From Evernote:

Caught on video: Fake hit man and Muskegon's widow wannabe discuss husband's murder | MLive.com Clipped from: http://www.mlive.com/news/muskegon/index.ssf/2013/07/caught_on_video_muskegons_wido.html

Caught on video: Fake hit man and Muskegon's widow wannabe discuss husband's murder 

Fake hit man, Julia Merfeld talk husband's murder (part 1) A fake hit man, actually a Michigan State police detective, and Julia Merfeld discuss plans to murder Merfeld's husband. Video was shot April 9, 2013. Footage courtesy of Muskegon County Prosecutor's Office and was edited for length by MLive.

MUSKEGON, MI – Julia Charlene Merfeld said she wanted her husband killed because "it was easier than divorcing him."

That explanation came in a meeting with a man Merfeld thought she was hiring to do the murder.

Merfeld, 21, of Muskegon didn't know the man was really an undercover police detective, or that she was being recorded on a hidden videocamera.

"When I first decided to do this … it's not that we weren't getting along," she says on the video. "But … terrible as it sounds, it was easier than divorcing him.

"You know, I didn't have to worry about the judgment of my family, I didn't have to worry about breaking his heart, all that stuff like this. It's, like, how I got a clean getaway."

Another motive, authorities have said, was the 27-year-old husband's $400,000 life insurance policy . Julia Merfeld told the fake hit man he'd be paid $50,000 from the proceeds, in a series of weekly $9,000 installments to avoid suspicion from her bank.

Merfeld pleaded guilty June 27 to solicitation to murder.

Her husband and intended victim asked that she get no jail time at all, the sentencing judge said in court at the time of her guilty plea. Instead, Chief Muskegon County Circuit Judge William C. Marietti committed to cap her minimum sentence at six years. The maximum can be anything up to life in prison, depending on Marietti's decision at her sentencing July 30.

After Merfeld's guilty plea, the Muskegon County Prosecutor's Office released videos of two meetings between Merfeld and a Michigan State Police detective. The recordings were released to MLive and the Muskegon Chronicle at a reporter's request.

Each conversation lasted about 11 minutes. Each took place in the fake hit man's vehicle parked outside the Harvey Street Meijer store in Fruitport Township. They were recorded on April 9 and 10, 2013. Merfeld was arrested soon after the second meeting and has been lodged in the Muskegon County Jail ever since.

The recordings are almost startlingly sharp. In them, the baby-faced young wife, wearing a Batman sweatshirt in the second meeting, discusses her murder plan in a matter-of-fact manner. Occasionally she laughs. She calmly discusses possible dates for the killing, checking her calendar on her Batman-stickered smartphone.

At one point late in the second conversation, she briefly appears to be having second thoughts. After the supposed hit man tells her he'll fire two bullets into her husband's head and that "he's gonna die," she smiles uneasily, says "it makes me sad," and at one point says softly, "It's a bad idea for me."

But within seconds she's back on track, saying "OK" after the fake killer tells her the killing can't be called off "after today." And seconds after that she interrupts him to ask "what happens if you get caught?" He assures her he'll "take the hit" and not give her up as long as she pays him, to which she replies, "absolutely."

The man who tipped off police, her co-worker Carlos Ramos, told MLive earlier that Merfeld offered him $50,000 to kill her husband. Instead he called police, who then set up the meetings that led to her arrest.

Merfeld and her husband had recently moved to Muskegon from New Jersey as the result of a job transfer for the husband. They have two young children who were staying with relatives in New Jersey at the time of the April meetings.

At no time in the conversations does Merfeld express any hostility toward her husband or complain of any action of his. She stresses that she doesn't want him to suffer.

When the "hit man" asks whether she wants him to use a gun or a knife, she says, "unless you can do it painlessly breaking his neck."

Early in the first conversation they discuss her preference that the victim be killed outdoors rather than in their West Forest Avenue home, for a couple of reasons. For one, Merfeld wanted a friend to move in with her after his death, and she didn't want the woman to be scared of moving into the house after it had been broken into.

Also, she says, a shooting indoors "would be messy in the house," then laughs.

By the second meeting, it's been decided the murder will be done inside the Merfelds' home while Julia is at work. Her husband will be in the pantry, she tells the "hit man." The hired killer will steal items such as a computer to make it look like a robbery.

For the second meeting, Merfeld brings along and hands the "hit man" a sheaf of notes he has requested, including directions to the home and a floor plan, then a photo of her husband, saying, "that's him." She also hands the purported killer a $100 bill as a down payment to show she's serious, as he had requested in the first meeting.

As the final conversation ends, the supposed killer shakes Merfeld's hand and wishes her luck. She replies with a smile just before she exits the vehicle:

"Thank you. Good luck to you, too."

Email John Hausman at jhausman@mlive.com or follow him on Twitter at @johnshausman

 

From Evernote:

Yes, Please | Party of One - NYTimes.com Clipped from: http://tmagazine.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/05/09/yes-please-party-of-one/

Yes, Please | Party of One 

Slim Aarons/Getty ImagesThe photographer Slim Aarons lounges by the Acropolis, circa 1955.

Why suffer through grumbling vacations with others when it's so much more blissful to go it alone?

The first rule of travel is that you should always go with someone you love, which is why I travel alone. The writer's life is more openly narcissistic than most, yet it takes a true connoisseur of self-involvement, a grand master in the art of selfishness, to experience the world's delights as they are meant to be enjoyed: through one pair of eyes, via one set of ears, with the perfect use of your own nostrils, tongue and touch. I believe that traveling alone is the last great test of who you are in a world where everyone aches to be the same.

I mean, you meet people. But you also meet yourself. That is the beauty of going it alone. For me, it all started with a trip from Scotland to America when I was 18. I had been there in books and movies, of course, and, in my youth, I had studied my countryman Robert Louis Stevenson's strictures about New York. "You must speak to no one in the streets," he was told, "as they would not leave you till you were rooked and beaten. You must enter a hotel with military precautions." As it turned out, I fell on New York like an old pal. I arrived and immediately went for a drink on 34th Street and thought I was in heaven. The heaven was being oneself. Perhaps even being oneself for the very first time, without tradition scrutinizing you, without expectation hounding you, without class defining you and without a sense of other people lording it over you. That's an unforgettable experience, especially in youth, because the lasting feature of the solo traveler lies in his hunger for singularity. Even today, when I grab my passport and head for the airport, I have something of Emerson in mind, wandering into the woods to establish "an original relation to the universe." But I also have Jean-Paul Sartre in mind: "Hell is other people."

The fun starts with the choices. Will I be solo tobogganing in New Zealand? Will I be watching Wagner's "Ring" cycle in a series of Bavarian chapels? Attending a vegetarian cooking course in the Taurus Mountains of Turkey? Drinking approximately 400 shots of tequila on some God-forsaken beach in Thailand? Doing yoga in Amorgos, Greece, in front of a perfect blue sea? Or will I be cycling through the back roads of France with the promise of lunch up ahead and no conversation?

Every vacation is an ego trip for somebody. It's just that in families the person actually commanding the ego trip has to pretend he or she is running a functioning democracy. (And vacations, like failed states, are always run by one person.) People argue so much on vacation because the occasion so often falls short of the desire: the desire is for rest, peace, no pressure, and a sense of being away from one's usual self, and your average family holiday sets fire in comic sequence to each of these high hopes. And often as memorable and meaningful as a family holiday is, it just doesn't feel like a holiday.

What feels like a holiday is turning up alone at the Hotel Danieli in Venice on a beautiful day. You open the window onto the Grand Canal and you feel the breeze. You order tea from room service and press your face against a cotton pillow. You take out the books you will read and you run a warm bath. You lift pictures of your loved ones from your suitcase and place them gingerly on the bedside cabinet and blow them a kiss. You switch off your phone. Then you take off your shoes and die of bliss. "From midday to dusk I have been roaming the streets," wrote Henry James in a letter to his brother William from Rome. "At last — for the first time — I live!"

Courtesy of Alexander and Bonin, New YorkA photograph from Robert Kinmont's ''8 Natural Handstands'' series (1969/2009).

Let me dispel a few myths. You will be lonely. No: you won't. My solo travels in Paris have brought many perfect hours of being alone but not a moment of loneliness. People who depend on other people are often in hiding from themselves. Two and a quarter million people live in the City of Light: you will see many of them and you will pass them in the street, but when you see Notre Dame after dark and walk home and perhaps stop to have a drink in the Marais, you can feel that the only thing that is missing from your experience is the common dependency on someone to distract your attention. You are living without it: you are on vacation.

Distraction can be nice. Of course, it can. One of the reasons many people travel is to find a structured way of distracting themselves to the point of oblivion. I've been to Ibiza with a crowd of boys and forgotten my own name. I once went on a group holiday to Machu Picchu on which the people — a group of solo travelers looking for adventure — spent the whole time involved in a rolling soap opera that only used the forgotten city as a kind of verdant background. They couldn't see the sites: they only saw each other and themselves in each other's eyes. Everyone needs something specific, I guess, and you can't travel far away from your basic needs. But traveling alone offers the chance to test the limits of what you think you know about yourself. Who knew that he needed a barefoot walk on a long white beach and the sight of a thousand jellyfish thrown up on the sand? Who knew that he needed a bottle shop serving perfect Australian shiraz, a jacaranda tree sprouting blue against a hopeful red sky over Byron Bay — who knew he needed these exact things in order to know he could survive the sickness of a child and the depression of a parent? I know that man, reader, and he went there alone.

Show me the world, says the group traveler. And show me two weeks when I don't have to think. Fair enough. But not for me: I want to think new things on holiday and the best way to do that is to go it alone, allowing yourself a space — a beautiful space, with any luck — that is circumscribed neither by your need to perform nor your need to blame. Get up when you like. Skip as many museums as you like. Eat or don't eat. Dance or don't dance. Swim far out if you want to. Drink Champagne at breakfast. Write a paragraph if you have one to write. Say nothing for days and dream of home. Keep the light on all night.

I love a solo holiday. It tends to refresh the part of oneself that is most depleted by modern life — patience. I once went to Germany on a 10-city expedition. It was winter and the trains slogged through enchanted forests and past emerald lakes to places where castles and universities jostled in the mind beside evidence of man-made problems. I loved the snow, and felt, halfway through my travels, that I was actually moving slower than I had when I was back at home. I was taking my time, giving things their due, and the solo holiday had in some way increased my reserves of contentment. I had been on mindless holidays and they were fun and I couldn't remember them. But my travels in Germany left me quite refreshed with thoughtfulness.

I've had solo pints of Guinness in the pubs of County Kerry and County Cork. I've walked across the sage- and juniper-scented maquis of Corsica on a spring day, where you can still find the world of Napoleon's childhood. More than once I went to the Isle of Iona in the Scottish Hebrides, the burial ground of the early Scottish kings, and watched darkness descend on the Sound of Iona while evensong came from the old monastery. I wasn't on these travels for visions or transformation, but simply to feel the force of the world, for a day, for a night, as it operates outside the chatter of commerce or media or mass psychology. I love these things, but not on holiday, when one might hope for a place where you can resist the temptation to be drowned out.

It's not for everybody. It's not for people who are apt to get anxious about the good times they could be having. Life is so virtual nowadays that people might spend their lives casually mourning a version of reality that can only exist elsewhere. The virtue of many modern holiday destinations is that they provide the perfect conditions in which high-paying customers can feel entirely homesick. This has been excellent news for the comic novel, but I'm sure I couldn't love it. The wanderlust of the solo traveler doesn't kill homesickness, it partners it, making the vacation all the better for involving one's profound wish to go home to normal life a little changed. If I ruled the world, and you can rest assured that I don't, I would send each person for a fortnight away on their own. It wouldn't serve the divorce lawyers or the councils of war very well, but it would make people much happier to know the entire world was theirs.

---

This post has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: May 19, 2013

An article on May 12 about the joys of traveling alone quoted incorrectly from a letter that Henry James wrote to his brother William from Rome. He boasted about roaming the streets "from midday to dusk" (not "dust").

A version of this article appeared in print on 05/12/2013, on page M2100 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Party of One.

 

www.vulture.com/2013/06/the-room-10th-anniversary-history.html

Khalid Shagari shared with you:           www.vulture.com/2013/06/the-room-10th-anniversary-history.html       vulture.com

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From Evernote:

The Room: The Decade's Biggest Cult Film -- Vulture Clipped from: http://www.vulture.com/2013/06/the-room-10th-anniversary-history.html

How The Room Became the Biggest Cult Film of the Past Decade 

• By Nate Jones

Ten years ago, in June 2003, a small independent film with a terrible script, a no-name director, and a cast of unknowns opened for a short run in Los Angeles. It was panned by the few critics who saw it and closed two weeks later, having grossed $1,800. But the film had something that set it apart. For while there are plenty of bad movies, there are no movies that are bad in all the ways The Room is bad. It suspends all normal rules of drama. Conflicts are introduced and then disappear instantly. Characters experience rapid mood swings, and everyone speaks in a weird brand of English filled with bizarre idioms. ("Keep your stupid comments in your pocket!") The sex scenes are scarier than the scary scenes.

The Room hit theaters at the right time. As it turns out, its unending series of bizarre moments were perfect for the dawn of the Internet's GIF and YouTube culture. As word of "the Worst Movie Ever Made" spread throughout message boards, an embryonic Room fandom coalesced around a series of midnight screenings in L.A. The movie's director became the center of a strange cult of personality, one that grew to include some of the top names in Hollywood. With their help, The Room became an international phenomenon, replete with a computer game , a stage adaptation, countless memes , celebrity parodies , ironic scholarship , an upcoming tell-all memoir , and regular screenings in three countries. Here's how the biggest cult movie of the past decade came to be.

Sometime in the Twentieth Century  
Tommy Wiseau, The Room's mysterious star-director-writer, is born. Little else is known.  

Wiseau: "[My past] has nothing to do with what I do. My private life is my private life."

Juliette Danielle, Room cast member : "We tried for a long time to find out where he's from. We never got an answer."

Sometime in the Late Twentieth Century
Wiseau is inspired.

Wiseau: "I got the idea of The Room from life," he says. "I conducted a lot of research, detailed work about human behavior, based on my environment. So I decided that I have this 'concept,' you know, about human behavior, and that's where everything started.

The idea begins as a 600-page book, which Wiseau considers turning into a stage play. Eventually, he decides to make a film, written by, directed by, and starring himself. 

1998  
In an acting class in San Francisco, Wiseau meets Greg Sestero, who will become his right-hand man.

Sestero : "He went up onstage and was just so entertaining. The whole class was laughing and chanting his name, and he was getting into it with the teacher and I thought, This guy's kind of cool. We just clicked. He told me, 'I have a movie I'd love to make, and I think you'd be great.'"

2002  
Production begins on The Room, though how Wiseau raised the film's $6 million budget is a mystery. In interviews, the director says that he got it from his leather jacket business.

Wiseau : ''If you work, you have to save money, right? I didn't get money from the sky. I was preparing, let's put it this way.''

The cast has no illusions that they're making a serious film.

Danielle : "I can remember one time that I just lost it. It's the line where Johnny has locked himself in the bathroom and he says, 'In a few minutes, bitch.' I was doing okay until I saw the entire crew in my field of vision, stifling their laughter. I couldn't help it. Tommy came out and demanded to know what was so funny. That made it worse!"

But Wiseau's eccentricities hamper production.

Anonymous crew member : "[The script] was actually a lot longer. There was stuff that was just unsayeable. I know it's hard to imagine there was stuff that was worse. But there was.''

Sestero: "[Production lasted] almost six months. It took longer than Transformers. That is sad."

June 27, 2003  
The film has its world premiere in Los Angeles. Wiseau arrives in a limousine.

Sestero: "People were hypnotized with laughter. Some people [walking out of the theater] looked dismayed. One guy said he may never get hard again."

Variety  critic Scott Foundas : "Given audience reaction at screening attended, pic may be something of a first: A movie that prompts most of its viewers to ask for their money back — before even 30 minutes have passed."

By the end of its two-week run, the film has found a super-fan in screenwriter Michael Rousselet.

Rousselet : "'It was like our own private Mystery Science Theater. I was calling friends during the end and saying, 'You have to come to this movie.' We saw it four times in three days, and on the last day I had over 100 people there.''

A Los Angeles billboard that was essentially The Room's only piece of advertising.

Late 2003  
The first wave of Room diehards begin a campaign to bring the film back.

Wiseau : "We got several phone calls from the theater that people were campaigning because they wanted to see The Room. I said to myself, What the heck? We got thousands of e-mails."

2004

The Room begins regular midnight screenings at the Laemmle Sunset in Los Angeles. Fans take to the Internet to sing the film's praises.

IMDb user Brickyard Jimmy : "See this film at all costs. See it twice. Or three times. Or as one kid that I met from Woodland Hills has, 12 times! See it until you can recite every precious line of dialogue this movie has to offer. Let The Room become your new religion."

Room fever infects the L.A. comedy scene. Members of the State seem particularly prone.

David Wain : "I was at Paul Rudd's house a couple of years ago, and he said, 'You have to watch this. Within two minutes, I'm like, 'Okay, this is my favorite thing I've ever seen.'''

December 2005  
Wiseau releases the film on DVD, allowing Room fans to mock the film from the comfort of their homes.

May 5, 2006  
NPR runs the first trend piece on Room screenings.

NPR : "During the movie, audience members shout out their own commentary about the dialogue, the sets — and notably, the framed photograph of a spoon that inexplicably reappears. Each time this happens, plastic spoons are thrown at the screen, in the can-do spirit of Rocky Horror Picture Show fans"

March 8. 2009  
Tim and Eric, Room fans both, get Wiseau to guest-direct an episode of Awesome Show. Watch it here.

The experience is a strange one, even for them .

May 21, 2009  
Monthly midnight screenings begin in New York City. The Room is now bicoastal.

July 24, 2009  
The Room makes its London Premiere at Soho's Prince Charles Theater.

The Independent : "The Room's crappiness is so compelling that, rather than market it as the Greek tragedy it was so obviously meant to be be, Wiseau nowadays insists it was conceived as black comedy." 

April 30, 2010  
The Room celebrates its one-year NYC premiere with a sell-out show at the 1,200-seat Ziegfield Theater. Wiseau is on hand to embrace the circus.

Entertainment Weekly :"While Sestero hung back, quietly signing autographs and taking pictures with fans, Wiseau — wearing a suit and those trademark sunglasses — was immediately bombarded with requests to pose in photos with football-wielding fans dressed in his likeness, and to sign shirts that read 'I heart Tommy Wiseau.' […] In fact, during the half hour that Wiseau rubbed elbows with fans outside the theatre, he was constantly surrounded by a mob worthy of Rob Pattinson, which made unknowing passersby curiously ask folks in line, "Who is that?"

September 7, 2010  
With the arrival of an online computer game, The Room becomes fully meme-ified.

Vulture : "Can you find Lisa's red dress in time?"

May 23, 2011  
Sestero becomes Wiseau's Boswell in earnest, signing a book deal with Simon & Schuster to write a tell-all about the making of the film. The Disaster Artist  will hit shelves in October.

June 11, 2011  
Wiseau's vision finally comes full circle with a stage adaptation of The Room, which premieres  at the AFI Silver Screen in Maryland. (Watch a video of it here .)

2013  
Wiseau announces a special tenth-anniversary tour for the film , with appearances in Hollywood, Minneapolis, and Denver. He will likely introduce each of them with what has become his trademark phrase.

Wiseau: "I always say, 'You can laugh, you can cry, you can express yourself, but please don't hurt each other.'"

 

From Evernote:

Powerful Ad Campaign, How Facebook 'Likes' Don't Help | Fstoppers Clipped from: http://fstoppers.com/powerful-ad-campaign-how-facebook-likes-dont-help

Powerful Ad Campaign, How Facebook 'Likes' Don't Help 

"Liking isn't helping"

Ad agency Publicis Singapore, put together that powerful tag line for Crisis Relief Singapore's latest ad campaign. The C.R.S. is a disaster relief organization run by volunteers. The jarring ads reveal the fact that simply clicking on a 'Like' button doesn't help crisis situations. 

The three ads: Flood, War and Earthquake, used real press photographs with dropped in 'Thumbs Up' to reflect the famous Facebook button. It is a powerful statement that definitely tugs at the heartstrings and shines light onto the fact that simply clicking on a button doesn't help.

The compelling motive can best be summarized in the copy, "Be a volunteer. Change a life."

Flood

Earthquake

Via Design Taxi and Buzzfeed

 

From Evernote:

Google Blimps To Bring Wireless Internet To Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Other Developing Countries Clipped from: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/05/25/google-blimp-wireless-internet_n_3333834.html

Google Blimps To Bring Wireless Internet To Sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, Other Developing Countries 

Reuters  |  Posted: 05/24/2013 5:51 pm EDT

(Reuters) - Google Inc intends to finance, build and help operate wireless networks from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia, hoping to connect a billion or so people in emerging countries to the Internet, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.

The Internet search giant - which has for years espoused universal Web access - is employing a patchwork quilt of technologies and holding discussions with regulators from South Africa to Kenya, the WSJ cited people familiar with the strategy as saying.

Access to the vast trove of information on the Internet, and the tools to make use of it, is considered key to lifting economies up the value chain. But countries are often hampered by the vast sums needed to build infrastructure, thorny regulations or geographical terrain.

To reach its goal, Google, which benefits the more people have access to its search and other Internet services, is lobbying regulators to use airwaves reserved for television broadcasts, which at lower frequencies can pass through buildings and over longer distances, the WSJ reported.

It is also working on providing low-cost cellphones and employing balloons or blimps to transmit signals over hundreds of square miles from high altitudes.

The company has already begun several small-scale trials, including in Cape Town, South Africa, where it is using a base station in conjunction with wireless access boxes to broadcast signals over several miles, the newspaper reported.

Chief Executive Larry Page has made no secret of his plans to use his company to work toward broader, non-profit goals. Google on Friday declined to comment on its plans.

(Reporting by Edwin Chan; Editing by Tim Dobbyn)

Also on HuffPost:

 

From Evernote:

Is HTC Coming Out with a HTC One that Runs Stock Android? Clipped from: http://gizmodo.com/is-htc-coming-out-with-a-htc-one-that-runs-stock-androi-509649190

Is HTC Coming Out with a HTC One that Runs Stock Android?

Please be true, please be true, please be true. After Google announced that it would be selling a pure Android version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 on Google Play , the entire world screamed joys of Hallelujah Halle Berry. An awesome phone running completely stock Android has always been the dream. Now, HTC might be making real life better than any dream by making the HTC One pure Android too.

Related

Supposedly, according to Geek.com's sources , HTC is considering making a stock variant of the HTC One. That'd mean there would be no HTC Sense to muddle the Android experience. That means we'd use a phone the way Google would want us to use it. What's unclear now is if it happens, how we'll get the pure Android HTC One.

Google's version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 is sold unlocked for $650 on Google Play. Would HTC go down that same route? What should be noted is that Geek.com had initially reported on the stock Android version of the Galaxy S4 before it was announced. They nailed that rumor. Maybe this one will be true too. In any case, I'm crossing my fingers. You should too. [Geek via Phandroid ]

 

From Evernote:

Consumers Go Crazy For Wii U Following Xbox One Reveal - Wii U News @ Nintendo Life Clipped from: http://www.nintendolife.com/news/2013/05/consumers_go_crazy_for_wii_u_following_xbox_one_reveal

Consumers Go Crazy For Wii U Following Xbox One Reveal 

Posted Fri, 24 May 2013 | 03:00 BST by Darren Calvert

One of Amazon UK's biggest movers and shakers

It's no secret that the Xbox One reveal did not go as smoothly as Microsoft might have hoped. For some, the idea of buying a giant Betamax-styled brick that blocks used games and requires the Kinect camera to function was a big turn-off — even if it does make changing the TV channel a fraction of a second quicker. Even dog-based shooters failed to win the crowds over, and to top it all off there is no backwards compatibility whatsoever either.

Nintendo might well have been feeling a little nervous before the Xbox announcement, but it would seem that consumers are voting with their feet and suddenly buying the Wii U in droves if Amazon UK's movers and shakers list is a reliable barometer.

At the time of writing we're seeing an increase of 386% as the sales rank of the Wii U Premium Pack skyrockets on Amazon from #243 to #50. With Nintendo's E3 Wii U Nintendo Direct only weeks away, we should see interest continue to rise as it's upcoming games are revealed. Some armchair analysts may have written off Nintendo's home console, but it would seem that the race is far from over.

[via amazon.co.uk ]

About Darren Calvert 

Darren is Nintendo Life's Batman: fearless in the face of danger, he loves gadgets and talking in a really, really deep voice. As Operations Director he stays mostly behind the scenes in a room he insists on calling "The Batcave".

From Evernote:

HTC One and the harsh reality of the Android ecosystem — Tech News and Analysis Clipped from: http://gigaom.com/2013/05/22/htc-one-and-the-harsh-reality-of-the-android-ecosystem/

HTC One and the harsh reality of the Android ecosystem — Tech News and Analysis 

A few days ago when hanging out with a friend, I got a chance to play around with HTC One, the newest and shiniest Android phone on the market (of course until it wasn't when Sony launched its Experia Z.) I was quite impressed by the build quality, the industrial design and the beauty of the device. Despite its supersize — I have normal people's hands — it did feel like something I would want to buy, especially if I was picking amongst the ever increasing array of Android smartphones.

Maybe, I thought to myself, HTC was going to make a comeback. I mean, these were the guys who jumpstarted the Android smartphone ecosystem in partnership with Google and T-Mobile USA. These were the guys who innovated fast and even came up with their own skin for Android . They pushed the design and speed envelope. They had edgy marketing . They were the first movers and their early sales were red-hot.

And yet, when they spent $300 million on headphones maker Beats by Dre , it became obvious that this company was going to run into some stormy weather. Of course, it was an idea that didn't go down well with many of its fans and its investors — HTC eventually sold back half its stake .

This (relatively) tiny Taiwanese company was going to get squeezed by cheaper Android phones on one end and Samsung on the other. In fact, as far back as 2010 we have argued that the real smartphone battle was going to be between Apple and Samsung. And when it comes to hardware, nothing really has changed. It is Apple vs Samsung.

According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung now accounts for about 95 percent of the total operating profits of the global Android business. During the first quarter of 2013, Samsung had an operating profit of $5.1 billion, while LG made $100 million and all other vendors (HTC, ZTE, Huawei, Sony and no-name brands) collectively made $100 million in operating (not net) profit.

It is hardly surprising to see that HTC is in trouble. A report in The Verge suggested that HTC's chief product officer, Kouji Kodera, has left the company. The report also implied that other senior executives are leaving the company . The most recent high-profile bet — the HTC First, which was launched in partnership with Facebook — has been a flop and one wonders if the company really has the wherewithal, both intellectual and financial, to undertake such experiments.

I am not sure if people remember, but Motorola was another company that found itself on a Sysephian quest and eventually found a $12 billion bailout from Google. The trouble with the smaller Android players is that despite all the talk about a PC-like ecosystem of sourcing components and using others to assemble their products, it is fundamentally not true.

Apple has used all the billions in the bank to lock up supplies for processors, memory chips, radios, displays and other such components at favorable prices. It has worked out long term manufacturing arrangements with the likes of Foxconn. It has its own retail outlets. While most of us try and focus on Apple's hardware and software integration, we forget that it is software, hardware and supply chain integration that allows the company to sell 37.5 million phones in the most recent quarter . It allows the company to make phones that meet the needs of different carriers.

Samsung too is an integration beast . It owns memory chip plants. It makes its own processors. It makes displays and it owns the factories. It has the unique ability to churn out new products faster than anyone else in the consumer electronics business and thus overwhelm the market with dozens of models. Just look at the many flavors on its latest Samsung S4 device and you start to see that this is a game only for big boys.

The only other company with Apple and Samsung-like manufacturing oomph was Nokia. I say was, because they are losing a grip on the phone business. However, their supply chain and manufacturing was legendary. It still is. I have yet to see a badly made Nokia smartphone — I just see smartphones with an OS that makes no sense. I bet if they entered the market with their own flavor of Android — something we suggested in 2010 — they would instantly become number three in the smartphone market, behind Samsung and Apple.

Sadly, smaller players like HTC can't compete with the manufacturing and marketing capabilities of Samsung. The HTC One, which is an awesome looking device, was hit by manufacturing issues earlier this year. So it needs to rethink its strategies. HTC needs to become comfortable with the idea of being a one or two product company, and hope that it can keep comping up with winning products every single time. Even that is a long shot. The marketing budgets of Samsung and Apple are enough to finance some small nations.

HTC's story is all too familiar to those who have studied the first mover phenomenon. A story in Economist points out that innovators captured seven percent of their market over time. THey point to various examples like White Castle who invented the idea of fast food burger joint but McDonalds is the big daddy now. Apple and Samsung are going through some of that as well. The lesson here for everyone — even tiny startups — is as Scott Anthony once perfectly said (and I paraphrase him): no one remembers who was leading the race midway through, and everyone remembers who finished first. And in order to finish first, a lot has to go right.

So where do companies like HTC go? And sad as it might be, perhaps nowhere. I am going to do my bit to give them some support — I will buy that HTC One, just because it is actually a great little device. It truly is.

5-year HTC stock chart, source: Yahoo Finance

 

TEST

From Evernote:

220 Story Sky City Gets go ahead to start construction in June 2013, so it should complete by the end of 2013 Clipped from: http://nextbigfuture.com/2013/05/220-story-sky-city-gets-go-ahead-to.html

220 Story Sky City Gets go ahead to start construction in June 2013, so it should complete by the end of 2013 

Lloyd Alter at Treehugger reports that Broad Group has gotten permission to proceed with the construction of the 220 story Sky City skyscraper starting in June, 2013 in Changsha.

Broad Sustainable Construction informs Lloyd Alter and Treehugger that a long and arduous approval process has been completed, and that they are starting excavation and construction on Sky City in June, 2013.

The Sky City concept significantly reduces the per capita use of land, and the CO2 emissions generated getting around. They call it "a way of development for higher life quality and lower impact on the environment" They see this as the future of Chinese city building: "Urbanization can not be materialized at the cost of land and environmental pollution."

By going up, hundreds of acres of land are saved from being turned into roads and parking lots. By using elevators instead of cars to get to schools, businesses and recreational facilities, thousands of cars are taken off the roads and thousands of hours of commuting time are saved. It makes sense; vertical distances between people are a whole lot shorter than the horizontal, and elevators are about the most energy efficient moving devices made. A resident of Sky City is using 1/100th the average land per person.

The modular factory mass produced skyscrapers are five times more energy efficient than conventional ones, using 8 inch thick insulated walls and triple glazing. There is exterior shading on the windows that cuts cooling requirements by 30% and what cooling or heating is needed comes from a co-generation plant using waste heat from power generation.

In one building, there will be accommodation for 4450 families in apartments ranging from 645 SF to 5,000 SF, 250 hotel rooms, 100,000 SF of school, hospital and office space, totaling over eleven million square feet. The building footprint is only 10% of the site; the rest is open parkland.

If you would rather walk rather than wait for one of the 92 elevators, there is six mile long ramp running from the first to the 170th floor. Beside the ramp are 56 different 30 foot high courtyards used for basketball, tennis, swimming, theatres, and 930,000 square feet of interior vertical organic farms.

The building is designed to be earthquake resistant to Magnitude 9, and to a 3 hour fire resistance rating, provided by ceramics installed around the structure. 16,000 part time and 3,000 full time workers will prefabricate the building for four months and assemble on site in three months. The Broad system is based on prefabricated floor panels that ship with everything need to go 3D packed along with it, so they are not shipping a lot of air. It all just bolts together. BSC claims that by building this way, they eliminate construction waste, lost time managing trades, keep tight cost control and can build at a cost 50% to 60% less than conventional construction.

The building is to cost $628 million and have 11 million square feet of space inside, which is about $60 per square foot. A 1000 square foot apartment would cost the developer about $60,000 and might sell for about $100,000. This would lower the cost of living in megacities like Shanghai, Changsha or New York. The lower cost versus $300 to 1000 per square foot for buildings like the Trump Tower Chicago or Freedom tower means that skyscrapers could hold not just expensive offices but also regular apartments, grocery stores, hospitals, schools and other regular applications. The low cost enables a city inside a skyscraper and not just high end offices, luxury apartments and high end restaurants.

They plan to build one hundred and fifty 30-story apartment building, hotel, office plans using the new system. They have started building a 1.33-million-square meter "NO.1 Sustainable Building Factory" and it will be able to produce 10 million square meters of mass produced skyscrapers (about 100 million square feet) each year. The 30 story building is 183000 square feet so the factory can produce about 500 of the 30 story building each year and many more factories will be built.

The Changsha Broad Air Conditioning Company has unveiled designs for the 200-storey Sky City tower, a sustainable mixed use project. At 666 meters tall, the building will house 1.2 million square meters (12 million square feet) of space for residential apartments, retail, offices, restaurants, schools and a myriad of other facilities. The building will be manufactured in a factory and assembled on the construction site. Additionally, the tower will have the capacity for 70,000 to 110,000 residents. It will use 400 kilograms (1000 pounds of material) per square meter). 480,000 tons of building. Even with reducing the occupancy by half so that units are 1320 square feet instead of 660 square feet the amount of material is 12 tons per person for 40,000 people. The Broad Group building also includes offices and retail shopping. Instead of being 6 times more efficient with material it is more like 8-10 times, since it is replacing 72 tons of house and the extra buildings for offices and shops. It is 20 times more efficient if the higher occupancy levels are used.

Other Broad Group Technology

Non-electric air conditioning withstood the world's toughest stress test serving over 250 pavilions in the largest, crowdest, hottest, and most dynamic architectural site. Achieving "zero fault" operation for 6 months, contributing to a successful Expo. Also saved 73,000 tons of CO2 emissions, and realized "Low Carbon Expo".

Successfully developed super-size " Heat Recovery Fresh Air Unit", realizing 99.9% air purification efficiency, ensuring abundant fresh air supply and high efficiency heat recovery.

Earlier Plans for a 666 meter tall skyscraper but now modified for 828 meter skyscraper

A Chinese company developed new factory prebuilt construction that can make a 15 story building in 6 days plans to build the second tallest building in the world over 6 months. 93% of the construction work is done in the factory vs at most 40% in western countries.

The Changsha Broad Air Conditioning Company has unveiled designs for the 200-storey Sky City tower, a sustainable mixed use project. At 666 meters tall, the building will house 1.2 million square meters of space for residential apartments, retail, offices, restaurants, schools and a myriad of other facilities. The building will be manufactured in a factory and assembled on the construction site. Additionally, the tower will have the capacity for 70,000 to 110,000 residents.

They are trimming their costs to 7,000 yuan to 8,000 yuan per square meter. The company then adds its profit margin and sells its properties for around 10,000 yuan per sq m - or about half the price of properties in Shanghai outside the city center. This would convert to a 660 square foot unit costing about US$100,000. The whole building is 1.2 million square meters so this project will cost about US$1.25 to 1.46 billion and will sell for $1.83 billion. Numbeo has Shanghai cost of living and Shanghai apartment prices are currently three to six times as high to buy as these apartments would be

Comfort of Skycity
• 100% fresh air, no mixed with return air, eliminate infection. 3-stage filtered fresh air , 99% nano-particulates be filtered. Indoor air is 20-100 times cleaner than outdoor air. Central vacuuming system keeps indoor air quality.
• Space blocks and all rooms remain at 20~27 ℃ all year round, glass wall enable
sunshine lighting up the streets.
• The clear height of residences and office is 2.8m, the clear height of space blocks are 5.6m, 9m, 12m respectively.
• Four 4meter wide streets start from the ground to the floor 121 at 400m, the total length of street is 12km, shops, agriculture markets, handcraft shops, restaurants, amusement parks, sports centers, natatorium, cinemas, opera houses, museums, libraries, training centers, schools, kindergartens, clinics, banks, police stations, etc. on both sides of street, same as city downtown. Botanical garden, natural parks, fishponds, waterfalls, sand beach can be found in some floors, same as the suburban.
• 16 large observation elevators and 31 high-speed elevators can serve 30,000 people every hour.

Safety
• Level 9 earthquake resistance, scale model will be tested by national authorized institution.
• BROAD unique technologies "diagonal bracing, light weight, factory-made" ensure the
highest earthquake resistance level with minimum materials.
• Trapezoidal construction structure corresponds the law of mechanics, which can withstand earthquake and storm.
• Sky gardens locate on floor 71, 121, 156, 176 and 191(12,000m2 in total), also function as the helipads, which are able to evacuate tens of thousand people during fire emergency, provide extra fire protection than conventional skyscrapers.


Energy Conservation
• 150mm exterior insulated walls, triple-paned windows, exterior solar shading, interior window insulation and heat recovery fresh air, 80% more energy efficient than conventional buildings.
• Adopting "distributed energy system", turbines provide power independently, exhaust from turbines is the source for cooling, heating and sanitary hot water. 50% more energy efficient than the power grid.
• Indoor HVAC is controlled by occupancy sensor, fan speed will be automatically adjusted to the lowest load when people left.
• Elevator generates electricity when ascending unload and descending full load, also choose the floor outside the elevator, and other electricity saving methods can save 75% more electricity than conventional elevator.
• LED lamp, 90% more energy efficient than incandescent lamp and 50% more energy efficient than fluorescent lamp.
• Separated drainage system, rain water is used for plant irrigation, bathing water will be directly drained after settled, bathroom sewage and kitchen waste go to biogas tank, biogas is used as fuel for air conditioning, and solid wastes become organic fertilizers.

Sustainability
• Annual energy conservation 60,000 ton oil equivalent
• Saving 600,000 ton construction materials
• Saving 1.4 sq. kilometers land (volume ratio 50)
• On-site construction waste is less than 1% of the total weight
• Zero raise dust on-site
• Zero water consumption on-site
• Recycle processes of living garbage from the building
• All steel structure, reuse after abandoned

The company's presentation of Sky City, incl. specs and drawings.

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