Hasta La Gadget!

Even as New York City battens down the hatches in advance of Hurricane Sandy’s intensifying strength Monday evening, some area gyms want their patrons to know that the storm won’t be hindering their workouts this evening.

The pricey Equinox fitness club in Brooklyn Heights sent around an email Monday afternoon alerting the uber fitness-minded that the chain will remain open despite the fact that the city’s public transit system is shut down, and parts of lower Manhattan have been ordered evacuated in advance of the coming storm surge.

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NORWALK, Conn. — As the rain pelted and winds gusted at their strongest yet Monday, a half-dozen cops and firefighters in this seaside town puzzled over what to do about a 110-foot, three-story riverboat called the Island Belle.

It’s been tied up in Norwalk’s harbor, with some controversy, for nearly two years. And Hurricane Sandy’s winds were threatening to break the enormous boat loose from its pilings, which could have sent it plummeting into a seafood restaurant or other nearby docks across the river.

The pilings for the dock were already bent significantly by mid-afternoon, and the driving winds were putting continuous pressure on the gigantic boat.

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CNN and The Weather Channel ran into trouble on Monday night when they falsely reported that the New York Stock Exchange was flooding with water.

At around the same time, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers and The Weather Channel’s Bryan Norcross reported that there was up to three feet of water flooding the building, which has been closed due to Hurricane Sandy. Myers cited “the National Weather Service, through broadcast media,” presumably referring to The Weather Channel.

CNN then brought in Ali Velshi to weigh in. He was already in the center of danger, knee-deep in water on a flooded Atlantic City block. But, as one of CNN’s top financial journalists, he commented on Meyers’ report.

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A couple weeks ago, we reported that Google was threatening to exclude French media sites from search results if it passed a law that would require search engines to pay for displaying links to French media sites. Google retorted that such a law would be harmful to the Internet, and that it would be forced to stop indexing French sites as a result. Now things have heated up, with Google being told to either pay up or strike a deal.

According to Reuters, France’s president Francois Hollande told Google’s Eric Schmidt that the company has to start paying for the links it displays to French media outlets unless it strikes a deal with the companies. His office said in a statement, “The President…said he hoped negotiations between Google and press organs could begin quickly and conclude before the end of the year.” Schmidt and Hollande met in Paris at the Elysee Palace.

Earlier this month, Google stated that it would “be required to no longer reference French sites” if such a law as the one proposed was passed. The pay model, it said, would threaten Google’s existence. According to the company, the search engine giant redirects billions of clicks per month towards French media Web pages.

This issue has surfaced as a result of lagging newspaper sales in the digital age. France is one of several countries that have proposed such a law, or indicated that they find it favorable. Germany has released draft legislation that would force search engines such as Google to pay for linking to media websites. Said Fleur Pellerin, French technology minister, to Quartz, “What I would suggest — and what I’m going to suggest to Google and to the press — is to start negotiating, to start discussions for maybe three months, and try to find an agreement on a negotiated basis. And if they don’t, well we’ll see.”

[via Reuters]

Google is told to pay up or strike a deal in French Internet debacle is written by Brittany Hillen & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Earlier today, we were shocked at the news that Apple’s Senior Vice President for iOS, Scott Forstall, is leaving Cupertino along with retail chief John Browlett. While Apple didn’t explain the reason for his leaving, a report from the Wall Street Journal says that Scott Forstall was actually asked to leave the company after refusing to sign a letter apologizing for the recent shortcomings of Apple’s Maps app. According to the publication, in spite of the problems its new mobile mapping software was facing, Forstall saw no need for Apple to apologize.

“Mr. Forstall argued that the company could address the outcry without apologizing as Apple had done when it shipped iPhones with faulty antennas a few years ago,” a source told the WSJ. Tim Cook, on the other hand, strongly disagreed and eventually signed the letter of apology instead. Forstall reportedly sent an email to Apple’s iOS software team expressing his dismay that the group wasn’t “working on enough big ideas in mobile software.” Scott Forstall, a protégé of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, came from NeXT and is highly regarded by many as one of the original architects of the Mac OS X operating system.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Scott Forstall, Senior Vice President of iOS, Leaving Apple, Holga Lets You Strap Analog Photo Filters On To Your iPhone 5,