Hasta La Gadget!

Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer has been surprisingly open and upfront with Yahoo employees. That is a significant change from how things were run at Yahoo previously. According to a source cited by AllThingsD, Mayer will be unveiling a plan to help turn around Yahoo to workers this week in a surprising bit of transparency.

The internal memo pegs the meeting for Tuesday and turnaround efforts will initially focus on improving Yahoo’s search efforts and advertising platforms. Mayer will be performing two meetings with one in the morning and one later in the day to accommodate foreign staff. Mayer also tips in the memo another all-hands staff meeting for October 1.

The October meeting will cover the rollout of a new system and process for tracking goals within Yahoo. The system will be used to track annual goals and grade them on a company level and then the level of departments, teams, and individuals. That is certainly a good thing because tracking goals is important when you’re trying to turn around a company in as much trouble as Yahoo.

Yahoo is expected to begin to spend significantly on search and advertising platforms. AllThingsD, also reports that Yahoo is expected to revamp its search partnership with Microsoft. Other things at Yahoo expected to be addressed include a refreshed Yahoo homepage and refreshed e-mail offerings. Both of those aspects are expected to be redesigned to substantially focus on the consumer experience. Perhaps most interesting item in the story at AllThingsD is Kara Swishers note that she is no longer embedding the full text of internal memos. She hints that Yahoo may be monitoring the use of those free smartphones we mentioned before in an attempt to catch people leaking internal documents.

[via AllThingsD]

Mayer tipped to unveil turnaround strategy to Yahoo troops this week is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
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David Niringiyimana and Innocent Nzayituriki were little boys when they fled war and genocide in the Democratic Republic of Congo in 1997. Now in their 20s, the close friends still live in the Gihembe refugee camp in Rwanda, waiting for peace to return to their home country.

Established in 1996, Gihembe is a kind of limbo to more than 19,000 refugees. They receive food, medical care, and basic education from humanitarian organizations, but lack incentive and opportunity to change their circumstances. They cannot return to the Congo until peace returns and they are not citizens of Rwanda.

When Innocent discovered the Cisco Networking Academy at the Gichumbi Business Development Center (BDC), he realized that developing information and communications technology (ICT) skills could be a way for both him and David to move out of the camp and improve their prospects. Refugees like David Niringiyimana and Innocent Nzayituriki walk the 45 minutes from the camp to seek opportunities at the BDC.

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If the MakerBot store in Manhattan is the East coast’s vanguard for 3D printer stores, Deezmaker’s just-opened store in Pasadena, California is the equivalent pioneer for the West coast crew. As of now, you can walk through the doors at 290 North Hill Avenue and at least see the store’s own Bukobot printer in action, even if high demand through Kickstarter pre-orders precludes walk-in sales for the next few weeks. When you can make that impulse purchase, however, you’ll find the Bukobot at a relatively cheap $600 and may see some alternatives during your visit. Store owner and Bukobot creator Diego Porqueras stresses to Ars Technica that he wants Deezmaker lasting for the long haul, and he may have chosen just the right area to make that happen — the shop is a stone’s throw from the experimenters (and simply curious) at Caltech, NASA’s JPL and Pasadena City College. No matter how it all shakes out, we’re hoping that the two near-simultaneous store openings are the start of a larger trend that takes 3D printing into the mainstream.

Filed under: Misc

Deezmaker 3D Printer Store opens in Pasadena, will sell you a slice of the future for $600 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Sep 2012 05:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re not sure what it is with the cat tails in Japanese culture, but they are pretty popular and have shown up in anime, video games and have even inspired people to wear them in their cosplays. In fact it was a few months back that we reported on a cat tail accessory that would sway to your pulse rate. Perhaps looking to take that up a notch, a Japanese company by the name of Neurowear has introduced a wearable accessory known as “Shippo”, which apparently also means “tail” in Japanese. Instead of following your pulse rate like the previous accessory, this one will read your brain waves and will wag according to your mood!

Your mood is read by an app which at the same time will tag your location. This allows the user and their friends to search for other places where other Shippo wearers have been and have determined to be relaxing. To complete the getup, wearers of Shippo will also need to use the brain wave reader along with a heart rate monitor that clips to the wearer’s earlobe. Neurowear’s Shippo was unveiled at the Tokyo Game Show in its prototype form and unfortunately there was no word on when it will be released or how much it will cost.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Necomimi mind-controlled cat ear headband, Neurowear headgear is controlled by your brain,

The “Flip Men” stumbled upon a job that was beyond their expertise on the season finale of the renovation series. Everything seemed alright with the new house, until they made their way into the backyard. There, the guys discovered two rattlesnakes.

They had to call in an expert to rid the property of the snakes. “When you get bit, it’s actually like hot pokers poking into you,” the expert explained, which did little to ease their nerves. The snake even proved the expert right by spitting a bit of venom on his cheek.

The good news for fans of the series is that Spike has already renewed “Flip Men” for a second season earlier this year.

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