Ex-SF crime lab tech won't face criminal charges

A former San Francisco lab technician who acknowledged snorting cocaine from evidence, resulting in the costly dismissal of hundreds of cases, will not be charged with a crime, state prosecutors said Friday.

The attorney general's office notified San Francisco police on Dec. 2 that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Deborah Madden, AG spokesman Jim Finefrock said Friday.

Madden, 60, had been accused of stealing small amounts of cocaine from the lab while working there last year.

The allegations led to the lab's closure in March and the dismissal of more than 600 drug cases. It also created a nightmare for District Attorney Kamala Harris, who asked the attorney general's office in April to handle any possible prosecution.

Madden's attorney, Paul DeMeester, said Friday his client is ecstatic.


"This lifts quite a burden for her," DeMeester said. "This is very positive news."

Public Defender Jeff Adachi said the decision raises concerns about a possible double standard when it comes to charging a police employee who acknowledged doing wrong.

"This scandal resulted in the dismissal of hundreds of cases and we're still reviewing thousands of others," Adachi said. "This has cost the city and county millions of dollars. The average citizen has to be scratching their heads on the rationale behind this.

"Somehow, I don't think we've heard the last of this."

Police Chief George Gascon said Friday that while he is "extremely disappointed," he respects the attorney general's decision.

"I'm not second-guessing the attorney general's office," he said. Gascon said that after discovering the theft, he knew the lack of physical evidence could be a problem in prosecuting the case. The lab has since undergone several new procedures and was reaccredited earlier this month to do DNA and ballistics tests

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Phones and Tablets At CES 2011 Preview

Dual-core and 4G phones will muscle their way to the fore at CES this year.

CES is traditionally the beginning of a busy season for cell phone and tablet announcements, but it's not the end of the story. With Mobile World Congress coming in February and the CTIA trade show coming in March, phone manufacturers like to stagger their revelations so they have something to promote at each show.

We're not likely to see a single "big phone" at CES like we did with the Palm Pre in 2009 or the iPhone in 2007. Rather, we're going to see a big lineup: it looks like Verizon is introducing a whole bunch of big-name, 4G LTE-based smartphones. AT&T wants to show it'll have a strong lineup once it loses iPhone exclusivity, and new dual-core phones are ready for prime time. Don't worry, there will be flashy stuff to see.

CES was aiming to be a big coming-out show for Android-powered tablets until Google threw water on that campfire by suggesting tablet-makers use the Honeycomb software version, which isn't ready yet. As a result, we're likely to see one flagship Honeycomb tablet from Motorola, and a slew of lower-cost, potentially lower-quality devices from smaller manufacturers who just can't wait.

Here's what tablet analyst Tim Gideon and I are expecting to see at CES:

4G Everything: This is going to be a huge show for 4G. Verizon Wireless may introduce a half-dozen LTE phones and tablets during Verizon CEO Ivan Seidenberg's keynote on January 6, and the carrier has blocked out time for hands-ons afterwards. Online rumors have suggested handsets from Samsung, LG and HTC. Not to be outdone, T-Mobile is throwing a press conference the same day, so I expect HSPA+ phones and tablets. Sprint doesn't have a press conference, but they won't want to be left out, either. Sierra Wireless and Novatel Wireless may be bringing 4G MiFi-style hotspots.

Dual-Core Phones: The dual-core ARM Cortex-A9 platform is ready to go, and we're probably going to see some powerful, dual-core handheld devices based on nVidia's Tegra 2 chipset and possibly a next-generation Samsung chipset as well. Those devices will almost certainly include the new LG Optimus 2X phone, but I'm anticipating other powerful surprises as well.

Lots of Tablets of Questionable Quality: Flagship Android-based tablets such as Motorola's 10-inch device need to wait for Google's Android Honeycomb software, coming this spring. We'll see the first demo of Motorola's device, and maybe a few others. But we're going to see a lot more of the Island of Misfit Tablets—low-cost tablets of questionable quality based on Android Froyo software, which may end up on convenience store shelves or sold at a discount through computer retailers. Think CherryPad, not iPad. New tablets potentially coming from Dell, Asus and Samsung will fit uncomfortably in the middle with decent hardware quality, but not Google's special tablet software.

Who's Holding Out for MWC? Microsoft has made the biggest announcement at MWC for the past few years, so don't expect a major Windows Phone 7 update at CES—they want to hold their thunder for February. Nokia and Sony Ericsson also generally announce devices at MWC, not CES; Sony Ericsson has already sent out invites to their MWC event. We also probably won't hear much at this show from HP/Palm or BlackBerry, other than yet another demo of the well-known BlackBerry Playbook tablet. That isn't about MWC strategizing, just about product timing.

No Verizon iPhone: Verizon Wireless will be getting some form of the iPhone within the next few months; there seems to be a consensus in the tech world on this. Agreement seems to be swirling that the Verizon iPhone will be a 3G, CDMA version of the iPhone 4. But I don't think Apple will announce this during CES. When Apple announces something during CES—like the original iPhone—it overshadows all other mobile products at the show. Verizon is sinking a lot of time and effort into promoting LTE devices at CES. For Apple to step in and steal the stage would be getting that relationship off to a really bad start.

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China announces Skype ban to protect telco revenues No place in People's Republic for imperialist P2P

China has banned Skype and other Western VoIP providers in a move designed to stop the services from eroding the profits of traditional telecoms operators in the country, China Telecom and China Unicom.

The decision was made by the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology but no date for its implementation was announced, the Peoples' Daily reports. Skype denied knowledge of the impending ban. "“Users in China currently can access Skype via TOM Online, our majority JV partner," the eBay subsidiary told Mashable, via a statement.

Other countries, including Panama, have tried to outlaw VoIP services for similar economically protectionist reasons. However such bans are difficult to enforce in practice because there are always workarounds, at least for tech savvy users. China is a world leader in censoring the net, routinely restricting access to smut and politically objectionable content under the guise of protecting its netizens from malware and other security threats. Even so blocking Western VoIP services while simultaneously allowing internet telephony services from local suppliers may be difficult to pull off in practice. China may however be able to curtail mainstream access to these services. If China decides to prohibit Skype the P2P VoIP service will join a long list of officially disavowed internet services that already includes Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Flickr, among others

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New Year’s Bug Kills iOS Alarms

iPhone owners cheering in the new year may be in for a surprise Saturday morning thanks to an iOS bug that seems to prevent one-time alarms from sounding once their clock rolls over into 2011. The bug apparently impacts devices running iOS 4.0.2 and higher, and alarms that were set both before and after the new year transition.

Reports of the bug started cropping up on Twitter as midnight rolled around in several time zones, and according to Engadget affects only alarms set in the Clock application. 9 to 5 Mac reports that the bug seems to fix it self after January 3, 2011.

 

Welcome to 2011, sans alarms.

Recurring alarms don’t seem to be impacted by the bug, which should come as a relief to users that missed appointments when the Day Light Saving alarm bug hit. That bug caused recurring alarms in the Clock app to fail if they were set before the Day Light Saving time shift.

A temporary fix for the New Year bug is to set a recurring alarm for specific days. Setting a recurring alarm for Sunday, for example, will ensure that you’ll get up on time this Sunday. Just be sure to disable the alarm after you wake up so you don’t hear the alarm unexpectedly next Sunday morning.

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Top 10 eBay's shopping trends in 2010

eBay's annual Top Shopped report usually offers insight into the pop culture moments and fashion trends that captivated shoppers' curiosity, and cash during the year. In 2010, it was all about Apple, the World Cup and toys, according to eBay, which released its top-10 list today.

Apple's iPhone 4 (1,634,674 related items sold) and iPad (621,399) dominated the tech scene. On the sporting scene, it was a buzzing plastic instrument at the World Cup in South Africa (more than 265,000 vuvuzelas sold). Classic toys like Barbie (1,178,909 related items sold) and Hot Wheels (748,140) also made a comeback.

eBay based its results on analyzed sales and search data across categories in its online Marketplace to come up with this year's list below:

1. iPhone
2. Barbie
3. Military jackets
4. Hot Wheels
5. iPad
6. World cup
7. The Beatles
8. Silly Bandz
9. Alice in Wonderland
10. New Orleans Saints

READ MORE - Top 10 eBay's shopping trends in 2010

The Internet Future Be in Chinese

English is the international language of business and commerce -- but its era of dominance on the Internet could be coming to an end.

An infographic circulating on the Internet highlights the growing prominence of Chinese users on the web, and suggest that Chinese may be the dominant language on the world wide web within five years.

The ascension of the Chinese language is no surprise given China's population. According to tech enthusiast blog the Next Web, which created the chart, China gained an additional 36 million Internet users last year taking the country to a total of 440 million users over all. Comparatively, there are 536 million English speaking users online it argues, citing figures from Internet World Stats.

Contributing editor Greg Sterling of Search Engine Land doesn't see such a straightforward coup by the Chinese language, however.

"Chinese will never replace English as the 'official' language of the Internet," Sterling told FoxNews.com. "This is clearly based on raw numbers and the size of China's Internet population," he said, noting that sheer users won't be enough to usurp the cultural significance of English.


"That's because the world speaks English while few other than Chinese nationals speak Chinese," Sterling said.

The Next Web chart emphasizes China's relatively low worldwide penetration -- meaning China's growth potential remains high for some time. If these growth rates stay consistent, the Next Web believes Chinese could become the dominant language on the Internet in less than five years.

Sterling argues that despite these potentials, one key factor will prevent Chinese from really taking hold online: censorship. "The censored and still-closed nature of the Chinese Internet further argues against Chinese taking over the virtual world," he told FoxNews.com.

David Graddol, a British applied linguist and broadcaster, has been researching issues relating to global English for over a decade. In English Next (2006), a recent report on the future of the language, Graddol acknowledged a key trend, that "Asia, especially India and China probably now holds the key to the long-term future of English as a global language."

"In terms of native-speaker rankings, English is falling in the world league tables," Graddol warned. "English has slipped to fourth place, where its position will become challenged by Arabic in the middle of the present century."

By then, Sterling admits to the possibility that the Internet landscape could be founded on another language.

"In 50 years that may be different and everyone may be talking Chinese (Mandarin) as a second language -- as the world does with English now."

READ MORE - The Internet Future Be in Chinese

Some Crazy Things People Are Doing With Kinect (MSFT)

Kinect, the motion-controlled sensor for the Xbox 360 that Microsoft released last month, contains some startling technology for a $150 consumer gadget. It's like when GPS navigators first became popular, bringing what was once highly sophisticated military technology to the masses, or when the iPhone made capacitive multitouch screens the new standard for mobile phones.

As with any sufficiently advanced technology, the community wasn't going to settle for using Kinect strictly as it was intended.

Almost as soon as it was released, people began trying to figure out how Kinect worked. Then came the hacks, then the alternate applications. Hopefully Microsoft will see fit to buy some of these ideas and release them for the product itself. In the meantime, look on in wonder.

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Net Neutrality Rules Has Releases By FCC

We have to believe that most of the suits in Washington, D.C. were in a hurry to get back home for the holidays, but an FCC ruling was able to be hammered out just before the Christmas break. Net neutrality has been one of the biggest issues in the FCC circle this year, along with rural broadband. As the Internet has grown, so has concern that ISPs may have too much power over their users. Earlier in the year, Comcast was chided for "throttling users" that were transferring peer-to-peer applications, which led to a heated debate over what an Internet service provided can and cannot do to a user's bandwidth.

Net neutrality is a huge, tangled issue. There are fierce debates ongoing on both sides, from those who think the government needs to regulate ISPs and those who think the government should stay far away from the Internet altogether. These newest rules aren't nearly the only ones we'll hear of over the next few years, but it's a start. On Christmas Eve, the FCC managed to release the full net neutrality rules for the world to pore over. They were only passed by a 3-2 vote, and both Republicans and Democrats had reason to complain.



But that's politics, and that's definitely not unexpected. The new rules are sort of soft; there's nothing too hard-hitting in here, and nothing too shocking. First off, ISPs will be required to be very transparent about how they manage their network. They can no longer throttle or discriminate in the shadows; how they manage their network must be made public and okayed by the FCC. The new rules also disallow ISPs from blowing a lawful application or service, or throttling the speeds depending on application. But there's a loophole here. ISPs can accept paid prioritization, with select outfits being able to pay for selectively faster access to an ISP's customer base. These setups will obviously undergo intense scrutiny before being passed, though.

On the wireless side, the rules are far less certain. Wireless operators will still have to be transparent about how they manage traffic, but that's about it. They also cannot block certain applications willy-nilly, but overall, they have far more flexibility in controlling their network due to wireless being far newer and subject to new competitors than wireline. None of these new rules will make a huge, huge impact in how your Internet is delivered most likely, but of course, this is just the tip of the iceberg. What happens next is anyone's guess.

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Michelle Obama Helps Track Santa's Path on Christmas Eve

As children across the world waited for a visit from Santa Claus on Christmas Eve, First Lady Michelle Obama helped track Santa's path as part of the North American Aerospace Defense (NORAD) Command annual tradition for children.

The First Lady's office said that Mrs. Obama surprised children callers from across America by answering calls for the "Tracks Santa" program, run by NORAD since 1958 – first exclusively by phone and then on the internet starting in 1998.

The website receives millions of hits and the live Operations Center is staffed by 1,200 volunteers each year in the lead-up to Christmas morning.

First Lady Michelle Obama spent over 40 minutes on the phone with children, answering Christmas Eve queries from kids as to where Santa is and how soon he will be at their home.

"You know that Santa only comes after boys and girls have gone to sleep, no matter where he is in the world," Mrs. Obama said to each of the children callers. "So Santa won't be at your house until you're fast asleep, okay?"

While Mrs. Obama was on the phone, according to the her readout of the NORAD radar, Santa spanned several parts of Africa and into Europe.

"The radar shows that it looks like the vehicle is being pulled by all nine reindeer and it's pretty full of toys," Mrs. Obama assured the children. "He's moving at a pretty good clip. The weather looks good, so there shouldn't be any problems with him getting the toys around."

The First Lady asked the children callers if they had been good this year, to which all of them answered affirmatively. One child, Sean, told Mrs. Obama that he had been so good that Santa sent him an email.

"You got an email from Santa? Well, he's really moving up. He's pretty high-tech now," Mrs. Obama said.

The First Lady told the children to put out cookies for Santa and of course vegetables for the reindeer.

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Skype Experiences Major Downtime

Skype, the web based video and telephone service, got back up on the tail end Christmas Holiday, missing most of what would have been their businesses time of year.

The service was down due to major technical difficulties that caused users to see a blank blue screen for several hours. The primary cause for the outage was faulty software for which they had to get dedicated servers to tend to the problems. They are offering a credit to users who experienced delays or interruptions to their calls and video chats.

Skype CEO Bates, who took over the company only eight-weeks ago, sent out a video message to users via you-tube explaining the problem and Skype’s plan for getting back on-line. At the time of the video Skype was about 85% back on-line.

Skype currently has over 17 million users world-wide with an additional 25 million concurrent users per day.

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New version of Foursquare to arrive next week

"We just found an app approval in our stocking! New foursquare early next week. Thanks #SantaJobs," the social checkin service tweeted.

Expect the next version of Foursquare to get a lot more personal. When I dropped by for an interview with co-founder Naveen Selvadurai at Foursquare's New York City headquarters last week, he hinted that the next version of Foursquare would begin offering personalized recommendations to users based on where they and their friends had previously checked in -- not just for places, but also what they should do at those places.

"When (Foursquare) knows you, it should ping you about some amazing store nearby. The goal is to create something that teaches you something about you(rself) and gets you out to discover new places...(When you arrive at a restaurant, for instance, Foursquare) should recommend that your mom order this and that you should get the salad. It should remember that you were there."

Selvadurai also suggested that the game mechanics of Foursquare would shift slightly, with less of an emphasis on competing against others (i.e. for mayorships, or your city's leaderboard), but against oneself.

"We want to make the game more personal," he said. "The leaderboard is daunting to some people. Going into the next phase of our game mechanics, it's about making the game more personal. It's you against yourself," he hinted. Whether we'll see any of these more personalized gaming features in next week's release is unclear.

In addition, a recently leaked screenshot suggests that the new edition might include the ability to upload and view photos of various venues.

READ MORE - New version of Foursquare to arrive next week

WikiLeaks Supporting wage Cyber War

The continuing pressures experienced by WikiLeaks and its founder, triggering reprisal carried out by the hacktivist (activist hackers).

WikiLeaks hacker group supporting founder Julian Assange conducted a series of cyber attacks against several parties who are considered hostile stand.

Web sites that are considered hostile to WikiLeaks, such as PayPal, Swiss Banks PostFinance (postfinance.ch), the official site in the Swedish public prosecutor Assange (aklagare.se), and Senator Lieberman site (lieberman.senate.gov) who vocally opposed Assange , they managed to disable it through the initiative which they named: Operation Payback.

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Inventor of World Wide Web Critique up Facebook

Tim Berners Lee, inventor of the world wide web (www), criticized the social networks, like Facebook, because it limits the openness web.

Berners-Lee tried to remind people of the power of the web open and democratic.

"Web evolved into a powerful tool, there is everywhere because it was built on egalitarian principles, and because hundreds of individuals, universities and companies have worked, both independently and together as part of the World Wide Web Consortium, to expand its ability based on the principle it, "Berners-Lee wrote in the journal Scientific America, as quoted by the Telegraph.

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Samsung and LG LCD Prepare a New Generation

Two manufacturers of electronic devices and digital South Korean giant, Samsung and LG, racing to soon launch a new technology cell phone screen.

Both Samsung and LG promising display screen will be much clearer and brighter than it is on pasaraan today.

Samsung's Mobile Display Division is developing a prototype LCD Super PLS. According to them, the point of view is more wide screen 100 percent and 10 percent lighter than the IPS LCD screen, which used the iPhone 4 and IPAD.

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About internet marketing

I want tell about the events a little funny, maybe I am doing this because I have been obsessed by one of my friends who now managed to get a few dollars each day from the internet, until finally I begining create some blogs that some of them Mentrenkpunya.blogspot.com and ndelipunya.blogspot.com. Every effort I've done to increase traffick and invite visitors to stop by to my blog to sit on google about all the SEO tricks, and eventually I tried one by one trick, quite still no result, although still small,Then, because of impatience I finally asked again to google about the strategy of looking for money on the internet and finally I found a row of program that I follow to gain results through blogging on the internet. 

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