Philippe Matthews Show Guru Advice, Author Reviews, Tech Reviews, Entertainment News

Early adopters of the iPad 2 have only had the weekend to play with their new toy. That was enough time for the first reports of possible defects to come to the surface

"Canceling ALL SXSW parties to launch #SXSW4JP tomorrow." That was Cameron Sinclair's Saturday night announcement, via Twitter. He's expected to announce the details of Architecture for Humanity 's Sendai earthquake reconstruction plan Sunday afternoon from the stage during his South by Southwest keynote.

Could Flattr be the future of making a living doing what you love? When you sign up for Flattr, a social micropayments service, you dedicate a flat fee per month to the site.

Residents offering free and paid space have become a viable alternative for the packed conference.

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake that struck Japan this week didn't just trigger a massive tsunami. It also caused an atomic-power emergency at the the Fukushima No. 1 plant in Fukushima Prefecture, where 3,000 people in a two-mile radius around the plant were forced to evacuate due to an overheated reactor.

The National Ocanic and Atmospheric Administration released this video showing the spread of the tsunami generated by a magnitude 8.9 quake off Sendai, Japan, on March 11. [More]

We continue our examination of the business book In Search of Excellence with an interview of author Tom Peters. Why was it so successful, what is the book's legacy and what does a restaurant owner in Chicago have in common with Jack Welch? What was the impetus for you to write In Search of Excellence

It's not easy to design a home energy monitoring device that people actually want to use and pay for. As evidenced by Tendril's recent decision to nix its IDEO-designed dashboard, not even slick devices that look like they came straight from the Apple store will necessarily make it to market (the $200 price tag was deemed too expensive). Enter EnergyHub , a consumer-facing energy management company that thinks it has a solution to the energy monitoring device quandary

Elephants are smart, social animals. And now we know that they can organize themselves into teams to accomplish tasks. A research team that included renowned primatologist Franz de Waal taught 12 Thai elephants--who already work with human trainers called mahouts--to get a bowl of food by pulling a rope attached to an out-of-reach table

Participant Media plans on portraying the moments leading up to the BP oil spill disaster in an upcoming film. Jeff Skoll's social film company, Participant Media , has picked up the rights to adapt the New York Times article, " Deepwater Horizon's Final Hours ." The deal was done in partnership with Summit Entertainment and Imagenation Abu Dhabi--the film will tell the story of what happened on the rig when it exploded, including the story of how over 100 people survived

Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking (The Cooking Lab, 2011) is a six-volume, 2,348-page work that relies heavily on photography and illustrations to make the science and technology of modern cooking accessible and engaging to everyone from science buffs to professional chefs. One of our goals in producing the book, by inventor and physicist Nathan Myhrvold, along with co-authors Chris Young and Maxime Bilet, was to give readers insight into what happens inside food as it cooks. So we developed a unique "cutaway" style of photo illustration that reveals all the action occurring at the center of, say, a pot of steaming broccoli or a pair of burgers on a Weber grill.

In the clearest language to date, Democratic Senator Herb Kohl of Wisconsin signaled heavy scrutiny of Google coming in 2011. An antitrust showdown between the U.S

Instapaper is already a very popular service on mobile devices, and it's just had a big social sharing makeover that improves its offerings significantly. Best of all--and following current trends--a user's Instapaper "likes" are now browsable by friends.

* Obama sends condolences, promises aid * Pentagon readies ships to help [More]

The magnitude 8.9 earthquake that hit Japan just a few hours ago has elicited a fast response from Google , with a person finder app identical to the one used in New Zealand recently. Japan's technologically very well equipped to react to the disaster, including the tsunami that followed the quake, and the nation's bullet trains, metros and nuclear power stations automatically halted. One reactor had an issue, but there was no reported leak