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NASA renames observatory for Fermi - United Press International
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 27 Aug 2008 | 11:42 am Psystar Fights Back By Sending Apple To Court - eFluxMedia
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 27 Aug 2008 | 11:05 am Mystery 'iPhone Girl' generates Internet intrigueHONG KONG - Who is the "iPhone Girl"? Pictures of an Asian factory worker found on a new iPhone sold to a British customer have generated keen discussion on the Internet about her...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 11:05 am Samsung Chooses ESS's 8-Channel Sabre Audio DAC for Its New Blu-Ray PlayerFREMONT, Calif., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- ESS Technology, a leading provider of high performance audio/video solutions, today announced that its Sabre Premier 8-channel...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 11:00 am MFLEX Announces Expansion Satellite Facility in MalaysiaTurnkey facility will support the Company's high-mix/low-volume assembly manufacturing business ANAHEIM, Calif., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Multi-Fineline ...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 11:00 am Verizon Business Helps E-Retailers Gear Up for Holiday Crunch'Tis Already the Season for Online Retailers to Plan and Prepare BASKING RIDGE, N.J., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- If you think the holiday season starts earlier and...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 11:00 am Tektronix Extends IMS and TISPAN Core Network Test Capabilities with Spectra2 EnhancementsSpectra2 6.3 Offers Increased Monitoring Capability, Expanded Media Portfolio and Extensive Testing Support RICHARDSON, Texas, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Tektronix...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 11:00 am In Sao Paulo, a 'social Silicon Valley' (CNET)CNET - SAO PAULO, Brazil--Brazilian journalist Gilberto Dilmenstein walks down an alley in the Villa Madelena neighborhood showing how what was once a haven for drug dealers has been transformed into a canvas for artists.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 27 Aug 2008 | 11:00 am Microsoft dishes dirt on IE8 'pr0n mode' - Register
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:59 am Mega Star Developments - Tiger Woods Dubai Golf Course + $64 Billion Development (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Tiger Woods, featured earlier as a potential Billionaire Athlete, has launched plans for his first golf course. The $1.1 billion golf course will be part of a $64 billion...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:53 am Synaptics to Present at the Jefferies 2nd Annual Technology ConferenceSANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Synaptics (Nasdaq: SYNA), a leading developer of human interface solutions for mobile computing, communications,...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:30 am English is a user-modifiable technologyHere's a stirring Boston Globe op-ed from master lexicographer Erin McKean, presenting the humane case for a dynamic English language in which speakers are allowed to coin neologisms and new usages without...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:25 am English is a user-modifiable technologyHere's a stirring Boston Globe op-ed from master lexicographer Erin McKean, presenting the humane case for a dynamic English language in which speakers are allowed to coin neologisms and new usages without grammar tightasses insisting that language is not a user-modifiable technology .Whenever I see "not a real word" used to stigmatize what is (usually) a perfectly cromulent word, I wonder why the writer felt the need to hang a big sign reading "I am not confident about my writing" on it. What do they imagine the penalty is for using an "unreal" word? A ticket from the Dictionary Police? The revocation (as the joke goes) of your poetic license? A public shaming by William Safire? The irony is that most of these words, without the disclaimer, would pass unnoticed by the majority of readers. (In case you noticed cromulent, that was invented in the 1990s for "The Simpsons.") Writers who hedge their use of unfamiliar, infrequent, or informal words with "I know that's not a real word," hoping to distance themselves from criticism, run the risk of creating doubt where perhaps none would have naturally arisen.Chillax (via Oblomovka) Source: Boing Boing | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:25 am Dell unveils new PCs targeting emerging marketsDell Inc. unveiled four low-cost computer models Wednesday designed for China, India and other emerging economies in a new bid to tap the potential of high-growth markets outside the United States.Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:22 am Tech Weekly: Windows 7 and location based servicesPodders Aleks Krotoski, Bobbie Johnson and Jemima Kiss are joined by The Guardian's Jack Schofield and PC Pro's John Honeyball to unlock the secrets behind Microsoft's next generation operating system,...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:10 am RIAA nears win (by default) in Atlantic vs. Howell - Los Angeles Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:07 am Chinese people discovering fortune cookiesHere's a funny short video of Chinese people being exposed to fortune cookies (an American invention) for the first time: Americans find high emotional attachment to the slips inside their cookies, looking to them for winning lottery numbers and becoming upset when the fortunes inside are unfortunate. The Chinese, on the other hand, would often tell me after trying the curved vanilla-flavored wafers, “Americans are so strange, why are they putting pieces of paper in their cookies?”Introducing Fortune Cookies to China (Thanks, Tim!) Source: Boing Boing | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:03 am Chinese people discovering fortune cookiesHere's a funny short video of Chinese people being exposed to fortune cookies (an American invention) for the first time: Americans find high emotional attachment to the slips inside their cookies,...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:03 am BIA Launches Michigan Facility Expanding Capabilities and Footprint While Creating JobsNew location to provide clients with increased service offerings and capacity while fostering economic growth NEW YORK, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Business Intelligence...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:03 am Steroid abuser's horrific chest-acneThe photos of this steroid abuser's violent chest-acne (and the subsequent scarring) ought to be posted in the changing room at every gym in the world. Before you complain about how gross the photos on...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:00 am Steroid abuser's horrific chest-acneThe photos of this steroid abuser's violent chest-acne (and the subsequent scarring) ought to be posted in the changing room at every gym in the world. Before you complain about how gross the photos on the click-through below are, just be thankful they didn't photograph his shrivelled, damaged testicles, too.Graphic Evidence Against Steroid Abuse Source: Boing Boing | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:00 am Photo: Great Getaways on One Tank of GasTripAdvisor Tool Finds Travelers Fun Gas-Friendly Destinations Labor Day Travelers Have New Way to Find Holiday Weekend Road Trip Ideas NEWTON, Mass., Aug. 27...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:00 am Can JavaFX make a play for rich Internet apps? (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - With its new JavaFX technology for rich Internet applications, Sun Microsystems hopes to leverage the strength of the Java development base and Java's ubiquitous presence on devices to make a strong run in a race it has entered very late -- and where Adobe Systems and Microsoft have a huge head start.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:00 am Major Historical Disasters (Natural & Manmade) With 20th Century Timelines Available at InfopleaseLearn History of Worldwide Disasters, Tips for Survival From Trusted Reference Site BOSTON, Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ -- On Aug. 29, New Orleans will mark the third...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:00 am Presidio Technology Capital Recognized for High Achievement in Equipment LeasingYear-end ranking by Monitor, an industry publication, shows company's employee productivity as second highest in the industry NORCROSS, Ga., Aug. 27 /PRNewswire/ --...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 10:00 am Teddy Bear USB drive is a headless horror The Teddy Bear USB drive does a really nice job of switching from sickly sweet to just sickening -- just rip its head off and plug its neck into your computer and it looks like you've crushed a little anthropomorphic bear's noggin and forced it into a tiny, little USB port. Teddy Bear USB Drive (via Oh Gizmo) Source: Boing Boing | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:55 am Teddy Bear USB drive is a headless horrorThe Teddy Bear USB drive does a really nice job of switching from sickly sweet to just sickening -- just rip its head off and plug its neck into your computer and it looks like you've crushed a little...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:55 am Neuros OSD gets a free/open web-browser for your TVHackers continue to add improvements to the Neuros OSD open set-top box -- now you can download a Web browser for it. Neuros leads the pack in providing a wide-open platform for your TV set, encouraging users to invent their own software and features for the device.The Web on Your TV: Why it Makes Sense
See also: Neuros OSD: a set-top box that treats you like an owner Source: Boing Boing | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:48 am Neuros OSD gets a free/open web-browser for your TVHackers continue to add improvements to the Neuros OSD open set-top box -- now you can download a Web browser for it. Neuros leads the pack in providing a wide-open platform for your TV set, encouraging...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:48 am What To Do With All of My Gadget Chargers?legoman666 writes "On my desk I have chargers for the following gadgets: Nokia N810, LG Chocolate, Sony Ericcson Z310a, Canon Powershot SD1000, Cowan iAudio X5L, Lenovo Thinkpad, Logitech MX1000 and my Nintendo DS. Not a single pair of them share a similar connector. I have two power strips whose singular purpose is to energize these chargers. My question to Slashdot is: How do you organize all of your different chargers? Please, share your secrets."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:46 am TELUS Canada royally hoses its wireless broadband subscribersTELUS, one of the large Canadian phone companies, is playing really scummy tricks on its wireless broadband subscribers. A Slashdot post has the dirt:"Canadian telco TELUS sold a bunch of (expensive) Unlimited EV-DO aircard accounts last winter and are now summarily canceling them or forcing people to switch to much less valuable plans. TELUS is citing 'Violations,' but their Terms Of Service (see #5) are utterly vague and self-contradictory. The TELUS plans were marketed as being unlimited, without the soft/hard caps that the other providers had at the time. They were purchased by a lot of rural Canadians who had no other choice except dialup. Now TELUS is forcing everyone to switch from a $75 Unlimited plan to a $65 1GB plan, and canceling those who won't switch. Have a look at the thread at Howardforums, a discussion of the TELUS ToS (in red at the bottom), an EV-DO blogger who's been a victim, a post at Electronista, and of course Verizon getting fined for doing the same thing! Michael Geist has taken an interest as well."You know, for a developed nation, Canada has some amazingly crappy broadband providers with decidedly medieval ideas about the Internet. TELUS Forcing Customers Off Unlimited Plans Source: Boing Boing | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:30 am TELUS Canada royally hoses its wireless broadband subscribersTELUS, one of the large Canadian phone companies, is playing really scummy tricks on its wireless broadband subscribers. A Slashdot post has the dirt: "Canadian telco TELUS sold a bunch of (expensive)...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:30 am DHS contractor threatens woman with arrest for wearing "lesbian.com" tee on federal propertySecurity guards contracted by the DHS threw a woman out of a Social Security office in Van Nuys for wearing a t-shirt that read "lesbian.com." He claimed that "The Rules and Regulations Governing Conduct on Federal Property" gave him the right to throw her out for wearing a t-shirt with the word "lesbian" on it.T-shirt gets Van Nuys woman kicked out of federal building (via Neatorama)
(Image: Hans Gutknecht) Source: Boing Boing | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:28 am DHS contractor threatens woman with arrest for wearing "lesbian.com" tee on federal propertySecurity guards contracted by the DHS threw a woman out of a Social Security office in Van Nuys for wearing a t-shirt that read "lesbian.com." He claimed that "The Rules and Regulations Governing Conduct...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:28 am Panic updates Coda Web development application (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - Mac software developer Panic released an update for its Web development tool, Coda on Tuesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:15 am IBM's server market lead over HP grows (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 27 Aug 2008 | 9:03 am Weak economy to sap handset market growth: Gartner (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:28 am Clariant Appoints Andy Piers Head of Group Technology and Member of the Board of ManagementClariant (SWX:CLN), a world leader in specialty chemicals, has appointed Andy Piers as Head of Group Technology effective September 1, 2008. He will be a member of the Board of Management.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Police Identify Man Found Dead in CarBy Robert S. Hong PASADENA - Police have identified a man who died Monday in a car filled with household and garden chemicals as Taylor Walker, 23, of Pasadena. His death appears to be a suicide, but police are waiting for the coroner's report for confirmation, Pasadena police Lt.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Pesticide Exposures Tied to Diabetes RiskBy Anonymous Workers who use chemical pesticides on more than 100 days during their lifetimes are at greater risk for diabetes, according to a National Institutes of Health study published in the May issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Antagonistic Interaction Between Systemic Acquired Resistance and the Abscisic Acid-Mediated Abiotic Stress Response in Arabidopsis(W)By Yasuda, Michiko Ishikawa, Atsushi; Jikumaru, Yusuke; Seki, Motoaki; Umezawa, Taishi; Asami, Tadao; Maruyama-Nakashita, Akiko; Kudo, Toshiaki; Shinozaki, Kazuo; Yoshida, Shigeo; Nakashita, Hideo Systemic acquired resistance (SAR) is a potent innate immunity system in plants that is effective against a broad range of pathogens.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Uncertainties in the Current Knowledge of Some Atmospheric Trace Gases Associated With U.S. Agriculture: A ReviewBy Krupa, Sagar Booker, Fitzerald; Bowersox, Van; Lehmann, Chris Topher; Grantz, David ABSTRACT Approximately 80 different crop species are grown in the United States in widely differing geographic areas, climatic and edaphic conditions, and management practices.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am You're Everything I NeedBy Anonymous Conward Jones II and LaQuanda Gill's wedding bells rang at a sunset beach ceremony in Destin, FL. The bride is a graduate of Grand Valley State University and holds a master's degree in public administration. She is a labor market specialist at the Georgia Department of Labor.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am County Seeks to Dismiss Swift Creek Suit / Landowners Contend That a Moratorium on Growth Violates Property RightsChesterfield County has asked to dismiss a lawsuit filed by 11 landowners seeking to toss out revisions to the county's comprehensive plan in the Upper Swift Creek area.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Week's End- The Aug. 13 editorial, "Cool Water," described how a commonwealth accustomed to abundant water supplies must learn to cope with persistent shortages. The restrictions announced for Central Virginia this week do not surprise.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Mixed Emotions at Montana Legacy Project MeetingsBy Cramer, John LOLO - The Nature Conservancy, the Trust for Public Land 'and the Plum Creek Timber Co., received praise but also some pointed questions the past two nights during public meetings about the Montana Legacy Project in Lolo and Seeley Lake.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Compost Additive Gets Impressive ResultsBy Wood, Joanna Visual results that speak for themselves when a new product is trialled are rare - but Celcote, Certis' new compost additive, really delivers dividends to growers.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am TT&T Deploys Cisco WiMAX Network at Mae Fah Luang UniversityCisco has announced that Thai telephone network operator TT&T is deploying its WiMAX network at the Mae Fah Luang University. The rollout is expected to complete in September 2008.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am South Africa's Den of Postal ThievesBy Anonymous Crime Global mail order giant, amazon.com, will no longer ship goods to South Africa from the US because of what it called "rampant theft "by workers at the South African Post Office (SAPO).Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Endace Delivers Traffic Replay Capabilities for Most Precise Recreation of High Speed Network EventsEndace Limited (LSE/AIM: EDA), a world leader in network monitoring solutions, today announced enhancements to their leading NinjaProbe appliance that now allow the platform to capture, store and replay network traffic at speeds approaching 10Gb/s.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Dove to Run Drive Via MySpace SiteBy Anonymous Dove is rolling out a summer campaign for its Go Fresh range through social networking site MySpace. A customised community page, www.myspace.com/ dovegofresh, features video content presented by T4's Miquita Oliver.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Hanover Activist Partly Wins CaseA privacy advocate who challenged a new Virginia law barring individuals from posting Social Security numbers on the Internet has won a partial victory in federal court. U.S. District Judge Robert Payne ruled yesterday that the law is unconstitutional as applied to Hanover County resident B.J.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Hip Digital Media Launches Custom Digital Music Store for NectarHip Digital Media, the leading consumer experience network, and Nectar, the UK's leading loyalty card, today announced the launch of the Nectar Digital Music Store.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am WebSpy -- Social Networking and the WorkplaceGone are the days when people turned up for work purely to work. In today's ever increasing flood of online attractions and enticements, coupled with the social networking phenomenon reaching epidemic proportions, it is no wonder employers and IT personnel are grappling with what to do.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Today-Bored, Puckered, Lonesome-I Would Like to Order a Russian Internet BrideBy Baggott, Julianna I've read that to train my new dog- all guttural, lowdown, beaten- who pees as a contrite act of submission (poor sprayed carpets so stenched)- I should clip her leash to my belt loop.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am On a Mission to Make Web TV PayBy Donnelly, Alison Broadcasters face a struggle to rival the BBC's iPlayer, but also to profit from their VoD offerings. By Alison Donnelly The success of the BBC's much-lauded iPlayer service has catapulted the phrase 'video-on-demand' (VoD) into the vernacular.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am AT&T Launches U-Verse Services in JacksonvilleAT&T has announced the launch of its integrated suite of U-verse services, including TV, High Speed Internet and Voice in Jacksonville, Florida. According to AT&T, its U-verse services bring together its TV, broadband and wireless services all on one bill.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Mozilla's 'Ubiquity,' A Command Line For Web 2.0 - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Power-Packed Monster Mowers - 10 Souped-Up Riding Lawnmowers (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) As far as extreme riding lawnmower enthusiasts are concerned, a monster mower doesnt even have to be able to cut grass to inspire envy and lust, so long as it is the biggest, baddest...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 8:00 am Manifesta 7: Tantalum Memorial - ResidueRgine Debatty is just back from Just back from Manifesta, the seventh edition of a touring art biennale held in Trentino, Italy. She writes up an exhibit related to cell phones on her blog we-make-money-not-art...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 7:53 am First Oort Cloud Object May Have Been DiscoveredSpuriousLogic alerts us to the discovery of what may be the first object ever discovered from the inner edge of the Oort cloud. 2006 SQ372 was found on images from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Its discoverers theorize that this comet-like object and the planetoid Sedna, first spotted in 2003, might be Oort denizens. Sedna is in a stable orbit but 2006 SQ372 has been perturbed by the gravity of Uranus and/or Neptune, simulations suggest, so its orbital history is unknowable. 2006 SQ372 will travel out to 1,600 AU on this orbit, making it the most distant solar-system object yet found. The Oort cloud is believed to extend ten times that far, or about a quarter of a light-year. "Theoretical models of the formation of the Oort Cloud predict that it should also host a massive inner part, but comets from this region never make it near Earth. To see the long-period comets from the inner region of the Oort Cloud requires observing comets whose orbits always stay well outside Saturn's orbit — like 2006 SQ372."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 27 Aug 2008 | 7:26 am A cellphone bill roams to the stratosphereSanta Monica resident Aurelie Foucaut traveled last month to Paris with her two kids. During a brief stopover in Montreal, she made six calls on her BlackBerry to friends and family members, each lasting...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 7:00 am Number of Americans without health insurance fallsThe Census Bureau says the 2007 decrease is mostly due to expanded government coverage for children. Thanks mostly...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 7:00 am Watch ad for Apple iPhone that has been banned by the Advertising Standards AuthorityAdvert for the Apple iPhone that was banned by the Advertising Standards Authority for misleading viewers about internet accessSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 6:22 am Apple iPhone ad banned by Advertising Standards Authority over misleading internet claimsA TV ad for Apple's iPhone has been banned by the UK's advertising watchdog for misleading consumers after it over-hyped the internet capabilities of the smart phone.The TV ad showed the internet navigation...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 6:21 am "Shimmer Vision" Scopes See Better Using Heatholy_calamity writes "New Scientist reports on a neat DARPA idea that uses the shimmer of heat haze to allow binoculars to see further. It works by exploiting the fact that some distortions from heat haze actually magnify objects behind them. The binoculars collect a series of frames when that is occurring to boost magnification by 3 times. The design goal is to be able to present one image a second, and to enable facial recognition at 90% accuracy at a distance of 1 km. The scopes could be on the battlefield inside of 3 years."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 27 Aug 2008 | 5:06 am At Disney, Blu-ray Sales Team Is a Cast of Characters - New York Times
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 27 Aug 2008 | 4:33 am Nokia Introduces High-End Cellphones - Wall Street Journal
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 27 Aug 2008 | 4:20 am Aug. 27, 2003: The Lights Will Stay On in Fairbanks2003: Fairbanks is connected to the world's largest storage battery, built to provide Alaska's second-biggest city with an uninterrupted power supply. Fairbanks' remote location and sub-Arctic climate makes supplying reliable power to the city of 32,000 difficult. In deep winter, the temperature in Fairbanks is almost constantly subzero, dropping as low as minus 60 degrees Fahrenheit The situation is complicated by the fact that Alaska isn't connected to the power grid that keeps the lower 48 humming. As a result, Fairbanks used to experience a serious, "cascading" blackout every two or three years, along with a number of smaller failures every month. Since the mountain couldn't come to Muhammad, it was necessary to devise another source of reliable local power. The answer turned out to be a massive battery, the largest ever built, that now sits in a warehouse on the outskirts of Fairbanks. According to ABB Communications Services, the power-components specialist that built it, the battery can generate up to 40 megawatts of power -- enough to keep 12,000 people supplied with electricity -- for seven minutes. That's long enough to fire up the city's backup diesel generators and restore the power supply. The battery energy-storage system, or BESS, which cost $35 million to build, contains 13,760 nickel-cadmium cells weighing a total of 1,400 tons and covering more than 10,000 square feet. BESS is controlled by a Pentium PC-based platform programmed to provide all the essential services, including a complicated temperature-control system designed to withstand the rigors of the Alaskan winter. In its first two years of operation, BESS reportedly prevented at least 81 power failures, an average of more than three per month. In a hostile environment like the area around Fairbanks, that can mean the difference between life and death. Source: Various 
Source: Wired Top Stories | 27 Aug 2008 | 4:00 am Clive Thompson on Why Urban Farming Isn't Just for FoodiesThis year, Carol Nissen's crops include mesclun, cherry tomatoes, strawberries, and assorted herbs. When she sits down to dine, she's often eating food grown with her own two hands. But Nissen isn't tilling the soil on a farm. She's a Web designer who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey — one of the most cramped, concrete-laden landscapes in the nation. Nissen's vegetables thrive in pots and boxes crammed into her house and in wee plots in her yard. "I'm a micro-gardener," she says. "It's a pretty small townhouse. But it's amazing what you can do without much space." The term for this is urban farming — the art of growing vegetables in cities that otherwise resemble the Baltimore of The Wire.It has become increasingly trendy in recent years, led by health-conscious foodies coveting just-picked produce, as well as hipsters who dig the roll-your-own vibe. But I think it's time to kick it up a notch. Our world faces many food-resource problems, and a massive increase in edible gardening could help solve them. The next president should throw down the gauntlet and demand Americans sow victory gardens once again. Remember the victory garden? During World Wars I and II, the government urged city dwellers and suburbanites to plant food in their yards. It worked: The effort grew roughly 40 percent of the fresh veggies consumed in the US in 1942 and 1943. These days, we're fighting different battles. Developing nations are facing wrenching shortages of staples like rice. Here at home, we're struggling with a wave of obesity, fueled by too much crappy fast food and too little fresh produce, particularly in poorer areas. Our globalized food stream poses environmental hazards, too: The blueberries I had for lunch came from halfway around the world, in the process burning tons of CO2. Urban farming tackles all three issues. It could relieve strain on the worldwide food supply, potentially driving down prices. The influx of fresh vegetables would help combat obesity. And when you "shop" for dinner ingredients in and around your home, the carbon footprint nearly disappears. Screw the 100-mile diet — consuming only what's grown within your immediate foodshed — this is the 100-yard diet. Want to cool cities cheaply? Plant crops on rooftops. This isn't just liberal hippie fantasy, either. Defense hawks ought to love urban farming, because it would enormously increase our food independence — and achieve it without the market distortions of the benighted farm bill. You don't need tomatoes from Mexico if you can pluck them from containers on your office roof. Better yet, urban farming is an excuse to geek out with some awesome tech. Innovations from NASA and garage tinkerers have made food-growing radically more efficient and compact than the victory gardens of yore. "Aeroponics" planters grow vegetables using mist, slashing water requirements; hackers are building home-suitable "aquaponics" rigs that use fish to create a cradle-to-grave ecosystem, generating its own fertilizer (and delicious tilapia, too). Experts have found that cultivating a mere half-acre of urban land with such techniques can yield more than $50,000 worth of crops annually. But what I love most here is the potential for cultural transformation. Growing our own food again would reconnect us to this country's languishing frontier spirit. Once you realize how easy it is to make the concrete jungle bloom, it changes the way you see the world. Urban environments suddenly appear weirdly dead and wasteful. When I walk around New York City now, I see the usual empty lots and balconies and I think, Wait a minute. Why aren't we growing food here? And here? And here? In fact, that's precisely what occurred to me when I came home and looked at the window of my apartment. So now it holds three pots balanced on the ledge: One with herbs, one with lettuce, one with tomatoes. I should have my first crop in about a month. And I expect my victory salad to taste very sweet indeed. Email clive@clivethompson.net.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 27 Aug 2008 | 4:00 am Gear Gallery: Beautiful Bargain LCD, Touchscreen PC and Nikon's D3 : Think of this 26-inch TV from Samsung as any one of last year's larger models, shrunk down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's only 720p, but its bright, detailed picture is impressive and its vivid color is surprisingly accurate for a set this small. It scores surprisingly well in our video-processing tests, even besting many of this year's small models. Sure, this model is a bit challenged in the areas of de-interlacing 24-fps film-based HD sources and removing jaggies from diagonal lines, but then so are many of the 32-inch and smaller TVs we've tested this year. And who really worries about 24 FPS film sources on a 26-incher besides geeks like us? Unlike many small sets, though, the Samsung's noise reduction performs beautifully. We saw good results leaving it in "auto" for all but the crappiest video, and only had to really adjust for our truly hideous NR test clip. Hardcore testing aside, the Samsung's good NR combined with its great picture and color delivered where it matters the most: Our HD and SD test movies looked awesome, as did satellite HDTV and output from our 360. —Chuck Cage WIRED: Attractive, simple remote-control. Side ports (HDMI, S-Video and composite) make hooking up a 360 or camcorder a breeze. Optical digital audio out -- perfect for tying into that massive dorm-theater sound system. TIRED: Some video-processing issues. 1366 x 728 native resolution makes it a not-so-great computer monitor unless you're over 40 and want to read without your glasses. Price/maker: $550, Samsung
Read our full Samsung LN26A450C1 LCD TV review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : The HP TouchSmart IQ506 is an update to last year's all-in-one touchscreen, the TouchSmart IQ770. This year, HP went for a countertop-friendly design by packing all the components into the IQ506's brilliant 22-inch, touch-sensitive display. As a whole, this makes for a much more streamlined and clutter-free presentation compared to its predecessor. In terms of general ease and responsiveness, the IQ506's touchscreen does a marginally good job. Common maneuvers like double taps and click-and-drag highlighting can be pulled off with minimal hassle. Even problem areas like corners were accessible with relatively effortless finger pokes. Save for a pinch/zoom gesture, however, all the image-rotating fun we were expecting was largely nonexistent. In its defense, leaving notes, creating calendar reminders and a host of other "bulletin board" tasks were a cinch using the TouchSmart dashboard. But even though you can incorporate non-dashboard programs like Firefox into the interface, opening these applications kicks you back out to the Vista desktop. On one hand, the system is a great value when one compares the sticker price to the components, but it's disconcerting that a $1,500 computer lacks the flair and usability of a relatively inexpensive device like the iPhone. We've got our fingers crossed for next year's model. WIRED: Elegant space-saving design. Speaker bar produces booming lows and clear highs. Bright 22-inch screen hides smudges and fingerprints. Integrated TV tuner adds living room chops. Blazing connectivity via gigabit Ethernet and integrated 802.11b/g/n. 500-GB hard drive offers plenty of room for media storage. Whisper-quiet operation. TIRED: Not the smoothest touch-based interface. Handoffs between TouchSmart/Vista programs are slow and awkward. Very limited upgrade options. Midrange GPU puts a damper on hardcore gaming. Retractable bezel feels cheap and rickety. Sluggish processor given its all-in-one class. What? No Blu-ray? Price/maker: $1,500 (as tested), hp.com
Read our full HP TouchSmart IQ506 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : Dubbed the "Boulder," this angular, candy-colored handset is the offspring of the Gadget Lab's crumpled Type-V, Type-S and Type-SL review units. The Boulder isn't another rugged rehash, though. In fact, Casio finally threw a curve by including some fairly useful multimedia features. Welcome additions like music playback, a more powerful (but still lacking) camera, and zippy EV-DO connectivity fatten up this phone's already rock-solid resume. But let's face it -- Casio is extremely late to the party with these commonplace features. Previous pratfalls like the laughably low-res external LCD, and an annoying light show for incoming calls have returned too. Foibles aside, a lot of the "new" features were actually well integrated into this otherwise hard-knock handset. Tasks like downloading and playing music, mobile messaging and accessing webmail were brisk and painless due to a sensible layout and speedy EV-DO network. Little usability improvements (and smart additions like a waterproof cover for the microSD port) reinforced Casio's obvious commitment to achieving a rugged/user-friendly balance. Casio definitely gets kudos for bringing a tank like the G'zOne into the multimedia era. However, the Boulder is more a patchwork of desirable features, rather than a cohesive marriage of entertainment and durability. WIRED: Armored cross section where mud meets multimedia. External LCD doubles as wanderlust-friendly e-compass. Awesome camera flash/flashlight combo. Expanded memory via microSD card slot. Solid call quality -- even after 12 rounds of tough love. Included cradle doubles as a travel charger. Also comes in "less-flamboyant" black. TIRED: Terrible speakerphone quality for both voice and music. Far too expensive. Annoying multicolored lights show signals incoming calls. No file sharing via Bluetooth. Lackluster 1.3-MP camera sucks for both stills and video. Sweet angles still can't hide a brick-ish profile. Price/maker: $130 (after $50 rebate), Verizon
Read our full Casio G'zOne Boulder review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : Out of the box and straight up to the eye you'll immediately enjoy the D3's spacious and bright viewfinder. The noticeably improved 51-point auto focus system is whip-fast and works in concert with an outstanding 1005-pixel metering sensor that gets it right in the most challenging lighting. Images are beautifully consistent with a wide dynamic range and improved noise-reduction settings that give the pictures a more natural look. To achieve that end, Nikon pulled back on the sharpening levels, leaving the choice of added "crunchiness" to a photographer's post-production predilections. Nikon's new three-inch high-res LCD is a revelation. If you do take the plunge, be ready to spend a good chunk of time learning the feature set to exploit the D3's capabilities. From resolution to speed, color control, bit-depth and so much more, the D3 is incredibly customizable. Dial it in for lightning-quick 11-fps sports action, superlow-light shooting (ISO up to 25600), handheld or tripod-mounted live view -- you name it, whatever and however you want to shoot, the D3 does it exceptionally well. WIRED: High ISO shooting is fantastic with relatively low noise at settings up to ISO 3200 and beyond. Live view function the best of the top-end DSLRs. Dual CF card capability. TIRED: So many functions it could take a lifetime to learn them all. No in-camera dust-reduction system. Price/maker: $5,000 (body only), Nikon
Read our full Nikon D3 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : The U110 ultralight we received looks striking, with a scarlet paisley-etched aluminum lid paired with a shiny jet-black keyboard area. As soon as you open it up and power it on, you come face to face with one of the U110's most interesting yet unsettling features: VeriFace recognition. After booting up, the webcam embedded in the bezel starts scanning the room. When it finds you, it superimposes disturbing cross hairs on your eyes in an attempt to recognize you and unlock the PC. If you haven't registered your peepers, the system will hang, so you have to shut it down, turn the notebook away and open it up again to get it to boot. The 11.1-inch display is bright and sharp, though it can look a bit iridescent at close range. The glossy black keys are big and square but the thin membrane beneath the keys is flimsy and deforms as you type. There is a decent set of ports, but the designers couldn't find room for an optical drive. Seriously, we're pretty disappointed. The included external DVD drive looks cool, but you know what would be even cooler? Not needing an external drive at all. For work purposes, the Lenovo is a capable little machine. The U110 excelled in our PCMark tests, far outdistancing most other ultralights. Overall this is a good PC; it just has a few annoyances. WIRED: Charming good looks will attract the Lenovo faithful who are sick of looking funerary. Excellent business performance will silence office critics of your "red PC (Harumph!)." Delightfully light and slim. TIRED: The keyboard, though pretty, is pretty flimsy. Terminator-style face recognition will give you the heebie-jeebies and make you torch all your Schwarzenegger flicks (Especially Batman and Robin). External DVD means one more gadget to tote. Price/maker: $1,800 (as tested), Lenovo
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Lenovo IdeaPad U110 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : Dishing out a hefty helping of HD, the SR12 is a lot of camera, both in your hand and under the hood with its 120-GB hard drive. The upgraded CMOS sensor and Bionz image processor have significantly improved image quality and stomped out even more noise. Sony’s face-detection system, which works snappily for video and the 10.2-megapixel stills, is very effective both up close and at long range. OK, so it makes great video, but what about the controls? For those who fly on manual, the Cam Control Dial is like piloting an F22. Neatly nestled next to the lens, the silver nubbin is a twisty-twirly festival of videographic functionality, providing quick access to manual adjustments of exposure, focus, white balance and aperture. There’s also an “easy” button on board. A quick tap on the little blue button and all you’ve got to do is point the camera in the right direction to get the good stuff. In spite of all this Sony video goodness, the SR12 has one glaring flaw — terribly difficult Mac integration. To get it working you’ve got to have iMovie '08. Previous versions of iMovie don’t have the capability to natively read the AVCHD codec meaning that you had to convert the video to other formats in order to do any post-production. WIRED: Excellent AVCHD video quality got better this time around. Extra-wide 3.2-inch touchscreen LCD is a big bonus. Outstanding sound quality. TIRED: Massive internal hard drive makes it somewhat chunky and a bit of a load to carry. The “easy” button should be bigger and easier to find. And it should be red. Yeah red and all glowy. $1,400, Sony
(Photo by Jackson Lynch for Wired.com) Read our full Sony HDR-SR12 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : With Kensington's Wireless USB Docking Station, the moment you open your Wireless USB (WUSB)-enabled notebook, all your desktop devices are ready to go. We were amazed at how seamless the process is: The station recognized our 20-inch monitor, wireless USB mouse, keyboard and printer. It was as if they were always connected to the notebook. Of course, there are a few gotchas. WUSB is a new standard and some notebooks can't hook up with this docking station. Dell and Lenovo offer a few models, and other companies should be out the gate by this fall. With its plain, geeky looks, the 11.4-ounce antenna-topped station could get lost in a field of wireless routers. But that's not quite enough to put our Battlestar boxers in a knot: The Kensington Wireless Docking Station is a snap to set up and makes mobile computing, well, mobile and hassle-free. You know, the way it's supposed to be. —Michael S. Lasky WIRED: Drop-dead, simple setup and instant wireless connection of all desktop peripherals makes moving a notebook to and from the desk a hassle-free, nothing-to-plug-in experience. Small footprint means no great loss of desktop real estate. TIRED: Still few WUSB-enabled notebooks on the market. Audio handling could be smoother; default requires USB-powered speakers. First generation device is still pricey. $230, Kensington
Read our full Kensington Wireless USB Docking Station review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : This standard-definition lightweight shoots better video and has a much smarter feature set than most of its competitors. In fact, JVC knows that YouTubers can't bear missing the latest police beating or Matthew McConaughey shirtless in the grocery store, so the MS100 is lightning-quick on start up. The 35x optical zoom allows you to capture the crushing blows and bothersome blemishes while keeping a safe distance. Plus, the nifty laser-touch LCD makes you feel like a real cinematographer with speedy access to manual features. While it's nicely appointed, you've got to bridle at a couple things. First, there's no optical image stabilization. But shaky image stabilization aside, the very nature of this camcorder calls into question its usefulness. While neither big nor expensive, there are other, better, ultrasimple run-and-gun camcorders out there. Most are smaller and cheaper, too. With this form factor at this price, the MS100 is kind of stuck in the middle between the svelte flash-based AVCHD camcorders and the shirt-pocket shooters from Flip, Kodak and Creative. WIRED: 35x optical zoom brings the action right to your doorstep. Superb video quality. Formula 1 start-up speed. Easy to use laser-touch LCD. TIRED: No optical image stabilization. Lack of Mac compatibility is inexcusable and utterly perplexing. Three hundred and fifty bones for a camera that's made to record for YouTube? The Flip Mino does the same thing for about half the cost. $350, JVC
(Photo: Jackson Lynch/Wired.com) Read our full JVC Everio GZ-MS100 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : Through some loophole, wormhole or deal with the devil, Gateway has produced a massive desktop replacement that's fast, good and cheap. How fast, you ask? Fast enough to go toe-to-toe with -- and school -- a $4,800 Alienware Area 51 m15x: In our Quake 4 test, the Gateway posted a score of 167.8 fps to the m15x's 167.2. This is partially because the Gateway's 512-MB Nvidia Geforce 9800M is running the show. The FX also has Olympic endurance for larger-class notebooks, going 2 hours, 23 minutes to play a DVD. And that brings us to the cheap part. The Gateway is just $1,400 -- more than three times less than the Alienware and hundreds (and more hundreds) less than most other desktop replacement machines. Sure, it lacks the latest processor (it's got a 2.27-GHz Core Duo), but it has a whopping 4 GB of RAM to help it attack processing tasks and a spacious 200 GB of drive space for your stuff. The big bummer here is the missing Blu-ray drive, which is what is likely keeping this thing so affordable. WIRED: Some of the best gaming performance ever recorded on a PC. Long battery life for a desktop replacement. Comfy and solid keyboard withstands heavy hands. Multimedia controls and slide volume look cool without glowing too brightly. TIRED: No Blu-ray is a letdown for HD-heads, and you can't configure your PC to include the drive. The battery sticks out a bit in the back, and the power brick is monstrous. Power lights on the front, unlike the multimedia controls, are too bright. Price/maker: $1,400 (as tested), Gateway
Read our full Gateway P-7811FX Notebook review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : Alienware prides itself on its tower rigs and desktop replacements, but several of its earlier forays in to the mid-size laptops were disastrous; the branding was intact but the performance wasn't. Not so with the m15x. This 15.4-incher is plenty portable, yet it has all the gaming trappings and the performance to back it up. From the unboxing onward, you can tell that you are paying for the experience as well as the hardware. A baseball cap with an alien head on it, an extra battery, VGA-to-DVI adapter, FireWire adapter and entertainment remote show that Alienware will risk no dissatisfied customers due to lackluster goodies. With specs that include a 2.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme processor, 3 GB of RAM, and a 512-MB nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX, the m15x performs impressively, but not out of this world. It all comes down to the loot; this is a luxury item and there are far more affordable PCs with comparable performance. WIRED: Tip-top business and gaming performance. Lots of included extras for gaming elitists. The solid and handsome design will please gamers, and cool lighting effects will titillate geeks. TIRED: Exorbitant price that only a space tourist could pay without wincing. For all the expense, it's not the very best gaming PC. Dual batteries take a long time to charge up. The Blu-ray drive must be removed to accommodate the secondary battery. Price/maker: $4,880 (as tested), Alienware
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Alienware Area-51 m15x review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : The Archos 605 WiFi is a damn fine portable media player. Now it’s slightly mo' better due to this new GPS accessory, which for $130 adds full-bore street navigation that's on par with a Garmin or TomTom system. Well, a low-end Garmin or TomTom from a few years ago, anyway: This lackluster accessory does not have many of the bells and whistles of modern nav systems, and the one it does have -- real-time traffic updates -- works only in Europe. On the plus side, the software locks in satellite signals faster than NORAD. However, it navigates like a base commander heading home from the officer's club. On several occasions the GPS tried to route us totally out of the way instead of continuing on the road right in front of us. To make matters worse, the software doesn't announce street names, only directions. The GPS Car Holder would look pretty good if this were, say, 2003. And it does get you where you're going, if not always by the fastest or most logical route. At $130, it's a decent deal for current owners, but definitely behind the GPS times. WIRED: Cheaper than a standalone GPS, at least if you already own an Archos 605. High-resolution screen makes maps look mighty purty. Lightning-fast satellite lock. TIRED: The 605 can’t navigate without the car holder, so you can’t go on walkabout. Doesn’t say street names. Requires you to move to Europe if you want traffic features. You have to manually restart the GPS app every time you power on the 605. Price/maker: $130, Archos
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Archos 605 WiFi GPS Car Holder review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : As one of six new Fujitsu offerings equipped with Intel's Centrino 2, the Lifebook A6120 more than makes up for its dull exterior with features that will have prettier laptops quaking in their neoprene sleeves. Opposite its no frills glossy shell resides a gorgeous 15.4-inch LCD capable of brightening even the darkest depths of Mordor. Battery life and performance are equally impressive. The new 2.26-GHz CPU more than did the job when it came to photo editing, gaming and pretty much every other benchmark we threw at it. What's more, we squeezed a respectable four and a half hours of battery life under normal usage out of A6120. In fact, after playing with the Lifebook for a week, we were hard pressed to find anything significant to complain about. Would Fujitsu be well served by spending a little more time and effort on design and shrinking down that plump chassis? Sure. But this reviewer is more than happy to overlook a 1.7-inch waistline as long as it hides enough goodies. WIRED: Great bang/buck ratio. The A6120 starts at only $1,150 and jumps but $200 for a Radeon HD 3470 card and Blu-ray drive. Sharp, beautiful screen is one of the brightest we've seen on a laptop. Screw the chicklet-style keys found on other notebooks: Fujitsu's old school keyboard provides near perfect "clickiness" (to borrow a term from designer Amar Sagoo). TIRED: Small trackpad makes for a less than thrilling multitouch experience. Runs consistently hot -- don't rest it on your lap for long or risk a scorched crotch. While certainly not ugly, design is blander than a plate of lima beans. Price/maker: $1,350 (as tested), Fujitsu
Read our full Fujitsu Lifebook A6120 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : GeTac clearly had utilitarian users in mind with the E-100, which makes for a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to function. On the bright side, this surprisingly light ultramobile PC is military certified to withstand splashes of water, dust, humidity, shock and even freezing temperatures. Even common vulnerabilities like exposed ethernet and USB ports have been sidestepped with a bevy of watertight rubber stoppers. In fact, my review unit was able to smoothly stream South Park episodes while taking repeated tumbles down a flight of stairs. But it was when I looked under the hood that I found kinks in the armor. Mission-critical applications like Office ran at a reasonable clip in a number of bumpy environments, but for the E-100's price I was expecting a little more "oomph." The 100-GB shock-resistant ATA hard drive and 1 GB of RAM tilt the balance a little bit, but honestly, even the unassuming Eee PC comes stock with Intel's newer Atom chips. Mediocre specs aside, this rough and tumble UMPC performs solidly in a number of harsh environments and boasts a host of connectivity options. WIRED: Rock-solid construction, ergonomics and field performance. Responsive 8.4-inch touchscreen looks phenomenal in direct sunlight. Web ready with 802.11b/g, gigabit ethernet and SIM card slot. Waterproof combination SmartCard/PCMCIA slot. Decent battery life at 3.5 hours (WiFi on). 100-GB hard drive has its own heater for cycling up in freezing conditions. TIRED: Too little processing given the amount of buck. Near three grand price tag? Seriously? No option for a solid state drive?! Recessed USB and headphone jacks are a hassle to plug into. Tinny speaker is more of an afterthought. Lose the stylus and you're S.O.L. Looks that only a FedEx driver could love. Price/maker: $2,880 as tested, GeTac
Read our full GeTac E-100 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : Most of the new mini-laptops look like toys, educational tools or lab experiments in miniaturization, but the MSI Wind is an actual PC. Packing the latest 1.6-GHz Atom processor and a roomy 80-GB drive, the Wind boasts some legit PC cred. Yes, your iPod probably has more drive space, but 80 gigs was plenty not so long ago, and it's not like you're going to be producing HD video on this thing; it's more of an internet lapdog than a laptop. The 10-inch widescreen can display most fixed-width webpages comfortably, and its keyboard is large enough to house decent-size keys so you can type easily without resorting to Homer's dialing wand. While even some larger laptops are short on ports, the Wind finds room for three USBs, an SD slot and a display connector (take note, MacBook Air!). Of course, it's not perfect. We would have loved to see a DVD burner included, and with all its ports, a mini FireWire would be welcome. Also, don't expect high-end performance from the unit or hearty battery life from its slim, three-cell battery. But if you want a cheap and tiny companion for uploading pictures during a Malaysian jungle trek, or just a little buddy to hang out with you on the couch for IMDB searches, it's pretty hard to be against the Wind. WIRED: Grown-up looks (as opposed to "I want to sit at the big kids' table" found in other netbooks). Full keyboard and the largest screen among mini-notes. Plenty of ports to plug away at. 2.3-pound weight and rounded edges make it simple to pack and lug. TIRED: Lack of a DVD is understandable, but it still makes us cry a little. Hard drive sometimes makes mysterious swallowing sounds. Two-hour battery life is OK, but three would be better. $500, MSI Mobile
Photo: Jon Snyder/ Wired.com Read our full MSI Wind U100 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : Behold, the new Eee Box! Like the rest of the Eee bloodline, these varicolored desktop boxes are small, cheap and adorable (think AppleTV or Mac Mini). Intel's 1.6-GHz Atom processor, up to 2 GBs of memory, four USB ports, an SD card slot, 802.11n and Bluetooth are plenty for the Eee Box to hit that elusive "good enough" mark with aplomb. Once again, you'll get your choice of running either Linux or Windows XP. Then there's the size. While it does have a slightly larger overall footprint, it's much trimmer than the Mac Mini. Not only will this elegant 8.5 x 7 x 1-inch box fit anywhere, but you also have the choice of mounting it directly to the back of any extra monitor you happen to have lying around. To be clear, the Eee Box is not for sweaty frag fests or heavy-duty HD video decoding. But if you have a hankering for a killer kitchen PC or just an über-cheap second or third home PC that runs Linux or XP, it simply can't be beat. WIRED: Small, lightweight and cuter than a bowlful of kittens. More than enough processing power for everyday computing. Cheaper than an ounce of Da Kine bud. The option of running Splashtop for preboot access to Skype, web browsing and IM clients. TIRED: Where's the optical drive? No HDMI output, which actually doesn't matter much because there's also no hardware to decode acceleration. By itself, the Atom processor can barely handle 720p H.264 streams, dashing our hopes of this being the ultimate home-streaming box. $300 as tested, Asus
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Asus Eee Box review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : Iomega's own $190 solution for a filled DVR is a 500-GB drive that plays nice with two DVRs in particular: Scientific Atlanta's 80-GB standard definition 8300 and the more recent 160-GB 8300-HD model. We tested the drive out on the latter model and found it more or less did what it promised. It even worked with a neighbor's Series 3 TiVo, which (to its credit) is known for being something of an eSATA slut. Setup in both instances was quick and painless, and involved simply turning off the DVR, plugging in the Iomega drive, and then turning everything back on again. Voila, no more having to choose between Emmanuelle: The Art of Love and the latest episode of Mad Men. WIRED: Reasonably priced. Your grandmother could probably set it up. Instantly adds an additional 300 hours of SD TV, or 60 hours of HD content. TIRED: Only one way to connect the drive to a DVR (that would be eSATA). Limited compatibility, although Iomega claims the drive will work with future SA eSATA-enabled DVRs. No way of controlling what gets stored on the expander drive and what gets stored on the DVR. Transporting DVR'd content to your computer is verboten, and plugging the drive into a computer will automatically reformat it. $190, Iomega
Read our full Iomega DVR Expander Drive review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  :
The Samsung U900, aka Soul, aka Magical Touch, doesn't really have any supernatural abilities. What it does have is a tiny, touch-sensitive OLED nav-pad that is one of the coolest, most efficient touch interfaces we've seen on a handset. The small display (situated below the main 2.2-inch QVGA screen) features icons that morph based on whatever application is currently on the screen. Switch to camera mode and controls for snapping pictures. Toggle to the music player and buttons for fast-forward, rewind, pause and play pop up. The big selling point is the phone's pocketability. The picture quality and dynamic range could be better (LED flash, we're talking about you), but at 0.5-inches thick and 7 ounces, this slider is more svelte than just about every 5-MP cam we've tested. Ultimately, our biggest complaint is that you cannot use the camera without sliding open the phone first. This design protects the lens from dust bunnies and pocket grime, yes, but shooting with a fully open device was a tad awkward at times. WIRED: External microSD slot makes it a cinch to swap cards on the fly. Bluetooth (+A2DP). Competent image-editing suite. Video editor allows you to layer additional audio tracks. Decent facial detection. Haptic feedback can be tweaked to three different levels of intensity or switched-off entirely. TIRED: Bundled proprietary ear buds sound duller than Ben Stein. No Xenon flash. No GPS. No WiFi. Lower-res video clips. Proprietary headphone jack positioned on the side = hard to pocket when phones are plugged in. Noticeable screen glare when outdoors. $400, Samsung
Photo: Issac Brekken/Wired.com Read our full Samsung SGH-U900 Soul "Magical Touch" review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : The biggest selling point of the new Sidekick is supposed to be the customizable "skins" you can order to replace the solid-color ones (we opted for jet black). But apart from flashy aesthetics, the pocket-friendly 2008 is 0.4-inches shorter and 0.9-ounces lighter than the pricier LX. It also packs features that were sorely missed with the tragically minimalist iD. Most notably, a 2.0-megapixel camera that can also capture video clips (albeit crappy ones). Though the 2.6-inch WQVGA swivel screen’s received a slight -- and necessary -- boost in pixels (400 x 240), the resolution’s still not fantastic. And neither is Bluetooth. We found data transfers not only paused the media player (annoying), but afterward, we had to go back and manually un-pause whatever track was playing (doubly annoying). For the price, though the 2008 is a solid option compared to the LX -- but only if you live and die by instant messaging and you don't mind being seen with Paris Hilton's device of choice in public. WIRED: Spacious, comfy QWERTY. 3.5-mm headphone jack. Surprisingly loud, radically clear music player. Wide screen excellent for web browsing. Solid battery life. Quick video recording/sharing. Comes with two skins (we got black and iridescent lime). Bluetooth with A2DP (great to have, even if it does disrupt tunes). TIRED: Screen retains more fingerprints than the Feds. No flash. No WiFi. Mike captures poor sound when recording video. Only 20-second video clips. Only 512-MB microSD card included. Apps are mostly in the $2.99+ range (except for the janky free Calculator). No 3-G. Price/maker: $150 (with 2-year contract), T-Mobile
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Sidekick review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : Cyclists know it's plum foolish to roll around on two wheels sans helmet, but it can be just as dangerous to bike about at night without a light. A good headlight affixed to your handlebars is just the thing to help cut through the murk and get you to your destination safely. Here we pit two of the top dogs on the market against each other and see which comes out on top. —Eric Smillie This one-watt LED cannon goes the extra mile, and we don't just mean it shoots light a ridiculous distance. Due in no small part to its particularly aggressive blinking mode, accurately called superflash, it didn’t just help us catch drivers' attentions; it had them anxiously craning their necks to check whether we were trying to pull them over. Drawing on only two AA batteries, this baby cuts down on weight but its CREE XR-E diode, coupled with a specially engineered Fraen lens, still pumps out the brightest light of all the lamps we tested -- enough to bounce off signs, license plates, and other reflective materials up to four blocks away, giving us plenty of time to make an impression. All we have to worry about now is whether some cop-hating, GTA IV-overdosing motorist trying to run us down. WIRED: Recessed switch only works if pressed firmly, which means it won’t turn on in your bag while you jostle your way to the bar, leaving you in the dark at closing time. Planet Bike spends 25 percent of its profits on bike advocacy. TIRED: The brightness and reduced weight come at a price: 20 hours of battery life in blinking mode, and only seven on high. Though it installs without the use of a tool, the handlebar bracket is tricky to tighten and slips easily. $50, Planet Bike
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : While not the sharpest bulb on our handlebars, the WhiteLite HP AA is in it for the long haul. Don’t get us wrong -- just like other 1-watt LED headlamps, this portable, all-in one lamp is more than a glorified blinky. When engineering this light, Topeak got all snippy, cutting the cords to one of its external power-pack lights and reengineered it to accept three AA batteries. Its widely diffused beam covers plenty of surface area and earned our trust by helping us dodge nasty potholes and tree roots on unlit paths. But where this guy really shines is in perseverance, by lasting 30 hours on high and a whopping 120 on flash. WIRED: The mounting bracket screws tight with a finger knob and adjusts five degrees left and right to get a straight aim even on angled handlebars, although it does require an Allen key to tighten. Little red LED signals when batteries are low. TIRED: Blinks come slowly and lack urgency in flashing mode. Pushing the rear on/off push button can rotate the mount and mess up the light angle. Sound like a small problem? It won't be when you look up just in time to face plant into the bumper of a lifted pickup. $60, Topeak
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.  : The E71 looks more like a Blackberry Killer, but don’t be fooled: This great white hope gives the iPhone a run for its money in a lot of different areas (yes, really). Despite its obvious lack of an oversize touchscreen interface, Nokia wins points for a remarkably trim profile (10mm vs. 12.3mm), decent 3.2-megapixel camera (instead of 2.0), and the fact it's not tied to any carrier (yet). Setting up Nokia's Mail for Exchange program required no IT help or time. QuickOffice let us create, edit and send Word/Excel/PowerPoint files on the fly while we browsed PDFs with Adobe Acrobat Reader. The E71 is stocked with enough apps and goodies to keep even the most overworked road warrior on the ball, but it didn't feel too "business" due to two separate customizable home screens. One is designed to house all of your work apps while the other is geared more toward entertainment with programs for audio, video and gaming. The phone's 2.36-inch, 320 x 240 QVGA display is only slightly smaller than the iPod classic's, and though the resolution can't top the iPhone's, with 15 fps, the E71 is still solid for YouTube clips. Oh, and did we mention the E71's got battery life for days? Yes, literally, three of them. WIRED: Up to 8 GB in an easy-to-access, external microSD slot. Quick and seamless OS. GPS, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth (you name it, it's basically got it). Vivid screen (even in direct sunlight). Textured stainless steel backing prevents slippage. Relatively lightweight (127 grams = six grams lighter than iPhone). Hit any letter on the QWERTY pad and predictive text calls up that section of your address book. TIRED: No standard 3.5-mm headphone jack. 3.2-megapixel camera's optics could be better. LED flash could be way better. N-Gage gaming platform not available. Screen's wide, but not wide enough to do a feature-length film justice. For $500, you could get two 8-GB, 3-G JesusPhones (with $100 left over to put toward AT&T's data plan). $500 (unlocked), Nokia
Photo: Max Buck/Wired.com Read our full Nokia E71 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 27 Aug 2008 | 4:00 am Gear Gallery: Beautiful Bargain LCD, Touchscreen PC and Nikon's D3: Think of this 26-inch TV from Samsung as any one of last year's larger models, shrunk down. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's only 720p, but its bright, detailed picture is impressive and its vivid color is surprisingly accurate for a set this small. It scores surprisingly well in our video-processing tests, even besting many of this year's small models. Sure, this model is a bit challenged in the areas of de-interlacing 24-fps film-based HD sources and removing jaggies from diagonal lines, but then so are many of the 32-inch and smaller TVs we've tested this year. And who really worries about 24 FPS film sources on a 26-incher besides geeks like us? Unlike many small sets, though, the Samsung's noise reduction performs beautifully. We saw good results leaving it in "auto" for all but the crappiest video, and only had to really adjust for our truly hideous NR test clip. Hardcore testing aside, the Samsung's good NR combined with its great picture and color delivered where it matters the most: Our HD and SD test movies looked awesome, as did satellite HDTV and output from our 360. —Chuck Cage WIRED: Attractive, simple remote-control. Side ports (HDMI, S-Video and composite) make hooking up a 360 or camcorder a breeze. Optical digital audio out -- perfect for tying into that massive dorm-theater sound system. TIRED: Some video-processing issues. 1366 x 728 native resolution makes it a not-so-great computer monitor unless you're over 40 and want to read without your glasses. Price/maker: $550, Samsung
Read our full Samsung LN26A450C1 LCD TV review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : The HP TouchSmart IQ506 is an update to last year's all-in-one touchscreen, the TouchSmart IQ770. This year, HP went for a countertop-friendly design by packing all the components into the IQ506's brilliant 22-inch, touch-sensitive display. As a whole, this makes for a much more streamlined and clutter-free presentation compared to its predecessor. In terms of general ease and responsiveness, the IQ506's touchscreen does a marginally good job. Common maneuvers like double taps and click-and-drag highlighting can be pulled off with minimal hassle. Even problem areas like corners were accessible with relatively effortless finger pokes. Save for a pinch/zoom gesture, however, all the image-rotating fun we were expecting was largely nonexistent. In its defense, leaving notes, creating calendar reminders and a host of other "bulletin board" tasks were a cinch using the TouchSmart dashboard. But even though you can incorporate non-dashboard programs like Firefox into the interface, opening these applications kicks you back out to the Vista desktop. On one hand, the system is a great value when one compares the sticker price to the components, but it's disconcerting that a $1,500 computer lacks the flair and usability of a relatively inexpensive device like the iPhone. We've got our fingers crossed for next year's model. WIRED: Elegant space-saving design. Speaker bar produces booming lows and clear highs. Bright 22-inch screen hides smudges and fingerprints. Integrated TV tuner adds living room chops. Blazing connectivity via gigabit Ethernet and integrated 802.11b/g/n. 500-GB hard drive offers plenty of room for media storage. Whisper-quiet operation. TIRED: Not the smoothest touch-based interface. Handoffs between TouchSmart/Vista programs are slow and awkward. Very limited upgrade options. Midrange GPU puts a damper on hardcore gaming. Retractable bezel feels cheap and rickety. Sluggish processor given its all-in-one class. What? No Blu-ray? Price/maker: $1,500 (as tested), hp.com
Read our full HP TouchSmart IQ506 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : Dubbed the "Boulder," this angular, candy-colored handset is the offspring of the Gadget Lab's crumpled Type-V, Type-S and Type-SL review units. The Boulder isn't another rugged rehash, though. In fact, Casio finally threw a curve by including some fairly useful multimedia features. Welcome additions like music playback, a more powerful (but still lacking) camera, and zippy EV-DO connectivity fatten up this phone's already rock-solid resume. But let's face it -- Casio is extremely late to the party with these commonplace features. Previous pratfalls like the laughably low-res external LCD, and an annoying light show for incoming calls have returned too. Foibles aside, a lot of the "new" features were actually well integrated into this otherwise hard-knock handset. Tasks like downloading and playing music, mobile messaging and accessing webmail were brisk and painless due to a sensible layout and speedy EV-DO network. Little usability improvements (and smart additions like a waterproof cover for the microSD port) reinforced Casio's obvious commitment to achieving a rugged/user-friendly balance. Casio definitely gets kudos for bringing a tank like the G'zOne into the multimedia era. However, the Boulder is more a patchwork of desirable features, rather than a cohesive marriage of entertainment and durability. WIRED: Armored cross section where mud meets multimedia. External LCD doubles as wanderlust-friendly e-compass. Awesome camera flash/flashlight combo. Expanded memory via microSD card slot. Solid call quality -- even after 12 rounds of tough love. Included cradle doubles as a travel charger. Also comes in "less-flamboyant" black. TIRED: Terrible speakerphone quality for both voice and music. Far too expensive. Annoying multicolored lights show signals incoming calls. No file sharing via Bluetooth. Lackluster 1.3-MP camera sucks for both stills and video. Sweet angles still can't hide a brick-ish profile. Price/maker: $130 (after $50 rebate), Verizon
Read our full Casio G'zOne Boulder review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : Out of the box and straight up to the eye you'll immediately enjoy the D3's spacious and bright viewfinder. The noticeably improved 51-point auto focus system is whip-fast and works in concert with an outstanding 1005-pixel metering sensor that gets it right in the most challenging lighting. Images are beautifully consistent with a wide dynamic range and improved noise-reduction settings that give the pictures a more natural look. To achieve that end, Nikon pulled back on the sharpening levels, leaving the choice of added "crunchiness" to a photographer's post-production predilections. Nikon's new three-inch high-res LCD is a revelation. If you do take the plunge, be ready to spend a good chunk of time learning the feature set to exploit the D3's capabilities. From resolution to speed, color control, bit-depth and so much more, the D3 is incredibly customizable. Dial it in for lightning-quick 11-fps sports action, superlow-light shooting (ISO up to 25600), handheld or tripod-mounted live view -- you name it, whatever and however you want to shoot, the D3 does it exceptionally well. WIRED: High ISO shooting is fantastic with relatively low noise at settings up to ISO 3200 and beyond. Live view function the best of the top-end DSLRs. Dual CF card capability. TIRED: So many functions it could take a lifetime to learn them all. No in-camera dust-reduction system. Price/maker: $5,000 (body only), Nikon
Read our full Nikon D3 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : The U110 ultralight we received looks striking, with a scarlet paisley-etched aluminum lid paired with a shiny jet-black keyboard area. As soon as you open it up and power it on, you come face to face with one of the U110's most interesting yet unsettling features: VeriFace recognition. After booting up, the webcam embedded in the bezel starts scanning the room. When it finds you, it superimposes disturbing cross hairs on your eyes in an attempt to recognize you and unlock the PC. If you haven't registered your peepers, the system will hang, so you have to shut it down, turn the notebook away and open it up again to get it to boot. The 11.1-inch display is bright and sharp, though it can look a bit iridescent at close range. The glossy black keys are big and square but the thin membrane beneath the keys is flimsy and deforms as you type. There is a decent set of ports, but the designers couldn't find room for an optical drive. Seriously, we're pretty disappointed. The included external DVD drive looks cool, but you know what would be even cooler? Not needing an external drive at all. For work purposes, the Lenovo is a capable little machine. The U110 excelled in our PCMark tests, far outdistancing most other ultralights. Overall this is a good PC; it just has a few annoyances. WIRED: Charming good looks will attract the Lenovo faithful who are sick of looking funerary. Excellent business performance will silence office critics of your "red PC (Harumph!)." Delightfully light and slim. TIRED: The keyboard, though pretty, is pretty flimsy. Terminator-style face recognition will give you the heebie-jeebies and make you torch all your Schwarzenegger flicks (Especially Batman and Robin). External DVD means one more gadget to tote. Price/maker: $1,800 (as tested), Lenovo
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Lenovo IdeaPad U110 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : Dishing out a hefty helping of HD, the SR12 is a lot of camera, both in your hand and under the hood with its 120-GB hard drive. The upgraded CMOS sensor and Bionz image processor have significantly improved image quality and stomped out even more noise. Sony’s face-detection system, which works snappily for video and the 10.2-megapixel stills, is very effective both up close and at long range. OK, so it makes great video, but what about the controls? For those who fly on manual, the Cam Control Dial is like piloting an F22. Neatly nestled next to the lens, the silver nubbin is a twisty-twirly festival of videographic functionality, providing quick access to manual adjustments of exposure, focus, white balance and aperture. There’s also an “easy” button on board. A quick tap on the little blue button and all you’ve got to do is point the camera in the right direction to get the good stuff. In spite of all this Sony video goodness, the SR12 has one glaring flaw — terribly difficult Mac integration. To get it working you’ve got to have iMovie '08. Previous versions of iMovie don’t have the capability to natively read the AVCHD codec meaning that you had to convert the video to other formats in order to do any post-production. WIRED: Excellent AVCHD video quality got better this time around. Extra-wide 3.2-inch touchscreen LCD is a big bonus. Outstanding sound quality. TIRED: Massive internal hard drive makes it somewhat chunky and a bit of a load to carry. The “easy” button should be bigger and easier to find. And it should be red. Yeah red and all glowy. $1,400, Sony
(Photo by Jackson Lynch for Wired.com) Read our full Sony HDR-SR12 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : With Kensington's Wireless USB Docking Station, the moment you open your Wireless USB (WUSB)-enabled notebook, all your desktop devices are ready to go. We were amazed at how seamless the process is: The station recognized our 20-inch monitor, wireless USB mouse, keyboard and printer. It was as if they were always connected to the notebook. Of course, there are a few gotchas. WUSB is a new standard and some notebooks can't hook up with this docking station. Dell and Lenovo offer a few models, and other companies should be out the gate by this fall. With its plain, geeky looks, the 11.4-ounce antenna-topped station could get lost in a field of wireless routers. But that's not quite enough to put our Battlestar boxers in a knot: The Kensington Wireless Docking Station is a snap to set up and makes mobile computing, well, mobile and hassle-free. You know, the way it's supposed to be. —Michael S. Lasky WIRED: Drop-dead, simple setup and instant wireless connection of all desktop peripherals makes moving a notebook to and from the desk a hassle-free, nothing-to-plug-in experience. Small footprint means no great loss of desktop real estate. TIRED: Still few WUSB-enabled notebooks on the market. Audio handling could be smoother; default requires USB-powered speakers. First generation device is still pricey. $230, Kensington
Read our full Kensington Wireless USB Docking Station review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : This standard-definition lightweight shoots better video and has a much smarter feature set than most of its competitors. In fact, JVC knows that YouTubers can't bear missing the latest police beating or Matthew McConaughey shirtless in the grocery store, so the MS100 is lightning-quick on start up. The 35x optical zoom allows you to capture the crushing blows and bothersome blemishes while keeping a safe distance. Plus, the nifty laser-touch LCD makes you feel like a real cinematographer with speedy access to manual features. While it's nicely appointed, you've got to bridle at a couple things. First, there's no optical image stabilization. But shaky image stabilization aside, the very nature of this camcorder calls into question its usefulness. While neither big nor expensive, there are other, better, ultrasimple run-and-gun camcorders out there. Most are smaller and cheaper, too. With this form factor at this price, the MS100 is kind of stuck in the middle between the svelte flash-based AVCHD camcorders and the shirt-pocket shooters from Flip, Kodak and Creative. WIRED: 35x optical zoom brings the action right to your doorstep. Superb video quality. Formula 1 start-up speed. Easy to use laser-touch LCD. TIRED: No optical image stabilization. Lack of Mac compatibility is inexcusable and utterly perplexing. Three hundred and fifty bones for a camera that's made to record for YouTube? The Flip Mino does the same thing for about half the cost. $350, JVC
(Photo: Jackson Lynch/Wired.com) Read our full JVC Everio GZ-MS100 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : Through some loophole, wormhole or deal with the devil, Gateway has produced a massive desktop replacement that's fast, good and cheap. How fast, you ask? Fast enough to go toe-to-toe with -- and school -- a $4,800 Alienware Area 51 m15x: In our Quake 4 test, the Gateway posted a score of 167.8 fps to the m15x's 167.2. This is partially because the Gateway's 512-MB Nvidia Geforce 9800M is running the show. The FX also has Olympic endurance for larger-class notebooks, going 2 hours, 23 minutes to play a DVD. And that brings us to the cheap part. The Gateway is just $1,400 -- more than three times less than the Alienware and hundreds (and more hundreds) less than most other desktop replacement machines. Sure, it lacks the latest processor (it's got a 2.27-GHz Core Duo), but it has a whopping 4 GB of RAM to help it attack processing tasks and a spacious 200 GB of drive space for your stuff. The big bummer here is the missing Blu-ray drive, which is what is likely keeping this thing so affordable. WIRED: Some of the best gaming performance ever recorded on a PC. Long battery life for a desktop replacement. Comfy and solid keyboard withstands heavy hands. Multimedia controls and slide volume look cool without glowing too brightly. TIRED: No Blu-ray is a letdown for HD-heads, and you can't configure your PC to include the drive. The battery sticks out a bit in the back, and the power brick is monstrous. Power lights on the front, unlike the multimedia controls, are too bright. Price/maker: $1,400 (as tested), Gateway
Read our full Gateway P-7811FX Notebook review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : Alienware prides itself on its tower rigs and desktop replacements, but several of its earlier forays in to the mid-size laptops were disastrous; the branding was intact but the performance wasn't. Not so with the m15x. This 15.4-incher is plenty portable, yet it has all the gaming trappings and the performance to back it up. From the unboxing onward, you can tell that you are paying for the experience as well as the hardware. A baseball cap with an alien head on it, an extra battery, VGA-to-DVI adapter, FireWire adapter and entertainment remote show that Alienware will risk no dissatisfied customers due to lackluster goodies. With specs that include a 2.8-GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme processor, 3 GB of RAM, and a 512-MB nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX, the m15x performs impressively, but not out of this world. It all comes down to the loot; this is a luxury item and there are far more affordable PCs with comparable performance. WIRED: Tip-top business and gaming performance. Lots of included extras for gaming elitists. The solid and handsome design will please gamers, and cool lighting effects will titillate geeks. TIRED: Exorbitant price that only a space tourist could pay without wincing. For all the expense, it's not the very best gaming PC. Dual batteries take a long time to charge up. The Blu-ray drive must be removed to accommodate the secondary battery. Price/maker: $4,880 (as tested), Alienware
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Alienware Area-51 m15x review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : The Archos 605 WiFi is a damn fine portable media player. Now it’s slightly mo' better due to this new GPS accessory, which for $130 adds full-bore street navigation that's on par with a Garmin or TomTom system. Well, a low-end Garmin or TomTom from a few years ago, anyway: This lackluster accessory does not have many of the bells and whistles of modern nav systems, and the one it does have -- real-time traffic updates -- works only in Europe. On the plus side, the software locks in satellite signals faster than NORAD. However, it navigates like a base commander heading home from the officer's club. On several occasions the GPS tried to route us totally out of the way instead of continuing on the road right in front of us. To make matters worse, the software doesn't announce street names, only directions. The GPS Car Holder would look pretty good if this were, say, 2003. And it does get you where you're going, if not always by the fastest or most logical route. At $130, it's a decent deal for current owners, but definitely behind the GPS times. WIRED: Cheaper than a standalone GPS, at least if you already own an Archos 605. High-resolution screen makes maps look mighty purty. Lightning-fast satellite lock. TIRED: The 605 can’t navigate without the car holder, so you can’t go on walkabout. Doesn’t say street names. Requires you to move to Europe if you want traffic features. You have to manually restart the GPS app every time you power on the 605. Price/maker: $130, Archos
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Archos 605 WiFi GPS Car Holder review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : As one of six new Fujitsu offerings equipped with Intel's Centrino 2, the Lifebook A6120 more than makes up for its dull exterior with features that will have prettier laptops quaking in their neoprene sleeves. Opposite its no frills glossy shell resides a gorgeous 15.4-inch LCD capable of brightening even the darkest depths of Mordor. Battery life and performance are equally impressive. The new 2.26-GHz CPU more than did the job when it came to photo editing, gaming and pretty much every other benchmark we threw at it. What's more, we squeezed a respectable four and a half hours of battery life under normal usage out of A6120. In fact, after playing with the Lifebook for a week, we were hard pressed to find anything significant to complain about. Would Fujitsu be well served by spending a little more time and effort on design and shrinking down that plump chassis? Sure. But this reviewer is more than happy to overlook a 1.7-inch waistline as long as it hides enough goodies. WIRED: Great bang/buck ratio. The A6120 starts at only $1,150 and jumps but $200 for a Radeon HD 3470 card and Blu-ray drive. Sharp, beautiful screen is one of the brightest we've seen on a laptop. Screw the chicklet-style keys found on other notebooks: Fujitsu's old school keyboard provides near perfect "clickiness" (to borrow a term from designer Amar Sagoo). TIRED: Small trackpad makes for a less than thrilling multitouch experience. Runs consistently hot -- don't rest it on your lap for long or risk a scorched crotch. While certainly not ugly, design is blander than a plate of lima beans. Price/maker: $1,350 (as tested), Fujitsu
Read our full Fujitsu Lifebook A6120 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : GeTac clearly had utilitarian users in mind with the E-100, which makes for a bit of a mixed bag when it comes to function. On the bright side, this surprisingly light ultramobile PC is military certified to withstand splashes of water, dust, humidity, shock and even freezing temperatures. Even common vulnerabilities like exposed ethernet and USB ports have been sidestepped with a bevy of watertight rubber stoppers. In fact, my review unit was able to smoothly stream South Park episodes while taking repeated tumbles down a flight of stairs. But it was when I looked under the hood that I found kinks in the armor. Mission-critical applications like Office ran at a reasonable clip in a number of bumpy environments, but for the E-100's price I was expecting a little more "oomph." The 100-GB shock-resistant ATA hard drive and 1 GB of RAM tilt the balance a little bit, but honestly, even the unassuming Eee PC comes stock with Intel's newer Atom chips. Mediocre specs aside, this rough and tumble UMPC performs solidly in a number of harsh environments and boasts a host of connectivity options. WIRED: Rock-solid construction, ergonomics and field performance. Responsive 8.4-inch touchscreen looks phenomenal in direct sunlight. Web ready with 802.11b/g, gigabit ethernet and SIM card slot. Waterproof combination SmartCard/PCMCIA slot. Decent battery life at 3.5 hours (WiFi on). 100-GB hard drive has its own heater for cycling up in freezing conditions. TIRED: Too little processing given the amount of buck. Near three grand price tag? Seriously? No option for a solid state drive?! Recessed USB and headphone jacks are a hassle to plug into. Tinny speaker is more of an afterthought. Lose the stylus and you're S.O.L. Looks that only a FedEx driver could love. Price/maker: $2,880 as tested, GeTac
Read our full GeTac E-100 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : Most of the new mini-laptops look like toys, educational tools or lab experiments in miniaturization, but the MSI Wind is an actual PC. Packing the latest 1.6-GHz Atom processor and a roomy 80-GB drive, the Wind boasts some legit PC cred. Yes, your iPod probably has more drive space, but 80 gigs was plenty not so long ago, and it's not like you're going to be producing HD video on this thing; it's more of an internet lapdog than a laptop. The 10-inch widescreen can display most fixed-width webpages comfortably, and its keyboard is large enough to house decent-size keys so you can type easily without resorting to Homer's dialing wand. While even some larger laptops are short on ports, the Wind finds room for three USBs, an SD slot and a display connector (take note, MacBook Air!). Of course, it's not perfect. We would have loved to see a DVD burner included, and with all its ports, a mini FireWire would be welcome. Also, don't expect high-end performance from the unit or hearty battery life from its slim, three-cell battery. But if you want a cheap and tiny companion for uploading pictures during a Malaysian jungle trek, or just a little buddy to hang out with you on the couch for IMDB searches, it's pretty hard to be against the Wind. WIRED: Grown-up looks (as opposed to "I want to sit at the big kids' table" found in other netbooks). Full keyboard and the largest screen among mini-notes. Plenty of ports to plug away at. 2.3-pound weight and rounded edges make it simple to pack and lug. TIRED: Lack of a DVD is understandable, but it still makes us cry a little. Hard drive sometimes makes mysterious swallowing sounds. Two-hour battery life is OK, but three would be better. $500, MSI Mobile
Photo: Jon Snyder/ Wired.com Read our full MSI Wind U100 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : Behold, the new Eee Box! Like the rest of the Eee bloodline, these varicolored desktop boxes are small, cheap and adorable (think AppleTV or Mac Mini). Intel's 1.6-GHz Atom processor, up to 2 GBs of memory, four USB ports, an SD card slot, 802.11n and Bluetooth are plenty for the Eee Box to hit that elusive "good enough" mark with aplomb. Once again, you'll get your choice of running either Linux or Windows XP. Then there's the size. While it does have a slightly larger overall footprint, it's much trimmer than the Mac Mini. Not only will this elegant 8.5 x 7 x 1-inch box fit anywhere, but you also have the choice of mounting it directly to the back of any extra monitor you happen to have lying around. To be clear, the Eee Box is not for sweaty frag fests or heavy-duty HD video decoding. But if you have a hankering for a killer kitchen PC or just an über-cheap second or third home PC that runs Linux or XP, it simply can't be beat. WIRED: Small, lightweight and cuter than a bowlful of kittens. More than enough processing power for everyday computing. Cheaper than an ounce of Da Kine bud. The option of running Splashtop for preboot access to Skype, web browsing and IM clients. TIRED: Where's the optical drive? No HDMI output, which actually doesn't matter much because there's also no hardware to decode acceleration. By itself, the Atom processor can barely handle 720p H.264 streams, dashing our hopes of this being the ultimate home-streaming box. $300 as tested, Asus
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Asus Eee Box review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : Iomega's own $190 solution for a filled DVR is a 500-GB drive that plays nice with two DVRs in particular: Scientific Atlanta's 80-GB standard definition 8300 and the more recent 160-GB 8300-HD model. We tested the drive out on the latter model and found it more or less did what it promised. It even worked with a neighbor's Series 3 TiVo, which (to its credit) is known for being something of an eSATA slut. Setup in both instances was quick and painless, and involved simply turning off the DVR, plugging in the Iomega drive, and then turning everything back on again. Voila, no more having to choose between Emmanuelle: The Art of Love and the latest episode of Mad Men. WIRED: Reasonably priced. Your grandmother could probably set it up. Instantly adds an additional 300 hours of SD TV, or 60 hours of HD content. TIRED: Only one way to connect the drive to a DVR (that would be eSATA). Limited compatibility, although Iomega claims the drive will work with future SA eSATA-enabled DVRs. No way of controlling what gets stored on the expander drive and what gets stored on the DVR. Transporting DVR'd content to your computer is verboten, and plugging the drive into a computer will automatically reformat it. $190, Iomega
Read our full Iomega DVR Expander Drive review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. :
The Samsung U900, aka Soul, aka Magical Touch, doesn't really have any supernatural abilities. What it does have is a tiny, touch-sensitive OLED nav-pad that is one of the coolest, most efficient touch interfaces we've seen on a handset. The small display (situated below the main 2.2-inch QVGA screen) features icons that morph based on whatever application is currently on the screen. Switch to camera mode and controls for snapping pictures. Toggle to the music player and buttons for fast-forward, rewind, pause and play pop up. The big selling point is the phone's pocketability. The picture quality and dynamic range could be better (LED flash, we're talking about you), but at 0.5-inches thick and 7 ounces, this slider is more svelte than just about every 5-MP cam we've tested. Ultimately, our biggest complaint is that you cannot use the camera without sliding open the phone first. This design protects the lens from dust bunnies and pocket grime, yes, but shooting with a fully open device was a tad awkward at times. WIRED: External microSD slot makes it a cinch to swap cards on the fly. Bluetooth (+A2DP). Competent image-editing suite. Video editor allows you to layer additional audio tracks. Decent facial detection. Haptic feedback can be tweaked to three different levels of intensity or switched-off entirely. TIRED: Bundled proprietary ear buds sound duller than Ben Stein. No Xenon flash. No GPS. No WiFi. Lower-res video clips. Proprietary headphone jack positioned on the side = hard to pocket when phones are plugged in. Noticeable screen glare when outdoors. $400, Samsung
Photo: Issac Brekken/Wired.com Read our full Samsung SGH-U900 Soul "Magical Touch" review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : The biggest selling point of the new Sidekick is supposed to be the customizable "skins" you can order to replace the solid-color ones (we opted for jet black). But apart from flashy aesthetics, the pocket-friendly 2008 is 0.4-inches shorter and 0.9-ounces lighter than the pricier LX. It also packs features that were sorely missed with the tragically minimalist iD. Most notably, a 2.0-megapixel camera that can also capture video clips (albeit crappy ones). Though the 2.6-inch WQVGA swivel screen’s received a slight -- and necessary -- boost in pixels (400 x 240), the resolution’s still not fantastic. And neither is Bluetooth. We found data transfers not only paused the media player (annoying), but afterward, we had to go back and manually un-pause whatever track was playing (doubly annoying). For the price, though the 2008 is a solid option compared to the LX -- but only if you live and die by instant messaging and you don't mind being seen with Paris Hilton's device of choice in public. WIRED: Spacious, comfy QWERTY. 3.5-mm headphone jack. Surprisingly loud, radically clear music player. Wide screen excellent for web browsing. Solid battery life. Quick video recording/sharing. Comes with two skins (we got black and iridescent lime). Bluetooth with A2DP (great to have, even if it does disrupt tunes). TIRED: Screen retains more fingerprints than the Feds. No flash. No WiFi. Mike captures poor sound when recording video. Only 20-second video clips. Only 512-MB microSD card included. Apps are mostly in the $2.99+ range (except for the janky free Calculator). No 3-G. Price/maker: $150 (with 2-year contract), T-Mobile
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com Read our full Sidekick review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : Cyclists know it's plum foolish to roll around on two wheels sans helmet, but it can be just as dangerous to bike about at night without a light. A good headlight affixed to your handlebars is just the thing to help cut through the murk and get you to your destination safely. Here we pit two of the top dogs on the market against each other and see which comes out on top. —Eric Smillie This one-watt LED cannon goes the extra mile, and we don't just mean it shoots light a ridiculous distance. Due in no small part to its particularly aggressive blinking mode, accurately called superflash, it didn’t just help us catch drivers' attentions; it had them anxiously craning their necks to check whether we were trying to pull them over. Drawing on only two AA batteries, this baby cuts down on weight but its CREE XR-E diode, coupled with a specially engineered Fraen lens, still pumps out the brightest light of all the lamps we tested -- enough to bounce off signs, license plates, and other reflective materials up to four blocks away, giving us plenty of time to make an impression. All we have to worry about now is whether some cop-hating, GTA IV-overdosing motorist trying to run us down. WIRED: Recessed switch only works if pressed firmly, which means it won’t turn on in your bag while you jostle your way to the bar, leaving you in the dark at closing time. Planet Bike spends 25 percent of its profits on bike advocacy. TIRED: The brightness and reduced weight come at a price: 20 hours of battery life in blinking mode, and only seven on high. Though it installs without the use of a tool, the handlebar bracket is tricky to tighten and slips easily. $50, Planet Bike
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : While not the sharpest bulb on our handlebars, the WhiteLite HP AA is in it for the long haul. Don’t get us wrong -- just like other 1-watt LED headlamps, this portable, all-in one lamp is more than a glorified blinky. When engineering this light, Topeak got all snippy, cutting the cords to one of its external power-pack lights and reengineered it to accept three AA batteries. Its widely diffused beam covers plenty of surface area and earned our trust by helping us dodge nasty potholes and tree roots on unlit paths. But where this guy really shines is in perseverance, by lasting 30 hours on high and a whopping 120 on flash. WIRED: The mounting bracket screws tight with a finger knob and adjusts five degrees left and right to get a straight aim even on angled handlebars, although it does require an Allen key to tighten. Little red LED signals when batteries are low. TIRED: Blinks come slowly and lack urgency in flashing mode. Pushing the rear on/off push button can rotate the mount and mess up the light angle. Sound like a small problem? It won't be when you look up just in time to face plant into the bumper of a lifted pickup. $60, Topeak
Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. : The E71 looks more like a Blackberry Killer, but don’t be fooled: This great white hope gives the iPhone a run for its money in a lot of different areas (yes, really). Despite its obvious lack of an oversize touchscreen interface, Nokia wins points for a remarkably trim profile (10mm vs. 12.3mm), decent 3.2-megapixel camera (instead of 2.0), and the fact it's not tied to any carrier (yet). Setting up Nokia's Mail for Exchange program required no IT help or time. QuickOffice let us create, edit and send Word/Excel/PowerPoint files on the fly while we browsed PDFs with Adobe Acrobat Reader. The E71 is stocked with enough apps and goodies to keep even the most overworked road warrior on the ball, but it didn't feel too "business" due to two separate customizable home screens. One is designed to house all of your work apps while the other is geared more toward entertainment with programs for audio, video and gaming. The phone's 2.36-inch, 320 x 240 QVGA display is only slightly smaller than the iPod classic's, and though the resolution can't top the iPhone's, with 15 fps, the E71 is still solid for YouTube clips. Oh, and did we mention the E71's got battery life for days? Yes, literally, three of them. WIRED: Up to 8 GB in an easy-to-access, external microSD slot. Quick and seamless OS. GPS, 3G, WiFi, Bluetooth (you name it, it's basically got it). Vivid screen (even in direct sunlight). Textured stainless steel backing prevents slippage. Relatively lightweight (127 grams = six grams lighter than iPhone). Hit any letter on the QWERTY pad and predictive text calls up that section of your address book. TIRED: No standard 3.5-mm headphone jack. 3.2-megapixel camera's optics could be better. LED flash could be way better. N-Gage gaming platform not available. Screen's wide, but not wide enough to do a feature-length film justice. For $500, you could get two 8-GB, 3-G JesusPhones (with $100 left over to put toward AT&T's data plan). $500 (unlocked), Nokia
Photo: Max Buck/Wired.com Read our full Nokia E71 review. Check Wired.com's latest Gadget Lab reviews, updated daily. Source: Wired: Gadgets | 27 Aug 2008 | 4:00 am Immersion to pay Microsoft $20.75M of Sony's money - BusinessWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 27 Aug 2008 | 3:42 am The Internet's Biggest Security Hole RevealedAt DEFCON, Tony Kapela and Alex Pilosov demonstrated a drastic weakness in the Internet's infrastructure that had long been rumored, but wasn't believed practical. They showed how to hijack BGP (the border gateway protocol) in order to eavesdrop on Net traffic in a way that wouldn't be simple to detect. Quoting: "'It's at least as big an issue as the DNS issue, if not bigger,' said Peiter 'Mudge' Zatko, noted computer security expert and former member of the L0pht hacking group, who testified to Congress in 1998 that he could bring down the internet in 30 minutes using a similar BGP attack, and disclosed privately to government agents how BGP could also be exploited to eavesdrop. 'I went around screaming my head about this about ten or twelve years ago... We described this to intelligence agencies and to the National Security Council, in detail.' The man-in-the-middle attack exploits BGP to fool routers into re-directing data to an eavesdropper's network." Here's the PDF of Kapela and Pilosov's presentation.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 27 Aug 2008 | 3:16 am Dr. Thomas H. Weller, 93; virologist won Nobel Prize for work on polioDr. Thomas H. Weller, the Harvard virologist who shared the 1954 Nobel Prize in medicine for developing techniques to grow the polio virus in the laboratory, a feat that laid the groundwork for the development...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 27 Aug 2008 | 3:03 am Computer With UK Bank Customer Data Sold On eBayWalpurgiss tips a BBC News story about a man in Oxford who paid $140 for a computer on eBay, and was shocked to find on it bank records of several million customers of the Royal Bank of Scotland, its subsidiary Natwest, and one other bank. "Mr. Chapman said anyone with a basic knowledge of computer software would have been able to find the data fairly simply. 'The information was in back-up CDs and in ISO files so it would have been possibly quite easy to find...,' he said."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 27 Aug 2008 | 1:23 am Alt Text: A Wistful Geek Heads for Sweet iPhone HellI do not, as of yet, own an iPhone. However, soon my cellphone provider will be unlocking the door, shooing away the rats, taking off my shackles and releasing me from my contract. At that point I will be buying an iPhone. Not because it's a shiny new Jobs-job, not because several of my friends have it and keep waving it at me, but because I clearly need it. I require its functionality for such important business purposes as having an iPhone.
In the past, technology has often taken me by surprise. I go over to a friend's house to see this new "TiVo" device they've got ("It's what? Like a VCR? I already have a VCR.") and before I know it, I'm refusing to watch television shows during their scheduled time slots just on principle. I find out about geocaching, pick up a GPS to give it a go, and in no time a stoic, computerized voice is telling me to drive through a 6-foot-wide alleyway on the way to San Diego's only In-N-Out Burger. This time, though, I'm not going to be taken by surprise. These are my last few weeks before I have an iPhone, and I'm going to make sure I cherish my ignorance. Right now, I can have a thought like, "I wonder who had a hit first, Chuck Berry or Little Richard?" and allow that question to wander around in my head. Maybe I'll remember it and look it up when I get the chance; maybe I'll just let it go. I suspect that this time next month I'll be pulling over to the side of the road -- I hope I'll pull over to the side of the road -- to get the answer immediately. Right now, my friends are not subjected to photos of every "witty" stop sign annotation I encounter. In fact, they can actually hang out with me with no fear of showing up in my Flickr stream with basil in their teeth. Right now, I do not post to Twitter every time I see a dachshund. While I long ago surrendered my right to stride the world undistracted by phone calls, right now I at least do not compulsively grab for my cellphone whenever someone friends me on Facebook. Right now, sometimes I have ideas for columns, and they slip my mind before I can write them down. I like to think they go to Idea Heaven, where they become a much better essay than they would have been if they had been brought to life by my mortal fingers. Once I have my iPhone, none will escape. Right now, I am capable of referring to my cellphone without actually telling people what brand it is. Right now, although I sometimes regale my long-suffering non-gamer friends with tales of the latest gear to drop from Kara, I do not actually pull up The World of Warcraft Armory and force them to look at my Cyclone Helm. Right now, I do not appear to bystanders to be speaking into an ice cream sandwich. Right now, I rarely, if ever, use the phrase "awesome new app." Right now, I would be surprised if using the phrase "awesome new app" in public did not result in mob justice. Right now, I understand that there is absolutely no reason for me to watch an episode of Dog the Bounty Hunter in the bathroom. In fact, I realize that the very fact that this is an option is, in some indefinable way, a sign that our civilization is doomed to collapse in flame and sorrow. So goodbye, non-iPhone Lore. It's nice having been you in a simpler world. These were the days. - - - Born helpless, nude and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg eventually overcame these handicaps to become a telecommunicator, a telecommuter and a teleconverter.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 27 Aug 2008 | 1:00 am Build a Green RoofYou can't get much greener than photosynthesis, and if you own a house you can take advantage of it. Plant some greens on your roof and you'll have a rich harvest, an insulated (and better looking) roof -- not to mention a cleaner environment. Stop wasting sunlight and green your roof.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 27 Aug 2008 | 1:00 am Blame iPhone 3G Reception Problems On Carriers, Not Handset - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 27 Aug 2008 | 12:31 am Revealed: The Internet's Biggest Security HoleResearchers demonstrate a serious eavesdropping risk in the internet's fundamental infrastructure, putting proof to a theory that's long been whispered about in national security circles.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 27 Aug 2008 | 12:00 am Make announces American Maker competition Dale Dougherty says: On September 20th at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago, the editors of Make will present a "show-and-tell" program called American Maker. The goal of American Maker is to showcase grassroots innovation from Chicago-area makers. We're looking for makers who are are working on cool projects and whose work has the potential to benefit others. We believe that makers are a leading force in grassroots innovation -- where individuals see a need to create something new.American Maker Source: Boing Boing | 26 Aug 2008 | 11:53 pm Burning Man art build videoKai says: "I thought you would like this video Current just produced on the creation of a number of projects at Black Rock this year" Every year thousands of people descend onto Black Rock to build a city in the desert from scratch. And for many of the artists and engineers, the period of set-up before the gates actually open has become the most important part of this yearly event. We talk to the founder of Burning Man, Larry Harvey, as well as the masterminds behind the art installations Temple, Elevation, Babylon, Mutopia, and of course, the team behind the building of The Man, as they share their views and show us the art that embodies this year's theme: The American Dream.Burning Man Art Build 08 Source: Boing Boing | 26 Aug 2008 | 11:46 pm Stanford Prison Experiment researcher's new study about everyday heroism Matt Langdon says: "At the end of February you liveblogged Phil Zimbardo's TED speech that had a lot to do with the banality of evil, but I'm glad you noticed that he finished with his solution -- heroism. I'm working with him on getting those hero ideas to spread and we were wondering if you would be able to help get word out on a survey we're conducting online." You may know him from the Stanford Prison experiment. Maybe you used his “Psychology and Life” text book in college or saw his “Discovery Psychology” TV series on PBS. Or perhaps you’ve read his recent book, “The Lucifer Effect”. Now Phil Zimbardo needs you.Phil Zimbardo's study of how individuals perceive the behavior of helpfulness Source: Boing Boing | 26 Aug 2008 | 11:44 pm Linux end-user summit planned (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - The Linux Foundation on Wednesday plans to announce an event enabling Linux users to interact with the Linux community, including high-level maintainers and developers.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 26 Aug 2008 | 11:40 pm Psystar Will Countersue AppleAn anonymous reader sends us to CNet for news that Apple clone maker Pystar plans to countersue Apple. We discussed Apple's suit last month. "Mac clone maker Psystar plans to file its answer to Apple's copyright infringement lawsuit Tuesday as well as a countersuit of its own, alleging that Apple engages in anticompetitive business practices. Miami-based Psystar... will sue Apple under two federal laws designed to discourage monopolies and cartels, the Sherman Antitrust Act and the Clayton Antitrust Act, saying Apple's tying of the Mac OS to Apple-labeled hardware is 'an anticompetitive restraint of trade,' according to [an] attorney... Psystar is requesting that the court find Apple's EULA void, and is asking for unspecified damages."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 26 Aug 2008 | 11:31 pm iPhone: Watchdog rules against Apple advert on net accessAn advertisement for Apple's iPhone handset has been shelved after Britain's advertising watchdog ruled that it misled buyers.The Advertising Standards Authority said that a TV promotion had falsely suggested...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 26 Aug 2008 | 11:15 pm DNA testing: Doctors search for 100,000 at risk of early heart attackNational Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommends major DNA testing programmeSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 26 Aug 2008 | 11:14 pm Obituary: Chris CurtisObituary: His research into tropical diseases saved thousands of livesSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNPaperTech | 26 Aug 2008 | 11:13 pm Talk to the (Bluetooth) headset - CNET Crave Blog
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 26 Aug 2008 | 10:46 pm Phil Zimmermann Replies To CNet On BidenA couple of days ago we discussed a CNet article on the tech voting record of Joe Biden, Barack Obama's running mate. Philip Zimmermann, who was mentioned in that piece, sends the following note to set the record straight. "In his 23 August opinion piece in CNet, Declan McCullagh wrote on Joe Biden's suitability as the Democratic VP nominee, Declan quotes me, creating the impression I criticized Biden for some legislation that Biden introduced in 1991. Declan's quote from me is out of context because it does not make it clear that I never mentioned Biden in my original quote at all when I wrote about Senate Bill 266. Second, Declan's quote is drawn from remarks I wrote in 1999. Declan seems to be trying to draft me in his opposition to Biden, and, by extension, makes it seem as if I am against the Democratic ticket. I take issue with this." Read below for the rest of Phil's comments.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 26 Aug 2008 | 10:38 pm Best Western rebuts claims of massive data breach (AP)AP - Did a computer intrusion at a Best Western hotel in Germany open the door for a hacker to steal the records of 8 million customers and pull off "the greatest cyber-heist in world history," as a Scottish newspaper put it?Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 26 Aug 2008 | 10:19 pm Little Yellow Lego Guys Turn 30This week marks the 30th anniversary of Lego's introduction of the "minifig," the friendly yellow characters that add a human element to those iconic, plastic bricks.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 26 Aug 2008 | 10:00 pm U.S. heating oil dealers clamp down on unpaid bills (Reuters)Reuters - U.S. heating oil dealers are using new software to weed out clients who may not pay their bills as Americans gear up for another winter of high fuel costs in the world's top consumer.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 26 Aug 2008 | 9:59 pm TELUS Forcing Customers Off Unlimited PlansAn anonymous reader writes "Canadian telco TELUS sold a bunch of (expensive) Unlimited EV-DO aircard accounts last winter and are now summarily canceling them or forcing people to switch to much less valuable plans. TELUS is citing 'Violations,' but their Terms Of Service (see #5) are utterly vague and self-contradictory. The TELUS plans were marketed as being unlimited, without the soft/hard caps that the other providers had at the time. They were purchased by a lot of rural Canadians who had no other choice except dialup. Now TELUS is forcing everyone to switch from a $75 Unlimited plan to a $65 1GB plan, and canceling those who won't switch. Have a look at the thread at Howardforums, a discussion of the TELUS ToS (in red at the bottom), an EV-DO blogger who's been a victim, a post at Electronista, and of course Verizon getting fined for doing the same thing! Michael Geist has taken an interest as well."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 26 Aug 2008 | 9:42 pm RIAA, MPAA Converging on Political ConventionsThe Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America are well-known for their thousands of copyright infringement lawsuits. But they're also Hollywood's biggest lobbying organizations. The pair have descended upon Denver for the Democratic National Convention and are headed to the Republican's convention next week in Minnesota -- in a likely move to bolster proposed legislation creating a cabinet-level copyright czar.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 26 Aug 2008 | 9:09 pm Your Parents (and Kids) Will Love Adobe's New Photo and Video ToolsAdobe announced new versions of its Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements suites for editing, cataloging and sharing digital photos and home videos on Tuesday. The tools are aimed squarely at novice users and budding hobbyists, yet they deliver much of what's available in more powerful, pro-level applications.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 26 Aug 2008 | 8:50 pm MapReduce Goes Commercial, Integrated With SQLCurtMonash writes "MapReduce sits at the heart of Google's data processing — and Yahoo's, Facebook's and LinkedIn's as well. But it's been highly controversial, due to an apparent conflict with standard data warehousing common sense. Now two data warehouse DBMS vendors, Greenplum and Aster Data, have announced the integration of MapReduce into their SQL database managers. I think MapReduce could give a major boost to high-end analytics, specifically to applications in three areas: 1) Text tokenization, indexing, and search; 2) Creation of other kinds of data structures (e.g., graphs); and 3) Data mining and machine learning. (Data transformation may belong on that list as well.) All these areas could yield better results if there were better performance, and MapReduce offers the possibility of major processing speed-ups."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 26 Aug 2008 | 8:48 pm The Internet Gets a New Command Line With Firefox's UbiquityMozilla released a new, experimental add-on for Firefox Tuesday which adds a human-language text interface to the web browser. Now users can manipulate web services by typing one line of text, setting a whole new paradigm for how we interact with applications on the open web.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 26 Aug 2008 | 8:20 pm Paralyzed Man Walks Again Using Exoskeletondominique_cimafranca notes a story up at the Daily Mail in the UK about a partially paralyzed man who is able to walk again using an exoskeleton frame. The article goes a bit far in comparing the device to Robocop, but it does show pictures of the man, paralyzed for the last 20 years, regaining some use of his legs. Quoting: "The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company. Something of a mix between the exoskeleton of a crustacean and the suit worn by Robocop, ReWalk helps paraplegics — people paralyzed below the waist — to stand, walk and climb stairs. The system, which requires crutches to help with balance, consists of motorized leg supports, body sensors and a back pack containing a computerized control box and rechargeable batteries."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 26 Aug 2008 | 7:55 pm Broadcom co-founder apologizes after plea deal (AP)AP - Broadcom Corp. co-founder Henry Samueli has apologized for lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission during its probe of stock options backdating at the chip maker.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 26 Aug 2008 | 7:33 pm Neanderthals Matched Brawn With BrainsContrary to popular thought, Neanderthals were sophisticated tool-makers.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Aug 2008 | 6:11 pm Wiggling Plastic at River Bottom to Generate ElectricityPlastic strips on the bottom of a Pennsylvania river could soon generate green energy.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Aug 2008 | 6:11 pm 'Ratchet & Clank' leads wave of fresh PSN games (AP)AP - Of the three video-game console manufacturers, Microsoft was the first to embrace online gaming, and its Xbox Live has become essential to anyone who wants to play against faraway competitors. Sony and Nintendo are trying to catch up with, respectively, the PlayStation Network and the Virtual Console.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 26 Aug 2008 | 5:53 pm Jeff Han: We're Just Scratching the Surface of MultitouchSAN JOSE, California -- Jeff Han has some simple advice for companies thinking about how to integrate the latest interface technology into their products: Start over. "It's like Yoda said, you must unlearn what you've learned," he says, referring to the 40 years that the mouse and keyboard have dictated how we interact with computers. Admittedly, that's no easy task, so the multitouch pioneer and his company, Perceptive Pixel, have devoted the better part of two years to building an entirely new multitouch framework from the ground up. Instead of simply mapping multitouch technology to familiar interfaces and devices, Han's goal is far more sweeping: To use the technology as a foundation for an entirely new operating system. That would be an ambitious goal for anyone, but it might be within reach for Han, who until two years ago was virtually unknown outside of academia. His demonstration of a multitouch display, which was sensitive not just to one finger (or a stylus) but to each of a user's ten digits, wowed the crowd at TED in 2006 and put multitouch on the map. Since then, Han's company has put multitouch screens on CNN and the Democratic National Convention, among other places. Microsoft's multitouch-enabled table, the Surface, has been showing up in Las Vegas casinos. And Apple's iPhone has shown that multitouch can be wildly popular, leading many other companies to try adding multitouch and other innovative interfaces to their own products. Wired.com caught up with Han shortly after he joined Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang onstage at the inaugural Nvision visual-computing conference on Monday. Wired.com: You mentioned it in your TED talk two years ago and you brought it up again today: We've been tethered to the keyboard and mouse for close to 40 years. So how far has multitouch technology really come over the past couple years? And is it any closer to freeing us from the tyranny of the mouse and keyboard? Jeff Han: Well, the reason why multitouch is really exciting is because … we realized immediately it's really an undiscovered country. We knew there was a lot of mileage to be had by entering this field. So, really, on a high level, I can honestly tell you we're just scratching the surface with multitouch. The progress we've been making, and the progress other research groups and companies out there have been making, that's still seminal stuff. There's a lot more we have to figure out. Some of the really trivial things -- like taking two fingers and zooming into a picture -- that's done. But the kind of stuff we really think will unlock this technology is not just simple extensions to the keyboard and mouse stuff. I see companies out there starting to do some multitouch stuff -- and all they do is remap to the standard way we interact with computers. Wired.com: Yeah, it seems like today multitouch is really more of a technology that's just slapped on top of the normal interfaces we're all accustomed to. Han: Well, there are two reasons for that. One, it's really hard to unlearn the mouse. When you've grown up and have been living and breathing the GUI and the WIMP (window, icon, menu, pointing) interface, it's actually really hard to think differently. Two -- and this is why our company has been spending a lot of time and energy on the software side of things -- it turns out that no operating system right now really understands multitouch at a fundamental level. What we've been really spending our energy on is this framework. We even have to throw away the traditional event model … and dispense with some of that lower-level machinery and pull it out. Right now, no operating system will work that way except in a graft-on format. What we've done is essentially rebuilt that entire stack. We did it because there was enough stuff to actually pull out. We didn't want to. Frankly, nobody really wants to rebuild something like that, but we knew there would be some payoffs. It took a lot of time, but since the TED 2006 talk, that's what we've been doing -- just the fundamental behind-the-scenes stuff, the foundational work. Wired.com: During your demos, you tend to use pretty beefy screens. You also talk a lot about how multitouch is also fundamentally about being multi-user. For the types of interfaces and user experiences you envision, are these bigger screens going to be a necessity? Han: The thing to keep in mind with all of our work is that we're not really advocating replacements. Multitouch is natural and useful for different modes [of computing] that may be inappropriate for the keyboard and the mouse. But there's always going to be things that the keyboard and mouse excel at. That said, we really see multitouch's potential being unlocked when you make it large. When you think of multitouch as "ubiquitous" or "pervasive" computing -- words that have been thrown around a lot in the past ten years -- ironically, there are really two ways to do such computing: Giant wall displays and personal ones that you carry with you all the time. [They are] totally different spectrums though. Wired.com: At the time of your 2006 TED talk, you said there was very little investment flowing into multitouch. We now have a hugely successful product that has captured the attention of consumers and the tech industry alike. How does the multitouch landscape evolve from here? Han: I think there's going to be an ecosystem out there. I don't think there's going to be one dominant player. There's a danger, however, in that it's a bit of a gold rush land grab at the moment. It took a long time to make a GUI out of the elements of a mouse: The dropdown menus, the buttons, the dialogue box and everything else associated with it. It's going to be dangerous having multiple parties all doing this with multitouch on their own, saying we think this three-point gesture should be interpreted this way, and so on. Wired.com: We've actually already explored whether there could be a coming patent battle over multitouch gestures as the technology gets more pervasive. So, based on those dangers you just highlighted, do you yourself patent your own gestures? Han: A lot of our research is coming up with gestures or manipulation metaphors. We have a general framework that a lot of the stuff shakes out of, actually. In terms of patents, as a small company, it's very important for us to protect our IP. So we do actively file patents both on hardware and software sides. Wired.com: But for the technology to become truly pervasive isn't it important to have, say, a universal series of gestures that everyone can agree on? Han: That's a great question. In order for this ecosystem to survive, there's going to have to be some standards bodies that say even though we're competitors, let's agree on some terminology, let's agree on some sub-gestures that none of us technically own. The problem is, multitouch is such a hyped field right now, it's very, very tempting for companies to start saying: Oh, we have multitouch, too. Now multitouch is starting to have all these different meanings that all of us don't necessarily agree on. Our definition of multitouch -- and we're starting to use the term true multitouch -- means an arbitrary number of finger points at the same time, or styluses, or any other object really. But there are other companies that take a more constrained view. Multi means more than one in English, right? So there's a two-touch system that is out there. And they're calling it multitouch. That's terrible because those are the kind of unsynchronized efforts by different players that can really cause a lot of harm for the rest of the industry. Wired.com: So if we're just scratching the surface with multitouch, where do you see things going? Obviously we have one very popular multitouch device: the iPhone. But the technology is also migrating to the desktop, although multitouch capable PCs seem like awkward hybrid devices. They seem sort of gimmicky. Han: One of the things that makes us a little different from the other players out there is that we're not trying to go right to the home. Because there's still so much unknown stuff in the multitouch space, we're trying to figure out how this technology is useful for things like productivity first -- how is it useful in specialized markets. And then we hopefully learn a lot there and see how it's applicable to the rest of the consumer market. I actually think it's very important to start using these systems not as gimmicks or for doing things like, say, ordering drinks at a restaurant. Instead, let's see how useful this will be for helping collaboration in a creative company or for info visualization or presentation. Wired.com: Like the "Magic Wall" you built for CNN. Han: Right. But stuff where the technology really impacts a lot of people. Honestly, those are the application areas that we're learning the most from. How does a CAD designer manipulate multiple parts of a building or engine with only his hands? Those are the tough questions. That's why we chose to go after those markets for now. Plus, by the time we get to the consumer, we won't be experimenting anymore. We'll know that this is the way to do things. Wired.com So, aside from building a new multitouch OS from the ground up, what else have you been working on? And long term, will multitouch simply give way to multi-gesture, as in Minority Report? Han: One of the things we're working on that we're really excited about is the fact that our devices use pressure information. They actually know how hard you're pressing on them with each of your fingers. So there's a neat thing we're going to show off in a couple months where we're using the pressure information to actually help you manage those 2D objects on the screen. You'll be able to push things and slip things underneath each other. It's extremely elegant and it actually works on single touch too. The answer to the second question is: I hate Minority Report. I hate pure gestural interfaces because they actually work very poorly. It's been proven. The human body really needs that kind of tactile feedback. However, combining it with touch, I do believe that for a future far out there, integrating the two together may actually be more successful that each one on its own. Source: Wired: Gadgets | 26 Aug 2008 | 5:30 pm Monkeys Reward Friends, FamilyCapuchin monkeys show they almost always opt to share with friends and family.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Aug 2008 | 1:55 pm Cows Use Inner Compass to Point North-SouthCows seems to have an inner compass that orients them north-south.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 26 Aug 2008 | 12:55 pm Comic Books on the iPhone? No ThanksWired.com's Gadget Lab looks at two applications for reading comics and graphic novels on Apple's iPhone, and finds both wanting.Source: Wired: Gadgets | 26 Aug 2008 | 12:18 pm
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He was a constant user of anabolic-androgenic steroids, of which acne is a side effect -- as is damaged sperm and shrunken testicles, both of which he also possessed.
As she headed for a line to pick up a Social Security card for her son, Gilbert was stopped by a guard who said her T-shirt, naming an educational and resource Web site for gay women, was offensive.
