The US Embassy is warning of a possible terrorist attack on Bali on New Year's Eve.

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Retrospective for one of 20th century's greatest creators opens in Paris amid more references to 'dark side'

Almost two years after he died in Paris and was hailed as one of the greatest creators of the 20th century, Yves Saint Laurent is being given his first full-scale retrospective in the French capital.

The exhibition, which showcases more than 300 of his designs from his debut in 1958 to his last collection in 2002, opens tomorrow in the lavish halls of the Petit Palais.

But, as fashionistas around the world prepare to pay tribute to the man who gave women the tuxedo, allegations about the late designer's hot temper and drug habits are tainting the celebrations.

In a biography published earlier this year, Saint Laurent is described as a bully "consumed by anxiety" whose drive to succeed led him to attack staff and seek refuge in drink and drugs.

Marie-Dominique Lelièvre, author of Saint Laurent: mauvais garçon (bad boy), has described his tendency to take out his own insecurities and self-loathing on those beneath him professionally. "It's the strength of the weak, the tyranny of the fragile," she told French television.

The book – made up of interviews with dozens of people who knew the Algerian-born designer – has been dismissed as gossip by Pierre Bergé, Laurent's long-term friend and partner.

In an interview with Le Monde, however, Bergé admitted there was some truth in the reports. "He had no carefree youth," he said. "That was why, one day, he escaped and came into contact with alcohol and then drugs."

It is not the first time Saint Laurent's so-called "dark side" has been referred to by former colleagues. Tom Ford, the designer turned film director and former creative director for the YSL brand, last year described both him and Bergé as "so difficult and so evil".

These troubles, however, are unlikely to dampen fans' enthusiasm for the retrospective, organised by the Pierre Bergé-Yves Saint Laurent Foundation. It brings together some of the highlights of the couturier's career, from his Trapeze dresses at Dior to a Matisse-inspired dress once worn by France's first lady, Carla Bruni, during her modelling career.

• Yves Saint Laurent
• Fashion
• Fashion designers
• France

Lizzy Davies
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Microsoft Outlook has historically been at the heart of document-based environments that for many years have ruled the enterprise.

But the walls that have guarded this document-based world are crumbling fast. Outlook is now more than a message center. It is becoming a collaborative space where the lines between Google Docs and other social applications start to blur.

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Three extensions exemplify this trend. These services are quite similar. Xobni has the longest track record. it started as a consumer-based service, gaining a following for its search capabilities in Outlook. Search is Outlook's inherent weakness. Neither DocVerse nor Harmony have deep search capabilities like Xobni. That may only be a temporary issue for DocVerse. Last week, Google announced that it had acquired DocVerse. We expect that will in some way translate into better search in the weeks and months ahead for the DoVerse service.

Harmony

Harmony is the newest of the group. The Mainsoft service is a mash up between Google Docs and Outlook. It also puts SharePoint directly into Outlook. Like most Outlook extensions, Harmony pulls Google Docs or Sharepoint into an Outlook sidebar.

The service is intended to ease attachment overload by creating a central place where people can access Google Docs. It's a drag and drop environment that allows people to drag email attachments into the Harmony sidebar.

A document may also be dragged into an email where it appears as a link for the recipient. The recipient may access the document by signing into their Google Docs or Google Apps account.

The service is now available as a free download. It is compatible with Sharepoint 2007 and Sharepoint 2010. It will be available later this year as an extension for Microsoft Office.

DocVerse

DocVerse plays a similar role to Harmony. The service synchronizes in the Outlook Sidebar. The widget associates a link to the document that is getting the edit. Every modification is synced. When multiple people work on a document, the updates are made through the plug-in and versions are stored online.

Xobni

Xobni provides what Outlook really needs. Great search. It will search Outlook and external social networks and third party applications to get a fuller profile of the contact. In November, the company released Xobni Enterprise. The service gives I.T. administrators the ability to deploy and manage the plugin across the enterprise. it also offers integration across services such as Salesforce CRM and Sharepoint.

Outlook Has Come A Long Way

The old days are over for Outlook. It's now entering an era where the degree of collaboration will center around a hyperlinked environment more so than document-based systems. The enterprise is becoming more web-oriented and Outlook is no exception to the change.

Discuss

Taylor Lautner's werewolf abs aren't really his own.

An anonymous MAKE subscriber writes in to let us know about this very cool wireless robotics platform based on the Arduino and an XBee. The purpose of the project was to teach their 9-year old son about programming in Processing. What a great way to introduce programming to kids!

I built a wireless robotics platform from a cheap R/C car, an Arduino with XBee shield, small microswitch sensors, and a Processing program running on a remote computer to control the vehicle. The vehicle is completely controlled by the code running on the remote computer which allows very rapid prototyping of the code to tell the vehicle what to do and how to react to the sensor events received from the vehicle. I'm hoping this is a good way to teach my 9-year old son about programming.

In the Maker Shed:


The Maker Shed has everything you need to get started with Arduino

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The fight over vision therapy, a controversial subspecialty of optometry that takes the traditional practice beyond its usual focus on eye health and eyesight.

LogMeIn has announced Pro2 remote access for Mac with a range of new features and enhancements.

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*****

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World's top scientists to review climate panel
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As part of the grand hoopla-fest building up to the release of the Federal Communications Commission's National Broadband Plan this month, the agency hosted a Digital Inclusion Summit at Washington, DC's Newseum on Tuesday. Co-sponsored with the Knight Foundation, during the course of the event the FCC disclosed more components of The Plan. These include recommending the creation of a Digital Literacy Corps "to conduct skills training and outreach in communities with low rates of adoption," and tapping into the agency's Universal Service Fund to subsidize broadband for low income people.

But what really got our attention was this: the NBP will ask the government to "consider use of spectrum for a free or very low cost wireless broadband service.''

That's odd, we thought, since the FCC and Congress have been considering such an idea for years.

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Before the Mac universe is consumed by iPad madness, we turn our attention to two other topics -- the state of Mac user groups and our favorite iPod and iPhone accessories.

SkinnyGuy writes "The only thing more remarkable than NewEgg shipping fake Core i7 CPUs to customers is getting your hands on one and checking it out. Apparently there are only a couple hundred of these things in existence and Gearlog somehow managed to get and unbox one. The images are fascinating."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

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Palestinian leaders meeting with Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. condemned a decision by Israel on new housing, but still spoke of participating in peace talks.

Linux Magazine: "One of the sorely missing aspects of storage is analyzing and understanding the IO patterns of applications. This article will examine some techniques for performing IO profiling of an application to illustrate what information you can gain."

Richard Purssell describes 'shocking event' in Haifa court on first day of civil suit brought by Corrie family against Israel

A British witness told a court today about how he had watched an Israeli military bulldozer run over and kill the American activist Rachel Corrie while she was trying to stop Palestinians' homes being demolished in Gaza.

Richard Purssell, who was also a volunteer activist in Rafah at the time, seven years ago, described the "shocking and dramatic event" in an Israeli court in Haifa on the first day of a civil suit brought by Corrie's family against the Israeli state.

Twenty-three-year-old Corrie, from Olympia, Washington, in the US, went to Gaza for peace activism reasons at a time when there was intense conflict between the Israeli military and the Palestinians.

The Corrie family lawyer, Hussein Abu Hussein, said he would argue that her death was due either to gross negligence by the Israeli military or that it was intended. If the Israeli state were found responsible, the family would press for damages.

Purssell, a Briton, now working as a landscape gardener, said he volunteered with the International Solidarity Movement (ISM) to witness events in the occupied Palestinian territories for himself. In Rafah he had been hoping to prevent the Israeli military from demolishing Palestinian homes. The organisation was strictly non violent, he said. "Our role was to support Palestinian non-violent resistance."

On the day of her death, 16 March 2003, Corrie was with seven other activists, including Purssell, in Rafah, close to the Israeli-guarded border with Egypt. They saw an Israeli military armoured Caterpillar D9 bulldozer approaching the house of a Palestinian doctor.

Purssell described how the bulldozer approached at a fast walking pace, its blade down and gathering a pile of soil in its path. When the bulldozer was 20 metres from the house Corrie, who like the others was wearing an orange fluorescent jacket, climbed on to the soil in front of it and stood "looking into the cab of the bulldozer".

"The bulldozer continued to move forward," Purssell said. "Rachel turned to come back down the slope. The earth is still moving and as she nears the bottom of the pile something happened which causes her to fall forward. The bulldozer continued to move forward and Rachel disappeared from view under the moving earth."

The bulldozer continued forward four metres as the activists began to run forward and shout at the driver.

"It passed the point where Rachel fell, it stopped and reversed back along the track it first made. Rachel was lying on the earth," Purssell said. "She was still breathing." Corrie was severely injured and died shortly afterwards.

The Israeli military says it bears no responsibility for Corrie's death. A month after her death the military said an investigation had determined its troops were not to blame; the driver of the bulldozer had not seen her and had not intentionally run her over. It accused Corrie and the ISM of behaviour that was "illegal, irresponsible and dangerous".

Hussein will argue at the Haifa district court that witness evidence shows that the soldiers did see Corrie at the scene, with other activists well before the incident, and that they could have arrested her or removed her from the area before there was any risk of injury.

Before the hearing began, Craig Corrie, Rachel's father, said the family had been on a "seven-year search for justice in Rachel's name". He added: "I think when the truth comes out about Rachel the truth will not wound Israel, the truth is the start of making us heal."

Cindy Corrie, Rachel's mother, said the family was still waiting for the credible, transparent investigation Israel first promised regarding her daughter's death. "I just want to say to Rachel that our family is here today trying to just do right by her and I hope that she will be very proud of the effort we are making," she said. She said the family had met the staff of US vice-president Joe Biden on Tuesday to talk about the case.

Three other witnesses, two more Britons and an American, who were all at the scene in Rafah when Corrie was killed will give evidence at the Israeli court. It is not clear if any Israeli military officials will speak.

The hearing is scheduled to run for at least two weeks.

• Rachel Corrie
• Israel
• United States
• Protest

Rory McCarthy
guardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds

Gareth Davis, the platform manager in charge of Games at Facebook, delivered his keynote today at the Game Developers Conference In Sa Francisco. Davis focused his talk on the changes in social gaming and told the audience that, despite FarmVille, the killer social game is still “out there”.

Enjoy playing rock, paper, scissors, but having trouble finding worthy opponents to play it with? Need to improve your game for that upcoming world tournament? Well, then, you will certainly appreciate Steve Hoefer's rock paper scissors playing glove. Thanks to the built-in accelerometer and bend sensors, all you have to do to play is play the game, and the computer will tell you what it's move was, and keep track of who won. It's a funny project, and it includes some cool features, such as using edge-lit plastic for the display. Well done!

More:

• DIY Rock paper scissors electronic game
• HOW TO - Beat anyone at Rock Paper Scissors
• Rock, Paper, Scissors - interview with a professional player

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