BuzzRun.com

This is pretty cool actually … (see the pictures here)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The original recordings of the first humans landing on the moon 40 years ago were erased and re-used, but newly restored copies of the original broadcast look even better, NASA officials said on Thursday.

NASA released the first glimpses of a complete digital make-over of the original landing footage that clarifies the blurry and grainy images of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the surface of the moon.

The full set of recordings, being cleaned up by Burbank, California-based Lowry Digital, will be released in September. The preview is available at www.nasa.gov.

NASA admitted in 2006 that no one could find the original video recordings of the July 20, 1969, landing.

Since then, Richard Nafzger, an engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, who oversaw television processing at the ground-tracking sites during the Apollo 11 mission, has been looking for them.

The good news is he found where they went. The bad news is they were part of a batch of 200,000 tapes that were degaussed — magnetically erased — and re-used to save money.

“The goal was live TV,” Nafzger told a news conference.

“We should have had a historian running around saying ‘I don’t care if you are ever going to use them — we are going to keep them’,” he said.

They found good copies in the archives of CBS news and some recordings called kinescopes found in film vaults at Johnson Space Center.

Read more from the source at Reuters …

A stage being built for a Madonna concert in the French port city of Marseille collapsed Thursday, leaving one dead and six injured, the fire department said.

The stage at the Stade Velodrome stadium fell apart on top of several workers. Two of the injuries were serious, Interior Minister Brice Hortefeux said. All of the injured were taken to local hospitals.

More on this from the AP here …

Domain names are still and (in my opionion) always will be HOT! Last week’s recent sales of domain names is proof-positive that the right domain name is a great investment.

According to DHJournal.com, the domain Contests.com sold for $380,000, Rosary.com for $78,088, and Loco.com for $55,500 … there were many other names that sold for very good amounts as well - see them here.

I think to many people domain names are still either an unknown or to those that do know little about them, they are not worth any more than what you paid for them. But I couldn’t disagree more. Domain names are realestate on the web … if you own a domain, no one else in the world owns that same name. If you can find or purchase the right name, and not let it expire, you may one day be able to sell for it top-dollar to the highest bidder. Even if you sold a name you owned privately, you still would be able to at least double or triple what you paid for the name (at a bare minimum).

If you’re interested in learning more about “domain name investing” a good place to start is searching those terms in Google. Do your homework … the best place to start investing in domain names is your local area (hometown, city, County, construction, tourism, travel, etc.).

One last note - STAY AWAY from trademarked names. Don’t register a name of a know trademark and think that you can sell it for a ton of money, you will only get sued and be forced to give the domain away. Belive me, it’s not worth it!!

Next time I’ll post more about domain name parking, another way to make money with good domain names.

Until then …Happy Domaining!

Blame it on the economy, unemployment or just plain thievery — or all three — but catalytic converters more and more are being clipped from pickup trucks, vans and SUVs.

Thieves are crawling under such vehicles and cutting out the catalytic converters in order to sell them for $200 or more, primarily for the precious metals the exhaust devices contain, notably, platinum. Platinum acts as catalyst to change harmful fumes into more harmless gases. A replacement converter can cost up to $1,500.

From New Jersey to California, police departments have reported thefts or even grabbed suspects red-handed with the devices in their vehicles.

[sources]

Read this on my iPhone this morning. I thought, ok so they are selling their assests and will get back to business, but then I kept on reading:

A bankruptcy judge has ruled that General Motors Corp. can sell the bulk of its assets to a new company, potentially clearing the way for the automaker to quickly emerge from bankruptcy protection.

U.S. Judge Robert Gerber said in his 95-page ruling late Sunday that the sale was in the best interests of both GM and its creditors, whom he said would otherwise get nothing.

 Now for the good part:

The company is expected to receive $50 billion in taxpayer funds. In exchange for those funds, the government will own about 61 percent of the “new GM.” The Obama administration has said it does not plan to interfere with the day-to-day running of the company, though government has been involved in the selection of the new company’s 13-member board of directors and change of control transactions.

 WHAT??

$50 freakin’ billion????? Are you kidding me?? Where’s this money coming from? YOU and ME - the middle class. Thanks Obama! Higher taxes, just what always wanted.

Oh and here’s the bite in the rear in this story:

The old GM will include a smattering of properties, several of which are facilities already slated to be closed.

Other assets to be filed under the old GM include brands like Hummer, Saturn and Saab, for which GM has lined up buyers. They also include all current GM common stock, which - despite its active trading on over-the-counter markets - will soon be worthless.

The old GM will remain an entity until all of the facilities are sold off, a process that could take months or years to complete.

The government has said it plans to provide about $1.18 billion to fund the wind-down process.

 Yes, that’ll be $1.18 BILLION dollars to help close down the “old GM”. And WE have to pay for this why??? Some one please explain this to me. How does this makes sense? In his first several months this he’s turning this country into nothing!

Ok, I feel sick. I need to stop writing …

[source]

So let’s see what happens. BuzzRunn.com is back from the dead.

We’ll be updating the site more regularly …

$2.2 Million worth of prizes this year (including the home, suv and a ton of other stuff). So if you haven’t already started entering “once per day”, then don’t start now … cuz I want to win it!

You can go here to see the details and here to enter now.

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This is a great list from Erick Schonfeld over at TechCrunch on this year’s new Tech Resolutions …. (I love the last one) …

Okay, I know, I’m late with these, but coming up with New Year’s resolutions is tough. And isn’t there a one-week grace period anyway? Rather than do predictions, I thought I’d offer up some resolutions—things I’d like to see happen this year. These aren’t my resolutions. These are resolutions that tech companies like Google, Apple, Amazon, and Facebook should adopt, IMHO. (And, no, they are not capable of coming up with their own resolutions. Someone has to do this for them). If you have better resolutions to suggest for these or any other company, please add them to comments.

Apple—Learn to Let Go. Don’t repeat the mistakes of history. Open up a little bit. You are helping to bring the phone and other mobile devices into the digital age. Other people and companies want to be a part of that too. Make it easy for them to build apps on top of the iPhone and your other products. (You’ve indicated that you are working on this, but we are still waiting to see the results). Command and control got you this far, but in a world where every device is connected, a bunker mentality will limit your growth.

Facebook—Stop Being a Party Hog. Release my friends and leave Scobie alone. You want everyone to create applications for Facebook, but when it comes to letting people take data out of Facebook you are not so generous. Find a way to let members take their social graph (their list of friends and social connections) with them to other Websites. If you are serious about becoming the social operating system of the Web, you need to let people party the way they want to, and where they want to (even if that is not on Facebook). Embrace this change. You’ll still be popular. The alternative is to battle a growing user backlash (and startups looking for workarounds).

Google—Go Beyond PageRank. The main way you sort search results, PageRank, is more than a decade old. It is the basis of the entire search economy. But it is also starting to be gamed in ways that threaten to dilute the value of your search results. People are buying and selling links on Web pages with the express intent of manipulating search results. You can fight this, and you are, but maybe it is time to start shifting to other ways to rank search results. There are other sources of authority on the Web besides links, aren’t there? (Don’t ask me what they are—you are the one with all the genius employees).

Amazon—Open Up The Kindle. Your Kindle Reader is a big step forward in terms of gaining mainstream acceptance for electronic books. But what is great about the Kindle is the service, not the device. It is your 90,000-and-growing titles in e-book format, seamless wireless downloading, and back-end billing linked to existing Amazon accounts that makes the Kindle worth replicating. Put out a reference design and let other companies make sleeker electronic readers that tie into the Amazon store. The design of the device itself is clunky. Stick to what you know, and let other companies build the hardware.

Microsoft—Get Serious About Webtop Apps. Productivity apps are moving to the Web, and while that threatens your Office franchise, you need to get in front of this trend now before it gains much traction. You are inching towards this with your recent Office Live Workspace beta, but you still need to get past your Barbarians at the Gate mindset. While Google, Adobe, and others try to figure out how to bring their Web-based word processors, spreadsheets, and presentation software offline, you are already did that a long time ago with Office. Now you are integrating Office apps with Office Live, but you are trying to force people to use the offline apps as their default environment. Keep that as an option, but let people create documents and spreadsheets online as well without the need to ever launch Office on their desktop.

Yahoo— Use The Traffic, Luke. I don’t know what to tell you guys (and gals). You are losing more executives than Google, Jerry Yang’s first 100 days were uneventful, and still nobody knows what your strategy is supposed to be. Your biggest asset is that you still attract more traffic than any other site in the U.S. (although Google is gaining on you). For the most part, you like to slosh that traffic around Yahoo, but you’ve shown signs that you are willing to turn that hose towards other worthy Websites, even if they have no pre-existing deals with you. Find more ways to spread that traffic and to get other Websites to return the love. Then use that natural traffic network to lure other Websites into your advertising network. Focus on dominating the growing behavioral ad-targeting market instead of trying to beat Google head-to-head on contextual and search ads.

eBay—Sell Skype. Come on, you know you want to. It was a bad fit from the start.

Source: TechCrunch.com
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ScienceDaily (Jan. 5, 2008) — A new study by two York University researchers estimates the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spends almost twice as much on promotion as it does on research and development, contrary to the industry’s claim.

he researchers’ estimate is based on the systematic collection of data directly from the industry and doctors during 2004, which shows the U.S. pharmaceutical industry spent 24.4% of the sales dollar on promotion, versus 13.4% for research and development, as a percentage of US domestic sales of US$235.4 billion.

The research is co-authored by PhD candidate Marc-André Gagnon, who led the study with Joel Lexchin, a long-time researcher of pharmaceutical promotion, Toronto physician, and Associate Chair of York’s School of Health Policy & Management in the Faculty of Health.

“In our paper, we make the case for the need for a new estimate of promotional expenditures by the U.S. pharmaceutical industry,” says Gagnon. “We then explain how we used proprietary databases to construct a revised estimate and finally, we compare our results with those from other data sources to argue in favor of changing the priorities of the industry.”

More …

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UPDATE: The Live Auctions is now Open for bidding. Now until January 10th. Take a look or start bidding.

DomainTools.com announced that it’s having their next Live Auction on Janurary 3rd. Out of over 2000 domain submissions only 170 made the cut (I actually was able to get three on the list - simplyfrench.com, aboutwifi.com, wificafes.com - so GO BID when it’s time.). Jay Westertdal also announced his list of top picks. Mine weren’t there, but I still hope they sell ;-).

DomainTools doesn’t just have “domain auctions” … it is a must-have resource for anyone related to the domain/web industry … it’s worth checking out (and bookmarking).

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