(InfoWorld) InfoWorld - Apple iPhone, move over. At least, that's the hope of Google and Research in Motion as they ready the first serious competitors to the iPhone, in the "mobile 2.0" market that Apple invented.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Oct 2008 | 10:00 am

Access Denied: RFID Cat-Flap Scans Kitties

BoingBoing Gadgets' John Brownlee owns a budgerigar – "Humbert Humbird" – so it's no surprise that he loves the SureFlap, a cat-flap which keeps unauthorized kitties out. Similar to the age-old pet-door design which detects a magnet hanging from a cat's collar, the SureFlap instead reads an RFID tag buried in Tiddles' epidermis.

This sounds brutal, until you remember that many pets carry embedded ID tags already. After purchase, the flap is put into learning mode and – unlike kitty, who will have to be tempted through the door with a bowl of snacks – it will obediently read the RFID tags of any cat passing through. From then on, only authorized felines will be granted access. The door can remember up to 32 cats simultaneously, enough for even your eccentric spinster aunt.

We love the neatness of the arrangement, and if you have the kind of cat that refuses to wear a collar, this may be the only way to go. My cat, now in a retirement home in Yorkshire, hates collars. In fact, whenever I tried to make her wear one, she would spend the rest of the day walking backwards, trying to reverse out of it.

Of course, Brownlee doesn't own a cat, and therefore has no need to put in a cat-flap in the first place. But remember, this is the man who named his pet bird after literature's most famous pedophile. He cannot be trusted. £76 ($130).

Product page [SureFlap via BBG]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 13 Oct 2008 | 9:27 am

People Prefer Angry-Faced Cars

fatalfury writes "Researchers from the University of Vienna asked 20 males and 20 females to rank vehicles based on their appearance. The list of traits included arrogant, afraid, agreeable, disgusted, extroverted, sad, and others. Cars with 'meaner' traits (such as BMW) ranked higher, whereas cars with 'nicer' traits (such as Toyota's Prius) ranked lower. With billions spent on developing new products in the automobile industry, this could spur a trend in meaner-looking cars and perhaps explain why sales of the Prius and other green cars are slow to take off with average consumers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 13 Oct 2008 | 8:58 am

MySpace gives little guys online ad muscle (AFP)

AFP - MySpace on Monday unleashed a tool to let small operators with tight budgets easily target online advertising to preferred demographics on the world's leading social networking website.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Oct 2008 | 7:39 am

In Defense of Piracy [Voices]

By Lawrence Lessig, Professor of Law, Stanford Law School

In early February 2007, Stephanie Lenz’s 13-month-old son started dancing. Pushing a walker across her kitchen floor, Holden Lenz started moving to the distinctive beat of a song by Prince, “Let’s Go Crazy.” He had heard the song before. The beat had obviously stuck. So when Holden heard the song again, he did what any sensible 13-month-old would do–he accepted Prince’s invitation and went “crazy” to the beat. Holden’s mom grabbed her camcorder and, for 29 seconds, captured the priceless image of Holden dancing, with the barely discernible Prince playing on a CD player somewhere in the background.

Ms. Lenz wanted her mother to see the film. But you can’t easily email a movie. So she did what any citizen of the 21st century would do: She uploaded the file to YouTube and sent her relatives and friends the link. They watched the video scores of times. It was a perfect YouTube moment: a community of laughs around a homemade video, readily shared with anyone who wanted to watch.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 13 Oct 2008 | 7:04 am

The Bell Now Tolls for Social Networks [Voices]

By Kevin Kelleher, Contributing Writer, GigaOm

I blame David Hasselhoff.

Everything was going fine for the web–the financial world had been unwinding its overleveraged excesses for nearly a year without nary a ripple into Silicon Valley–until the launch of HoffSpace, a social network revolving around the oogachaka-ing, burger-wagging actor.

Some bloggers called it a bizarre nightmare. Others decried it as the end of social networks. They were probably joking. But they were right.

Hoffspace showed once and for all what the web sector had fought so hard to admit: These social networks had finally expanded a niche too far. No longer was it possible to argue that one day social networking sites would be anywhere near as good at making money as they were at expanding, fractal-like, into a grey goo of trivial matter.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 13 Oct 2008 | 7:03 am

Mafiaboy Grows Up; a Hacker Seeks Redemption [Voices]

By Robert McMillan, Senior Writer, IDG News Service

The Internet attack took Yahoo engineers by surprise. It came so fast and with such intensity that Yahoo, then the Web’s second most-popular destination, was knocked offline for about three hours.

That was on the morning of Feb. 7, 2000. A few months later, 15-year-old Michael Calce was watching “Goodfellas” at a friend’s house in the suburbs of Montreal when he got a 3 a.m. call on his cell phone.

His father was on the line. “They’re here,” he said.

Calce knew right away what that meant. He had already talked to a lawyer after warning his father, weeks earlier, that he’d knocked offline a string of high profile Web sites–Amazon, Dell, CNN–and his attacks had been widely covered in the press.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 13 Oct 2008 | 7:02 am

IBM and Lessons From the Great Depression [Voices]

By Kevin Maney, Contributing Editor, Conde Nast Portfolio

IBM has a habit of being a beacon during economic calamity. Of course, its earnings yesterday helped everyone feel for at least a moment that the world wasn’t coming to an end. But that pales in comparison to IBM’s feat during the Great Depression. Hopefully, we’ll see more of the same from the company.

I know about this because I wrote a book about the guy who built IBM, Thomas Watson Sr., titled The Maverick and His Machine. (Earlier this week, blogger Ed Cone picked up on the connection between IBM then and now.)

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 13 Oct 2008 | 7:01 am

CrunchGear Week in Review: 36 Screens Edition

Holy God, this guy plays WoW on 11 computers simultaneously
Tokyo Game Show: Footage from Sony’s Little Big Planet (PS3)
Video: Kota the triceratops robot now available
TOKYObay Robots for your office cubicle
CEATEC 2008: The two coolest robots of the show besides Little Seiko (2 videos)

Source: CrunchGear | 13 Oct 2008 | 7:00 am

Whoops. False Positive. Sorry ’Bout That … Heh Heh. [Digital Daily]

It figures. Not only are the predictive data mining and behavioral surveillance efforts through which the government hopes to identify terrorists a threat to privacy, they don’t really work, either.

In a 352-page report published last week, the National Research Council said data mining and behavior detection aren’t nearly as useful as their proponents claim. In fact, they’re of dubious scientific merit and have “enormous potential” for infringing on law-abiding Americans’ privacy. “Automated identification of terrorists through data mining (or any other  known methodology) is neither feasible as an objective nor desirable as a goal of technology development efforts,” the Council found. “Even in well-managed programs, such tools are likely to return significant rates of false positives, especially if the tools are highly automated.”

While not an explicit condemnation of the techniques at issue here, the report does recommend that the government evaluate the effectiveness and lawfulness of these data mining and behavior-detection programs it’s so keen on before implementing them, and periodically thereafter. Said the Council, “History demonstrates that measures taken in the name of improving national security, especially in response to new threats or crises, have often proven to be both ineffective and offensive to the nation’s values and traditions of liberty and justice.”

Source: All Things Digital | 13 Oct 2008 | 7:00 am

Amid the Gloom, an E-Commerce War [Voices]

By Brad Stone, Staff Writer, The New York Times

When the e-commerce giant eBay emerged from the last recession seven years ago with an aura of invincibility, its chief executive, Meg Whitman, boasted that “eBay is to some extent recession-proof.”

As the online auctioneer’s revenues and stock price kept climbing, one of its primary rivals, Amazon.com, just limped along.

How times have changed.

Ms. Whitman, now co-chair of Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, retired from eBay earlier this year as the company struggled with stagnation. Amazon, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most vibrant and reliable retailers in the country.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 13 Oct 2008 | 7:00 am

Android’s Login Is Cool, But Is It Secure?

I’ve been hearing a lot about Google’s innovative login feature for the Android phone, but only saw it today for the first time (Loren Feldman, who recently did some video of one, sent a screenshot).

Unlike other phones, which require a four digit number for unlocking, the Android simply puts nine dots arranged in a square on the touch screen, along with the words “draw pattern to unlock.” My understanding is that any pattern can be used as long as it touches at least four of the dots. Given the many, many different possible patterns (any math majors want to tell me how many?), it seems like a decent way to to lock and unlock a phone.

Except a very low tech side effect of the touch screen may be giving Google pause.

From what we hear, some people using the phone are noticing that the oil from a user’s fingers may leave enough of a smudge that the unlock password can be guessed at some of the time. Particularly since most people start their unlock pattern with the top left dot, and then move right or diagonally right. If you can see the smudge, it’s an easy guess what the unlock code is.

Of course users can always just wipe down the screen whenever they lock the phone. But my guess is Google offers an alternative, and more traditional, way to lock the phone as well.

Update: Good video and discussion of the unlock feature here, per the comments. Video is also embedded below, as well as another screenshot:

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch | 13 Oct 2008 | 6:07 am

New York Times Says Thin Clients Are Making a Comeback

One of the seemingly eternal questions in managing personal computers within organizations is whether to centralize computing power (making it easy to upgrade or secure The One True Computer, and its data), or push the power out toward the edges, where an individual user isn't crippled because a server at the other side of the network is down, or if the network itself is unreliable. Despite the ever-increasing power of personal computers, the New York Times reports that the concept of making individual users' screens portals (smart ones) to bigger iron elsewhere on the network is making a comeback.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 13 Oct 2008 | 6:01 am

YouTube offers full length TV shows

Section: Web, Online Music/Video, Google

YouTube announced that they will be offering full-length TV shows online.  Of course, Google, the proud owner of YouTube, will certainly place advertisements in the upcoming TV shows. 

Google said that the advertisements would be slotted just like ads on television with interruptions appearing during, before and after the actual program That’s not so surprising considering that Google Ads contribute quite an amount of Google’s total revenue.

Well, for those who are dying to find out what TV shows will be offered, expect some CBS properties like “Star Trek” and “Dexter” thanks to a CBS-Google agreement that also allows revenue sharing.  This is a bit of a strange deal considering the owner of CBS is going after YouTube (via Viacom) in a copyright infringement lawsuit.

Read [The New York Times]

Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:35 am

Eyealike Sets Its Image Recognition Technology On A New Target: Advertising

Eyealike, the startup that lets you use photo recognition to help find your ideal mate, is expanding to apply its image processing technology to a new market: advertising. The company says that the new system will allow businesses to place highly targeted advertising alongside photographs that appear on their site (which have long been difficult to monetize).

For now the image recognition is restricted to identifying physical traits of the people in photographs, with categories including age, gender, hair color, and skin color. In the demo I saw, the results were impressive: photographs with babies in them were paired with products for infants and toddlers, and makeup ads were shown near photos with women in them.

The company is also in early stages of identifying company logos in photographs (which could be paired with matching products), and eventually hopes to include support for more objects, like vehicle recognition and applications for travel.

Eyealike isn’t meant as a consumer product. Instead, it’s being licensed at an enterprise level, with a customizable backend that Eyealike will tailor for each customer’s needs. Provided the system works well, Eyealike shouldn’t have any trouble finding customers - sites like MySpace with billions of photos would love to more effectively monetize them.

The problem that Eyealike is trying to solve isn’t a new one, as numerous other startups have tried to implement their own versions of image recognition. Unfortunately, lackluster accuracy has long hampered this kind of technology. Eyealike claims that its algorithms work 90% of the time - an impressive figure that would undoubtedly lead to higher advertising revenues. But because the technology doesn’t have a consumer front-end, I was unable to try it out for myself. Eyealike says that it is in talks to implement its system in a large social network, so we may get to try it for ourselves soon enough.

Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.

Source: TechCrunch | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:00 am

Oct. 13, 1884: Greenwich Resolves Subprime Longitude Crisis

1884: Geographers and astronomers adopt Greenwich as the Prime Meridian, the international standard for zero degrees longitude. The late 19th century was an era of standardization. With the Second Industrial Revolution stimulating world trade, the Treaty of the Meter established the International System of weights and measures in 1875. With railroads linking together entire continents, nations were replacing hundreds (or even thousands) of diverging local times with a system of hour-wide time zones. (The United States adopted its zones in 1883.) Amid all this, navigation at sea -- and the charting of stars in the heavens -- often remained a matter of local, national or even religious preference. Maps might be based on longitude east or west of Jerusalem, Saint Petersburg, Rome, Pisa, Copenhagen (think Tycho Brahe), Oslo, Paris, Greenwich (just east of central London), El Hierro (in the Canary Islands), Philadelphia (former U.S. capital) and Washington, D.C. These divergent reference meridians -- representing a mixture of astronomical, theological and maritime power -- ranged over 112 degrees of longitude. You could do the math, but that meant you did the math. These were the days before computers and even the bulkiest of mechanical calculators. Got abacus? Many state boundaries in the U.S. West were determined by the Washington Meridian, which then ran through the Old Naval Observatory in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood. But an 1850 law established its use...

Wired.com

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:00 am

Obama vs. McCain: The Wired Scorecard

What do Barack Obama and John McCain say, and what have they done, about policies that matter to Wired? We describe and analyze five issues: broadband, H1B issues, investment in green tech, net neutrality, spectrum. They may or may not come up in Wednesday’s third and final debate. But that doesn’t mean you have to be uninformed or apathetic.

Wired.com

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:00 am

Microscope-On-a-Chip Is One Step Closer to the Tricorder

: Photo: Dave Bullock/Wired.com LOS ANGELES, California – In the very near future, drawing blood may be obsolete. Instead, implants will be able to image your blood and monitor it constantly. This is because scientists at Caltech have squeezed a microscope onto a computer chip not much larger than a dime. And that’s just the demo unit. Shrinking a standard microscope to this size is practically impossible due to the layers of optics involved, but Caltech professor Changhuei Yang decided to skip the optics altogether and put microscopic samples almost directly onto a photo sensor chip — just like the one found in your cheap point-and-shoot. The microscope-on-a-chip uses standard, off-the-shelf hardware sensors with a clever modification — pixels on the sensor are forced to only look through microscopic holes, which allows the chip to image very tiny things. The standard hardware makes future mass production cheap and easy and Yang’s lab is already working to create a small batch of iPod-size prototypes. He hopes to have working units in doctor's hands in a year or two, with full production in five5 years. In addition to the handheld devices, Yang envisions blood- monitoring implants that provide instant health warnings and diagnoses. Click through the gallery to learn exactly how this ingenious invention works. Left: A working sample of the microscope-on-a-chip placed next to a dime shows how small it actually is. The part that does most of the work is the...

Wired.com

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:00 am

Q&A: John Hodgman on Perfecting the Illusion of Expertise

John Hodgman is an expert. At everything. (OK, maybe not sports.) But where he really excels is in creating the illusion of expertise — and not letting pesky facts intrude on that authority. From his first book, a compendium of faux trivia aptly titled The Areas of My Expertise, to his fiction-spewing shtick on The Daily Show to his role as the bloviating PC in those Mac ads, Hodgman handles the most obscure subjects with an aura of invincible confidence. The fact that it's fake? All the funnier. Hodgman talks to Wired about his latest book, More Information Than You Require (out in October), and his new area of bona fide expertise: being semi-famous. Wired: Is your character on The Daily Show the same person narrating your books? Or, for that matter, the PC in your Mac ads? Hodgman: I should clarify at this point: I'm not that John Hodgman. There's a guy who goes on The Daily Show claiming to be me. And there's a guy who goes on the Mac ads claiming to be me. Wired: You should sue! Hodgman: No, I would say that the Resident Expert on The Daily Show is all me, or at least a heightened aspect of myself. Aside from finding humor in the deadpan descriptions of things precisely as they are, I just veer off into the fantastic and the absurd. Wired: And that has made you slightly famous. Hodgman: Well, I always had this desire to celebrate and somehow be a part of things that I thought were really great. When I wrote about Battlestar Galactica for The New York...

Wired.com

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Oct 2008 | 4:00 am

National Debt Clock Overflowed, Extended By a Digit

hackingbear writes "The National Debt Counter, erected in 1989 when the U.S. debt was 'merely' a tiny $2.7 trillion, has been moving so much that it recently ran out of digits to display the ballooning figure: $10,150,603,734,720, or roughly $10.2 trillion, as of Saturday afternoon. To accommodate the extra '1,' the clock was hacked: the '1' from "$10.2" has been moved left to the LCD square once occupied solely by the digital dollar sign. A non-digital, improvised dollar sign has been pasted next to the '1.' It will be replaced in 2009 with a new clock able to track debt up to a quadrillion dollars, which is a '1' followed by 15 zeros. That should be good enough for a few more months at least, I believe." Adds reader MarkusQ, "I know Dick Cheney has assured us that 'Deficits don't matter' but I can't help wondering if we should be fixing the problem rather than the sign."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 13 Oct 2008 | 2:51 am

MySpace Launches “My Ads” Self Serve Ad Platform: Is This Their Google Moment?

MySpace launches their self serve ad platform, called My Ads, tonight, which was first talked about a year ago. Like Facebook’s similar product, it allows anyone to quickly create a targeted ad and serve it on MySpace.

Unlike Facebook, which only allows text ads, MySpace is only allowing display ads for now (advertisers would like both, I imagine). Users can choose between a 728×90 or 300×250 ad unit and can create an ad with pre-built templates and a Flash tool, or upload their own.

MySpace ads are charged on a cost-per-click basis (Facebook allows advertisers to pay, at their option, on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression basis). Ads are prioritized based on the maximum CPC rate stated by the advertiser as well as relative click information - meaning that, like Google, advertisers will pay less if their ads tend to be clicked on a lot. The back end optimization technology behind the product was originally developed by SDC, which was acquired by MySpace’s parent company in February 2007.

The key to MySpace’s ad platform is their hypertargeting technology. Facebook allows targeting as well, although it’s based on interest areas put in by users directly. So if someone says they like books, you can target ads to them based on that. What MySpace does is much different - they build out a profile of each user based on what they do on MySpace over time, with 1,200 different ways to categorize each user. So if you only want to target women who live in California between the ages of 25-30 who like motorcycles, i can. There are 2,842 of them on MySpace. And if I just want to target those in San Francisco, I can. There are 147 of them (the ad tool tells you all of this):

Will This Be MySpace’s Google Moment?

The big social networks are still trying to find their “Google Moment” - the point when (and if) they find a way to monetize these massive audiences they’ve attracted. Google was just a great search engine until they matched it with contextual advertising. MySpace and Facebook need to find their own revenue engine.

Facebook will probably only generate $300 million or so in revenue this year. MySpace is ahead of them, with $850 million or so in revenue last year and a projected $1 billion in fiscal 2008 (which ends next June for them). But it’s still a far cry from what Google generates per unique monthly visitor.

MySpace says MyAds will be a major revenue source for them. “We expect MyAds to be a significant revenue source for us,” MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe said in an email today. “It has already exceeded our launch expectations in the pre-launch phase.”

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch | 13 Oct 2008 | 2:19 am

Plymouth Rock Monthly -- old magazine for chicken aficionados

As the proud owner of five Plymouth Barred Rock chicks, I was interested in this post on Homegrown Evolution about a magazine called the Plymouth Rock Monthly, which had a circulation of 40,000 in 1920. Maybe I should re-launch it with the goal of 200 subscribers.

What magazine had 40,000 subscribers in 1920? Answer: the Plymouth Rock Monthly, a periodical devoted to our favorite chicken breed. We have two "production" Barred Plymouth Rocks in our small flock of four hens, and we've found them to be productive, friendly and, with their striped plumage, an attractive sight in our garden. While the internet is an amazing resource for the urban homesteader, there are a few holes in this electronic web of knowledge. In short, would someone out there please get around to scanning and putting online the Plymouth Rock Monthly? All I can find are images of two covers lifted off of ebay.

The February 1925 issue, at right, promises articles on, "Selecting and Packing Eggs for Hatching", a poetically titled essay, "The Things We Leave Undone", "Theory and Practice in Breeding Barred Color", "White Plymouth Rocks", "The Embargo on Poultry", and "Breeding White Rocks Satisfactorily". Incidentally, the Embargo article probably refers to a avian influenza outbreak of 1924-1925 that repeated in 1929 and 1983.

By the 1950s interest in backyard and small farm flocks vastly decreased and the Plymouth Rock Club of America, the publisher of the Plymouth Rock Monthly, collapsed down to 200 members from a peak of 2,000. Thankfully, interest in keeping chickens is now on the rise again and an informative magzine, Backyard Poultry has been revived. Plymouth Rock fans can read an article about the breed in the latest issue of Backyard Poultry.

Plymouth Rock Monthly

Source: Boing Boing | 13 Oct 2008 | 1:58 am

Telescope Tech Will Speed Search for Extraterrestrial Life

Some of the largest land-based telescopes in the world are getting new technology that will enable them to better detect Earth-like planets outside our solar system that could harbor extraterrestrial life.

Wired.com

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 Oct 2008 | 1:00 am

More Nokia touchscreen phones are coming

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile

Nokia’s first touchscreen phone, Nokia 5800 was a blast for Nokia fanatics.  Nokia has recently made another statement pertaining to the production of Nokia touchscreen phones in the future.  In a recent event in India, Devinder Kishore, Marketing Director of Nokia revealed, “We will have lot of touchscreen phones coming up, including an N-series device very soon.”.

Well, this proves that Nokia is really up to the challenge to compete with its rivals and it’s evolving fast!  With the promising looks of Nokia 5800, we are certainly anxious for the next touchscreen product from Nokia.

Read [Cellpassion]

Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:43 am

English Court Allows Patents For "Complex" Software

jonbryce writes "The court of appeal in England has ruled that companies should be granted patents for 'complex' software products. In this particular case, Symbian had written something that makes mobile phones run faster. The court case has received very little attention because of the bank crisis, but it can be appealed to the House of Lords and then the European Court of Justice."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 13 Oct 2008 | 12:33 am

T-Mobile has already sold 1.5 million pre-ordered G1’s

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Web, Google

Who knew that the T-Mobile G1 would be this popular before it even was officially released?  Certainly not Google, HTC, and T-Mobile.  Their official estimates of how many G1’s to order was really low; so low that they had to order triple the initial amount and those G1’s sold would not arrive until after the official release, which is October 22.  Just recently, they announced that they have sold off all 1.5 million units they had available for presale.

Before you start thinking this number includes the retailed G1’s, it does not.  Since it hasn’t even been released yet, all 1.5 million G1’s have come strictly from pre-order.  People have ordered G1’s based on only what they have read, few of the customers have actually tried one out for themselves.  Google and T-Mobile have to hope that the G1 lives up to all the surrounding hype, because if it doesn’t, people will realize that and stick to the iPhone or other smartphones.  However, if many people come to like the G1 a lot more than the iPhone, then Apple has a serious competitor.

It will be interesting to see what the general public thinks of the G1 when it becomes officially released on the 22nd.

Read [Fool.com] Via [Pulse2]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 Oct 2008 | 11:00 pm

Fuel Efficiency and Slow Driving?

vile8 writes "With the high gas prices and ongoing gas gouging in my hometown many people are trying to find a reasonable way to save gas. One of the things I've noticed is people driving exceptionally slow, 30mph in 45mph zones, etc. So I had to take a quick look and find out if driving slow is helpful in getting better mileage. I know horsepower increases substantially with wind resistance, but with charts like this one from truckandbarter.com it appears mileage is actually about the same between 27mph and 58mph or so. So I'm curious what all the drivers out there with the cool efficiency computers are getting ... of specific interest would be the hemis with MDS; how do those do with the cylinder shutoff mode at different speeds?" Related: are there any practical hypermiling techniques that you've found for people not ready to purchase a new car, nor give up driving generally?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 Oct 2008 | 10:57 pm

Microsoft Quietly Previews PC Advisor Repair Tool

notthatwillsmith writes "On Friday, Microsoft invited members of the Windows Feedback Program to try out a preview of a new application, the Microsoft PC Advisor. The new tool promises to 'continuously monitor your PC for problems and give you the solutions to fix them, in real time.' After testing on several Vista machines with a variety of problems, Maximum PC has written a full report on the Microsoft PC Advisor. The short version? Like every other 'PC Repair' tool they've tested, the new apps signal-to-noise ratio is quite bad, and it misses the obvious and important problems, like out-of-date videocard drivers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 Oct 2008 | 9:41 pm

The Prickly Prince From Microsoft Strikes Again

Dare Obasanjo, a Microsoft employee and the son of a former President of Nigeria, doesn’t like it when people disagree with him. I found that out in 2007 when Obasanjo vandalized the TechCrunch Wikipedia page in response to a post we wrote that was mildly critical of Microsoft’s hiring of a blogger to edit certain Wikipedia entries relating to Open Office standards. His actions as an individual and as a representative of Microsoft were outrageous.

Today he writes a post accusing us of “encouraging…garbage” on TechCrunch because we’ve reported on the market fall over the last week, pointing to three examples (out of over 100 posts last week) where we chronicle the fall of Yahoo and Google stock, and the Seesmic layoffs. A number of other blogs jumped on the bandwagon, calling for the negativity to stop (obviously none of these writers read TechCrunch this last week).

“The last thing we need is popular blogs AND the mass media spreading despair and schadenfreude at a time like this,” he says.

Our job isn’t to cheerlead the startup scene no matter what happens. Our job is to report the news as it happens and add our opinion as we feel is appropriate. So even if we were reporting nothing but doom and gloom, the criticism isn’t appropriate.

But in fact we’ve been fairly cheerful over the last week, reporting on a couple of dozen new startups and products, focusing as much as possible on the positive, and trying to defocus the mobs from blaming the venture capitalists for what’s happening in the markets.

In other words, the tone of our coverage hasn’t changed.

So what happened? You guessed it. We dared to disagree with something the Obasanjo had to say over on TechCrunchIT, which he immediately characterized as a personal attack. A few days later- zap! - he finds three posts that aren’t all roses and butterflies and makes a subtle accusation that suggests TechCrunch may be partly to blame for the hysteria in the market right now.

In fact, his post, which ostensibly calls for everyone to be positive no matter what, is really just a clever way of inciting the mob to blame (in this case) TechCrunch for the market problems.

This isn’t ok from anyone, and it really isn’t ok from a high profile Microsoft blogger. This is the second time Obasanjo has attacked us when we disagreed with him. It’s one thing to disagree. But it’s another to attack (first Wikipedia, then this F’d company comparison) when you face disagreement. And when you represent a company, whether you like it or not, you do it under their brand. In this case, given the weakness of Obasanjo’s argument, and the fact that he just had a one sided flame war with TechCrunchIT, his motives were clear. It’s time for Microsoft to stop this nonsense.

Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors

Source: TechCrunch | 12 Oct 2008 | 8:38 pm

'Children in Need' Could Unite All Surviving Doctor Whos

Reports claim the seven surviving actors who played The Doctor will reunite for this year's BBC 'Children in Need' telethon. That means David Tennant and Peter Davision would join Tom Baker, Colin Baker, Sylvestor McCoy, Paul Mcgann and Christopher Eccleston for a reunion fans thought was impossible.

Wired.com

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 Oct 2008 | 8:32 pm

Verizon to improve cell phone coverage with COLT

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile

If you pay attention to sports, then you probably know that the NLCS (National League Championship Series) is taking place right now between the Philadelphia Phillies and Los Angeles Dodgers.  As you can imagine during many popular events such as sporting events, many use their cell phones an awful lot at the same time.  This can sometimes cause a cell phone traffic overload and prevent calls and texts from going through, which would definitely be annoying. 

In efforts to combat this, Verizon is introducing something near the stadium known as COLT (Cell on Light Truck).  This is a fully-functional mobile cell site that adds extra wireless capacity.  Such extra measures will prevent from any calls to be dropped, texts not going through, and making surfing the Internet as smooth as possible.  In addition, if you plan to use a laptop near the stadium, you will probably notice that you have access to better Broadband Internet. 

Ed Chan, executive director of network for Verizon Wireless’ Philadelphia Tri-State Region had this to say about the whole process: 

“During special events, traffic on our network can increase significantly. With the activation of this temporary cell site, our network is prepared to handle the expected increase in cell phone and laptop computer use at the stadium complex.  We want to ensure that Phillies fans can make that long-awaited call to their friends and families once the ‘Fightins’ win this series.”

It looks like he’s a Phillies’ fan, and wants everyone to be able to call people when and if the Phillies win.  Verizon has been trying to improve network capacity ever since they got involved with cell phones and they have invested nearly $45 billion dollars in projects such as this one.  Furthermore, since 2000, they have spent around $1.5 billion in the Tri-State area alone.

It’s good that Verizon does things like this, I hope they will do something similar for the ALCS and World Series, and in future sporting events.

Via [PR Newswire]

Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 Oct 2008 | 7:54 pm

High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman

If you're a fan of "Borat" you'll love "Shirley Ghostman" the spoof telepsychic created by edgy British comic genius, Marc Wootton. "Shirley" -- who is a man, an extremely effeminate man with nail polish who'll have you know he's not gay, okay? -- is the Liberace-esque host of High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman. Shirley makes contact with the spirits of Elvis Presley and Lady Diana, reads the minds of pets and takes hapless contestants through a maze of humiliation in a reality show-within-the-show "Spirit Academy," the American Idol of psychic talent. As with Sacha Baron Cohen's "Borat" character, the people "Shirley" interacts with -- and the studio audienc e-- have no idea they're being put on. They might figure it out as it's going on, but sometimes they don't!

To one dumb-founded audience member "Shirley" suggests a dead relative was trying to tell him: "You like a drink, but you will not like waking up on the bathroom floor with a black eye and shit in your pants." In a bit taped at a vet's office, he informs a pet owner that her dog has asked him to ask her if she and her husband can knock it off with the anal sex when the dog is in the room. There are tons of these kinds of moments in "High Spirits with Shirley Ghostman."

I've inflicted "Shirley" on many a friend and everyone agrees: This is one of those "pee in your pants funny" shows. An absolute must see if you are a fan of humiliation comedy like Ali G or Larry David. It's the equal of both.

Shirley auditions the psychic talent | Shirley helps her apprentices channel dead celebrities | The Spirit Academy finale | Shirley Ghostman Channels Lady Di | Shirley meets the Skeptics | A Skeptic writes of his "psychic" encounter with "Shirley Ghostman" | More Marc Wootton: "My New Best Friend" (insane humiliation reality show)

Source: Boing Boing | 12 Oct 2008 | 7:44 pm

Lester Bangs audio interview

In 1975, when I was nine years old, I discovered Lou Reed from reading about him in CREEM magazine. It was probably the very first rock magazine that I ever bought. The article, titled "Let Us Now Praise Famous Death Dwarves"really captured my young attention. It was the coolest thing I'd ever read. The author, Lester Bangs, conjured up a spectacularly ghoulish portrait of a totally disheveled, wasted and just plain old mean Lou Reed even as he hurled drunken druggy insults right back at him throughout the entire interview. The writing was sublime. I'm not saying I realized this when I was nine, btw, but even that young, I knew I was reading the unfiltered thoughts and opinions of someone who seemed to know about, and feel passionately about, a heck of a lot of really cool things. In his writing on rock and roll, he could really convey strong emotions. Bangs didn't hesitate to let you know where he stood on groups like Yes and Emerson Lake and Palmer (that would be two thumbs down) but when he loved a record or a group, his rhapsodic gonzo prose was worthy of being compared to Jack Kerouac, Tom Wolfe or Hunter S Thompson. Sometimes his writing was even better when he hated a group!

When each new issue of CREEM would come out, I'd go straight for the Lester Bangs articles and record reviews and I'd obsess on owning the albums he liked. This was back in the days (ahem) when you couldn't find anything like an Iggy Pop or Velvet Underground album outside of a specialist shop in a big city or through mail order, but the writing of Lester Bangs inspired you to want to have the same experience he had listening to groups like PiL, The Clash, The New York Dolls and The Stooges. He never, ever steered me in the wrong direction and not only do I see that my own passion for deviant culture comes from a crucial young connection to the mind of Lester Bangs, but also that he's one of the stylistic voices I've most emulated in my own writing.

So what an incredible thrill it was to come across a 90-minute interview with Lester Bangs himself on a Bit Torrent tracker recently. To finally, at long last hear the speaking voice of one of my literary heroes --it was like having a mental orgasm. Pure joy! Bangs and the interviewer cover a lot of ground in the two part interview including the state of the music industry at the time, whether or not the Rolling Stones ought to retire (in 1980!), John Lydon's PiL and what music Lester was listening to himself. It's a wonderful, articulate and thoughtful interview with a great writer whose speaking voice we rarely hear.

Someone at at website called The Interview Archive has posted the interview online. It's absolutely worth listening to, a rare treat.

Lester Bangs Interview | Lester Bangs, King of the Noise Boys | Let Us Now Kill White Elephants

Source: Boing Boing | 12 Oct 2008 | 7:43 pm

Q&A: 'World of Warcraft' Lead Producer J. Allen Brack

During Blizzcon Wired chats with with J. Allen Brack, Wow's lead producer, to discuss the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion, where the game goes from here, and the title's Deathknight class, an addition many fans see as the latest example in Blizzard's new-found desire to homogenize their once unimpeachable games.

Wired.com

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 Oct 2008 | 6:00 pm

BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 10-05-2008

Section:

Apple news—you crave it, you want it, you love it!  Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…

• VoIP comes to iPhone
• New MacBooks to have Nvidia Nside
• And the “Brick” is…a manufacturing process?!
• CNN eagerly laps up fake story; Steve Jobs still not harmed
• Google’s Street View to be included in iPhone firmware 2.2

Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 Oct 2008 | 5:33 pm

Will Verizon’s New Three-Cent Hike Kill SMS Services?

On Friday, word got out that come November 1 Verizon Wireless plans to tack on an extra 3-cent charge for every SMS message sent by Web information services to any of its mobile subscribers. That hike will be on top of the 20 cents per message that Verizon subscribers already pay (even those with “unlimited” plans). Thus, in one fell swoop, Verizon is attempting to boost its SMS revenues by about 15 percent.

While it may be good for Verizon, the additional charge is not good for any service that sends out millions of SMS messages each month. The move caught a lot of Internet companies, SMS aggregators, and media companies by surprise. For instance, I asked Twitter co-founder Biz Stone what impact it would have on the micro-blogging service, which lets users keep up with every Tweet they follow via SMS, and he didn’t know:

We’re still investigating with Verizon so I don’t have a definite answer for you right now.

In August, Twitter suspended the SMS feature in the UK and other foreign countries because it would have cost the company as much as $1,000/year/user. In the U.S., apparently it has more of a flat-rate pricing.

But that might change now with Verizon—and other U.S. mobile carriers as well, if Verizon’s competitors match the price hike. How long are they going to stand by and watch Verizon capture a 15 percent margin advantage in the booming SMS business? If the new 3-cent charge becomes the norm, it would cost companies $30,000 for every million SMS messages they send out.

I use Twitter here as an example, but it is by no means alone. Thousands of Web services use SMS as a communication channel. For example, Google lets you search by SMS and also lets people set up automatic SMS alerts from Google calender and other services. Nearly every sports, stock, and weather Website (not to mention the political campaigns) lets you get SMS alerts as well. Those are the heavy volume users. But this new charge could end up hurting SMS startups such as 3Jam, 4Info, or TextMarks the most.

Now, of course, the price hike could backfire on Verizon. Google, ESPN, Twitter, and others could just suspend their SMS features for Verizon customers, and its competitors could use that disparity to their marketing advantage. But if AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile decide that they too can squeeze out an extra three cents per SMS message, they might simply pile on board.

Forget for a moment that the mobile carriers are already making a huge profit margin on the 20 cents they charge users for each message. They know they cannot charge consumers any more, but Verizon at least thinks it can turn around and charge the Web services where the SMS information is originating. If the charge spreads to other carriers, those services might die or stop using SMS as a communications channel.

(For Twitter, at least, this may not be so dire. Although Stone would not confirm, my understanding form another source is that SMS accounts for less than 10 percent of Twitter’s overall message volume. That makes sense to me. I only use Twitter’s SMS functionality to send in Tweets from my phone, not to receive the barrage of Tweets that I follow).

The other way this could backfire for Verizon is that it could raise some serious Net neutrality issues. If it does not apply this charge evenly across the board, or starts carving out exceptions to do biz dev deals (and Verizon made some indications to Silicon Valley startups it was moving in this direction prior to the rate hike announcement), then it will be giving preferential treatment to one source of information over the other.

What if Verizon were charging the Obama campaign 3 cents per SMS message right now, but cut a deal with the McCain campaign to charge one cent per SMS? That is just a stark example, but you see where this can go. What if it charges the New York Times one rate, and the Wall Street Journal another? It becomes a freedom of speech issue. That is why it is better for the mobile carriers to charge consumers directly (and consistently), rather than try to sneak around and get an extra three cents per message from the Web content companies.

(Photo by Ti.mo).

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

Source: TechCrunch | 12 Oct 2008 | 4:39 pm

U.S. Game Designer Hurtles into Space With DNA Cargo

An American computer game designer -- along with two crewmates and the digitized DNA sequences of some of the world's most famous minds -- reached space Sunday.

Wired.com

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 Oct 2008 | 3:37 pm

New 'Xbox Experience' Too Much For Some 360s (PC Magazine)

PC Magazine - There's a lot to look forward to in the upcoming New Xbox Experience -- set to launch on November 19 -- but for those who own Xbox 360s without a hard drive or a 256MB memory card, you may have to go through a few headaches before you can download it.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Oct 2008 | 2:21 pm

Brightcove 3 (Leaked ScreenShots)

Brightcove, the Web video distribution platform used by media companies including Dow Jones, Warner Music, and the New York Times, is getting a massive makeover. Most people won’t see it, but its customers will. A new version of the Web-based software that they use to upload, manage, and distribute their videos is rolling out soon. It will be called Brightcove 3. (For more background, read the preview of the Brightcove 3 beta we wrote last june, and our interview with Brightcove CEO Jeremy Allaire in August).

Back in June, we noted:

The new publishing model centers around Brightcove’s first server-side API, which allows publishers to deeply integrate video meta data into their display pages. Publishers can choose to highlight related videos in ways that make the most sense for their content (perhaps by organizing them into lists that can be browsed by topics or names). They can also display descriptions, and choose URLs, that optimize SEO. As far as monetization is concerned, in-page advertisements can be synchronized with in-video ads to make for more effective impressions.

. . . Brightcove 3 has been blessed with a new user interface that doesn’t require publishers to skip around between tabs to address different parts of the setup process. An iTunes-looking control panel takes advantage of drag-n-drop and batch editing capabilities, which should streamline the addition and editing of videos.

Yesterday, we received the leaked screenshots below, and paired them with the corresponding current sections of the Web software. As far as we know, they’ve never been seen before outside the private beta. Judging by the screenshots, Brightcove 3 is much more visual, intuitive, and offers Web video publishers a ton more options than before. Click on each screenshot for a larger image.

Here is the new start page (top) versus the current dashboard (bottom):

Brightcove lets customers customize their video players. Here is the new video player styling editor (top) versus the current one (bottom):

Here is the new title editor (top) versus the current one (bottom). Notice how the ability to add tags and pick video stills and thumbnails is put right up front:

The advertising options are also being expanded. Brightcove 3 (top) looks like it will have options for different ad policies and ad types (pre-roll, mid-roll, post-roll) per player. Currently (bottom), users can pick “advertising” or “no advertising”:

And, I think this might be new, Brightcove 3 will create “multiple renditions” of each video in different standards (VP6 and H.264) and different bit rates (360, 512, 900, and 1,500 kbps), depending, presumably, on the viewer’s bandwidth and software:

Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0

Source: TechCrunch | 12 Oct 2008 | 1:10 pm