^[1]World/Politics

Fox News is reporting the president signalled he'd meet critics part way on health care.  President Obama said Tuesday he's willing to sign a bill even if it doesn't deliver everything he pursued through a year of grinding effort at risk of going down as a dismal failure.  Still, Republican leaders expressed renewed skepticism about Obama's call for bipartisanship and reiterated their demand that Obama jettison the Democratic bills and start from scratch. (Fox News) ^[2]

The New York Times is reporting that a monster storm would deliver as much as 16 inches of fresh snow to the nations capital, which was still digging out from beneath the nearly two-foot thick blanket of snow that obliterated the city over the weekend.  By Tuesday afternoon, workers had to give up clearing from last week’s storm to prepare for the new one.  The weather caused more than a few federal delays. The House of Representatives called off all of its votes for the rest of the week as some members of Congress could not get to Capitol Hill. (NY Times) ^[3]

Breitbart.com is telling us Haiti's government has raised the death toll for the Jan. 12 earthquake to 230,000 from 212,000 and says more bodies remain uncounted.  The new figure is not definitive as it does not include bodies buried by private funeral homes in private cemeteries or the dead buried by their own families.  The new figure gives the quake the same death toll as the 2004 Asian tsunami. (Breitbart) ^[4]

CNN is reporting In what appears to be an attempt to call Iran's bluff on its nuclear program, the United States is poised to offer Tehran a way to obtain medical isotopes that Iran says it desperately needs to treat cancer patients, according to the State Department.  The new offer from the United States comes as Washington and other major countries move closer to imposing harsh new sanctions on Iran over its nuclear program, which those countries say is designed to develop a nuclear weapon. Iran says its nuclear program is exclusively for peaceful purposes. President Obama told reporters on Tuesday that the international community will try to pressure Iran more if Iran is not willing to cooperate. (CNN) ^[5]

Fox News is reporting The convicted killer of a Kansas abortion provider has little sympathy for the family of his victim, comparing them to the relatives of a hit man in a recording posted online.  Roeder, 51, was convicted Jan. 29 of first-degree murder for shooting Dr. George Tiller last May as the doctor served as an usher at his Wichita church. He will be sentenced March 9. (Fox News) ^[6]

Tech News

Google buzz is what all of the big buzz is about and I’ll get to that in one second, but first here’s a few quickies that I thought you might find interesting.  I don’ t know if you’re a dog lover, but I am, I have 3, so I found this article on Engadget very interesting.  They introduced me to a gadget called the Dog-e-Minder which basically is a battery-powered device that records the last time your pup (or any pet that rocks a leash) ate, walked or took his / her medications. Essentially, owners simply mash the corresponding button after an event has occurred, and an internal timer keeps track of how long it has been since said event has happened. It also doubles as a dog identification tag (displaying the owner's contact information and the pet's name). Nice. (Engadget) ^[7]

Mashable is telling us about a cool mobile phone promotion involving the Sports illustrated swimsuit edition.  All you need is a physical issue of the mag and a camera phone.  Once you pick up your issue simply search through the pages for the JAGTAGs — or 2D barcodes — featuring a black and white image of what they’re calling a “mobile beauty.” Snap a photo of the JAGTAG and send it via MMS in order to get behind-the-scenes videos of the models sent directly to your phone. (Mashable) ^[8]

Techcrunch is reporting that Scrapblog, a startup that allows you to make beautiful Flash-based online scrapbooks, is hoping to help Facebook users make pretty collages of their photos via a new Facebook app, Share the Love.  When you first start using Share the Love, the app will employ Scrapblog’s recently launched QuickMix technology to instantly generate a photo collage with up to ten Facebook photos. The photos will be automatically arranged with a set theme, which you can change easily. The app offers users coordinated stickers, backgrounds and captions. And users can easily change photos from the photos they are tagged in and from their personal albums. You can also bypass Scrapblog’s technology and start from scratch by picking a theme and choosing the photos to feature. Once you are finished designing your collage, you can publish the scrapbook to your Facebook page and photo albums. (Techcrunch) ^[9]

As I mentioned earlier the big news in the Tech world is about Google Buzz. Techcrunch describes it as a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from your friends. You can “like” these items and you can comment on them. And if you use Flickr, Picasa, Google Reader, or Twitter, you can also automatically have those items imported into your stream. And Buzz will recommend items you might like based on your friends’ activity.  Buzz resides inside of Gmail and plays nice with Twitter, but it seems that Facebook and Buzz are not friendly at this point.  There is also a very active mobile component of buzz as well. I think the best coverage of the buzz announcement was from Techcrunch and I linked that on cloudcastnews.com as well as the videos introducing Buzz and Buzz mobile. It will be interesting to see if Buzz has what it takes to help Google break into the mainstream social networking scene. (TechCrunch) ^[10]

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Gossip & Entertainment

Tickets for Bonarroo went on sale yesterday and Mashable reported that they announced the acts throughout the course of the day on their myspace page. The full initial list is now available at myspace.com/bonaroo. It looks like it’s going to be a great show. (Mashable) ^[11] http://www.myspace.com/bonnaroo ^[12]

Radar online is reporting that Erin Andrews creepy peeping tom Michael David Barrett taped 16 other women and researched several more, including high profile celebrities.  Barrett pled guilty to an interstate stalking charge in a Los Angeles court back in December.  Prosecutors met in court Monday to convince the judge to sentence Barrett to 27 months, a sentence greatly reduced due to his plea bargain.  Prosecutors claim Andrews now suffers from "substantial emotional distress” following her ordeal and that she is seeking over $330,000 in restitution from Barrett. (Radar) ^[13]

The last bit of news for today comes from TMZ who tells us Captain Phil Harris -- star of Discovery Channel's "Deadliest Catch" -- died late last night ... sources tell TMZ. Harris was hospitalized a few weeks ago after suffering a stroke while unloading crabs. He had been doing better until the sudden turn.  Captain Harris died in a hospital in Alaska. He was 53. (TMZ) ^[14]