Julian Fellowes Creating NBC Drama: Set In New York In The 1880s, Titled ‘The Gilded Age’

Julian Fellowes is bringing his “Downton Abbey” success to NBC.

Fresh on the heels of “Downton Abbey” getting a fourth season order, NBC has announced that series creator Fellowes is developing an 1880s New York set series titled “The Gilded Age.”

“This was a vivid time, with dizzying, brilliant ascents and calamitous falls, of record-breaking ostentation and savage rivalry; a time when money was king,” Fellowes said in a statement of the upcoming series, which will spotlight the American Renaissance.

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Vatican Sells Stamps To Restore Famed Bernini Colonnade In St. Peter’s Square

VATICAN CITY — Not even the Vatican is immune from the economic crisis.

For the first time, the Vatican is seeking funds directly from pilgrims, collectors and tourists to pay for the ambitious restoration of the 17th century Bernini colonnade surrounding St. Peter’s Square.

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Fiscal Cliff Negotiations: ‘No Clarity’ On Deal, Though Positions Soften

By Thomas Ferraro and Jeff Mason

Nov 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. Congress advanced by inches on Tuesday toward compromise on taxes and spending, but a firm deal to avert the “fiscal cliff” at the end of the year still seemed miles away, despite growing pressure from business interests for action.

President Barack Obama was set to hold meetings with business leaders on Tuesday and Wednesday and then travel to a factory in Pennsylvania on Friday to press his case on taxes.

Fresh from his Nov. 6 re-election, Obama wants to extend low income tax rates for middle-class Americans, but let tax rates rise on income over $250,000 a year per family.

Republicans oppose this position and favor extending low income tax rates, adopted during the administration of former President George W. Bush, for all income levels.

Without action by Congress, the Bush tax cuts will expire at year-end and rates will go up for most taxpayers.

The tax rate dispute is the central obstacle to an agreement that would prevent the nation from plunging off the fiscal cliff, a convergence of an estimated $600 billion in tax increases and spending cuts that threatens to trigger another recession.

“There remains no clarity on the ultimate status on the Bush tax cuts, which have to be resolved before you can move forward with the remainder of the fiscal cliff,” said Chris Krueger, an analyst at Guggenheim Securities’ Washington Research Group.

The debate in Congress raged on as the government reported another increase in planned U.S. business spending in October, while U.S. stock prices were broadly flat on Wall Street. The Dow Jones industrial average was at about 12,950, up 15 percent from a year ago despite market worries about fiscal policy.

Republicans have not shifted from their stance against any tax rate increases, but a few have been publicly disavowing a no-new-taxes pledge to which most of them have adhered for years, putting tax revenues, if not higher rates, on the negotiating table.

REID SLAMS NORQUIST

The pledge – enforced by fiscal austerity activist Grover Norquist and his group Americans for Tax Reform – came in for renewed criticism from Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid.

“For years, Norquist has bullied lawmakers … So I was pleased to see a few Republicans in Congress distance themselves from Norquist this week,” Reid said on the Senate floor.

“Several Republican lawmakers have said revenue should be on the table during fiscal cliff negotiations. Now it’s time for those Republicans to turn happy talk into action.”

Norquist appeared Tuesday on Fox News and said talk of Republicans backing away from his pledge was “a complete media-created frenzy.”

Also on Tuesday, Dick Durbin, a senior Senate Democrat and close Obama ally, urged fellow liberals to consider reforming the costly Medicare and Medicaid healthcare programs, signaling possible Democratic compromise in an area where they have steadfastly resisted change.

“Progressives should be willing to talk about ways to ensure the long-term viability of Medicare and Medicaid” for the elderly and poor, Durbin said in excerpts from a speech.

But he added that Medicare and Medicaid should not be part of the current negotiations on averting the fiscal cliff. On that front, Durbin stood firmly with Obama, urging extension of middle class tax cuts for 98 percent of Americans.

As part of a multi-pronged push on taxes, Obama will meet with a group of small-business owners on Tuesday. On Wednesday he will host leaders of larger businesses. Then on Friday, he will visit a manufacturing facility of The Rodon Group, a small toy company in Pennsylvania.

Obama’s visit and his meetings at the White House are meant to pressure Republicans to extend tax cuts for middle-income people and end them for wealthier families.

A pressure group called Fix the Debt – which includes budget deficit hawks and corporate leaders – scheduled its own news conference for Wednesday to urge Congress “to enact a plan that would allow us to steer away from the fiscal cliff and further economic instability.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell ripped into Obama for planning to hit the road later this week to promote his tax agenda. “Rather than sitting down with lawmakers of both parties and working out an agreement, he’s back out on the campaign trail,” McConnell roared on the Senate floor.

“We already know the president is a very good campaigner. What we don’t know is whether he has the leadership qualities necessary to lead his party to a bipartisan agreement.”

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Annie Dookhan’s ‘Fake’ Lab Results Prompt Gov. Deval Patrick To Order Huge Case Review

BOSTON — Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick has ordered a “file by file review” of every case handled by a state chemist accused of faking test results at a now-closed government lab.

Annie Dookhan allegedly skirted protocols and manipulated drug samples at a former Department of Health drug lab where she worked for nine years. The alleged misconduct has threatened to unravel thousands of criminal cases.

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Rdio for iOS hits version 2.0: now with all-new design, unified player and more (update: Android too!)

Rdio for iOS hits version 20 now with allnew design, unified player and more

Rdio’s done a pretty decent job at often keeping its desktop and mobile apps updated with fresh features. With that in mind, the streaming service has just pushed out v2.0 of its iOS application, which includes a novel and very sleek design that, as you can see above, brings an all-new navigation bar, as well as the addition of a unified player to make syncing across multiple devices easier and a remote control feature to let folks tinker with other Rdio apps. Of course, this new version (2.0.0, to be precise) is compatible with the usual iOS suspects (iPod touch, iPhone and iPad) — and, better yet, you can grab the updated app now directly from your Cupertino device or via the source link below.

Update: Android users haven’t been left out, as the updated UI is now officially available on Google Play. Hit the Rdio blog for more details or the source link to grab the app directly.

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Via: Rdio Blog

Source: iTunes (App Store), Google Play

This 170-Foot Long Trampoline Needs To Be an Olympic Event

Why is the International Olympic Committee wasting its time on introducing new events like Kitesurfing at the 2016 games in Rio when any sport played on this 170-foot long trampoline would be far more entertaining to watch? More »

Evernote Clearly adds text-to-speech for Premium members

Evernote Clearly is a Google Chrome extension that promotes distraction-free reading on websites. By just clicking on the extension button, all ads and navigation controls are hidden, leaving users with a simple webpage with the only the text that you want to read. Evernote announced today that they’re adding text-to-speech capabilities to the extension.

Evernote explains that the new features is incredibly handy when you don’t have time to actually sit down and read an article. By opening a link to an article and clicking the Text-to-Speech icon in Clearly, the article will read itself aloud to you, letting you do other tasks while you listen. Evernote says that it’s “like instantly turning articles into podcasts.”

However, in order to take advantage of the new feature, you have to be an Evernote Premium member, which costs $5 per month, or $45 for a yearly subscription. But if you use Evernote a lot, we can’t say that Premium membership wouldn’t be worth it. And on top of the text-to-speech functionality, Evernote has included the ability to pause, skip ahead, or jump to different sentences.

This new text-to-speech feature supports over 12 different languages, and Evernote says that when you combine it with the text highlighting tool, it can make for a great language-learning tool. Just visit a site in another language, then have Evernote Clearly read it to you as you follow along with the highlighting. The Clearly browser extension is only available for Google Chrome, but Evernote says that it’ll be available for other browsers soon.


Evernote Clearly adds text-to-speech for Premium members is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Motorola HC1 Headset Computer

What you see in the video above is not some kind of Borg invasion re-enactment, but rather, it is an actual headset from Motorola Solutions that works. This headset has been dubbed as the Motorola HC1 Headset Computer, where it was specially designed in such a way to usher in the future of hands-free computing. For starters, the Motorola HC1 Headset Computer is capable of operating based on the partnership between voice control and head movement. What you see is shown on its micro display, showing off what a remote 15-inch laptop depicts.

There is a camera as well as microphone which enables one to stream video in addition to communicating with remote team members. This ruggedized device is able to take in its fair bit of knocks and drops, although the operating system must have been dusted off someone’s shelf as we are talking about Windows CE Professional. The rest of the specifications are nothing to write home about, carrying 512MB RAM, a TI 3730 dual-core processor, a 3D accelerator, and a microSD memory card slot for expansion purposes.

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Mujjo Leather Touchscreen Friendly Gloves, Ceton Echo Windows Media Center Extender Offers Beta Android Support,

Hamilton’s Great Adventure THD Review

In two massively gigantic downloads out on the market right this second, the development team at Fatshark have teamed up with NVIDIA to bring on the console and PC Indiana Jones-like puzzle thriller Hamilton’s Great Adventure to Android. This game works only on devices packing an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor – that including, of course, the Google Nexus 7 tablet, your best pal! Here in Hamilton’s Great Adventure THD and Hamilton’s Great Adventure THD Expansion Pack you’ll get massive amounts of puzzles to whip your way through in full-on leather jacket and next-level graphics from all directions.

This game has 22 levels, 24 puzzles, and 2 worlds per pack. There are two packs – that’s two applications, the second relying on the first to work – each of them with their own set of 22 levels, 24 puzzles, and 2 worlds. Worlds include Jungle of Amazonas, Mountains of Himalaya, Ruins of Egypt, and the Lost continent of Maralidia, and you get your bird companion Sasha the whole way through. This game takes what the original PC and console iterations brought forth and makes a miraculous re-creation here for the mobile environment.

You’ll be working with our good grave-robbing buddy and his fine feathered friend through this lovely collection of levels AS him or the bird. For bird controls you’ll be using your tablet or smartphone’s entire bulk to fly upward or downward – it’s no easy task! Avoid flying too low into the dust – you’ll get lost!

A couple things you may want to look out for before tossing cash towards this two-part beast download of a game: you need 1GB of space on your device for each half of the game. This is no small requirement, especially if you’ve got an 8GB Nexus 7. You’ll also want to be sure you have the first part of the game before you buy the expansion, as the expansion does not work without the first part. You’ll also want to be aware that this game works ONLY on devices running an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor – if you don’t know if your device does, generally Google Play will tell you, but in this case it appears that it’s only after you’ve made the download that the game itself lets you know – be careful!

This game is intensely immersive, full to the max with mind-bogglingly difficult puzzles and high quality graphics you’ll be surprised your mobile device can work with. It would appear that Fatshark has a winner on their hands as far as gigantic Android games go – just so long as you’ve got the space and patience for it: you’re going to go nuts with puzzling levels of death from start to finish!

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Hamilton’s Great Adventure THD Review is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.


Galaga Fighter Model Kit: From 8-Bit to Real Bits

The classic arcade shooter Galaga celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. That means we’re growing old faster than we think. It also means celebratory trinkets. If you’ve ever wondered what the tiny space fighter would look like in real life, this model kit provides a potential answer.

galaga fighter model kit by wave corp

For comaprison’s sake, here’s a supersized shot of the original ship courtesy of Fanpop:

galaga fighter model kit by wave corp 2

I don’t understand Japanese, but from what I understand the model was designed by Kow Yokoyama, the artist who co-created the popular Maschinen Krieger model series. The ship does have a beat-up look found in MaK models, but again I’m not 100% sure about that bit. One feature that fans will appreciate is that two models can be linked together, a nod to the double shooter mode in the game.

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You can pre-order the Galaga fighter from Rakuten for ¥3,240 (~$40 USD), but don’t think it’ll land on your doorstep right away; Wave Corporation won’t release the toy until March 2013.

[via Wave Corp via CNET]