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An anonymous reader writes "It looks simple. I've got a laptop and a USB HDD for backups. With rsync, I only move changes to the USB HDD for subsequent backups. I'd like to move these changes to a more portable USB stick when I'm away, then sync again to the USB HDD when I get home. I figured with the normality of the pieces and the situation, there'd be an app for that, but no luck yet. I'm guessing one could make a hardlink parallel-backup on the laptop at the same time as the USB HDD backup. Then use find to detect changes between it and the actual filesystem when it's time to backup to the USB stick. But there would need to be a way to preserve paths, and a way communicate deletions. So how about it? I'm joe-user with Ubuntu. I even use grsync for rsync. After several evenings of trying to figure this out, all I've got is a much better understanding of what hardlinks are and are not. What do the smart kids do? Three common pieces of hardware, and a simple-looking task."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

#imagecache If you were lucky enough to live in Asia or the western United States or anywhere in between, you would've been graced with the clear sight of what looked like a ring of fire in the sky. Or more specifically, an annular eclipse. If you missed the eclipse, don't worry, we got you. Here are the best pictures we've seen. More »

Remember that high-resolution variant of the Transformer Prime ASUS trotted out at CES? The federal government just finished putting it through its paces. The WiFi version of the firm's upcoming Transformer Pad Infinity (formally numbered TF700T) sauntered its way through the FCC, revealing itself as the slate's Tegra 3 option, if only for its lack of having a cellular radio. The tablet's LTE equipped sibling, however, was nowhere to be found -- though we're sure the feds will put it through the official gauntlet soon enough. Hit the source link below to dive into the official report.

ASUS Transformer Pad Infinity Series hits the FCC originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 May 2012 00:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Yesterday at Maker Faire Bay Area 2012 we visited the Electric Imp booth to chat with the startup's founders and get some hands-on time with the tiny wireless computer. What is the Electric Imp? It's a module containing an ARM Cortex M3 SoC with embedded WiFi that's built into an SD card form factor. While the device looks just like and SD card, it's not pin-compatible with the standard -- the idea is to leverage a reliable and affordable connector for the Electric Imp. The module is not very useful on its own -- it only comes to life when inserted into one of several boards, which provide the Electric Imp with power and access to the real world. In turn the device gives these boards a brain and an Internet connection. Eventually the company hopes that appliance manufacturers will incorporate Electric Imp slots into products to make them network aware.

We talked with CEO Hugo Fiennes (formerly with Apple) about the past, present and future of the Electric Imp so hit the break to read more and to watch our hands-on video.

Gallery: Electric Imp hands-on

Continue reading Hands-on with the Electric Imp at Maker Faire (video)

Hands-on with the Electric Imp at Maker Faire (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 May 2012 00:20:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Kevin Smith likes to talk. He'll riff for hours on pretty much anything -- comics, farting, hockey, Bruce Willis, the general state of the internet -- but mostly he likes to talk about movies. A lot. With people. And with his new Hulu series, that's pretty much all he has to do. The master of the Star Wars reference talks at length about Spoilers, fandom and how the internet changed everything.

Google's daily brainteaser helps hone your search skills.

It's been a bit of a sour year for Yahoo -- it's seen the departure of one of its founding fathers, suffered through a patent dispute with Facebook and lost its new CEO in a sea of scandalous accusations. Yikes. At least former head honcho Scott Thompson's negotiations to sell the firm's stake in Alibaba seem to be going through -- the two firms just announced plans to redistribute about half of Yahoo's 40-percent stake in said Chinese tech giant. Under the current agreement, Alibaba will purchase 20-percent of its fully diluted shares back from the Silicon Valley company, netting Yahoo $7.1 billion in compensation. Yahoo will also be permitted to sell an additional 10-percent of its stake in a future IPO, or else require Alibaba to purchase it back at the IPO price.

Despite Yahoo's stake changing hands, the companies will still be working together -- Yahoo has cleared Alibaba to continue to operate Yahoo! China (which was acquired by the latter back in October 2005) under the Yahoo! brand for up to four years -- in exchange for royalty payments, of course. Finally, Alibaba will license various patents to Yahoo moving forward. What's next? Well, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma did let it slip at AsiaD that he's considered buying Yahoo as a whole, and repurchasing the firm's assets in Asia could be a step in that direction. Read on for the official press release in all its financial glory.

Continue reading Yahoo to sell back half of its Alibaba stake for $7.1 billion, more in the latter's future IPO

Yahoo to sell back half of its Alibaba stake for $7.1 billion, more in the latter's future IPO originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 May 2012 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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jrepin writes with news of today's release (here's Linus's announcement) of Linux 3.4: "This release includes several Btrfs updates: metadata blocks bigger than 4KB, much better metadata performance, better error handling and better recovery tools. There are other features: a new X32 ABI which allows to run in 64 bit mode with 32 bit pointers; several updates to the GPU drivers: early modesetting of Nvidia Geforce 600 'Kepler', support of AMD RadeonHD 7xxx and AMD Trinity APU series, and support of Intel Medfield graphics; support of x86 cpu driver autoprobing, a device-mapper target that stores cryptographic hashes of blocks to check for intrusions, another target to use external read-only devices as origin source of a thin provisioned LVM volume, several perf improvements such as GTK2 report GUI and a new 'Yama' security module."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Native Instruments' gear is a must-have for those in the beat making world. We put the cheaper, dinkier Maschine Mikro through its paces and found that while we loved the portability, we weren't so hot on the lack of MIDI ports and absence of knobs for twiddlin'. That said, we weren't able to hate on the compromises that were made to bring it in under $600 and small enough to stow in a backpack, but how about you guys out there? When you've used this gear day in, day out, can you forgive its flaws in exchange for that extra cash in your hand, or do you wish you'd saved up a little more? If you were in NI's position, what would you have done differently?

How would you change Native Instruments' Maschine Mikro? originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 22:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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#fashion Almost as brilliant as their dress pant sweatpants, the guys at Betabrand have created a worthy follow up: the executive pinstripe hoodie that looks like a suit jacket. This is what Zuckerberg should've worn to his wedding. More »

Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green.

Want a sneak peek into the future of design? This week Inhabitat hit NY Design Week to uncover the best and the brightest in green interior and furniture design. At ICFF we spotted an ethereal series of 3D printed Hyphae lamps and we were wowed by the iTree -- a massive iPod sound system made out of an entire tree trunk! We also saw LED technology take on surprising new forms - like Light and Contrast's tiny flower-shaped lamps and Peteris Zilbers' quirky mood broom lamp (yes, it's shaped like a broom). We'll continue with the New York Design Week coverage throughout next week, so come back to Inhabitat in the coming days for more fresh new design finds, and read on beyond the break for more in the here and now.

Continue reading Inhabitat's Week in Green: NY Design Week, a hybrid Porsche and recycled sportswear

Inhabitat's Week in Green: NY Design Week, a hybrid Porsche and recycled sportswear originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 20:30:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Innovation and real startup companies are front and center at the newly re-engineered HBS. The venerable institution hopes to prepare budding entrepreneurs--with inspiration from the one that got away.

Harvard Business School is buzzing. In part, it’s because students are working in “hives,” new circular, collaborative workspaces. But also because the hives are part of a radical rethink happening here—of everything from the storied school’s established curriculum, its pedagogy, student profiles, and outcomes, to its brand identity and physical spaces. Inspiration for the hives, for example, comes from a company founded by Harvard’s most famous dropout--they have “the look and feel of Facebook’s offices,” Dean Nitin Nohria (left) tells Fast Company.

An inestimably influential institution and iconic brand, Harvard Business School (HBS) for some has become a symbol for what is wrong with business and education today: stodgy orthodoxy; ivory tower learning; American elitism and entitlement; and bloated Wall Street salaries. HBS’s makeover aims to change all that with a focus on the kind of real-world risk-taking, sweaty hard work and tinkering, and spirited collaboration that lured Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg away from Cambridge to the wild tech innovation happening out west.

Under the leadership of Harvard University President Drew Gilpin Faust and Nohria (and their predecessors), the school has implemented this year an ambitious creative destruction project. HBS wants to reinvent the MBA and birth a new generation of entrepreneurs, innovation, and startups.

Learning by doing is a central tenet of the new FIELD (Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development) curriculum which supplements its venerated case method core with a required leadership (FIELD 1), global immersion (FIELD 2) and entrepreneurship “module” (FIELD 3) for all 900 students. HBS has taught courses on entrepreneurship for decades; but now all first year MBAs will do it by building 150 real businesses which are graded by real markets.

“HBS has long been a leader and innovator in business education,” Faust tells Fast Company. “The field of organizational behavior began at Harvard in the late 1920s. The first course in entrepreneurship was taught at Harvard just after World War II, and the case method was developed here just to name a few. I think FIELD and other innovations by HBS faculty will have a similar impact.”

Before FIELD, HBS could claim a strong innovation story. Decorated professor Clayton M. Christensen wrote The Innovator’s Dilemma which “deeply influenced” Steve Jobs and coined the term “disruptive innovation.” It was the first school to dedicate faculty and facilities specifically to entrepreneurship. HBS established a Research Center in Silicon Valley back in 1997 to bring both faculty and students closer to emerging technology business cases. Its star-studded list of alumni who founded or lead successful startups and major global tech companies is hard to match (HBS’s MBA class is about three times the size of Stanford’s).

Despite this pedigree, Nohria says that other business schools are more often top-of-mind in the areas of entrepreneurship and venture capital; he’s working to change that perception, which "lags reality,” he says. Stanford University of course is nearly synonymous, if not incestuous with the Silicon Valley scene. But even in its own Boston backyard, HBS tends to be overshadowed on entrepreneurship by schools like MIT Sloan School of Management and Babson.

Raj Kapoor, Managing Director at Mayfield Fund on Sand Hill Road, is an HBS ’96. In 2005, he sold the company he cofounded, Snapfish, to Hewlett-Packard for $300 million. He says HBS tends to be more famous, or infamous, for minting bankers, consultants, and captains of Fortune 500 companies than entrepreneurs (though it is well known that many of the former become the latter). Kapoor tells Fast Company he's noticed a change in the HBS culture that has been building roughly since the recession; a graduate's self-worth used to be defined by level of starting salary but today "more students want to create new values-based companies instead of just manipulating markets.” In the past, entrepreneurship had a stigma at HBS. “This is what people did when they couldn’t get a job,” he says.

The iLab at HBS

But the mantra in the FIELD 3 module is that failure is good learning and expected for most of the 150 startups ultimately judged on May 14, “IPO Day” at HBS. Every first year student is evaluated on the “microbusiness” they jointly conceive, form, and fund (each venture receives $5,000 from HBS in seed money), then launch and commercialize. Unlike the Business Plan Contest, which has been growing at HBS since the 1990s, FIELD 3 business-building is a non-elective. The microbusiness teams are not self-selected (as Business Plan Contest entrants are) but rather chosen by faculty based on factors such as student interests and diversity (more like the real world). The FIELD 3 ventures are graded less on slick PowerPoints and more on market results--actual sales and stock prices from a financial market simulation made up of non-conflicted student shareholders; input from a panel of VCs, entrepreneurs and faculty also factors into the final judging and report cards.

HBS is far from alone among business schools in revamping its curriculum to focus on entrepreneurship and “action-learning.” But the sheer pace (announced 2010, deployed 2011) and scale of implementation, and requirement that all 900 students be immersed globally at 150 established companies (FIELD 2) and then, a few months later, build from scratch 150 businesses and sell their products--is unprecedented and unparalleled, say Nohria and Alan MacCormack, FIELD 3’s co-director who previously ran an entrepreneurship “experiential learning” program at MIT Sloan.

But FIELD 3 does not have an explicit goal of launching successful startups, MacCormack says. In fact, the school encourages those students with the best IP to save those ideas for post-graduation. But several microbusiness teams have already heard from VCs including the winner IvyKids, which is an iPad application that teaches children about everyday experiences. The market reality is that a handful of the 150 ventures will become successful businesses, MacCormack says. Long range Nohria expects HBS to produce “more entrepreneurs, more action-oriented, better trained students who put ideas into practice more quickly, versus just analytical thinkers.” By adding FIELD to its case foundation, “the soul of the school," and the HBS experience, we “continue to put distance between us and others,” Nohria says.

Still, a debate simmers about whether Stanford or Harvard can claim the b-school entrepreneurship mantle; it goes something like this: HBS has more outcomes and dedicated professors and buildings; Stanford and its students have multi-disciplinary innovation in their DNA and form the fabric of Silicon Valley; name brand alumni entrepreneurs and tech titans are referenced by each school. Guest "stars" like Intel co-founder Andy Grove teach at Stanford. (Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, HBS ’95, is scheduled to address the inaugural FIELD group at HBS’s Class Day on May 23.)

Matthew Prince, HBS ’09, tells Fast Company “when I walk up and down Sand Hill Road, eight out of ten venture capitalists are either Harvard Business School graduates or Stanford Business School graduates.” He and classmate Michelle Zatlyn came up with the idea behind hot San Francisco-based startup CloudFlare, which won the HBS Business Plan Contest in 2009. Prince thinks HBS’s generalist requirement (classes in marketing, finance, operations, etc.) helped better prepare him to be an entrepreneur than would have Stanford’s “choose you own adventure” approach. He cites a “remarkable list” of companies started by his ‘09 classmates that “have created easily over a billion dollars in value.”

HBS Class Of 2009 9 startups from HBS students have created more than $1 billion in combined value. Matthew Prince (HBS '09), co-creator of CloudFlare, lists success stories

CloudFlare--an "intelligent global network" for accelerating websites' performances. Rent the Runway--a business that rents high-fashion party frocks. Tough Mudder--10- to 12-mile hardcore obstacle course events designed by British Special Forces. ThredUp--a high-quality children's clothing swap hub. Viglink--a service providing product links to help blogs and other websites make money. Signpost--an online ad service for local businesses. Paddle8--an online destination connecting art collectors with leading galleries, foundations, and art fairs. GetGoing--a service that develops and implements online travel booking technologies. Trendyol--a Turkish designer fashion e-commerce site from an HBS student scheduled to graduate in 2010 who dropped out in 2009.

Bob Sutton, a professor of management science and organizational behavior at Stanford’s engineering school who also teaches at Stanford’s Institute of Design (d.school) and business school, welcomes HBS’s new FIELD approach and downplays the Harvard-Stanford competition. “If you blend evidence, experience and vivid cases, you get a more complete understanding and better prepared students. That is what the best of Stanford aims for, and it appears the best of HBS is going that way,” he says. Sutton views FIELD as a supplement and enhancement to the HBS cases, which he uses, not a replacement. He’s not sure how HBS will make up for the loss in revenues as a reduced case focus means less cases sold.

Nohria, who greatly admires Stanford’s cross-university collaboration and teaching involving the d.school, has plans for the “FIELD method, not just the HBS experience” to become a widely imitated, shared, and distributed learning product. “That is our measure of success, the only one really,” he says. The overarching goal is “to improve the education of business leaders, not just at HBS, but wherever they are taught in the world.”

While the size, speed and institutional adoption of FIELD have been impressive, Prince sees some pitfalls and challenges ahead. CloudFlare's CEO wonders if the more formalized FIELD faculty-led immersion trips (e.g. to Silicon Valley, Mumbai) will end up stifling innovation long-term with the decline of informal, student-led forays which define spirited, bootstraps-style entrepreneurship. Prince is disappointed that a core course on negotiation was cut to make room for FIELD. He also fears that HBS students will ultimately end up running up debt to pay for the ambitious program--fueled in part by “the arms race” with Stanford--thus limiting their ability to be entrepreneurial.

HBS wants to be a catalyst for the nascent Boston entrepreneurial ecosystem. Stopping short of envisioning a Silicon Yard, Harvard Hub, or Cambridge Corridor that rivals Silicon Valley, both Faust and Nohria see a thriving innovation and tech scene that is born and stays in Boston with Harvard as a “sparkling node.” Nohria points out that over the last 100 to 200 years "Boston has had a much longer and more enduring history of innovation than Silicon Valley"; in the 1980s, nearby Route 128 (which was the subject of his doctoral dissertation at MIT) and Silicon Valley were roughly on a par for technology development. His long view of history says life sciences and biotechnology may be the next big wave of innovation--post-information technology/Internet age; Boston and Harvard are well positioned for that, he says. (perhaps for online education too)

Last November, on the campus of HBS, Faust and Nohria opened Harvard’s gleaming new iLab facility which is designed to spur innovation and interdisciplinary collaboration across the Harvard University campus. iLab is housed in the old WGBH studios building where the innovative Sesame Street 'learning product' was born and first broadcast across America. HBS’s hives take up the two floors above the iLab.

“The iLab is designed to be an incubator for new ideas where students and faculty from across the University can meet and develop innovative ideas and learn how to translate them into entrepreneurial ventures," Faust says. "It is also a place where people from the community can receive advice on new ventures. These two facets make it an important contributor to Boston’s reputation as a hub of innovation.” 

Nohria's simple vision is "the next Mark Zuckerbeg will find the right business partner at the iLab and the necessary resources" to keep him or her in the "local ecology", from going West. 

One can only imagine the impact that the iLab might have had were it available for Zuckerberg. It’s impossible to ignore the timing of HBS’s overhaul with the record-breaking, landscape-changing $104 billion IPO of Facebook, and it’s hard not to imagine whether its founder and CEO would have stuck it out at Harvard if he had the iLab at his disposal. The iLab’s director, Gordon Jones, tells Fast Company that Zuckerberg was wowed by the facility while attending its opening event. ”This is really cool,” Jones recalls him saying. “This really is a lot like Facebook.”

[Images: Susan Young]

#design Steven Heller and Veronique Vienne have written a book about the 100 ideas that changed graphic design, which can be taken as a sort of chronological history for graphic design as a whole. The book makes consideration for everything, from body types and teen magazines to sexual taboo busting and designer websites, it's a great look at the roots of design. More »

Fluffeh writes "On Friday, a company called SceneTap flipped the on switch enabling cameras installed in around 20 bars to monitor how full the venues are, the mix of men and women, their ages — and to make all this information available live via an iPhone or Android app. Privacy advocates are unimpressed, though, as the only hint that people are being monitored is via tiny stickers on the windows. Beyond academics and policy experts, some San Francisco bar owners that originally partnered with SceneTap have said that they're pulling out and will be taking down the company's cameras. An increasing number of bars still listed on the SceneTap's site are now saying that they're not working with the Chicago startup, including Mr. Smith's, Southpaw, John Colins, and Bar None."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Despite Motorola's Android 4.0 rollout schedule, not every one of the manufacturer's devices are ready for dessert -- some, the outfit says, will be put on a diet. "Obviously we want the new release to improve our devices," the company said in a recent blog post, "If we determine that can't be done, well, then we're not able to upgrade that particular device." Handsets that are bogged down by Ice Cream Sandwich simply won't get an update. Even so, Motorola affirms that it's working closely with Google to keep its hardware up to date.

Motorola skipping Ice Cream Sandwich for some devices, worries it'll make them fat originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 19:25:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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#food Real Simple magazine's weblog recommends dropping a raisin into a bottle of champagne that's lost its effervescence and give it a couple of minutes before pouring. The last gasps of carbon dioxide left in the wine will stick to the raisin's ridged surface and release as bubbles. More »

#health We know eating red meat can kill us and make us feel happy but the real reason guys eat it? It makes them feel manly. According to scientists, red meat is synonymous with masculinity making it desirable for guys who view themselves as masculine. More »

Your smartphone and / or tablet is just begging for an update. From time to time, these mobile devices are blessed with maintenance refreshes, bug fixes, custom ROMs and anything in between, and so many of them are floating around that it's easy for a sizable chunk to get lost in the mix. To make sure they don't escape without notice, we've gathered every possible update, hack, and other miscellaneous tomfoolery we could find during the last week and crammed them into one convenient roundup. If you find something available for your device, please give us a shout at tips at engadget dawt com and let us know. Enjoy!

Continue reading Refresh Roundup: week of May 14th, 2012

Refresh Roundup: week of May 14th, 2012 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 18:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TheGift73 writes "In a few hours a new episode of Game of Thrones will appear on BitTorrent, and a few days later between 3 and 4 million people will download this unofficial release. Statistics gathered by TorrentFreak reveal that more people are downloading the show compared to last year, when it came in as the second most downloaded TV-show of 2011. The number of weekly downloads worldwide is about equal to the estimated viewers on HBO in the U.S., but why? One of the prime reasons for the popularity among pirates is the international delay in airing. In Australia, for example, fans of the show have to wait a week before they can see the latest episode. So it's hardly a surprise that some people are turning to BitTorrent instead. And indeed, if we look at the top countries where Game of Thrones is downloaded, Australia comes out on top with 10.1% of all downloads (based on one episode). But delays are just part of the problem. The fact that the show is only available to those who pay for an HBO subscription doesn't help either."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.

Fans of the Lincoln-Kennedy coincidences can appreciate similarly contrived dynamics in comparing Nokia and RIM (neither of which, contrary to the occasionally expressed opinion, has been murdered despite "Apple and Android" consisting of three words and 15 letters). Both companies are former smartphone market share leaders -- RIM in North America, Nokia globally. Both have had success in developing economies with efficient operating systems that they plan to support indefinitely. Both developed reputations for high build quality and good antenna design, and both were initially dismissive of the iPhone as they continue to see Android as the path to commoditization. And after precipitous market share declines, both hired new CEOs. Nokia, a European company, hired a CEO raised in Canada. RIM, a Canadian company, hired a CEO raised in Europe. These men now struggle with keeping their companies part of a viable alternative to the two dominant marketplace offerings.

Since embarking on their new operating system strategies, though, there have been many contrasts. While Nokia hired an outsider as a CEO, RIM hired an insider. Nokia decided to adopt a licensed OS; RIM decided to build its own (based largely on acquisitions). And now that both the Mobile World Congress and BlackBerry World conferences have passed, there's an opportunity to assess their comeback progress.

Continue reading Switched On: Clash of the troubled titans

Switched On: Clash of the troubled titans originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 May 2012 18:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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