(photo: plastic lemonade)

First, Sen. Richard Shelby put a blanket hold on all executive branch nominees to extort the executive branch into rigging procurement to guarantee that the company he favored won a bid on a defense contract. Oh, and he wanted the FBI to build a crime lab in his state, too.

And now Sen. Lindsey Graham is copycatting, placing a hold on the closing of Gitmo hostage to extort the Department of Justice into not having a civilian trial for Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. And Graham's not being subtle about it. In a well-researched piece for The New Yorker, Jane Mayer breaks some amazing scoops:

Rahm had a good relationship with Graham, and believed Graham when he said that if you don't prosecute these people in military commissions I won't support the closing of Guantnamo. . . Rahm said, If we don't have Graham, we can't close Guantnamo, and it's on Eric!'

[snip]

Graham told [Mayer], It was a nonstarter for me. There's a place for the courts, but not for the mastermind of 9/11. He said, On balance, I think it would be better to close Guantnamo, but it would be better to keep it open than to give these guys civilian trials. Graham, who served as a judge advocate general in the military reserves, vowed that he would do all he could as a legislator to stop the trials.

Okay, Senators Graham and Shelby? This is the U.S. Senate, not middle school. This blackmail thing? Its not like, Oh, the cool kids are wearing Hello Kitty wristwatches and you need to follow the fad.

There is zero logical nexus between whether or not to close Gitmo and whether or not to have civilian trials, so the only reason for making the kind of statement quoted above, is quid pro quo. While I'm not suggesting that this is a Hobbs Act violation (read the link, trust me), it certainly smells just as bad.

Kate Martin, the Center for National Security Studies director, warns, We can't have a situation where political pressure forces the federal government to forgo criminal prosecution. That would mean the system is fundamentally broken.

Message for Rahm, from Marcy Wheeler:

Remind me. Didn't Rove and the Bush White House get in trouble for this kind of tampering with DOJ issues?

Really, the White House needs to BACK OFF and let the Department of Justice and the federal courts do their job. And a bunch of non-lawyers with ZERO expertise in this area should NOT be part of the decision making process, much less driving that process. Hasn't Rahm done enough damage to the President with his mishandling of the healthcare bill? Why do you want him to screw up something he knows even less about?

Earlier this afternoon, the TechCrunch office got some new additions: a collection of massive stickers, ranging from giant TechCrunch logos (you can see them on the CrunchCam) to various animals, a big donut, and even a surfing alien. They come from a new startup called Larger Than Life Prints, which is best described as a CafePress or Zazzle for humongous stickers. The company allows users to design their own oversized wall graphics, which can then be ordered in one-off runs or sold to other visitors through an integrated store.

The site is still fairly new, but's already beginning to attract some top talent, including Susan Kare, who is famous for designing the on-screen graphics of the original Macintosh computer and many of Facebook's popular virtual gifts. LTL Prints is featuring many of these artists in a collection of big wall art, which includes art curated by the Start Soma Art Gallery.

It's hard to really get excited about stickers, but these are actually pretty impressive. They're made out of a study fabric-based paper that's really hard to tear (we tried), and it can also be applied many times on various surfaces, like walls and glass. You can roll the sticker up in a ball, and it will pull apart without any lasting damage. Contrast that with most other large stickers, which are typically made of vinyl, and it becomes clear that these are truly some high grade stickers.

Prices for the stickers range from $20 for a 2ft sticker to $165 for a massive 7 ft tall sticker. From there you're free to charge higher prices if you sell your sticker in the site's integrated marketplace.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Chicago's Horizon Realty, a property management company, filed a $50,000 libel lawsuit Monday against a former tenant, Amanda Bonnen, over one of her alleged Twitter posts.

Horizon argues that Bonnen libeled the company with her May 12th tweet, which read in part Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it's okay.

Bonnen's alleged twitter account, abonnen, is no longer active. But, based on information in Google's cache, it appears that Bonnen had 22 followers.

The statements are obviously false, and it's our intention to prove that, said Horizon's Jeffrey Michael. We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization. Michael added that the company has a good reputation it wants to preserve.

Sue First, Ask Questions Later

Horizon may be breaking new ground in public relations with its response.

By suing Bonnen for $50,000 over a tweet that was probably seen by a fraction of abonnen's 22 followers, the company is bringing Bonnen's complaint to tens of thousands of readers on Twitter, in blogs and in news stories that the situation will generate.

Instead of preserving the company's good reputation, Horizon Realty is establishing itself as a sue first, ask questions later kind of company.

The kind of company that will sue you for $50,000 if you have something bad to say about one of their apartments.

If Horizon's lawsuit goes forward, fixing the damage it will do to the company's reputation will take a lot more than $50,000.

Horizon's response looks like a textbook case of what not to do when faced with a new media PR problem. What do you think the right response would have been?

Chicago's Horizon Realty, a property management company, filed a $50,000 libel lawsuit Monday against a former tenant, Amanda Bonnen, over one of her alleged Twitter posts.

Horizon argues that Bonnen libeled the company with her May 12th tweet, which read in part Who said sleeping in a moldy apartment was bad for you? Horizon Realty thinks it's okay.

Bonnen's alleged twitter account, abonnen, is no longer active. But, based on information in Google's cache, it appears that Bonnen had 22 followers.

The statements are obviously false, and it's our intention to prove that, said Horizon's Jeffrey Michael. We're a sue first, ask questions later kind of an organization. Michael added that the company has a good reputation it wants to preserve.

Sue First, Ask Questions Later

Horizon may be breaking new ground in public relations with its response.

By suing Bonnen for $50,000 over a tweet that was probably seen by a fraction of abonnen's 22 followers, the company is bringing Bonnen's complaint to tens of thousands of readers on Twitter, in blogs and in news stories that the situation will generate.

Instead of preserving the company's good reputation, Horizon Realty is establishing itself as a sue first, ask questions later kind of company.

The kind of company that will sue you for $50,000 if you have something bad to say about one of their apartments.

If Horizon's lawsuit goes forward, fixing the damage it will do to the company's reputation will take a lot more than $50,000.

Horizon's response looks like a textbook case of what not to do when faced with a new media PR problem. What do you think the right response would have been?

Note: If you want to share this on Twitter or other social network, hit the Share/Save button below!

NEW YORK (AP) -- A former New York City police sergeant shot in the back by a fellow officer during a drug bust has settled a lawsuit against the city for $3.25 million.

Retired NYPD sergeant Dexter Brown was shot in the 1998 incident and sued the city and police department. It was revealed recently in court papers that the shooter, Det. Luis Lopez, was assisting in the arrest at a Brooklyn crack house. The city Law Department says the shooting was accidental and did not admit wrongdoing.

Brown walks with a cane and suffers chronic pain from damage caused by the shooting. The 45-year-old is retired on disability and cannot work. Brown says he feels vindicated his story came out. The settlement was reached Monday, as the trial was to begin.

UPDATE: For the latest on this story, see Confirmed: Digg Just Hijacked Your Twitter Links

The social news site Digg found itself criticized earlier this year after the release of the DiggBar and Digg short URLs, which some said stole traffic and pagerank from publisher sites to increase Digg's pageviews.

Now Digg faces a new accusation: that it has, either accidentally or on purpose, changed the behavior of these URLs to send logged-out users to Digg.com in preference to the publisher sites. We were able to verify that Digg is indeed redirecting Digg URLs to its own site.

DiggBar Controversy

First, a little background. At launch, Digg URLs provided an alternative to popular URL shorteners like bit.ly and TinyURL (commonly used to save characters on Twitter), except that the links loaded publisher sites in framed pages on Digg.com. Some claimed that this was a way to build traffic to Digg while hurting the search engine traffic provided to publishers.

After a firestorm in the SEO community that lead to some sites adding framebreakers to prevent Digg framing their sites, Digg relented and decided to only frame pages if the user was logged in to Digg at the time.

New Digg URL Behavior: Redirects Traffic to Digg.com

This week Digg users have noticed an odd change in the way Digg URLs work: for logged out users, they no longer go to the site they link to. Instead, the links go to the Digg.com page for that story, provided it has already been submitted to Digg. The result? The thousands of short links that people are trying to create to their favorite websites are instead redirecting their followers to a Digg landing page.

The blog EndofWeb, which appears to have spotted the issue first, calls this a bait and switch operation.

You can try it out for yourself: choose any webpage URL and place Digg.com/ at the front of it to create a Digg URL. While this used to create a link that redirects to the original story, it now simply directs visitors to the Digg.com landing page for that story.

Intentional Change or Mistake?

If intentional, the move is likely to sour Digg's relationships with publishers: Digg became popular based on its ability to drive traffic to publisher sites, but the DiggBar showed Digg's intent to retain more of that traffic on its own site.

If a mistake, it's likely to damage trust in URL shorteners: users want to be sure that when they create a link, it'll send visitors to the intended destination. When that process fails, it hurts confidence.

We've reached out to Digg via email for more information.

What do you think? Are your Digg URLs directing to Digg.com?

Apparently all print subscribers haven't been asked (this by way of a full disclosure), but the New York Times is asking its dead tree readers whether they'd be willing to pay to access the paper's content online.

The numbers being floated are $2.50 a month for subscribers, and $5 a month for everyone else, according to Bloomberg.com.

Nytimes.com is currently free, and a previous attempt to put some their columnists behind a paywall, Times Select, ended with great fanfare nearly two years ago with the slogan: Now, everyone is entitled to our opinions.

But that was then: Way before the global recession, when the New York Times Co was worth four times what it is today, wasn't selling assets and cutting its payroll, the advertising market hadn't gone into freefall (the industry has lost more than $11 billion in ad sales since 2005) and Google wasn't the enemy.

The notion of beginning to charge for content that has always been free is extremely controversial. Some media observers simply think it cannot work and some industry professionals think it must absolutely happen.

Nobody can say it will work, and the risk of trying and failing could do serious permanent damage to a news brand to say nothing of being utterly demoralizing to everyone else who might have thought it was the last, best hope.

There have been some newspaper attempts to start asking readers to pay for what had been free content (like Times Select) but no major player has ever tried charging customers directly with any gusto the digital equivalent of giving no part of the print paper away for free. The Wall Street Journal and Financial Times have always charged online, so there was no need to re-condition their readers to go from paying zero to something. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer had to shut down its newspaper to try to survive purely in digital form, and the Christian Science Monitor curtailed print editions.

But those publications, with all due respect, are not the likes of the New York Times. Were the Gray Lady to draw a line in the sand, a lot of theory would be put to the test right quick.

It might be time for some paper to stop the threats and just do it, and an iconic brand like the Times may be the best one to try.

New York Times Considers $5 Monthly Web-Access Fee Update1 - Bloomberg.com.

Time is usually - nearly always - displayed by a circular indication: one dial and two (or three) with the time displayed around a perpetual circle. However, this 360 representation of time goes against everything we learnt as we grew up drawing a straight line on a blank page and marking it Past, Present and Future. Why do we think of time as travelling in a straight line yet display it rotating around a circle? The answer is straightforward: mechanisms that continually rotate are much simpler to produce than those that trace a straight line then return to zero. In fact, the latter is so difficult that, until now, nobody has ever managed to develop a production wristwatch with true retrograde linear displays.

The triple-cam is crafted from bronze beryllium, a metal selected for its inherently self-lubricating properties and low co-efficient of friction, and takes the form of three small inclines. The precise shape of the curve of the incline is relayed to the pivoting rack, while the teeth on the end of the rack mesh with and rotate the minute cylinder. The triple-cam makes a complete rotation in three hours so that each of the three inclines takes 60 minutes, and 180 points of reference have been calculated on each of the three cams to ensure the precise and isochronic rotation of the minute cylinder.

Model: UR-CC1

Case: available in either grey gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces) or black gold with titanium case back (limited edition of 25 pieces); brushed-satin finish

Movement: calibre UR-CC1; automatic winding regulated by fly brake turbine pneumatic shock absorber

Indications: linear display for hours and minutes with jumping hours and retrograde minutes ; second display both digital and linear

Dimensions: 45.7mm x 43.5mm x 15mm

Dial and Bridges: ARCAP P40. SuperLumiNova treatment on hours, minutes displays

Genesis of a creation

1958. Messrs Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier combine their talents to create a watch destined to revolutionize the horological world. Their idea is completely outrageous: it is the world's first watch to feature a linear display. It is an extraordinary, avant-garde piece that fulfils none of the aesthetic criteria of the time. As for its linear indication, the idea may seem simple but the execution is a technical headache of monumental proportions. However Messrs Albert and Cottier believe in it and they stick with it, creating a prototype for Patek Philippe.

1959. A patent is deposited by Louis Cottier, detailing the technical scale of the achievement. Then nothing. The prototype is put on to one side. Does the watch even work? Today nobody knows for sure. It took its place in the corner of the Patek Philippe museum and proceeded to arouse curiosity from time to time.

1998. With pencil and paper Martin Frei, co-founder of the URWERK brand and an aesthete at heart, sketches the first outline of his future creation: a watch in which the hours and minutes are indicated by two straight, parallel lines. But he hesitates. With Felix Baumgartner, master watch-maker and co-founder of URWERK, another idea springs to mind the concept of the hour satellite, presented for the first time at Basel. The earlier project is postponed, sine die.

2006. URWERK is henceforth known and recognized for its mechanical hour satellite watches in which orbiting hour satellites indicate the minutes. But the idea of developing a different way of telling the time continues to fascinate Felix Baumgartner. In the end it is the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds that gives him the decisive nudge in the right direction. In one of the most famous scenes from the film, the heroine seeks refuge in an old Dodge. The image lasts only a few seconds but it is crucial a close-up of the dashboard and its linear speedometer. Yes. That's it! A continuous line with which to mark time. Felix and Martin work non-stop on this new project. Their research leads them to the discovery of Gilbert Albert and Louis Cottier's watch. It will be their muse.

Original Prototype Movement

Watchmaker Felix Baumgartner

I am not big on nostalgia, but I have always loved the linear speedometers found on old cars. My older brother had a 1960's Volvo and it was that which gave us the first idea for a horological linear indication. I recently watched the film The Birds' by Alfred Hitchcock, and in it the heroine took refuge in an old Dodge with a linear speedometer- it is one of my favourite scenes. There are very few wristwatches with linear indications. One of them, if not the first, was The Cobra', which was developed in the late 1950s by Mr. Louis Cottier. It is sensational! Although it was created over half a century ago, it is still very contemporary. Unfortunately, it only exists as a single prototype and was never put into production. Now, 50 years after he filed his patent (1959), URWERK pays homage to the work of Louis Cottier by creating its own interpretation of the Cobra. -Felix Baumgartner

Designer Martin Frei

I am interested in the perception of time. Physicists tell us that time can be warped or stretched, and our daily experiences are with the circular cycles of the days, seasons and years. But I am also intrigued that time can be ordered, even straitjacketed, to flow in a linear direction - a straight line from the past, through the present, to the future. And, because this can represent an individual's lifeline, I feel that this linear format can be a very human way to look at time. That plus the fact that I think it looks really cool! -Martin Frei

Leveraging social media against corporate brands for personal gain serves only to damage an entire mode of communication.

Social media provides an inexpensive and powerful platform for regular people to make their voices heard to a massive audience. Unfortunately, people don't always use that power in reasonable and positive ways.

When a business faces an attack on its brand through social media, what is the appropriate response?

For instance, what about party-goers who have a few drinks, get out of hand, and are expelled from a club? When iphones come out and the club brand is ravaged online by angry tweets and videos about poor service, how is the club supposed to respond? Is the club supposed to publicly admit wrongdoing when none was committed and set a precedent for others to complain so they can get free stuff? It's a slippery slope for both a brand and the consumers that enjoy it.

Consider: A video in which country singer Dave Carroll mourns the damage of his Taylor guitar (supposedly) during a flight on United Airlines:

On his website, Dave Carroll moans the saga of his flight with United Airlines and the discovery of his damaged guitar. After getting the runaround from low-level company representatives about a damage claim, he concludes:

I realized then that as a songwriter and traveling musician I wasn't without options. In my final reply to Ms. Irlweg [The United Airlines representative] I told her that I would be writing three songs about United Airlines and my experience in the whole matter. I would then make videos for these songs and offer them for free download online, inviting viewers to vote on their favourite United song. My goal: to get one million hits in one year.

It's an interesting marketing plan for a small time musician in need of some publicity. He finished his diatribe with,

I should thank United. They've given me a creative outlet that has brought people together from around the world. We had a pile of laughs making the recording and the video while the images are spinning on how to make United: Song 2 even better than the first. So, thanks United! If my guitar had to be smashed due to extreme negligence I'm glad it was you that did it. Now sit back and enjoy the show.

And so he launched his show with website updates and a youtube video that continues to gain leverage through social media.

One of the drawbacks of social media is that most users have short attention spans and little use for fact-checking. I did a bit of my own fact-checking about Dave Carroll and his #unitedbreaksguitars experience: It turns out that United explicitly states on its website that it is not liable for damage to fragile items and includes the type of cases approved for transport of musical instruments.

Dave states that he witnessed ground crew throwing his band's instruments and yet he neglected to check his ostensibly-beloved Taylor guitar upon arrival. He says, The guitar case looked ok and we were tired.

Now, take the perspective of the United Airlines representative dealing with this situation: A guy complains to you that his expensive guitar was damaged but that he didn't notice it until a day after his flight. What is your first thought?

If your silly claim/fraud detector went off, good. It should. There are many ways a guitar could be broken in 24hrs and it would be ridiculous for an airline to welcome a suspicious liability.

Dave admits to filing a claim after leaving the airport. I'm familiar enough with shipping claims to know that once you leave the location of a business you're filing against without confirming damages, your chances of successfully settling a claim dramatically dwindle.

But all was not lost for Dave Carroll and the Sons of Maxwell. They had social media, some production talent, and a desire to embarrass a company into bending its rules just to shut them up.

United Airlines responded via Twitter to the barrage of tweets directed at them concerning the video:

Is this a step forward for social media? I don't think so. Dave Carroll and his Sons of Maxwell get some cheap publicity but at what cost to the rest of us?

We encourage companies to engage their customers through social media but little is said about how to deal with rogue campaigns bent on embarrassing a brand into cooperation.

It's tempting to jump on the UnitedBreaksGuitars bandwagon and gleefully watch as social media is used to force a company into action. ( This in spite of legitimate reasons for inaction.) It's tempting to say the customer is always right and ignore the need for policies meant to protect companies from fraudulent claims. It's tempting to get caught up in the seductive power of social media and forget that some people are interested only in promoting themselves.

Did United Airlines break Dave Carroll's guitar? Perhaps. But the only person he should be singing to right now is himself for not checking his guitar for damages when knew the rigors of its journey.

If social media is going to be a sustainable conversation between consumers and brands, it's important that we show respect to the brands that bravely step into this space. We need to be responsible participants in social media and use the powerful tool we've been given for good causes and not for senseless complaints.

Social media need not be about consumers whining to get free stuff. It must not be.

How do you think United Airlines and other companies faced with a similar situation should respond?

Share this post on Twitter

photo: dave carroll music

Hat tip to Stuart Foster for alerting me to this story via twitter.

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