Ribs ETC. , locally owned and operated since 1986, closed this past Saturday. Located on Roswell Road near Chastain Square shopping, the restaurant is adjacent to both Cafe at Pharr and 10 Degrees South. Ribs Etc. was started by John Pomeroy in 1986, in a smaller location less a half mile from its current space. In 2005, Clayton Cole, a former employee of Pomeroy purchased the restaurant and in 2009, current employee, Mitch Burdett came on as Managing Partner. When I reached someone at the business today and asked what precipitated the closure, the simple answer given was that they were not making money. While I’m not a big fan of BBQ myself, I would have thought this would be a good location for them and gotta think there is more to the story. Fat Matt’s on Piedmont and One Star Ranch on Irby both seem to do well enough and neither has a tremendously better location, parking or otherwise. Just last year Atlanta lost Dusty’s Barbecue, another long standing barbecue joint, though readers of this blog have their own ideas as to what caused the closure. Anyone know if something more serious caused Rib’s to suddenly close? ToNeTo Atlanta

– by Gadget

Right, the way the news has panned out, it seems that today is HTC day. So, on with the first of today’s HTC–related stories, and it’s a good’n if you’re a fan of the Sense interface (which I am), because according to Forbes, HTC Sense will live on in Windows Phone 7. That’s according to the head of HTC’s user experience design team, Drew Bamford, by the way, so this comes more or less from the horse’s mouth.

“Microsoft has taken firmer control of the core experience, but we can still innovate… We won’t be able to replace as much of the core Windows Phone experience, but we will augment it.”

So, if you like Sense, this is good news!

But what form will it take? I mean, it’s well-known that Windows Phone 7 doesn’t allow third party interfaces on top of it (which means no more SPB Mobile Shell, which actually makes me considerably more sad than the loss of Sense, but ah well), so the stock Windows Phone 7 interface will be what you get if you buy a phone running it. So, where does HTC Sense come in?

Well, it’s about now that the word ‘hub’ is flitting across my mind. Y’see, Microsoft have said that they’ll make it easy for other people to create hubs, and put hubby widgets on the start screen. So, that being said, I reckon the concept image I knocked together for this post might not be too far off the money. Which’d be pretty cool.

As for Android, Bamford said he couldn’t imagine Google blocking third party interfaces, so expect to see the full fat version of HTC Sense appearing on future Android 3.0 phones (including the successor to the Samsung Galaxy S, since it’s rumoured to run on 3.0).

Basically, all of that translates as me being damnably intrigued what HTC have planned for their WP7 phones.

More news as it happens! And be sure to subscribe now to get all the latest action from the world of mobile phones!

– by Gadget

Lindsay Lohan may get out of jail sooner than expected.

Of course, then she’ll have to head straight into rehab.

The troubled star’s in-patient treatment will commence almost immediately after her painstaking sentence ends, and she won’t have to travel far to get there.

As part of Lohan’s sentence, she will receive the court ordered 90-day treatment in California. The idea behind entering a rehab facility that’s close by is simple:

So people can actually keep tabs on her progress.

She’s handling jail well, but Lindsay still must deal with rehab.

Michael Lohan lobbied for his daughter to enter a Long Island facility, but he belongs in jail/rehab himself, so he doesn’t have much in the way of credibility.

What Lindsay’s camp wants to avoid is a repeat of her 2007 rehab visit to Cirque Lodge in Utah – a very respected facility, but Lohan was too unmonitored.

Rather than focusing on getting better, she treated the facility and its program like a total joke and took up with that douche Riley Giles. Remember him?

Anyway, yeah. Rehab in and around L.A. this time. It sounds like it’s the best fit for her when she’s released, which may be by the end of this month now.

Do you think she’s served enough time in jail?

– by Gadget

The popular and Grammy award-winning band Kings of Leon were forced to end a concert in St. Louis last night after playing just three songs because a pigeon pooped into bassist Jared Followill’s mouth.

A spokesman for the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater told the crowd the show would not be able continue due to fears for the band’s safety.

Drummer Nathan Followill also apologized to fans on Twitter:

“So sorry St. Louis. We had to bail,” he wrote, explaining that the show was stopped because a pigeon had defecated in Jared Followill’s mouth. “Too unsanitary to continue,” he added.

Concert goers have been a offered a full refund.

– by Gadget

RYE (AP) – Staff at a New Hampshire state park where a dead jellyfish broke apart and stung about 100 swimmers have stocked up on vinegar to ease the pain of future stings – but they don’t expect another calamity.

The giant Lion’s Mane jellyfish broke into pieces Wednesday when staff at Wallis Sands State Beach attempted to remove the gelatinous blob from the water, sending barbed tentacles into the tide. Nine children were treated for stings at a local hospital.

Beach manager Ken Loughlin said his staff raced to a nearby store to buy vinegar, which eases the burning sensation of the stings, while triaging the affected swimmers on Wednesday. He said once the crisis was over they bought four more gallons of vinegar.

Portsmouth General Hospital spokeswoman Christine Galli said the nine children treated at the hospital, ranging in age from 5-10, were bathed in vinegar and given antihistamines and anti-inflammatory medication.

Marine biologists say the jellyfish washed into shallow waters only because it was dead. Lion’s Mane jellyfish prefer the colder, deeper waters of the northern Atlantic Ocean and Arctic Ocean. They average 80 pounds, with tentacles that can grow as long as 150 feet. The jellyfish that washed up at Wallis Sands was estimated to weigh about 50 pounds.

“Usually when they’re washed up on the beach it’s an isolated incident involving a single fish,” said biologist Renee Zobel of the marine fisheries division of the Fish and Game Department.

Loughlin said people were back in the water Thursday and “everything is right back to normal.”

“I’m not anticipating this happening again,” Loughlin said. “I was born and brought up here and I’ve never seen anything like this. We had little jellyfish we would play with. This was a total surprise, but it really was an aberration.”

Five of the children who were taken to the hospital were at the beach on an outing from Camp Foster, run by the Boys and Girls Club of Manchester. Gary Frost, executive director of the club, was at the emergency room when the five were released.

“The swelling had subsided, the pain had subsided,” Frost said Thursday. “They were in good spirits.”

– by Gadget

– by Gadget

Fantasyland Records, which has been located at 2839 Peachtree Road for the last 34 years, will re-open in a new location July 1st. I’m told that the owners were forced out as the landlord wanted to redevelop the center. Likely to be the lone remaining tenant in the center is the recently relocated Peachtree Bikes. Less than a mile away at 360 Pharr Road, the new location was once a children’s play place called Playforming Arts. With all the kids’ rooms, I’m told the new location is a smidge bigger than the previous location. One of the larger rooms seems ideal for an acoustic set but I figure the residents of the apartments above might not take too kindly to that. Fantasyland is a music fan’s paradise with tons of vintage vinyl, as well as tapes and CDs. The store also carries music posters and T-shirts. The previous location was very much a “no-frills” atmosphere, something the owners will foreseeably transfer to the new location: great prices and knowledgeable associates in as much of an anti-corporate feel as possible. I still love Bookman’s in Arizona and have fond memories of going to Oxford Books and Turtle’s as a kid, but Fantasyland has kept pace and hopefully will continue to do so.

– by Gadget

A Westlake, Ohio girl named Alyssa Thomas, 6 years old, is apparently some sort of “threat” in the eyes of the US Department of Homeland Security. Alyssa and her family discovered this shocking fact when, on a trip to Minneapolis, her name was found on the no fly list.

Alyssa was allowed to make her flight, but her family was told to contact Homeland Security to clear up this issue. Later on, the little girl received a letter from the US government stating that nothing would be changed on their list. The letter said the government will neither confirm nor deny information they have about her or another person on the list with the same name. The FBI has said it will not discuss why anyone is on the no fly list due to security concerns.

“The watch lists are an important layer of security to prevent individuals with known or suspected ties to terrorism from flying,” a spokesperson from the Transportation Security Administration said.

Alyssa has been flying since she was two-months old and has never had any sort of trouble with airport security before. The Thomas family plans on making another appeal to Homeland Security.

– by Gadget

I have had a great first day of the Building Learning Communities conference, but my brain is full. The day started with an interesting keynote by Mitch Resnick, the inventor of Scratch. I do a lot with Scratch at my school and it was wonderful to see all of the projects that students are doing with the Scratch software. Mitch pointed out that good technology should have a low floor, so that it is easy to get started with, a high ceiling, so that students can take it far, and a wide walls, so that students can follow their own interests. Scratch certainly has that and I think it is a great rubric for evaluating any software.

In my second session I was not the smartest person in the room with Dean Shareski. School is no longer the primary place for learning. He asked the great question, what does it mean to be a life long learner? How do we move past an educational model that is tethered in time and place. Students have already moved there, when will schools follow?

In Jeff Utecht’s session on Blended Learning, he showed us how his school is using blogs as online portfolios of their work over their entire school career. He suggests finding a container that works for you, whether it be a blog, a wiki or a ning, and using that to hold student work. He also encouraged us to be connectors for our students to use our own networks to help network our students and expose their work to a wider audience.

Finally, I learned about different iPad apps at Seth Bowers’s session. He showed us too many to talk about, but he nicely posted a list here.

If you aren’t at the conference, you can follow a lot of what is going on by searching #blc10 on Twitter or checking out the delicious bookmarks tagged BLC10. If you are here, I hope you will leave a comment and or a link and share some of the highlights of your first day!

– by Gadget