More iPad Fever !

After months of feverish speculation, Steven P. Jobs introduced Wednesday what Apple hopes will be the coolest device on the planet: a slender tablet computer called the iPad.

For all the hoopla surrounding it, however, the question is whether the iPad can achieve anything close to the success of the iPhone, which transformed the cellphone and forced the industry to race to catch up.

Apple is positioning the device, some versions of which will be available in March, as a pioneer in a new genre of computing, somewhere between a laptop and a smartphone. “The bar is pretty high,” Mr. Jobs acknowledged. “It has to be far better at doing some key things.”

Half an inch thick and weighing 1 1/2 pounds, the device will vividly display books, newspapers, Web sites and videos on a 9.7-inch glass touch screen. Giving media companies another way to sell content, it may herald a new era for publishing.

But the iPad, costing $499 to $829, also lacks some features common in laptops and phones, as technology enthusiasts were quick to point out. To its instant critics, it was little more than an oversize iPod Touch. A camera is notably absent, and Flash, the ubiquitous software that handles video and animation on the Web, does not work on the device.

Another thing missing is an alternative to the AT&T data network, which is already buckling under the strain of traffic to and from iPhones. Some versions of the iPad can, for a monthly fee, use a 3G data connection like cellphones, but the only carrier mentioned was AT&T.

The event, in typical Apple style, was tightly scripted and heavy on theatrics and hyperbole. But the success of the iPhone, and the hive of rumors and leaks surrounding the iPad, raised expectations and made this perhaps Mr. Jobs’s most highly anticipated product unveiling yet.

It was one that he clearly cared deeply about. Mr. Jobs, a consummate showman, presented the iPad to an enthusiastic crowd of around 800 employees, business partners and journalists, some of whom shoved their way in when the doors opened to grab the best seats. It was only his second public appearance since a leave of absence for health reasons last year.

Mr. Jobs posited that the iPad was the best device for certain kinds of computing, like browsing the Web, reading e-books and playing video.

The iPad “is so much more intimate than a laptop, and it’s so much more capable than a smartphone with its gorgeous screen,” he said in presenting the device to a crowd of journalists and Apple employees here. “It’s phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hands.”

One question Apple faces is whether there is enough room for another device in the cluttered lives of consumers.

“I think this will appeal to the Apple acolytes, but this is essentially just a really big iPod Touch,” said Charles Golvin, an analyst at Forrester Research, adding that he expected the iPad to mostly cannibalize the sales of other Apple products.

Mr. Golvin said book lovers would continue to opt for lighter, cheaper e-readers like the AmazonKindle, while people looking for a small Web-ready computer would gravitate toward the budget laptops known as netbooks.

But other analysts say they have heard similar criticism before — once aimed at the iPhone, which has now been bought by more than 42 million people around the world. These believers say Apple’s judgment on the market is nearly infallible.

“The target audience is everyone,” said Michael Gartenberg, vice president for strategy and analysis at Interpret, a market research firm. “Apple does not build products for just the enthusiasts. It doesn’t build for the tens of thousands; it builds for the tens of millions.”

Apple says the iPad will run the 140,000 applications developed for the iPhone and the iPod Touch, but the company expects a new wave of programs tailored to the iPad.

One of the most significant applications for the iPad may be Apple’s own creation, called iBooks, an e-reading program that will connect to Apple’s new online e-bookstore.

Mr. Jobs said Apple so far had relationships with five major publishers — Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan — and was eager to make deals with others. Publishers will be able to charge $12.99 to $14.99 for most general fiction and nonfiction books.

Apple’s announcement that it was diving into the growing e-book business put the company on a collision course with Amazon. Mr. Jobs credited Amazon with pioneering e-readers with the Kindle but said “we are going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther.”

John Doerr, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who serves on Amazon’s board and is also an adviser to Apple, said there could be room for both companies, noting that Amazon sells many books to iPhone owners who use its Kindle application, which will also work on the iPad.

“I don’t think Jeff Bezos is going to leave the e-book business,” he said, referring to Amazon’s chief executive, “and I don’t think it will be confined to the Kindle.”

Three models of the iPad, $499 to $699, will connect to the Internet only via a local Wi-Fi connection. Three other versions will include 3G wireless access and will be available later in the spring, costing an additional $130 and requiring a data plan from AT&T. Owners of the iPhone who already pay at least $70 a month to AT&T will not be getting any breaks.

Other companies have sold tablet computers for years, but they never caught on with consumers. In 2001, Bill Gates predicted at an industry trade show that tablets would be the most popular form of PC sold in America within five years.

“The fact that he and Microsoft didn’t deliver is surprising,” said Tim Bajarin, a longtime industry analyst. “It has taken Apple to bring this to consumers and make it work.”

Apple has been working on a tablet computer for more than a decade, according to several former employees. Improved technology has helped the company to finally bring a model to market, as has the ubiquity of wireless networks.

The success of the iPhone and its cousin, the iPod Touch, have shown a path for tablets. People have been willing to pay to customize those devices with applications, turning them into video game machines, compasses, city guides and e-book readers.

The iPad will be a big opportunity for software developers, said Raven Zachary, president of Small Society, an iPhone development company based in Portland, Ore. “Although I think some of us were a bit surprised we only have 60 days until it launches to develop for it.”

Steve Jobs unveils Apple iPad tablet

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• Apple Messiah Steve Jobs has announced the iPad, the firm's long rumoured tablet device.

Apple Messiah Steve Jobs has announced the iPad, the firm's long rumoured tablet device. Jobs said that there is room for a third device between the smartphone and the laptop, but it has to be better than both of them at tasks such as web browsing, email, photos, e-books and videos.

"Some thought that netbooks were the answer, but they aren't better at anything," proclaimed Jobs.

The iPad is powered by a 1GHz Apple A4 processor, which is probably based on ARM technology, but Jobs didn't elaborate. In terms of wired connectivity, there's a 30-pin dock connector, as well as speaker and microphone sockets.

When it comes to wireless connectivity, the iPad includes 802.11n wireless and Bluetooth 2.1 support. Some models will also have built in 3G capabilities - UK pricing hasn't been announced, but it'll be $14.99 for 250MB per month or $29.99 for unlimited data and there's no contract in the US. Instead, you can activate directly on your iPad and the tariffs also include free use of AT&T wireless hotspots.

It weighs 680g and is half an inch thick, but battery life hasn't been compromised - you'll get 10 hours in use and over a month in standby. There's a 9.7in capacitive touchscreen too with a high-quality IPS LCD panel. There's also an accelerometer built in, which means Apple considers the iPad as much of a gaming platform as the iPhone and iPod touch - you tilt the iPad to control games.

The interface is very similar to the iPhone's and looks to be running a modified version of the iPhone OS - we'll have to wait and see if there's a new version of iPhone OS announced later in his keynote. As a result, it runs all of the 140,000+ applications in the App Store right from the get go - what's more, you'll instantly be able to use applications you've already purchased for your iPhone. These can either run in a window pixel-for-pixel or be zoomed to 200 per cent in full screen mode.

Developers can also target the iPad's screen size directly if they want, thanks to the introduction of the new iPhone OS SDK which is released today.

It'll come in 16, 32 and 64GB storage capacities. Prices will start at $499 for the 16GB WiFi-only model, going up to $599 for the 32GB and $699 for the 64GB model. With built in 3G, prices are $629, $729 and $829.

Worldwide availability will be in 60 days for the WiFi model and 90 days for 3G models.

In terms of accessories, there are two that Apple is announcing today - the first is a standard dock, the second is a keyboard dock and the third is a case.

http://www.expertreviews.co.uk/laptops/275416/steve-jobs-unveils-apple-ipad-tablet

The iPad Finally Arrives !

Steve Jobs finally introduced Apple's new tablet computer, called the iPad.

The question now is whether regular consumers will buy the iPhone-like device, which starts at $499 and can cost as much as $829.

Mr. Jobs, appearing energized but gaunt, a result of his continuing health challenges, unveiled the iPad at a press event here on Wednesday morning. Its features and specifications, once the stuff of Internet myth, are now sharply in focus: The half-inch thick, 1.5-pound device will feature a 9.7-inch multi-touch screen and is powered by a customized Apple microchip, which it has dubbed A4. The iPad will have the same operating system as the iPhone and access to its 140,000 applications.

The price of the device will start at $499 for the most basic model, with a Wi-Fi wireless connection. More expensive models will be offered with more memory and with 3G wireless access from AT&T, which will charge up to $30 for an unlimited monthly data plan.

Wi-Fi-only versions of the device will be available in March, Apple said, with the more expensive 3G models coming 30 days after that.

The most expensive models, with 64-gigabytes of memory and 3G connectivity will cost $829.

However, the device lacks a camera, the ability to make phone calls and does not work with the ubiquitous Flash software that runs many Web sites. Apple is selling accessories like a stand and a keyboard.

Mr. Jobs positioned the iPad as a device that sits between the laptop and the smart phone — and which does certain things better than both of them, like browsing the Web, reading e-books and playing video.

The iPad “is so much more intimate than a laptop and its so much more capable than a smartphone with its gorgeous screen,” Mr. Jobs crowed. “It’s phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hands.”

Mr. Jobs also dismissed netbooks, another interstitial computing device seeking to fill that role. “Netbooks aren’t better at anything,” he said.

But perhaps the most significant application was its own, called iBooks, an electronic book store that turns the iPad into a direct competitor to Amazon’s Kindle. Apple said it would sell books in the open ePub format. That conceivably means that e-books sold by Apple would also run on other devices that support ePub, like the Sony Reader and Barnes & Noble’s Nook.

Mr. Jobs said Apple has struck relationships with five major publishers, Hachette, Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Macmillan, and was eager to establish relationships with others, including textbook publishers.

The announcement puts Apple on a direct collision course with Amazon. Mr. Jobs credited Amazon with pioneering the category with the Kindle, but said “we are going to stand on their shoulders and go a little bit farther.”

Gerry Purdy, an independent analyst who keeps a close eye on the e-reader industry, said, “Reading a book on an iPad isn’t necessarily going to be that much better — a whole lot better — it will still be in black and white. The Kindle still represents a good vehicle for people who only want an e-reader.”

“Right now, it will have some effect on the Kindle market but it won’t be gigantic,” he said. “There will still be people who want to buy the Kindles or the Nooks.”

Scott Forstall, an Apple senior vice president, said that developers can modify their apps to take advantage of the large touch-screen display, just as Apple did with its calendar, iTunes, e-mail and YouTube apps. The iPhone SDK, a set of programming tools for developers, will be enhanced to support development of the iPad, and the new SDK will be released today.

“We think its going to be a whole other gold rush for developers as they build apps for the iPad,” Mr. Forstall said.

Among the partners at the San Francisco event that showed off new software compatible with the iPad: Gameloft, a game developer, which demonstrated a first-person shooter game on the iPad; Electronic Arts and The New York Times.

Apple has been working on such a tablet computer for more than a decade, according to several former employees. But early prototypes, which used PC microchips, quickly drained batteries, and Apple executives could never figure out how or why people would want to use such a device, which lacks a traditional keyboard and computer mouse.

Other companies, like Microsoft, have also sold tablet computers for years, but the category has never caught on with consumers.

But advances in technology have since made tablets more feasible. Battery technology has improved, and the ubiquity of 3G networks and Wi-Fi now allow such devices to remain tethered to the Web at all times.

Traditional QWERTY keyboards have also, to many people, become expendable. In 2005, Apple acquired Fingerworks, a company founded by two researchers at the University of Delaware to develop gesture based computer interfaces. Their work has been integrated into the iPhone and now, the iPad.

In 2008, Apple acquired a semiconductor company, called P.A. Semi. That group is responsible for the development of the A4 chip in the iPad.

The remarkable success of the iPhone and its cousin, the iPod Touch, have also shown a path forward for tablets. People have been willing to pay to customize those devices with a large pool of third party tools, called applications, turning them into video game machines, compasses, city guides and e-book readers. There are now more than 100,000 applications for the iPhone and iPod Touch, which are expected to generated $1.4 billion in revenue in 2010, according to an analysis by Piper Jaffray

from New York Times

O’Brien Tells NBC Good Night

NBC may control its airwaves, but apparently it does not control Conan O’Brien.

Less than a week after NBC told him it intended to move his “Tonight Show” to a new time, 12:05 a.m., Mr. O’Brien said he would not agree to what he considered a demotion for the institution of “The Tonight Show” — and his own career — by going along with the network’s plan to push him back a half-hour to make room for his most recent predecessor, Jay Leno.

Mr. O’Brien’s statement Tuesday said that he so respected the institution of “The Tonight Show” that he could not participate in what “I honestly believe is its destruction.”

Pointedly, Mr. O’Brien did not resign or indicate he would not show up for work. But an executive at the network who declined to be identified because of continuing negotiations said that Mr. O’Brien would leave once a financial settlement was reached.

“For the record,” Conan O’Brien wryly noted in a statement addressed to “People of Earth” outlining his refusal to host NBC’s “The Tonight Show” if it was shoved back half-an-hour, “I am truly sorry about my hair; it’s always been that way.”

This is the week of the television winter press tour from Pasadena, when the networks traditionally roll out their offerings for midseason replacement shows. But there’s only one replacement show that anyone here is talking about: an NBC family drama bloodier than “The Tudors” and more inexplicable than “Lost,” a tragedy about comedy featuring an imperious emperor and his two dueling jesters in a once-mighty and now-blighted kingdom.

As NBC reeled from the fallout of Jeff Zucker’s tacit admission that his attempt to refashion the customary way Americans watch prime time had failed, Hollywood was ablaze with baldenfreude.

In a town where nobody makes less than they’re worth, and most people pull in an obscene amount more, there has been a single topic of discussion: How does Jeff Zucker keep rising and rising while the fortunes of NBC keep falling and falling?

The 44-year-old is a very smart guy who made a success as a wunderkind at “The Today Show,” but many in the Hollywood community have always regarded him as a condescending and arrogant East Coaster, a network Napoleon who never bothered to learn about developing shows and managing talent. At a moment when Zucker’s comedy double-fault was smashing relationships in L.A., he showed the talent of a Mafia boss for separating himself from the hit when he went and played in a New York City tennis tournament. (He lost in the first round.)

“Zucker is a case study in the most destructive media executive ever to exist,” said a honcho at another network. “You’d have to tell me who else has taken a once-great network and literally destroyed it.”

Zucker’s critics are ranting that first he killed comedy, losing the NBC franchise of Thursday night “Must See TV,” where “Seinfeld,” “Friends” and “Will & Grace” once hilariously reigned; then he killed drama, failing to develop successors to the formidable “ER,” “West Wing,” and “Law & Order”; then he killed the 10 o’clock hour by putting Jay Leno on at a time when people expect to be told a story; and then he killed late night by putting on a quirky redhead who did not have the bland mass-market appeal of Leno and who couldn’t compete with the peerless late-night comedian NBC had stupidly lost 16 years ago, David Letterman.

Zucker is a master at managing up with bosses and calculating cost-per-hour benefits, but even though he made money on cable shows, he could not program network to save his life. He started by greenlighting the regrettable “Emeril” and ended by having the aptly titled “The Biggest Loser” as one of his only winners.

Certainly, Zucker greatly underestimated the deeply ingrained viewing patterns of older Americans, who have always watched the networks in a particular way. The kids come home, do their homework, the family has dinner. They’re in front of the TV by 8, and 8:30 is known as the dog-walking slot. At 9, it’s time for more comedy. As they get tired, they like to watch a fictional drama that leads into the real drama of the late local news. And then they like to laugh again so that those images of war or a local murder are not the last thing they see before bed.

America has been watching a very specific sort of guy at 11:35 p.m. for half a century, one who chuckles as Mary Tyler Moore or Sarah Jessica Parker tells an amusing story and lets us drift off by the time some stand-up comic or blow-up starlet tells a salacious joke.

Zucker rolled the dice because he wanted to show Jeff Immelt that he could get beyond his Ben Silverman debacle and get prime time to stop bleeding money (a problem he created). But he learned the hard way that it is a lot to undo.

As Mark Harris wrote in New York magazine in November, “Zucker has often behaved like the grudging caretaker of a dying giant. ... As much as Jeff Zucker would like to cast the blame elsewhere, substituting number-crunching defensiveness for enterprise, adventure, and showmanship is what helped get NBC into this mess.”

Consumed with the NBC game of musical late-night chairs, Hollywood machers play a game of trying to figure out the last time there has been a blunder of such outlandish proportions. Despite everything, Zucker just got his contract renewed for three years with the Comcast acquisition of NBC. “Not since J. Pierrepont Finch in ‘How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying’ has an executive failed upwards in so obvious a fashion,” marveled one TV writer.

Another called the Leno experiment the worst mistake made by anyone in television since an ABC Entertainment executive told the Chicago affiliate chief that the network didn’t want to own and broadcast the new daytime talk show hosted by a young black woman. Her name: Oprah Winfrey.

By Hollywood standards, Mr. O’Brien’s letter was an extraordinary gesture — releasing a statement to make public his anger at the company paying him tens of millions of dollars before he even reached a settlement.

The closest episode in history may be when Jack Paar walked off the set of “The Tonight Show” in a huff over corporate censorship.

Mr. Paar returned to the show within a month in 1960, but few are predicting a reconciliation between Mr. O’Brien and the network.

NBC executives continued Tuesday to work toward a financial settlement, though some indicated increasing impatience with Mr. O’Brien’s effort to blame the network for the three-car pile-up in late night.

The host, who saw his brief run as host of “Tonight” cut short when NBC decided to restore Mr. Leno to the 11:35 p.m. time period, has been increasingly upset about how he believes he was treated by NBC’s management.

A representative of the host said Tuesday that Mr. O’Brien finally reached the point on Monday where he “sat up all night drafting the statement.”

The statement also took NBC to task for not giving the show more time or supplying stronger lead-in audiences, which could be interpreted as a shot at Mr. Leno’s poor performance at 10 p.m. (Though Mr. O’Brien mentioned Johnny Carson, David Letterman and Jimmy Fallon in his statement, he never referred to Mr. Leno by name, only by the title of his show.)

“After only seven months,” Mr. O’Brien wrote, “with my ‘Tonight Show’ in its infancy, NBC has decided to react to their terrible difficulties in prime time by making a change in their long-established late-night schedule.”

He hosted the show Tuesday night, even as negotiations, which one participant described as intense, continued throughout the day. But Mr. O’Brien did not hold back on criticizing NBC during his performance.

“Welcome to NBC — where our new slogan is, ‘No longer just screwing up prime time,’ ” he said.

He was also self-effacing in his jokes. “Hello, my name is Conan O’Brien, and I may soon be available for children’s parties.”

Though some rumors appeared saying NBC might be lining up guest hosts, NBC quietly dismissed that notion. Indeed, such a move could have legal implications because it might be interpreted as NBC firing Mr. O’Brien, which could lead to a bigger settlement for him.

Jeff Gaspin, the chairman of NBC Entertainment, who broached the idea last week of shifting the late-night lineup, said he was motivated by trying to retain both stars, not to drive Mr. O’Brien away. But other NBC executives indicated privately that they would be satisfied with a new late-night lineup with Mr. Leno back at “The Tonight Show” at 11:35 and Mr. Fallon settling in at the “Late Night” show at 12:35.

Those executives will apparently get their wish. But questions will linger about whether Mr. Leno will return automatically to his former position of dominance at 11:35 against Mr. Letterman’s show at CBS.

“You have to wonder if Jay is damaged goods after all this,” said one former longtime network programmer who did not want to be identified criticizing the network. “But if they give him ‘The Tonight Show’ back, maybe it ends up all right after a while. But it just seems so unfair to Conan.”

The release of Mr. O’Brien’s statement complicated an already messy legal and programming situation. NBC executives have quietly complained for at least a month that Mr. O’Brien himself was responsible for declining ratings on the show because he had not broadened his appeal from his days hosting NBC’s 12:35 a.m. show, “Late Night.”

NBC has also made it clear that it does not believe it breached Mr. O’Brien’s contract in any way because it offered him the chance to continue on “Tonight.” NBC executives said that Mr. O’Brien’s contract did not include any language that guaranteed the show had to begin at 11:35 p.m.

The counterargument from Mr. O’Brien’s representatives has been that no such language was necessary in this case because “The Tonight Show” has followed the late local news in cities across America for 60 years.

Plenty of money is involved. Mr. O’Brien is owed about two and a half years on a contract that pays him $10 million to $20 million a year.

Mr. O’Brien expressed hope in his statement that the issue could be resolved so “that my staff, crew, and I can do a show we can be proud of, for a company that values our work.” But though the Fox network has made its potential interest in Mr. O’Brien public in comments this week, Mr. O’Brien said, “I currently have no other offer and honestly have no idea what happens next.”

There would be questions, too, about Mr. O’Brien’s potential at another network after the disappointment at “Tonight.”

Mr. O’Brien’s future could also be complicated by how his contract is settled. Even if NBC settles with him, it could enforce a clause that keeps him off television for a year or more.

from New York Times

Sarah Palin Campaign A "Train Wreck"

Fresh details emerged today of the backroom dramas as Sarah Palin alarmed her campaign managers with a string of gaffes during her run for vice-president in 2008.

Race of a Lifetime, a new book by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin which is serialised in The Times this week, reveals that advisers to John McCain were taken aback by how little Mrs Palin knew about politics and history when she was confirmed as Mr McCain's Republican running mate after a cursory, 12-hour selection process.

"You guys have a lot of work to do," Steve Schmidt, Mr McCain's campaign chief, is said to have told the experts he had recruited to tutor her. "She doesn't know anything."

Heilemann and Halperin write: "Palin couldn't explain why North Korea and South Korea were separate nations. She didn't know what the Fed [the Federal Reserve] did. Asked who attacked America on 9/11, she suggested several times that it was Saddam Hussein. Asked to identify the enemy that her son would be fighting in Iraq, she drew a blank. Later, on the plane, Palin said to her team: 'I wish I'd paid more attention to this stuff'."

The authors say that, after "cramming furiously", writing newly acquired facts on white index cards that she studied at night, Mrs Palin managed to emerge intact from an interview with Charlie Gibson on ABC News, a "success" that led to the unwise decision to grant Katie Couric of CBS News the right to conduct a multi-part television interview. The move was a public relations disaster for the McCain camp.

"When Couric asked her to name examples of McCain's efforts to regulate the economy, Palin said: 'I'll try to find some and bring them to you'. Asked about the relevance of Russia's closeness to Alaska, she replied: 'As Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the USA, where do they go? It's Alaska'," the authors relate.

Yesterday, in the first serialised extract in The Times, it emerged that Mrs Palin became so overwhelmed by her preparation for one of the Couric interviews that she announced, "I hate this make-up". She smeared it off her face, "messing up her hair, complaining that she looked fat".

Today the authors reveal that the failures affected Mrs Palin's nerves. "Palin flew to Philadelphia to spend the next week concentrating on debate prep. The next two days were a total train wreck. Never before had Palin's team seen her so profoundly out of sorts for such a sustained period. She wasn't eating (a few small bites of steak a day, no more). She wasn't drinking (maybe half a can of Dr Pepper; no water, ever). She wasn't sleeping (not much more than a couple of hours a night, max).

"The index cards were piling up by the hundreds, but Palin wasn't absorbing the material written on them. When her aides tried to quiz her, she would routinely shut down – chin on her chest, arms folded, eyes cast to the floor, speechless and motionless, lost in what those around her described as a kind of catatonic stupor."

Asked if the preparations weren't worth it for the prospect of power, Mrs Palin is said to have replied darkly: "No. If I'd known everything I know now, I would not have done this."

One of her advisers sent an urgent SOS to McCain headquarters, the authors continue. "They began discussing a new and threatening possibility: that Palin was mentally unstable."

She cheered up when she was plucked out of the fetid hotel room where the failed cramming session had taken place to the more comfortable surroundings of Mr McCain's ranch, with a doctor on hand, the authors relate. But Mrs Palin continued to alarm campaign managers with her howlers as she prepared for her head-to-head debate with Joe Biden, the Democrat vice-presidential candidate.

"She continued to stumble over an unavoidable element: her rival's name. Over and over, Palin referred to Obama's running mate as 'Senator Obiden' – or was it 'O'Biden'? – and the corrections weren't sticking." In the event, Mrs Palin famously strode on stage, stuck her hand out and said: "Hey, can I call you Joe?"

Soon Mrs Palin began to show a still more disturbing propensity, the authors write. "It wasn't long before the signs appeared that Palin was going rogue. She thrashed Obama for 'palling around with terrorists'. Palin said that Obama's pastor, Rev Jeremiah Wright, should be fair game and implicitly criticised McCain for not leading the charge."

They write that Mr McCain was shielded from the full force of his own campaign team's dismay at Mrs Palin's unfitness for office, but that his staffers held serious discussions about what to do if he won the election, placing Mrs Palin's hands on the levers of power.

"Some in McCainworld were ridden with guilt over elevating Palin to within striking distance of the White House," the authors claim, adding that while Mrs Palin's fans in the US public continued to cheer her on, the national media and political establishments – once so ready to give her a chance – dismissed her as "a hick on a high wire".

More than a year on, Mrs Palin remains hugely popular in the US, particularly with members of the grassroots "tea party movement' of disaffected conservatives who fear that Mr Obama is leading America towards socialism. She has more than 1.1 million Facebook followers.

In July she stepped down as Governor of Alaska, a move that surprised her supporters and fuelled speculation on her next career step – with predictions ranging from seeking the presidency in 2012 to hosting a conservative talk show.

She told Barbara Walters in an interview in November that a presidential bid in 2012 was not on her radar, but did not rule out playing some kind of role in the next US presidential election. She has recently enjoyed success with her best-selling memoir Going Rogue, which was published four months after she left office.

Today it emerged that she is to take her conservative message to Fox News as a regular commentator. The US cable channel said that she would offer political commentary and analysis on its TV programming, its website, radio network and business cable channel.

She also will host occasional episodes of Real American Stories, a new series intended to feature inspirational tales about Americans who have overcome adversity.

"Governor Palin has captivated everyone on both sides of the political spectrum and we are excited to add her dynamic voice to the Fox News line-up," Bill Shine, executive vice president of programming, said in a statement.

Mrs Palin said in a statement posted on the network's website: "It's wonderful to be part of a place that so values fair and balanced news."

Race of a Lifetime, published yesterday, is based on more than 200 interviews with the 2008 candidates and their staffs, and has already caused controversy in Washington.

It forced Senator Harry Reid into a humiliating apology to Mr Obama at the weekend for describing him as a "light-skinned" African-American with "no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one".

from The London Times

Hand Signals

What works better than remote controls, mice and joysticks, and works without batteries, wires or a user manual?

It's called the hand. Please click on graphic at left to enlarge.

Hand signals to the PC is the way technology is going.

In the coming months, the likes of Microsoft, Hitachi and major PC makers will begin selling devices that will allow people to flip channels on the TV or move documents on a computer monitor with simple hand gestures. The technology, one of the most significant changes to human-device interfaces since the mouse appeared next to computers in the early 1980s, was being shown in private sessions during the immense Consumer Electronics Show here last week. Past attempts at similar technology have proved clunky and disappointing. In contrast, the latest crop of gesture-powered devices arrives with a refreshing surprise: they actually work.

“Everything is finally moving in the right direction,” said Vincent John Vincent, the co-founder of GestureTek, a company that makes software for gesture devices.

Manipulating the screen with the flick of the wrist will remind many people of the 2002 film “Minority Report” in which Tom Cruise moves images and documents around on futuristic computer screens with a few sweeping gestures. The real-life technology will call for similar flair and some subtlety. Stand in front of a TV armed with a gesture technology camera, and you can turn on the set with a soft punch into the air. Flipping through channels requires a twist of the hand, and raising the volume occurs with an upward pat. If there is a photo on the screen, you can enlarge it by holding your hands in the air and spreading them apart and shrink it by bringing your hands back together as you would do with your fingers on a cellphone touch screen.

The gesture revolution will go mainstream later this year when Microsoft releases a new video game system known at this time as Project Natal. The gaming system is Microsoft’s attempt to one-up Nintendo’s Wii.

Where the Wii requires hypersensitive hand-held controllers to translate body motions into on-screen action, Microsoft’s Natal will require nothing more than the human body. Microsoft has demonstrated games like dodge ball where people can jump, hurl balls at opponents and dart out of the way of incoming balls using natural motions. Other games have people contorting to fit through different shapes and performing skateboard tricks.

Just as Microsoft’s gaming system hits the market, so should TVs from Hitachi in Japan that will let people turn on their screens, scan through channels and change the volume on their sets with simple hand motions. Laptops and other computers should also arrive later this year with built-in cameras that can pick up similar gestures. Such technology could make today’s touch-screen tools obsolete as people use gestures to control, for instance, the playback or fast-forward of a DVD.

To bring these gesture functions to life, device makers needed to conquer what amounts to one of computer science’s grand challenges. Electronics had to see the world around them in fine detail through tiny digital cameras. Such a task meant giving a TV, for example, a way to identify people sitting on a couch and to recognize a certain hand wave as a command and not a scratching of the nose.

Little things like the sun, room lights and people’s annoying habit of doing the unexpected stood as just some of the obstacles companies had to overcome.

GestureTek, with offices in Silicon Valley and Ottawa, has spent a quarter-century trying to perfect its technology and has enjoyed some success. It helps TV weather people, museums and hotels create huge interactive displays.

This past work, however, has relied on limited, standard cameras that perceive the world in two dimensions. The major breakthrough with the latest gesture technology comes through the use of cameras that see the world in three dimensions, adding that crucial layer of depth perception that helps a computer or TV recognize when someone tilts their hand forward or nods their head.

Canesta, based in Sunnyvale, Calif., has spent 11 years developing chips to power these types of 3-D cameras. In the early days, its products were much larger than an entire desktop computer. Today, the chip takes up less space than a fingernail. “We always had this grand vision of being able to control electronics devices from a distance,” said Cyrus Bamji, the chief technology officer at Canesta. Competition in the gesture field has turned fierce as a result of the sudden interest in the technology. In particular, Canesta and PrimeSense, a Tel Aviv start-up, have fought to supply the 3-D chips in Microsoft’s Natal gaming system.

At last week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, executives and engineers from Canesta and GestureTek were encamped in suites at the Hilton near the main conference show floor as they shuttled executives from Asian electronics makers in and out of their rooms for secretive meetings.

Similarly, PrimeSense held invitation-only sessions at its tiny, walled-off booth and forbade any photos or videos of its products.

In one demonstration, a camera using the PrimeSense chip could distinguish among multiple people sitting on a couch and even tell the difference between a person’s jacket, shirt and under-shirt. And with such technology it’s impossible, try as you might, to lose your remote control.

Art Clokey, Animator Who Created Gumby, Dies at 88

Art Clokey, the animator who half a century ago created Gumby, that most pliant of pop-cultural figures, died on Friday at his home in Los Osos, Calif. He was 88.

His son, Joe Clokey, said he died in his sleep.

Asparagus green and fashioned from clay, Gumby made his television debut in 1956 on “The Howdy Doody Show.” The next year, he became the star of “The Gumby Show,” in which he embarked on a string of gently quixotic adventures with his supple steed, Pokey. The series was one of the first extended uses of stop-motion animation on television.

Though the 1950s show was fairly short-lived, Gumby reappeared in new series in the 1960s and in the 1980s and continued for years in syndication. He also starred in a feature film, “Gumby: The Movie” (1995), directed by Mr. Clokey.

Gumby is now firmly ensconced in popular culture. He dangles from rearview mirrors, appears in video games and crops up ubiquitously in references in film and on television. Millions of Gumby dolls have submitted to their owners’ manipulations. The character has been satirized, notably by Eddie Murphy, who played him as a cigar-chomping vulgarian — “I’m Gumby, dammit!” — on “Saturday Night Live” in the 1980s.

With his first wife, Ruth, Mr. Clokey also produced “Davey and Goliath,” the adventures of a clay boy and his dog, broadcast in the 1960s and ’70s.

Mr. Clokey was the subject of a documentary film, “Gumby Dharma,” released in 2006.

Arthur Charles Farrington, as Mr. Clokey was first known, was born in Detroit on Oct. 12, 1921. After his parents divorced when he was about 8, he lived with his father; when Art was 9, his father was killed in an automobile accident. Rejoining his mother in California, the boy was banished by her new husband and placed in a children’s home.

At about 11, Art was adopted by Joseph Waddell Clokey, a well-known composer of sacred and secular music. By Art’s later account, Joseph Clokey was a loving father who opened up a world of books and culture.

Art Clokey earned a bachelor’s degree from Miami University in Ohio and later attended Hartford Seminary in Connecticut, intending to become an Episcopal priest. He left before graduating and settled in California, where he and Ruth planned to make religious films.

Entering the University of Southern California, Mr. Clokey studied with the modernist filmmaker Slavko Vorkapich. In 1955, he made a student film, “Gumbasia” — the title was a nod to “Fantasia” — in which clay shapes dance to a jazz soundtrack. (The film is included on the DVD “Gumby Essentials,” released in 2007 by Classic Media.)

Mr. Clokey created Gumby soon afterward. As he often said, Gumby’s asymmetrical head, resembling a rakish pompadour, was a tribute to his biological father’s prominent cowlick.

“The Gumby Show” had an undercurrent of tender, if slightly surreal, spirituality. (A lifelong seeker of enlightenment, Mr. Clokey tried LSD — but only once, under medical supervision and not till long after he created Gumby, his son said in a telephone interview on Sunday.)

“Davey and Goliath” was spiritual by design. Underwritten by what is now the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the series was meant to teach values like charity and tolerance.

Mr. Clokey’s first marriage, to the former Ruth Parkander, ended in divorce; his second wife, Gloria, died in 1998. In addition to his son, Joe, from his first marriage, he is survived by a stepdaughter, Holly Harman; a sister, Arlene Cline; a half-sister, Patricia Anderson; and three grandchildren. A daughter from his first marriage, Ann, died in 1974.

With the rise of slick, titillatingly violent cartoons in the 1970s, Gumby’s popularity waned. According to many published accounts, Mr. Clokey struggled financially. Then along came Mr. Murphy, and suddenly Gumby was everywhere.

Mr. Clokey adored Mr. Murphy’s performance, his son said. But he was also gratified that it was broadcast late at night, when no child was awake to see it.

Gumby's principal sidekick is Pokey, a talking pony voiced by Art Clokey and Dallas McKennonthe Blockheads, a pair of humanoid, red-colored figures with block-shaped heads, who wreak mischief and havoc at all times. The Blockheads were inspired by the Katzenjammer Kids, who were always getting into scrapes and causing discomfort to others.^[2] Other characters are Gumby's dog Nopey (who responds to everything with a gloomy "nope"); and Prickle, a yellow creature often mistaken for a dinosaur but who was proved to actually be a dragon in the installment titled "The Big City" where he breathed fire at the vicious dog of a man trying to mug Gumby for a recently purchased guitar. Prickle often declares himself as a detective, sporting a pipe and a hat in the likeness of Sherlock Holmes. Also featured are Goo, a flying blue mermaid who spits blue goo-balls and can change her physical shape at will; Gumby's mother Gumba; Gumby's father Gumbo; his sister Minga; Denali (a mastodon); Tilly (a hen); King Ott; and Professor Kapp. at different times, and his nemeses are

Origins of Gumby

Gumby was created by Art Clokey while a student of Slavko Vorkapich at the University of Southern California. Clokey and his wife, Ruth (née Ruth Parkander), invented Gumby in the early 1950s at their Covina home shortly after Art finished film school at USC. Clokey's first animated film was a 1953 three-minute short called Gumbasia, a surreal montage of moving and expanding lumps of clay set to music in a parody of Disney's Fantasia.^[3] Gumbasia was created in a style Vorkapich taught called Kinesthetic Film Principles. Described as "massaging of the eye cells", this technique of camera movements and editing was responsible for much of the Gumby look and feel. In 1955 Clokey showed Gumbasia to movie producer Sam Engel, who encouraged him to develop his technique by adding figures. Of the three pilot episodes of Gumby, the first was done by Clokey on his own, and the next two were done for NBC and shown on The Howdy Doody Show to test audience reaction. The second 15-minute pilot, "Gumby Goes to the Moon", was initially rejected by NBC executive Thomas Warren Sarnoff. The third Gumby episode, "Robot Rumpus", made a successful debut on the Howdy Doody Show in August 1956. Gumby was an NBC series starting in 1957.^{[4] [5]}

Gumby was inspired by a suggestion from Clokey's wife Ruth that he base his character on the Gingerbread man. Gumby was green simply because that was Clokey's favorite color. Gumby's legs and feet were made wide for pragmatic reasons: they ensured the clay character would stand up during stop-motion filming. The famous slanted shape of Gumby's head was based on the hair style of Clokey's father in an old photograph.^[6]

Female performers (among them Ginny Tyler and Nancy Wible) supplied Gumby's voice during the initial episodes. New episodes were added from 1961 to 1963, at which time Dallas McKennon became the voice of Gumby. Production continued through 1966-1968, by which time Norma MacMillan voiced Gumby.

The Lorimar-Telepictures Years

Mr. Stuff gives Gumby all the goodies he can hold in "Grub Grabber Gumby."

By the 1980s, the original Gumby shorts had enjoyed a revival, both on television and home video. This led to a new incarnation of the series for television syndication by Lorimar-Telepictures in 1988 that included new characters such as Gumby's sister Minga, Tilly the chicken, and Denali the mastodon. Dallas McKennon returned as the voice of Gumby in new adventures that would take Gumby and his pals beyond their toyland-type setting and establish themselves as a rock band.

In addition to the new episodes, the classic 1955-59 and 1961-68 shorts were re-run as part of the series, but with newly recorded soundtracks, including new voices and synthesized musical scores (Clokey's rights to use the original Capitol Records production tracks could not be renewed at the time, due to legal issues.)

Art Clokey reportedly gave many movie industry talents their first break in the business. A number of the clay animators who worked on the new series went on to work for Pixar, Disney and other studios.

The movie and beyond

Screenshot of the video game, Gumby vs. the Astrobots.

In 1987, the character appeared in The Puppetoon Movie. In 1995, Clokey's production company produced an independently released theatrical film, Gumby I (aka Gumby: The Movie), marking the clay character's first feature-length adventure. In it, the villainous Blockheads replace Gumby and his band with robots and kidnap their dog, Lowbelly. The movie featured in-joke homages to such sci-fi classics as Star Wars, The Terminator, and 2001: A Space Odyssey. Starting in 1992, Cartoon Network aired re-runs of Gumby episodes.

The Library of Congress had Gumby as a spokescharacter from 1994 to 1995, due to a common sequence in his shows where Gumby walks into a book, and then experiences the world inside the book as a tangible place. By the end of the decade, Gumby and Pokey had appeared in commercials for Cheerios cereal, most notably Frosted Cheerios.

Although no new animated Gumby material is planned for the foreseeable future, most of the episodes (with a few exceptions) of the two series are available on home video and DVD.

In August 2005, the first video game featuring Gumby, Gumby vs. the Astrobots, was released by Namco for the Game Boy Advance. In it, Gumby must rescue Pokey, Prickle and Goo after they are captured by the Blockheads and their cohorts, the Astrobots. Also in the summer of 2005, an event produced by TheDeepArchives/TDA Animation was held in New York. The exhibit featured props, storyboards and script pages from various Gumby shorts over the past 50 years, as well as toys and other memorabilia that had appeared during Gumby's "career," including a reproduction of Eddie Murphy's Saturday Night Live Gumby costume. The centerpiece of the show was an actual complete set used in the production of a TV commercial for Gumby vs. the Astrobots.

In San Francisco, California, Studio Z held "Gumby's 50th Birthday Party" with Gumby creator Art Clokey. The bands Smash Mouth and Remoter played at the party, hosted by comedian Kevin Meaney. The party/comedy tribute was written by comedy writer and stage director Martin Olson and Gumby's creative director and composer Robert F. Thompson. It was produced by Missing Link Media Ventures and Clokey Productions.

In 2006, The Center for Puppetry Arts, Atlanta, Georgia, hosted the most comprehensive Clokey/Gumby exhibition to date. Entitled "Gumby: Art Clokey - The First Fifty Years," the exhibition was curated by writer/animator David Scheve, and featured over one hundred puppets and many of the original sets from the 1980s television series, as well as the 1990s full length theatrical film. The exhibition ran from August 2006 until March 2007.

Bob Burden wrote the Gumby comic series with art by Rick Geary, colors by Steve Oliff and Lance Borde, edited by Mel Smith and published by Wildcard Ink. The first issue dated July 2006. It won an honor for Best Publication for a Younger Audience at the 2007 Eisner Awards.

The Gumby images and toys are registered trademarks of Prema Toy Company. Premavision owns the distribution rights to the Gumby cartoons (having been reverted from previous distributor Warner Bros. Television), and has licensed the rights to Classic Media.

On March 16, 2007, YouTube announced that all Gumby episodes would appear in their full-length form on its site, digitally remastered and with their original soundtracks. This deal also extended to other video sites, including AOL.^[7]

In March 2007, KQED-TV broadcast an hour-long documentary "Gumby Dharma" as part of their ""Truly CA series.^[8]

On January 8, 2010, creator Art Clokey died of natural causes at his home in Los Osos, CA.

Toys and merchandise

Early versions of bendable figures: Pokey & Gumby

Various Gumby merchandise has been produced over the years, the most prominent item being bendable figures. Several single packs and multi-figure sets by Jesco, as well as a 50th anniversary collection, have been made of the Gumby characters. Also included in the Gumby merchandise catalog are plush dolls, keychains, mugs, a 1988 Colorforms color foams set, a 1995 Trendmasters playset, and a Kubricks set by Medicom.

A tribute album, Gumby, was released in 1989 by Buena Vista records.

Challenging Task of Monitoring Drones

As the military rushes to place more spy drones over Afghanistan, the remote-controlled planes are producing so much video intelligence that analysts are finding it more and more difficult to keep up.

Air Force drones collected nearly three times as much video over Afghanistan and Iraq last year as in 2007 — about 24 years’ worth if watched continuously. That volume is expected to multiply in the coming years as drones are added to the fleet and as some start using multiple cameras to shoot in many directions.

A group of young analysts already watches every second of the footage live as it is streamed to Langley Air Force Base here and to other intelligence centers, and they quickly pass warnings about insurgents and roadside bombs to troops in the field.

But military officials also see much potential in using the archives of video collected by the drones for later analysis, like searching for patterns of insurgent activity over time. To date, only a small fraction of the stored video has been retrieved for such intelligence purposes.

Government agencies are still having trouble making sense of the flood of data they collect for intelligence purposes, a point underscored by the 9/11 Commission and, more recently, by President Obama after the attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound passenger flight on Christmas Day.

Mindful of those lapses, the Air Force and other military units are trying to prevent an overload of video collected by the drones, and they are turning to the television industry to learn how to quickly share video clips and display a mix of data in ways that make analysis faster and easier.

They are even testing some of the splashier techniques used by broadcasters, like the telestrator that John Madden popularized for scrawling football plays. It could be used to warn troops about a threatening vehicle or to circle a compound that a drone should attack.

“Imagine you are tuning in to a football game without all the graphics,” said Lucius Stone, an executive at Harris Broadcast Communications, a provider of commercial technology that is working with the military. “You don’t know what the score is. You don’t know what the down is. It’s just raw video. And that’s how the guys in the military have been using it.”

The demand for the Predator and Reaper drones has surged since the terror attacks in 2001, and they have become among the most critical weapons for hunting insurgent leaders and protecting allied forces.

The military relies on the video feeds to catch insurgents burying roadside bombs and to find their houses or weapons caches. Most commanders are now reluctant to send a convoy down a road without an armed drone watching over it.

The Army, the Marines and the special forces are also deploying hundreds of smaller surveillance drones. And the C.I.A. uses drones to mount missile strikes against Al Qaeda leaders in Pakistan.

Air Force officials, who take the lead in analyzing the video from Iraq and Afghanistan, say they have managed to keep up with the most urgent assignments. And it was clear, on a visit to the analysis center in an old hangar here, that they were often able to correlate the video data with clues in still images and intercepted phone conversations to build a fuller picture of the biggest threats.

But as the Obama administration sends more troops to Afghanistan, the task of monitoring the video will become more challenging.

Instead of carrying just one camera, the Reaper drones, which are newer and larger than the Predators, will soon be able to record video in 10 directions at once. By 2011, that will increase to 30 directions with plans for as many as 65 after that. Even the Air Force’s top intelligence official, Lt. Gen. David A. Deptula, says it could soon be “swimming in sensors and drowning in data.”

He said the Air Force would have to funnel many of those feeds directly to ground troops to keep from overwhelming its intelligence centers. He said the Air Force was working more closely with field commanders to identify the most important targets, and it was adding 2,500 analysts to help handle the growing volume of data.

With a new $500 million computer system that is being installed now, the Air Force will be able to start using some of the television techniques and to send out automatic alerts when important information comes in, complete with highlight clips and even text and graphics.

“If automation can provide a cue for our people that would make better use of their time, that would help us significantly,” said Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, the Air Force’s chief of staff.

Officials acknowledge that in many ways, the military is just catching up to features that have long been familiar to users of YouTube and Google.

John R. Peele, a chief in the counterterrorism office at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which helps the Air Force analyze videos, said the drones “proliferated so quickly, and we didn’t have very much experience using them.

“So we’re kind of learning as we go along which tools would be helpful,” he said.

But Mark A. Bigham, an executive at Raytheon, which designed the new computer system, said the Air Force had actually moved more quickly than most intelligence agencies to create Weblike networks where data could be shared easily among analysts.

In fact, it has relayed drone video to the United States and Europe for analysis for more than a decade. The operations, which now include 4,000 airmen, are headquartered at the base here, where three analysts watch the live feed from a drone.

One never takes his eyes off the monitor, calling out possible threats to his partners, who immediately pass alerts to the field via computer chat rooms and snap screenshots of the most valuable images.

“It’s mostly through the chat rooms — that’s how we’re fighting these days,” said Col. Daniel R. Johnson, who runs the intelligence centers.

He said other analysts, mostly enlisted men and women in their early 20s, studied the hundreds of still images and phone calls captured each day by U-2s and other planes and sent out follow-up reports melding all the data.

Mr. Bigham, the Raytheon executive, said the new system would help speed that process. He said it would also tag basic data, like the geographic coordinates and the chat room discussions, and alert officials throughout the military who might want to call up the videos for further study.

But while the biggest timesaver would be to automatically scan the video for trucks and armed men, that software is not yet reliable. And the military has run into the same problem that the broadcast industry has in trying to pick out football players swarming on a tackle.

So Cmdr. Joseph A. Smith, a Navy officer assigned to the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which sets standards for video intelligence, said he and other officials had climbed into broadcast trucks outside football stadiums to learn how the networks tagged and retrieved highlight film.

“There are these three guys who sit in the back of an ESPN or Fox Sports van, and every time Tom Brady comes on the screen, they tap a button so that Tom Brady is marked,” Commander Smith said, referring to the New England Patriots quarterback. Then, to call up the highlights later, he said, “they just type in: ‘Tom Brady, touchdown pass.’ ”

Lt. Col. Brendan M. Harris, who is in charge of an intelligence squadron here, said his analysts could do that. He said the Air Force had just installed telestrators on its latest hand-held video receiver, and harried officers in the field would soon be able to simply circle the images of trucks or individuals they wanted the drones to follow.

But Colonel Harris also said that the drones often shot gray-toned video with infrared cameras that was harder to decipher than color shots. And when force is potentially involved, he said, there will be limits on what automated systems are allowed to do.

“You need somebody who’s trained and is accountable in recognizing that that is a woman, that is a child and that is someone who’s carrying a weapon,” he said. “And the best tools for that are still the eyeball and the human brain.”

from N. Y Times