(CNN) -- Whatever your state of mind or current location, there is probably a remix of the Jay-Z/Alicia Keys ode to New York City "Empire State of Mind" available for your listening pleasure and localized for your hometown.
Simply type in the keywords "empire" and "state of mind," paired with the name of your city, into Google or the search function on YouTube to see if some enterprising rapper and mezzo-soprano have tailored the blockbuster single to your city, town or borough.
Whether the surge in remixes is from people trying to refute the notion that New York City is the center of the universe, or because the song is a prototypical anthemic beat that every city wants to claim as its own, it doesn't seem to matter. Nearly 100 city-specific remixes have already popped up around the Internet.
"It had been a while since a song filled New Yorkers with as much pride as this one does," said M. Tye Comer, the executive editor of Billboard.com. "I think people from other cities are seeing this, and there is an envy of that. They want to take a piece of that and bring it to their city."
NEW YORK (WABC) -- A white van parked in the heart of Times Square with tinted windows, no license plates and a bogus law enforcement placard caused a scare on the day before New Year's Eve.
The investigation began around 11:00 on Wednesday morning and brought the area near Times Square to a standstill. Patrol officers spotted the van parked on the west side of Broadway between 41st and 42nd Streets. They said the 1992 Dodge with tinted windows covered by a tarp and a placard in its windshield for a nonexistent New York / New Jersey police agency. Officials also said the van had no license plates.
The van had not been moved for some days. One woman who works nearby said she saw a man park it on Monday and walk away. NYPD officials closed the area for cars and pedestrians as they investigated.
I love technology and could not end the year without a little more tech news...
From npr
Here's one thing that has stayed the same over the past decade: Americans love screens. There are many, many more screens in our lives now than there were 10 years ago: Nintendo DS, iPhone, Garmin GPS navigator. However, the screen that is most pervasive is the regular old TV.
According to Nielsen, we are watching 20 percent more of it than we were in 1999, and American households now have more TV sets than people.
What we watch on TV, though, is very different than it was 10 years ago.
In 1999, television's top show was the NBC scripted drama E.R. There were no reality shows in the Top 20. Now, the No.1-ranked American Idol is just 1 of 5 reality shows in the Top 20.
All 20 of the highest-rated shows are still shown on the big broadcast networks, but this was also the decade that saw the rise of cable TV. The vast majority of American homes — 90 percent of them — subscribe to cable or satellite now, which means almost all viewers have access to thousands more shows than they did 10 years ago.
With hits like The Daily Show, The Sopranos and ESPN's Monday Night Football, cable is beginning to give the broadcast networks a run for their money in the ratings. Just recently, the eccentric detective show Monk on cable's USA Network easily beat out its time-slot rivals on the broadcast channels.
(CNN) -- Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport will begin using bodyscanners on all passengers taking flights to the United States following the attempted terrorist attack on a U.S.-bound flight on Christmas Day, the Dutch interior minister said Wednesday.
The millimeter-wave bodyscanners will be in place in about three weeks, Dutch Interior Minister Guusje ter Horst told a news conference at The Hague.
"We've escaped a very serious attack with serious consequences, but unfortunately in this world there are individuals who do not shy away from attacks on innocent people," she said.
Nigerian suspect Umar Farouk AbdulMutallab, 23, is accused of trying to blow up a Northwest Airlines plane going from Amsterdam to Detroit, Michigan, with explosives that had been concealed in his underwear. He is charged with attempting to destroy an aircraft.
The militant group al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula has claimed responsibility for the December 25 plot.
Dutch authorities have already said they were confident in the security measures that were carried out when AbdulMutallab transferred to the Detroit flight from an earlier flight from Nigeria.
The measures they had in place were metal detectors and X-ray machines, however -- and ter Horst admitted they could not have picked up the explosive material that AbdulMutallab was allegedly carrying.
From NYT
There were so many rappers around at the Highline Ballroom on Tuesday night that Melanie Fiona began to get confused. “I go by the name of ...,” she said early in her too-short set, beginning to introduce herself as if she had some fanciful sobriquet. But then she caught herself: “Not just go by the name — it’s my actual name.”
On the night’s bill, which had been organized by the hip-hop and R&B radio station Power 105.1 (WWPR-FM) as part of its Power Live series, Ms. Fiona offered a brief reminder of the things absent from the rest of the show: singing amid rapping, elegance amid raucousness, feminine energy amid bursts of testosterone.
Her first album, “The Bridge” (SRC/Universal Motown), released last month, is one of this year’s best R&B albums, and also one of the year’s most promising debuts. It’s full of brassy, thumping throwback soul, revival territory first staked out by white British singers like Amy Winehouse and Adele but lately reclaimed by black singers, from Jazmine Sullivan to Estelle to Ms. Fiona.
But Ms. Fiona, 26, from Toronto, is in no way a relic. She has a muscular voice but still manages a bright tone, making her equally convincing whether she’s getting bruised or doing the bruising.
On Tuesday, in a black leather jacket and sporting cold dashes of turquoise eye shadow, she made the best of her predicament. First she howled through the tough, almost mean come-on “Give It to Me Right.” Then, during “It Kills Me,” a tremendous exercise in Mary J. Blige-esque tortured soul (and nominated for a 2010 Grammy for female R&B vocal performance), she subtly posed for a photographer who was taking pictures onstage as she sang.
Performing before Ms. Fiona, Pusha T and Malice of Clipse were visibly cheerful during their short set, especially on “I’m Good” and “Popular Demand (Popeyes),” tracks from their new album, “Til the Casket Drops” (Columbia). After that ALBe BACK, from the South Bronx, dropped in for a quick rendition of his charmingly naïve “Mira Mira.” Closing the show, Jadakiss put on a clinic of efficient showmanship, bringing out Ryan Leslie and Busta Rhymes for guest appearances. “I know y’all like surprises,” Jadakiss said. “It’s Christmas.”
From NYDailyNewsFDNY firefighter Jim Ryan succumbed to pancreatic cancer, which he contracted from working on the poisonous Ground Zero site, on Christmas Day ...
They didn't find that out until early Christmas morning 2009, eight years later, when the firefighter's lungs finally overfilled with fluids, the side-effects of pancreatic cancer inflicted on him by the toxic dust he swallowed in hundreds of hours at Ground Zero.
Ryan answered the call of duty on 9/11, then went beyond, returning to the blasted ground for months. First, he hunted survivors, then victims, then just fragments of people - his FDNY brothers among them - whose lives and bodies were shattered that day.
He didn't realize how his own life was being shattered. Officials said the air was safe. He got cancer in 2006 that the Fire Department said came from the poison rubble. He beat it once. He couldn't beat it a second time, as a 48-year-old father of three.
On Christmas Eve, he tried to be himself, optimistic, helping with the morning dishes in his Kings Park, L.I., home as if he were not dying. By then, though, he had been off his cancer treatments since November because they no longer worked.
"That's just the way he is," his wife, Magda, said Christmas night, hours after her husband lost his final struggle.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/2009/12/27/2009-12-27_the_other_victims_of_911_li_firefighters_death_and_the_renewed_call_for_bill_to_.html#ixzz0bBFvGNPr
From NYT
Yes, that’s right, ladies and gentlemen, it’s Apple iTablet time — oops, I mean iSlate time!
Over the last week, we’ve heard more rumors, some facts and a lot of excitement about the impending Apple tablet.
Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo recently pulled together an “Exhaustive Guide to Apple Tablet Rumors,” leaving no slate unturned. In brief, Gizmodo believes the device is likely to be called the iSlate, will cost around $800, and will be announced in January, but won’t hit store shelves until March or possibly April.
Many predictions point to either a 7- or 10-inch display for the tablet. Seven inches would be a manageable size, almost like carrying a paperback book. But what about a 10-inch device? I rummaged under my desk and pulled out an old 2006 model of the Hewlett-Packard Compaq Tablet PC TC1100, pictured above, to try to understand what a 10-inch screen might feel like.
