World Pool-Billiard Association Holds General Assembly in Manila The World Pool-Billiard Association (WPA) held their General Assembly at the Heritage Hotel in Manila, Philippines on Friday November 27 in conjunction with the World Ten Ball Championships. At this year’s assembly Ian Anderson of Australia was re-elected to his post as President and Jerry Forsyth of the [...]

Foster and Meglino Top Ultimate Billiards KF Cue Tour / Fort Pierce, FL by Lea Andrews After a late setback courtesy of Jeff Mabry, Anthony Meglino rebounded to clinch his first KF Cue Tour win, topping the 52-player field that gathered for the $1,000-added amateur event on December 5-6 at Ultimate Billiards in Fort Pierce, FL. In [...]

Fisher Wins KwikFire Stop KwikFire Tour / Charlotte, NC by InsidePOOL Staff Recent Hall of Fame inductee Allison Fisher brought doom to her opponents at the December 5-6 stop of the KwikFire Tour, taking first place. The $2,500-added stop was hosted by The Smokin Cue in Charlotte, NC. Also at this event the KwikFire Tour was able to [...]

Jason Lucash's OrigAudio Fold 'n' Play music speakers recently made Time magazine's list of the 50 Best Inventions of 2009.

For Jason Lucash, travel and music are the mothers of invention.

The young entrepreneur's OrigAudio Fold 'n' Play music speakers recently made Time magazine's list of the 50 Best Inventions of 2009.

Lucash, a 26-year-old alumnus of University of California, Davis, estimates he has traveled close to 400,000 miles for business and pleasure during the past five years, and he never leaves home without a portable music player.

"Music and travel work together," he said. "Music reminds you of home."

He was in South Korea last December, with small plastic travel speakers in tow, when he came up with the idea for a foldable speaker that would fit easily into a case with his laptop computer. He contacted a South Korean speaker-manufacturing firm and suggested using its components to create a portable speaker that starts out flat and folds together, like origami, into a 3-inch cube.

Lucash calls San Francisco home, but said he spends most of his time in airports or on airplanes.

In a telephone interview last week, Lucash said he's still trying to get used to the heady company. NASA's Ares rockets led Time's top 50 list, which also included the AIDS vaccine, tank-bred tuna and a $20 knee.

Lucash graduated from UC Davis in 2006 with a degree in managerial economics, but he launched his first business as a third-grader in the East Bay community of Danville. He and friends set up a candy stand on the street where his family lived and operated it for three years.

"It was on the main thoroughfare for kids who rode their bikes to school," he recalled.

He started a bartending service for weddings and special events while in college. But it was his experience as an "ambassador" for Microsoft at UC Davis that launched his career.

"That's how I got into the whole marketing thing," Lucash said.

Lucash also credits a UC Davis marketing class taught by lecturer John Constantine for helping equip him for his endeavors.

Constantine, whose classes typically number about 150 students, said he doesn't recall meeting individually with Lucash. But when he learned of his former student's achievements, he looked up Lucash's grades.

"He was a solid student," Constantine said, adding that he was pleased to hear Lucash valued his class.

"But whatever success he's had, that's him," Constantine said. "In a country of 300 million people and many of them trying for that great idea, to be one of 50, that's really mind-boggling."

OrigAudio speakers attracted the interest of a couple of venture capitalists, but Lucash said he was able to start the business with his own money.

The speakers, which sell for $16 a pair, have resulted in about 7,000 orders since online sales began in August. About 4,000 of those have come since last month's publication of the Time list.

With a six-member staff, OrigAudio distributes the speakers out of Chicago and has begun selling them through various retail stores. Lucash said they've seen the greatest demand in Canada and Japan.

They have yet to find outlets in the Sacramento area. For those who don't want to order online, Lucash said, the easiest place to get them is at Techshowcase in San Francisco International Airport's Terminal 3.

While savoring their recent success, Lucash and his staff are preparing for the launch of another product called Rock-It, which he described as "a little square device with earbuds."

It allows earbuds connected to a music player to be affixed to the surface of an object, such as a box, desk or window. The object is used to turn a vibration sequence into sound.

"This will revolutionize the way people listen to music," Lucash predicted.

For more information about OrigAudio, see the Web site at www.origaudio.com/.

Wilk Dominates on Dominiak Tour Dominiak Cues Northeast 10-Ball Tour / New Milford, CT by Kevin Vidal Stan Wilk walked away with first place at the Dominiak Cues Northeast 10-Ball Tour’s December 6 stop, defeating Gene Hunt in the final match. The stop was hosted by Buster’s Billiards in New Milford, CT. Hunt started off in the top half [...]

Lil D Takes Down Mobile Great Southern Billiard Tour Event Great Southern Billiard Tour / Mobile, AL by Lea Andrews Daniel “Lil D” McKinney, who won his first Great Southern Billiard Tour event in June, won his second on December 5. The $1,000-added, A/B amateur event, which saw its numbers diminished by the Crimson Tide SEC championship [...]

A TMZ image shows Maria Shriver holding a cell phone to her ear while driving in Los Angeles on Tuesday, in violation of a law signed by husband Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger.

People reading newspapers in Australia and England last week learned that California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had troubles with the Internal Revenue Service.

In October, hundreds of millions of Chinese were regaled with tales of motor vehicle misconduct by the governor's wife, Maria Shriver.

And in Worthington, Minn., readers of the Daily Globe were cautioned not to drive like Shriver.

What they all shared was a common source for their news: A 4-year-old Web site with an obscure acronym for a name and a predilection for breaking stories that sting its subjects even as they tickle its viewers.

"TMZ has become a go-to source for celebrity news, certainly, and for sensational news," said Neil Henry, dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism. "It's been proven over the past 18 months that TMZ is outstanding at producing news."

Much of the time – make that most of the time – the site's news production centers on short snippets of celebrity sass or the foibles and mishaps of personages major and minor:

• "Lamar & Khloe Officially Stuck With Each Other."

• "David Hasselhoff: 'I'm Healthy!' "

• "Ex-Miss Argentina Dies After Butt-Implant Surgery."

The site has led the world in reporting events connected to golfer Tiger Woods' driving mishaps and marital woes.

And as UC Berkeley's Henry and others point out, the site's reach has sometimes extended far beyond the audience of people who know who Lamar and Khloe are, or care about the cost of replacing the fire hydrant in front of Woods' mansion.

The day after Thanksgiving, for example, TMZ reported in a 150-word missive that "the United States government might have a bigger budget to work with – if one bodybuilding governor would pay the back taxes it appears he never got around to paying."

"According to documents filed in L.A. County Superior Court, Arnold Schwarzenegger owes the IRS $39,047 from 2004 and $40,016 from 2005."

The site also included a copy of an IRS lien against Schwarzenegger in May.

As it turned out, the issue concerned computer glitches and a postal problem. The governor's business manager eventually explained the tax agency hadn't noticed a different filing number on payroll forms for Schwarzenegger's household employees, and that notices about it were sent to his home address instead of his business address.

No matter. The original story was carried in newspapers, Web sites and television outlets from Sydney to Sacramento – and virtually all of the accounts included variations of the phrase "according to TMZ."

So, what's a TMZ, and why is it zeroing in on the governor of California and his wife?

TMZ – the acronym stands for "Thirty Mile Zone," a reference to the area surrounding a cluster of Los Angeles TV and movie studios – was born in November 2005.

An offspring of the Time Warner media conglomerate, TMZ is run by Harvey Levin, a 58-year-old lawyer who worked for a decade as a television reporter in Los Angeles.

The site, which Levin has likened to the Associated Press of the celebrity gossip world, provides a seemingly endless stream of often exclusive and as often embarrassing photos of luminaries from the worlds of show biz and sports.

In addition to the tax flap, TMZ has photographically nabbed Schwarzenegger and Shriver for parking in red zones and talking on cell phones while behind the wheel, respectively.

While the site doesn't ordinarily feature the parking peccadillos of politicians and their spouses, Schwarzenegger and Shriver transcend politics because of their celebrity as former movie star and former network news reporter/Kennedy clan member.

"The governor and Maria are bona fide celebrities," said Barbara O'Connor, who heads the Institute for the Study of Politics and Media at California State University, Sacramento, "and anyone who lives by the celebrity sword is open to being stabbed by it."

Neither the Governor's Office nor the Web site seem eager to talk about whether the first couple are being stalked by the site. A spokesman for the governor declined to comment, as did TMZ.

In fact, TMZ officials declined to comment on anything, even after written questions were submitted by a Bee reporter.

But while TMZ has been harshly criticized for ambush-style reporting and rushing stories onto the Web without key elements or explanations, it also has been cited as an example of the new synergy that constitutes 21st century journalism.

"I think sites like TMZ 'key up' stories that are largely unvetted, and then the mainstream media will do the necessary vetting, and either report it or dispense with it," said O'Connor, "As mainstream media downsizes, having these sites as a source of tips is valuable."

O'Connor said she is troubled, however, that in the accelerating competition to report things first, the need to report things accurately sometimes suffers.

"The mainstream media often feels compelled to compete on sensationalistic breaking news," she said, "and sometimes relies on attributing things to reporting by celebrity Web sites or gossip papers, which are sometimes not very reliable."

And sometimes the "mainstream media" aren't needed at all.

For example, UC Berkeley's Henry points to TMZ's Northern Trust Bank exposé in February.

TMZ posted photos and videos of a lavish party the bank threw for hundreds of clients and employees as part of a professional golf tournament it was sponsoring in Los Angeles. The report prompted demands by members of Congress that the bank repay $1.6 billion in federal bailout funds, which it did.

"The work they did on Northern Trust was outstanding," Henry said. "As journalists we tend to hold journalism to a higher standard of coverage. But as newspapers and other news entities continue their shrinkage and diminishing content, sites like this are helping to fill the gaps."

Among them: improving the driving habits of certain governors and their spouses.

Predator 10-Ball World Tour Announces Two Qualifiers for 2010 Spain Event Predator 10-Ball World Tour, Presented by Masterpool Promotions, announces two qualifiers for the Predator World Tour Spain event that will take place in Lloret De Mar, Spain on January 6-9, 2010. The inaugural Northern Action 9-Ball Tour stop, organized by Fred Goodman, held on Dec. 12-13 [...]

DeBreo Undeterred by Competition Tri-State Tour / Queens, NY by InsidePOOL Staff Rafael DeBreo came out on the winning end of a hill-hill final match to take the December 5 stop of the Tri-State Tour, defeating Troy Deocharran 7-6. This $750-added stop attracted 28 B-D players to Master Billiards in Queens, NY. DeBreo and Deocharran met twice in the [...]