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AP - Internet providers Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block access to child pornography and eliminate the material from their servers, New York's attorney general said Tuesday.
AFP - Apple has unveiled a new version of its popular iPhone built for high-speed wireless networks with faster Internet access and more features for business users.
 Palluxo! - Mac Dose of All Things Apple | Microsoft says it doesn’t fear iPhone 3G, won’t release Zune phone CrunchGear - Don’t laugh, but Microsoft says that, as far as 3G phones are concerned, it’s got the iPhone 3G (and BlackBerry) beat. I said don’t laugh, silly! Apple tries going corporate with faster, cheaper iPhone Software updates equip iPhone for corner office |
 KIMA CBS 29 | Last minute work for shuttle before hatches close The Associated Press - HOUSTON (AP) - Little work remained for shuttle Discovery's astronauts to complete aboard the international space station Tuesday before they closed the hatches between the two spacecraft in preparation for their return trip to Earth. Shuttle Crew Prepares to Leave Space Station Shuttle Astronauts Finish Work on Space Station |
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State Says FCAT Shows Improvement In Math, Science, Reading Tampa Tribune - By MARILYN BROWN | The Tampa Tribune TAMPA - The state released its 2008 Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test results for reading, math and science today, saying more students are performing at or above grade level in those subjects. Martin Co. does well on FCATs, St. Lucie Co. makes modest improvements Lee County FCAT scores comparable to to rest of Florida |
 Canada.com | AT&T will subsidize 3G iPhone FierceWireless - By Sue Marek AT&T confirmed it will subsidize Apple's 3G iPhone to customers who sign a two-year contract for the phone. AT&T CEO Ralph de la Vega told the WSJ that the company believes the $199 price point is necessary to drive mass market adoption. Apple unveils $199 iPhones with 3G, GPS The Cheaper, Faster iPhone |
 eFluxMedia | HP tries to thump the Macbook Air with its Envy 133 notebook TG Daily - By Humphrey Cheung Berlin (Germany) - So maybe Rahul Sood’s cutting of a birthday cake with a Macbook Air wasn’t really a stunt after all. Voodoo Announces Envy HP rolls out laptop armada; Voodoo Envy targets MacBook Air |
 Xconomy | Does the New iPhone Hold More Promise for Marketers ClickZ News - By Enid Burns, The ClickZ Network, Jun 10, 2008 The latest iteration of Apple's iPhone promises to be cheaper and faster than its predecessor, and opens the doors to mobile blogging, gaming, e-commerce and other third-party applications. Apple answers call for iPhone applications Apple unveils new offering - 3G iPhone 2 |
National Geographic magazine dedicated its May issue to China, but some in China had trouble reading it — because pages had been glued together.Link<>/a>Readers of the 5,000 copies of the English-language edition distributed in China have reported that pages 44 and 45, which show a map of China, were stuck together. These pages didn’t make the often-censored slip-up of treating Taiwan as a separate country, but the concern might have been labeling several borders disputed with Pakistan and India. Another map, on pages 126 and 127, showing the distribution of China’s ethnic minorities, was also glued, perhaps because of recent sensitivities over the country’s Tibetan population.
Pages 100 and 101, which feature controversial artwork, as well as pages 128 and 129, on dissent, were also censored, presumably for more obvious reasons...
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 PhysOrg.com | Apple announces faster, cheaper iPhone CNNMoney.com - CEO Steve Jobs unveils the much-anticipated 3G iPhone; cuts the iPhone price to $200; takes aim at the BlackBerry. By Scott Moritz, writer Apple CEO Steve Jobs speaks in San Francisco on Monday. I Am A Member Of The Cult Of iPhone Apple iPhone To Get More Games |
 ABC News | Internet Providers Agree to Block Child Pornography New York Times - By Sewell Chan Verizon, Sprint and Time Warner Cable have agreed to block access to Internet bulletin boards and Web sites nationwide that disseminate child pornography, Danny Hakim reports in a front-page article. NY AG: 3 net providers to block Web sites with child porn US ISPs agree to block access to child porn |
 eFluxMedia | The Caribbean Monk Is Now Officially Extinct eFluxMedia - By Michael Todd The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration officially announced on Friday the upsetting news about the Caribbean monk which is now extinct. Caribbean monk seal is declared extinct Overhunting Was Demise of Caribbean Monk Seal |
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 SlashGear | One for this "Roadrunner"! Techtree.com - A new supercomputer code-named "Roadrunner" is being touted as the world's fastest machine so far. Designed and built by IBM, this super computer, costing nearly $100 million, can operate at 1 petaflop per second, which is equivalent to one thousand ... Energy Dept says new computer world's fastest IBM supercomputer breaks speed record |
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In today's edition of Boing Boing tv, music legend David Byrne transforms an entire NYC building into a giant musical instrument, and Xeni joins him inside for a BBtv tour.
Playing the Building is Byrne's latest sonic innovation, and morphs the century-old Battery Maritime Building into a clanging, vibrating sound sculpture. In this installation, the former Talking Heads co-founder blurs the boundaries between the creators and consumers of culture. He explains:
Devices [have been] attached to the building's structure — to the metal beams and pillars, the heating pipes, the water pipes — and are used to make these things produce sound. The activations are of three types: wind, vibration, striking. The devices cause the building elements to vibrate, resonate and oscillate so that the building itself becomes a very large musical instrument.Byrne sees music as deeply embedded within the natural sounds that surround us every day, and believes "anyone can be a writer, artist, or musician if they want to." Playing the Building continues through August 10, 2008 at 10 South Street, New York, NY; open every Friday through Sunday, noon - 6pm. Admission is free of charge.
Link to Boing Boing tv post with discussion and downloadable video.
(Photos used in this episode are by Clayton Cubitt. Special thanks to Danielle Spencer, and Jason Wishnow).
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Thirty-five articles were presented by Rep. Dennis Kucinich to the House of Representatives late Monday evening, airing live on C-SPAN.Link (Thanks, Mary!)"The House is not in order," said Kucinich to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), upon which Pelosi pounded her gavel.
"Resolved," Kucinich then began, "that President George W. Bush be impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and that the following articles of impeachment be exhibited to the United States Senate. ...
"In his conduct while President of the United States, George W. Bush, in violation of his constitutional oath to faithfully execute the office of president of the United States, and to the best of his ability preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States, and in violation of his constitutional duty to take care that the laws be faithfully executed, has committed the following abuses of power..."
The first article Kucinich presented, and many that followed, regarded the war in Iraq: "Article 1 - Creating a secret propaganda campaign to manufacture a false case for war against Iraq."
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Swecon 2008 - ConFuse 2008Link
The Swedish National Science Fiction and Fantasy Convention 2008
Guest of Honour Cory DoctorowDate: 13-15 June 2008
Venue: Ryds Herrgård, Linköping, Sweden
First there was silence... Then there was data... But there was no story...Link (8-bit NSFW)
Just images and sounds...
cities were built and a grid was laid on top of the topography
Within this global grid a company named eBay became the largest marketplace, with very local marketspaces. eBay is romantic and seductive, not like the local fleamarkets in Paris (Le marché aux puces de Saint-Ouen) but sexed up a million times bigger and spherically transcended, much more effective and thoroughly commercialized. We love it! "The Sound of eBay" is the affirmative high-end low-tech contribution to the atomic soundtrack of the new peer-to-peer hyper-catastrophic shock-capitalism.
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As Kottke sez, "Not that this guy cares or whatever, but the modern banana is a cultivated fruit...i.e. pressured by humans to, oh what's the word...evolve into its present form. And other varieties of bananas are smaller or larger and differently shaped. Some wild bananas have large hard seeds. I could go on...."
Link
(via Kottke)
What it is: Aesculap ScalpFix
What it's used for: Closing up gushing arteries at the start of a craniotomy
When sawing open someone's skull, it's best to be as efficient as possible. That's why scalp-clip guns like the $1,200 stainless steel ScalpFix are de rigueur on neurosurgeons' instrument trays, providing a quick and simple way to pinch off cranial bleeding. The ScalpFix can deploy its magazine of 10 plastic clips and then be reloaded in seconds. As the trigger is squeezed, a clip moves to the end of the barrel and opens. Upon release, the springy little plastic jaws grab onto the breached area of an artery, stanching the blood flow. After the operation, the doc just removes the clips with forceps, sutures the wound, and sterilizes the gun for the next head case. The 8-ounce device saves several minutes over the course of an hours-long operation. That may not sound like much, but it doesn't take a brain surgeon to know that when someone is bleeding from the noggin, every second counts.
Even with gas at four bucks a gallon, Yahya Fahimuddin enjoys filling his car. It's a contest, a chance to see how many miles he can squeeze from every tank. He's getting about 45 mpg these days and says you can, too.
He's a hypermiler, one of a growing number of people going to often extreme lengths to get 40, 50, even 60 mpg or more. "It's like a videogame," he says. "Can I beat my new high score?"
It's a game that some say started during the gas-rationing days of World War II and came back during the oil embargo of the 1970s. It's catching on again as fuel prices spiral out of sight, and skilled players say small changes in driving style -- eliminating hard acceleration, turning off the engine at stop lights, coasting to a stop -- can bring big improvements in fuel economy no matter what you drive.
"If you combine a handful of simple hypermiling techniques, you can easily see increases of 20 percent," said Tim Fulton, a 25-year-old designer from West Bend, Wisconsin. "Use a few more techniques and 30 percent is yours."
Fulton routinely gets 55 mpg from his 1997 Toyota Paseo, a car the EPA rates at 29 mpg. He started hypermiling about 18 months ago when he landed a new job 37 miles from home and got tired of burning so much gas. He mastered "pulse and glide" -- turning off the engine and coasting while driving. "This technique alone dramatically increased my mileage from 38 mpg to 47 mpg on my first tank," he says. "I was blown away."
Pulse and glide is controversial -- and in some states, illegal -- because the engine drives the power steering and brakes. Shut it off, critics warn, and you can't steer or stop effectively. Hypermilers say the risks are overstated. Still, there are easier -- and, arguably, safer -- things you can do to boost fuel economy. The first suggestion?
"Try the speed limit," says Rick Harrell, a moderator at the website ecomodder.com and its list of more than 100 ways to improve fuel economy. "It's a crazy idea, but it works."
The U.S. Department of Energy says gas mileage plummets above 60 mph. Every 5 mph above that speed is akin to paying another 20 cents a gallon for gas. For that reason, hypermilers scrupulously obey the speed limit. They also use the accelerator and brake as little as possible, preferring instead to coast. The truly hardcore coast to a stop, avoid using brakes around corners and draft behind trucks or other large vehicles.
Following the speed limit was quite a change for Harrell, who favored high-performance cars before getting the hypermiling bug three years ago. "I knew I needed to slow down for both environmental purposes and not to scare the living daylights out of my passengers," he says.
These days he's driving a 1998 Acura Integra and getting as much as 40 mpg in a car the EPA rates at 24. His quest for better fuel efficiency started with the car, which got a tune-up and an engine-block heater for more efficient starts. He inflated the tires to the maximum listed on the sidewall to reduce rolling resistance. And he installed a fuel-consumption gauge that provides real-time data about how much gas he's burning. He and other hypermilers highly recommend them.
"The instant feedback was great," Harrell says. "Simple things like slowing down on the highway, timing traffic lights (to maintain) momentum and coasting with the engine off started to push that fuel-efficiency number higher and higher."
Hypermilers call the gadgets "game gauges" because they're always trying to see how high they can go. The best of them get absurd figures. Wayne Gerdes, founder of cleanmpg.com and the king of hypermilers, recently drove a Honda Civic hybrid 800 miles from Chicago to New York on a single tank of gas. That works out to 65 mpg.
That's low for Darin Cosgrove of Brockville, Ontario. The co-founder of ecomodder.com averages 69 mpg in his 1998 Geo Metro, a car that got 40 mpg off the showroom floor. He's gotten as many as 133 mpg on a long trip by going slowly and using pulse and glide. He's also modified his car to make it more aerodynamic and tinkered with the drivetrain to improve efficiency.
Fahimuddin hopes to achieve those kind of numbers with his 2000 Honda Insight. It was a heap when he bought it and he's overhauled just about everything, but the clutch is shot so he's only getting 45 mpg or so. He'll replace it eventually, and add a belly pan to improve aerodynamics under the car. He figures that and a few tweaks to his driving style will get him to 60 mph.
But that's just the beginning.
"I'd like to hit 70 mpg. Seventy would be pretty sick," he says. "It's doable."
1943: Brothers László and Georg Bíró, Hungarian refugees living in Argentina, patent the ballpoint pen. A half-century-old idea is coming to commercial fruition.
Lewis Waterman's invention of a practical fountain pen, patented in 1884, had solved the problem of portability. You no longer had to carry around an inkwell to be able to write when and where you wanted. But the ink still took awhile to dry and was subject to running and smudging.
American banker John L. Loud patented a ballpoint pen in 1888. It used a ball-and-socket to deliver sticky, quick-drying ink. Too sticky: The ink was so coarse, it didn't really work well on paper. (It was a good idea on paper, except literally.) It did find industrial uses for writing on leather and cloth.
László Bíró was a Hungarian journalist who saw an idea in the quick-drying inks newspapers use. His brother Georg, a chemist, helped him with technical aspects. They used a tiny -- and precisely ground -- ball bearing to serve two functions. It distributed ink evenly from the cartridge to the paper for writing, and it contained the rest of the ink inside the cartridge.
The Bíró brothers made progress on improving the ballpoint to the point, so to speak, that it could write as smoothly as a fountain pen. But the situation in their homeland was deteriorating. When World War II started, they fled from Budapest to Paris, then to Madrid and finally to Buenos Aires, Argentina.
There, they applied for a patent and sought financial backing. One of their contacts, an English accountant named Harry Martin, realized that the ballpoint solved a problem faced by Britain's Royal Air Force: Conventional pens were unsuitable for writing aircraft logs, because they leaked, were too sensitive to changes in atmospheric pressure, and wouldn't let you write on a vertical or overhead surface.
Martin eventually flew to Washington and London, convincing both the U.S. Air Force and the RAF to adopt the new technology. By the time the Allies won the war, the ballpoint shared the luster of victory.
When the pens went into commercial production in 1945, they were a sensation. In the United States, the Reynolds Pen sold for $12.50 (about $150 in today's money). Yet people swarmed a New York department store to buy 8,000 of them on the first day of sale.
What? People lining up to be the first to buy new technology? Where have we heard that before? You mean, it happened in the old days, too?
Some of the earliest versions of commercial ballpoints leaked and smudged, but manufacturers eventually worked the bugs out. What? A technology brought to market before it's quite ready? How could that be?
Today, the ballpoint is what most people mean when they say just pen. And in much of the world, the generic name for a ballpoint pen is biro. In Argentina, by the way, it's a birome.
Source: BBC h2g2
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: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comSAN FRANCISCO -- As conferences go, Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference ranks low on the sexiness factor. It's a good bet that, without the promise of a new, iPhone 3G, the programmer-centric conference would not have drawn the hundreds of broadcast, print and blog journalists that it did.
Fortunately, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did have a new iPhone up his sleeve, and after spending an hour selling the company's new iPhone development tools and previewing some of the platform's forthcoming apps, Jobs delivered what we all came for: the new phone.
The iPhone 3G, as it will be called, will cost $200 for an 8-GB version, $300 for a 16-GB version. Both will be available in a new, slightly rounded case with a shiny black-plastic back. The 16-GB version will also be available with a white back.
Breaking with Jobs' keynote tradition, the iPhone 3G is not yet available: Both models will go on sale July 11 in 22 countries. Apple plans to make the phone available in 75 countries within several months.
For details, check out our full coverage of the WWDC 2008 keynote, or browse these slides for the highlights.
Left: Jobs' normal "reality-distortion field" seemed to be at ebb during today's keynote, which many observers noted was less exciting than a typical Jobs presentation. Indeed, Jobs -- looking thinner than ever in his trademark black mock-turtleneck -- let his deputies take most of the stage time. More than one audience member noticed that Jobs seemed to be looking a little wan and have less energy than usual. And maybe it's time for a new turtleneck? This one was looking a little gray, not to mention baggy.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comApple's Phil Schiller, a regular fixture at Apple keynotes, touted the phone's new integration with Microsoft Exchange using "ActiveStink -- I mean ActiveSync." Was that an intentional dig at the Cupertino company's sometime competitor, sometime partner? Or was it a true Freudian slip, indicating Schiller's habitual distaste for the nearly ubiquitous Microsoft standard?
It's not clear. One thing is sure, though: Apple has provided deep and meaningful enterprise tools in the 2.0 version of the iPhone software, including the ability to "push" e-mail, calendar and contact updates. The company has also given IT managers the ability to zero out any data on a corporate iPhone, remotely -- handy when one of them goes missing.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comApple executive Scott Forstall demonstrates how easy it is to create an iPhone application using the software development kit's new tools. You just drag in this snippet of code here, drop a button there and presto! Instant contact manager.
Like other software-development demos, this one had a lot in common with cooking demonstrations on TV: So much depends on having everything set up just right, ahead of time. In real life, you'd spend half a day doing prep work before you got to do the five minutes of dragging-and-dropping that Forstall showed onstage.
Still, developer after developer testified to the ease of developing iPhone apps. It's clear that if you're used to coding OS X apps, the iPhone should be a cakewalk.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comOne of the applications shown at the March preview of the iPhone SDK was Sega's popular Nintendo DS title Super Monkey Ball. This game will be available for the iPhone for $10 -- once the iPhone App Store opens -- and will feature all four cute little monkeys and more than 100 different levels. Players control the rolling monkeys simply by tilting the iPhone this way and that.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comDevelopers who want to create location-aware applications have plenty to drool over with the new iPhone 2.0 operating system, which has plenty of support for geographic data. In addition to the first-generation iPhone's ability to do geolocation by triangulating nearby WiFi hotspots and cell towers, the iPhone 3G will also have a GPS receiver, giving the device the ability to track its movements with great precision.
In this demo by location-sensitive social network Loopt, the orange pin denotes the user's location, while blue pins show nearby friends. Looking for someone to have lunch with? Loopt can help you hook up with someone and can even help recommend a cute little local cafe. (Friends not included.)
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comMajor League Baseball's iPhone app takes advantage of the phone's fast 3-G and WiFi data connections to provide real-time game scores -- and "real-time video clips." That doesn't mean you'll be able to watch streaming video of the whole game, but highlight clips will be available for you to view within "minutes" after they happen, the MLB developer promised.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comAmong the most impressive iPhone app demos of the day were graphics-intensive ones, including a medical-imaging program and this game, called Kroll, from Digital Legends. In the demo, a fully animated character ran through a beautifully rendered fantasy landscape, battling winged demons and an immense, scary-looking giant whose steps shook the very screen.
Like the many other developers who took the stage, Digital Legends touted the ease of porting its OS X software to the iPhone -- and also provided an impressive demonstration of the phone's built-in 3-D video capabilities. In terms of graphics quality, this game looked comparable to what you might find on a PlayStation 2.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comPerhaps the biggest news of the day was a three-digit number: $199, the price of the 8-GB iPhone 3G. That's a significant drop from the current price for the 8-GB first-generation iPhone ($399), and a huge drop from the $600 that it cost when Apple first introduced the iPhone a year ago.
As if the mere figure weren't impressive enough, Jobs had the price stomp onto the screen with massive booming sounds, saving him from having to actually say the word Boom.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comThe new iPhone 3G comes with a shiny black-plastic back, in contrast to the current model's matte aluminum. If you decide to spring for the more capacious 16-GB model (which will cost $299), you can also choose a shiny white-plastic back.
The iPhone 3G itself doesn't appear to be any smaller, thinner or lighter than the current version, although it has tapered, slightly rounded edges, which will either make it feel thinner or make it feel more like a bar of soap.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comJobs made his customary brief appearance in the middle of the crowd, surrounded by burly bodyguards, after the keynote wrapped up. However, he didn't spend any time chitchatting with the hoi polloi, and no one got any hands-on time with his shiny new gadget.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comSAN FRANCISCO -- As conferences go, Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference ranks low on the sexiness factor. It's a good bet that, without the promise of a new, iPhone 3G, the programmer-centric conference would not have drawn the hundreds of broadcast, print and blog journalists that it did.
Fortunately, Apple CEO Steve Jobs did have a new iPhone up his sleeve, and after spending an hour selling the company's new iPhone development tools and previewing some of the platform's forthcoming apps, Jobs delivered what we all came for: the new phone.
The iPhone 3G, as it will be called, will cost $200 for an 8-GB version, $300 for a 16-GB version. Both will be available in a new, slightly rounded case with a shiny black-plastic back. The 16-GB version will also be available with a white back.
Breaking with Jobs' keynote tradition, the iPhone 3G is not yet available: Both models will go on sale July 11 in 22 countries. Apple plans to make the phone available in 75 countries within several months.
For details, check out our full coverage of the WWDC 2008 keynote, or browse these slides for the highlights.
Left: Jobs' normal "reality-distortion field" seemed to be at ebb during today's keynote, which many observers noted was less exciting than a typical Jobs presentation. Indeed, Jobs -- looking thinner than ever in his trademark black mock-turtleneck -- let his deputies take most of the stage time. More than one audience member noticed that Jobs seemed to be looking a little wan and have less energy than usual. And maybe it's time for a new turtleneck? This one was looking a little gray, not to mention baggy.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comApple's Phil Schiller, a regular fixture at Apple keynotes, touted the phone's new integration with Microsoft Exchange using "ActiveStink -- I mean ActiveSync." Was that an intentional dig at the Cupertino company's sometime competitor, sometime partner? Or was it a true Freudian slip, indicating Schiller's habitual distaste for the nearly ubiquitous Microsoft standard?
It's not clear. One thing is sure, though: Apple has provided deep and meaningful enterprise tools in the 2.0 version of the iPhone software, including the ability to "push" e-mail, calendar and contact updates. The company has also given IT managers the ability to zero out any data on a corporate iPhone, remotely -- handy when one of them goes missing.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comApple executive Scott Forstall demonstrates how easy it is to create an iPhone application using the software development kit's new tools. You just drag in this snippet of code here, drop a button there and presto! Instant contact manager.
Like other software-development demos, this one had a lot in common with cooking demonstrations on TV: So much depends on having everything set up just right, ahead of time. In real life, you'd spend half a day doing prep work before you got to do the five minutes of dragging-and-dropping that Forstall showed onstage.
Still, developer after developer testified to the ease of developing iPhone apps. It's clear that if you're used to coding OS X apps, the iPhone should be a cakewalk.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comOne of the applications shown at the March preview of the iPhone SDK was Sega's popular Nintendo DS title Super Monkey Ball. This game will be available for the iPhone for $10 -- once the iPhone App Store opens -- and will feature all four cute little monkeys and more than 100 different levels. Players control the rolling monkeys simply by tilting the iPhone this way and that.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comDevelopers who want to create location-aware applications have plenty to drool over with the new iPhone 2.0 operating system, which has plenty of support for geographic data. In addition to the first-generation iPhone's ability to do geolocation by triangulating nearby WiFi hotspots and cell towers, the iPhone 3G will also have a GPS receiver, giving the device the ability to track its movements with great precision.
In this demo by location-sensitive social network Loopt, the orange pin denotes the user's location, while blue pins show nearby friends. Looking for someone to have lunch with? Loopt can help you hook up with someone and can even help recommend a cute little local cafe. (Friends not included.)
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comMajor League Baseball's iPhone app takes advantage of the phone's fast 3-G and WiFi data connections to provide real-time game scores -- and "real-time video clips." That doesn't mean you'll be able to watch streaming video of the whole game, but highlight clips will be available for you to view within "minutes" after they happen, the MLB developer promised.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comAmong the most impressive iPhone app demos of the day were graphics-intensive ones, including a medical-imaging program and this game, called Kroll, from Digital Legends. In the demo, a fully animated character ran through a beautifully rendered fantasy landscape, battling winged demons and an immense, scary-looking giant whose steps shook the very screen.
Like the many other developers who took the stage, Digital Legends touted the ease of porting its OS X software to the iPhone -- and also provided an impressive demonstration of the phone's built-in 3-D video capabilities. In terms of graphics quality, this game looked comparable to what you might find on a PlayStation 2.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comPerhaps the biggest news of the day was a three-digit number: $199, the price of the 8-GB iPhone 3G. That's a significant drop from the current price for the 8-GB first-generation iPhone ($399), and a huge drop from the $600 that it cost when Apple first introduced the iPhone a year ago.
As if the mere figure weren't impressive enough, Jobs had the price stomp onto the screen with massive booming sounds, saving him from having to actually say the word Boom.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comThe new iPhone 3G comes with a shiny black-plastic back, in contrast to the current model's matte aluminum. If you decide to spring for the more capacious 16-GB model (which will cost $299), you can also choose a shiny white-plastic back.
The iPhone 3G itself doesn't appear to be any smaller, thinner or lighter than the current version, although it has tapered, slightly rounded edges, which will either make it feel thinner or make it feel more like a bar of soap.
: Photo: Jim Merithew/Wired.comJobs made his customary brief appearance in the middle of the crowd, surrounded by burly bodyguards, after the keynote wrapped up. However, he didn't spend any time chitchatting with the hoi polloi, and no one got any hands-on time with his shiny new gadget.
AP - The iPhone will soon be $200 cheaper and support satellite navigation and faster Internet access, but higher monthly service charges are likely to erase most of the savings.
Link(Featuring in order of appearance): The Artist's Guide to Infinity, Jason Polan presents Jacob Brege, Arbito, Spencer Hibert, Justin Van Hoy, Gluekit, Matt W Moore, Keith Shore, Ryan Riss, Dan Rule, Garrett Morin, Justin Fines, Blair Sayer, Sylvain Gerand, Neil Doshi, Thomas Jennings, Ray Frenden, Gasolline Gut, Derek Ballard, a Boy named Ethos, Labour-Ny, Pietari Posti, Tristan Henry Wilson, Damien Correll, Sune Ehlers, Jason Urban, Christopher Norris (Steak Mtn), Prate™ Computer Channel & Bang.
Scott Beale of Laughing Squid has good things to say about the $50 (after rebate) Sierra Wireless Compass 597 EV-DO USB Modem on Sprint's $60 a month (not really unlimited) unlimited plan.
EV-DO has come a long way since I first started using it back in January 2006, we are now on Rev. A and the size and functionality of the EV-DO modems has improved quite a bit. I recently picked-up the tiny Sierra Wireless Compass 597 USB EV-DO modem using the Sprint network. It comes with GPS, has a slot for a microSD card and a port to connect an external antenna. Best of all, it is small enough to work on a MacBook Air without using an extension cable.LinkThe software has evolved quite a bit as well, especially on the Mac side of things. The modem ships with Sierra Wireless’ TRU-Install software, which automatically loads up when you insert it into the USB slot, then when launched installs the drivers and Sprint’s SmartView software, all without the use of a CD. Activation was super easy and once complete getting online is a simple as hitting “connect”.
Today at Boing Boing Gadgets we looked at Sprint's Instinct, and, of course, the new 3G iPhone, which has an engineering marvel within, and for which higher rates and a new 2-year contract will apply.
Yesterday, we published a song about when the Apple Store is Down that Joel's been working hard on for weeks—listen closely! Today's magnum opus, however, was our liveblogged coverage of Steve Jobs' keynote speech in the style of a classical play. 
Collection of Tonight Show style newspaper items.
Here's the question -- "Should Congress quit funding for Public Television and NPR, Public Radio?"LinkRichard Guess of Charleston says, "Congress should continue paying for it because if they don't, the taxpayers will end up paying for it."
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