FROM GAMERTELL - There’s one game coupon (Mario Kart for Wii) and an iDog Dance coupon, as well as several other geek and tech toy coupons. Clik through for a list and a link to printable coupions…
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Usually, Canada has to pay more for the same technology we Americans enjoy for a cheaper price. We can often be thankful that we can get the same item for cheaper here than Canada. However, a Canadian retailer, Future Shop, has put up a listing for the Microsoft Zune Second Gen 8GB player - one that will make you pretty surprised.
Future Shop is listing the 8GB player 149.99 CAD, but after a 50 CAD discount, it becomes 99.99 CAD. That price, 99.99 CAD, is equivalent to about $82, which is more than $50 cheaper than any 8GB Zune you can find in the United States. In case you live in Canada and want to take advantage of this offer, you better do it quick because in a few days, the price for this Zune will go back to 149.99 CAD.
This project is a bit confusing but here goes: a guy got a broken 13-inch MacBook Pro. Most of it was water damaged but the mobo was fine so he unsoldered everything and made it into a little caseless computer with an external screen and hard drive. He discovered, however, an odd little case that was shaped like a Mac Pro but was about as big as a Mac Mini. With a little sass and vinegar, he install the MacBook Pro into the case and created the aptly named Mac Pro Ultra Mini, essentially a tiny Mac Pro.
This seems like a great winter project: recycling old gear into new forms. While we don’t all have dead laptops lying around, is there anything you’re probably going to throw away that you could turn into something cool?
(TrendHunter.com) Looking young, suave, and debonaire in traditional 30s male attire and spectacles with a cigarette stemming from a holder in his mouth, the front cover of this weeks TIME Magazine... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 10:39 am
BGR is reporting that T-Mo is having their Customer Delight day where T-Mo customers can get 100 bonus minutes just for stopping by the store and 200 for bringing a friend. If you refer a customer you... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 10:20 am
BGR is reporting that T-Mo is having their Customer Delight day where T-Mo customers can get 100 bonus minutes just for stopping by the store and 200 for bringing a friend. If you refer a customer you get a $25 credit on your next bill and if you at T-Mobile @Home you get the first month free. Some resctrictions apply, but I'm kind of sad I switched to AT&T now. T-Mobile is sooooo nice. OMG!
Sorry, the offer is 'Merican only.
(TrendHunter.com) Another I wish I would have thought of this gimmick. When hunters are wandering all over the woods trying to kill Bambis brethren this fall, the last thing you want to be doing is... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 10:19 am
BGR is reporting that T-Mo is having their Customer Delight day where T-Mo customers can get 100 bonus minutes just for stopping by the store and 200 for bringing a friend. If you refer a customer you get a $25 credit on your next bill and if you at T-Mobile @Home you get the first month free. Some resctrictions apply, but I’m kind of sad I switched to AT&T now. T-Mobile is sooooo nice. OMG!
T-Mobile’s Customer Delight Day
Saturday, November 15
At your local T-Mobile Store:
Drop in and be rewarded!
* Get 100 FREE bonus minutes just for stopping by — a $40 value
* Get 200 FREE bonus minutes if you bring a friend — an $80 value
* Refer a customer to T-Mobile and get a $25 credit on your next bill
* Sign up for T-Mobile @Home and get the first month free — a $10 value!
Limited time offer. Participating locations only. See store for details. Offers are valid for qualified T-Mobile postpaid and FlexPay customers who are in good standing. Limit one offer per qualifying line. Offers can not be redeemed for cash or other value. Referral Credit Offer: The referred customer must activate a qualifying T-Mobile voice data postpaid or FlexPay plan at a participating T-Mobile store. The credit may take up to 2 billing cycles to appear on the referring customer’s bill. T-Mobile @Home Offer: Qualifying rate plan, credit approval and two-year agreement required. $10 monthly fee will be credited to account. The credit may take up to two billing cycles to appear.
CWmike writes "In moving to cut its current workforce by between 15% and 18% today, Sun is trying to stay ahead of a falling knife. And today's announcement made it clear that Sun officials are banking on the company's open-source strategy to help it pull through. A cut of up to 6,000 employees at Sun will hurt, but CEO Jonathan Schwartz contends users will be more inclined to try open-source products such as MySQL, OpenSolaris and Sun's GlassFish application server during a time of economic stress." Reader Barence also pointed out that Sun will begin to auction "branding space" in OpenOffice.
India rejoiced Saturday at joining an elite club by planting its flag on the moon as the country's space agency released the first pictures of the cratered surface taken by its maiden lunar Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 10:03 am
I spent the past week traipsing around Europe and, luckily, I’d not brushed up against the poop shelf until last night. For those of you not in the know, the poop shelf toilet is a toilet that offers an unobstructed view of your waste, both solid and liquid, before it is whisked away into the darkness. As this guy states,, it’s found in many German-influenced countries including Poland and some former Soviet Central European destination spots. The poop shelf is a diabolical invention created, I believe, by the Stasi as a method to break down the mental resilience of the populace.
Imagine, if you will, my surprise when I sat down quite calmly and began the steady evacuation of a week’s worth of processed reindeer. An odd scent wafted up over me and I was sadded to find that I was mere inches away from a very unpleasant evening. The poop shelf had struck again. While I can laugh all I want, why in God’s holy name would these madmen invent the poop shelf? Was it to suss out contraband? To examine the waste in private before disposing of it? Was it a game, a la Three Kings Day, where the child who pulled a kewpie doll from a pile would win that evening’s orange? Answers, people, and fast.
Code Name: Pionen White Mountains. Location: Stolkhom, Sweden. Assignment: Perform as a Data Center??
Yep...the Pionen is a real, working data center located in central Stockholm. It was totally redesigned and rebuilt from 2007 to 2008; after having served during the Cold War era as a nuclear shelter and military bunker. The “code name” for the center? Its actual code name from back in its military days.
James Bond would be proud. Although it is serving a practical purpose, housing the Network Op Center for not only Sweden’s biggest ISP, but also the NOC for all of the operations for Bahnhof; it also clearly has a high tech almost science fiction class and style. It also serves as a co-location hosting center; so others can come in and put their own servers there as well. And once you’ve seen this place, you will not forget the experience.
As Jon Karlung, CEO at Bahnhof (the ISP behind Pionen) puts it, “The unique design makes it a ‘talk about’ facility. If you have been inside Pionen you will for sure tell somebody else about it.” The photo shows the conference room which is suspended above the server area. And get this, the floor of the conference room is the surface of the moon. (Well, not really obviously, but designed to look just like it).
They don’t even use a boring back-up power source. Try German submarine engines. Or to be more specific, two Maybach MTU diesel engines producing 1.5 Megawatt of power. And for kicks, the folks at Pionen even installed the sound horn warning system from the original German sub.
(on left: Back up generators from the German subs. On right: Interior Server area)
And the stuff there is pretty darn safe from attack. It’ll even take a near hit from a hydrogen bomb. Heck, most workplaces probably can’t take a hit from a big tree in a windstorm. They’ve got 1.5 megawatt of cooling for the servers. The network has both fiber optics and extra copper lines with three different physical ways to get into the mountain housing the server space for a Triple redundancy Internet backbone access. Talk about being well connected.
Now to the really cool stuff. They have waterfalls, greenhouses and simulated daylight. They say they wanted to break the standard mold and really focus on the humans. Karlung explains, “Rather than just concentrating on technical hardware we decided to put humans in focus. Of course, the security, power, cooling, network, etc, are all top notch, but the people designing data centers often (always!) forget about the humans that are supposed to work with the stuff.”
It’s clear there was some kind of inspiration behind the design of building a place like Pionen in a mountain of bedrock. Karlung confirms this. “Since we got hold of this unique nuclear bunker in central Stockholm deep below the rock, we just couldn’t build it like a traditional – more boring – hosting center,” he said. “We wanted to make something different. The place itself needed something far out in design and science fiction was the natural source of inspiration in this case – plus of course some solid experience from having been a hosting provider for more than a decade.”
And it’s also clear some of that inspiration came from places other than just thoughts that came to them in the middle of the night. Some visual inspiration was needed, so where does one go? Of course. Movies. “I’m personally a big fan of old science fiction movies. Especially ones from the 70s like Logan’s Run, Silent Running, Star Wars (especially The Empire Strikes Back) so these were an influence,“ said Karlung. “James Bond movies have also had an impact on the design. I was actually looking for the same outfit as the villain ‘Blofeld’ in Bond and even considered getting a white cat, but that might have been going a bit far!”
Right now, only 15 senior technical staff employees work full time in Pionen; so even if you think it is way cool, it may not be utterly practical sending them your resume just yet.
In the second seizure this week since a systemwide lockdown and search for contraband ended, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officers have found a phone inside the body of condemned inmate Hank Skinner,... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 7:44 am
Looking for something that will allow you to have totally portable images for use anywhere? Check out the new Pico Projector PK-101. You attach this tiny device (it is smaller and lighter than a mobile phone even!) to either your smart phone (and yes, it works with iPhones too) or media player, and it throws an image onto a nearby screen or white surface. Pretty cool.
Being the first digital light processing (DLP) projector gives Optoma the right to wave the banner for having a model with a higher contrast ratio at 2,000:1 and brighter colors than the other guys. The LED light source actually does project a pretty good image, whether inches or a couple of feet from whatever you are using for the projection screen. The actual resolution of the image is 480 x 320. You can also mount it on a regular camera tripod using the included adapter.
It comes with two batteries, which you will need since it is kind of a battery-hog. Each battery will last about 2 hours if you are working in slideshow mode; or an hour and a half in video mode at half brightness setting. Now, keep in mind if you set it for full brightness, you’ve only got about 45 minutes per battery. There is also a half-watt built in speaker, focus control, and a 2.5mm minijack/ composite video/stereo audio RCA cable.
Rod Sommerich, National Product Manager for Amber Technology display division, explains that “Optoma’s new PK-101 creates a benchmark for sharing content-on-the-go. This Pico projector enables users to enjoy a better visual experience with an image that is up to 100 times larger than the small screen of output capable portable media devices including iPods, PDA’s, smart phones and digital cameras.”
Although our Aussie friends get to buy it this month; here in the States we have to hold out until December 15th at an MSRP of $399. If you want the iPhone/iPod adapter cable, add $30 to that price.
Indian newspapers Saturday were euphoric about the landing of an Indian probe on the moon, marking a milestone for the country's 45-year-old space programme. "The tricolour... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 7:15 am
An anonymous reader writes with an article about AMD's Conesus chip, suggesting that it is intended to compete with Intel's Atom for the netbook market. However, CNet reports that AMD is eschewing that form factor in favor of something larger, yet still more portable than a traditional laptop. Quoting: "AMD's strategy seems solid, in my opinion. Go for a segment that is bigger and better than Netbooks. The ultraportable category (the MacBook Air being the best example) is full of attractive but expensive designs. Why not work with PC makers to offer an ultrathin, ultralight, full-featured 13-inch notebook that is priced a lot less than $1,800? Why not $600 or $700? In addition to the conventional criticism of Netbooks (small screens, tiny keyboards), an underrated fact is that many users eventually get the feeling that they're stuck with an underpowered laptop."
Remember HD DVD, the now-dead next-gen format? Well it turns out that Netflix is getting ready to bring those rentals to an end. The news comes as little surprise as Netlfix announced way back in February that they decided to support the Blu-ray format.
The original announcement was that they would phase out HD DVD rentals “by the end of 2008” and well, that time is just about here and the rentals will officially come to an end on December 15. Which means that at that time, if you have any HD DVD titles in your queue, they will be replaced with a standard DVD.
An anonymous reader writes "Developer 2D Boy has written that they are seeing an 82% piracy rate for everyone's favorite DRM-free physics puzzler, World of Goo. Surprisingly, this rate is in-line with what they were expecting. The article also features a fascinating comparison with the piracy rate of another game that was shipped complete with DRM, at 92%. There seemed to be no major difference in the outcomes of the rate regardless of whether DRM was used or not... well, no difference other than the cost to implement such nonsense."
Times are tough, but Pet Holdings, the company behind ICanHasCheezburger, isn’t complaining - from September to October the company saw its traffic grow by 23%, reaching 128.3 million total page views and 6.3 million unique visitors across its network of blogs. The profitable network includes nine properties, each of which posts humorous content focused on a different internet meme. The most popular by far is ICanHasCheezburger, which frequently features pictures of cats alongside user-added captions. The site is now the 14th ranked blog on Technorati (falling just behind Gawker). Other notables in the network include failblog and IHasAHotDog.
In August, the network reported a 43.5% leap in revenue month-over-month, coinciding with the launch of new blogs EngrishFunny (a site making fun of phrases poorly translated into English) and roflrazzi, which features celebrity images with captions added. Since then revenue growth has steadied out, with an increase of 11.5% in September and 9.4% in October.
But despite its growth the site will not be immune to a steep downturn in ad sales. To help diversify, the company now sells merchandise through retail stores, and is selling some of its top pictures in book form (one is already on shelves and three more are in the works). To further encourage growth, the site will be releasing an API for its photos within the next month.
Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Times are tough, but Pet Holdings, the company behind ICanHasCheezburger, isn't complaining - from September to October the company saw its traffic grow by 23%, reaching 128.3 million total page views... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 5:15 am
Sweet cars and amazing, if improbable, car chases have been essential elements of James Bond movies since the series began in 1962. The tradition continues in Quantum of Solace, which finds our favorite superspy behind the wheel of a hot Aston Martin DBS and — in a nod to these eco-conscious times — a Ford Edge that runs on hydrogen (in the film, if not in real life). But it takes more than a fuel cell to make the list of the 10 coolest Bond cars ever.
Left:
Aston Martin DB5
The quintessential Bond car appeared in Goldfinger, and it is both the most famous Bond car and one of the most iconic vehicles in the history of film. In addition to gorgeous lines and stunning speed, Bond's DB5 featured machine guns, a bulletproof shield, radar and that über-cool ejector seat that could villains flying at the push of a button.
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This one's tricky because Bentley never produced a car called the Mark IV. Ian Fleming made that up. Bond drove a 1933 Bentley convertible with an Amherst-Villiers supercharger in the novel Casino Royale. Various Bentleys have appeared in Bond films, including From Russia With Love, in which our hero seduces Miss Sylvia Trench behind the wheel of a 1930 Bentley Derby similar to the one in this photo by Flicker user starpitti.
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The Lotus Esprit from The Spy Who Loved Me is almost as famous as the DB5, if only because it could turn into a submarine at the flick of a switch. The car featured surface-to-air missiles, torpedoes and depth charges, all of which we find amazing given the shaky reliability of the electrical systems in British cars.
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Strictly speaking, this wasn't Bond's car. It was driven by his assistant, Aki, in You Only Live Twice. But it makes the list because it was chock-full of cool gadgets — including a television, a cordless phone and a voice-activated stereo – that are commonplace today but the stuff of science fiction in 1967. Toyota built a GT without a roof because Sean Connery was too tall for the coupe.
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Aston Martin returned to Bond's fleet in 2002 after the spy's brief dalliance with BMW in the late 1990s. The Vanquish that appeared in Die Another Day came with an ejector seat and a cloaking device that rendered the car invisible. We prefer the more muscular and understated DBS in Casino Royale because it's a better match for Daniel Craig's darker, more brooding Bond.
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Yes, Bond drove a Mustang, albeit briefly, in Diamonds are Forever, and he looked almost as cool as Steve McQueen did driving his 'stang in Bullitt. Connery took the Mach 1 on a wild ride through Vegas, getting up on two wheels to squeeze through an alley. The film editors weren't so skilled: The car is shown entering the alley on one set of wheels and emerging on the other.
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Pierce Brosnan drove the convertible Beemer in The World Is Not Enough, but it was a BMW in name only. The Z8 was still a prototype when filming started, so the film featured a Cobra kit car wearing BMW skin. We're still not sure where Q found room for the surface-to-air missiles, let alone the six cup holders, but now we know where they put the movie camera.
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Bond stole this car from a dealership showroom to make an escape in The Man With the Golden Gun, making a spectacular corkscrew jump over a canal to elude his pursuers. The stunt was planned with help from a supercomputer at Cornell University, and it is the only time in history an AMC Hornet has ever looked cool.
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This Whyte Industries jobby appeared in Diamonds Are Forever. It's a moon buggy. 'Nuff said.
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Another Bond car that wasn't what it appeared to be. The 2CV couldn't outrun its own belching plume of exhaust, so the car in For Your Eyes Only was tricked out with a hotter engine, a modified transmission and a reworked frame. It still had trouble outrunning the humble Peugeots – Peugeots — pursuing it, so Bond had to resort to skilled driving and good luck to make his escape.
After a bit of a delay, Dish Network has confirmed that they will be releasing the DTVPal DVR mid-December. However, you can pre-order it starting next week. Originally introduced as the EchoStar TR-50 when it was shown at the Consumer Electronics Show the beginning of the year, the slightly modified HD personal video recorder now has a spiffy new name to match its new look.
With the February 17 digital switchover fast approaching, lots of people still using analog input TV are looking for an alternative to TiVo which has a monthly fee. The DTVPal DVR has that covered. It records over-the-air high-definition channels in HD. You can record up to 30 hours of HDTV or 150 hours of standard definition on its hard drive.
The DTVPal DVR also features a 7-day electronic programming guide, 720p/1080i outputs, and whether you are using digital or analog, you can record, pause, reverse, and more. Dish also states that it works with closed-captioning, supports program search, as well as analog passthrough.
Retail price is $250 after an instant rebate Dish is offering (since this isn’t eligible for the government $40 DTV coupon). You can pre-order starting November 19th at dtvpal.com
(TrendHunter.com) Many new moms have trouble shedding their baby weight, but Alessandra Ambrosio reported to work for a Victorias Secret bikini shoot looking fit and trim. Alessandra Ambrosio joined... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 3:20 am
NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "According to a report at p2pnet, Duke University has told the RIAA that it will no longer forward the RIAA's 'early settlement' letters to its students unless the RIAA submits 'evidence that someone actually downloaded from that student,' and said that 'if the RIAA can't prove that actual illegal behavior occurred, then we're not going to comply.' While it is good news that a university is requiring the RIAA to put up or shut up, the forwarding — or not forwarding — of letters is pretty insignificant. What I want to know is this: 'When the RIAA comes knocking with its Star Chamber, ex parte, 'John Doe' litigation to get the students' identities, is the University going to go to bat for the students and fight the litigation on the ground that it's based on zero evidence, and on the ground that the students weren't given prior notice and an opportunity to be heard?' Over 1,000 infringement notices were sent to Duke students in the last year."
The XPERIA X1, another long awaited handset, will be available here in the US very shortly. That’s right, the Sony Ericsson XPERIA X1 will make a US debut on Black Friday (November 28), but sadly it will not be coming with any of the typical Black Friday savings that we have come to expect. Instead it will be retailing for $799.99, that is, of course, as an unlocked handset.
As for features, the XPERIA X1 has a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard along with a 3-inch display, a 3.2-megapixel camera with auto-focus, a microSD card slot, A2DP, Wi-Fi and GPS. Additionally the X1 will come loaded with Microsoft Office Mobile, Internet Explorer Mobile, Opera 9.5, Windows Media Player Mobile and will be running Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional.
So, if you are looking to make a purchase, November 28 will be the day, it can be found directly through Sony Electronics.
(TrendHunter.com) Camilla Diedrichs fiber optic Nature Ray Charles wallpaper is a beautiful set of luminescent wall coverings that seeks to replace electric light fixtures. The Nature Ray Charles... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 2:19 am
CANOGA PARK, Calif., Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Three Pratt & Whitney Rocketdyne Space Shuttle Main Engines (SSME) successfully boosted supplies and equipment onboard... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 2:19 am
While it may not be as fun as getting your hands on the real thing, if anyone was itching to give the new BlackBerry Curve 8900 a test run, I have just found a nice simulator that will allow you to do just that. The simulator may just end up being a little more of a tease, but at least you will get to check out the latest 4.6.1 software. Of course, these online simulators usually just leave me wanting to make a purchase, but maybe that is the point. You can begin playing by clicking the “Read” link below and then selecting “BlackBerry Device Simulators v4.6.1′ for the 8900.”
Papermaster doin’ it for his self! Well, his lawyers are helping. They’ve produced a somewhat scattershot countersuit against IBM, which if you don’t remember, sued the man for supposedly breaching a non-competition agreement in his contract. Papermaster’s corner says that not only is the non-comp clause “unreasonably broad,” but the statute of limitations is “unreasonably lengthy” and even if that weren’t the case, it’s “unenforceable” due to it being a part of NY law and Papermaster himself being bound only by Texas and California law.
To be honest, it’s pretty dry. I’m think I’ll leave this one alone for a while.
CNET - Google's recent announcement that it may have found a way to predict U.S. flu trends has led to the inevitable expressions of concern from some privacy groups. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 15 Nov 2008 | 2:12 am
The Asus M50Vm-B4 is a desktop-killer, with HDMI, eSATA, a 10-key number pad, and a 2.53-GHz Core 2 Duo processor. Wonderful, but leave it plugged in — battery life is a paltry 1.5 hours.
The Asus M50Vm-B4 is a desktop-killer, with HDMI, eSATA, a 10-key number pad, and a 2.53-GHz Core 2 Duo processor. Wonderful, but leave it plugged in — battery life is a paltry 1.5 hours.
While they’re not as significant as the potential 6,000 layoffs at Sun Microsystems (JAVA) announced earlier today, several sources at Yahoo said that the previously announced layoffs at the Internet giant are set to take effect on December 10.
Yahoo (YHOO) confirmed it would cut it workforce by “at least” 10 percent of its global workforce–or about 1,400 to 1,500–on October 21, as part of its third-quarter earnings call. But it did not give an exact date for the action.
That 10 percent figure is still the number being cut, said sources, although the company–as all tech outfits suffering in the current economic meltdown–could be forced to make more reductions if the outlook worsens.
That’s not likely for now, but such a large cut will still have a major impact at the company, which has not had to make a lot of cutbacks over its history.
Thus, not such happy holidays at Yahoo’s Sunnyvale, Ca. HQ.
But someone who is not leaving–at least not quite yet, despite the persistent rumors over the last week–is Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang.
As Yahoo’s share has dropped this week to $10 a share, a spate of rumors swirled inside and outside the company about the fate of Yang and also President Sue Decker.
But sources said that neither is leaving the company at this point and both are focused on ongoing plans to improve its fortunes. That includes a possible deal to merge with Time Warner online unit AOL.
Talks about a merger have been ongoing, but the pair are still far apart on price. Source at both companies said Time Warner (TWX) wants $6 billion for AOL, while Yahoo wants to pay a little more than half that in the $4 billion range.
Price is a bigger issue than ever, since Yahoo’s market valuation has dropped so significantly and the deal would involve Time Warner getting a percentage of the combined company.
That said, if the pair can come to terms on price, having done a lot of due diligence already, with AOL and Yahoo execs involved in extensive meetings, Yang could bring a deal to the board by next week.
If combined, of course, there would be more layoffs in the consolidation of the pair.
We want to do it before the holidays, which is why we wanted to let people know that it would affect 10 percent [of Yahoo's work force]. But we also want to make sure that we are cutting to be more effective and not cutting for cutting’s sake.
We have been growing costs for the last few years while we were investing in new products and platforms, and we have also made a lot of acquisitions and additions. There have been redundancies and geo-consolidation that we had not addressed that we are doing now. I know that sounds generic, but doing this is really important.
I look at these cuts as both a short-term and long-term effort. In the short term, we have consolidation and organizational corrections to make. In the long term, we will look at our whole portfolio and are now asking ourselves in each case if we need to be in this business.
We’re asking ourselves–should we sell it or should we shut it down? That is the kind of comprehensive look we are doing across the company.”
Dell has officially made their latest Inspiron Mini available in the US. Customers can now visit Dell and purchase the Inspiron Mini 12, but sadly the configurations seem a little limited and may not be ideal for everyone.
Dell is offering the Inspiron Mini 12 in three configurations, which begin at $549 and go up as high as $649. The main drawbacks are that (at least for now) the maximum amount of RAM that you can add is 1GB, and the only option for an operating system is Vista Home Basic. Personally, I would like to have seen some more RAM as 2GB is becoming more and more of a standard nowadays, but more important is that the only OS available is Vista Home Basic and that is sure to turn some sales away from all those Vista haters.
All three configurations feature a 12.1-inch display with a 1280 x 800 resolution, Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 500, Wi-Fi 802.11 g and are available in Obsidian Black or Alpine White. The Inspiron Mini 12 also has three USB 2.0 ports, ethernet, VGA-out, a line-out, microphone-in and a built-in three-in-one card reader.
The low-end model is retailing for $549 and features a 1.33GHz Intel Atom processor, a 40GB hard drive and ships with a 3-cell battery. The next step up will set you back $599, and that features a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, a 60GB hard drive, and a 6-cell battery. Finally, the high-end model offers the same 1.6GHz processor and 6-cell battery, but has an 80GB hard drive.
All three options are currently available for order and are expected to begin shipping out to customers in December.
KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Fla., Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- As Endeavour lifted off today on the 124th Space Shuttle flight, a new software upgrade aimed at improving mission safety was... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 1:12 am
stephencrane writes "Northrop Grumman is making available for sale the FIRESTRIKE weaponized laser system. The solid-state laser unit weighs over 400lbs, sends/receives instructions and data via an RJ-45 jack and can be synchronized with additional units to emit a 100 kW beam. It looks like some piece of stereophonic amplification equipment out of the 50's. Or Fallout 3. The press release suggests that FIRESTRIKE 'will form the backbone of future laser weapon systems.'"
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The Obama administration should move away from using private contractors in active battle areas in Iraq and Afghanistan and dramatically step up oversight, a Washington think... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 1:06 am
This week's Gadget Lab video podcast, episode #17, features hands-on reviews of two hot new products: Apple's new 13.3-inch MacBook, and Canon's high-definition, solid-state, tapeless camcorder, the Vixia HF10.
The new aluminum MacBook is one hot notebook, featuring a case milled in part out of a solid block of aluminum (which somehow makes it especially green, according to Steve Jobs) and an extra-large multitouch-capable touchpad. It's also a screamer, boasting better performance than the old MacBook Pro. Danny Dumas and Bryan Gardiner give it a 9 out of 10.
The Canon Vixia HF10 is a cutting-edge HD camcorder that eschews tape in favor of an internal 16GB of storage; it's also compatible with SD storage cards. The list price is $1,100 but it's available for as little as $600 on Amazon -- or save $100 and get the HF100, which doesn't have onboard memory and uses only SD cards for storage. Dylan Tweney and Jose Fermoso star in this segment of the video. It scores 9 out of 10 in Wired's review.
Space shuttle Endeavour and a crew of seven are blasting into the night sky, bound for the international space station. The shuttle rose off its launch pad Friday a little before 8 p.m.... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 12:58 am
The Brit comedian tees off on fat people, cracks jokes about autistic kids and even dabbles in mime -- and somehow turns the whole twisted shebang into a laugh riot.
MySpace has an embarrassing situation today involving their new MyAds self service advertising product - they’ve repeatedly rejected ads from a startup called HubPages as competitive to MySpace, despite the fact that the site isn’t a social network.
Ryan Hupfer from HubPages (who coincidentally is the author of MySpace For Dummies) writes:
This is a follow-up for these 2 posts (here and here) that you guys have written on the new MySpace MyAds advertising platform, which I was initially excited for and now wish that I’d never seen due to it being a complete waste of my time. I thought that you might enjoy hearing a first-person encounter with the system and from a business that actually utilizes these types of campaigns as a way for new member recruitment. I will give you a brief overview and if you’d like more information, I’d be more that happy to talk more about it.
Who I am:
My name is Ryan Hupfer and I’m the Communicator of Awesomeness! (marketing manager) at HubPages.com, a US top 250 website that focuses on helping writers monetize topical content. I believe that Mike knows one of our founders, Paul Edmondson pretty well and you wrote about our launch back in 2006. You last wrote something about in May of 2007 when we changed our look and added some text ad optimization to the site.
Why I’m contacting you:
Part of my job is to keep new writers coming into HubPages and we do all types of CPC campaigns and other online partnerships to help with this. Well, I have been using Facebook ads for quite a while now and have been very pleased with the results. It’s super easy to use, targets well and is very easy to create, update and manage as the campaigns progress over time. Well, when I heard that MySpace was coming up with the same type of self-service ad system I was pretty excited to try it out. I even had one of our designers come up with 2 versions of 5 ads that I wanted to start running. Well, as I started creating the campaigns, I first noticed a few things:
1. The targeting isn’t nearly as good as Facebook (I couln’t even target Finance or Autos topics)
2. The platform is very Flash heavy and super slow/clunky compared to Facebook
3. The campaign setup was fairly confusing and it seemed like I could only add one ad to a campaign, which dictates the ad budget (which had to be over $25). So that’s a daily spend of $25 per ad.
Despite these slowdowns, I still continued on and entered in each of the ads, with 2 versions of each (300 square and 728 banner). But, as I began to enter them in I noticed that they were starting to get rejected just as quickly as I was adding them in. I wasn’t really sure why they were getting rejected until I received an email from MySpace with a reason. This is where it gets interesting, too due to the fact that I received several different reasons for rejection for the same ad after I resubmitted it again. Also, 5 out of the 10 ads made it through, no probem so I have no idea why the some were rejected and some weren’t. Here are some screenshots of the rejection from the platform and here are a few quotes from the email that was sent to me (2 of them are different and they were for the same ad):
Rejection #1 (same ad as Rejection #2, but with different reason) Dear Advertiser:
The Write 300 advertisement in your campaign(s) MySpace Writing 300 was reviewed to ensure that it complies with our editorial guidelines. We would like you to know that your ad was not accepted for the following reason: Other - Not accepting this type of business.
Rejection #2 Dear Advertiser:
The Write 300 advertisement in your campaign(s) MySpace Writing 300 was reviewed to ensure that it complies with our editorial guidelines. We would like you to know that your ad was not accepted for the following reason: Other - Promotion of a Myspace Competitor.
Rejection #3 Dear Advertiser:
The auto 700 advertisement in your campaign(s) auto 700 was reviewed to ensure that it complies with our editorial guidelines. We would like you to know that your ad was not accepted for the following reason: Other - Myspace competitor, cannot promote.
So, not only did they continue to reject my ads (and my money), but they did it in a very inconsistent way, not to mention that I would never view HubPages as a competitor to MySpace in the first place.
Anyways, I thought that you and the rest of the TechCrunch crew would find all of this pretty interesting and I would be curious to see if anyone else is having the same issues with the new MyAds platform. As an advertising platform it’s not even in the same ballpark as Facebook’s system, but maybe other people would say otherwise. If you’d like to post something about this, feel free and if you’d like more information, just let me know.
I contacted MySpace and they said the rejection is an error and will be reversed. They did confirm that they reject ads from “direct competitors,” and point out that Facebook does the same. In this case, though, they said that their customer service representatives were overzealous in rejecting the ads.
MySpace also says they now have 10,000 advertisers on the platform. Earlier this month we reported early revenue numbers for the product.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
On Monday we published a list of gadgets eerily similar to those that appeared in Minority Report. Now, Oblong Industries has produced a video (above) demonstrating a spatial operating system called G-speak, which mimics the film's famous gesture-based interface far more closely than Mgestyk Technologies' similar product.
Oblong says its technology combines gesture reading, "recombinant networking, and real world pixels" to get that Minority Report effect. And Oblong claims the similarity to the film is no coincidence, as one of the company's founders was a science adviser to Minority Report.
SAO PAULO, Nov 14 (Reuters) - State-run oil company Petrobras reported on Friday that October crude output in Brazil was 1.87 million barrels a day on average, an 8.3 percent increase over the same month... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 12:21 am
Microsystems Inc., one of the storied names in computing, to the brink of extinction. The company's servers and software helped stimulate the Internet boom, and its engineering acumen... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 12:17 am
unassimilatible writes "DARPA has announced a 'Personal Air Vehicle Technology' project. It will 'ultimately lead to a working prototype of a military-suitable flying car — a two- or four-passenger vehicle that can "drive on roads" one minute and take off like a helicopter the next. The hybrid machine would be perfect for "urban scouting," casualty evacuation and commando-delivery missions, the agency believes.' Wired has the summary of the project." Maybe they'll take inspiration from Terrafugia's "drivable airplane."
WASHINGTON, Nov 14 (Reuters) - The Obama administration should move away from using private contractors in active battle areas in Iraq and Afghanistan and dramatically step up oversight, a Washington think... Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 15 Nov 2008 | 12:13 am
German startup Cellity has unveiled its enhanced address book (called Addressbook 2.0) for mobile phones, now available in a private beta. The J2ME application allows users to aggregate data from across their Email boxes, social networks, and standard address books into a single intuitive application, bringing the functionality of a smartphone to the hundreds of more basic phones that support the Java platform. The company is offering 1000 invites to TechCrunch readers, which you can request here.
Beyond offering a complete database for contact information, the app allows users to place inexpensive phone calls over the company’s own PSTN network (which is similar to Jajah’s), and send free text messages. However, Cellity will also make a whitelabel version available in the future, which would allow cellular carriers to implement Addressbook 2.0 using their own native networks. The application also allows users to update status messages across multiple social networks.
Addressbook 2.0’s design is very polished, and is significantly more intuitive than most address books that come standard on cell phones. To get started, users import their friend lists from social networks including Xing, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter, as well as from Email clients like Outlook. The service will automatically detect when a friend is found on multiple social networks and aggregate their data under a single profile without creating duplicates.
And because address books generated using social networks can grow very large very quickly, the site offers an online control panel to manage contacts. Users can create a database consisting of thousands of entries to be stored in the cloud, picking out the few dozen that they use most regularly to be stored on the phone (they can access the full list from their phones if they ever need it). The online panel also allows includes the same features of the mobile app, allowing users to place calls, send text messages, and update social network statuses.
The company estimates that the application will run on around 650 available phones, which are less sexy than the iPhone and Android but account for a much larger mobile install base worldwide. The company will see no shortage of competition, as there have been a number of other efforts to integrate social networks with mobile phones, including Yahoo’s OneConnect (though Cellity seems to be highlighting on more traditional address book functionality rather than social networking).
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Video sharing service YouTube has rolled out a new search feature that
returns video results based on location. The site gets your current location
using optional controls inside your browser, and it gives you a list videos
with nearby geotags.
U.S. customs agents have found $700,000 worth of fake Nikes in a shipment from China that allegedly pretended to carry $20,674 in kitchen cabinets.
There's no word on whether the Nikes involved in the sting operation were the Hyperdunk shoes that the company tried to pass off as the real Mcflys from Back to the Future II, earlier this summer. The shoes are the company's most trendy this year, and we wouldn't be surprised if a criminal tried to make money off their popularity.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, 568 cartons of bogus Nikes were stuffed behind 30 cartons of industrial toilet paper. This is only the latest incident in the battle against trafficking of valuable gadgets and other merchandise in California ports.
Earlier this year, thousands of expensive counterfeit watches were seized in a Los Angeles port, and in May, $22 million worth of fake designer bags were also found in Oakland's Port.
The Port of Oakland is one of the West Coast's largest terminals for container ships, and is one of the busiest ports in the country. According to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office, about 20,000 to 30,000 containers come into the port each month.
According to the Chronicle's report, the alleged counterfeit importer described the contents of the container as only kitchen cabinets, before arriving to the port. There is no word on whether the man has been indicted for the counterfeit or whether he was wearing fake McFlys at the time of his arrest.
A convicted pedophile who turned up in MySpace's 2007 purge of sex offenders faces new charges of bank fraud for allegedly running counterfeit checks through a bank account he established for his online church, TruthOfGodMinistries.org. Also, South Carolina is mum on a state worker accused of stealing identity data on nearly everyone in the state.
Getting someone to try a new search engine is not easy. In this Friday’s Elevator Pitch, Herbert Roitblat tries to entice you to try his new green search engine Truevert by asking, “Are you average?” Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live, he contends, give you average results. Truevert gives you special results—everything comes back through green-colored glasses. So a search for “SUV” brings back HybridSUV.com as the top result. A search for “building materials” brings back results for green building materials.
But what is really special about Truevert is not that it is a green search engine. It is a Yahoo BOSS search mashup. Truevert is actually just a demonstration of some powerful underlying semantic technology developed at OrcaTec, a company co-founded by Roitblat and Brian Golbère. Truevert gets its search results from Yahoo BOSS and applies its own text-analyzing software to generate the most relevant green results. OrcaTec’s software could just as easily be used to create a fashion search engine, a startup search engine, or any of a thousand other vertical search engines.
In an email, Roitblat explain how his technology works:
Our approach is to mimic the way that people learn language. When people learn a new word they learn its meaning by it relation to the other words in the sentence or paragraph. . . . Even if you learn it from a dictionary, its meaning is still from the context of other words. Similarly, when people understand a sentence, each word in the sentence helps to disambiguate the other words in the sentence. For example, consider the sentence, “the tree surgeon examined the young man’s palm.” By the time you get to the word “palm,” you have a pretty good idea what that word means.
Our system also learns meaning from the context. We provided the system with a set of green documents. These documents are broken into paragraphs and the word relationships within each paragraph are computed using our patent-pending modeling software. Each word in the paragraph becomes the context for the other words in the paragraph.
Then, when a user submits a query, that query is transmitted to the model and a set of additional terms, that are most closely related to that query are generated. All of these terms are then submitted to BOSS. The snippets that come back from BOSS are then re-ranked by according to the match between the snippet and the expanded and weighted list of query terms. The result is a set of pages that match the query in the context.
The big difference between the semantic technology underlying Truevert and those used by other semantic search engines such as Hakia or Powerset is that Truevert’s does not require massive and unwieldy ontologies, taxonomies, or even a thesaurus. It tries to learn the meaning of words from the text itself and the surrounding words. Roitblat distances Truevert’s approach from other semantic search technologies and explains their limitations:
Other semantic search engines may be based on 20 or more years of ontology building. Ontologies capture only the words and relationships that their designers think are important. They are usually limited to a single language and require substantial effort to extend to a new language. In contrast, the Truevert system learned about the green vertical in well under an hour. The technology works in any language because it learns the meaning of words directly from the pages that it reads.
Verticals can be as broad as you like, for example, consumer goods, travel, or as narrow as a single person’s interest. Because construction of the verticals can be automated, there is no intrinsic limit to the number that could be created very quickly. Users of general search engines can be offered a choice of verticals in the same way that they are offered a choice of related searches.
Other companies have offered what they call semantic search based on the semantic web approach. The difficulty with this approach is that it requires some person to actively determine what category or categories a document belongs in. (Or it requires machine classification.) But this is similar to the situation search engines used to have with meta tags. It was too easy for people to cheat and assign pages to categories that were inappropriate, but profitable. We don’t know what will stop a similar descent into chaos for an RDF framework. The Truevert approach is more resistant to such cheating because it depends on the actual content of the pages, rather than on someone’s description. It does not rely on an author’s honesty or reliability.
Human categories do not correspond to the kind of things that are likely to be represented by semantic web tags. People make up new words (the Jabberwocky effect, e.g., “podcast”) and use old words in new ways (the Humpty Dumpty syndrome, e.g., “twitter”). In short, vocabularies are constantly growing and human categories of meaning are always changing, so ontologies are always behind.
The semantic web approach also relies on fitting words into categories that are stable from time to time and from person to person, but people change how they categorize things based on their current context and needs. A given word or object can belong to an infinite number of categories. For example, what categories does a basketball belong in? Round things, bouncy things, brown things, etc. How long is this list? Do you ever reach a point where no one could add another category to it? Things with tiny dimples? Things that my brother hates? Things that Barack Obama likes? Things that float? For this last one, imagine that you are on a sinking ship, in this context that category is important and obvious.
The question is: Does Truevert do a better job? Check it out and tell Roitblat what you think in comments.
CNET - When the Space Shuttle Endeavour launches Friday afternoon, assuming it is not delayed, the astronauts onboard and the technicians on the ground at mission control will have at their disposal new software that could streamline the process of problem reporting and analysis. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Nov 2008 | 11:36 pm
Swiss watchmaker Romain Jerome may not be as well-known as Rolex or Patek Philippe. But it is looking to stand apart by creating watches with some very exclusive material.
The company's latest collection called 'Moon Dust-DNA' uses materials such as moon dust and fragments from spacecrafts Apollo XI, Soyuz and the International Space Station.
It is "inspired by and incorporates the DNA heritage of major figures in the conquest of space," says the company.
A Romain Jerome watch from the collection will have a lunar dial with tiny craters that will be filled with mineral deposits including Moon dust. It will also have a 46mm steel and titanium case with steel from the Apollo XI space shuttle and rusted steel paws that include fragments of the Soyuz spacecraft. The strap is composed of fibers from a spacesuit worn during the International Space Station mission.
The company says it guarantees the origin of each of the materials used in the watch by a legal document authenticated in Switzerland. And each piece will be accompanied by a certificate from the Association of Space Explorers.
In the past, Romain Jerome has done a Titanic-DNA collection using steel and coal from the remains of the ill-fated ship.
Romain Jerome will make 1,969 Moon Dust DNA-collection watches, symbolic of the year man first landed on the moon. The watches will retail between $15,000 and $500,000.
Ashmash writes "Phoronix is reporting on a new Linux driver nVidia is about to release that brings PureVideo features to Linux. This video API will reportedly be in nVidia's 180 series driver for Linux, Solaris, and *BSD. PureVideo has been around for several nVidia product generations, but it's the first time they're bringing this feature to these non-Windows operating systems to provide an improved multimedia experience. This new API is named VDPAU, and is described as: 'The Video Decode and Presentation API for Unix (VDPAU) provides a complete solution for decoding, post-processing, compositing, and displaying compressed or uncompressed video streams. These video streams may be combined (composited) with bitmap content, to implement OSDs and other application user interfaces.'"
With more than a dozen cinematic irons in his creative fire, the writer/director takes time out from tackling Tolkien to talk about the art of moviemaking.
By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Morgan Stanley analyst Richard Ji this morning cut his rating on Sina (SINA) to Equal Weight from Overweight. He also cut estimates: for 2008, he now sees $1.38, down from $1.41, and for 2009 he now expects $1.41, down from $1.69. For 2010, his forecast is $1.67, down from $2.11.
Ji is concerned about softening of China’s advertising market, and he thinks Sina is more exposed to the slowdown than other China Internet portals. He notes that the company generates about 70 percent of its revenue from online ads, versus 40 percent-plus for Sohu and mid-teens for Tencent and NetEase. He also notes that the company had created an Olympics channel, generating extra inventory; but that (for obvious reasons) that channel has ceased to exist.
AFP - Microsoft, which has made billions of dollars selling packaged software, has opened its first online store in the United States offering its ubiquitous programs for downloading.
AP - A flashy Las Vegas entrepreneur who became a billionaire at the height of the dot-com bubble was sentenced Friday to nine years in prison for stock fraud, capping a seven-year investigation that led to seven convictions. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Nov 2008 | 10:56 pm
This looks pretty cool, even if it could be mistaken for being steampunk. I like being able to have my light blink, personally, but it would also be nice to be able to mess with the LEDs or put in colored ones.
What, it’s the season! Make DIY merry, people!
[via MAKE]
Protoclown writes "The National Center for Computational Sciences (NCCS), located at Oak Ridge National Labs (ORNL) in Tennessee, has upgraded the Jaguar supercomputer to 1.64-petaflops for use by scientists and engineers working in areas such as climate modeling, renewable energy, materials science, fusion and combustion. The current upgrade is the result of an addition of 200 cabinets of the Cray XT5 to the existing 84 cabinets of the XT4 Jaguar system. Jaguar is now the world's most powerful supercomputer available for open scientific research."
Everyone from sweet old grandma to your Charles Schwab rep is using your ancient Hotmail or AOL address to keep in touch, so you can't just abandon it. Here's a technique for swapping out that crappy old e-mail service for something from this century. Get with the times on Wired's How-To Wiki.
Every week leading up to LeWeb, in Paris on December 9th and 10th, the conference’s organizers are going to be giving away one ticket to the TechCrunch reader who leaves the best comment about why they want to go. We are also excited that LeWeb’s, organizers are offering TechCrunch readers a 20% discount Thank You LeWeb
Without our sponsors TechCrunch would not be possible. Accordingly, we want to thank the following sponsors for their support.
TechCrunch also is happy to announce two new sponsorship opportunities. First, CrunchGear is publishing a Holiday Gear Guide, which is the perfect way for your company to reach people as they research their purchases this holiday season. Second, we are now offering a full banner (468×60) on TechCrunch’s RSS feed, which has over 1.2 million subscribers. If you are interested in either of these opportunities, please e-mail Dan Kimerling
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Geneva might be known as the center of international diplomacy but the quality audio gadgets from a local company could be latest Swiss export to gain notoriety.
At least, the system's design will probably turn more heads than the last peace treaty that was soundly ignored by world governments.
Geneva Sound Systems, based in the old city, is releasing their newest speaker rigs for the holiday season this week, the $800 Medium Speaker. We got a first look (and ears-on) at this system a couple months back in Denver at the CEDIA conference and our early verdict was that the audio was accurate and full, and its design simplicity really made a positive impression.
This is especially the case when the speakers were placed next to the other gaudy and over-compensating systems that surrounded it on the show floor. The all-in-one Hifi speaker rig is wood-crafted and comes with an audio CD, radio, iPhone/iPod dock, and has a piano-laquered finish in red, white or black.
It also comes with four speakers, a ported bass, and 100-watt all digital (Class D) amp.
Despite our early excitement, we're still not sure if the rig is good enough to legitimize the $8oo price (it's probably not), but we'll bring it for a review soon and make up our minds.
An EPA panel's ruling that blocks a Utah coal plant from expanding, coupled with a court order to set a nationwide standard for carbon dioxide emissions, may make coal plants more expensive to operate than alternative energy installations.
There's gold in them thar PCs -- not to mention silver, copper, aluminum and other valuable recyclables.
That fact, not a desire to save the planet, is now pushing the tech industry toward "greener" manufacturing and recycling practices. It could mean that there's an environmental silver lining to the mounting economic crisis: Tough times are forcing companies to resort to
recycling as a means of recouping costs. These recycling measures are also good public relations in a time when consumers are increasingly eco-conscious -- and they might even be good for the planet.
"We view this waste as a valuable resource, and recycling it is a far
better use of it," said Wes Muir, director of communications at
Waste Communication Recycle America, which is handling
Sony and LG's recycling programs.
Several electronics
manufacturers, such as Dell, LG and Sony recently partnered with
recycling facilities to offer take-back programs for consumers to
freely dispose of their gadgets.
Apple is particularly aggressive
with its
green message. The company tags its latest line of MacBooks as "The
greenest MacBook ever." While Steve Jobs sounds awfully humanitarian, his
move toward greener tech is as much for Apple as it is for the
environment, said Casey Harrell, a toxics campaigner with environmental
group Greenpeace. By making these gadgets safer to recycle, Apple, and
other companies making similar decisions, is saving money by
reducing the costs of recycling while benefiting from reusing old
materials.
Recycling facilities disassemble old gadgets into different parts and
sell salvageable materials to brokers, according to Muir. Then, the
brokers sell the recycled materials, such as plastics, gold and copper,
to tech manufacturers to reuse in new gadgets. Manufacturers are
preferring this method because it's substantially less expensive than
purchasing newly mined materials.
Just how much a company saves varies depending on the type of gadget
being recycled, but Harrell estimates that recycling old electronics
could result in up to 4-to-1 cost savings.
"I don't think these companies would be lobbying [greener tech] unless
there was a financial incentive," Harrell said. "It's not altruistic,
and ultimately we don't care. We want the [cleaner] results, so if
they're able to make money off of this ... it's a win-win."
Other than saving money, the industry-wide shift toward cleaner tech is
also being driven by new laws regarding electronic waste. In 2003, the
European Union passed the Waste from Electrical and Electronic
Equipment (WEEE) Directive Act, which requires manufacturers to take
responsibility for recycling their products after consumers discard
them. In other words, if Sony sells a TV to a European customer, Sony
has to take the TV back and recycle it at the end of the device's life.
While the
directive is only directly affecting Europe, it's spreading to the
United States and Asia, too: Many big tech manufacturers operate
internationally, and it'd be both inefficient and costly to make an
eco-friendly product for Europe and a dirtier version of the same
gadget for another country.
New
rules regarding hazardous waste have also emerged in the United States
-- although they're a bit less demanding than the EU's. In 2007, the
Environmental Protection Agency issued a rule probibiting the United States
from exporting used televisions and computer monitors. This is a small
but important step: Older displays contain high amounts of toxics, such
as lead contained in cathode ray tubes (CRTs) -- as much as several
pounds per TV or monitor.
Tech companies are also marketing
cleaner tech to retain positive public relations, as they're feeling
the heat from widespread, global concern over the disposal of
electronics waste. Currently, environmental groups are still fighting to eliminate e-waste exports to Asian countries. The
environmental group Silicon Valley Toxics Coalition (SVTC) claims
the majority of U.S. e-waste -- an estimated 20 million pounds -- is
collected for recycling and shipped to China, India, South Korea,
Nigeria, Malaysia, Mexico, Vietnam and Brazil. The problem? Many of the
recycling organizations in these countries are in the "informal sector"
-- essentially junk
dealers with very little money and few resources. Illustrating the
issue, a recent documentary by Current shows recycling workers in China disassembling old gadgets on top of piles of waste.
"We've kind of won the overall war on the direction of chemical
phase-out and waste collection," Harrell said. "Now we're bickering
about how much and how fast."
Photo: Shelves of old computers in a Portland, Oregon recycling plant. Jeff Kubina/Flickr
lobo235 writes to tell us that a new underground data center designed by Sweden's largest ISP is fit for a classic supervillain, complete with greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb. "'Rather than just concentrating on technical hardware we decided to put humans in focus,' he said. 'Of course, the security, power, cooling, network, etc, are all top notch, but the people designing data centers often (always!) forget about the humans that are supposed to work with the stuff.'"
Other than slowing down consumer spending, the economic downturn is deterring businesses from buying new computers for their workers.
The typical lifespan of an office computer is three years before it's replaced by a new one, but 46 percent of businesses are postponing on purchasing upgrades because it's one of the easiest ways to cut costs, according to a Wall Street Journal story. Though to the average consumer three years may not seem very long to merit an upgrade, office employees use their computers heavily and tend to wear them down faster. In consequence, slower computers (and massive layoffs) amount to office productivity taking a big hit.
Of course, fewer enterprise computer sales are affecting tech manufacturers as well, which is why research company IDC is projecting U.S. PC shipments will drop 1 percent in the fourth quarter compared to quarter four of 2007. The good news for consumers is that companies are slashing computer prices up to 30 percent to boost demand, but lower prices don't necessarily bode well in a collapsing economy.
AP - SUN DOWN: Still not fully recovered from the dot-com bust eight years ago, Sun Microsystems Inc. is being walloped by this economic downturn. In response the company plans to cut as many as 6,000 jobs 18 percent of its work force. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Nov 2008 | 9:49 pm
Today, I downloaded one of the dumbest, yet somehow most satisfying, apps to my Android phone. It is called the Punch-O-Meter. You grasp the phone (firmly) in your hand, tap the screen, and then give it your best shot. The app uses the phone’s accelerometer to measure how fast you can punch. After each punch, you get a score and a one-to-five-star rating. It is guaranteed to destroy your phone.
When you start playing with it in a room full of people, everybody wants to try it. Especially anyone under five. When my two-year-old son insisted that I let him try it after he saw how much fun his older brother and I were having competing to get the highest score, I knew I would have to uninstall it quickly or else risk seeing the phone smashed against the floor.
A similar app with the exact same name is also available on the iPhone for 99 cents. (The Android app is free). The iPhone version is made by DoApp, and appears to be unrelated to the Android Punch-O-Meter. It looks a little different (you can see a video here), and the developer of the Android app, Alex Pisarev, is not listed as a member of the DoApp team.
Sounds like DoApp and Pisarev might have to duke it out.
Here’s a video showing the iPhone Punch-O-Meter:
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
NewsFactor - Google is pushing its voice-recognition technology to Apple's iPhone first, before devices running its own Android mobile platform. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Nov 2008 | 9:33 pm
The year-end total for tech sector job losses in 2008 is expected to reach 180,000, according to Challenger, Gray & Christmas. That’s the largest annual job loss for the sector since 2003, when tech firms sacked some 228,325 employees.
Not at all hard to believe given the news these days. Job cuts through Oct. 31 total 140,422, according to Challenger’s calculations.
That is 31 percent more than the 107,295 cuts announced in all of 2007.
Looks like the tech sector is shooting for a full percentage point increase in unemployment this year.
“In addition to Sun Microsystems’ announcement, Applied Materials and National Semiconductor have announced job cuts in November,” says John Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray and Christmas. “By the end of the year, we may also see cuts from Cisco Systems, Qualcomm and Nokia, all of whom are reporting falling sales amid the weakening economy.”
Wonderful. Something to look forward to…sigh….
Challenger’s release in full, after the jump.
Tech Sector Cuts To Reach Highest Level Since 2005
MORE THAN 140,000 TECHNOLOGY CUTS SO FAR
CHICAGO – After a quiet first half of the year, job cuts in the technology sector surged in the third quarter and are on track to reach the highest year-end total since 2003. The latest evidence that the economic downturn has reached the tech sector came this morning with the report that Sun Microsystems will be eliminating 5,000 to 6,000 jobs in a broad restructuring.
Through October 31, job cuts by firms in the telecommunications, electronics and computer industries total 140,422, according to global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas, Inc., which tracks job-cut announcements daily. That is 31 percent more than the 107,295 tech-sector job cuts announced in all of 2007.
Nearly two-thirds of these job cuts (89,433) have occurred since July. The 69,654 tech-sector job cuts announced in the third quarter were 37 percent more than the 50,989 job cuts announced by technology firms in the entire first half of 2008. The third-quarter total was, in fact, the largest quarterly figure since the fourth quarter of 2003, when technology cuts numbered 82,328.
Computer, electronics and telecommunications firms have already announced 19,779 cuts since the beginning of the fourth quarter. Job cuts in the technology sector are now averaging 22,358 per month in the second half of year, up from a monthly average of 8,498 in the first half. At the current
pace, the year-end total could reach 180,000, which would be the largest annual total since 2003, when technology firms announced 228,325 job cuts.
“In addition to Sun Microsystems’ announcement, Applied Materials and National Semiconductor have announced job cuts in November. By the end of the year, we may also see cuts from Cisco Systems, Qualcomm and Nokia, all of whom are reporting falling sales amid the weakening economy,” said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
“The tech sector is simply the latest victim in this downturn that began last year with the collapse of the housing market, and quickly spread to the financial markets. Since then, the impact has rippled throughout the economy and job cuts have surged in several industries, including retail, transportation, media, entertainment and leisure, automotive and even health care. Businesses and consumers have slashed their spending and no industry is immune,” he added.
As close as we come to a corporate D+R meeting, Mark Frauenfelder, Jenny Hart and I [Mister Jalopy] will all be at Felt Club this Sunday. All it takes is a trip to another craft fair to realize that Felt Club is a full 1000% cooler than those other pikers. Jenny will be teaching embroidery, but only to those who sign up early. Two classes, 10 people each, buy a starter kit at the Felt Club info table. Get there early, suckers!
The New York Times is reporting that Google has added a voice interface to their iPhone search software. Expected to make its debut as early as Friday, users will be able to speak into their phone and ask any question they could type into Google's search engine. The audio will be digitized and results will be returned via the normal search interface. "Google is by no means the only company working toward more advanced speech recognition capabilities. So-called voice response technology is now routinely used in telephone answering systems and in other consumer services and products. These systems, however, often have trouble with the complexities of free-form language and usually offer only a limited range of responses to queries."
Reuters - Top handset maker Nokia Oyj said on Friday the world's mobile phone market would fall in the fourth quarter and next year as an economic slowdown crimps consumer demand around the world.
Paul J. Zak, a neuroeconomist and director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies at Claremont Graduate University, explains the psychology of cons using himself as an example. When he was a teenager, he was taken by the "pigeon drop."
Here's what happened to me. One slow Sunday afternoon, a man comes out of the restroom with a pearl necklace in his hand. "Found it on the bathroom floor" he says. He followed with "Geez, looks nice-I wonder who lost it?" Just then, the gas station's phone rings and a man asked if anyone found a pearl necklace that he had purchased as a gift for his wife. He offers a $200 reward for the necklace's return. I tell him that a customer found it. "OK" he says, "I'll be there in 30 minutes." I give him the ARCO address and he gives me his phone number. The man who found the necklace hears all this but tells me he is running late for a job interview and cannot wait for the other man to arrive.
Huum, what to do? The man with the necklace said "Why don't I give you the necklace and we split the reward?" The greed-o-meter goes off in my head, suppressing all rational thought. "Yeah, you give me the necklace to hold and I'll give you $100" I suggest. He agrees. Since high school kids working at gas stations don't have $100, I take money out of the cash drawer to complete the transaction.
You can guess the rest.
He goes on to explain the psychology of cons. In short, :The key to a con is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you."
The organizers of the annual online video event NewTeeVee Live invited me to join them yesterday to talk about Boing Boing tv's first year on the air, on the intertubes. Here's a video of our "fireside chat," which was in fact, actually by a fire of sorts. Video is about 15 minutes long. NewTeeVee Live Star: Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin(GigaOm, and thanks, Om Malik, Liz Gannes, and Chris Albrecht)
Inspired by these old school Kodak infrared flashbulb illuminated snaps of Japanese sexhibitionists and their peeping toms in parks that were shot by Kohei Yoshiyuki in the early '70s, fashion photographer Steven Meisel has created his own version in a layout that was (supposedly) too hot to run in Vogue Italy, so we get to look at them on the internets. NSFW, unless you work in an orgy pit.
Novatel’s latest USB modem, Ovation MC760 Micro, has arrived at the CrunchGear office and it sure is tiny. It will be available from Verizon Wireless starting December 1st. It’s been redubbed the USB760 Modem for VZW and promises an average of 600 kbps to 1.4 mbps down and 500-800kbps up. The price for this dandy is $100 after a MIR and two-year contract. Not sure if this has been done before, but the rebate will come in the form of a debit card.
You can choose between one- and two-year VZW BroadbandAccess plans: 50 MB data usage for $39.99/month or 5 GB data usage for $59.99/month.
Jones’n for some sweet BlackBerry Curve 8900 action? I hear yah, so you might wanna check out the simulator on BlackBerry’s download site to satisfy your itch. Just don’t let your old 8300 see you’re cheating on it. It could get ugly.
My pal Jeff Cross sent me this link to fantastic photos of Swedish dance bands from the 1970s. As Jeff says, "This (reveals) what's wrong with music today... not enough costumes." Swedish Dance Bands From the 70's
Thanks to the MediaMemo readers who’ve been sending in tips, leads and generally useful information about what’s happening at Time Inc., the magazine arm of Time Warner (TWX). Thanks to you, I can report that:
“About 8-10 people” were let go yesterday from InStyle’s editorial group.
Sara Jacobs, VP of Web Application Delivery, has been let go, a move one reader surmises is a “strategy…to gut the Internet unit and let the old magazine IT guys run the show.”
I also want to pass along the thoughts of a 20+ year Time Inc. veteran who says I’m a fool for surmising that CEO Ann Moore has cut down on reorg/layoff memos because of strategic concerns: “The real reason she doesn’t want to put any more of this stuff in writing is that when the rank & file read this stuff it makes us ill. The memos are of necessity tortourously long and nonsensical.”
Here’s the longer take from the Time Inc. vet, who, for obvious reasons, has asked to remain anonymous:
I could throw a rock from my office and hit 10 people with more good ideas on how to take Time Inc. into the digital age than Ann. The ‘reorg’ is classic Moore management. The problem was a too high cost structure, but it would be too embarrassing to her to just say that, so the whole thing has to be cloaked as a ‘strategic realignment of assets.’ The new structure is so complicated, with so many ‘dotted-line’ reporting structures that the new group publishers have no clue how things will work. Even more unbelievably, the new structure is based on the structure under which Fortune and Money have been operating for the past 2-3 years. It is an objective, easily quantified fact that that structure has been a failure (for starts, Chris Poleway, the executive who implemented it was fired). So naturally, we’re rolling it out to the rest of the company.”
Anyone else want to chime in? If you want to use your real name, go ahead and leave a comment below. If you’re (understandably) shy, go ahead and email me: I keep all correspondence anonymous: peter@allthingsd.com.
California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) scientists today began a comprehensive three-month study of salmon migration through the Delta. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
Jason Peltier of the Westlands Water District is addressing the CA Fish & Game Commission today in opposition to a proposed regulation that would cut one million acre feet to California water supplies. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency in Santa Barbara County Friday as an out-of-control wildfire raged near Montecito. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
3 Scandinavia, a part of Hutchison Whampoa, has selected Cisco to support expansion of its broadband data services and to reduce network complexity. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
As over 42% of all consumers research travel online (PhoCusWright), travel and tourism industry leaders continue to focus on how to maximize their online marketing dollars to increase ROI. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
AmericanLife TV Network (ALN), the Nation's only cable network devoted to the Baby Boomer generation, announces the web premiere of "A Journey To Darfur," the highly acclaimed documentary produced by ALN, chronicling the historical trip of Nick and George Clooney to the Sudan border. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
Alawyer4you is a legal technology services company offering complete, IP-based video solutions for the telelaw problems facing attorneys and clients in battling law enforcement. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
BOSTON, Nov. 14 /PRNewswire/ -- Avid cyclist Eric Falk goes online when he's looking for support and motivation during his training. The Lexington, Mass. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
A warning system designed to alert students and faculty at Virginia Tech, scene of a 2007 massacre, failed in its first test, school officials say. The alarm was sounded Thursday after a report of gunfire near a dormitory. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, a Germany-based provider of solutions for commercial and industrial customers in the print media industry, has renewed its contract with AT&T for the provision of data communication and network services. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
US-based Milcom Systems has selected Canada's Redline Communications's WiMAX 4C Mobile WiMAX products for its first WiMAX initiative in Thailand. Tech Mahindra, Redline's preferred systems integration partner, will manage the implementation of the RedMAX 4C network. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 14 Nov 2008 | 8:00 pm
We live in a farm house built in 1930. Even though we're in Los Angeles, our neighborhood is zoned for farm animals and agriculture. Whoever lived in the house before us loved fruit trees. We've got grapefruit, oranges, clementines, olives, figs, persimmons, plums, and feijoas.
The feijoas, also called pineapple guavas, are my second favorite fruit from our yard (the figs are my favorite). They have a perfumey scent, a tart, firm, gritty flesh, and a sweet custardy center. (I'm not sure what kind of cultivar it is.)
This year's harvest came later than usual, and it looks like it's not as bountiful as previous years', but I'm grateful to have any amount. I wait for fruit to drop off the tree, then remove the rind with a vegetable peeler and eat the rest like a pear or apple. I eat up to seven or eight a day.
Wikipedia article about feijoa
Barack Obama is already being called the YouTube President because of the 1,800 YouTube videos that help propel him to win the election and have been watched more than 110 million times. So it seems fitting that Obama will continue to use YouTube to get his message out once he takes office. The weekly radio address that every president has done since FDR will be videotaped and put onto YouTube.
These “fireside chats” were started by FDR during the depression as a way to reassure Americans that everything was going to be all right. Now Obama will have some of his own reassuring to do as we grapple with the current economic crisis.
The Presidential radio address is somewhat of an anachronism that Obama hopes to reinvigorate by bringing his message on-demand to people’s computers. So the weekly chat is skipping TV entirely and going straight from radio to YouTube. The address (which will still be broadcast over the radio) is usually only about four minutes long, a perfect length for YouTube. The videos will be posted on Obama.s Change.Gov website, as well as its dedicated YouTube channel. I wonder if they will ever turn comments on.
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Canadian researchers have been given a unique look at dinosaur reproduction and the evolution of birds as they've narrowed down the likely owner of a dinosaur nest, abandoned on a river's edge 77 million years ago.The nest unearthed in northern Montana in the 1990s likely belonged to one of two types of small, carnivorous dinosaurs, according to scientists from the University of Calgary and Alberta's Royal Tyrrell Museum.The researchers believe it is either a ceanagnathid, which looks somewhat like an ostrich, or a small raptor called a dromaeosaurid. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 7:42 pm
In documents filed late Thursday in federal court in New York, Papermaster argues his noncompete agreement with IBM (IBM) is “unreasonably broad.”
The ‘Business Enterprise’ restriction is unreasonably broad in that it purports to restrict Mr. Papermaster from going to work for any company that engages in competition with his former business unit to any extent, even if Mr. Papermaster will not be working for the part of the company that does so. Likewise, the ‘significant competitor or major competitor’ prong purports to restrict Mr. Papermaster from going to work for one of these companies even if the work that Mr. Papermaster will be doing is completely unrelated to the work he was doing at IBM. These provisions are not necessary to protect any legitimate interests of IBM.”
So not only is Papermaster’s noncompete “unreasonably broad,” it’s utterly irrelevant to his employment with Apple (AAPL).
And beyond that, it’s just plain silly.
Noncompetition agreements are unenforceable both in Texas, where Papermaster was employed by IBM, and California, where he’ll be working for Apple–a fact also noted in his countersuit. Given that, does IBM really want to be putting up $3 million to cover any damages Papermaster might incur should the case be decided in his favor?
Thick smog clouds that loom over Asia threaten the livelihood of crops and contain particles that actually reflect the sun’s rays away from the earth, the U.N. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 7:25 pm
That seemed plausible a few years ago, when consumers embraced the ringtone trend and shelled out $2.50 to buy a couple seconds of music for their phones. But trend is the operative word here–ringtone sales have been flattening for some time. And hopes that consumers would use their phones to buy music over the air via iTunes-like stores haven’t panned out, either.
New plan: Tether music sales directly to the sale of mobile phones, via bundling plans like Nokia’s “Comes With Music.” That program, which just launched in the U.K. last month, makes an interesting proposition: Buy a $229 Nokia handset, and you can download as much music as you want from the big labels–Warner Music Group (WMG); Sony (SNE); Vivendi’s Universal Music Group and EMI Music Group–for a year.
If that works, it’s a double win for the business: It gets consumers to actually pay for digital music and it gets them to pay via an outlet that’s not Apple’s iTunes, which is a big deal for an industry trying to reduce its dependence on Steve Jobs and company.
But it only works if people are actually buying new phones, period. And Nokia (NOK) is now saying that looks a whole lot less likely for the foreseeable future.
When I was a kid and we studied the French Revolution, and, of course, the guillotine, the class buzzed with rumors that the executed could briefly maintain consciousness after decapitation. Damn Interesting just reposted a short piece on that notion of "Lucid Decapitation." From Damn Interesting:
In the heyday of the guillotine during the French Revolution, it is said that many of the condemned were asked to blink for as long as possible after decapitation. While many reportedly did not blink at all, some complied for as long as thirty seconds. Still other observations describe much more specific reactions to stimuli following beheading. Consider the case of Languille, a convicted murderer who was guillotined in France. He was observed by Dr. Beaurieux during his execution at 5:30am on June 28th, 1905. As written in Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, here are the doctor's observations:
Here, then, is what I was able to note immediately after the decapitation: the eyelids and lips of the guillotined man worked in irregularly rhythmic contractions for about five or six seconds … I waited for several seconds. The spasmodic movements ceased.
The face relaxed, the lids half closed on the eyeballs, leaving only the white of the conjunctiva visible, exactly as in the dying whom we have occasion to see every day in the exercise of our profession, or as in those just dead.
It was then that I called in a strong, sharp voice: 'Languille!' I saw the eyelids slowly lift up, without any spasmodic contractions … Next Languille's eyes very definitely fixed themselves on mine and the pupils focused themselves … After several seconds, the eyelids closed again, slowly and evenly, and the head took on the same appearance as it had had before I called out.
Leads scientists to rethink ocean's carbon and nitrogen cyclesAn unusual microorganism discovered in the open ocean may force scientists to rethink their understanding of how carbon and nitrogen cycle through ocean ecosystems.A paper describing the new findings appears in the November 14 issue of the journal Science.A research team led by Jonathan Zehr, a marine scientist at the University of California, Santa Cruz, characterized the new microbe by analyzing its genetic material, even though researchers have not been able to grow it in the laboratory.Zehr said the newly described organism seems to be an atypical member of the cyanobacteria, a group of photosynthetic bacteria formerly known as blue-green algae."This research has revealed a big surprise about the microbiology of the oceans, and the complex integration of the ocean's nitrogen and carbon cycles," said Phillip Taylor, section head in the National Science Foundation (NSF)'s Division of Ocean Sciences, which funded the work."The fact that nitrogen fixation in these abundant unicells is decoupled from photosynthesis is intriguing," said Taylor. "This unique adaptation brings up questions about the role of these abundant microbes in the ocean."Unlike all other known free-living cyanobacteria, this one lacks some of the genes needed to carry out photosynthesis, the process by which plants use light energy to make sugars out of carbon dioxide and water.The mysterious microbe can do something very important, though: It provides natural fertilizer to the oceans by "fixing" nitrogen from the atmosphere into a form useable by other organisms."For it to have such an unusual metabolism is very exciting," Zehr said. "We're trying to understand how something like this can live and grow with so many missing parts."Earlier research by Zehr's group had revealed surprisingly large numbers of novel nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria, including the one that is the focus of this study, in the open ocean.Although 80 percent of Earth's atmosphere is nitrogen, most organisms cannot use it unless it is "fixed" to other elements to make molecules like ammonia and nitrate. Because nitrogen is essential for all forms of life, nitrogen fixation is a major factor controlling overall biological productivity in the oceans.The new microbe is one of the most abundant nitrogen fixers in many parts of the ocean, Zehr said.New DNA sequencing technology provided by 454 Life Sciences enabled rapid sequencing of the organism's genome."I had begun to suspect that there was something missing in this organism's genome, and the genome sequencing confirmed that," said Zehr.The results showed that it is missing the entire set of genes needed for photosystem II and carbon fixation, essential parts of the molecular machinery that carries out photosynthesis in plants and cyanobacteria."That has multiple implications," Zehr said. "It must have a 'lifestyle' that's very different from other cyanobacteria. Ecologically, it's important to understand its role in the ecosystem and how it affects the balance of carbon and nitrogen in the ocean."During photosynthesis, photosystem II generates oxygen by splitting water molecules. Because oxygen inhibits nitrogen fixation, most nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria only fix nitrogen at night, or do it in specialized cells. The lack of photosystem II enables the new microbe to fix nitrogen during the day, Zehr said.But without photosynthesis, it can't take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and convert it into sugars. So it's not clear how the new microbe feeds itself. Either it has some way of feeding on organic matter in its environment, or it lives in close association with other organisms that provide it with food, Zehr said."It would make a perfect symbiont because it could feed nitrogen to its host and live on the carbon provided by the host," he said.Photosystem II is large complex of multiple proteins and chlorophyll molecules, but the team was unable to find any of the genes for the photosystem II core proteins. The genes for photosystem I appeared in the sequencing data, as did genes for both photosystems from the small numbers of contaminating cyanobacteria in the sample.Zehr said he plans to continue research on the new microbe and fill some gaps in the present knowledge.Efforts are currently underway to map the microbe's presence in the oceans and determine its global abundance.Zehr is also interested in how its metabolism differs from other known cyanobacteria. If it can be cultured, there may be ways to exploit this organism's unusual metabolism in biotechnology applications, he said.Zehr's coauthors on the paper include graduate student Shelley Bench, researcher Brandon Carter, and postdoctoral scholars Ian Hewson, Tuo Shi, and James Tripp of UCSC, as well as Faheem Niazi and Jason Affourtit of 454 Life Sciences.The work was also supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation; sequencing was provided by 454 Life Sciences.---Image 1: Two cyanobacteria fluoresce brightly inside a diatom seen under a microscope. Credit: Rachel Foster, UCSCImage 2: An under-microscope view shows clusters of cyanobacteria collected in the Pacific Ocean. Credit: Rachel Foster, UCSCImage 3: Marine scientists sample ocean waters for nitrogen fixing microorganisms in the South Pacific Ocean from the research vessel Kilo Moana. Credit: Jon Zehr, UCSC Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 6:55 pm
Since the last time we gave an update at the beginning of the month there have been 20,171 layoffs at tech and media companies added to our Layoff Tracker. That brings the total to 58,709 tech layoffs over the past two and a half months. You can mouse over the iChart above to get a sampling of some of the companies that are downsizing.
One previously unreported layoff we have been able to confirm is 10 people at classifieds search engine Oodle, which occurred last week and represents a 20% reduction. Another layoff happened at Rearden Commerce, which trimmed about 40 people, or 10 percent (and Rearden just raised $100 million, showing that no company is immune).
The biggest layoff this month was announced just today by Sun Microsystems, which will be reducing its headcount by 5,000 to 6,000 (15 to 18 percent). Other big tech companies also announced cuts earlier this week, including Applied Materials (1,800 layoffs), Nokia Siemens Networks (750), and National Semiconductor (330).
The big tech and media companies account for the biggest number of layoffs, but when you look at the percentage of total employees being laid off, startups are cutting just as deep if not deeper. For instance earlier this month, Spot Runner cut about 30 percent of its staff (115 people), Dash Navigation eliminated 65 percent (55 people), and BitTorrent got rid of 50 percent (18 people). This past week we saw a 38 percent cut at Jobster (15 people) a 15 percent cut at Metacafe (11 people), a 10 percent cut at Current TV (40 people), and the complete shutdown of CBS Interactive’s Juke (5 people).
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. (For those more interested in who is hiring, check out our job board).
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Experts say the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season may be best remembered as one of the worst in Cuba's history.Hurricanes Gustav, Ike and Paloma caused an estimated $10 billion damage in Cuba, where they damaged nearly half a million homes and flattened sugar cane and tobacco fields.As hurricane season nears its end on November 30, 16 cyclones have formed -- eight tropical storms and eight hurricanes -- making it the busiest Atlantic season since the record-breaker of 2005, which produced 28.However, chances for another storm are ebbing. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 6:35 pm
By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Collins Stewart solar analyst Daniel Ries today cut his rating on Canadian Solar (CSIQ) to Hold from Buy, and slashed EPS estimates, citing “the harsh pricing environment” in the solar sector. He now sees 2008 EPS of $1.85, down from $2.18. But the real change is for 2009: He goes to $1.74, from $2.94.
Ries notes that European buyers are demanding substantially lower prices. “This presents a challenge for CSIQ, as it is a competitive company but not a low cost producer at this point,” he writes.
Though nearly the entire pre-flight process has been tweaked to make use of modern technologies, one outdated aspect still lingers: the tickets. Every single time I fly, I find myself checking the location where I put my tickets once every 3-4 minutes. Are they still there? Did I remember to zip up after I last checked? When I pulled my hand out, did the ticket sneak out? I’ve never lost a ticket, yet I consistently fear that I will. It’s just such an abnormal thing in our daily lives - when else are we given something to hang on to for a few hours that is so easy to lose or destroy, yet so significant in the success of our plans? Lose that ticket, and there’s a good chance queues and regulations might just make you miss your flight. Miss your flight, and you’ll be making up for it your entire trip.
Fortunately, the times are changing. As handset displays grow to higher and higher resolutions, functionality generally limited to ink and paper becomes possible. Scannable barcodes can easily be printed onto just about any device made within the last few years, opening the door to ticketless boarding via your cell phone’s display.
Continental was the first in the US to embrace this concept, back in May of this year. Now American Airlines has hopped on board with the launch of their Mobile Boarding Passes program. If you’re flying out of Chicago (ORD), Los Angeles (LAX), or Orange County (SNA), you’re given the option to send a digital boarding pass to your cell phone via e-mail. The boarding pass contains a QR-code-ish bar code - security will scan this, and you’re on your way. Just remember to juice up your phone before heading to the airport!
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AP - Shares of Activision Blizzard Inc. and Electronic Arts Inc. declined Friday after October's video game retail sales report from the NPD Group showed a disappointing performance in the music genre. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 14 Nov 2008 | 6:06 pm
Amid the fast-deteriorating economy, Microsoft (MSFT) opened its first online shop in the U.S.–a digital storefront through which customers can purchase first-party software, hardware, and videogames directly from the company.
Although, I’m not quite certain why anyone would, given the prices.
While Google waits for it Android mobile operating system to mature, the search giant is launching a sophisticated voice recognition tool for iPhone.
The software, set to release some time Friday, will be part of Google's free, long neglected mobile app [iTunes Link] on iPhone, and it will allow users to perform a Google search by simply dictating a query, according to a story in the New York Times. Examples: "When was Michael Crichton's birthday?" or "Japanese restaurants in San Francisco," or "400 kilometers into miles."
Google's app might sound groundbreaking, but similar speech recognition services are already available on iPhone. DialDirections, a startup, recently released a free app called Say Who, which allows you to dial a contact by either dictating the phone number or a person's name. Also, in October, DialDirections released Say Where, which enables users to look up business listings or Google Maps by dictating a city, state and address or name of business.
A major distinction in Google's voice-recognition app is that it will use the iPhone's GPS capabilities to pinpoint your location and display location-based advertisements. Google believes it can charge higher rates for such ads. Of course, that means Google is planning to release its voice-recognition software on other handsets after launching it on iPhone.
RED released a new camera system today, the "Digital Still and Motion Camera System", a ridiculously modular system with a goofy name for which I'd mock them if the whole package didn't turn my tongue to sandpaper with lust.
But in a preface to an interview with RED head honcho Ted Schilowitz, FX Guide make an interesting observation: even though the new RED cameras could take on professional 35mm cinema cameras, there aren't actually all that many top-end units being used at any given point in time:
Currently there are about 75 Genesis cameras in the world, far fewer F35s or Dalsa cameras. If one was to give these cameras a generous $200,000 price tag, then at about 50 Cameras a company could expect to make 50x 200K = $10,000,000.
It was estimated in 2007 before RED delivered that the world requirements for high end cameras to service the non-indie film feature film market was just 500 cameras total. If the world could be clever: a mere 500 cameras would be need to film all the professional studio films in the world. There just aren't that many major features being shot simultaneously in any given month that the world needs more than about 500 top end cameras.
When we first heard that this phone was on its way to U.S. Cellular, we expected it to launch in the middle of November. Sure enough, we’re one day from the dead middle of the month, and here it is. This’ll be the third TouchWiz launch in the US (the others being the Delve on Alltel, and the Eternity launch on AT&T earlier this morning.)
Like the Alltel release, the US Cellular Delve packs a 3.5mm headset jack, full HTML browser, Bluetooth, and a 2.0 megapixel camera for stills and video behind a 3.0″ touchscreen. The Delve’s full retail price is $399.95 - sign up for a 2 year contract, and US Cellular will lop it down to $149.95, and tack on a $50 dollar mail-in rebate, bringing it down to $99.95.
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ZHANGJIAGANG, China, Nov. 14 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Today, WACKER Chemie AG and Dow Corning Corporation officially started production in the first stage of their new pyrogenic silica and siloxane plants in Zhangjiagang (China). Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 5:00 pm
First Wind, an independent wind power company, today announced that it has begun construction of its Milford Wind Corridor Project. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 5:00 pm
Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/009d17/agriculture_glob) has announced the addition of the "Agriculture - Global Strategic Business Report" report to their offering. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 14 Nov 2008 | 5:00 pm
This cute little puzzle made by Bittorrent co-creator Bram Cohen features three interlocking gears that can only freely rotate in one configuration.
TriGears is a special puzzle. There are three gears set so that turning one gear turns the other two. If the three gears were in a flat plane they would, of course, jam. Oskar had the gears bevelled and set them at 60 degrees so that they all mesh in the middle. This apparently has no practical value and would not be a puzzle if Oskar had not made the teeth of the gears of varying width and of varying spacing. The object of the puzzle is to place the three gears in their holder such that they spin freely and do not jam. There is only one way to do this (see the solution). All other assemblies quickly jam. Once solved, the puzzle becomes a toy in that it is very satisfying to keep spinning the gears.
By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
The news for videogame stocks is decidedly mixed this morning. The raw numbers look good: According to NPD Group, videogame software sales rose 35 percent in October, better than many had expected. Hardware sales rose five percent; peripherals fell eight percent.
But the stocks are coming under pressure, due at least in part to cautious comments on the prospects for the industry in the unfolding economic downturn by Merrill Lynch analyst Justin Post. The Merrill analyst cut his ratings on both Electronic Arts (ERTS) and Activision Blizzard (ATVI) to Neutral from Buy. He maintains his Underperform rating on THQ (THQI).
Google has just announced that sometime today, they will release an iPhone app that allows users to generate search results just by speaking into the mike. It simply sucks up your voice, uploads it to a Google server and returns the results, with promises that the results will get better over time as Google gets exposed to a larger variety of stutters, mumbles and lisps.
Sounds great: I'd definitely rather speak into my iPhone than use the onscreen keyboard. But why is Google premiering stuff like this on the iPhone? It just makes them seem sloppily uncommitted to Android.
It’s not quite the Samsung Omnia that folks are eagerly awaiting for, but it’s a step or two in that direction. Launched this morning for AT&T, the Samsung Eternity sports a 3.2″ touchscreen, haptic feedback for a dash of vibration with every touch, an accelerometer, a 3.0 megapixel camera, and all that good ol’ 3G connectivity.
While it may look the same up front due to the TouchWiz UI, the inch-for-inch match with the Omnia’s 3.2″ touchscreen, and the surprisingly similar rear casing, the Omnia it is not. Where as the Omnia is running WinMo 6.1, this one’ proprietary OS all the way down. While some might see the lack of WinMo as a benefit, most would see the absence of WiFi as a disappointment. Regardless - for $149.99 after contract and rebate, you still get some pretty solid bang for your buck.
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Over at Gearfuse, Vince Veneziani — the shrieking monkey id of gadget blogging — took advantage of an all-too-rare moment of sanguinity to post this striking shot of the gorgeous manual set that IBM shipped with the original PC back in 1984. This complete set of documentation is still sitting on the shelves of my parent's house under a cake of twenty year old dust as thick, silvery and undappled as the surface of the moon. They just don't make documentation like this anymore.
Spotted over at Dark Roasted Blend, this hydraulic excavator, monkey climbing its way up a specially designed tower and then doing a handstand at the top. This, my friends, is the Harold Lloyd of construction vehicles.
A big part of me has always hoped that underneath the helmet, this was the way all NASCAR drivers were: just massive automobile racing cyborgs with laser-emitting LEDs for eyes, each race's programming inserted into a DVD tray that pops out of their chinguard.
Otherwise, not much to report, except a radio, a built-in CD player and a staggering $140 price tag. Its being sold exclusively at Walmart: apparently, FAO Schwartz — the nation's other most popular mega-retailer amongst NASCAR fans — lost the bidding war.
Bam! Right off the bat, this morning brings not one, but two new Samsung phones to Verizon.
First up is the WinMo 6.1 powered Samsung Saga, pictured on right. For 200 bucks and a 2-year contract, you’ll walk away with a QWERTY keyboard, 2.2″ touchscreen, optical mouse, and support for Stereo bluetooth. They’ve also packed in WiFi (802.11b/g), quad-band radio, and a 2-megapixel camera with microSD support up to 16 gigs. This one should be on the shelves as of this morning.
Next up is the Samsung Renown, which is a bit less smartphone and a whole lot more brown. It’s got quad-band GSM to keep it tickin’ round the globe, a 2.0 megapixel shooter, stereo Bluetooth, microSD up to 8GB, and support for Vcast Music/Video. This one won’t hit the shelves till December 1st, at which point you can pick one up for $179.99 on a 2-year contract. Having a hard time figuring out what’s making this one so pricey? Us too.
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Blue shirted benefactors of humanity and sephirim guiding us all upon the path of technological enlightenment that they be, Best Buy will be hosting workshops in 25 of its stores around the country to "educate consumers about the transition to digital television broadcasting and help them choose the best solution for their television needs."
In reality, though, it is hard to imagine these will be anything but elaborate sales presentations trying to sell people expensive HDTVs. Best Buy and other big box retailers has been using the digital transition (and the public's lack of education about it) to sell unnecessary televisions for months.
I mean, hell, what is there to really hold a workshop about? If you've got cable — which approximately 80 percent of Americans do — you don't need to worry about anything. If you're still sucking in broadcast waves via bunny ears, you do. And that box is not a $1500 plasma.
If there is a ever another movie made about the day the world falls to the mercy of the machines, and our soft pink bodies are crushed like the meat puppets we are, there will be a starring role for the creepy "Jules". If he survives long enough, that is:
At my school, any kid who spoke in such a pompous, gloating manner would have been roundly thrashed, wedgied and had his head flushed down the toilet. I should know. In my school, that obnoxious kid was me.
Don't let "Jules" near a British Comprehensive School, robot overlords, or the day of reckoning will never come. The annoying robot-face has got something right, though -- when he threatens to destroy the world, he suggests starting with Weston-Super-Mare. I used to live there, and I couldn't agree more.
After some months of saving my pennies, I blew them this week on a Nikon D700. Remember our post about buying old, full-frame lenses and using them on your small-sensor DSLR? There was a reason for it — those cheap old lenses will last you until you move up to full frame.
There are plenty of reviews and incredibly detailed spec sheets for the D700 already online, so I'll just cover a few of the quirks and delights I have found so far. In short, though, the D700 kicks ass. It's easy to use, and takes an incredible picture, even in the dark.
That Sensor
The headline feature of the D700 is its full-frame sensor, which is the same one you'll find in the flagship D3. You only get 12 megapixels, but they're big pixels, and their light-gathering ability is extraordinary. The top ISO available on the D700 is a staggering 25,600, a full eight stops faster than ISO 100. At that setting, though, the pictures are terrible. Convert them to black and white and they look exactly like they have been through a photocopier. A photocopier that is running out of toner. That said, even this is better than the results that the Canon G9 gives at just ISO 1600.
Drop just one stop, to ISO 12,800, and things are a lot better. The pictures are still noisy but Nikon has tweaked its noise reduction algorithms to mimic film grain, or so it seems. The EXPEED processor has no mercy with color noise, but is a little easier on the luminance noise. What does that mean? It means that the nasty stuff is cleared out, leaving a grainy but pleasing result.
Drop the ISO to 6400, the highest setting with an actual number (Nikon uses names like H0.3 for the more sensitive settings) and you'd never know you were shooting at more than 800. This, combined with a fast lens (a 50mm ƒ1.8, for example) means you can shoot in ambient light, handheld, at night. And coupled with the heavy body, which steadies things, you can handhold to some pretty slow shutter speeds, too. If you were to add a shake-reducing lens into the mix, you'd likely have no trouble with shooting 2001's monolith in a black hole. At midnight.
The Knobs and the Aperture Ring
About that heavy body. The weight is reassuring (body only and without the battery it weighs 995g, or 2.2 lbs.) but the feel in your hand is what counts. I used to own a couple of Nikon F100 bodies and the feel is similar, if a bit chunkier. The biggest change for anyone moving up from a cheaper DSLR is the manual controls. Instead of all the functionality being hidden away in menus, most of the important functions get their own knobs, dials and switches.
Its strength is its simplicity. Once you have twisted one knob, you know how every other knob works. If it is marked, its position provides visual feedback. If not, our brains easily associate the amount of twist with the level of the knob’s effect. And best of all, it’s the only controller we know of which can go up to 11.
Better still, many of the knobs can be customized to do different things. Part of the fun is digging through the custom settings inside the menus to figure out just what you can tweak. The short answer is "almost everything."
But the one thing I really love, the discovery of which actually brought a small tear to the corner of my emotionally suppressed eye (Hey, I'm English. We don't do emotions.) is the aperture control. You can choose to use the aperture ring around the lens to set the size of the hole, shifting it away from the finger-dial on the grip (custom function f9, page 326 in the manual).
For someone who has this muscle memory baked in since childhood, this is huge. You lose the fine-grained control of the 1/3 stop adjustments available with the command dial, but the shutter speed takes care of this. You also lose the Live View function, but you can always switch back temporarily (and quickly).
Live View
It works, and the high-resolution screen means it looks great, but the live view is janky as hell. Here's how you use it: Turn the dial on the top to the LV setting (it's the same dial that chooses between self timer, single and continuous shooting). Then press the shutter release all the way down. The mirror flips up and live view is on. To refocus, press the shutter half way. The mirror flips down, the camera focuses, and the mirror flips up again. And when you actually take a picture, the mirror flips again.
You can choose the "tripod mode," which uses contrast detection like a compact camera, but it is slow as molasses. To me, Live View is little more than a gimmick. You can, however, zoom in on the live view image to see a 100 percent rendering for easy manual focusing (if holding a two-pound camera plus lens at arms' length and twisting the focus ring is your thing) and there's a semi-useful level that can be superimposed on the image, but still: Gimmicky.
Built-in Flash
Really. Why? C'mon, Nikon.
Full Frame
The full-frame sensor means that all your DX lenses are useless. If you were hoping that you could use your 18-55mm DX zoom as an ultrawide objective, you're out of luck. You can force the camera to treat the lens as a full frame one, but you'll get heavy vignetting at the wide end and a drop in image quality away from the center at all focal lengths.
The D700 defaults to reading just the central part of the image area, which means that an 18mm lens will act just like it does on a DX camera and give the equivalent view of a 27mm lens. The rub is that you are then shooting at just 5 megapixels. Even my D60 doubles that. For Lomo-style fun and frolics, though, those extreme angles, low-definition edges and black corners can be useful.
Auto Focus
The D700 has 51 focus points, all of which can be individually selected, and 15 of which are cross-type sensors which are faster and more accurate. There are several modes, from single point AF to a 3-D tracking mode which remembers the color of the thing you first focus on and then locks onto it like a junkyard dog on a schoolkid as it moves around the picture.
But all you really need to do is to set it to auto and forget about it. The D700's auto focus is uncanny. It seems to know what you are taking a picture of and it locks on almost instantly. If you ever saw the Clint Eastwood movie Firefox (or read Craig Thomas' book), you'll remember the thought controlled weapon system in the plane. I believe Nikon took this and built it in to the D700. It really is that good.
Should You Buy One?
There's so much more to this camera that we have no chance of covering it here. But if you're thinking of buying a D700 (and especially if you are weighing it up against the more expensive D3), go ahead. I haven't had this much fun taking photos since I sprung for a Leica M6 some years ago (yes, I saved long and hard for that one, too. I then sold it to pay the rent). Bonus: Stick the 472-page manual in the bathroom and you'll have your morning reading taken care of for weeks. $3000, or thereabouts.
There are plenty of reviews and incredibly detailed spec-sheets for the D700 already online, so we'll just cover a few of the quirks and delights. In short, though, the D700 kicks ass. It's easy to use, and takes an incredible picture, even in the dark.
RadioShack’s Black Friday ad is now out and here’s what they are offering to those brave folks willing to wait in line for the 6am opening:
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Dell has officially made their latest Inspiron Mini available in the US. Customers can now visit Dell and purchase the Inspiron Mini 12, but sadly the configurations seem a little limited and may not be ideal for everyone.
I contacted MySpace and they said the rejection is an error and will be reversed. They did confirm that they reject ads from “direct competitors,” and point out that 
eToday has a photo gallery of female body builders. The photos are by Marton Schoeller, from his book, 
Oh, it’s on now.
In the heyday of the guillotine during the French Revolution, it is said that many of the condemned were asked to blink for as long as possible after decapitation. While many reportedly did not blink at all, some complied for as long as thirty seconds. Still other observations describe much more specific reactions to stimuli following beheading. Consider the case of Languille, a convicted murderer who was guillotined in France. He was observed by Dr. Beaurieux during his execution at 5:30am on June 28th, 1905. As written in Archives d'Anthropologie Criminelle, here are the doctor's observations:
Next up is the Samsung Renown, which is a bit less smartphone and a whole lot more brown. It’s got quad-band GSM to keep it tickin’ round the globe, a 2.0 megapixel shooter, stereo Bluetooth, microSD up to 8GB, and support for Vcast Music/Video. This one won’t hit the shelves till December 1st, at which point you can pick one up for $179.99 on a 2-year contract. Having a hard time figuring out what’s making this one so pricey? Us too.
