Google Updates Mobile Weather Search with Interactive Options.

Google is taking yet another step into the realm of
mobile web pages as apps with the introduction
of some nifty new features for their weather
results. When using a mobile device (English
only, for now), a simple search for “weather” will
now return an interactive set of information on
the days forecast.
The content isn’t new, but the way you access it
has changed for the better. Now a slider lets you
shift through the weather over the next 12 hours,
with information on temperature, wind, and
humidity changing as you move along the day.
Scrolling past the new interactive weather results
brings you to your standard Google search
results.
While apps are experiencing a big boom, the
future is in mobile web pages that leverage
HTML5 and other technologies to create more
app-like experiences. Google senses this and is
making some pretty cool strides in that direction.


Source: Http://phandroid.com/2011/01/24/google-updates-mobile-weather-search-with-interactive-options/

READ MORE ................... Google Updates Mobile Weather Search with Interactive Options.

Obama Speech Will Set Tone for 2012 Run.

President Obama delivers his first State of the
Union address on January 27, 2010. President Obama's State of the Union speech
Tuesday will be in part driven by events - chief
among them the "shellacking" he took in the
midterm elections and the assassination attempt
on Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona.
But it will also, inevitably, be driven by politics -
and, along with the tax cut compromise worked
out in December, set the groundwork for Mr.
Obama's argument to voters that he deserves to
be reelected in 2012.
When Republicans took control of the House in
November, it was an obvious setback for
Democrats. But it also came with an opportunity.
After two years of casting stones from the
sidelines, Republicans had to take some
ownership of the business of governing. The
result was the unexpectedly productive lame
duck session punctuated by the tax cut
compromise, which provided Americans with a
glimpse - however brief - of a Washington that
seemed to work.
And much of the credit for that went to Mr.
Obama, who had promised to change the tone in
Washington but had until that moment, in even
the eyes of many of his supporters, failed to
deliver. Polls in the wake of the compromise
suggest that his standing has increased since the
midterms, particularly among independents,
who may be giving the president a second look
as someone who ultimately can function as, in
the words of his predecessor, "a uniter, not a
divider."
Indeed, the tax cut deal allowed Mr. Obama to
present himself as someone capable of
overseeing a more effective Washington. Then
came the tragic attack on Giffords and others in
Tucson, which gave him the opportunity
(however unwanted, in light of the
circumstances) to present himself as capable of
changing the tone as well.
The tax cut deal and Mr. Obama's reaction to the
Tucson tragedy - which included a moving
speech memorializing the victims and calling on
Americans to aspire to their better selves -
allowed the president to reclaim his original
argument: That he can rise above the ugliness of
Washington rhetoric and cut through the
divisiveness that rose to a fever pitch under
President George W. Bush.
The speech Mr. Obama delivers Tuesday will be
designed in large part to drive that notion home.
The president has little reason to call for the sort
of aggressive policy moves of his first two years
- political reality means that anything as ambitions
as health care reform is off the table. Instead, he
will stress how lawmakers can come together
both legislatively and personally - a notion that
will be reinforced by the decision of many
lawmakers to break with tradition and watch the
speech alongside a member of the opposition
party.
The Barack Obama of the 2011 State of the Union
address will strive to project moderation. He will
likely point to his recent efforts to reach out to the
business community to make the case that
acrimony can't be overcome -- and drive that
point home by stressing his desire to improve
the playing field for American business to be
competitive around the globe.
That doesn't mean there won't be fault lines, of
course. Republicans are aggressively pushing the
notion that Mr. Obama has been a reckless
spender in his first two years, an argument they
will come back to over and over in the run-up to
election day 2012. They plan a vote for
Tuesday on returning discretionary, non-
security spending to 2008 levels to drive the
point home.
And while Mr. Obama is stressing that he wants
to lower deficits responsibly, he will call in the
speech for continued spending on infrastructure,
education and research and development to help
the economy continue to recover - and caution
that deep spending cuts could hamper that
recovery. In a preview speech released over the
weekend, the president cast such costs not as
spending but investment, prompting derision
from Republicans.
Yet don't expect that conflict to yield anything like
the " You Lie" moment provided by Rep. Joe
Wilson in 2009. The speech, coming just weeks
after a national tragedy, will be about unity: The
president will favor soaring rhetoric and
generalities over potentially divisive policy
proposals, and members of both parties in the
audience will look for opportunities to showcase
their willingness to disagree without being
disagreeable.
Republicans realize that the credit for that
environment is likely to go disproportionately to
Mr. Obama, just as it did following the tax cut
deal. But there isn't much they can do about it.
For the president, the speech offers the
opportunity to set the tone for a reelection
campaign highly dependent on winning back the
independent voters who respond well to efforts
to rise above the typical Washington noise. And
that's not an opportunity he's going to pass up.

Source: Http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20029390-503544.html

READ MORE ................... Obama Speech Will Set Tone for 2012 Run.

Friend recalls Arizona suspect's disturbing decline(2).

The unassuming Loughner started forcing
himself to stay awake in an effort to experience
"lucid dreaming," a trance-like state in which a
person goes directly from waking to dreaming
with no lapse in consciousness.
A timeline of Loughner's behavior the night
before the shooting -- when he crisscrossed
Tucson's northwest side, stopping at two Wal-
Marts, a Walgreens pharmacy and three
convenience stores between midnight and
sunrise -- is typical of the way Gutierrez
remembers him.
"He got really into depriving himself of sleep ... It
had to be natural. He explained this. If you use an
amphetamine or something like that, as soon as
it's completely out of your system, you can
crash, and you're also not getting the true lucid
dreaming state, because you're under the
influence of a chemical or substance," he said.
Loughner is alleged to have been involved later in
a series disruptions at Pima Community College
between February and September 2010 that led
school administrators to bar him from campus
until he could be examined and cleared to return
by a psychiatric professional.
According to school officials, he chose instead to
withdraw from college.
His friends knew he was having some kind of
trouble, but they assumed he was going through
a hard time at home and didn't want to talk about
it, so they gave him what support they could,
Gutierrez said.
"We'd just be here to hang out with him when he
wanted to. You know, you really can't offer
much, if you're not a professional or anything like
that. There's not a lot you can offer as a friend
besides, 'Yo, here's a place you can come chill
and hang out, and no one's going to bother you.'
It got to the point where he didn't even want
that," he said.
In a widely distributed YouTube video narrated
by Loughner, he is heard rambling about the
"genocide college" that was controlling grammar
and would leave him homeless.
Such talk became typical for Loughner, and
friends would sometimes challenge him when he
spoke that way.
"He kind of got tired of us, like, checking him on
things he was trying to say and being weird and
stuff. I think he just got tired of hearing it from
us, and he just cut us off," Gutierrez said.
When Gutierrez last had contact with him,
Loughner still appeared clean-cut, well-groomed
and dressed in Eddie Bauer. Then in July,
Gutierrez saw him in a grocery store parking lot.
He was wearing camouflage pants and combat
boots and his head was shaved.
"Jared was a good kid who was sick, and he just
went crazy. That's what happened, and if there's
going to be any fingers pointed anywhere, it's
that someone didn't haul his ass in and get him
evaluated. Whether that responsibility lies on the
parents, the school on the state, whatever it may
be, it didn't happen," he said.


Source: Http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE70N6U520110124?pageNumber=2

READ MORE ................... Friend recalls Arizona suspect's disturbing decline(2).