages, SignalR, and Entity Framework.
    • MVC, Web API, and Web Pages will be merged into one framework, called MVC 6. The new framework removes a lot of overlap between the existing MVC and Web API frameworks. It uses a common set of abstractions for routing, action selection, filters, model binding, and so on. You can use the framework to create both UI (HTML) and web APIs.
    • ASP.NET vNext apps can use a cloud-optimized subset of .NET vNext. This subset is factored for server and web workloads, has a smaller footprint than the full .NET vNext, and supports side-by-side deployment.
    • MVC 6 has no dependency on System.Web. The result is a leaner framework, with faster startup time and lower memory consumption.
    • vNext will support true side-by-side deployment. If your app uses the cloud-optimized subset of .NET vNext, you can bin deploy all of your dependencies, including the .NET vNext (cloud optimized) packages. That means you can update your app without affecting other applications on the same server.
    • vNext is host agnostic. You can host your app in IIS, or self-host in a custom process. (Web API 2 and SignalR 2 already support self-hosting; ASP.NET vNext brings this same capability to MVC.)
    • Dependency injection is built into the framework. Use your preferred IoC container to register dependencies.
    • vNext uses the Rosyln compiler to compile code dynamically. You will be able to edit a code file, refresh the browser, and see the changes without rebuilding the project.
      vNext is open source and cross platform.

    You can get the full overview here.

    Image via Microsoft

  • Google Acquires Stackdriver For Cloud Platform

    Google announced on Wednesday that it has acquired Stackdriver, a provider of cloud monitoring services.

    “Stackdriver has built a leading service to help developers intelligently monitor the apps and services they’re building and running in the cloud,” says Google product manager Tom Kershaw. “This allows customers to have more visibility into errors, performance, behavior, and operations. The teams are going to be working to integrate Stackdriver’s great functionality so that Google Cloud Platform customers can take advantage of these new advanced monitoring capabilities.”

    Stackdriver had this to say in a message on its website:

    Our new colleagues on the Google Cloud Platform team share our passion for helping developers build great products. They also know a thing or two about data visualization, analytics, and cloud computing. We could not be more excited to join forces and innovate together.

    We remain committed to delivering a world-class service for Stackdriver’s current and future customers–regardless of your chosen infrastructure provider. And because Google is fully committed to the cloud, expect us to continue to be as agile and responsive as ever as we begin this next chapter in our journey.

    Google says it will be investing more in the Cloud Platform area in the coming months. It’s unclear whether that specifically means acquisitions or other investments.

    This is the second piece of acquisition news we’ve heard from Google today. The company has also acquired Appetas to further build out its local business information, specifically for restaurants.

    Image via Stackdriver

  • Robot Blackjack Dealers Will Always Stack The Deck Against You

    Robot Blackjack Dealers Will Always Stack The Deck Against You

    I love and hate Blackjack. The simplicity of the game means I can actually understand the rules, but the game is always stacked against the players in favor of the dealer. Now a robotics company is removing the last defense players have against the all mighty dealer – human error.

    Yaskawa Motoman Robotics had its SDA10F robot deal hands at a Blackjack table last month at Chicago’s Automate 2013. The robot uses a technology called Cognex 2D vision guidance to read the cards and deal appropriately.

    This Blackjack dealing robot could be the sneakiest attempt by robots yet to subjugate humanity. The robots have realized that we would recognize a weaponized threat. Instead, the robots will now exploit our addiction to gambling. The robots will destroy us with poverty before moving in the robot mules to cart us off to the human recycling plant.

    [h/t: Singularity Hub]

  • BlueStacks Android Emulation Comes To Surface Pro

    The Surface Pro came out over the weekend, and the device is already selling out across retailers. Those who were lucky enough to get one may be disappointed, however, by a lack of apps. That’s where BlueStacks comes in.

    BlueStacks, the mobile company that brought Android emulation to Windows PCs last year, is now optimizing its Android emulation software for the Surface Pro. Users will now be able to enjoy all the Android apps they know and love on Microsoft’s newest tablet.

    “We’ve had our users asking for a Win8 version for a long time,” said BlueStacks CEO Rosen Sharma. “Now that it’s finally available on our website we’re looking forward to getting feedback and building on the experience. The number of mobile apps being written overall is expanding exponentially and Microsoft has not added apps to the handful it has. Our goal is to get people more value out of their Surface Pro and Win8 devices.”

    As the video above shows, BlueStacks also lets you transfer apps from your Android device to your Windows 8 PC. All the functionality of the original apps, including touch input, is kept across devices. Your Surface Pro will be a lean, mean Android gaming machine in no time.

    If you want to start enjoying Android apps on your Windows 8 device, just hit up BlueStacks Web site.

  • AMD Partners with BlueStacks To Bring Android Apps To PCs

    Intel makes the best PC processors around. That being said, we all can’t afford the $300 Intel demands for their latest processors. That’s why I go with AMD and their very affordable high-quality CPU line. Turns out that my frugality when it comes to CPUs nets me and other AMD CPU users a boatload of Android apps.

    AMD and BlueStacks announced a partnership today that will bring 500,000 Android apps to PCs powered by AMD CPUs. The two forces have launched the AMD App Zone where users can grab the virtualization software required to run Android apps on the PC alongside a number of free apps. Most of the apps are games, but there are quite a few general purpose apps as well.

    “BlueStacks’ cross-platform innovation bridges the Android and x86 application ecosystems, providing new opportunities for developers and better experiences for users,” said Manju Hegde, corporate vice president, Heterogeneous Applications and Developer Solutions at AMD. “By collaborating with BlueStacks, we are enabling software developers to more easily tap into the full capabilities of AMD’s products, and providing millions of consumers with great experiences as they can now run Android apps on AMD-powered devices.”

    It should be noted that the Android apps are only available to users running Windows 7 or Windows 8. Users are also only required to have an AMD CPU to run Android apps.

    “As the engine behind the AMD AppZone Player, we are providing a potent combination of award-winning software optimized for AMD’s industry-leading hardware. Consumers can now enjoy their favorite mobile apps on the larger, more immersive screen of their PC,” said Rosen Sharma, CEO of BlueStacks. “With BlueStacks technology, app developers can rest assured their Android apps will run directly on Windows without any code change. We’ve made it easy for all.”

    Unfortunately, neither company clarifies if these apps will be modified in any way to be better on the PC. Can users up the resolution of Android apps to take advantage of larger displays on the PC? Will controls be optimized for the PC, or will PC users have to replicate touch movements with the mouse? We’ve reached out to AMD for clarification and will update when we hear back.

    UPDATE:

    An AMD spokesperson just got back to us. They said that PC users can scale Android apps up to 1920×1080. Unfortunately, it’s not true full screen mode as a window must remain open for key functionalities that are accessed in the window. They also said that AMD has optimized its graphics technologies to make the scaling as smooth as possible.

    As for controls, they say that the BlueStacks Layercake technology features support and is optimized for touch, keyboard/mouse, and various movement sensors.

  • Woman Purchases an iPad, Gets a Box Full of Notepads

    This story may sound like some sort of hilariously zany plotline you might find on a primetime television sitcom, but apparently it’s the real deal. And while I don’t think that notepads are as archaic as others might claim, I can understand one’s initial irritation upon receiving a stack of them in place of an Apple iPad.

    Such is the case of Ciera Billups, a woman who was in the market for such a handy little device to help her two-year old daughter with speech therapy. So she embarked on an adventure to a local Walmart, where she procured what she thought was an iPad 3. Unfortunately, when the box was opened and its contents revealed, Ciera was understandably horrified by what she found inside.

    Notepads. Stacks and stacks of ordinary, everyday notepads.

    You might be thinking to yourself, “This lady is shady. She probably just popped the box open and swapped the iPad for the notepads in the parking lot”. Ciera claims this isn’t the case. However, the manager on-duty at the Walmart where she purchased the device said she her story didn’t add up. The police seemed to feel the same way, which means that this poor woman ended up dropping an insane amount of money for an item she could have picked up at the local dollar store for next to nothing. Hey, at least it came in an Apple box, right?

    If this were an isolated incident, perhaps you’d be inclined to side with Walmart. After all, trusting people these days is rather difficult, to say the very least. Sadly, this isn’t the first time someone has purchased an iPad from the nation’s biggest retailer and ended up with nothing but paper and an increasingly throbbing headache to show for it. However, not all cases ended the way Ciera’s did. In fact, a woman in Roseville, Michigan experienced the exact same problem, except she managed to convince the store to issue her a complete refund.

    Over the years, others have claimed the same thing, except they didn’t get a box full of notepads for their troubles. They received a shredded phonebook. Another example is the poor sap who bought a new Nintendo DS and wound up with a small box packed with rocks. In most instances, a refund and an apology are issued, but not always.

    On a lesser note, I’ve purchased no less than three DVDs from Walmart, only to find that one or all of the discs in the case were missing. When I brought the issue to their attention, I was immediately treated like a criminal, one that was trying to pull some sort of elaborate scheme to acquire more copies of the same film. Who in their right mind wants two copies of the Bruce Willis/Damon Wayans flick “The Last Boy Scout”? Seriously?

    My advice: The next time you purchase an expensive electronic gadget from the likes of Walmart or its contemporaries, pop open the box and have a look at what’s inside. That way, if you end up with someone’s dirty laundry wrapped in old newspapers, they can’t claim you’re trying to pull a fast one. And for the record, I still don’t own a copy of “The Last Boy Scout” on DVD, and that makes me sad. Very sad, indeed.

  • Sony Develops 1.5TB Stackable Optical Disks

    The cloud is getting bigger and bigger every single day. But with the cloud comes the increased ability for hackers from either government or non-government entities to access vital information. That makes the need for physical data storage more paramount than ever before. Enter Sony, and their brand new physical optical mass storage solution due for release this fall. The new technology contains twelve optical discs which will be seen as one volume sized between 300GB and 1.5TB. This is about the same size as 12 full capacity blu-ray disks.

    The cartridges will be released alongside compatible hardware in the form of the ODS-D55U USB 3.0 Optical Disc Archive. Sony also announced that several companies including BSkyB, CBS News, Time Warner Cable Sports, Fuji Television, and Tohokushinsha Films have all signed up already to use this new technology.

    Furthermore, in addition to the production of media and drive units, Sony will collaborate with a variety of other manufacturers in related business areas such as storage media, robotics (automated media exchange systems), middleware (hierarchical storage management and control) and application software for media asset management (including media management and search) for the purpose of developing system solutions for media archive applications.

    Sony lists these highlights on their product page for this device. But Strangely there is no price listing:

    -Best suited for archiving any data file, long term

    -Direct and quicker access than legacy linear data tape systems

    -New optical disc cartridge, scalable capacity up to 1.5TB per cartridge

    -USB3.0 interface

    -Robotics for ODS-D200U planned for the future

    -Available Fall 2012

  • Twitter Acquires WhisperSystems

    Twitter Acquires WhisperSystems

    Whisper Systems, a company that provides mobile security products for Android, has been acquired by Twitter. The company’s products, which aim to enterprise-ify phones and tablets, include WhisperCore, WhisperMonitor, Flashback, RedPhone and TextSecure.

    WhisperCore integrates with Android to provide disk encryption, network security tools, encrypted backup, selective permissions, and basic platform management tools. WhisperMonitor works with WhisperCore to provide a firewall. Flashback stores encrypted backups of devices in the cloud. RedPhone provides end-to-end call encryption, and TextSecure is for encrypted texting.

    Twitter’s Ryan Sarver tweeted:

    @rsarver
    Ryan Sarver    Whisper Systems Is Joining Twitter! http://t.co/nRz0h5ho 7 minutes ago via Tweet Button · powered by @socialditto

    @whispersystems
    Whisper Systems    WhisperSystems has been acquired! http://t.co/BsGixWOg 2 hours ago via web · powered by @socialditto

    In a message on the company blog, Whisper Systems says:

    We started Whisper Systems with the goal of improving security and privacy for mobile devices. We were attracted to this not only because we saw it as an opportunity to reinvent the security solutions that never really worked in the PC environment to begin with, but also because the stakes are much higher — due to the nature of mobile devices themselves — and we didn’t like the way that things were looking.

    We ended up tackling the full stack — all the way from application-level solutions at the top of the stack, down through a hardened version of Android, to kernel modifications at the bottom of the stack. Along the way we learned a lot, and developed products that we’re proud of.

    Now that we’re joining Twitter, we’re looking forward to bringing our technology and our expertise into Twitter’s products and services.

    Whisper Systems’ software will remain available for users, but the products will be taken offline temporarily during the transition period.

    Terms of the acquisition have not been disclosed.

  • Delicious is Back with Stacks

    It wasn’t much more than a couple weeks ago when reports surfaced that Delicious would be relaunched sometime later this year. Now, Avos, the company from YouTube founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, which purchased Delicious from Yahoo earlier this year, has launched the new version.

    And here’s what it looks like:

    Delicious with stacks

    The new delicious utilizes a new feature called “stacks,” which the company calls “playlists for the web”. The following video explains how these works with the example of “why mustaches are so awesome”. You find various related links around the web and find a nice collection to create a stack. It’s pretty simple really.

    To be honest, I’ve never been much of a Delicious user, but I’m kind of digging what they’ve done with it, at least at first glance. This looks more like something I would use than the previous version, which ultimately led to a sale after its expected demise. If enough people feel this way, we may see a resurgence for this social bookmarking site.

    “After acquiring the service from Yahoo! in April, we realized that in order to keep innovating over the long term, the eight-year-old site needed to be rebuilt from the ground up. The result is a new homepage, interface and back-end architecture designed to make Delicious easier to use,” the team says in a blog post.

    “Every day, people create boatloads of content on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and across the entire web,” the team says. “It’s getting increasingly difficult to cut through all the noise. If you know exactly what you’re looking for, search works great, but what if you want to discover something new? Conversely, how can you easily organize the best websites around a topic you know a lot about?”

    Stacks are the company’s answer to this question, and Delicious will be competing with services like StumbleUpon, Reddit, Digg and the like, just as it has always done, but the new feature provides Delicious with a new weapon. It will be interesting to see how users respond.

  • Blekko Partners with Stack Overflow for Programming Queries

    Blekko just announced it is now using the Stack Overflow community to help improve and maintain programming-related slashtags for its search engine. Stack Overflow, if you’re unfamiliar with it, is a programming Q&A site built by programmers for other programmers. 

    Stack Overflow, a representative for Blekko tells WebProNews, has "quickly risen to become the pre-eminent programmer community on the Web and will now help Blekko return only the most relevant programming search results."

    "This is just another one of Blekko’s search partnerships (following DuckDuckGo in November) and more in the pike," she adds.

    "At Blekko, we pride ourselves in returning the very best results in specific verticals by eliminating spam," says Blekko CEO Rich Skrenta. "We turned to the experts at Stack Overflow to help us edit all of these tags and curate the best programming search verticals out there."

    Watch our recent interview with Skrenta:

    "Stack Overflow is designed to provide programmers with the best, fastest answers from their peers," said Jeff Atwood, CTO of Stack Overflow. "We’re collaboratively built and maintained by people who write code because they love it and are thrilled to share this knowledge with Blekko’s community by offering up our most trusted contributors to curate only the best results."

    Blekko recently banned 20 content farms from its index, and is clearly placing a heavy emphasis on providing quality search results. DuckDuckGo is following a similar path, by "hard-wiring" in zero-click answers to a number of queries from 40 different sources. More on that here. 

    Meanwhile, Google released a new Chrome extension to try and crowdsource part of its own search quality strategy.  

  • OpenStack Open Source Cloud Project Sees Rapid Growth

    Rackspace Hosting just announced the six-month anniversary of OpenStack, the open source cloud project started by Rackspace and NASA, and that it has already grown to include 40 companies working on fighting against the emergence of proprietary cloud stacks and creating a standard way to deploy applications and connect clouds. 

    Initially, Rackspace donated the code that powers its own Cloud Files and Cloud Servers products to the project, while NASA contributed its Nebula Cloud Platform. 

    OpenStack from RackSpace and NASA"From day-one Rackspace has believed industry standards emerge from widely adopted, open platforms," said Lew Moorman, president, cloud and chief strategy officer at Rackspace Hosting. "Over the past six months we have seen the OpenStack community grow, showing we are not alone in this fight. As one of the founding members we couldn’t be more excited about OpenStack’s success. We plan to continue to deploy OpenStack at Rackspace as the center of our cloud hosting options."

    OpenStack, a collection of open source technologies, is currently developing two interrelated projects: OpenStack Compute and OpenStack Object Storage. As Rackspace explains:

    OpenStack Compute is software to provision and manage large groups of virtual private servers, and OpenStack Object Storage is software for creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of commodity servers to store terabytes or even petabytes of data. The first ‘Austin’ code release was October 2010, and second ‘Bexar’ release is expected to be available for download February 3, 2011.

    Among those participating in OpenStack, besides founding members Rackspace and NASA, are: Citrix, Dell, AMD, Cloud.com, Intel, and many others. You can see the full roster here.

    "OpenStack has seen an incredibly fast amount of interest in the cloud community, drawing in many of the key and more interesting players, even people who ostensibly would compete with OpenStack,"  said Michael Cote, analyst at developer-focused industry analyst firm RedMonk.  "This new community has been doing a good job of building the stack, and more importantly, the ecosystem needed for an open source cloud computing platform."

    Rackspace says it will continue to implement OpenStack throughout its own portfolio, as the project matures.