News Blog

This has to be the weirdest and saddest crime-of-virtual-passion story I've come across.

Kimberly Jernigan--a 33-year-old woman from North Carolina--was apparently distraught after her online relationship with a 52-year-old man from Claymont, Del., came to an end.

The pair apparently met through the online community Second Life and began a virtual relationship. The two finally met in reality several months ago, and the alleged victim ended the relationship, sending Jernigan into a downward spiral.

Kimberly Jernigan met her virtual ex-boyfriend in Second Life.

(Credit: CBS3.com)

In early August, Jernigan allegedly drove to the victim's Pennsylvania workplace and attempted to kidnap him at gunpoint, according to local news station CBS3.com. When she was unsuccessful, according to the report, she returned two weeks later to track down the victim's Delaware address, and posed as a postal worker to do so. After four days of searching, authorities said she found residence in the Whitney Presidential Towers on the 7100 block of Society Drive in Claymont.

On August 21, police said, Jernigan broke into the unnamed victim's apartment with a Taser, a pair of handcuffs, a BB gun, her dog, and a roll of duct tape. He wasn't there, so she waited. When the virtual ex arrived home he saw what looked like a laser beam projecting on his chest. He immediately fled the apartment and contacted the Newcastle County Police.

(Credit: Innosuisse)

Hydrogen peroxide is not just for blonds anymore. It's also used to power an experimental helicopter that the developer says is more economical and environmentally friendly than any other rotary-wing technology in existence today.

SwissCopter AG of Murten, Switzerland is working to certify a "ultra-covert propulsion technology" based on a secret sauce called Perosin, a mix of 50 percent H2O2 and some unspecified additives. Hydrogen peroxide was used as rocket fuel as early as the 1930s, but mixtures of over 70 percent H2O2 are highly explosive, making them unfit for civilian use.

"Air is mixed with the fuel inside the rotor blade that leads to the combustion chamber at the tip of the blade where it passes an ignition system," the company explained. Gases ejected through the nozzles are what provide the power.(PDF)

The company claims to have received a large number of pre-orders and plans to begin deliveries in 2010.

(Credit: DARPA)

A Silicon Valley company has integrated iLink, a social network analytics technology, into three online military communities in hopes of improving the way users, ranging from Army wives to platoon leaders, share critical information across a wide variety of domains.

iLink is a machine learning-based system that models users and content in a social network and then points the user to relevant content, discussions, and other network members with shared interests and goals across a broad range of scenarios.

"iLink learns to deliver the right answers to the right people at the right time," SRI International's David Gutelius said in a press release. "It identifies needs, questions, and issues as they emerge in online communities and matches them with highly relevant resources and people. The goal is a more adaptive, effective problem-solving military."

The technology was developed as part of CALO (Cognitive Agent that Learns and Organizes), funded under the DARPA PAL (Personalized Assistant that Learns), a program to develop an "enduring personalized cognitive assistant." (PDF) CALO, from the Latin word "calonis," means "soldier's servant."(PDF)

The military is currently evaluating the technology and how it can be applied to solve battlefield problems, promote professional development, and support military families, according to SRI International (PDF). The goal is to create online communities where soldiers can troubleshoot, converse, and brainstorm with each other in social networks, using software that learns from its users. One site is devoted to information exchange and mutual support between U.S. Army lieutenants, another is for captains, and the third assists families in dealing with the challenges of military life.

(Credit: SRI)

Internet phone company Vonage is turning to a former Cingular Wireless to help guide it forward.

Marc Lefar, CEO of Vonage

(Credit: Vonage)

Vonage announced Wednesday that Marc Lefar, former chief marketing officer at Cingular, will become the Vonage's new CEO. Lefar, 44, will take over the top spot at the company from Jeffrey Citron, Vonage's founder who stepped in last year to help guide the company through its legal battles and financial issues.

Jeffrey Citron, founder and chairman of Vonage

(Credit: Vonage)

Now that Vonage has made headway through these troubles, Lefar will take over to guide the company's long term strategy. Earlier this week, Vonage said it had gotten $215 million in debt financing to help it get it back on track. And earlier this year it settled its legal troubles over patent disputes.

But Lefar has a tough job ahead of him. Vonage faces stiff competition from cable operators that are also offering voice over IP services. And it faces competition from traditional phone companies selling wireless services.

It's so hard to keep a good secret these days. Just ask T-Mobile. Word of its new Sidekick model, code-named Gekko, got out months ago and was all but confirmed about a week ago when the ruthless blogosphere got hold of some internal T-Mobile documents about the upcoming model.

(Credit: Corinne Schulze/CNET Networks)

Well, today, the wraps were officially taken off the new model. Simply called the T-Mobile Sidekick (more on this new, puzzling naming scheme below), it's the first Sidekick to debut since device manufacturer Danger was acquired by Microsoft.

The Sidekick isn't a revolutionary, new product, but we think there's enough there to attract the young, hip messaging fanatics. The big highlight is the new level of personalization, as you can add your own graphics, images, and designs to the outer shell for a one-of-a-kind model. You can read all about this as well as the handheld's other features and performance in our full review. The T-Mobile Sidekick is available in select stores and online today for $149.99 with a two-year contract and after discounts and rebates.

Finally, for those of you who are curious about why T-Mobile has reverted to simply calling the handheld Sidekick, here's the official statement from the carrier: "The T-Mobile Sidekick family is going to have two lines of devices, the T-Mobile Sidekick and the T-Mobile Sidekick LX. Both Sidekick lines will have their own unique set of features so that consumers can choose the one that best fits their lifestyle. The T-Mobile Sidekick will focus on personalization at an affordable price while the T-Mobile Sidekick LX will be a little higher-end and have more of a 'luxury' emphasis; it will also likely include future limited edition models."

Alcatel-Lucent's CEO and chairman are stepping aside as the company continues to face big losses and increased competition from Asian suppliers.

The telecommunications equipment giant said Tuesday that CEO Patricia Russo and Chairman Serge Tchuruk will leave later this year. Russo will finish out the year as she helps the company look for a new CEO, and Tchuruk, who helped architect the mega-merger between Lucent Technologies and Alcatel, will leave October 1.

The company said the two executives had stepped down on their own accord. It is a move, however, that shareholders have urged for months.

And who could blame them. Since the combined Alcatel-Lucent started operating as a single company in December 2006, it has lost more than half its value. It has faced six consecutive quarters of losses and has shed critical market share in several telecom equipment categories.

Executives sold the merger to investors two years ago as a great way to cut costs and compete more effectively with emerging rivals in Asia. But the reality has been much different. Combining any two large companies rarely goes smoothly. But the task of combining the U.S.-based Lucent and France-based Alcatel was further complicated by cultural differences between the two companies, which analysts say remain unresolved.

As the company tried to combine forces despite the hurdles, its competitors rallied and began stealing customers. In addition to facing competition from the usual players, such as Ericsson, Nortel Networks, and Nokia Siemens, the company also faced increasing competition from new players like Chinese rivals ZTE and Huawei.

These competitive forces, combined with the company's inability to make decisions quickly enough or to retain key executives, have fueled major losses. The company has issued profit warning after profit warning.

Despite promises from Russo last year that a turnaround was in the works, the company's shareholders and board of directors apparently have lost confidence.

For the second quarter, the company reported sales and profits slightly ahead of expectations. It also reported a major loss due to writedowns.

Its immediate future looks bleak amid concerns over the economy. As a result, the company has cut its forecast for third-quarter sales, saying it expects revenue to remain flat or decline compared with the previous quarter. Investors had hoped for a 2.5 percent increase in sales. The company also expects 2008 revenue to fall "in the low to mid single-digit range."

In addition to the departures of Russo and Tchuruk, Henry Schacht, who preceded Russo as Lucent's CEO prior to the merger, will resign from the board immediately, the company said.

New Yorkers will now officially be able to get Verizon's Fios TV service.

Verizon employees were at Grand Central Terminal in Manhattan Monday to market the new Fios TV service.

(Credit: Marguerite Reardon/CNET Networks)

The phone company launched the new service Monday in what is the largest launch of Fios TV to date. Initially, about 300,000 of the city's roughly 8 million residents will have access to the service. But Verizon plans to be able to offer the service to at least three million homes and businesses in New York City by year's end.

Verizon representatives were on hand all day Monday at the busy Grand Central train station in midtown Manhattan to get the word out about the launch.

Verizon, which will be competing head on with Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, is offering its basic triple package that includes 20 Mbps downstream and 10 Mpbs upstream data, phone service with unlimited local calling, and Fios TV service for an introductory rate of $94.99 for the first year of service.

Exactly how much it will cost after the promotion ends is somewhat of a mystery, if you talk to representatives at Grand Central Station. Representatives I talked to at Grand Central couldn't tell me how much I could expect to pay after the promotion. But given the competitive nature of the New York market, it's likely that consumers will not pay much more than the introductory rate and could even pay less if Verizon slashes prices to compete with Time Warner Cable and Cablevision, which also offer triple play services in different parts of New York City.

But price won't be the only differentiator for Verizon. The company also announced Monday that it will offer 100 high-definition channels in all its markets. And the plan is to increase that number to 150 channels by year's end.

Verizon launched its Fios TV service a couple of years ago and is now offering it in parts of 13 states. While the company had a banner 2007 and racked up thousands of new subscribers in the first quarter of 2008, it missed some analyst expectations for the second quarter.

But Maura Breen, Verizon's general manager for New York City, said she expects the third quarter to bring in many new subscribers. She attributed the dip in subscriber growth in the second quarter to a slowdown in marketing and promotions offered to get people to sign up for the service. And she expects the company's aggressive launch in New York City to lead the charge for the third quarter.

"I think we are going to see a knockout third quarter," she said. "We've already seen some very good presale numbers for New York City. And we expect it to be at or ahead of what we see for the rest of the Verizon territory."

New York City is a crucial market for Verizon, she added. Not only is it the biggest city in Verizon's territory, but the company has been providing phone service to New Yorkers for more than a 100 years.

"It sounds kind of corny, but we are the hometown team," she said. "We needed to be able to provide a full suite of products and services here. And New York is the toughest and most complex market, so if we can do it here, we can do it in any city."

One of the biggest challenges for Verizon has been negotiating with individual building landlords and real estate developers. The company has worked with bigger developers to sign on entire portfolios of buildings. And in March it began wiring Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, one of Manhattan's largest apartment complexes.

But Verizon has made strong commitments to the city to have its build out complete by 2014. The deal it struck with New York's Franchise and Concession Review Committee calls for the company to make Fios available in 57 percent of Manhattan, 13 percent of the Bronx, 15 percent of Queens, 12 percent of Brooklyn, and 98 percent of Staten Island by the end of 2008.

Breen said the company has already covered 25 percent of city with fiber. And it will simply be a matter of building on that footprint and extending fiber to individual buildings. Breen said the company is committed to reaching residents in buildings both large and small. She said people interested in the service can check to see if Fios is offered in their neighborhood, and if it is and is not yet offered to their apartment building, they can request that Verizon contact the building owner to set up some kind of deal.

Verizon's Fios TV is coming to New York City starting Monday.

The phone company sent a media advisory on Friday about the launch and will provide more details about the service during a Webcast press conference Monday morning. New York City granted Verizon its TV franchise back in May. And on July 16th, the company won final approval to offer its TV service from the New York Public Service Commission.

Verizon has been aggressively marketing its Fios Internet and TV service in the New York City suburbs for the past couple of years. And the company has offered the Fios high-speed Internet service in some apartment buildings in New York City. Now the company will be able to offer a complete package of telephony, TV, and broadband services to New Yorkers, helping it compete head-to-head with Time Warner Cable, the predominant cable operator in the city.

Verizon's Fios service uses a new fiber network that extends directly into people's homes to deliver nearly unlimited bandwidth capacity.

Technology blogger Dave Zatz reported earlier this week that Verizon will soon offer Web-based videos as part of its Fios TV offering through its set-top boxes. Initial Internet video partners include YouTube, Veoh, Blip.tv, and Break.com, the post said.

Internet phone company Vonage will name a new chief executive as early as next week, according to a story published in The Wall Street Journal Friday.

The newspaper cited people familiar with the situation. The news comes as Vonage secures funding to buy back some of its debt. On Thursday the company said it has a letter of commitment from the hedge fund Silver Point Finance to provide up to $215 million in private debt financing.

Vonage will use the cash, plus some of its own, to repurchase the remainder of its $253 million in convertible notes, the Journal story said. Vonage needed to raise money for the repurchase by December 16 or risk bankruptcy, according to the article.

Jeffrey Citron, who founded Vonage and stepped down as head of the company in early 2006, returned as interim CEO in April 2007. Over the past year, Citron has helped guide the company through a series of patent disputes and worries of bankruptcy.

Now that Vonage has settled its legal disputes and it's regained its financial footing, Citron is looking for someone else to take over the day-to-day management of the company, the story said.

But even with a new chief executive in charge, Vonage still faces many challenges. The company, which pioneered the Internet telephony market, faces stiff competition from cable operators now offering phone service as well as the phone companies themselves who sell cellular services that can also be used as wired phone replacements.

Randy Pausch, the Carnegie Mellon University computer science professor who inspired millions through his "last lecture", died at his home in Virginia on Friday of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 47.

(Credit: Randy Pausch)

Pausch was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September 2006. And his popular "last lecture" at Carnegie Mellon in September 2007 became an Internet sensation, viewed by millions throughout the world. The lecture was part of an ongoing series at many universities that asked professors to think deeply about important life lessons.

In his lecture titled "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch humorously recounted his efforts to achieve his childhood dreams, such as becoming a professional football player, experiencing zero gravity, and working with the Walt Disney Company's Imagineering department to develop virtual reality rides for the amusement park.

He clicked through photos of himself as a boy, one of which showed him at the beach in my hometown of Rehoboth Beach, Del. in 1965. He also shared pictures of his own PET scans depicting several large tumors devouring his organs. And there were pictures of past students, co-workers, and bosses who played major roles in his life.

Throughout the talk he shared insights about the power of helping others and always going after your dreams even when you're faced with obstacles. A graduate of Brown University and Carnegie Mellon's computer science Ph.D. program, he confessed that he had not originally been admitted to either school. But unwilling to accept these roadblocks, he managed to get in anyway.

Pausch went on to become an award-winning professor and helped pioneer virtual reality research. He was a key member of Carnegie Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute and co-founder of the Entertainment Technology Center, a master's degree program that brings artists and engineers together. He also helped create Alice, an interactive program that helps teach young people computer programming.

With the help of Wall Street Journal columnist Jeff Zaslow, Pausch turned his words of wisdom into a best-selling book, which was published this spring.

Pausch is survived by his wife, Jai, and three young children: Chloe, Dylan and Logan.

I first heard about Randy Pausch last year when my older sister forwarded me The Wall Street Journal column written by Zaslow, who had attended Pausch's last lecture. We had lost our mother to pancreatic cancer almost exactly five years earlier, so Pausch's story hit particularly close to home for me and my sisters. As I read about Pausch's lecture, my heart immediately went out to him and his young family as I envisioned the struggle they faced.

Unlike my mother's battle with pancreatic cancer, Pausch's journey lasted nearly two years. This is incredible given the fact that only 20 percent of all people diagnosed with pancreatic cancer make it through the first year, according to the American Cancer Society. And only about 4 percent live five years post-diagnosis. My mother, who was diagnosed a week before my younger sister's college graduation in May 2002, died about three and a half months after her diagnosis.

While no one would ever doubt my mother's own passion for life, she was definitely in a different phase of her life than Randy Pausch. And thus, she decided to forgo palliative chemotherapy and let her illness take its natural course. She had beaten breast cancer nearly 15 years earlier at the age of 45 and was thankful to fulfill her greatest wish of seeing her youngest child graduate from college. (I joked with her when she was given her terminal diagnosis that she should have aimed for a higher goal, such as the marriage of her middle daughter. I'm 35 and still single.)

But Pausch, whose oldest child is only 6-years-old now, clearly had strong incentives to endure recovery from the painful surgery to remove tumors from the pancreas and grueling months of chemotherapy.

Pausch playing with his three young children.

(Credit: Randy Pausch)

I am glad for Pausch and his family that they were given as much time as possible. But I am still saddened at the loss of such an incredible and inspiring man. And I am saddened even more that his children will grow up without him in their lives.

I can attest to the fact that it sucks to lose a parent at any age. But I was 29-years-old when my mother died. I have many wonderful memories of her that I replay in my mind almost daily. Unfortunately, Pausch's children will most likely not have any memories of their own of their dad. And that is tragic. While there could never be any replacement for the time they have lost with him, I hope the enduring legacy of his lecture and the book that followed will provide some comfort to his children as they grow up.

Pausch's family has requested that donations on his behalf be made to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245, or to Carnegie Mellon's Randy Pausch Memorial Fund.