Daily Digest
37.txt
Democrats attack Lieberman, saying he lied to del-
egates
(CNN) – Democrats accused former colleague Sen.
Joe Lieberman of misleading the Republican National
Convention when he addressed them in a speech Tues-
day night.
A senior Barack Obama campaign adviser said Lieber-
man flat-out lied when he told delegates that Obama
never successfully reached across party lines.
”Joe Lieberman ought to be ashamed of himself for
some of the things he said tonight, not as a Democrat
but as an American,” adviser Robert Gibbs said on
”Larry King Live.”
Lieberman, an independent senator from Connecti-
cut who was the Democratic vice presidential candidate
alongside Al Gore in 2000, has thrown his support be-
hind John McCain, a longtime friend.
Lieberman urged Democratic and independent vot-
ers to make a change and vote for a McCain because, he
said, he would do whatever it took to help the American
public. iReport.com: Do you agree with Lieberman?
Lieberman attacked Obama’s rhetoric, saying ”elo-
quence is no substitute for a record.”
”In the Senate, [Obama] has not reached across
party lines to get anything significant done, nor has
he been willing to take on powerful interest groups in
the Democratic Party,” Lieberman said in his speech.
Gibbs stressed that it was a ”flat-out lie” that Obama
hasn’t reached across party lines during his time in pub-
lic office. Gibbs cited Obama’s work with Sen. Richard
Lugar, R-Indiana, to keep nuclear weapons out of the
hands of terrorists and with Sen. Tom Coburn, R-
Oklahoma, on the government budget.
Gibbs blamed what he called lies like those perpe-
trated in Lieberman’s speech for disillusioning voters
and making them cynical of the government.
”I think [Lieberman] owes it to the American people
to look into the camera and tell them the truth,” Gibbs
said. Watch New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson’s take
on Lieberman’s speech Video
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid spokesman Jim
Manley said Reid too was unhappy with the tone of
Lieberman’s speech.
”As the American people have made very clear, the
last thing this country needs is another four years of
the same old failed Bush-McCain policies of the past,”
Manley said.
1
Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor said in
a statement that the convention speeches also showed
how out of touch the McCain campaign and Republi-
cans are with the American people, neglecting to talk
about one of the country’s biggest problems: the econ-
omy.
”At a time when millions of Americans are strug-
gling like never before to pay their mortgage, their
medical bills and their gas bills, tonight’s speakers at
John McCain’s Republican convention proved how out
of touch their candidate is by saying not one word about
his plans to put our economy back on track and provide
real relief to middle-class families,” Vietor said. ”Ap-
parently, John McCain’s belief that we’ve made ’great
progress’ economically over the last eight years means
he doesn’t have to offer any plans at all to fix our ailing
economy.”
The Obama campaign also used a short speech de-
livered by President Bush via satellite to once again tie
McCain to the unpopular president, as it has attempted
to do throughout this election season.
”Tonight, George Bush enthusiastically passed the
torch to the man who’s earned it by voting with him
90 percent of the time and who will continue this pres-
ident’s legacy for the next four years: his disastrous
economic policies, his foreign policy that hasn’t made
us safer and his misguided war in Iraq that’s costing us
10 billion a month,” Obama campaign manager David
Plouffe said.
”The man George Bush needs may be John McCain,
but the change America needs is Barack Obama.”
38.txt
Palin to call for reform in convention speech
ST. PAUL, Minnesota (CNN) GOP vice presiden-
tial candidate Sarah Palin will highlight her record as
Alaska’s governor and a former smalltown mayor when
she speaks Wednesday night to the Republican Na-
tional Convention, a top aide to Palin said.
Sen. John McCain’s running mate also will call for
reform in Washington, Palin aide Tucker Eskew said.
”She will speak as a governor, a former mayor and
someone with both hands on the steering wheel of Amer-
ica’s energy economy,” Eskew said.
”She will detail her record of shaking up the status
quo in Alaska and standing up to entrenched interests
to put the government back on the side of the people.
She will make the case for Sen. McCain as the only
candidate who has fought for America and the best
man to protect us in dangerous times.”
Palin is slated to speak during the 10 p.m. ET hour
at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul. Video Watch
more on Palin’s speech
Palin took a tour of the podium at the convention
site Wednesday morning, hours before she’ll return to
give what will be the most scrutinized speech of her
career.
She walked through the nearly empty hall and spent
about 10 minutes checking out the podium where she’ll
give her primetime acceptance speech.
Palin told reporters that she feels ”great.”
”I’m excited to speak to Americans. This will be
good. It’s about reform,” she said. Video Watch Palin
tour the podium
Top McCain staff, including campaign manager Rick
Davis and senior adviser Nicolle Wallace, accompanied
Palin on her tour.
Her address is sure to generate a lot of attention
since McCain surprised many political observers last
week with his selection of Palin over betterknown con-
tenders such as former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Rom-
ney and Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty.
Revelations that Palin’s 17yearold unmarried daugh-
ter, Bristol, is pregnant also generated a flurry of media
buzz as the GOP convention got under way this week.
On Tuesday night, Republican leaders strongly de-
fended Palin, who has won praise from influential con-
servatives for her opposition to abortion and her probusi-
ness record.
Actor and former Sen. Fred Thompson led the
charge, berating ”Washington pundits and media big
shots” who have questioned her experience as a first-
term governor of Alaska and former mayor of Wasilla,
Alaska.
”She is from a small town, with smalltown values,
but that’s not good enough for those folks who are at-
tacking her and her family,” he said to cheers.
”Let’s be clear. The selection of Gov. Palin has the
other side and their friends in the media in a state of
panic. She is a courageous, successful reformer who is
not afraid to take on the establishment.” Video Watch
Thompson defend Palin
Thompson said Palin has the experience needed in
Washington, calling her ”a woman who has actually
governed rather than just talked a good game on the
Sunday talk shows and hit the Washington cocktail cir-
cuit.”
Sen. Joe Lieberman, the 2000 Democratic vice pres-
idential nominee and now a Connecticut independent,
also called Palin ”a reformer.”
”She’s taken on the special interests and the polit-
ical power brokers in Alaska and reached across party
2
lines to get things done,” Lieberman said. Video Watch
more of Lieberman’s speech
And President Bush, speaking to the convention by
video link from the White House, said McCain could
govern in Washington with ”an outstanding leader at
his side.”
Also on Wednesday night, McCain’s former rivals
for the GOP presidential nomination will take center
stage at the convention.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Romney
and former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee will speak
in prime time, party officials said.
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Giuliani scrapped his run for the presidency in Jan-
uary. Romney, who was on the shortlist of potential
running mates for McCain, gave up his bid for the
White House in February. And Huckabee dropped out
a month later.
All three men backed McCain after ending their
campaigns.
39.txt
Will her gender sway women to Palin?
(CNN) – As Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, Sen. John
McCain’s pick for vice president, makes her case to the
convention Wednesday night, Republicans hope she will
sway Democratic women toward their ticket.
Palin already has been working on that.
”It was rightly noted in Denver this week that Hillary
[Clinton] left 18 million cracks in the highest and hard-
est glass ceiling in America, but it turns out the women
of America aren’t finished yet and we can shatter that
glass ceiling once and for all,” she said as McCain in-
troduced her as his choice Friday.
But some of the most ardent Clinton supporters —
even those still loath to vote for Sen. Barack Obama
– found McCain’s choice of Palin patronizing. Video
Watch more of Palin’s comments
”Well, first were just laughing. I mean laughing not
in the sense of ’Oh my God, what has he done?’ but
”Does he think that’s really going to work?’” Allida
Black, a Clinton supporter for Obama, said.
”I mean does he think that women voters who are
with Hillary is some Lego block ... you can take out a
red one and put in a green one?”
She said Palin and Clinton have only gender in com-
mon. Palin is anti-abortion rights, belongs to the Na-
tional Rifle Association and is a conservative Repub-
lican. And she’s been critical of Clinton, calling the
New York senator’s charges of ”sexist” news coverage
– whining.
”When I hear a statement like that coming from
a woman candidate with any kind of perceived whine
about the excess criticism or maybe a sharper micro-
scope put on her, I think, man, that doesn’t do us any
good,” Palin told Newsweek magazine in March.
That’s not to say all Clinton supporters would be
adverse to a McCain-Palin ticket. A group called PUMA,
which stands for ”Party Unity My A**”, were Clinton
supporters – both women and men –who are threaten-
ing to vote McCain.
The McCain camp has been aggressively courting
those disaffected with Obama, especially after he an-
nounced Delaware Sen. Joseph Biden as his running
mate. Video Watch more on Palin’s readiness to lead
Just as the Democrats’ convention was getting started
in Denver, Colorado, last week, the McCain campaign
and the Republican National Committee unveiled four
TV ads geared toward Clinton supporters.
The most recent McCain ad involved the famous
Hillary Clinton ”3 a.m.” spot and will be aired during
the convention. The 30-second spot uses footage from
Clinton’s original ad and declares, ”Hillary’s right.”
The ad, which ran in key battleground states and
specifically in Denver last week, also goes a step fur-
ther than the New York senator’s original ad, in detail-
ing what it claims are the national security threats the
United States faces.
Clinton, speaking to a member of the New York del-
egation in Denver on August 25, said she was opposed
to Republicans using her words against Obama.
But it is still unclear as to how many will go the way
of the PUMA. Read more on the PUMA movement
A recent Rutgers University study said historically,
women don’t vote for a candidate because a woman is
on the ticket. They tend to vote Democratic.
That happened in 1984 for former New York Rep.
Geraldine Ferraro, the first female vice presidential of
a major political party. Despite the historic nature of
the race, her addition to Walter Mondale’s ticket proved
fruitless.
The Mondale-Ferraro ticket lost big time to Presi-
dent Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush that year:
525 electoral votes to Mondale’s 13.
Reagan carried 49 out of the 50 states, with Mon-
dale’s only electoral votes coming from Minnesota – his
home state – and the District of Columbia.
Ferraro’s ties to New York, which is a notoriously
blue state, were unsuccessful for the ticket.
In that race, 44 percent of Democratic women voters
and 56 percent of their Republican counterparts voted
in the presidential race; 51 percent of all voters were
women, according to exit polling.
Twenty-four years later, there’s another woman on
a presidential ticket – this time a Republican. It’s some-
thing that Ferraro hopes will not bring sexism back into
the campaign.
”I believe that people will look back and assess how
Hillary was treated by the media during the campaign
primaries. And it remains to be seen whether or not
3
the ugly head of sexism – in the media – will raise its
head again,” said Ferraro on August 29, the day after
Obama’s speech at Invesco field.
”I have always said that I wish I would have never
been the only woman, until now,” she said last Friday.
But if Democratic women were swayed this year, it
was toward a woman in their own party. iReport.com:
Are you a woman backing Palin?
That woman was Hillary Clinton , and it wasn’t
because of her gender, but what they pointed to as her
experience and fitness to lead the country.
Claudine Montano, initially a Clinton supporter,
said last week at the Democratic convention that not
many Clinton backers will support McCain after Clin-
ton’s rousing speech endorsing Obama.
”I think when they heard Hillary ... they will go
with Obama,” said Montano, a New Mexico resident
who is not a delegate.
Pledged Clinton delegate Anne Price Mills, with
tears in her eyes, said Clinton was ”presidential” on
August 26.
Price Mills, of Washington state, was a staunch
Clinton supporter. As for her vote in November?
”Obama has two months,” she said. ”I won’t vote
for McCain, but [Obama] has to get me here, and I
haven’t connected with him.” Read more on Clinton
supporters on the fence
Palin has five children. Her 17-year-old daughter,
Bristol, is pregnant, and she recently had a Down syn-
drome baby. Anti-abortion groups and conservatives
have praised her and her daughter’s decisions to keep
their babies.
Elder statesman of the evangelical movement, Fo-
cus on the Family founder James Dobson, released a
statement lauding the Palins for acting in keeping with
the group’s policies and practices:
”We have always encouraged the parents to love and
support their children and always advised the girls to
see their pregnancies through, even though there will of
course be challenges along the way. That is what the
Palins are doing, and they should be commended once
again for not just talking about their pro-life and pro-
family values, but living them out even in the midst of
trying circumstances,” his statement said.
But an anti-abortion stance is unlikely to sway Demo-
cratic women.
A recent survey by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Re-
search shows that the issue of choice can have a large
impact on the election.
The poll, conducted May 29-June 8, showed: Pro-
choice is an issue that swings key blocs of women voters
to Obama’s side.
Obama gains 13 points among pro-choice indepen-
dent women – who make up 9 percent of the sample
– and 9 points among pro-choice Republican women,
who account for 5 percent of the sample, according to
the poll.
 advertisement
”Among pro-choice independent women, pro-choice
Republican women, and liberal to moderate Republican
women, the issue of abortion produces a larger advan-
tage for Democrats than the economy, the war in Iraq,
or health care,” according to the Greenberg Quinlan
Rosner/NARAL poll report.
Also, a recent New York Times article looked at
working mothers and found both support and criticism
that Palin might not be able to handle a big family
and the role of vice presidency at the same time and
reservations about her going back to work right after
giving birth to a disabled baby.
Cake Financial Turns One And Pushes
A New Social Stock Index: The
Cakedex
One year after it launched at TechCrunch40, Cake
Financial is rolling out a new design today with a load
of new features. One of the most interesting is a new
stock index called the Cakedex that is based on the
top 100 holdings of the top performing investors on the
social investing site. Over the past five and half years,
the Cakedex would have outperformed the SP 500, the
Dow Jones, and the Nasdaq. Although, over the past
90 days, it has been underperforming the major stock
indexes. Next year, the company plans to launch an
exchange-traded fund based on the Cakedex so that
people can actually invest in it. Can the top investors
on Cake do better than the market?
The Cakedex was actually introduced in May, but
is now integrated into Cake’s new design timed with its
first birthday. Cake members track the performance
of their actual brokerage accounts and share that data
with each other. Cake can now tap into 60 different
brokerage services, up from a dozen or so. And has
now tracked over one million transactions.
In addition to Cakedex, other new features include:
Cake Take: A stock rating system updated several
times a day, based on the real-time buying and selling
of stocks by Cake’s members.
Cake Scout: A stock recommendation system that
uses collaborative filtering to show you what other Cake
members with similar holdings and risk profiles are buy-
ing and selling. Each recommendation includes the
Cake Take stock rating.
By adding these social recommendation features,
Cake is becoming more like the Last.fm of investing.
But it adds a ranking element so you know which mem-
bers are worth following. Other social investing star-
tups creating similar ranking systems include Covestor
and Vestopia, and the race is on to create real financial
products based on the social investing data that these
startups are collecting.
4
Cake now has ”tens of thousands of members,” ac-
cording to CEO Steve Carpenter and is collectively
tracking about 1 billion worth of assets. But the Cakedex
is based only on the holdings of the top 10 percent of
members. So good is that top 10 percent? The aver-
age Cake member’s portfolio is down 9.84 percent over
the past 12 months, while that of the average top-ten-
percenter is up 7.41 percent. (YTD it is -12.39 percent
versus -5.59 percent, respectively).
DreamIt Incubator Holds Funding Day
To Commemorate First Graduating
Class
Today marks DreamIt Ventures’ first Funding Day,
during which the new startup incubator will introduce
a dozen new companies to a collection of founders and
venture capitalists. DreamIt is a program in the same
vein as Y Combinator and TechStars, offering startups
seed funding, guidance, and connections in exchange
for equity. We’ve written brief introductions to each of
the startups, which you can view below:
SCVNGR: SCVNGR is a promising startup that al-
lows users to create mobile games without any techni-
cal knowhow. The games are free to play from any cell
phone, and don’t require a download. SCVNGR games
are ideal for group activities, like school orientations,
corporate team building, and promotions.
Vuzit: Vuzit offers an embeddable document viewer,
allowing users to include documents in their web pages
and blogposts. Very similar functionality by Scribd and
Docstoc, but Vuzit is aiming to become a tool for indi-
viduals and companies who are interested in managing
access to their content instead of a destination portal.
Phrazit: Phrazit condenses reviews down to 30 char-
acters or less by allowing users to create tag clouds for
just about anything. Users submit words or phrases
associated with each word, with the most popular re-
sults displayed in a large font. For example, the Phrazit
for Harry Potter describes the series as ”Bloody Awe-
some”. You can see our full review of Phrazit from last
month here.
DropCard: DropCard hopes to be a solution to the
problems that plague business cards (namely, you don’t
always have them with you, and they’re practically use-
less if you have too many of them). DropCard reme-
dies this issue by asking users to text their new ac-
quantince’s email address to a 41411, which will send
their contact information and ask them to repicrocate
by signing up and sending theirs. For a similar service,
see Rmbrme.
BeanStockd: BeanStockd is a news site and media
company hoping to further bring the green and env-
iornmental movements to the public’s attention. The
site currently features a blog, and also plans to release
a web-based game, which users can advance on by par-
ticipating in real-world green activities.
InterviewBest: InterviewBest helps users prepare
for their job interviews by generating printed presen-
tations that can be used during their interviews. The
site also helps users write their post-interview follow-up
letters. InterviewBest will offer a trial version, and will
generate revenue with a paid subscription plan.
Anthillz: Anthillz asks professionals to review their
colleagues, which can be used as a ”social pitch” for
future job applications. In order to request a review
from one of your colleagues, you have to write a review
about them first - a design that may help the site in-
crease its content, but may also lead to inaccurate or
careless reviews.
Sleep.fm: A self-described ”social alarm clock”, Sleep.FM
allows users to set their alarm and have their friends
leave messages which will wake them up in lieu of a
standard buzzer. The site also promises to allow users
to set up ”smart” alarms, such as a weather report or
a notification if a flight has been delayed.
SnackFeed: SnackFeed indexes premium video con-
tent on the web and tries to ascertain which shows will
interest you the most. The site also intends to offer an
activity feed for video, allowing you to see what videos
your friends have uploaded or watched.
TapInko: TapInko looks to simply the often time
consuming process of purchasing ad space in the real
world. The site plans to offer users a variety of ad place-
ment options, including newspapers, restaurant walls,
vehicles, or even as a tattoo on someone else’s body
part (who had previously put a portion of their skin up
for sale).
Trendient: Trendient is positioning itself as a pro-
motions and sales intelligence solution for the long tail
of e-tailers, who may not have the time or resources to
track such data themselves. Details at this point are
slim, as the site is currently in alpha testing.
socialmedian Launches First Major
Upgrade
socialmedian, which has come under fire as of late
for trying to use Twitter as means of raising 500,000
in venture funding, announced Thursday that it has
launched its first major upgrade since the company
started and its improvements will finally address some
of the concerns its users have had since its inception.
First off, the new socialmedian will make it easier
for users to get content onto the site and enable blog-
gers to better promote their content. Dubbed ”News-
Streaming,” socialmedian’s latest foray into bringing
only certain content to its users is quite complex.
News-Streaming lets users filter out all the junk
from the social media that they broadcast through the
5
site. According to the company, if users want to share
their Twitter feed with the community, but only want
their tweets that are actually newsworthy to be col-
lected by socialmedian, they can first input their Twit-
ter feed and next to that, place certain keywords into
the field to help the service filter out the tweets that the
user doesn’t want posted. In other words, if you want
to only post your political tweets to socialmedian, add
your Twitter feed to the service and select keywords
that may have some relevance to politics. From there,
socialmedian will grab all tweets containing those key-
words and post it to the site. The same goes for Google
Reader feeds, Digg submissions, and Delicious book-
marks, to name a few.
To make sure all that information isn’t annoying
other users, socialmedian is adding a filter feature that
will let other users ”turn the volume up or down” on the
amount of tweets and stories making their way across
the pages. Those users can choose to see all updates or
only those ”relevant updates” that they preset.
Part two of socialmedian’s new initiative will make
it easier for bloggers to promote their material. In or-
der to do that, socialmedian will launch a ”reverse-blog
widget,” which after users place their blog feed into
their updates, will be featured in the clips section to
the right of the socialmedian page and display the lat-
est stories from the blog.
Taking a page out of the Digg handbook, socialme-
dian is also offering a page displaying the most popular
stories of the day, week, and month. Instead of calling
newer stories ”Upcoming,” like Digg, socialmedian has
two new entries called ”Rising Fast” and ”Hot Discus-
sions.” Genius.
Finally, socialmedian opened up its site to make al-
most every page available to search engines and users
won’t need to register any longer to view different pages
on the site.
All in all, socialmedian’s updates seem rather logical
and don’t really break the mold in any way. The site
was in desperate need of improvement and it looks like
it has finally happened. Now we’ll need to wait and see
if its users embrace it.
Samsung agrees to sell Symbian stake to
Nokia
Samsung Electronics has agreed to sell its invest-
ment stake in Symbian to mobile phone maker Nokia,
according to a Reuters report.
In June, Nokia announced plans to acquire the re-
maining stake in smartphone software developer Sym-
bian that it didn’t already own. Nokia, by having full
ownership of Symbian, wants to beat back the compe-
tition from Apple’s iPhone and other competitors by
accelerating its product development and serve as an
open-source operating system platform for other hand-
set makers, wireless carriers, and software developers.
Nokia, according to the Reuters report on Tuesday,
will pay 410 million for its Symbian stake.
Nvidia, AMD gaming graphics buck
green-PC trend
There is an ungreen revolution taking place in en-
thusiast game PC circles.
The eye-opening graphics possible on today’s game
PCs come at a cost: light-dimming power consumption.
The trend, rooted in the perennial quest for more speed,
bucks the overall greening of the PC industry.
Green PC designs have become more than just prac-
tical; they’re cool. Power-sipping Netbooks are in, as
are small desktops like the Dell Studio Hybrid and
Hewlett-Packard Pavilion Slimline.
This is not the case for high-end gaming PCs, where
bigger is better. How far this trend can go isn’t clear,
but a seminal event in Apple’s history may offer a les-
son. In 2001, Apple unveiled one of the first dual-
processor consumer systems, based on the overheating-
prone IBM PowerPC G4 processor. The original Apple
tower design had a Rube Goldberg feel to it, with a host
of fans straining to rid the system of heat. A noise like
that emitted by a wind tunnel, generated by the power
supply and fans, forced Apple to redesign the system.
This symbolized why Apple eventually abandoned
PowerPC: The platform wasn’t efficient with power.
Fast-forward to 2008. Game rig makers are cram-
ming as many as four graphics chips into high-end boxes
that are notable not only for performance but also for
the power they consume. As a consequence, big power
supply units are in vogue. Today, bragging rights ex-
tend to the units themselves: some systems boasting
boutique brand names such as Cooler Master and Sil-
verStone draw 1,200 watts–roughly three times the power
requirements of game systems a few years ago.
It’s an ominous trend, according to box makers. ”If
this trend does continue, then, yes, it will give us prob-
lems,” said George Yang, an engineer at Los Angeles-
based game rig maker IBuyPower. ”A regular home
user would have to have an electrician come in, get the
outlet out, and plug in a higher breaker,” Yang said.
Today, some of the higher-end systems with big power
supplies require a special wall power socket, according
to Yang.
Other game rig makers are equally concerned. ”I
swore that I’d never break 1,000 (watts),” said Kelt
Reeves, president of game PC maker Falcon Northwest.
”Unfortunately, that’s been the solution for the past
several years. Bigger, bigger, bigger power supplies.”
Reeves says that 1,200 watts is now essential for
gaming systems based on multiple boards from Nvidia
6
or AMD’s ATI graphics unit. ”With three GTX 280s
or two of the R700 cards, we’re recommending they go
with a 1,200-watt power supply,” Reeves said, referring
to the newest graphics chips from Nvidia and ATI re-
spectively.
This is just about the limit, he said. ”We can’t go
too much more over that before–if you actually pull
that (power)–you start tripping the client’s household
circuit breaker.”
Neither Nvidia nor ATI show any signs of slowing
down, according to Reeves. ”Eventually these chips
get so hot that their own heat becomes a barrier to
performance,” he said.
Nvidia admits that its chips are drawing more power
than before. ”If we go back about three years, our
graphics card power was in the 120- to 130-watt range,”
said Jason Paul, product manager in charge of enthusi-
ast GPUs (graphics processing units) at Nvidia. ”The
GTX 280 which we launched a couple of months back,
it’s around 230 watts (of) graphics card power,” he said.
But Paul claims the performance per watt is the key
yardstick, not raw power. ”Where you see a little under
2X increase in maximum power, you’ve seen probably
3-times or 4-times (the) increase in the level of perfor-
mance. So, overall we see a substantial improvement in
performance per watt. This is the big metric we track
to ensure we’re delivering efficient architectures. ”
Paul says Nvidia has implemented power savings
techniques on its GTX 280 that keep the power down
when it’s not running at top performance loads. ”With
the GTX 280 at idle, that card runs at about 25 watts,
which is one-tenth of its absolute worst-case power,” he
said. Nvidia also offers hybrid graphics technology that
turns off all the power-sucking boards when they’re not
in use.
Moreover, Paul says that the multiboard systems
are limited to a small niche at the very top of the mar-
ket. ”There’s definitely a segment of the market that
wants more and more performance. Remember, how-
ever, that this is the ultimate performance (segment).”
But game box makers ship many–if not most–of
their systems to the very niche that Paul is describ-
ing. ”We’re all about the high end. The higher-end the
graphics card is, and the more expensive, the more we
sell,” said Reeves.
And the trend in power supplies exemplifies how
this market has changed. ”The power supply used to be
just silver box, and nobody gave it a second thought,”
he said. ”(But) as graphics cards have evolved, they
have forced the power supply makers to keep providing
more and more power pipes–or cabling–to the graphics
cards”–increasing the unit’s complexity, he said.
Reeves cites GPUs, not CPUs from Intel, as the
culprit. ”The latest CPUs use very little wattage. If
you overclock a 3GHz Intel CPU to 4GHz, you might
pull 40 more watts. Whereas a graphics card, you put
three of them in a system, they’ll pull 800 watts running
some of the higher-end games,” he said.

LinkedIn and CNBC team up

CNBC and social networking site LinkedIn announced

Thursday a strategic alliance.
Under the deal, CNBC will provide articles, blogs,
financial data and video across the LinkedIn network,
while CNBC will integrate the social networking site’s
functionality into its CNBC.com site to allow LinkedIn’s
user base to share comments about the news within
their network of friends and business contacts.
Users of both sites are expected to notice these changes
in the fourth quarter. And, as part of the deal, portions
of CNBC’s content will provide a revenue sharing ar-
rangement with LinkedIn.