This week found the release of some of the most anticipated albums of recent months. Killer Mike’s R.A.P. Music and Ab-Soul’s Control System lived up to their considerable hype. Childish Gambino, last seen in the depths of offensive Trayvon Martin joke purgatory, wormed his way back onto our list this week as well. Otherwise, Jay Rock sticks up for his crew; Nitty Scott, MC juggles some elaborate wordplay; and Yasiin Bey drops a shady metaphor. Below, the lines of the week.

5. “On that s**t, take a whiff/Move in silence like a .gif” – Childish Gambino, “F**k Your Blog” lyrics
Leave it to Donald Glover to find the humor in what is perhaps the web’s most unfunny invention, those small, soundless moving pictures known as .gif files. Here, Gambino nods to all of the terrible American Idol, Martin, and Twilight excerpts with “funny” captions that people try to pass off as amusing.

4. “I’m the silent assassin of the four-headed dragon/Black Hippy blasting a .50 out of the Benz wagon” – Jay Rock, “Black Lip Bastard (Remix)” lyrics
Jay Rock may not get as much credit as his Black Hippy brethren Kendrick Lamar and Ab-Soul, but he deserves his share of praise, too. He outshines his group-mates on this number, and this couplet is the best of the lot. Then again, maybe we’re just scared that he’ll turn his .50 caliber rifle on us unless we shout him out. Either way…

3. “Super Nitty, I’m a full-time juggler/Juggernaut aiming for the jugular” – Nitty Scott, MC, “Hands on the Wheel Freestyle” lyrics
Nitty Scott, MC has lately been a pal to the site, even joining us at a tony Yale University event. Here, she shows why we love her, finding appropriate use for three “jug” words in two lines.

2. “Cool frames don’t qualify as sunblock/The coolest shades ain’t never made the sun stop” – Yasiin Bey, “Chop Chop” lyrics
The artist formerly known as Mos Def has taken a more abstract turn with his lyrics in recent months, making the already brainy rapper’s lyrics more poetic than normal. Here, he speaks in metaphor so clearly and directly that you wonder why this phrase wasn’t already a folk saying. The inability of consumption to satisfy real spiritual cravings has rarely been more simply and beautifully stated.

1. “But thanks to Reaganomics, prisons turned to profits/’Cause free labor is the cornerstone of U.S. economics/’Cause slavery was abolished unless you are in prison/You think I am bulls**tting, then read the 13th Amendment/Involuntary servitude and the slavery it prohibits/That’s why they giving drug offenders time in double digits” — Killer Mike, “Reagan” lyrics
There is so much in Mike’s ode to our 40th president that is awesome — we could have chosen practically anything in the second verse. This segment in particular deals with the ugly and too-often-ignored dynamics of prison labor, and its unacknowledged but huge role in our economy. Reagan is often (and rightly) a sort of hip-hop boogeyman, but rarely have his crimes been so epically documented as in this number. For those interested in more about the relationship between rap and Reagan, check out our blog post on the topic.

Hot Songs of the Week:

Mann – Intro (Freshmann on Varsity) lyrics
Killer Mike – Reagan lyrics
Childish Gambino – F**k Your Blog lyrics

The Forrest Can Sealer will be easy to implement with any small to medium office receptacle within seconds, and will be just as conveniently removable when necessary. Additionally, it will be cost effectively priced, adding to its appeal. The inventor of the Forrest Can Sealer is hopeful of the product finding success through outlets and catalogs selling office products.

The Forrest Can Sealer is also the subject of U.S. Patent # 5,971,194 with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

This original idea is now being made available for licensing to manufacturers interested in new product development, especially in the office products industry. Darryle F. is hoping to have the Forrest Can Sealer in full production and available to the public within the very near future.

After including the inventor and preliminary, non-confidential information about her product idea at no charge for a 1 year term in their proprietary database of invention information, the National Directory of American Inventors, NewProductHelp.com’s professional staff of writers and graphic illustrators then created a New Product Portfolio and Online Product Presentation for the Forrest Can Sealer, helping to clarify how the invention works and looks. A General Field-of-Art search through the database of the United States Patent and Trademark Office was also completed by an independent, registered patent attorney in order to provide the inventor with perspective on some prior art within the general category of her idea.

Having had an opportunity to review and approve the New Product Portfolio and Online Product Presentation, Darryle F. made a decision to accept NewProductHelp.com’s New Product Publicity and Marketing Program proposal. Consequently, NewProductHelp.com will represent Darryle F.’s Forrest Can Sealer for 2 years through a collection of dynamic promotional materials such as press releases, product brochures, digital renditions, a password-protected website, and other visual mediums such as a New Product DVD and potentially, an interactive virtual reality presentation.

NewProductHelp.com representatives will also actively follow up with any manufacturers and marketers that display an interest in potentially licensing the Forrest Can Sealer.

For more information on how you can get your idea to NewProductHelp.com, visit: www.newproducthelp.com

Contact: Contact: 786-249-0308

About NewProductHelp.com: NewProductHelp.com is a Miami, Florida-based invention assistance firm that represents independent inventors who typically lack the resources and experience to pursue the commercialization of their product concepts on their own. NewProductHelp.com utilizes dynamic promotional materials such as digital renditions, press releases, invention websites, and interactive virtual reality presentations, as well as representation at industry-leading trade shows, to achieve valuable exposure for the inventions it represents.

Article source: http://www.pr.com/press-release/413929

Sound familiar?

In the 19th century, Americans expanded into a physical frontier — a geographic edge of society brimming with opportunities and dangers and challenges and setbacks. So began the notion of manifest destiny: theidea that, no matter what, the United States pushes outward to the farthest edge of the most distant place possible.

Today, almost two centuries after that term was coined, American expansionism is playing out vigorously at society’s latest cutting edge: the social space of the Internet. Friday’s high-octane, $16 billion IPO of the global juggernaut that is Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook is, for better or worse, the most recent example of how the new frontier has been cultivated, colonized and commanded by entrepreneurial Americans.

As the manufacturing economy reconfigures, you often hear the lament that “America doesn’t make anything anymore.” But then there’s this: Most of the world’s digital centers of gravity have been, and remain, American. Apple and Microsoft. Google and Yahoo. YouTube and Amazon and eBay. Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. Kickstarter. Netflix. PayPal. Akamai, the content-delivery behemoth. Intel, the internal combustion engine of the whole shebang. And for that matter, the Internet itself and the organization that regulates its domain names were both born and raised in (you guessed it) America.

A digital manifest destiny is playing out, built upon the notion that the United States’ outward expansion continues apace on the virtual frontier. What the self-defined sense of American exceptionalism built in the physical world, it is now building in the digital one.

“It’s a projection of American values — what international experts would call soft power,” says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project.

Look at what the digital space disseminates, he says: freedom of the press, of information and of assembly; knowledge and scientific advancement; free-market mechanisms and entrepreneurialism. “It’s hard to think of a cluster of ideas and architectures that would more allow basic American cultural values to propagate,” says Rainie, co-author of the new book, “Networked: The New Social Operating System.”

Technological progress has always walked hand in hand with American expansion. Where would the settlement of the West have been without Robert Fulton’s steamboat, Samuel F.B. Morse’s work in telegraphy and, later, the inventions of Thomas Edison and Henry Ford? Not to mention the old-time data pipelines themselves — the postal system, the railroads and eventually the interstate highways?

In those cases, innovation helped drive development and physically shape the frontier; now innovation itself is the frontier. And the American tendency to glorify the inventor’s spirit remains a key engine. As Alexander Graham Bell went, so goes Mark Zuckerberg.

“In this country, you’re a hero if you invent something. To be an inventor in America, that’s as good as being an explorer,” says Julie Fenster, author of “The Spirit of Invention: The Story of the Thinkers, Creators and Dreamers who Formed Our Nation.”

“The notion that `I can invent my way out of problems’ — that always fueled a sense of hope and expansion in this country,” she says.

That parallel between the frontiers of the road and the mind has not gone unnoticed by politicians and leaders looking to cast America’s newest progress in the context of the old. President Barack Obama, speaking to Carnegie Mellon University’s National Robotics Engineering Center last year, called for tech innovation this way: “That’s the kind of adventurous, pioneering spirit that we need right now. That’s the spirit that’s given us the tools and toughness to overcome every obstacle and adapt to every circumstance.”

The nation’s digital innovators have been placing virtual progress into the context of American expansionism for years. Sometimes they’re oblique about it, sometimes they’re explicit. “There is never a reliable map for unexplored territory,” wrote Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, who in 1995 likened the early Internet to the Oregon Trail. Apple co-founder Steve Jobs put it this way in 1985: “In a society where information and innovation are going to be pivotal, there really is the possibility that America can become a second-rate industrial nation if we lose the technical momentum and leadership we have now.”

Manifest destiny and its first cousin, American exceptionalism, aren’t popular notions everywhere. The idea of U.S. domination in everything from cultural frontiers (Hollywood) to geographic ones (outer space) can set the world on edge. Just as irritatingly to some, America’s ability to occupy these spaces rests upon not only actual innovation but the oomph to amplify it on a global level — in effect, to shout the loudest in a crowded, if now virtual, room.

“Manifest destiny justifies a certain behavior. One could call it rapaciousness on one end, but someone else could call it being an entrepreneur, being a founder,” says John Baick, a historian at Western New England University in Massachusetts. That reflects back upon the original manifest destiny imperative to push outward at all costs; expansion, on any frontier, can also mean overrunning the people who are already there.

What has helped this dominance along? Is it the American penchant for RD, which fuels innovation? The rise of venture capital over the past half-century, particularly in places like Silicon Valley? Is it the combination of creativity and Barnum-style snake oil that matured into the marketing culture that helps define America today? Is it the nation’s higher-education system, which has vigorously pushed the relationship between technological innovation and entrepreneurialism?

Or — and this is where it really gets interesting — is it the ability and willingness of an increasingly connected planet to adopt American innovation and take it to a global level, encouraging U.S. digital expansion in the process?

Article source: http://www.startribune.com/lifestyle/152141885.html

The Ziolek Lifter will be easy to install on virtually any model of toilet and will be fabricated from durable plastic. It will also provide its users with peace of mind while protecting them from potentially dangerous diseases caused by coming in contact with a contaminated toilet seat. The inventor of the Ziolek Lifter is hopeful of the product finding success through outlets and catalogs selling bathroom accessories.

This original idea is now being made available for licensing to manufacturers interested in new product development, especially in the bathroom accessories industry. Kasia Z. is hoping to have the Ziolek Lifter in full production and available to the public within the very near future.

Kasia Z.’s journey towards the attempted commercialization of her invention began when she opted to contact Miami, Florida-based NewProductHelp.com recently to explore the possibility of having the invention assistance company further research and document her concept, as well as facilitate the presentation of information and materials about it to potentially relevant manufacturers in industry, with the ultimate goal being to secure a licensing agreement.

NewProductHelp.com assists inventors who are seeking to bring their inventions to the consumer market via established third party manufacturers and marketers by providing them expertise designed to guide them from the earliest stages of invention development to the point where there are professionally produced promotional materials regarding the concept. New Product Help.com’s New Product Publicity and Marketing Program is designed and targeted to provide maximum exposure through promotional materials such as press releases, product brochures, digital renditions, a password-protected website, and other visual mediums such as a New Product DVD and potentially, an interactive virtual reality presentation.

NewProductHelp.com will represent the Ziolek Lifter invention for 2 years utilizing the aforementioned vehicles of exposure. Any interest displayed in the invention by manufacturers and marketers will also be followed up on by NewProductHelp.com representatives.

For more information on how you can get your idea to NewProductHelp.com, visit: www.newproducthelp.com

Contact: 786-249-0308

About NewProductHelp.com: NewProductHelp.com is a Miami, Florida-based invention assistance firm that represents independent inventors who typically lack the resources and experience to pursue the commercialization of their product concepts on their own. NewProductHelp.com utilizes dynamic promotional materials such as digital renditions, press releases, invention websites, and interactive virtual reality presentations, as well as representation at industry-leading trade shows, to achieve valuable exposure for the inventions it represents.

Article source: http://www.pr.com/press-release/413934

FOR Ian Holloway, this is the moment. He has had a taste of the Premier League – and he is desperate to get back there.

This pre-Wembley period probably isn’t the time or place to get into a debate about what might happen should the Seasiders lose.

But the worry, of course, is that Holloway will be so deflated he might want to start a new challenge elsewhere.

There is no evidence to suggest that, before anyone gets too worried. But whether he would want a fourth season has to be open to debate.

It was hard enough starting from scratch last summer – to do it again might be too much.

But that is a concern for another day. Right now, it is about trying to get the better of West Ham and securing a result that would well and truly write Holloway’s name into the Blackpool history books.

He’s already in there, of course. Taking the club to the top flight two years ago was a phenomenal achievement given the budget and the players at his disposal.

But to take them back would really cement his reputation and give final confirmation, if ever it was required, that he really is a top-class manager – the best at Bloomfield Road since legendary 1953 FA Cup final winning boss Joe Smith. What an accolade.

Ahead of tomorrow, Holloway is excited. Really excited.

“I just cannot believe we are getting the chance to do it again in my lifetime. It is just absolutely brilliant,” he said.

“It was such a wonderful feeling last time but it happened so quickly, it didn’t really sink in.

“The emotions of Nottingham Forest away in the play-off semis and the magnitude of how well we played, going behind yet always coming back.

“And then Wembley – it was just incredible. I woke up the next day and honestly had to look in a paper to check it was real, that it had actually happened.

“Now I am remembering more about that time because we are having a chance to do it again.

“I want to go there and help get the lads what I think they deserve. They deserve better contracts, they deserve to play at the higher level.

“But they have to earn that right by now stopping a magnificent club that have been in the top flight for nearly all my life.”

Click here to listen to Steve Canavan’s Blackpool FC Wembley song.

Follow us on twitter @The_Gazette and like our page on facebook to keep up with all the latest Blackpool FC play-off news.

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Article source: http://www.blackpoolgazette.co.uk/sport/football/blackpool-fc/genius-ollie-just-so-excited-1-4564098

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Facebook’s stock market debut has made Mark Zuckerberg the 23rd wealthiest person on earth but he’s no evil genius.

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Thursday night was just like any other for Mark Zuckerberg. On the eve of his company’s dizzying stock market debut, the 28-year-old gave his weekly address to Facebook engineers and opened its “hackathon” jamboree of computer code, caffeine and Chinese food.

Zuckerberg did not stay long into the night, leaving his company’s campus-style headquarters in Menlo Park, San Francisco, to be with his girlfriend Cilla and their Hungarian sheepdog, Beast.

Not your average billionare … Mark Zuckerberg. Photo: Getty Images

His way of life has been described as monastic by some commentators, who contrast it with the lavish extravagances enjoyed by other self-made billionaires. On Friday he became the 23rd wealthiest person on earth, according to Forbes magazine.

But Zuckerberg does not own a super-yacht or a mansion. He is rarely seen out of his trademark navy hoodie, and last year the Harvard dropout drove around San Francisco in a discreet $US30,000 Acura TSX.

Those who have worked with Zuckerberg over the past four years describe an earnest and unassuming young developer whose social network has grown to connect one-eighth of humanity.

Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg (centre) speaks from the company’s headquarters as he remotely rings the bell to open the trading in Facebook shares.

“He’s not off on himself about how this whole thing has happened,” one of these people said. “He’s just earnest about developers and the product; he’s definitely not some kind of evil genius. It’s easy to make a caricature of him, but he’s not a caricature – he’s a good guy, and it could have been so easy for him to be a dick.”

Much has been made of Zuckerberg’s apparently awkward social manner. Technology news sites are awash with videos of early interviews showing an unblinking, dry-mouthed 20-something struggling to explain his quasi-religious belief in engineering and openness.

But those who worked with Zuckerberg say he has gone “way out of his comfort zone” to improve on his press relations, guided by his widely admired No 2, Sheryl Sandberg. “Mark is clearly gifted, but he doesn’t make others feel small or flaunt his success. There is no ‘I’m the boy genius wonder, where’s my Gatorade?”‘ said one person.

Champagne is passed out for executives moments before Facebook shares go public. Photo: Getty Images

Even his own Facebook profile is unpretentious. His history timeline mentions the mammoth social network only once – when he founded it in 2004 – and otherwise charts his own personal milestones: in 2010 he started learning Mandarin Chinese (Cilla is half Chinese and a fully qualified doctor); in 2011 he became vegetarian; in April this year he joined an organ donation scheme.

The New York Yankees fan lists “minimalism” and “openness” among his interests, he enjoys reading Plato, and tennis and fencing are among his favourite sports. Like your typical young American male, Jay Z and Nirvana feature heavily on his iPod. Less is known about Zuckerberg’s wildly ambitious formative years.

The son of a dentist father and psychiatrist mother, Zuckerberg enjoyed a comfortable upbringing with his three sisters, Randi, Donna and Arielle. He was a voracious programmer, building a network for the family home dubbed “Zucknet” aged 12. Later he reportedly created a computer version of Monopoly based on his school.

A rare insight into his teenage mind came to light in 2010, when the Business Insider website published a series of instant messaging conversations between Zuckerberg and his Harvard friends in 2004. The correspondence is notable both because it exposed a steely ambition but also because Zuckerberg’s machine-gun-fire missives were remarkably close to his flat way of speaking.

Zuckerberg appeared to confirm in one message that he secretly hacked into the website of the Harvard University newspaper, the Crimson, by guessing emails and passwords.

In another message, Zuckerberg joked that 4000 people had submitted emails, pictures and addresses to his budding Harvard social network. “People just submitted it … I don’t know why … They ‘trust me’ … dumb f****.”

Zuckerberg later told the New Yorker that he regretted the exchanges and that he had since grown up. “If you’re going to go on to build a service that is influential and that a lot of people rely on, then you need to be mature, right?” he said.

The signs are that Zuckerberg has grown up markedly since those Harvard hijinks. Hidden in the corner of his Facebook profile are three favourite quotations, including this from Pablo Picasso: “All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once you grow up.” That will no doubt resonate more strongly than ever as Zuckerberg enters a bold new chapter with his $US100b-valued social network.

Guardian News Media

Article source: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/not-your-average-billionaire-why-zuckerberg-is-no-evil-genius-20120519-1yxb2.html