USATODAY.com - Achieving visibility in Google's search rankings can be a mystery. To help solve the riddle, USA TODAY sat down with Google's Matt Cutts, an engineer and active blogger, who has five easy tips on how to "optimize" your site so Google and the rest of the world can find it. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 23 Jun 2008 | 10:52 am
AFP - The disposal of massive numbers of unwanted mobile phones will be a key focus of a five-day meeting on waste management which started Monday in Indonesia, organisers said.
Spotted on productdose, a dial cell phone watch. You can't exactly make a phone call, but you can Dial 117 to get the time and it will be spoken to you. The Zihotch Retro Phone Watch is made by Japan's... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 10:38 am
NASA believes that material found on Mars recently may really be ice. When images from the trench dubbed “Snow White 2” were received from the Phoenix Mars lander, scientists believed the white... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 10:30 am
The airline industry could save over $600 million within the next few years if it learns how to exploit the new features in high end mobiles. According to airline IT company SITA, mobiles location awareness... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 10:24 am
Techradar reports that Swedish Pirate Bay team has pledged to do everything that it can to ffight against Sweden's recent ruling that it will monitor all phone calls and internet traffic that "leaves... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 10:17 am
One of the best things about being an immigrant is that there's an entire nation's worth of wonderful and weird pop-culture to absorb. Case in point: last night, my dinner guests told me about the notorious Fred Dibnah, a British steeplejack who made a career out of televised, dramatic demolitions of giant industrial chimneys, a feat he accomplished without explosions. Dibnah also owned a pair of lovingly restored steam engines, and dug a replica coal mine in his back yard. There's a wealth of Dibnah videos on YouTube -- they're endlessly entertaining.
Having mastered his trade repairing chimneys, Dibnah became aware of the demand for a cost-effective demolition method and offered to remove them without the need for explosives. His technique was to cut an ingress at the bottom of the chimney, support the brickwork with wooden props and then burn the props so that the chimney fell, hopefully in the intended direction. Alongside his demolition work he also continued to work as a steeplejack. He has always maintained that, although most famous for demolishing chimneys, he much preferred to repair and preserve them.
Michael sez, "Artist Fiddian Warman built some robots controlled by a neural network. neural networks can learn, so he's been playing them classic punk records in an attempt to turn them into robotic versions of his younger self. the robots are 2 metres tall and have the ability to pogo.
It all culminates in a gig at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (3-5 July 2008: bring your friends!). the artist has formed a punk band for the occasion: they're going to play to the robots and the audience and see if the robots dance."
Link
(Thanks, Michael!)
Retrobrick sells "vintage" mobile phones and accessories -- I love the cognitive dissonance I get by typing the words "vintage" and "mobile phone" together, but given that these things have been around for decades, it's perfectly reasonable. My friend Jim Griffin likes to say "anything invented before you were 18 has been there forever, anything that turns up before you're 30 is new and exciting, and anything after that is a threat to the world and must be destroyed."
A reader writes, "Saturday night's Science Fiction Hall of Fame induction ceremony honored this Betty and Ian Ballantine (Literature Category), William Gibson (Literature Category), Richard M. Powers (Art Category), and Rod Serling (Film, Television and Media Category.)" That's a damned fine list of inductees -- congrats all 'round.
Link
Hurrah! The OpenTech conference is returning to London! I wish I was in town for it, but I'm going to be overseas. Co-organizer Sam Smith sez,
At the last OpenTech in 2005, the Open Rights Group was started. For 2008, the conference includes a State of the Nation from ORG and NO2ID, describing where we've come from, and a look forward to where we're going.
Also in the lineup is "Power to the people - Power of Information one year on" with participation from Richard Allan, William Perrin and Tom Watson MP on how Power of Information is changing the UK Government, and what we can do with it.
Plus, another 18 sessions on everything from Porn to Baird.
5th July, Central London, £5. We expect the event to sell out, so please book in advance.
Link
(Thanks, Sam!)
PingMag has a great interview with Kogoro Kurata, a Japanese ironsmith whose works range from staircases to robots to typewriters to bulldozers, all of which seem to have come from a rusty dimension of grim, skeletal force.
One thing that gets me once in a while is just that the colour of iron is always black! [laughs] Sometimes it can be boring, so I would rather use wood. My basic material is always iron, but I’ll use other materials as decoration to escape its monotone characteristic. On the other hand, I think the texture of iron is really important in my works so I don’t paint them either. I’ll probably always work with iron — as long as my body holds out! [laughs]
I was recently profiled by writer/photographer Julian Voloj for Switzerland's Tachles Magazine. As you can see, it's a German-language publication, so I have no idea what he wrote about. He did ask good... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 9:42 am
I posted the other day about Google Trends For Websites. Google isn't the only search company that's taking the data it collects and turning it into valuable insight. Our portfolio company, Indeed, has... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 9:35 am
Last week we started a new series called Mainstream Web Watch, in which we'll be exploring how the Social Web is infiltrating mainstream culture. We started out with NBA.com last week, to celebrate the... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 9:20 am
Ian Whyde notes that Sun is finally coming to the end of its struggle to open up Java completely. Simon Phipps, the chief open source officer at Sun Microsystems, said: "There were a couple of holdouts there. One was the area to do with raster graphics and 2D graphics. That turned out to be owned by a company that didn't want us to release that code as open source. We negotiated with them and because they've said 'yes, you can open source the code'... The only element that's left now is actually a sound-related component within Java. We finally decided that the vendor that's involved there just isn't going to play ball and we're rewriting the code from scratch. That's going to be done within the next couple of months." In another sense the milestone of a free Java was reached this week when IcedTea passed the rigorous Java Test Compatibility Kit.
Award-Winning DefensePro Deploys Automatic Real-Time Signatures to Safeguard Against Emerging Network Threats Undetectable by Static Signature IPS MAHWAH, New Jersey,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 9:00 am
State Ombudsman to Automate Investigations Processes and Boost Efficiency With Investigative Case Management Software Based on SAP(R) CRM 2007 WALLDORF, Germany and... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 9:00 am
Battery-agnostic smart module combines integrated monitoring, prognostics & wireless communication flexibility ANN ARBOR, Mich., June 23 /PRNewswire/ -- For the third... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 9:00 am
FibeAir IP-10 is now Fully MEF 9 and MEF 14 Certified for Delivering Standard Carrier-Ethernet Services Over Microwave TEL AVIV, Israel, June 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 9:00 am
HAIFA, Israel, June 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Elbit Systems Ltd. (NASDAQ:ESLT) announced that its subsidiary Elbit Systems Electro-Optics Elop Ltd. ("Elop")... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:43 am
Reuters - The world's top cellphone maker Nokia
said on Monday it has agreed to buy social networking start-up
Plazes as part of its major push into offering Internet
services.
HELSINKI (Reuters) - The world's top cellphone maker Nokia said on Monday it has agreed to buy social networking start-up Plazes as part of its major push into offering Internet services. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:02 am
By Martino, Kristina MANLIUS - Wireless-communications distributor Premier Technologies LLC already operates 14 locations across Upstate and is planning to open two more in June, says Robin Kassel, vice president. Premier Technologies, based at 201 Fayette St. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Olson, Debbi When Kennecott Land Development (KLD) unveiled its plans in 2005 to create a master plan for the future development of the 144 square- mile West Bench, news and excitement about the project spread fast, creating unrealistic expectations that the Oquirrh Mountain range would quickly be transformed into a new metropolis that would more than double the current population of the Salt Lake Valley. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Kitty Caparella, Philadelphia Daily News Jun. 23--Damon Romell Watson may not have had any water in his second-floor apartment, but he doesn't think he and 200 others should have been evacuated on Saturday from Lindley Court Apartments in Logan. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Lauren McSherry Water agencies and cities in San Bernardino County's West End that purchase water from the Metropolitan Water District sent out a plea last week for residents to conserve more water. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Stall, Sam Chris Wilkes, senior vice president for South Bend-based Holladay Properties oversees development at the 1,500-acre AmeriPlex Business Park just southwest of Indianapolis International Airport. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Mike Sprague -- PDF: Discovery Center Schematic Design Report WHITTIER NARROWS - An environmental fight is breaking out over whether a proposed 19,000-square-foot San Gabriel River Discovery Center belongs in this natural habitat. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Richard Mial, La Crosse Tribune, Wis. Jun. 23--My first impression of La Crosse, while driving toward downtown on the Causeway in 1974, was that this was a dumpy-looking city in the middle of a beautiful valley. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Bunderson, Gaye Since 1969, happy campers have been the norm at a White Bird, Idaho, campground now known as Hells Canyon Jet Boat Trips & Lodging. The campground is run by Heather and Les Killgore, who own Killgore Adventures, LLC along with their son Kurt. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Karen Robes Long Beach's newest city department is looking to reach out to the masses with some new communication features. Long Beach Development Services has introduced a new hotline and newsletter and is planning to launch its new Web site in August. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Anonymous In celebration of its first anniversary with a full-time office in New Haven, Citizens Campaign for the Environment (CCE) recently conducted a New Haven Harbor/Long Wharf Cleanup. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By John Canalis It may be landlocked, but Orange County considers Rossmoor an "island." That is because the 50-year-old subdivision of ribboned roads, rambling ranch houses and enviable schools is not a city, but an unincorporated area that receives core services from the county seat in Santa Ana and a tiny on-site agency with a few employees. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
Red Ventures, a leader in high-tech, online customer acquisition marketing for verticals including home services, consumer products, education, home improvement and small business services, announced today that it has acquired New York, N.Y.-based Modern Consumer. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Anonymous A recent study by Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage of Utah shows that despite the many advances in technology and the Internet, residents along the Wasatch Front still see the value in using a Realtor to help them in buying or selling a house. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
Websites offering adult content are the single most significant security threat for Internet users, comprising 31% of dangerous websites, according to a new study by Against Intuition, Inc. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
PARIS, June 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- ICANN 32nd International Public Meeting - NeuStar today announced that two million domain names have been officially registered within the .BIZ Internet domain. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Kim Horner, The Dallas Morning News Jun. 23--The Dallas Housing Authority provides rent-assistance vouchers to about 17,000 families. Nearly 8,000 more are on a waiting list, a backlog so massive that the agency quit taking new applications four years ago. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Anonymous In case you missed it, Stefano Grande, executive director of the Downtown BIZ, has expressed an idea that may scare the dickens out of people who like their privacy. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Wehner, Jan In 2000, Environment Canada published the Information Technology (IT) and Telecommunication (Telecom) Waste in Canada report. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
By Porter, Brenda New opportunities for broadband abound not just in the state's residential market, but in its small- and medium-sized business (SMB) space. Tapping into the latest broadband services, SMBs can now operate as efficiently and affordably as their larger-sized competitors. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
MIAMI, June 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Calypso Wireless, Inc. (OTC: CLYW / CLYW.PK), a leading innovator in advanced wireless telecommunications technologies announced... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
AMSTERDAM, June 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- - Ready to Implement CrossRef's Plagiarism Detection Software After Successful Pilot Elsevier, Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 8:00 am
More than 1,000 people from 170 countries gathered on the Indonesian resort island of Bali on Monday to discuss the management of waste under the Basel Convention, organisers said. Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 7:44 am
Assorted highlights from the previous week: A woman named Heidi ponders changing her name to her avatar's... A man named CyFishy creates a metaverse-flavored definition to the term self-love... The US... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 7:28 am
Berlin, Germany based Plazes, a location based social network (and one of the first startups we ever wrote about here on TechCrunch, back in 2005), has been acquired by Finland-based Nokia, the companies... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 7:25 am
PC World - The first laptops to make use of the SpursEngine, a co-processor derived from the Cell chip that powers the PlayStation 3... Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 23 Jun 2008 | 7:20 am
God, how I miss Scott McNealy, Sun Microsystems co-founder & former CEO, and his off-the-cuff but often prescient quotes. Back in 1999, much to the chagrin of privacy advocates, he quipped, “You... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 7:06 am
LONDON, June 23 /PRNewswire/ -- - AmberFin iCR 3.5 to Incorporate Extensive New Compatibility Functions AmberFin today announces the launch of the Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jun 2008 | 7:00 am
djvaselaar sends along an article from The New Atlantis that summarizes recent research indicating that multitasking may be detrimental to work and learning.. It begins, "In one of the many letters he wrote to his son in the 1740s, Lord Chesterfield offered the following advice: 'There is time enough for everything in the course of the day, if you do but one thing at once, but there is not time enough in the year, if you will do two things at a time.' To Chesterfield, singular focus was not merely a practical way to structure one's time; it was a mark of intelligence... E-mails pouring in, cell phones ringing, televisions blaring, podcasts streaming--all this may become background noise, like the 'din of a foundry or factory' that [William] James observed workers could scarcely avoid at first, but which eventually became just another part of their daily routine. For the younger generation of multitaskers, the great electronic din is an expected part of everyday life. And given what neuroscience and anecdotal evidence have shown us, this state of constant intentional self-distraction could well be of profound detriment to individual and cultural well-being."
Reuters - New mobile phones being developed by
Google Inc and more than 30 partners based on software
called Android will arrive in the fourth quarter, a schedule
that some cellular carriers and program makers are struggling
to meet, The Wall Street Journal reported on Monday.
1983: Paul Mockapetris and Jon Postel run the first successful test of the automated, distributed Domain Name System. DNS will lay the foundation for the massive expansion, popularization and commercialization of the internet.
The fledgling internet of the time (Arpanet and CSnet) relied on a bulky and exponentially growing "phonebook" of addresses called the "host tables." It was a text file maintained by SRI International in Menlo Park, California. You contacted another computer on the network by looking up its numerical address, and typing it in.
Craig Partridge, another DNS pioneer (.ppt), later called the host tables an "operational nightmare." Everyone on
the network had to copy it nightly to get the latest version. There "were many opportunities for error," Partridge wrote, "and we experienced many of them."
"People had figured out that the old scheme wouldn't work forever," Mockapetris told Computerworld a few years ago. He worked at the University of Southern California Information Sciences Institute, and his manager, Jon Postel, assigned him to devise a new way of assigning and recording internet addresses.
Their solution was brilliant. It still used an underlying system of numerical designations, but allowed you to reach a computer by name as well. It was also hierarchical and distributed. Top-level domains would mark out various types of users, like .mil or .edu. Once a name like berkeley.edu got assigned to the University of California at Berkeley, its local network administrator could independently add computers within the domain, numbering and naming them. Or the Berkeley administrator could subdelegate areas of the domain.
After testing the new plan and tweaking it for a few months, Mockapetris, Postel and Partridge published their idea in a Request for Comments (RFC) memorandum in November 1983. The system gained gradual adoption over the next few years (with prodding from the Arpanet overlords at Darpa), first supplementing and then entirely supplanting the host tables.
The first generic, top-level domains weren't officially established until October 1984 (and implemented in January 1985), but they live on: .com, .edu, .gov, .mil, .net and .org. Though DNS was originally designed to handle 50 million-plus entries, it's been expanded and internationalized. There are now probably more than a billion entries, counting all the DNS names hidden behind firewalls.
Without the Domain Name System, it's doubtful the internet could have grown and flourished as it has. Would a dot-com boom (and bust) have been the same as a dot-22.33 boom (and bust)? If numbers were being used as addresses, would Web 2.0 have emerged as Web B? Would I be writing this? Would you be reading it?
Ian Lamont writes "Anti-spam service Knujon has released reports highlighting how certain registrars in the US and abroad have consistently failed to live up to certain WHOIS-related obligations under ICANN's Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA) — specifically, the requirement that people or company registering domains provide valid contact information. Now the firm is requesting that ICANN shut down the worst alleged offender, Xinnet Bei Gong Da Software. According to Knujon, none of the WHOIS records in a sample of 11,000 alleged spam sites registered through Xinnet and reported by Knujon to ICANN's Whois Data Problem Report System were corrected in a six-month period ending in May 2008 — and the Chinese registrar continues to register about 100 spam sites per day. In many cases, says the Knujon document (PDF), Xinnet does not have 'any Whois record data for review while the sites are still active' and the spam sites further promote 'seal abuse' by posting bogus BBB, Verisign, and other trusted industry seals. ICANN says it is investigating. ICANN has just posted a draft revised RAA that is open for public comment until August 4. However, the wording of Section 3.7.8, governing registrars' obligations to check and correct domain owners' contact information, hasn't changed."
Genetics testing companies face off against California's health department requirement that they submit plans for coming into compliance with the biological materials testing laws or face civil and criminal sanctions.
Seen here are Stephen Taylor and Annika Irmler. German teenager Irmler had the Guinness World Record for the longest tongue, 7 cm, until the UK's Taylor beat her by 2.5 cm. Link to Guinness page on Taylor, Link to BBC New story about Irmler
Previously on BB:
• It's official: At seven centimeters... Link
The New Yorker features a review of the life and work of R. Buckminster Fuller, on the occasion of a retrospective exhibition in New York 25 years after his death. Fuller was a deeply strange man. He documented his life so thoroughly (in the "Dymaxion Chronofile," which had grown to over 200K pages by his death) that biographers have had trouble putting their fingers on what, exactly, Fuller's contribution to civilization had been. The review quotes Stewart Brand's resignation from the cult of the Fuller Dome (in 1994): "Domes leaked, always. The angles between the facets could never be sealed successfully. If you gave up and tried to shingle the whole damn thing — dangerous process, ugly result — the nearly horizontal shingles on top still took in water. The inside was basically one big room, impossible to subdivide, with too much space wasted up high. The shape made it a whispering gallery that broadcast private sounds to everyone." From the article: "Fuller's schemes often had the hallucinatory quality associated with science fiction (or mental hospitals). It concerned him not in the least that things had always been done a certain way in the past... He was a material determinist who believed in radical autonomy, an individualist who extolled mass production, and an environmentalist who wanted to dome over the Arctic. In the end, Fuller's greatest accomplishment may consist not in any particular idea or artifact but in the whole unlikely experiment that was Guinea Pig B [which is how Fuller referred to himself]."
With a heady mix of news, celebrity and controversy, Mail Online - the umbrella site for the Daily Mail's titles - became the highest circulating UK newspaper online last week. But its rise is likely... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 22 Jun 2008 | 11:11 pm
Will the geek get the girl? It's the big question of thousands of romantic movies, and in Beyond the Rave, it's here again, this time with a few provisos: will the geek get the girl (a) before she decides... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 22 Jun 2008 | 11:11 pm
He is everyone's friend and, by the yardstick he invented, the most popular man in the world. He has helped turn the music industry on its head and change the way a generation communicate. But as Tom... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 22 Jun 2008 | 11:11 pm
It's a fact: busy people have cluttered hard drives. It's also true that multiple copies of the same data can account for a substantial amount of that clutter. How many times have you re-downloaded an... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 22 Jun 2008 | 11:11 pm
At his three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in a leafy suburb of Perth, Western Australia, 44-year-old Ian Usher's eyes are glued to his computer screen. Since noon yesterday local time, the Briton's entire... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 22 Jun 2008 | 11:11 pm
At his three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in a leafy suburb of Perth, Western Australia, 44-year-old Ian Usher's eyes are glued to his computer screen. Since noon yesterday local time, the Briton's entire... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 22 Jun 2008 | 11:11 pm
cathector sends along a story from SpaceWeather.com on the discovery of water ice on Mars. "Scientists have figured out the mysterious white substance unearthed by NASA's Phoenix lander on Mars. It's frozen water. The breakthrough came last week when Phoenix's stereo camera caught the substance in the act of disappearing. Bathed in martian sunlight for four days, the white substance sublimated — i.e., it transformed from solid to gas without passing through the liquid state. This is how water behaves on Mars.... Some readers have asked, how do we know the white substance is not frozen CO2 (dry ice) instead of frozen water? Answer: Phoenix's landing site is too warm for dry ice. The average daily temperature is about -70 F while dry ice requires temperatures lower than about -109 F." The animated GIF showing the ice sublimating is pretty nice too.
Beatles representatives are in talks with Acrtivision and MTV Games to create a Beatles-themed video game in a move that could pave the way for a broader licensing of the Fab Four's catalogue Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 22 Jun 2008 | 10:32 pm
Beatles representatives are in talks with two companies to create a Beatles-themed video game in a move that could pave the way for a broader licensing of the Fab Four's catalogue.The representatives have... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 22 Jun 2008 | 10:32 pm
Facebook, the fast-growing social network, has taken a significant lead over MySpace in visitor numbers for the first time, according to ComScore, a company that measures internet traffic Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 22 Jun 2008 | 10:32 pm
Subterranean Press just released a free podcast of my story After the Siege, which won the Locus Award for best science fiction novella of 2008 last night in Seattle. The reader is the wonderful sf writer (and talented voice actor) Mary Robinette Kowal, who really nailed her performance. I'm so happy about this!
Link
(Thanks, William!)
carusoj writes in with NetworkWorld reporting from a panel at Harvard last week. It concluded that employee non-compete agreements have stifled tech startup development in Massachusetts, where the pacts are aggressively enforced, but failed to hold back the tech industry boom in states like California, where they are mostly unenforceable. We've discussed non-competes often here in the past; Techdirt made much the same point a year and a half back.
I'm awfully excited to note (belatedly) that Banshee, the free/open music player for GNU/Linux, turned 1.0 a couple weeks ago while I was still on the road. When I first surveyed all the music players available for Ubuntu, Banshee looked the most promising, but it was still in a fairly unstable beta. Now that it's finished, I'm happily importing all my playlists and chortling to myself. Basically, this does everything iTunes does -- including video playback, podcasts, remembering last-played position for audiobooks, ripping and burning -- and acts more or less like iTunes. But there's no DRM, it natively drives players other than the iPod (it supports iPods too),
Link
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our Rob takes notice of the hilarious, scathing "reviews" left on the Amazon sell-page for Denon's $500 Ethernet cable which is supposed to deliver superior audio to your IP-based speakers:
"If I could use a rusty boxcutter to carve a new orifice in my body that's compatible with this link cable, I would already be doing it. I can just imagine the pure musical goodness that would flow through this cable into the wound and fill me completely -- like white, holy light."
javascript:void(0) “A caution to people buying these: if you do not follow the ‘directional markings’ on the cables, your music will play backwards. Please check that before mentioning it in your reviews.”
"The first time I downloaded a picture to the printer over this cable, the bits moved so fast the printer collapsed into a naked singularity, right there in my office.”
"I accidentally dropped one end of my Denon cable into a glass of Tuscan whole milk I was drinking. Later when I finished my milk (yeah, I still drank it; should I not have done that?), my right arm (lost in an accident in 1987) spontaneously grew back. Is that normal?"
AP - In the second grade, James Silva didn't just play "Mario" and "Zelda" on his Nintendo but drew pictures of new levels and cooked up ideas for future games. While other kids dreamed of becoming an astronaut or president, he felt destined to be a video game designer. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 22 Jun 2008 | 9:25 pm
The game industry has been a tough sell for indie game makers. However, now players like Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony are opening up digital distribution channels and reaching out to the independents.
Famed Japanese "sleep doctor" Takuro Endo attempts to lull an audience of 1,500 to sleep with a playlist that includes Chopin, Tchaikovsky and Japanese tenor Masafumi Akikawa. The result? A partial snooze.
theodp writes "In yet another case of life imitating Dilbert, the State of Georgia has issued a press release touting how helpful Google products will be in getting Georgians to go outdoors. According to the release and a follow-up Yo-State-So-Fat Official Google Blog post, this includes AdWords, Analytics, Maps, Earth, Picasa, Gadgets and a branded YouTube channel for the GO Georgia initiative 'We're thrilled that Google has joined us in the effort to help everyone in the state lead a healthier life,' said Sally Winchester, a manager for Georgia State Parks & Historic Sites. 'At Google, we are committed to helping our employees lead healthy lives,' added Maureen Schumacher, a Google regional sales director. 'We are very excited that Google products will be used as part of this effort to improve the health and well-being of all Georgians.'"
im_thatoneguy sends in an account up at Shacknews about Atari's actions to get early reviews of its upcoming game Alone In the Dark pulled from Web sites in Europe. Atari sued the German site 4Players, alleging piracy, and also cancelled an advertising deal on the site, after a pre-release review gave the game only 68%. 4Players posted a commentary (translation) alleging that Atari is doing this bcause the review is unfavorable. Shacknews reports that Atari has also demanded that both Gamer.no and GameReactor remove early reviews — both reviews gave the game a score of 3/10. Kotaku editorializes: "[Does Atari] fear that, because these outlets may have received copies of the game 'early' (i.e. from pirated copies), that they're somehow reviewing incomplete code, which could affect their opinion of the game? Maybe. Pessimists could, however, be forgiven for thinking it's a convenient excuse for Atari to attack negative reviews of the only game they're releasing in 2008 that has any chance of making them some money."
We discussed the Galaxy Zoo project soon after it launched last summer. Science News is now following developments about an odd celestial object that is fueling a lot of excitement among astronomers around the world. In August a Dutch schoolteacher named Hanny, in the process of characterizing galaxy images, noticed a peculiar object and posted a query about it on the Galaxy Zoo blog. She called it a "Voorwerp," which Science News says is Dutch for "thing" but which Google translates as "subject." Hanny's Voorwerp emits mostly green light (the earlier report said blue). The best guess astronomers have now is that the Voorwerp is emitting "ghost light," i.e. it is "lit by the ultraviolet light and X-rays from a quasar that has vanished in the last 100,000 years," to quote astronomer Bill Keel. "As far as we can tell, it's an unprecedented thing," Keel added. Researchers are scrambling to book time on the Hubble and other major telescopes to get a closer look.
On Friday, NASA launched the Ocean Surface Topography Mission/Jason 2 satellite into orbit to begin a detailed study of ocean currents, sea-surface height, and surface topology. Scientists hope to use the data gathered by Jason 2 in order to better understand weather patterns and global warming. Further details about the mission objectives (PDF) are also available. Quoting NASA's press release: "Combining ocean current and heat storage data is key to understanding global climate variations. OSTM/Jason 2's expected lifetime of at least three years will extend into the next decade the continuous record of these data started in 1992 by NASA and the French space agency Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, or CNES, with the TOPEX/Poseidon mission. The data collection was continued by the two agencies on Jason 1 in 2001. Compared with Jason 1 measurements, OSTM/Jason 2 will have substantially increased accuracy and provide data to within 25 kilometers (15 miles) of coastlines, nearly 50 percent closer to shore than in the past."
Researchers discover that a particular form of beta-amyloid, a sticky protein found in the brains of Alzheimer's patients, causes dementia in rats where other forms of the same protein don't. The findings help explain why not all patients with the protein develop the disease.
AFP - The disposal of massive numbers of unwanted mobile phones will be a key focus of a five-day meeting on waste management which started Monday in Indonesia, organisers said.
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At the last OpenTech in 2005, the Open Rights Group was started. For 2008, the conference includes a State of the Nation from ORG and NO2ID, describing where we've come from, and a look forward to where we're going.
