Information provided by CrunchBase

Information provided by CrunchBase

(Dear Abby) Dear Abby - DEAR ABBY: Unbelievable as it may seem, this actually happened. I was in the ladies' room in my office building when a woman came in talking on her cell phone. She went into the stall next to mine and continued carrying on a conversation throughout her visit -- even while washing her hands!
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:59 pm

Packs of Robots Will Hunt Down Uncooperative Humans

Ostracus writes "The latest request from the Pentagon jars the senses. At least, it did mine. They are looking for contractors to 'develop a software/hardware suite that would enable a multi-robot team, together with a human operator, to search for and detect a non-cooperative human subject. The main research task will involve determining the movements of the robot team through the environment to maximize the opportunity to find the subject ... Typical robots for this type of activity are expected to weigh less than 100 Kg and the team would have three to five robots.'" To be fair, they plan to use the Multi-Robot Pursuit System for less nefarious-sounding purposes as well. They note that the robots would "have potential commercialization within search and rescue, fire fighting, reconnaissance, and automated biological, chemical and radiation sensing with mobile platforms."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:44 pm

USB flash drive skull ring

Solid Alliance has introduced a USB flash drive in the form of a skull ring. It has a capacity of 2GB, sells for $150 from Geek Stuff 4 U, and comes in a variety of fashionable colors. Skull flash drive (Thanks, Kirsten Anderson!)

UPDATE: Previously on BB:
• Lucky Charms Leprechaun Goes Goth

Source: Boing Boing | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:42 pm

I can’t tell if this HDD rack is awesome or budget

It’s a hard drive rack. You puts your hard drives in the cases, and it stores your datas on the disks. Is hard to understand? Yes, maybe, if there is a switch that lets you choose the RAID mode apparently on the fly. Is it intelligent and starts reorganizing your data, like a Drobo? Or is it dumb, and if you switch modes in the middle of a write, it corrupts your data? Since it costs less than $100, I’m going to guess dumb. It connects via SATA or USB and can hold (obviously) two hard drives.

The thing actually looks kind of cool, but I don’t trust it. Not one bit.

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:40 pm

California's Largest Community College Supports Traditional Marriage

SACRAMENTO, Calif., Oct. 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The students of American River College, the largest community college in California, rejected an attempt to recall nine...
Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:36 pm

Elevator Pitch Friday: RouteYou makes it easy to find the perfect driving, hiking, or biking route

It’s Elevator Pitch Friday, which means another startup has created a video that’s worth showing you. This week’s presentation comes from RouteYou, a startup that wants to make it easier for you to find outdoor routes that are optimized for your needs.

RouteYou wants to make it easy for you to find the best route from one place to another, whether in a car, on foot, or riding a bike. They do this by taking raw geo-spatial data and structuring it, turning mapping information into routes with turn-by-turn directions that people can use. They also offer a route planner that allows for collaborative route planning.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:30 pm

Freak Out the Kids With the Ultimate DIY Haunted House

When the trick or treaters arrive at your abode this Halloween, don't just give them candy — give them a serious case of the willies. Follow our tips for making the coolest Halloween display on the block. In Wired's How-To Wiki.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:00 pm

Who’s On Crack in tech: 10.24.08 edition

Section: Communications, Mobile, Computers, Mobile Computers, Gadgets / Other, Gaming, Console, Games, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack, Features

This is where we call out by names the actions and companies that seem odd, out of touch or just plain straight up smokin’ crack.  Technology is an odd realm where PR speak doesn’t hold a lot of water if the 1s and 0s don’t line up.  This week sees posturing, positioning and flat out insanity.  Here is what caught my eye this week:

Phone companies

Our Executive Editor, Adam Berger, sent me this offer yesterday suggesting they were on crack:

Great deal for you. Free phones for the family.  Buy any Verizon Wireless phone for $29.99 or more and get 3 MOTO™ VU204 phones Free MOTO VU204 $29.99 ($79.99 2yr price less $50 mail-in rebate debit card) with new 2yr activation per phone

The classic buy one get three free.  Who does this stuff?  Doesn’t this scream, “The phones are worthless, literally?  We place no value on them and neither should you.” I know economic times are tough and we’ll see gimmicks like these more and more as companies fight for our bucks, but 3 free phones? 

I was just telling our editor, I’ve got 7 phones on my desk right now and 3 dead ones under it.  How many phones can you handle?  Can you imaging the guy or gal walking out of the Verizon store with a sack slung over his/her back with the 30 free phones he just got?  Ebay is always flush with “free” phones, crackheads.

Dell looking at rehab center materials

Despite the funny post this morning about how Apple could buy you in cash right now, now you tell us about preloading our machines with music.  First, it was Sandisk, now you? 

Dudes, I am working to get as much bloated music off my machines as possible and you crackheads keep ramming it in there.  Every time I turn around another Gig is on there.  Come on, at least let me start out clean.  How about some added disc space or NAS system?  It would make a lot more sense.

Asus, don’t you remember MC Hammer?

Predictable.  All the success goes straight to your head and you start thinking oversized pants, funky shades and luxury netbooks are all hip. 

Really?  A luxury netbook?  Every thinking person I know believes the success of these fun little computers is derived from the fact that a 12 pack purchase isn’t all that financially unreasonable.  They are small, cute, fun and best of all: cheap.

So you blow that model and tells us about a luxury model.  I swear you doped up PC makers plug every single niche before thinking if it makes any sense.  You realize you compete with laptops at that price, right? 

Perhaps the R&D used to build this machine could have been used to make the Eee PC even more affordable, you know, the thing we love about the whole product segment?  If you can’t win over netbook-lover Robert Nelson, then you’ve got no market.

Luxury Eee PC - can’t touch this.

Motorola: what we need to solve this economic situation is a really snazzy $2,000 phone.

Oh, Moto.  I keep extending the branch of peace and you keep peeing on it.  Most folks are freaking about banks going under, the government is writing trillion dollar checks and you are shining up the Aura? 

Gordon Gekko called, he is going to be late to pick this one up on his way home.  Jodie Andrefskri made the funny comparison of buying this or 10 iPhones...hmmm.

I plead for exciting phones and you warm up the CNC machine?  Good gravy man!  Look, it is interesting looking, and might do fine as a buy one get 17 free phone, but this isn’t what I meant the past four Who’s on Cracks when I called you out. 

Unless your goal is now to keep making me talk about you on my crack list?  Clever.  Very clever, crackhead.

Hard core gamers own “fat jeans?”

This news blows me away and if you’ve not picked up on it, head over to Gamertell and check it out.  When I think of big names in gaming, GTA is in the top five.  But here comes Wii Fit with its soothing music, downward facing dog yoga crap and upturns the whole apple cart?  It seems Wii Fit is on target to surpass GTA in just unit sales (already blows it away in sales dollars).  No way this can happen.

Or could it?  Could it be steering the industry to teens and preteens has skewed the content?  Can Wii bring new fun and life into gaming?  Will we see games catering to soccer moms like plucky games like School Dropoff or Party Arranger 3?  Is the whole premise of the industry on crack?

What did I miss this week?  And don’t say Android.  I am playing a wait and see game, just like everyone else.

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2008 | 11:00 pm

Affordable, upgradable electric GPR-S motorcycle

No, not that GPRS.

If I knew how to ride a motorcyle, I’d buy one of these. I’ve pledged not to buy a vehicle until I can buy a real electric, but I never said anything about how many wheels it needed to have. The Electric GPR-S from Electric Motorsport is more expensive than a normal motorbike but cheaper than its EV brethren.

Its specs aren’t exactly eye-popping: 70mph top speed, 60 mile range. But! It only costs eight grand and, because the battery is the most likely part to either wear out or be improved, they’ve made it super easy to replace. And it’s pretty sexy, to boot. I’m seriously going to keep my eye on this thing and take some motorcycling classes.
[via Wired Gadget Lab]

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2008 | 10:58 pm

Product Reviews: 40-inch TVs You Need To Know About Now

Sony Bravia KDL-46W4100

Sony's LCD 46er aced our processing-evaluation gauntlet, cleanly displaying all SD and HD video we fed it — even film-style 24-frame-per-second sources. Toss in stunning, accurate color and this LCD rendered our test Blu-ray — Spider-Man 3 — so beautifully we could almost ignore the flick's miserable plot. Almost.

Check our full review on our product review website right here.

Samsung LN40A550

A 40-incher that offers a bright-yet-contrasty picture, we also appreciated the Samsung’s semi-shiny panel t reflected room lighting less than other models. We just tried to ignore its painfully cheesy start-up sound and silly glowing light under Samsung logo.

Check our full review on our product review website right here.

Philips 42PFL5603D

Rounded corners give the Philips’ packaging a dated feel that belie this 42-inch energy miser’s modern center: 120 Hz refresh and a claimed 30% energy savings over standard LCDs. Its color impressed, but its uber-fustrating full-screen menus completely cover the picture, making adjustments more difficult than necessary.

Check our full review on our product review website right here.

Sharp LC46D64U

A stately, classic case doesn’t completely hide this 42-incher's technical flaws: chunky noise reduction that yanks detail along with the noise, noisy BluRay performance, and oversaturated color. We weren’t too fond of its ugly menus, either.

Check our full review on our product review website right here.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Oct 2008 | 10:47 pm

Geek Proposes With iPhone, Succeeds

Antelope, California resident Dan Deeble proposed to his girlfriend with an iPhone this week -- and it worked. 

As dorky as that may sound, it wasn't something impersonal like sending a text message or lame like writing an e-mail. According to a Sacramento Bee story, Deeble used a free iPhone application called Scribular, which works with the handset's GPS to tag specific locations with notes readable by other users of the app.

Deeble bought an iPhone for his girlfriend, Crystal Gardner, too, and loaded it with Scribular. He led her on a virtual scavenger hunt of sorts before busting out the big question.

It started with a Post-it note in Gardner's car, telling her to open Scribular on her phone while she drove to work. Gardner's friends, cued by Deeble, told her to check Scribular throughout the day -- leading her to read love notes, each ending with,  "P.S., I love you," that Deeble virtually planted in various locations in Sacramento.

Finally, the two met at Delta King restaurant at 7 p.m., when Gardner's sister called her to check Scribular one more time. The note read:

"Almost one year ago, I found you -- and I found love.... I ask if you will grant me the greatest privilege of my life and marry me. Forever yours, Dan."

"Of course I will," she responded.

Deeble, a 35-year-old information technology supervisor at Sutter Health, told Wired.com that he got the idea from P.S. I Love You, the first movie he and Gardner, now 28, watched together.

"I just like the idea of random people interacting with her, bringing her these notes and using the technology I use for a living around that," Deeble said.

How freaking cute is that?

See the entire thread of notes at Scribular's web site.

High-tech marriage proposal gets an old-fashioned 'yes' [SacBee via Reddit]

Photo courtesy of Dan Deeble

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Oct 2008 | 10:43 pm

19,683 Tech Layoffs And Counting

This has been a brutal month or so for tech layoffs. According to our Layoff Tracker, there have been 19,683 job eliminations at tech companies announced since mid-September, and we’re not even counting the 24,600 people at Hewlett-Packard who are being eliminated as a result of its merger with EDS.

But only five big companies make up more than 90 percent of the layoffs: Xerox (3,000), Dell (8,900), Yahoo (1,500), eBay (1,500), and German chipmaker Qimonda (3,000). The other 33 companies are mostly startups, and collectively account for 1,683 layoffs. Although three more companies (Sony Ericsson, Nvidia, and TicketMaster) account for an additional 1,110 job losses.

After stripping those out, you get closer to a pure number of layoffs at tech startups: 573

That is the equivalent of about 57 startups with ten people each. And those are just the ones that we or other news outlets have been able to confirm. Our list of tips is much longer than that and we are working through it to confirm as many as we can. For instance, Cake Financial has laid off 30 percent of its staff, or 6 people.

Another company with unreported layoffs earlier this week was Meraki, which I’ve confirmed let go 20 percent of its staff (10 people). That makes Meraki the third Sequoia-backed company to announce layoffs this week. (The other two were Mahalo and imeem). Sequoia urged all of its portfolio companies to make cut-backs earlier this month.

At least most of these startups are already done with their layoffs, unlike Yahoo which announced a 10 percent cut is coming but won’t say who exactly is losing their jobs for another few weeks. Layoffs are bad enough, but don’t prolong the misery.

This past week alone, tech companies have laid off 13,809 people:

Company–––––––––Layoffs

Xerox————3,000
Daptiv————–21
Haute Secure———3
Cake Financial——–6
Mercent————-6
Dell————-8,900
imeem————-20
Mahalo————-6
TicketMaster——300
Eons—————8
Veoh————–15
Yahoo———-1,500
Wikia—————3
Meraki————-10
Break.com———-11

Total———-13,809

If you know of any layoffs at a tech company, please submit a tip with the name of the company and number of layoffs. If it’s been covered, also send a link to the blog post or news article.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 10:24 pm

AOL Begins Shutdown Of AOL Pictures, BlueString And Xdrive

In July we wrote about AOL’s plans to shutter a number of services based on an internal email from EVP Products and Marketing Kevin Conroy.

Next week, AOL says, they’ll begin to communicate the news to consumers around the shutdown of three of those properties - AOL Pictures, BlueString and Xdrive.
AOL Pictures will close in December, and users will have the chance to move photos to American Greetings PhotoWorks, download photos to a personal computer, or purchase an archive of photos on DVD. Photos will be available until June 2009.

XDrive and Bluestring will close on December 31. Users can download files or purchase a DVD until that time. After that, it sounds like the files will be deleted.

MyMobile, which is still in beta, will also likely be shut down by end of year.

A FAQ is reprinted below.

AOL Pictures

Q. When will the AOL Pictures service close?

A. The AOL Pictures service will continue until December 31, 2008. After this date, the service will close down and all photos stored will no longer be accessible through AOL Pictures. However, users will still be able to retrieve their images through our online photo service partner, American Greetings PhotoWorks, after registering for a free American Greetings PhotoWorks account. Users must register for an American Greetings PhotoWorks account by June 30, 2009 to transition their assets.

Q. When/how will users be notified?

A. Anyone who has stored photos on AOL Pictures will receive a series of emails from AOL beginning the week of October 27, 2008 and continuing until the site closes in December.

Q. What are the options for retrieving photos from AOL Pictures?

A. There are three options for retrieving photos from AOL Pictures. Users may choose as many of these options as they like, before December 31, 2008:

1. Register with American Greetings PhotoWorks to access photos;

2. Download photos to a personal computer;

3. Buy an archive of photos on DVD.

For more information and specific instructions, users can go to pictures.aol.com.

Q. What happens to photos if users do not take action before December 31, 2008?

From January 1, 2009 through June 30, 2009, users can register for a free PhotoWorks account to access their pictures.

Q. Will this impact any other AOL products or services?

A. After December 31, AOL Pictures will no longer be integrated with any other AOL product or service, and embed links to photos stored on AOL Pictures will become obsolete. Additionally, the AOL Pictures APIs will be removed from dev.aol.com and no longer work with 3rd party services.

Q. Why did AOL choose PhotoWorks exclusively?

A. After careful consideration and close examination, AOL Pictures chose PhotoWorks as the best option for users. AOL and American Greetings have a long standing relationship providing AOL users personal and social content for personal expression. For over 10 years, American Greetings has been AOL’s exclusive provider of ecards and greetings. With continued free, unlimited photo storing and sharing, access to PhotoWorks’ leading selection of photo merchandise including American Greetings photo cards, photo books, keepsakes, calendars and prints, PhotoWorks offers AOL Pictures users a perfect new home for their photo expressions.

Xdrive/BlueString

Q. When will Xdrive and BlueString close?

A. The Xdrive and BlueString services will close on December 31, 2008. After this date, all files and data stored on the services will be permanently deleted. To retrieve files, users should go to Xdrive and log in using their Xdrive or BlueString user ID and password.

Q. When will users be notified?

A. Email notification to users will begin on November 5, 2008.

Q. What options do users have for retrieving files?

A. BlueString uses the Xdrive online storage service to store photos, videos and music uploaded through BlueString, so both BlueString and Xdrive users need to visit the Xdrive site to retrieve their files, and log in using an Xdrive or BlueString user ID and password.

Once there, users have several options and tools for retrieving files.

· Create a single .zip file, containing all of the files in the Xdrive account, which can then be downloaded to a computer;
· Purchase an archive of files on DVD;
· Download files through the standard Xdrive Web and Desktop Clients.

Step-by-step instructions on how to take any of the above actions will be provided on Xdrive.com and AOL will also list a number of online storage services that provide similar functionality.

Q. What happens if users don’t do anything to retrieve files by December 31, 2008?

A. After December 31, 2008, users will no longer be able to access their Xdrive accounts. All files and data will be permanently deleted and users will no longer be able to retrieve files.

Q. Will users who pay for storage through Xdrive receive a refund?

A. All billing for the Xdrive service will cease as of November 5, 2008 when email notifications are sent out to users. Users who subscribe to the Xdrive annual plan will receive a pro-rated refund based on the annual plan renewal date, and credited to the payment method on file within six to eight weeks.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 10:19 pm

Amazon Kindle Endorsed By Oprah

Oprah Winfrey enthused about the Amazon Kindle on her show today — it's her "new favorite thing" — and had Jeff Bezos on to announce a $50-off offer good till Nov. 1. A plug on Oprah is ordinarily a sign that a product has crossed over into the mainstream. But her show's audience has been slipping lately, and it's unclear how many cash-strapped citizens will be willing to part with $309 (after the special offer) for a new techno-gadget, for which they then have to shell out more money for DRM-encrusted content.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Oct 2008 | 10:08 pm

Disposable Phone Maker Hops on to Google Android

Just days after the first Google-powered handset hit stores, disposable phone maker Hop-on announced its Android phone is on the way, too.

Scarce with details, Hop-on said in a press release that it expects to launch its Android-powered phone at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas this coming January. The phone will cost under $200.

Though Hop-on is known for its low-cost, disposable phones, the company did not specify whether the Android-powered handset would be disposable as well.
It certainly does make sense, however, for Hop-on to adopt Android, since the operating system is freely licensed and would keep costs down.

Press Release [PR News Wire]

Photo: Hop-on

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Oct 2008 | 10:04 pm

Tame the Wild Web With These Browser-Specific CSS Hacks

Your code is standards-compliant and it looks just right in Firefox. But Internet Explorer, not so much. While outdated browsers are still a fact of life, it's up to you to make your pages backwards-compatible. Why make visitors with up-to-date browsers suffer with obsolete code? Solve that problem the Webmonkey way — hack around it.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Oct 2008 | 10:00 pm

What’s Up at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (Hint: Cloudy With a Chance of Amazon Pain) [BoomTown]

Next week in Los Angeles, Microsoft will kick off its Professional Developers Conference, a place the software giant likes to unveil all kinds of news in a big launchtastic flourish.

For all the noise, it’s worth paying attention, because Monday’s outlook will be cloudy, as in cloud computing.

The day will include a speech from Microsoft’s Chief Software Architect, Ray Ozzie (pictured here), and others on, among other topics, its cloud infrastructure service initiatives–designed to match aggressive efforts from Amazon (AMZN) in the space.

There will also be a demo of Windows 7, which will hopefully put an end to the long Vista nightmare when it is eventually released. (To be ahead of the curve, see a video below of Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer and founder Bill Gates showing Windows 7 off at our sixth D: All Things Digital conference in May.)

In all, a Windows geekfest!

Microsoft (MSFT) execs will probably be in a good mood given the decent earnings results the company announced earlier this week for the third quarter. Revenue was up nine percent to $15 billion, even though net profits only increased 1.9 percent to $4.37 billion.

Still, that was a pretty good performance in a down economy, due to strength in Microsoft’s powerful Windows and Office franchises. And despite–as usual–the weakness of its online division.

While the revenue for its MSN, search and advertising network grew to $770 million, or up 15 percent in the quarter, operating losses doubled to $480 million from $267 in the same period a year ago. Search grew more than display advertising, a forward outlook Microsoft that maintained.

And still no digital chief, long promised by Ballmer, in sight either. Sources said that head, who will lead the unit, has still not been selected. (BoomTown is officially beginning to feel sorry for longtime leading internal candidate Brian McAndrews.)

While PDC has never been an online-focused event–this is for the big-dog businesses of Microsoft–it will still be interesting that the event will focus on continued movement toward the cloud.

It’s an inevitable–though decidedly dicey–journey for the software-dependent behemoth. So, the continued transformation should be interesting to watch.

Here is the Windows 7 demo from D6:

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:58 pm

Sequoia’s Voter Consternation Drive [Digital Daily]

A man who reportedly believed Republicans were conspiring to steal today’s election entered an Allentown polling site, signed in and proceeded to smash the screen of one of the electronic voting machines with a metal cat paperweight, poll volunteers said.

‘He smashed it with the cat’s ears,’ said volunteer Jim Govostis.”

–Morning Call, Nov. 7, 2006

Fantastic. Here we are, just two weeks before the 2008 presidential election and the integrity and accuracy of some of the electronic voting machines that will determine its outcome are in question.

Again.

According to new research from the Princeton University Center for Information Technology Policy, the Sequoia AVC Advantage machines used throughout New Jersey and Louisiana, and in a few counties in Colorado, Virginia, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania as well, can be hacked in eight minutes to manipulate vote tallies.

From the Princeton report:

The AVC Advantage contains a computer. If someone installs a different computer program for that computer to run, it can deliberately add up the votes wrong. It’s easy to make a computer program that steals votes from one party’s candidates, and gives them to another, while taking care to make the total number of votes come out right. It’s easy to make this program take care to cheat only on election day when hundreds of ballots are cast, and not cheat when the machine is being tested for accuracy. This kind of fraudulent computer program can modify every electronic ‘audit trail’ in the computer. Without voter-verified paper ballots, it’s extremely hard to know whether a voting machine (such as the AVC Advantage) is running the right program.”

Damning allegations and ones which Sequoia categorically denied after unsuccessfully attempting to suppress them. According to Sequoia, its voting machines are vulnerable only in a classroom setting. In real-life election scenarios, they’re just fine. “…Simple, established, and previously used accuracy and security protections–removed from the Advantages studied in the report published by the plaintiffs–make the items in their report next to impossible,” Sequoia said in rebuttal to Princeton researchers’ claims. “In fact, many of the scenarios painted by plaintiffs depend on the existence of crooked, malicious, and corrupt pollworkers, while the success of some scenarios depends on both corrupt pollworkers and inattentive voters.”

How reassuring.

Well, at least they’re not switching votes between candidates like some of those touchscreen systems in West Virginia, right?

PREVIOUSLY:

• Got a “Verifiable Paper Trail” for Those Phantom Voters?
• Premier Continues Proud Tradition of Diebold E-Voting Screw-Ups
• Make the E-voting System’s Password “1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8″? That’s so Obvious It’s Genius!
• Diebold: A New Beginning (to the First Step in E-Voting Terror)
• AccuVote? Bit of an Oxymoron, Don’t You Think?
• What Did You Expect? They All Run Windows…

[Image Credit: Diebold Variations]

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:52 pm

Are Political Pollsters Undercounting the Unwired? [Voices]

By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Columnist, Tech Trader Daily

Some political pollsters appear to be undercounting the support for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama by not including people who have only wireless phones, Bernstein Research analysts Craig Moffett and Patricia Pan in a research piece today.

The Bernstein analysts note that according to a December 2007 survey conducted by the Center for Disease Control, about 16 percent of Americans now have only wireless phones, and no landlines. That group tends to skew young: The CDC found that a third of the population 18-29 years old have only wireless devices. The analysts note as well that “there is compelling evidence that younger voters”–those most likely to have only wireless phones–strongly favor Obama. They note a USA Today/MTV/Gallup poll that found 18-29 year old voters support Obama over Republican John McCain by 61 percent to 32 percent.

A Pew Research Center study on the topic of wireless bias, they add, found that the cellphone-only population preferred Obama over McCain by 55-36 percent.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:50 pm

Radeon HD 4830 fills the budget-midrange gap

AMD’s 4000 series has been exceptional in that not only has it exceeded NVIDIA at the high end while keeping the price down, but the budget offerings going all the way down to <$100 are good performers for the money as well. The new HD 4830 slots right in between the 46XX series ($70-80) and the 4850 (~$170). At around $130 or less, the Radeon HD 4830 provides DirectX 10.1 support and pretty decent performance. There’s a good review over at Hot Hardware with more info, but it’s pretty much what you expect. Support for everything you need and every dollar’s worth of performance but not more.

The graphics card market is stuffed to the gills right now and you can find competition and clear choices practically at every $10 interval. If you’re looking to upgrade, just set your own price, be it $100 or $500, and seek out the best deal for that money.
[image credit: Hot Hardware]

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:35 pm

QOTD [Digital Daily]

QOTD

At age 30, they are given an opportunity. If they accept, then we train them, at age 35, we send them. At age 65, who knows what advances have taken place. They can retire there, or maybe we can bring them back.”

– Buzz Aldrin says the first astronauts to journey to Mars should plan to stay there.

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:35 pm

Report: North Korea restricting cell phone use (CNET)

CNET - North Korea has been restricting the use of cell phones to prevent its residents from sharing news about a worsening food crisis, according to a report on the The Times of London Web site.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:28 pm

Spy Cam Hides Inside an ID Card

Brando's Spy Pass Card Micro Camera can capture still images, video and audio -- and while it looks pretty sneaky, the part that reads "ID CARD" might give you away. I don't know about you, but I've never received an ID card explicitly labeled "ID CARD." You might as well plant a spy cam in a credit card and label it "CREDIT CARD" as opposed to American Express or Visa. That'd be discreet.

Kind of an oversight, but not surprising, considering the $174 spy cam's made by the same company that designed tiny keyboards for its Smurf demographic. 

Product Page [Brando via DVICE]

Photo: Brando

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:23 pm

Wired magazine’s game nods for November 2008

FROM GAMERTELL - The November 20080 issue of Wired magazine offers a few groovy gamer nods including a quick look at Webkinz, causal games, gaming tech, the iPhone and classic manual scans including Pong and the Apple-1…
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:22 pm

Ralph Lauren launches an iPhone application. Anyone care?

Proving that not everything needs to be made into a mobile application, Ralph Lauren has released a free iPhone application. No matter where you are, you can look at Ralph Lauren clothes. Can you buy them via the application? Er, no. Does it allow you to read those QR codes Ralph Lauren started putting in ads a few months back? Nope.

What it does do:
• Video highlights from the Fall 2008 runway show
• Go behind the scenes with the Backstage Pass photo gallery, full run-of-show video and Lookbook feature
• A look ahead to the Spring 2009 runway show (full set of features, videos, and exclusive photography)
• Domestic and international store locators
• A rare look at the artist at work through the short film “Portraits of a Collection,” narrated in part by the designer himself

In other words, nothing that couldn’t be done just as well through a web site. It even looks like a web site, straying about as far from Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and UI standards as possible.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:05 pm

jill-e designs steps up and produces manly camera bags dubbed jack

jill-e designs have been around for a while with great, but pricey, camera bags. the firm has won numerous awards but is now stepping in to the male arena with its jack lineup. three different bags make up the line starting with a rolling camera bag, followed by a messenger style, and lastly, a medium sized case. all the models are made out of rich brown colombian leather, with contrasting stitching. quite honestly, if the bags didn’t start at $229, i would be all over ‘em. they should be available sometime early next year.

jill-e via i4u

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2008 | 9:04 pm

E-tailers Try Email Discounts To Lure Shoppers

Online retailers struggling with plunging consumer spending are stepping up their marketing efforts with aggressive emails touting the latest deals.  With subject lines like “Hurry, final sale ends," or "Last chance to save 20 percent,", the e-mails aim to lure consumers back into online spending.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:45 pm

Amazon Ends EC2 Beta, Adds Windows Services (NewsFactor)

NewsFactor - Amazon Web Services (AWS) is reaching farther into the cloud. After two years in beta, Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) is now generally available. Amazon also announced a beta for hosted support running Microsoft Windows Server and Microsoft SQL Server.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:42 pm

Despite slump, Yahoo plans new operations in Neb. (AP)

AP - Yahoo Inc. says it will invest at least $100 million in a new data center and a new service center in Nebraska, creating at least 100 jobs.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:33 pm

Apple goes political with California’s Prop 8

In an attempt to stay non-partisan, here is Apple’s official statement on California’s Proposition 8 that aims to eliminate rights of same-sex couples to marry.

Apple is publicly opposing Proposition 8 and making a donation of $100,000 to the No on 8 campaign. Apple was among the first California companies to offer equal rights and benefits to our employees’ same-sex partners, and we strongly believe that a person’s fundamental rights — including the right to marry — should not be affected by their sexual orientation. Apple views this as a civil rights issue, rather than just a political issue, and is therefore speaking out publicly against Proposition 8.

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:25 pm

New Cheap Wii Accessories Land Near an Economy-Crippled Home Near You

Two new Wii accessories are being released this month that are sure to end up in hundreds of Santa wish lists this Christmas, one a glowing jedi-like saber attachment and the other a jolly gun trigger.

So when the kids are ready to open presents, it will be the perfect time for Daddy to sit them down and talk about how his housing empire went up in flames this year and why that means he can no longer afford $20 accessories to their favorite gaming console. Oh Merry!

For the other four people in America that will have extra spending cash, we're not sure you should spend it on these two, but they do seem interesting enough to try.

Thrustmaster's Glow Saber Duo Pack NW is compatible with any games where you need to use a light saber or swords, and each casing includes 17 LEDs (one of the sticks is blue, another red). The hardware is supposed to be plasticky and flexible, so the little ones won't get hurt when they inevitably lose their minds and start stabbing their sister. The pack goes for about $35 at Amazon.com.

The gun trigger seems a bit more fun, though it is similar to Nintendo's own $20 Wii Zapper, which came with the Link's Crossbow Training game and that Game|Life’s Chris Kohler said actually made the shooting games less fun because it didn't improve upon the accuracy of the regular Wiimote.

The Dual Trigger Gun NW has a two-hand grip that supposedly improves stability for shooting games but the best thing about it is that it only comes in at $18.

 

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:23 pm

Judge Rejects 'Making Available' Defense in Teen File Sharing Case

A federal judge is ordering a 20-year-old Texas woman to pay the Recording Industry Association of America $7,400 to settle copyright infringement violations from when she was a juvenile. The woman demanded a trial, but the judge ruled she was liable because she made the songs available on an open share folder on Kazaa. The outcome underscores that the level of proof necessary to win a file sharing case varies from judge to judge.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:23 pm

Discovery May Be Lost Tribe Of Philippines

In what could be a major archaeological discovery, authorities in the Philippines may have unknowingly recovered the remnants of a long-lost tribe during the confiscation of 22 bags of broken pottery seized from antiquity smugglers.Experts at the National Museum in Manila are now analyzing the burial urns from a Philippine tribe that lived over 2,000 years ago."The pottery has human faces that show emotions," said Eusebio Dizon, A U.S.-trained archaeologist who leads the archaeological unit at the National Museum, during an interview with Reuters.Pictures of people on the shards could mean the tribe had different origins from the native tribes in the Philippines, Dizon said."The Manobos, Tirurays and B'laans tribes that have survived over time do not bury their dead in painted anthropomorphic (human form) jars.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:15 pm

Don’t Be Evil? Google Uses Shady Ad Tactics To Edge Out Competitor

Two weeks ago we wrote about Yamli, a powerful transliteration engine that allows users to use their Latin keyboards to type in Arabic text. The service has gotten rave reviews (see the comments), and serves a very large audience that has largely been neglected.

Now we’ve gotten word that Google has launched its own competing service, and is using a dubious advertising scheme to get the word out. Running searches for “Yamli” or “Yamli.com” on any of Google’s Arabic portals (like Google.ae) will prominently display ads for Google’s competing service alongside the search results.

Google’s AdWords policy is to only ban names trademarked outside of the United States, The UK, and Canada from being used as ad keywords. I contacted Yamli’s CEO, who says that his trademark is filed in the United States (though he has plans to apply for one elsewhere), so it sounds like Google isn’t directly violating its own policies. But the practice is undeniably shady. And searches for other competitive sites don’t return results for Google products (for example, a search for “Wikipedia” doesn’t return an ad for Google Knol).

Google has long been criticized for using its own AdWords advertising service to promote its own products (other search engines do the same, and have fallen under similar scrutiny). Google may not technically be breaking any of its own policies with these Yamli ads, but it’s ignoring its oft-spoken mantra: “Don’t Be Evil”.

Update: Google has removed the ad.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:09 pm

Oprah Loves the Kindle So Much She’s Offering $50 Off

Amazon Kindle is either Oprah's favorite gadget or Amazon sent over the largest fruit basket looking for the ultimate endorsement. Either way, by using OPRAHWINFREY as a coupon code, her glorious name nets you $50 off the e-books standard $359 price. Gosh, is there anything Oprah can't do?

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:09 pm

Apper! No! This is Orange!

My friend Jeremy once bought a tourbillon watch on eBay. Tourbillons were invented by Breguet in the 1880s in order to offset the force of gravity on the balance wheel and they’ve become something of a status symbol of late. Jeremy’s watch, however, had a working tourbillon in it but broke maybe three weeks after he bought it, never to run again. This is what I think of this wonky but almost note-perfect rendition of the iPhone. But, like most Chinese knock offs, they might have gotten the details right but the rest is abysmal.

via BBG

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:05 pm

Are point-and-shoots matches for Leicas and Hasselblads?

Here’s a controversy that’s always popping up. “Do we really need those $40,000 professional cameras when a regular point and shoot takes almost indistinguishable pictures?” It’s often propagated in the “six megapixels is enough” argument, or a fraudulent comparision between two resized photos. Depending on the size of the originals, there is always a certain point they can be shrunk to at which they will appear equivalent. Sure, there’s a practical “but that’s what you see” aspect to the test that is compelling, but if you’re shooting in conditions that don’t play to the strengths of the expensive camera, it’s not really a fair comparison.

It’s no surprise that a G10 should be able to match a Hasselblad up to a certain point. The entire idea is that past that point the Hasselblad is superior. Printing 13×19 is not what Leafs and Leicas are for. From the perspective of their argument, a cell phone camera is equivalent to a Hasselblad — up to a size of 100×100 pixels. See how that works?
[via CNET]

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:00 pm

Virgin Mobile Canada introduces “myPair” plan for unlimited cellular sweet nothings

We’ve all been there: There’s still a week left in your month, and you and your snuggle buddy are already 300 “Oh, I just wanted to hear your voice” calls deep. Your minutes are now almost completely gobbled up. Suddenly, you’re wracking your brain with each incoming call, trying to figure out if it’s worth your now precious time. I mean, come on, you just talked to your mom two weeks ago - if it was really important, she’d call you at least four more times.

This morning, Virgin Mobile Canada introduced a new “myPair” plan for couples, ensuring that you’ll never have to go a day without making kissy-kissy noises with that special someone. 50 bucks a month (for two lines, so $25 per person) gets you unlimited local calling between the two lines, 350 shared daytime minutes, unlimited evening/weekend minutes, and you get to pick one of the following: myCrew (Unlimited talk/text with 5 people), myTalk&Text (Unlimited texting), or myCalls (unlimited incoming calls).

Oh, and before anyone asks: Yes, “pair” means two people. That’s it.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:00 pm

Metatomix Executive Jon Pilkington Named Mass Technology Leadership Council 2008 CXO of the Year

Metatomix, Inc., a leading provider of semantic solutions to justice and public safety, financial services, manufacturing and life sciences organizations, today announced that Vice President of Marketing Jon Pilkington has been named the 2008 CXO of the Year by the Mass Technology Leadership Council (MassTLC).
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:00 pm

ESP Technologies Corp. Ranked Number 41 in Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 Program for New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut

NEW YORK, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- ESP Technologies Corp.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:00 pm

Cisco TelePresence Supports Next-Generation Commercial Services From NTT East and NTT West

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) Godo Kaisha (President & CEO: Edzard Overbeek; Address: Akasaka, Minato-ku, Tokyo; Cisco) today announced that Cisco(R) TelePresence now supports the next-generation network (NGN) commercial services provided by Nippon Telegraph and Telephone East Corp.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:00 pm

Rohm and Haas National Poster Contest Winners Announced

Rohm and Haas Company (NYSE:ROH) has named the five winners of its "Having a Ball With Chemistry" National Poster Contest, held in conjunction with National Chemistry Week (Oct. 19-25). Children were encouraged to submit posters displaying why they love the sports they play.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2008 | 8:00 pm

Well Said: Ana Marie Cox on Bloggers Then and Now [BoomTown]

The more things change, the more they actually do change.

At least, according to this excerpt from a 10-questions interview former Wonkette blogger Ana Marie Cox, who now contributes to Time magazine’s Swampland blog, did with Stop Smiling magazine recently.

Cox (pictured here) was on a blogger panel at our third D: All Things Digital conference in 2005, where she talked about the changes in the media industry due to the rise of blogs.

At the time, there was a lot of controversy about the rise of bloggers.

But now, in questions No. 7 and 8 here, Cox discusses the huge differences in the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns, in terms of blogs, and how the image of bloggers has shifted dramatically with mainstream media.

From Cox’s lips to traditional journalists’ ears.

Here are the excerpts:

Q7: You’ve been around long enough to see the differences between the 2004 and 2008 presidential campaigns. Do you have any strong feelings about how this year differs from the Kerry-Bush election, in terms of the role that blogs play?

AMC: In 2004, MTV hired me to cover the Democratic convention, and I swear I did two or three interviews just on the fact that I was a blogger covering the convention. I doubt that would happen today. In 2004, people would be highly suspicious of me, because at any moment I could break out my computer and blog about them. I went to YearlyKos in 2006, as one of my first assignments for Time, and I was hanging out with the real reporters, and there was this running joke: As soon as someone said something off-color or impolitic, you’d say, “Hey, I’m gonna blog that.” Like a taunt. In 2008, I was at a Republican debate during the primaries, and I looked around the filing center and everyone was blogging. Everyone has that force propelling them to publish whatever they can. Anything that happens to them is now fodder for a Washington Post blog.

Q8: Do you think more traditional reporters still frown on blogging as if it were not a serious form of journalism?

AMC: The whole “are bloggers journalists?” question, which was always stupid, is finally fading, especially thanks to people like Josh Marshall [of Talking Points Memo], who have shown you don’t have to have a big organization behind you to be a journalist. The defining characteristic of a journalist is what you produce. I think it’s changed the question from “are bloggers journalists?” to “what is journalism?” And that is a perfectly acceptable debate to have. There’s never going to be an answer, but it starts us at a better place than simply talking about delivery systems.”

Ana

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Oct 2008 | 7:51 pm

Warming Cools Chances for Skating Marathon

A 120-mile skating race across Holland will become rarer with warming.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Oct 2008 | 7:47 pm

Dude, Where Are My Gadget Reviews?

If you're a regular at the G-Lab then you're probably aware that we've been publishing witty, original, and informative product reviews on the site almost everyday for the last two years. But all of a sudden starting this week, the reviews have kinda sorta gone AWOL from the site. Where did they go? Swallowed by the Montauk Monster? Secreted away by Bigfoot? Oh no. We've got a much more rational explanation.

I'll let you in on a little secret, for the past year the G-Lab and Wired's web development team have been toiling away at something very special: a separate website dedicated to product reviews — everything from the short form to the long winded. The site, which was soft launched yesterday, will still have the same smart, irreverent Wired voice, accompanied by hard nosed testing, and beautiful (home brewed) photography of the freshest, most delicious gadgets and gear imaginable long before they've hit store shelves.

So go ahead and slap this link into your bookmarks, favorite places, and RSS feeds: www.wired.com/reviews. Check it out and tell us what you think. Remember this is a beta version, we're still making improvements, so be gentle.

In the meantime, we'll be still be publishing the links to the daily reviews on the G-Lab. Today we're having a look at three 40-inch HD televisions that we put through our testing ringer. Hint: be wary of flashy bezels; they often conceal podunk performance. 

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Oct 2008 | 7:28 pm

iPhone or Google Phone? Web Site Helps You Choose

Many who resisted purchasing an iPhone were waiting for the release of the first Google-powered handset. That phone -- the HTC T-Mobile G1 -- launched Wednesday, but the decision to invest in a handset still isn't easy, as Android is a young operating system with as much to learn as Apple's iPhone. Will you go with the tightly controlled, somewhat mature iPhone or the brand new, open-platform G1?

BillShrink introduced a new web tool this week that makes the choice a bit easier by breaking down how the costs fit in to your personalized budget. The calculator enables you to enter how many minutes you typically use, how many texts you send and so on to determine which phone offers a plan to suit your lifestyle.

From there on, you can compare the features of each handset at the site, too. Pretty nifty tool if you're really torn between the two giants.

I'm sure there are some of you mulling over this decision over the weekend. What'd you end up going for?

BillShrink (Thanks, Vanessa!)

Photo: Jonathan Snyder / Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Oct 2008 | 7:10 pm

Will Ferrell as Dubya (on the Hot Lady and the Tiger Woods Guy) [BoomTown]

Here is the latest "Saturday Night Live" political video, with Will Ferrell reprising his excellent take on President George W. Bush, along with Tina Fey as Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, in a spoof version of the endorsement of Sen. John McCain.

Once again, it is likely to be more popular online than on television, as it has been for all of the sketches, a striking trend for the long-running comedy show.

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Oct 2008 | 7:04 pm

From the makers of "Bacon Salt", a new type of sandwich spread

Coming any day now to an artery near you. Consider me a day one adopter.

Baconnaise product page [Baconnaise.com]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:59 pm

Bidz.com: Merriman Downgrades, Cuts Estimates; Stock Slides [Voices]

By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily

Bidz.com (BIDZ) shares are down sharply today after Merriman Curhan Ford analyst Eric Wold cut his rating on the online jewelery auction site to Neutral from Buy. He cut his 2008 EPS estimate to 55 cents, from 58 cents, and trimmed 2009 to 63 cents, from 71 cents. His revenue estimates drop to $235.3 million from $240.5 million for this year, and to $272.7 million from $287.4 million for next year.

Wold writes in a research note that while Bidz.com is “uniquely positioned to offer consumers a discounted way to purchase jewelery,” he adds that “we cannot assume that Bidz.com will be immune from an overall slowdown in consumer spending.”

Wold notes that he had cut numbers on the company just last week, based on his view that the company was being hurt by worsening economic trends. But he says trends have already declined further.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:50 pm

Live: Yahoo Previews Its New Application Platform

I’m here at Yahoo Brickhouse in San Francisco for an event where Yahoo will preview its new Application Platform for developers, the latest effort in an ongoing strategy to be more “open” that was announced last April.

Executive Vice President Ash Patel will be joined by Jay Rossiter, Cody Simms, Neal Sample, and Sam Pullara to explain for the first time in depth just what the Application Platform is all about. I’ll be posting my notes here as I learn more.

The release of the application platform comes on the heals of a new profile system, which didn’t exactly launch without a hitch.

Yahoo! Open Strategy Overview

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: openhack08 yos)

• The platform isn’t being rolled out today; apparently it’s coming sometime next week.
• 11:51am - Ash Patel is kicking things off by saying that we’ll be doing a “deep dive” into Yahoo’s open strategy. He is going back a bit in history explaining how there was once a “Jerry fund” that later evolved into Yahoo’s developer program, which works on APIs and other tools. When Jerry took over as CEO, he wanted to turn Yahoo into a platform company and have products that enforce that notion. Move away from collection of products to platform that has a developer ecosystem of developers, publishers, and advertisers.
• 11:54am - A strength and weakness of Yahoo is that it has a lot of data. Developers have wanted to tap into it but it hasn’t been easy to do, especially with all the acquisitions. So Patel sketched up diagrams with Jerry that embodied a vision for platform that provided single consumer experience. Then the challenge was turning it into an “end state”, something that actually allowed products to come alive and change the Yahoo consumer’s experience.
• 11:55am - Over period of 3-4 weeks teams worked on specing various elements out and come up compelling story that was called the “Sharon Deck” (named after the typical Yahoo user). They walked through the typical Yahoo user’s experience after all the changes were put in place. That’s when they decided it was something they really had to do, so they formed a team that became the YOS (Yahoo Open Strategy) team. It’s what they’ve spent the better part of a year on. Search Monkey and BOSS were early parts of the strategy, but biggest was the new profile from last week.
• 11:57am - The profile system is like an iceberg - you’re only seeing 1/9 of what’s going on. Youll start seeing other products that leverage the profile system. Neil started on platform side but has now moved to product side so products actually take advantage of the platform. Open Mail, Galaxy experience, new frontpage all will take advantage of the platform and its openness. It’s all about rewiring the user experience so it engages users, changes Yahoo from a walled garden to the “best of the web”.
• 11:59am - Today we’re going into the details of the platform, will be an interactive presentation so we can ask questions during it. Neil is now introducing us to the team (”brain trust”) behind YOS - Rossiter, Sample, Simms, and Pullara.
• Jay Rossiter (Head of Yahoo Open Strategy) is now up onstage. He was pulled into the “big bet” late last year. At the start, he wasn’t sure how serious Yahoo was about all this, especially because it would take such a significant effort. So he was a bit skeptical but within a day, after talking with Jerry, Sue and Dave Filo, he was convinced it was serious and Yahoo was throwing its weight behind it. So he came onboard.
• 12:02pm - Hundreds of people within Yahoo are working on the platform - it’s a large scale development. Has both executive-level buy-in and the developers behind it. And now we’ve delivered it. This doesn’t always happen because often companies have executive-level buy-in but no traction among engineers. At Yahoo, the problem has traditionally been the opposite - too many ideas among engineers but little executive guidance.
• 12:04pm - Developer platform coming next week. We had an open hack day last month, second in history of company. Challenge was to give developers API and 24 hours to build an interesting application. Then we had an award ceremony. That was a developer preview, but next week we actually bring these APIs out.
• 12:06pm - Goals of YOS: 1) establish a social dimension, 2) open properties to 3rd party developers like never before (so they can blend their ideas with Yahoo’s own), and 3) rewire yahoo itself with social features (this part’s going to be a “rolling thunder” with social products coming online over time)
• 12:08pm - Rossiter is now going to talk about the technology stack behind YOS. The Yahoo Developer Network (YDN) is the “front door” for developers, with full documentation and details about Yahoo’s developer services. YOS has been built on top of Yahoo’s cloud intrastructure, which makes it possible to launch services on a large scale across many countries (the new profiles launched for 31 countries, for example). On top of this infrastructure sits a social platform that embodies one social graph and profile record. On top of that is an application platform that provides a framework for developing social apps. And on top of that is a web services and query language that provides one mechanism for accessing and mashing up data. The application platform enables apps on Yahoo itself whereas the web services and query language can be used to create apps off Yahoo with Yahoo data.
• 12:14pm - Right now Yahoo users have multiple user accounts for different services. So first step is collapsing all of those identities into one and then map that single identity to a social graph where it’s connected with others (friends, etc). This part alone is quite a big task, but from a user’s point of view it’s very beneficial. We had to rework our internal login components so we had an identity record that was safe to share across applications, even ones managed by third parties.
• 12:15pm - Then we wanted users to be able to map this single identity with other identities on the web (Amazon, Twitter, Digg, Facebook, Gmail, CNN, Windows, Google, eBay, etc). One of the things we’re going to do is allow people to use other accounts (like Gmail) and log into Yahoo with them.
• 12:16pm - Once we’ve tied user accounts together from across the web, we can bring in information from these other services and make it usable on Yahoo. Conversely, we’ll make this aggregated information available for other services as well. It’s an in and out service, not just a data trap. We’re using oAuth to do this so users can break access for services when desired.
• 12:19pm - You can give temporary access to your profile through a token so you don’t give up too much control. You can also set it up so that services either have permanent access to your profile data or only for a set number of days. Granular controls are also available that let you give access to particular parts of your profile but not others (this is an extension to the oAuth spec).
• 12:20pm - Yahoo is concerned about making sure that these controls are intuitive, which is why it’s being careful about how it rolls them out among its userbase. They are considering language tweaks and tutorials as some of the ways to explain things better. Getting the user experience right is key, as is setting the right defaults for users. Users will also have the ability to give developers visibility of their data but not access (a nuanced point that controls the flow of data)
• 12:23pm - Some of our competitors tend to train users to not care about these sort of issues. Yahoo will make sure that users know exactly how programs will access their information, and the prompt should look fairly scary (”skull and cross bones”) so users actually think about it (they appear to be contrasting their method with that of Facebook’s). This will encourage developers to do the right thing. This warning and permission granting system will hold true whether the user is installing something onto Yahoo or using an app off Yahoo that accesses Yahoo data.
• 12:30pm - We’re working on the ability to do authenticated requests so banks and other security-minded institutions can tie their services into YOS with peace of mind. Yahoo recognizes that a lot of security considerations have to be made if such organizations are going to open up for data interflow.
• 12:34pm - Patel: “the number of user accounts people have is ballooning out of control”. Yahoo wants to be the starting point for all of these accounts and to create an engaging experience for all of them.
• 12:36pm - Yahoo’s attitude seems to be much like Facebook’s when it launched its app platform. The company realizes there’s a lot that can be done with its data but it doesn’t want to be the one that builds all the possible apps around the data, especially when it involves countless third party services (it’s like the anti-communism argument: the state can’t control everything and know exactly what people want, so leave it to the market).
• 12:38pm - Rossiter is now turning his attention to the relationships people have, which is centered around the address book. The most important people in your address book are those who you actually have a relationship with. So you need a way to create a social graph out of this data. The key part of doing this is a technology called “Yahoo Activator”, which ties together Mail, Messenger, Gmail, Hotmail, Suggestion List, and your address book, using them all to determine who matter to you. The result is a ranked list of people as well as a list of suggested friends. Knowing that people contact each other in multiple ways (email, IM, etc) helps to determine who matters. Yahoo can then set user preferences that share certain information with people who matter to you (such as, share only photo uploads that have been deemed important to you). This is a new way to build a social graph. Previously, email spamming has been used heavily by others.
• 12:43pm - Even though there are 273 million Yahoo mail users, lots of times you’re communicating with people who don’t use Yahoo mail. This system takes that fact into consideration and let’s outside users get involved with YOS. This activator technology is going to be put in front of several Yahoo properties, such as mail and IM. The hope is that the activator will get you set up in a very short amount of time.
• 12:44pm - This activator technology will also help users handle the overload of emails they might get by filtering, labeling and categorizing messages that come from people who matter to you. You’ll also get a Xobni-like context for each email contact, showing you the history of your interactions with them. This is coming very soon. The activator is live in profiles as of last week, and it will go live in Mail as one of the first big pieces (not giving specific date but within next few months).
• 12:52pm - Now discussing permissions and privacy concerns. Two parts to this: 1) who are my connections and 2) what data do I share with them. The choice and type of relationship is important. Data is shared with your “connections” not with your address book contacts or randoms. Also, the data that users explicitly put into Yahoo is their data; they own it. Yahoo places controls around spam (especially with regards to invites) and, as mentioned previously, leveraged oAuth. Yahoo wants to go with whatever is industry-compatible, isn’t necessarily wed to oAuth it seems.
• 12:55pm - Cody Simms is now on stage to talk about data updates. Yahoo will let developers present their users with notifications that let them share their data back to Yahoo. For example, if their uploading photos off network, they can choose to send those photos to Flickr as well. The same goes for activity that occurs on sites like Flickr, Yahoo Music, message boards, Digg, or Facebook. Yahoo wants to provide a two-way updates platform that also pushes data updates back out to other services. So if someone does something on Digg, Yahoo can then inform a site like CNN of that action. It’s like Facebook Beacon but it doesn’t just drive data to Yahoo, it also syndicates data out to any number of sites. Also, it supports not just status-like messages but large data pushes (images, etc). All of the permission controls apply to these updates as well.
• 1:04pm - Rossiter is back to tak about the Application Platform (finally?). It will provide 3 primary discovery mecanisms: invites, updates, and gallery. Applications can be installed by users in many places across Yahoo. Each app has 2 views - small and large. Furthermore, the view is customized depending on where it’s placed (in search, in mail, on the front page, etc).
• 1:07pm - Number of different programming models. Open Social is one. It’s backed by something called eYML that allows apps to run in high performance and secure environments. It will eventually be made available to the open source community.
• 1:09pm - After briefer-than-expected discussion on app platform, now talking about Yahoo Query Language (YQL), which “looks just like SQL”. Provides access to data from rest of the web. YQL is intended to do the heavy lifting for developers when community with a variety of APIs.
• 1:15p - Last year has been all about building the platform, the next will be all about building products on top of it. This will involve getting Yahoo users to start making connections and building out their social graph. And it will involve placing “update consumption points” where users start acting socially. The profile piece from last week is an important one but not a destination. Instant Messenger 9 is a place where Yahoo is driving “activations” of the social graph; Mail and the homepage will be increasingly important in this regard over the next few months. Much of it is about giving users choice.
• 1:18pm - Applications will come to My Yahoo, allowing users to customize it much more. Search has search monkey already. Mail will get applications that let you extend its capabilities, as will the frontpage.
• 1:19pm - Hooks will be placed at all the consumption and production places around Yahoo (music, news, sports, movies, etc) that encourage users to engage in social behavior
• Next week: Yahoo Application Platform, all social APIs, updates platform, YQL
• Next week developers will have a sandbox area where they can start developing their apps and share them with their connections. There won’t be any gallery yet, and they won’t actually be able to push these out onto any Yahoo sites — both of those steps come later, after Yahoo has let the platform “bake” a bit..
• Both instant messenger and profiles now have Facebook feed-like areas where you can see updates. Later on, these will be added to different places as well (homepage, etc).
• 1:37pm - Presentation is now done. We’ll upload slides from the event once we get them.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:44 pm

Hop-on hopping on the Google Android bandwagon

Hop-on is planning to release a new open Android phone at CES early next year. It will reportedly sell for less than $200.

“Hop-on is committed in bringing the latest technology to the market, the Android open platform makes Hop-on competitive in the high end mobile phone market. This will create market value for our share holders,” said Peter Michaels, Hop-on’s CEO.

It’s nice to know he doesn’t have the consumers as his top priority. I looked high and low for any more information on the phone, and found nothing. I guess those kinds of details are saved for the shareholders.

If they release this phone like they released their disposable phone, you will only be able to look at nice shiny mock photos of it on their website. While the site says it’s available, there doesn’t appear to be any way to buy it. Do I smell vaporware?

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:41 pm

"iSafe" app for Android keeps the fearful in fear

Sascha Segan tells us about an overwrought app for Android phones called "iSafe", a GPS-driven tracker for the paranoid that alerts its users when they're in a high-crime area or motoring through a neighborhood that harbors a sex offender.

A "sex offender," of course, can be anyone from some idiot teenager who took porno shots of herself for her boyfriend to a housebound elderly man who did despicable things in 1966. But if you're driving past Ms. Accidental Porn Star's house, iSafe will blurt out "You are in a sex offender neighborhood!" and you'll resolve never to let the kids out into the yard again.

By giving no additional details, iSafe increases the fear. At least on Web sites like familywatchdog.us, I found out that the guy who lives half a mile from me was convicted once, ten years ago, of assaulting an adult, and probably isn't a serial child molester. Even those sites, of course, don't give the full story. The full story, sadly, usually involves violence against a family member or someone already known to the assailant, not violence against a stranger. By not supplying details, iSafe invites you to falsely imagine the worst: marauding killers prowling the streets.

Just terrible. I'm fine with the app being available, of course, but I agree with Segan that this sort of thinking only breeds unproductive fear.

Humorously, all of New York City, one of the safest places per-capita in the nation, is listed as "unsafe for personal crime".

Opinion: Android App iSafe is Bad For America [Appscout.com]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:26 pm

Xerox CEO: Get Me 3,000 Copies of This Pink Slip, Pronto [Digital Daily]

The worsening econalypse is inspiring worker reductions and other cost-cutting moves across the tech industry. The latest company to take a hatchet to its operating costs: Xerox (XRX), which plans to sack five percent of its workforce, or about 3,000 jobs, in an effort to cope with an “unpredictable economy.”

We’re assuming more of the same … deterioration in the economic markets,” Xerox CEO Anne Mulcahy said on a conference call with analysts. “That’s why we’re being so aggressive in terms of the cost reductions, so we can be assured of delivering the earnings growth that we expect in 2009.”

[Image Credit: The Great Copy Machine Epidemic]

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:26 pm

E-tailers push e-mail discounts to lure shoppers (AP)

AP - Online retailers — grappling with a sharp drop in consumer spending from even their most gung-ho Web enthusiasts — are becoming pushier with e-mails that pitch the latest deals.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:20 pm

Dino Skull Has Both Meat And Plant Eating Traits

Image Caption: Cast of the type specimen of Heterodontosaurus tucki from South Africa, as displayed in the Valley Life Sciences Building of the University of California, Berkeley.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:10 pm

Samsung adding 3x optical zoom to 8MP cameraphones in ‘09, then on to 12MP

With Sony Ericsson, Samsung, and LG battling all pushing 8 megapixel handsets to the market, the feature is slightly less brag-worthy than it was just a few months ago. Looking to make their 8MP handsets stand-out amongst the ever-growing crowd, Samsung Electro-Mechanics, a South Korean Samsung subsidiary, has announced that they’ve developed an 8MP camera module with 3x optical zoom. If everything goes as planned, we should start seeing Samsung devices sporting the new module in early 2009.

This won’t be the first time such a feature has made its way to a Sammy phone: Samsung showed off the 7MP SCH-V770 with 3x optical zoom back in 2005 but, as far as I know, that was a demonstration handset which never made it off the showfloor. As for phones that have actually reached market, the Samsung G810 hit the shelves with 3x optical zoom back in March, albeit strapped to a 5 megapixel camera.

Is 3x zoom really all that much? No. But it’ll make it look like you’re a few feet closer when you shoot your horribly washed-out bootleg concert footage, and that’s all people use camera phones for anyway, right?

In the same announcement, they also mentioned that they’ve got a 12MP camera module in progress back in the labs. Resolution wise, that works out to the fairly absurd 4000×3000. Right around this point, the megapixel race becomes silly. None of the camera phone samples that we’ve seen so far, even amongst the 8 megapixel shots, justify going higher in resolution.

[Via Unwired View]

Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 6:02 pm

The NYTimes.com Prepares For HD Video; Drops the FeedRoom For Brightcove

The New York Times is hurting financially these days, and its online business doesn’t seem to be helping much, but at least it keeps pushing forward. One area where the NYTimes.com has put a lot of effort is in video, and it has just redesigned its video page around the new Brightcove 3 player.

Previously, the NYTimes was using the FeedRoom as its main video platform. (This swap doesn’t come out of the blue. The New York Times is an investor in Brightcove). I know of at least one more large video site that is going to announce it is switching to BrightCove 3 next week (more on that later). In the case of the NYTimes.com, one of the things Briightcove 3 will allow it to do is eventually stream HD-quality video and distribute that video elsewhere. As of now, the video is closer to DVD-quality at 1.5 megabits per second, but the site has standardized around the 16:9 landscape aspect ratio most HD video is shot in. (Brightcove 3 dynamically adjusts the resolution of the video stream to whatever the viewer can handle based on player size and bandwidth).

One thing the NYTimes needs to fix is video search. On the video page there is a box that says “Search Video,” but it brings up general results. Another flaw is that The NYTimes does not allow its videos to be embedded elsewhere, only shared via links. Lame.

I’ve embedded an interview with the NYT’s video and television director Ann Derry below from Beet.TV explaining the changes.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 5:45 pm

Scientists Find Greenhouse Gas 4 Times Higher Than Estimated

New measurements released on Thursday show that levels of a powerful greenhouse gas are four times as high as previously thought.Scientists say about 5,400 metric tons of nitrogen trifluoride are in the atmosphere, with amounts increasing by about 11 percent per year.Nitrogen trifluoride, a colorless, odorless, nonflammable gas, is used to etch silicon wafers and in some lasers.Nitrogen trifluoride is 17,000 times more effective at warming the atmosphere than an equal mass of carbon dioxide, although it does not yet contribute much to global warming.Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, California, said it had not been possible to accurately measure this gas before.Estimates in 2006 had put levels of the gas at less than 1,200 metric tons.Study leader Ray Weiss and colleagues said they analyzed air samples gathered over the past 30 years under the NASA-funded Advanced Global Atmospheric Gases Experiment.Weiss said nitrogen trifluoride needs to be regulated, as carbon dioxide is."From a climate perspective, there is a need to add nitrogen trifluoride to the suite of greenhouse gases whose production is inventoried and whose emissions are regulated under the Kyoto Protocol, thus providing meaningful incentives for its wise use," he said.Nitrogen trifluoride is being used more commonly and Michael Prather, an atmospheric chemist at the University of California at Irvine, predicted that more would be found in the atmosphere.Prather said it is now shown to be an important greenhouse gas.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2008 | 5:40 pm

Apple? No. This is iOrange.

At least this Chinese knock-off is being utterly shameless about it. "Apple... no. This is iOrange!" Except they misspell it "iOrgane," which is just so deliriously, accidentally filthy.

Everything about this is just tops. I don't even know how to even transcribe the narration: "Eet eez zo kul writin massage wit zeengle hund!" Only better. The whole demonstration of the phone's abilities seems to be done by a freak with two right hands. And they completely fudge the accelerometer orientation switching.

WANT.

[via Engadget]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 5:11 pm

Potent Greenhouse Gas Worse Than Thought

Nitrogen trifluoride -- far more insidious than CO2 -- is more prevalent than thought.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Oct 2008 | 5:04 pm

Chemical Information Services Adds Innovative Tool to Its Family of Sourcing Products

DALLAS, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- Chemical Information Services announces the release of the ChemInfo MarketPlace, a new accompaniment to its family of chemical sourcing tools.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2008 | 5:00 pm

The Keston Institute to Host Forum "Assessing Performance and Progress" of California's 2006 Infrastructure Bonds

On November 7, 2006 California voters approved over $42 Billion in General Obligation Bonds to fund transportation, flood control, school construction, housing, and water supply protection.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2008 | 5:00 pm

LDF Secures Voting Rights That Protect Foreclosure Victims

NEW YORK, Oct.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2008 | 5:00 pm

Dell price gouges Japanese business market for spray painted Mini Inspiron

Deciding that the Mini Inspiron 9 was too garish to sell to the Japanese salaryman market, coming in whorish black and white as it of course does, Dell has opted to rebrand the Mini Inspiron as the Vostro A90 in Japan.

Everything else is the same. It still comes in black (although it's a blacker, more businessy black). It still has the same 1.6GHz Atom, the same 8GB storage drive, the same whatever.

But price? Close to a thousand dollars.For a machine that, short of a spray of paint, goes for less than 400 in the same configuration. Ha! lolwhut?

Dell readies small, cheap computer for small biz [Reg Hardware]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 4:57 pm

Android to Kill Windows Mobile? Not So Fast…

I usually agree with Senor Cringely. He writes thoughtful, longer pieces about tech and he often portends grave changes in the industry. Today, however, I'm not quite sure he's hit the nail on the head. His piece posits that there is an 85-10-5 split in most markets, most notably the phone market. In this case you have 85% feature phones, 10% smartphones, and 5 odd ducks like Nextel and MVNOs bringing up the rear where the feature of interest isn't quite smart but not quite mass market - walkie talkie features being a notable example. He then extrapolates Samsung's plan to stop producing "smartphones" for the mass market as proof that what they are actually planning is to produce smartphones masquerading as cheaper feature phones. Instead of trying to beat WinMo, Symbian, or OSX, they are going to use Android in a highly customized way to offer smartphone features at feature phone pricing. Fair enough.

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 4:51 pm

Female Plants 'Communicate' Their Preference In Males

MU researcher identifies pollen proteins that provide insight into the fertilization processWithout eyes or ears, plants must rely on the interaction of molecules to determine appropriate mating partners and avoid inbreeding. In a new study, University of Missouri researchers have identified pollen proteins that may contribute to the signaling processes that determine if a plant accepts or rejects individual pollen grains for reproduction.Like humans, the mating game isn’t always easy for plants. Plants rely on external factors such as wind and animals to bring them potential mates in the form of pollen grains. When pollen grains arrive, an introduction occurs through a “conversation” between the pollen (the male part of the flower) and the pistil (the female part of the flower). In this conversation, molecules take the place of words and allow the pollen to identify itself to the pistil. Listening in on this molecular conversation may provide ways to control the spread of transgenes from genetically-modified crops to wild relatives, offer better ways to control fertilization between cross species, and lead to a more efficient way of growing fruit trees. “Unlike an animal’s visual cues about mate selection, a plant’s mate recognition takes place on a molecular level,” said Bruce McClure, associate director of the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center and researcher in the MU Interdisciplinary Plant Group and Division of Biochemistry. “The pollen must, in some way, announce to the pistil its identity, and the pistil must interpret this identity. To do this, proteins from the pollen and proteins from the pistil interact; this determines the acceptance or rejection of individual pollen grains.”In the study, researchers used two specific pistil proteins, NaTTS and 120K, as “bait” to see what pollen proteins would bind to them. These two pistil proteins were used because they directly influence the growth of pollen down the pistil to the ovary where fertilization takes place.Three proteins, S-RNase-binding protein (SBP1), the protein NaPCCP and an enzyme, bound to the pistil proteins. This action suggests that these proteins likely contribute to the signaling processes that affect the success of pollen growth.“Our experiment was like putting one side of a Velcro strip on two pistil proteins and then screening a collection of pollen proteins to see which of the pollen proteins have the complementary Velcro strip for binding,” McClure said. “If it sticks, it’s a good indication that the pollen proteins work with the pistil proteins to determine the success of reproduction.”In previous studies, McClure showed that S-RNase, a protein on the pistil side, caused rejection of pollen from close relatives by acting as a cytotoxin, or a toxic substance, in the pollen tube.For their study, the MU team used Nicotiana alata, a relative of tobacco commonly grown in home gardens as “flowering tobacco.” The study, “Pollen Proteins Bind to the C-Terminal Domain of Nicotiana Alata Pistil Arabinogalactan Proteins,” was published in the Journal of Biological Chemistry and was co-authored by McClure; Kirby N. Swatek, biochemistry graduate student; and Christopher B. Lee, post-doctoral researcher at the Bond Life Sciences Center.Faculty from six of MU’s colleges and schools perform interdisciplinary research in the Christopher S. Bond Life Sciences Center with a vision to become a recognized world-wide center of scientific excellence and leadership in life sciences research, innovation and education. The Center integrates the strengths of multiple, often disparate, disciplines to promote discovery that boosts the production and quality of food, improves human and animal health and enhances environmental quality. The Center enriches the state of Missouri and its people by generating new businesses and jobs, fueling the economy through the creation and dissemination of new knowledge, and training young people to solve complex interdisciplinary problems.---Image Caption: Nicotiana alata. Courtesy Carl E Lewis - Wikipedia
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Oct 2008 | 4:45 pm

Maybe The Sweetest 'Guitar Hero' Axe You'll Ever See (PC Magazine)

PC Magazine - When Logitech announced its Logitech Wireless Guitar Controller Premiere Edition for the PlayStation 2 and PlayStation 3 versions of the "Guitar Hero" franchise, we did not bat an eye. That is, until we saw the thing.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Oct 2008 | 4:15 pm

Why Are There No Decent Note-Taking Applications for the iPhone?

It seems simple. You have an iPhone (or iPod Touch). It's the perfect little device for taking notes — always in your pocket and always ready to go. Back home you have a Mac or PC, also both perfect for taking notes — in fact, even better than the iPhone.

Wouldn't it be great if you could create a simple note on your iPhone and, when you get home, have it sync with a note app on your computer? Like I said, it seems easy. But as far as I can tell (and I have been searching on and off for an entire week), nobody is doing it.

There are, of course, many note apps in the App Store, both paid and free. Some of them offer synchronizing features, but they require that either your iPhone or your computer be online. One example is Evernote, a service that lets you make notes in pretty much any way you like: you can snap pictures, clip web pages or just write something.

Any photos are whisked off to the Evernote servers and any text therein is read and indexed. Amazing for business cards and recipes, for instance. Evernote exists either on the web or as an app for the iPhone, the Mac and the PC. But the iPhone version requires that you are online to access anything, making it pretty much useless, especially for 3G-free iPod Touch users. One redeeming feature: You can make notes on the iPhone and they will be queued until you get a connection.

Some applications work the other way around. Zenbe is a native iPhone App, which connects to the online list maker Zenbe Lists. The iPhone side of things syncs when you have a connection, but is otherwise fully functional offline, with all lists accessible. On the computer, you access your notes through a browser. This would be fine, but Zenbe Lists is, that's right, a list-making application, and it doesn't work well for long-form notes.

What about the built-in Notes app from Apple? That should sync with something, right? Just like the calendar, address book and mail accounts. But, despite OS X Mail having a notes function, the iPhone notes are inexplicably stranded on the iPhone. If you have a jail-broken (hacked) iPhone, you can try a Mac solution called "iPhone Notes." It's donationware, and apparently works, but my iPod is still a jail-break virgin, and this should really just be built in.

There is, in fact, one application I found that does (kinda) sync between the iPhone and the computer. It's called, somewhat imaginatively, Note Pad. The iPhone client looks great: You can shake to make a new note, use folders and smart folders to organize notes and folders, and the interface is clean and easy. You can even use your location as a parameter for those smart folders, allowing you to search your notes depending on where you wrote them. It's pretty amazing, and just $3.

The problem? It looks like the developer put about two minutes of work into the desktop end of the deal. Called Sink, it is one of the fugliest things I have seen on a Mac (and that includes some of the janky stuff on the Gadget Lab Hackintosh). Take a look:

What's worse, you can't edit the notes on the Mac. The folder structure disappears, too, and the only way to sync is to open the app on the iPhone, hit sync, then move to the computer, find your iPhone in the source list, then hit the button there. Clunky as hell.

It's a shame. And symptomatic of the whole iPhone app experience: Rush to get something out, whatever the quality, and then slowly fix it through updates. Have you noticed that there are very few applications from established Mac developers on the App Store (yes, there are some, but not nearly as many as you'd think). That may be because they are doing things the old-fashioned way — actually working on a full-featured, functional product before they start asking you to give them money for it.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:51 pm

Sprint officially releasing HTC Touch Pro next week

Here comes the HTC Touch Pro. It’ll be available on the Sprint network with availability starting next week at “select national retailers” followed by availability in Sprint stores and on Sprint’s website starting November 2nd. So if you’re looking for one, better check places like Best Buy and Radio Shack next week because it appears that they’ll have these phones before they’re sold directly from Sprint.

The device will cost $299.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate and a two-year contract. You’ll also have to have a $25-or-higher data plan or Sprint’s Simply Everything plan. Spending $400 just to get out the door with the device seems a bit steep but, hey, we’ll see what happens. Just don’t forget to mail in that rebate form.

Full release after the jump…

Sprint Introduces the Highly Anticipated

HTC Touch Pro

Advanced TouchFLO™ 3D interface, access to Sprint Mobile Broadband data speeds, desktop-like Web browsing, five-row sliding QWERTY keyboard and Windows Mobile 6.1 merge work and play into one device

Bellevue, Wash. — Oct. XX, 2008 — HTC Corporation, a global leader in mobile phone innovation and design, today launched the HTC Touch™ Pro for Sprint. Bringing a beautiful new angle to mobile business productivity, the HTC Touch Pro uses styling and functionality similar to the recently launched HTC Touch Diamond™ and introduces a variety of business-focused enhancements that make getting work done on-the-go quick and easy.

The HTC Touch Pro is priced at $299.99 with a two-year subscriber agreement, after a $100 mail-in-rebate and a $25-or-higher data add-on or Everything plan with data. Customers will be able to purchase the device in select national retailers beginning the week of Oct. 26 and in all Sprint sales channels, including online at www.sprint.com, 1-800-SPRINT1 and Sprint Stores, on Nov. 2.

“People have already shown a tremendous initial response to the HTC Touch Diamond for Sprint, and we are pleased to also offer the HTC Touch Pro as another choice to customers,” said Jason Mackenzie, vice president for HTC America. “The HTC Touch Pro is the perfect device for those who demand the ease of use of TouchFLO 3D and the styling of the HTC Touch Diamond but also crave a more powerful mobile business experience.”

The HTC Touch Pro is a professional workhorse that allows people to balance their professional and personal lives in ways that matter most to them. Building on the strong feature set found on the HTC Touch Diamond, the HTC Touch Pro adds a five-row, slide-out QWERTY keyboard for easy data entry, expandable storage capabilities with a microSD card slot (1 GB card included) and a business card scanner application to automatically capture and convert business card information to the contact list using the built-in 3.2 MP camera/camcorder. Additionally, with Windows Mobile 6.1, users have access to security and device management capabilities demanded by many business customers.

“The HTC Touch Pro marks the addition of yet another robust Windows Mobile device for our portfolio and demonstrates our commitment to delivering the best wireless technology today,” said Kevin Packingham, Sprint senior vice president of Product and Technology Development. “Combined with worry-free pricing and exclusive Sprint content, the HTC Touch Pro delivers an unparalleled user experience – all on Sprint’s Now Network.”

Sprint customers will have direct animated access to arrange their favorite contacts, photos, weather and music by using HTC’s intuitive TouchFLO 3D interface.  By combining a rich, dynamic presentation with integrated multi-media features, people have the ability to graphically personalize their device with 3D animated transitions.

Lightning Fast Connectivity
The HTC Touch Pro for Sprint provides a mobile Internet experience that uses the Sprint Mobile Broadband Network. With EV-DO Rev. A technology access, the HTC Touch Pro provides customers with blazing fast speeds that reach more than 253 million people, 16,986 cities and 1,625 airports and brings customers instant gratification so they stay connected to life and work fast and on-the-go. With EV-DO Rev. A, peak download data rates increase to 3.1 Mbps and peak upload data rates increase to 1.8 Mbps; average download speeds improve to 600 Kbps to 1.4 Mbps and average uplink speeds increase to 350 Kbps to 500 Kbps.

Beyond this lightning-fast connectivity, customers can also interact with their device in new ways. With the new HTC Touch Pro for Sprint, users can zoom and pan Web sites and automatically view optimized content that has been specially created to fit the display. Using gravity-sensor technology, turning the device sideways automatically rotates the Web page view from a portrait to landscape view.

In addition to game-changing Web browsing, the HTC Touch Pro offers direct access to exclusive Sprint content, including live and on-demand programming from Sprint TV® as well as over-the-air song downloads from the Sprint Music Store^SM and even a custom YouTube application for watching a variety of user-generated video content.

Unmatched Style With Complete Productivity

Like the HTC Touch Diamond, the HTC Touch Pro is crafted with precision to fit comfortably in a user’s hand and brings together elegant touch screen response with the direct precision of HTC’s distinctive sliding keyboard design. A new five-row QWERTY keyboard layout makes typing-intensive tasks like composing email or working on Microsoft Office® documents quick and easy. Built-in TV-out functionality means users can deliver the perfect PowerPoint® presentation from the Touch Pro.

Bursting with Innovation

The Touch Pro delivers an unrivalled combination of features and functionality. The 2.8 inch display provides near-print quality viewing that enables beautiful Web browsing and viewing of photographs. The built-in camera includes an optical auto-focus lens that ensures the photos you take will be clear and consistent. Advanced wireless and auto sensor screen pivoting are just a few of the features that make the Touch Pro experience stand out.

Unmatched Customer Experience

Customers purchasing devices at Sprint retail locations can get the most out of their phone by having it personalized just for them before they leave the store. With Ready Now, Sprint retail associates work with new or existing customers to explain, set up and demonstrate the features and applications of their new phone.

Sprint’s Ready Now program is a first in the industry – no other wireless company offers a similar customer experience. The service is available whenever the customer wants it during business hours; however, only existing Sprint customers have the option to schedule an appointment online by visiting www.sprint.com/readynow.

To take advantage of all the great features on these new phones without having to worry about additional monthly charges, Sprint customers can sign up for the $99.99 Simply Everything^SM plan, which includes unlimited domestic calling, messaging, email, Web surfing, GPS navigation, Sprint Music Premier, Sprint TV^® Premier, NFL Mobile Live, NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, Direct Connect and Group Connect on compatible phones. The Simply Everything plan is available to current customers without renewing their contract. New lines of service require a two-year agreement.

Key HTC Touch Pro Specifications

• Size: 4.17 (L) x 2.05(W) x 0.70 (D)
• Weight: 5.3 ounces
• Connectivity: CDMA 2000 1X/EVDO Rev.A/1xRTT and IS-95A/B voice or data. Dual band (800 and 1900 MHz)
• Operating system: Windows Mobile® 6.1 Professional
• Display: 2.8-inch VGA touch screen
• Camera: 3.2MP, with autofocus, flash and video calling
• Internal memory: 512 MB flash, 288 MB RAM
• Expansion slot: microSD™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible); supports up to 16 GB
• Keyboard: Slide-out five-row QWERTY keyboard
• Bluetooth: v2.0 with A2DP support (Stereo Bluetooth)
• Wireless: Wi-Fi 802.11b/g
• GPS: GPS/AGPS
• Interface: HTC ExtUSBä (mini-USB and audio jack in one; USB 2.0 High-Speed)
• Battery: 1340 mAh
• Talk time: 250 minutes
• Chipset: Qualcomm^Ò MSM 7201Aä 528MHz

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:30 pm

Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking Retires From Post

Hawking leaves behind his official position but will continue to explore space and time.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:21 pm

How to make a cylon Jack o' Lantern

Make's Halloween project is a Cylon jack 'o lantern. You'll need a "Larson scanner," some LEDs, chrome spray paint, and a big pumpkin. Detailed instructions are in this month's special edition of the magazine itself, but its video should be enough to guide steady technical hands: "You'll probably want to put the scanner in a zip-lock bag"

Weekend Project: Cylon Jack O' Lantern [Makezine]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 3:15 pm

Why Is the iPhone Such a Crummy Note Pad?

The iPhone and iPod Touch might seem like the perfect devices for taking notes. So why are all the note-taking apps so poor?

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 2:51 pm

Destress in 2009 with a bubble wrap calendar

Perpetual Kid's 2009 bubble calendar dupes you into paying $30 for a sheet of bubble-wrap glued to a cardboard printout. Nonetheless, it's a bizarre and intriguing gift for any members of your family involved in the packaging and distribution trade.

One is reminded of the episode of Red Dwarf where Lister makes a fortune selling bubble-wrap as an anti-stress toy.

2009 BUBBLE CALENDAR [PerpetualKid]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 2:48 pm

Ethan Ham's robotic slide whistle

Ethan Ham built this motorized, vocoder-inspired slide whistle out of parts from an ink jet printer. It responds to sound input like a vocoder and responds with a pleasing whistle in kind.

In the above video, Ethan shows it off at Brooklyn's fantastic LEMURplex art space.

Study for a Vocoder [EthanHam.com]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 2:47 pm

Shoe cabinet affirms tribal query: Yes, you can Kick It

There's only one problem I can see with the "KickIt" shoe rack: lobbing shoes into a forest of plastic bristles is going to dislodge a lot of dirt and hobo muck into the bottom of the cabinet. I hope there's an easy way to clean it all out.

But besides that? I'm into it. I'm a bit of an edge case shoe fancier: I like to keep them looking nice and everything, but I also sometimes just get lazy and throw them on the floor. Having a cabinet I could drunkenly jam my foot into sound great.

Not $2,500 great, mind you.

KickIt! [Magazin.com via Swiss Miss via Crunchgear via Gadget Lab]

Blogger meta-whine: It's a shame that out of all the websites linking to this there's not a higher-quality image. It pains me to see such a compressed JPG wafting around — I bet it pains the original designers even more.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 2:40 pm

World's Oldest Cooked Cereal Was Instant

Prehistoric people enjoyed something very similar to your morning bowl of cereal.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Oct 2008 | 2:32 pm

'What a Great Ride,' Says Space Tourist After Landing

Game designer Richard Garriott was all smiles after returning from space.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Oct 2008 | 2:30 pm

Concept: Virtuo LCD palette for digital painters

Often, the hypothetical gadgets imagined by Yanko's collection of design magicians lack a certain creative flair. Not today. Yana Kilmava's idea for a handheld digital LCD palette, linked wirelessly to a Cintiq-style touchscreen "canvas", is a perfect application of fresh technology to an old problem: reality's lack of an "undo" button.

Virtuo looks very similar to the traditional paint pallets used by artists for hundreds of years, with the added bonus of modern technology. There are no wasted paints, no confusing mixing of colors and you don’t have to be an experienced artist to create really beautiful pieces of artwork. Virtuo includes an art pallet, a charger, 5 different art tools and works by electromagnetism so no worry about quick battery loss. Even though it was designed with the inexperienced artist in mind, Virtuo can also be used by the more professional digital artists who are also experienced in the traditional forms of creating art. At the present time, Virtuo is only in concept form, but I can hope that it is made available to the public sometime in the near future.

VIRTUO: A gidital art toolset that helps art novices develop their artistic side [Yanak Limava via Yanko Design]

We've seen at least a couple coffee table MAME cabinets — often times, the guts of an old PC crammed into an umlaut-spittled IKEA fiberboard cheapie — and every time, there's a tug between the allure of a coffee table that plays video games and the bothersome fact that very few people are really going to want to sit on the floor, stare down at the screen from an odd angle and use a joystick in a drawer to play a game on one.

As such, there's a definite upper limit on what you'd want to spend on a MAME coffee table, and that upper limit is way, way below the nearly five grand SurfaceTension wants. It would be overpriced at half as much: bog standard furniture design with a 19-inch LCD, a Shuttle PC, 2GB RAM, dual core processor, 160GB hard drive, Happ arcade buttons, 2 control sets, Happ illuminated trackball, volume controls and Sanwa joysticks built-in.

If you're willing to spend five grand, just buy yourself a real MAME cabinet already.

SurfaceTension New Arcade Coffee Table [Born Rich]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Oct 2008 | 2:05 pm

High Deer Populations May Benefit Critters

High deer populations may actually support larger populations of smaller creatures.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Oct 2008 | 1:40 pm

Tiny, Toothy Dino Was No Vegetarian

The skull of a baby dinosaur reveals its species had wide taste in cuisine.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Oct 2008 | 1:22 pm