Meet the World?s Cheapest Venture Capitalist

Maciej Cegłowski’s new startup fund was the toast of Silicon Valley on Friday, lighting up Twitter, winning top billing on the elite Hacker News forum, and drawing dozens of applications from would-be portfolio companies. The fund’s draw: Extreme stinginess.

The Pinboard Investment Co-Prosperity Cloud, as the fund is called, offers chosen startups all of $37 in venture capital. Not $37 million, like you might get from the uber-investors on Silicon Valley’s Sand Hill Road, or $37,000, like what YCombinator and other incubators offer. Thirty-seven crisp George Washingtons.

“The thing that has really changed in the past couple of years that hasn’t been internalized by everyone is that startup costs are really very, very low,” says Cegłowski. “Even compared to 2008 it costs very little money to do stuff. You have these technologies that are pretty good at scaling up … but it’s still free, open source software. So as long as the labor is free, you’re fine.”

‘I want to promote ideas that aren’t game changers.’

— Maciej Cegłowski

The Co-Prosperity Cloud is more than a statement on the rapidly falling cost of scaling software. It’s also about a crucial shift in the role played by startup investors. The importance of the actual capital distributed by venture capitalists continues to fall along with the costs of deploying, distributing, and scaling up apps, websites, other software, and even hardware. Less tangible aspects of an investment, like the endorsement, expertise, and social graph of the investor have become correspondingly more important.

If Cegłowski can prove there is an extreme version of this trend — that there are compelling startups for which investment dollars are borderline meaningless, and for which social capital is paramount – he could help remake the tech investment pipeline from a glorified money hose into a system for primarily distributing social capital like prestige, attention, taste, and advice.

The Co-Prosperity Cloud is an experiment in distributing just that sort of social capital. It offers not just the $37, but also Cegłowski’s vote of confidence – he’s only picking six winners – and “as much publicity as I can provide,” as the fund webpage says. That publicity will presumably come via the devoted online following Cegłowski has built over the years for his articles on bootstrapping his bookmark service Pinboard.in, as well as for his wide-ranging personal essays, including an indispensable meat-lover’s guide to visiting Argentina.

“I want to see if I can give people the social boost to get a chance to explain their idea and attract that initial group of customers,” Cegłowski says. “Because once you have a handful of people who use your product you can kind of claw your way up from that. It’s just that the first part is really tough.”

The former Yahoo engineer is hardly the first to capitalize on the changing nature of startup funding. YCombinator pioneered the pairing of tiny, low-five-figure funding rounds with intensive mentoring and an unconventional selection process. Its success stories include Dropbox, SocialCam, and Airbnb. The venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, meanwhile, bolsters its monetary investments with exceptional expertise in areas like human resources and public relations. Its investments have included Facebook, Twitter, and Skype.

Where the Co-Prosperity Cloud is different is in its lower ambitions. It aims to fund what Cegłowski calls “barely successful … modest” companies like his own Pinboard, a one-man operation that he says couldn’t pay a second employee but that covers his costs, salary, plus a contribution to his savings. Where YCombinator encourages two-founder teams and follow-on venture capital rounds that push startups toward a big-money exit, the Co-Prosperity Cloud actively encourages solo founders and slow-building, sustainable companies.

“I’m interested in this world of niche businesses no one will really fund,” Cegłowski says. “[I] want to promote ideas that aren’t game changers and aren’t going to grow into a giant business but are a perfectly great business.”

The fund is off to a promising start. As of this morning, it was a brand-new idea that had popped into Cegłowski’s head during an a.m. jog around San Francisco. By the end of the evening, he had upward of 40 applications, as well as offers to supplement each of his investments, to the tune of $50 apiece, from venture capitalist Marc Andreessen (of the aforementioned Andreessen Horowitz) and tech entrepreneur Thomas Ptacek.

The Co-Prosperity Cloud’s application deadline is Jan. 1, and Cegłowski anticipates announcing winners shortly thereafter. He jokes about how poorly things could go, but in the end resolved that this would be OK: “I decided I could spend $200 for this experiment.” That small outlay could result in big savings for future entrepreneurs. Or, at the very least, another blockbuster entry on Cegłowski’s blog.

Read More..

One Direction, Rihanna, Adele lead Billboard 2012 charts

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Newcomer British boy band One Direction joined R&B diva Rihanna and British singer Adele to top Billboard‘s year-end music charts, released on Friday.

One Direction, who topped the Billboard 200 album chart twice this year with their debut, “Up All Night” in March and their sophomore album “Take Me Home” in November, were named Billboard‘s top new artist/group, rounding off a stellar year of U.S. success for the band.

Adele, 24, who became the first woman top score No. 1 single, album and artist on Billboard’s 2011 year-end charts, continued her reign in 2012, when her Grammy-winning record “21″ was the top-selling album in the U.S. and she was once again named artist of the year.

“21″ has sold more than 10 million copies in the U.S. since its release in February 2011, becoming a fixture on the Billboard 200, especially after Adele’s six wins at the Grammy Awards earlier this year.

She is the only act to be named both top artist and have the top album in Billboard’s charts for two years in a row.

Adele was also named the No. 1 female artist while R&B rapper-singer Drake was named No. 1 male artist and pop-rock band Maroon 5 were named No. 1 group.

Rihanna, also 24, was named the top Hot 100 artist after a year of chart-topping hit singles such as “We Found Love” and “Diamonds” on the Hot 100 chart, which measures top-selling singles each week.

But Australia’s Gotye picked up the Hot 100 single of the year, with his heartbreak hit “Somebody That I Used To Know.”

Billboard compile their end-of-year lists based on chart performances between December 3 2011 and November 24 2012, tallying data including album sales and streaming figures.

For more on Billboard’s year-end charts, visit http://www.billboard.com/news/the-best-of-2012-the-year-in-music-1008045682.story#

(Reporting By Piya Sinha-Roy, editing by Jill Serjeant and Andrew Hay)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Microsoft Battles Google by Hiring Political Brawler Mark Penn

SEATTLE — Mark Penn made a name for himself in Washington by bulldozing enemies of the Clintons. Now he spends his days trying to do the same to Google, on behalf of its archrival Microsoft.

Since Mr. Penn was put in charge of “strategic and special projects” at Microsoft in August, much of his job has involved efforts to trip up Google, which Microsoft has failed to dislodge from its perch atop the lucrative Internet search market.

Drawing on his background in polling, data crunching and campaigning, Mr. Penn created a holiday commercial that has been running during Monday Night Football and other shows, in which Microsoft criticizes Google for polluting the quality of its shopping search results with advertisements. “Don’t get scroogled,” it warns. His other projects include a blind taste test, Coke-versus-Pepsi style, of search results from Google and Microsoft’s Bing.

The campaigns by Mr. Penn, 58, a longtime political operative known for his brusque personality and scorched-earth tactics, are part of a broader effort at Microsoft to give its marketing the nimbleness of a political campaign, where a candidate can turn an opponent’s gaffe into a damaging commercial within hours. They are also a sign of the company’s mounting frustration with Google after losing billions of dollars a year on its search efforts, while losing ground to Google in the browser and smartphones markets and other areas.

Microsoft has long attacked Google from the shadows, whispering to regulators, journalists and anyone else who would listen that Google was a privacy-violating, anticompetitive bully. The fruits of its recent work in this area could come next week, when the Federal Trade Commission is expected to announce the results of its antitrust investigation of Google, a case that echoes Microsoft’s own antitrust suit in the 1990s. A similar investigation by the European Union is also wrapping up. A bad outcome for Google in either one would be a victory for Microsoft.

But Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., has realized that it cannot rely only on regulators to scrutinize Google — which is where Mr. Penn comes in. He is increasing the urgency of Microsoft’s efforts and focusing on their more public side.

In an interview, Mr. Penn said companies underestimated the importance of policy issues like privacy to consumers, as opposed to politicians and regulators. “It’s not about whether they can get them through Washington,” he said. “It’s whether they can get them through Main Street.”

Jill Hazelbaker, a Google spokeswoman, declined to comment on Microsoft’s actions specifically, but said that while Google also employed lobbyists and marketers, “our focus is on Google and the positive impact our industry has on society, not the competition.”

In Washington, Mr. Penn is a lightning rod. He developed a relationship with the Clintons as a pollster during President Bill Clinton’s 1996 re-election campaign, when he helped identify the value of “soccer moms” and other niche voter groups.

As chief strategist for Hillary Clinton’s unsuccessful 2008 campaign for president, he conceived the “3 a.m.” commercial that raised doubts about whether Barack Obama, then a senator, was ready for the Oval Office. Mr. Penn argued in an essay he wrote for Time magazine in May that “negative ads are, by and large, good for our democracy.”

But his approach has ended up souring many of his professional relationships. He left Mrs. Clinton’s campaign after an uproar about his consulting work for the government of Colombia, which was seeking the passage of a trade treaty with the United States that Mrs. Clinton, then a senator, opposed.

“Google should be prepared for everything but the kitchen sink thrown at them,” said a former colleague who worked closely with Mr. Penn in politics and spoke on condition of anonymity. “Actually, they should be prepared for the kitchen sink to be thrown at them, too.”

Hiring Mr. Penn demonstrates how seriously Microsoft is taking this fight, said Michael A. Cusumano, a business professor at M.I.T. who co-wrote a book about Microsoft’s browser war.

“They’re pulling out all the stops to do whatever they can to halt Google’s advance, just as their competition did to them,” Professor Cusumano said. “I suppose that if Microsoft can actually put a doubt in people’s mind that Google isn’t unbiased and has become some kind of evil empire, they might very well get results.”

Nick Wingfield reported from Seattle and Claire Cain Miller from San Francisco.

Read More..

Ray Briem dies at 82; all-night radio host in L.A.

Ray Briem, the longtime KABC-AM talk show host who ruled all-night radio for nearly three decades with his phone calls to the famous and the quirky and his opinionated banter slamming liberals, championing conservative causes and extolling the big-band music he loved, died Wednesday at his Malibu home. He was 82.

The cause was cancer, said his son Bryan.

Briem spent most of his life on the radio, reaching his largest audience as the host of a popular midnight-to-5 a.m. talk show on KABC from 1967 to 1994. During those 27 years he helped set the mold for what has become a major radio genre.

WALK OF FAME: Visit Ray Briem's star

"We consider him one of the most important radio talk-show hosts of all time," said Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, the main trade publication for the talk radio industry. "There were only a handful of stations in the entire country doing talk then. It hadn't been formulated, researched, standardized and consulted. It was all based on these creative characters … and Ray Briem was one of the originals."

One of the first conservatives to establish a beachhead in radio, Briem dominated the post-midnight hours, consistently attracting the largest ratings of any overnight talk show. The year he left KABC he was drawing 15.7% of the available audience, a remarkable share in any era. He was also one of the station's most effective pitchmen, whose show "brought in more than a million dollars a year in revenue," said former KABC General Manager George Green.

His political crusades also turned tides.

Briem gave Proposition 13 author Howard Jarvis a regular platform during the 1970s and was credited by Jarvis for helping build the public groundswell that led to the anti-tax measure's resounding victory in 1978. Its passage proved that conservative radio did not play "only to the fringe," Briem said, but had mainstream appeal. "We spoke to the people, and the people responded," he told The Times in 1996.

The veteran broadcaster later bolstered the campaign for Proposition 187 led by Harold Ezell, who credited Briem with helping to get the controversial initiative cutting state services for illegal immigrants on the 1994 state ballot.

Briem also defended President Nixon during the Watergate scandal, which so endeared him to one loyal listener that when she died at 100 she left Briem her house.

An avid pilot, Briem sold the house to buy an airplane.

"He was of a different era," said Michael Jackson, another talk-radio icon who was a daily presence on KABC but attracted a more liberal base than Briem. "Politically we disagreed on almost everything, but I liked him — you couldn't help it. He had no affectation. He cared about the caller. He was always fair.... And his audience trusted him."

Briem was born Jan. 19, 1930, in Ogden, Utah, where his mother was a teacher and his father was a railroad engineer. He briefly attended the University of Utah, where he studied chemistry but abandoned his plans for a science career after "he blew up his chemistry set in the house," his son said.

By then Briem already had the radio bug. When he was 15, he and his buddies conceived a 15-minute radio drama called "The Adventures of Vivacious Vicky" that Ogden's tiny radio station agreed to air. When a staffer at the station went on a drunken binge on V-E Day in 1945, Briem was asked to fill in. Later that year, he was hired full time.

He worked with Armed Forces Radio during the Korean War, hosting live shows with big-name bands, including those led by Harry James, Guy Lombardo, Count Basie and Duke Ellington.

In 1953, after completing his military service, Briem moved to Los Angeles to spin records at KGIL-AM. He remained a deejay through the early 1960s, including a stint in Seattle where he worked for King Broadcasting on both its radio and TV outlets. He hosted a popular teen dance show that led fans to call him "the Dick Clark of Seattle."

In 1958, he married Elsie Child. The marriage ended in divorce in 1964. He is survived by their two children, Bryan, of Malibu, and Kevin, of San Diego; and five grandchildren.

In 1960 Briem came to Los Angeles to deejay at KLAC-AM. He was mentored there by Joe Pyne, the abrasive forerunner of confrontational talk show hosts such as Wally George, Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. When the station asked Briem to switch to nighttime talk, "I went into it kicking and screaming," and endured a steep learning curve, he told The Times. "I realized what a dumb head I was. I knew very little about politics or the workings of government, and the first year I was an embarrassment."

But he built up a following during his seven-year stint, engaging listeners with straightforward topics, "like cats, frogs and even submarines," he said in a 1966 Times interview, noting that the submarine show elicited a call from a Nazi U-boat commander who had settled in L.A.

Briem also made "Kooky Calls," the most celebrated of which featured a Hogansville, Ga., police chief who regaled L.A. night owls with stories about confiscating and testing Georgia moonshine. When Briem brought the chief to Hollywood for a week of V.I.P. treatment, he was met by a welcoming party of 300 KLAC listeners.

When Briem was hired at KABC in 1967, he continued to fill the hours with unusual phone calls. One of his most memorable long-term phone pals was Vladimir Pozner, the Radio Moscow commentator who went on to become a Western media celebrity.

After thousands of nights helping the lonely and insomniac pass the hours, Briem "pulled the plug" in 1994. KABC threw him a retirement party at the Century Plaza, which drew more than 1,000 Briem listeners who paid $50 apiece to see their idol and listen to some of his favorite musical artists, including Frankie Laine and the Mills Brothers.

WALK OF FAME: Visit Ray Briem's star

"I'm 65 and my body says staying up all night ain't the right thing to do," he told The Times shortly before he retired. "You never get used to it. Your biological clock, your circadian rhythms are always upset. There will be times when I will miss it, but being able to sleep at night — oh, how wonderful! That will more than compensate for the pangs of not having a forum."

His retirement was brief. Less than a year later he was back on the air, anchoring an afternoon drive show for KIEV-AM. He retired for good in 1997.

A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. Dec. 22 at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 575 Los Liones Drive, Pacific Palisades.

elaine.woo@latimes.com

Read More..

A Google-a-Day Puzzle for Dec. 14

Our good friends at Google run a daily puzzle challenge and asked us to help get them out to the geeky masses. Each day’s puzzle will task your googling skills a little more, leading you to Google mastery. Each morning at 12:01 a.m. Eastern time you’ll see a new puzzle posted here.

SPOILER WARNING:
We leave the comments on so people can work together to find the answer. As such, if you want to figure it out all by yourself, DON’T READ THE COMMENTS!

Also, with the knowledge that because others may publish their answers before you do, if you want to be able to search for information without accidentally seeing the answer somewhere, you can use the Google-a-Day site’s search tool, which will automatically filter out published answers, to give you a spoiler-free experience.

And now, without further ado, we give you…

TODAY’S PUZZLE:

Note: Ad-blocking software may prevent display of the puzzle widget.

Ken is a husband and father from the San Francisco Bay Area, where he works as a civil engineer. He also wrote the NYT bestselling book "Geek Dad: Awesomely Geeky Projects for Dads and Kids to Share."

Read more by Ken Denmead

Follow @fitzwillie and @wiredgeekdad on Twitter.

Read More..

Politico financier Joe L. Allbritton dies at 87

LOS ANGELES (TheWrap.com) – Joe L. Allbritton, the millionaire founder of Politico‘s parent company, died Wednesday of heart ailments in a Houston hospital. He was 87.

The founder of Allbritton Communications, which launched Politico and owns several television stations, built the Washington, D.C.-based media empire after controversy-fraught years as the chief of Riggs National Bank.

Born in Mississippi and raised in Texas, Allbritton was a self-made businessman, who dabbled in real estate, mortuaries and banking before entering the news business in 1974, when he purchased the struggling Washington Star newspaper.

He revived the paper. Six years later, federal regulations regarding cross ownership of newspaper and television stations forced him to sell his $ 35 million investment. Time Inc. bought it for $ 217 million.

Allbritton held on to his more lucrative media properties, including WJLA, an ABC affiliate in Washington, D.C. that took his initials, and helped launch NewsChannel 8, also in Washington, one of the country’s first 24-hour news channels.

The company he founded, which is now run by his son, Robert, has made inroads into the internet world – founding Politico in 2007 and TBD, a short-lived internet news site that the company shuttered in 2012. Though Politico is his son’s creation, the elder Allbritton bankrolled the publication and has been accused of excessively involving himself in its editorial affairs.

But, for all of Allbritton’s successes and wealth, his career was marred by a nationwide recession in the early 1990s that Forbes magazine said brought the bank to the brink of insolvency.

The economic slump left Riggs with bad loans on drastically devalued real estate, but Allbritton was also blamed by analysts for ignoring the growing suburban banking market which took business away from Riggs.

Despite these woes, he refused to give up his private jet at Riggs, even as shareholders urged him to sell the Gulfstream.

He was also criticized for his eagerness to do business with some shady customers

He personally courted Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whom human rights groups accused of killing more than 3,000 of his own citizens during his 17-year reign.

And – in a 2001 letter to Teodoro Obiang Nguema, the dictator of oil-rich Equatorial Guinea – Allbritton praised the west African strongman’s “reputation for prudent leadership.” Obiang deposited hundreds of millions of dollars in banks controlled by Allbritton.

But little of this criticism appeared in Politico’s glowing, three-page obituary on its financier.

The piece, bylined by editor-in-chief John F. Harris and reporter James Hohmann, makes a brief, passing mention of a federal inquiry into Allbritton’s dealings with Pinochet. There is no mention of Obiang.

The man, whom the Washington Post noted – in the headline of its obituary – led once-venerable Riggs to “disrepute” is praised by Politico with a laundry list of accomplishments.

“He would wear Politico baseball caps and T-shirts while playing with his grandchildren. Sometimes, he would quiz executives at the company on business and editorial matters, sometimes pretending caustically to second-guess their decisions,” Harris and Hohmann wrote of the former boss.

“It took the publisher, adept at reading his father’s sense of humor, to assure people that he was just kidding; his main involvement in the new publication was as cheerleader.”

It wasn’t the only time Allbritton was accused of involving himself in Politico’s coverage.

In 2007, five months after the news agency’s christening, Glenn Greenwald, then a columnist at Salon, accused Politico of having a conservative bias, pointing to Allbritton’s appointment of Frederick J. Ryan Jr., a one-time assistant to President Ronald Reagan, as president and CEO of Politico.

“There is nothing wrong per se with hard-core political operatives running a news organization. Long-time Republican strategist Roger Ailes oversees Fox News, of course,” Greenwald wrote. “But it seems rather self-evident that a news organization run by someone with such clear-cut political biases ought to have a hard time holding itself out as some sort of politically unbiased source of news.”

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..

Life Expectancy Rises Around World, Study Finds

A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and infectious diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a report published on Thursday, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases mostly associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.

Tony Karumba/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Children in Nairobi, Kenya. Sub-Saharan Africa lagged in mortality gains, compared with Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are striking: infant mortality declined by more than half from 1990 to 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.

At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.

“The growth of these rich-country diseases, like heart disease, stroke, cancer and diabetes, is in a strange way good news,” said Ezekiel Emanuel, chairman of the department of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania. “It shows that many parts of the globe have largely overcome infectious and communicable diseases as a pervasive threat, and that people on average are living longer.”

In 2010, 43 percent of deaths in the world occurred at age 70 and older, compared with 33 percent of deaths in 1990, the report said. And fewer child deaths have brought up the mean age of death, which in Brazil and Paraguay jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 30 in 1970, the report said. The measure, an average of all deaths in a given year, is different from life expectancy, and is lower when large numbers of children die.

But while developing countries made big strides the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries’ female populations between 1990 and 2010. American women gained just under two years of life, compared with women in Cyprus, who lived 2.3 years longer and Canadian women who gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. Life expectancy for American women was 80.5 in 2010, up from 78.6 in 1990.

“It’s alarming just how little progress there has been for women in the United States,” said Christopher Murray, director of the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, a health research organization financed by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation at the University of Washington that coordinated the report. Rising rates of obesity among American women and the legacy of smoking, a habit women formed later than men, are among the factors contributing to the stagnation, he said. American men gained in life expectancy, to 75.9 years from 71.7 in 1990.

Health experts from more than 300 institutions contributed to the report, which provided estimates of disease and mortality for populations in more than 180 countries. It was published in The Lancet, a British medical journal.

The World Health Organization issued a statement on Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differed substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others were similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries — representing about 15 percent of the world’s population — produce quality cause-of-death data.

Sub-Saharan Africa was an exception to the trend. Infectious diseases, childhood illnesses and maternity-related causes of death still account for about 70 percent of the region’s disease burden, a measure of years of life lost due to premature death and to time lived in less than full health. In contrast, they account for just one-third in South Asia, and less than a fifth in all other regions. Sub-Saharan Africa also lagged in mortality gains, with the average age of death rising by fewer than 10 years from 1970 to 2010, compared with a more than 25-year increase in Latin America, Asia and North Africa.

Globally, AIDS was an exception to the shift of deaths from infectious to noncommunicable diseases. The epidemic is believed to have peaked, but still results in 1.5 million deaths each year.

Over all, the change means people are living longer, but it also raises troubling questions. Behavior affects people’s risks of developing cancer, heart disease and diabetes, and public health experts say it is far harder to get people to change their ways than to administer a vaccine that protects children from an infectious disease like measles.

“Adult mortality is a much harder task for the public health systems in the world,” said Colin Mathers, a senior scientist at the World Health Organization.

Tobacco use is a rising threat, especially in developing countries, and is responsible for almost six million deaths a year globally. Illnesses like diabetes are also spreading fast.

Donald G. McNeil Jr. contributed reporting.

Read More..

Jenni Rivera jet linked to troubled company and executive

So far, this much is clear: Jenni Rivera, one of the most celebrated artists in the Latin world, died when her private jet went into a dive. The plane plummeted nose-first, 28,000 feet in 30 seconds, leaving its wreckage — and the remains of Rivera and six others — splayed across the side of the mountain like a wash of pebbles.

The investigation at the remote Mexican crash site is now in full swing, and authorities have not said whether they suspect maintenance problems or pilot error. But scrutiny has fallen on the plane and its pilots, one of whom was 78 years old. Interviews and documents link the jet to a troubled company — and an executive who was once imprisoned for faking the safety records of planes he bought from the Mexican government and sold to private pilots in the United States.

According to federal aviation records, the Learjet 25 carrying Rivera from a performance in Monterrey, Mexico, was built in 1969 and was owned by a Las Vegas company called Starwood Management LLC.

A Starwood executive, Christian E. Esquino Nunez, was accused of conspiring with associates in the 1990s and 2000s to falsify records documenting the history of planes they bought and sold — tail numbers, inspection stamps and logbooks. Esquino's "fraudulent business practices ... put the flying public at risk," federal authorities argued in documents obtained by The Times.

"We had a forewarning that this is what he is," Timothy D. Coughlin, an assistant U.S. attorney in San Diego, said. "Essentially they would manufacture the records ... that would indicate that maintenance was up to date. They would create them out of whole cloth." Once Esquino brought the planes across the border for sale, "it was open season," Coughlin said.

Coughlin prosecuted the case against Esquino in 2005, resulting in a guilty plea that sent Esquino to a federal prison in Lompoc, Calif., for two years.

After his release from prison, Esquino was deported from Southern California to his native Mexico, where he lives today.

For 20 years, Esquino has been embroiled in a briar of legal allegations, many involving airplanes — a bankruptcy and a restraining order, criminal indictments and civil judgments, cocaine-distribution charges, even a role in an alleged conspiracy to airlift relatives of the late Moammar Kadafi out of Libya.

On Wednesday, Esquino told The Times by telephone from Mexico City that the flight was not a charter as authorities have said. Rather, Rivera was in the final stages of buying the plane from Starwood for $250,000; the flight was offered as a free "demo."

Esquino, 50, described himself as Starwood's operations manager, and said he understood why his past would place him under scrutiny in the wake of the accident.

"Obviously my past — there is a story to it," he said. "It's unavoidable that they are going to look at my past.... I think it's fair to bring it up right now and question it."

However, he said, the jet was perfectly maintained. He said the only conceivable explanation for the crash was that pilot Miguel Perez Soto suffered a heart attack or was incapacitated in some way, and that a younger co-pilot, Alejandro Torres, was unable to save the plane. (Authorities stressed that they have not determined a cause of the crash or whether the plane had any problems.)

"We're all grieving," Esquino said. "I'm definitely very sorry that this happened."

Esquino said it was not a mistake to put a 78-year-old pilot at the helm of the flight. Perez had a valid license to fly in Mexico, authorities said Wednesday, but U.S. aviation sources said that in the United States, Perez was licensed to fly only under conditions that didn't require the use of instruments and was not allowed to carry passengers for hire.

Esquino said he had known and trusted Perez for 30 years. "I couldn't think of anyone more qualified," he said.

Rivera, 43, a famed Mexican American performer, mother of five and master of a growing international business empire, was killed Sunday when the private jet carrying her and four members of her entourage crashed near Iturbide, Mexico.

Rivera had sold 20 million albums, lived in a massive estate in Encino, was preparing to make her American network television debut and was at the height of her career.

The same plane, according to U.S. aviation records, sustained "substantial" damage in 2005 when a fuel imbalance left one wing tip weighing as much as 300 pounds more than the other. The unnamed pilot, despite having logged more than 7,000 hours in the air, lost control while landing in Amarillo, Texas, and struck a runway distance marker. No one was injured.

Esquino called that accident "minor" and said the plane had flown without issue for 1,000 hours since then.

Starwood formed in March 2007, two months after Esquino was released from prison. He probably knew, federal officials said Wednesday, that he would be unable to receive a license to buy and sell U.S.-registered aircraft following the federal charges and his deportation. Nevada employment records list Esquino's sister-in-law, Norma Gonzalez, as the sole corporate officer of Starwood. But according to allegations contained in court documents, it was Esquino — who has operated at times under the name Eduardo "Ed" Nunez — who was actually running the show.

Read More..

Hallelujah! Google Maps Returns to Apple's iPhone

The wait is now, finally over. Google Maps is in Apple’s App Store, available for both the iPhone and iPad, bringing hope to those who have been having trouble getting around since the Apple mapocalypse.

Google’s app, which arrived late Wednesday night, improves on the Google-powered maps app that Apple shipped included in iOS before version 6 — when Apple ditched Google to go out on its own.
The most important new feature, of course, is turn-by-turn voice-guided navigation.

Unlike Apple’s maps app, Google’s navigation feature isn’t integrated with Siri. But it’s also much less likely to direct you into the Pacific ocean.

Other differences: Google Maps uses Zagat listings, and Google’s own local search, for charting and rating restaurants and retailers, while Apple uses Yelp. And if you have a Google account you can sign in to sync searches, directions, and favorite places between your iPhone, iPad and other computers.

Public transit, a glaring omission from Apple Maps, shows up on iOS’s Google Maps too. So bus, subway, train, walking and driving directions are all here. And what would Google Maps be without Street View integration? Google Maps on iOS has that too, with the ability to view 360-degree panoramas of both outside streets and the inside of businesses.

Google is also releasing a Google Maps SDK for iOS, which will allow third-party app developers to incorporate Google Maps inside of Apple Maps. The new Google Maps app runs on any iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch that can run iOS 5.1 or newer and its available in 40 countries and 29 languages.

Read More..

Rock legends take to New York stage for storm Sandy victims

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Bruce Springsteen, the Rolling Stones and Alicia Keys were among the musical stars headlining an all-star benefit concert for victims of Superstorm Sandy on Wednesday, in what producers promised was “the greatest line-up of legends ever assembled on a stage.”

Organizers said the “12-12-12″ concert at New York‘s Madison Square Garden was being distributed to nearly 2 billion people worldwide through television feeds, radio and online streaming.

“How do I begin again? My city’s in ruins?” Springsteen sang. He was joined by fellow New Jersey native Jon Bon Jovi for “Born to Run,” ushering in a night of musical duets.

Next up, Roger Waters performed alongside Eddie Vedder, and Paul McCartney was due to jam later in the evening with Dave Grohl.

“This has got to be the largest collection of old English musicians ever assembled in Madison Square Garden,” Mick Jagger told the crowd. The Stones performed “You Got Me Rocking” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash.”

To help with the fundraising, celebrities such as Leonardo DiCaprio, Kristen Stewart, Jake Gyllenhaal, Chelsea Clinton and Billy Crystal took part in a telethon during the concert, which was expected to last four to five hours.

Comedian Adam Sandler took the stage for a Sandy-themed spoof on Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” rhyming the title with “Sandy, Screw Ya!”

Backstage, actress Susan Sarandon recounted losing power in her New York home but said that was a small hardship compared with the real victims who lost their homes.

Steven Van Zandt, guitarist of the E Street Band, scolded “the oil companies” and “Wall Street guys” for not doing more to help.

“Even with the music business not what it used to be … we are proud to be here,” he said.

Before the concert, producer John Sykes said $ 32 million had already been raised from ticket sales and sponsorships. Organizers are hoping to raise tens of millions more.

It was being broadcast live on television, radio, movie theaters, on Facebook and iHeartRadio, and streamed on digital billboards in New York‘s Times Square, London and Paris.

EXPANDING FUNDRAISING’S REACH

More than 130 people were killed when Sandy pummeled the East Coast of the United States in October. Thousands more were left homeless as the storm tore through areas of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, causing billions of dollars in damage.

Throughout the show, celebrities shared memories of growing up in New York City or the Jersey Shore, and offered shout-outs to first responders.

“Watching my hometown get pummeled was devastating to watch,” said actor-comedian Crystal, who grew up on Long Beach, Long Island. “It’s a helpless feeling of what’s in store for us maybe in the future.”

Sykes was also involved with “The Concert for New York City” after the September 11, 2001, attacks, which raised more than $ 30 million for charity.

He said technological advances over the past decade had exponentially changed the reach of fundraising.

“We have both traditional and new media behind us in a way that we’ve never had before, and that is really going to be the ‘x-factor’ on how much money we can raise for the victims,” he said.

Donations raised from the concert produced by Clear Channel Entertainment and the Weinstein Co, will go to the Robin Hood Relief Fund, which will provide money and materials to groups helping people hardest hit by the storm.

(Additional reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant, Patricia Reaney and Peter Cooney)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

Read More..