About Kurt Black

Kurt Black

Kurt has been a tech lover ever since he got his Apple IIe and a 2800 baud modem to access CompuServe (that's a loooooooong time ago).

In his spare time, of which there is very little, he enjoys wakeboarding, snowboarding, mountain biking and golf. He's especially interested in emerging clean and renewable energy technologies.

He lives in Annapolis, MD with his wife and two daughters.

Kurt Black's Post Reel

Web:

Report: Facebook sales likely to hit $2 billion in 2010

Facebook Inc is likely to generate 2010 revenue of about $2 billion, more than previously expected for the popular social networking site, Bloomberg reported, citing three people familiar with the matter.

Facebook’s 6-year-old service, which ranks the world’s largest Web social network with roughly half a billion users, posted 2009 revenue of around $800 million, Reuters reported earlier this year.

Computers:

Dell to buy Compellent for $960 million

Dell Inc agreed to buy data storage company Compellent Technologies Inc for about $960 million in cash, to expand beyond PCs and catch up with rivals Hewlett-Packard Co and IBM in technologies like cloud computing.

Shares of Dell dropped nearly 1 percent early Monday after it announced that it would offer $27.75 a share for Compellent, a price that is about a 3 percent discount to Compellent’s closing price on Friday on the New York Stock Exchange.

Compellent shares were down 2.4 percent, or 71 cents, at $28 in premarket trading, although they were still trading nearly 1 percent above Dell’s bid.

Dell will pay $820 million, net of cash.

Compellent shares have risen about 46 percent since late October when Reuters first reported the deal was being discussed.

Monday’s deal was widely expected after Dell and Compellent announced last week that they were holding “advanced discussions.” At that time, Dell said it would bid $27.50 a share.

Lifestyle:

10 Activities That Burn Less Calories Than Sex

Let’s face it. It’s the holiday season and most of us are taking this opportunity to pig out keeping solace in the fact that we’ll work out full steam after the new year. The problem however, is that, those types of resolutions barely ever stick, probably because walking on a treadmill and water aerobics just aren’t fun.

What if there was a fun workout plan that could burn more calories? Would you use it? What if it was so fun that you’d want to do it all the time? Well, we put sexual intercourse to the test, to see if it would work as a reliable source of exercise and guess what… it is!

We strapped a husband and wife team with Zephyr Technology’s Physiological Status Monitoring device to see just what happens with the body during intercourse (no we didn’t watch). Turns out, sexual intercourse burns a significant amount of calories as well as raises heart and breathing rate to similar levels as some common exercise activities. In fact, here are 10 activities that aren’t quite as good for you as sex.

Walking

Walking at 2mph for 30 minutes straight burns, on average, 126 calories, which is of course less than the 192 calories burnt on average from 30 minutes of sexual intercourse.

Read More

Web:

Google to Give Staff 10 Percent Pay Raise

Google Inc will give its staff a 10 percent pay increase at the start of next year, according to website Silicon Alley Insider.

Chief Executive Eric Schmidt informed Google’s more than 23,000 employees of the raise by email, the Wall Street Journal later reported.

Silicon Alley Insider, citing a reader, earlier reported that Google is giving all its employees a $1,000 holiday bonus in addition to pay increases of at least 10 percent.

Active:

3 Exercises to do When Trapped in a Mine

By now, you’ve heard about the Chilean miners who were trapped underground for months and survived with the help of many others. Well, one of TechVert’s sponsors, Zephyr Technology was able to help the Chilean miners by monitoring their vital signs with their product and sending it wirelessly to a base above ground where doctors could manage the miners’ health. Pretty cool if you’re trapped in a mine for months.

So, how did doctors keep them healthy, oxygenated, and monitored?

Entertainment:

Microsoft Aims to Reignite Video Game Market With Halo

Microsoft Corp is hoping to reverse the recent slump in video games and kickstart the holiday shopping season as it launches the latest version of its blockbuster Halo video game early on Tuesday.

Halo: Reach, the fourth in the popular series that pits the player against murderous aliens in a variety of settings, will be available from midnight in stores across the United States.

The game has sold more than 34 million copies in the nine years of its life — boosting the popularity of Microsoft’s Xbox console — helping the world’s largest software company grab a slice of the $20 billion U.S. video game business.

The new Halo: Reach, technically a prequel to the main Halo narrative, has better graphics, more complex fighting scenarios and new ways of playing with others online, which analysts say could bring some excitement back to the slack video game business.

General:

Oil-Eating Microbes Consume Oil Plume

It’s no doubt the massive oil spill in the Gulf was the worst we’ve ever seen and has destroyed much of the ecosystem of the area including companies that depend on the health of the area in order to continue to conduct business. However, scientists have found that petroleum-eating bacteria was plentiful in the clouds of oil that drifted for months following the April 20th incident.

This bacteria which has been consuming oil seeping from the seafloor for ages seems to have increased their own metabolic machinery to consume more of the oil quite efficiently. The result has been a natural cleanup mechanism that can reduce the amount of oil by half about every three days or so.

Space:

Sunspot Photo is Most Detailed Ever

A new image taken by NJIT Distinguished Professor Philip R. Goode and the Big Bear Solar Observatory (BBSO) team is the most detailed sunspot photo yet. In September, the popular astronomy publication, Ciel et l’Espace will publish more photos of the Sun taken using BBSO’s new adaptive optics system.

Goode said that the images were achieved with the 1.6 m clear aperture, off-axis New Solar Telescope (NST) at BBSO. The telescope has a resolution covering about 50 miles on the Sun’s surface.

In the center is a dark sunspot, that is to say a colder zone, less brilliant than the rest of the solar surface. The temperature is around 3600 ° C. All around, the mosaic of small cells is called granulation (temperature: about 5800 ° C). On an average size of 1000 km, these cells are made of hot gas rising from inside the Sun.

  2. 1
  3. 2
  4. 3
  5. 4
  6. 5
  7. 6
  8. 7

Latest on TechVert

More on TechVert