Charles Kushner is a wealthy real estate mogul that lives in New York. His son and boyfriend of Ivanka Trump Jared bought out The New York Observer for $10 million.  Charles was the subject of controversy when he bought a $1.8 billion office tower and routed $$18 million for himself and $5 million to the New York Observer.

Earlier this week it was announced that The New York Observer acquired Very Short List from InterActiveCorp.  Very Short List is an e-mail list of about 200,000 subscribers of wealthy people.  After the acquisition was made, Kushner wasted no time firing everybody working for Very Short List:

Timeline: We get a bunch of emails Thursday morning. At 10AM, the GM said he might have news (at 6PM, that news would finally be delivered). Someone else said that the deal had already gone through, and that it was finally over. And yet someone else said that we still had assignments for the next week, so it would stretch for another week. And then we heard that the person who was supposed to take over at the NYO had been fired the week before in their bloodbath. So nobody knew anything. Thursday night, the news came through. Our last day was Friday, after SIX WEEKS of being told we were going to be laid off. The worst part: some of us were on the phone with the NYO’s people on Friday, trying to teach them how to do our jobs.

Very Short List wanted to replicate the success that AOL executive Bob Bittman had with Daily Candy and Thrillist.  Video advertisements in Thrillist have a CPM rate as high as $275.

[via Valleywag/BusinessInsider]

Looks like Elon Musk let Governor Arnold Schwarznegger’s words about Detroit getting off their butts and taking notes from Tesla get to his head.  “When the mess gets sorted out, I’d like to have a conversation with whoever’s in charge at the time — the car czar or whoever — and say ‘I’d like to run your plants, if you don’t mind,’” stated Musk at Wired’s Disruptive by Design conference in Manhattan.

Musk believes that the electric car is inevitable and will be the future.  “The reason I’m putting so much time and effort into helping create Tesla is because I’m hoping we can accelerate that transformation,” stated Musk at the conference.  Musk made $200 million when his company PayPal was acquired by eBay around 2002.  After PayPal Musk has been an investor and is focusing on three other businesses.  This includes electric cars at Tesla, space exploration at Space-X, and energy technology at Solar City.

Musk said that one of the problems with Detroit is the union system.  He said that he believes that unions are important, but if there are going to be unions they should be on the same side as the company.

“Most of our experienced factory workers come from unionized environments, and we asked them what benefit did they see in unions,” he added. “They said, ‘Well, if their boss was an asshole, they had recourse.’”

[via Wired]

In an effort to make money from users, Facebook was considering on auctioning off vanity URLs to the highest bidder.  Originally Facebook was planning an ascending auction where the highest bidder would win the URL and user name.  The problem with the auction system is that Facebook would have to monitor millions of auctions in a short period of time.

Facebook was thinking about doing a Vickery auction.  An interested party submits a bid and the highest bidder only has to pay a penny more than the second highest bid.  This was too complicated to handle too.  Some of Facebook’s users tested out the auctions and gave a lot of hard pushback because MySpace and Twitter already offer vanity URLS for free.

[via BusinessInsider]

Ngmoco is an iPhone  that raised $10 million in funding back in March.  Ngmoco games include Rolando 2, TouchPets Dogs, Topple, DropShip, Doctor Awesome, Word Fu, and Maze Finger.

Ngmoco also launched a publishing network called Plus+.  Ngmoco has taken their company to the next level by hiring SEGA President and COO Simon Jeffery.  Before SEGA, Jeffery was President of LucasArts.  At Ngmoco, Jeffery will be Chief Publishing Officer.  Ngmoco’s CEO Neil Young is also a former exec at Electronic Arts.

Ngmoco also plans on launching a social gaming network called the Plus+Network.  Players on the Plus+Network will be able to create profiles, add friends and followers, and monitor leaderboards.

[via TechCrunch]

President Obama warns that the U.S. is falling behind in education.  More specifically, the President blames videogames and TV for the U.S. falling behind.  ”‘The Chinese, the Indians, they’re coming at us and they’re coming at us hard, and they’re hungry, and they’re really buckling down… And they watch—their kids watch a lot less TV than our kids do, play a lot fewer video games, they’re in the classroom a lot longer,” stated the President.

Not a bad attempt at keeping us motivated Mr. Obama, telling us to play less videogames.  Perhaps he did not read the article that surgeons that play video games tend to make less errors.  ”[The US] used to be head and shoulders above other countries when it came to education,” added the President. “We aren’t anymore. We’re sort of in the middle of the pack now among wealthy, advanced, industrialized countries.”

I must say that I agree with the President.  With all the great consoles out there, it is hard for us not to play video games.  Back in my day, we were happy with 8 and 16 bit pixelated games. All you kids these days have your 3D games with OpenGL physics engines.  Read a book for crying out loud.  And if you don’t have a 4.0, get one as soon as you get a chance.

[via Ars Technica]

Sony European Product Manager Adam Grant has given away some of the details about the Sony PSPgo.  The battery life on the Sony PSPgo has not been improved much since the PSP.  The cables of the PSPgo are actually different from the PSP.

“We have adopted an embedded battery to realise a smaller and lighter PSP system,” stated Grant. “The battery life is equivalent with the current models meaning approximately 3 to 6 hours for gameplays and approximately 3 to 5 hours for playing back videos.”

Sony has also changed the specifications of the cables on the system.  ”We have reduced the size of the USB connector and introduced multi-function features which has allowed us to obtain a smaller and lighter PSP,” added Grant. “As such the peripherals for the current PSP models do not currently work on PSPgo however we are considering introducing a special attachment that can connect current peripherals to PSPgo.”

Three of the new functions in the PSPgo include:

- Game sleep: THe XrossMediaBar can be used while suspending gameplay temporarily
- Bluetooth: Gives the ability  to use wireless headphones to listen to music, games, and videos
- Clock and calendar application: The clock and calendar application can be found when the sliding panel is open or closed

[via Ars Technica]

General Motors subsidiary OnStar Corporation is best known for designing GPS technology, hands free calling, 24 hour emergency access, and turn by turn navigation.  Earlier today OnStar tracked a kidnapper in Fort Wayne and revealed his location to the police.

Police officers stopped the non-custodial father that kidnapped his three children in Detroit.  The father used a gun to abduct Alannah (2 years old), Ajani (5 years old), and Amari (7 years old).  The children were rescued unharmed but were in “extreme danger” when they were kidnapped.  An Amber alert was issued on Sunday night around 8PM after the abduction took place.

The suspect was Anthony Adams of Cheekawaga, New York.  Adams was arrested on I-69 north of Illinois Road after Fort Wayne.  Adams was arrested on gunpoint and is being held without bail at the Allen County Jail.  Adams faces five previous counts of operating a vehicle while intoxicated, three of the times involving the endangerment of putting the children at risk.

Yesterday at a Wired conference, Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos indicated what direction the Kindle device and the Kindle book store may be taking.  Bezos said that he foresees the Kindle books and Kindle readers becoming two separate businesses.

“We are going to give the device team competition” by having Kindle books available on “mobile devices and other computing devices,” stated Bezos.  Bezos did not specify which other devices Kindle books would be offered.

Amazon.com was even considering whether to offer the Kindle at a lower price with a monthly subscription price.  But he preferred a one time higher price to keep things simple.

[via NYT]