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Mozilla wants you to Fashion Your FirefoxSection: Computers, Software / Applications, Web, Downloads, Web Browsers
Obviously, Fashion Your Firefox doesn’t list every add-on, only about 40 of those available at the moment. It’s broken up into categories ranging from “News Junkie” to “Shutterbug,“ “Digital Pack Rat,“ and a few other categories for how people use their internet browser. According to the FAQ, there are a few points the add-ons needed to meet. They had to be popular, compatible with Mac and PC (I suppose Linux doesn’t count?), easy to use (oh, right, linux is supposedly hard to use), and “ffer a well-rounded set of functionality.“ Sounds a bit reasonable to me. Looking at the add-ons, the choices make sense. Especially the fact that StumbleUpon, possibly the most popular, and most unproductive add-on is the first on the list. There are others on the list that I have used, and they all deserve to be on the list. There are even a few that I haven’t heard of before that seem like they’d be very useful, if not always useful to me. I do have one question, though: if this is supposed to highlight the best Firefox add-ons, why isn’t it advertised on Mozilla’s front page? Read [Fashion Your Firefox] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:12 pm Debt-Free Business: Japan vs U.S.Interesting stat about debt among Japanese public companies. It points to one possible future for U.S. firms: Almost a quarter of all companies listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange are debt-free compared...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:23 pm Global Markets All Pointing to DeflationGood chart from Bloomberg showing how most major global markets now point to deflation:Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:18 pm Call it green: Toshiba’s latest 500GB 2.5-inch hard drive cuts power consumption by some measure
So Toshiba has a 2.5-inch hard drive that might interest you. The SATA hard drive ranges in capacity from 120GB to 500GB, the 500GB model being the jewel in Toshiba’s crown. They’re only 5400 RPM, so don’t expect blazing fast speeds or anything when you slide it into your laptop. There’s one other thing, and that’s that Toshiba claims, through some sort of witchcraft, that it was able to reduce the noise emanating from the drive so as to improve audio performance. (How good are your headphones that you can hear the sounds of the HDD spinning?) Oh, and Toshiba may be able to slap a “green approved!” sticker on the box, sorta like what NBC is doing nowadays with its great TV shows, seeing as though it has reduced power consumption from previous its previous hard drive generation from 1.7W to 0.5W. It starts shipping in December. No price, though. Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:20 pm Samsung announces T220P SyncMaster LCD monitor
Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm Vital Images Celebrates Its 20th AnniversaryThe Company Celebrates Two Decades of Pioneering Advanced Visualization MINNEAPOLIS, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Vital Images, Inc. (Nasdaq: VTAL), a leading...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm Jumpstart Windows(R) Embedded CE designs with BSQUARE's free board support package for Cortex(TM)-A8 processor based OMAP35x EVM from Texas InstrumentsValue-added tools including Device Validation TestSuite, Flash(R) Lite(TM) for Windows and high speed SDIO drivers complement free BSP HOUSTON, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ --...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm eHarmony, Inc. Settles With New Jersey Attorney General, Agrees to Launch Same-Sex Matching Service in 2009PASADENA, Calif., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- eHarmony, Inc. and the New Jersey Attorney General's Division on Civil Rights (DCR) have settled allegations that the company...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm MatchCraft Marks 10 Years in Search Engine Marketing; Continues on Growth Track Fuelled by Increasing Local Search Marketing DemandMatchCraft expands leadership team to manage next phase of development. SANTA MONICA, Calif., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- MatchCraft, developer of next-generation...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm Famatech Release Radmin 3.3 With Active Management Technology (AMT) SupportMOSCOW, November 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Famatech, a world leader in remote control software, has released Radmin(R) 3.3. The new version now supports Intel AMT (Active...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm AFORE Announces Ethernet Compression and Encryption Technology for WiMAX, LTE and Broadband NetworksSolution Targets Networking Platforms and COTS/ATCA Based Systems OTTAWA, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ - AFORE Solutions, Inc., a leader in the design and delivery of...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm Photos: KT-Tech Debuts KTvid: Live, Real-Time, 2-Way Video Chat Cellphone-to-Cellphone/Cellphone-to-PCFirst affordable mobile peer-to-peer video chat solution for consumers and businesses BOWIE, Md., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- KT-Tech announces the launch of KTvid, the...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm Altair GridWorks' PBS Professional(R) Scales to Manage NASA's New 600-TeraFLOPS Pleiades ClusterNASA and Altair continue their collaboration as NAS expands its HPC capacity to 700 teraFLOPS in 2008 TROY, Mich., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair Engineering, Inc., a...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm TripAdvisor Gives Hotels, Restaurants and Attractions Free Promotional ToolsUser-Generated Reviews Available for Free for Use by Millions of Businesses Worldwide NEWTON, Mass., Nov. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- TripAdvisor(R), the world's largest...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm Intelligent Decisions' President Harry Martin Joins ThanksUSA's Board of DirectorsWASHINGTON, Nov. 19 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- ThanksUSA, a charitable effort to mobilize Americans to "thank" the nation's active-duty troops, today announced...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 3:00 pm New Yahoo CEO must be willing to do Microsoft deal (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:45 pm Judge Dismisses Psystar Antitrust Suit Against Apple - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:43 pm Wal-Mart to sell $128 Blu-ray player on Black Friday
In the ultimate test to see whether or not Blu-ray is ready for mainstream adoption, Wal-Mart will be selling a Magnavox player for $128. If it creates stampedes like Wal-Mart’s $29 DVD player from 2003, we’ll know Blu-ray is here to stay. If people casually mosey over to the electronics department, glance at the tag, and head elsewhere, we’ll know that the high-definition downloading initiative is in full swing. Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:40 pm 'Stealing' Keys by Camera Proven EasyA quick picture with a camera phone could be all a criminal needs to copy your keys.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:36 pm Astronaut Loses Tools While Performing an EVAtpheiska writes "NASA press release states that 'At approx. 3:33 p.m. EST, Piper reported that one of the Braycote lubrication guns had released grease into her toolbag. As she was cleaning the bag and wiping the tools and equipment inside, the bag floated away. Another bag carrying identical equipment is now being shared by Piper and Bowen.' Luckily they had a spare."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:32 pm Time Inc Layoffs: Cottage Living Yesterday, Hundreds Today? [MediaMemo]Time Inc. is cutting something like 600 employees, but for the past few weeks it has been doing so in small steps: 10 here, 30 there. That will change today, reports the NY Post’s Keith Kelly, when up to 250 people at Time Warner’s magazine unit (TWX) are expected to get pink-slipped. Kelly’s number for today “may be on the high side”, a person familiar with the matter counsels me. In any event, I expect to have more details later in the day. As always, I value your input, and I keep all correspondence anonymous: peter@allthingsd.com. In the meantime, an update on this week’s cuts: I’m told Time Europe editor William Green and senior editor James Graff, were laid of via phone yesterday, and that more cuts in the London office are expected today. And 4-year-old Cottage Living magazine has been shut down, which means that 38 out of 47 people who worked on that title are out of work; the remainder will be placed elsewhere in the group.. Here’s the memo:
Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:28 pm Amazon CloudFront turns S3 into content distribution network - Ars Technica
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:26 pm Scientists see political attacks as badge of pride - Ars Technica
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:21 pm HP shares soar after solid 4Q outlook (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:20 pm Psyanora … [Digital Daily]
Sued by Apple in August for violating the terms of its shrink-wrap license, trademark and copyright on OS X, Psystar replied in kind with a countersuit charging Cupertino with restraint of trade, unfair competition, and other violations of antitrust law. Apple, Psystar argued, engages in all manner of anticompetitive conduct to “protect its valuable monopoly in the Mac OS market.” But according to the california judge presiding over the case, Apple’s products don’t constitute a market to dominate. And that being the case, Apple can’t be considered a monopolist. “The counterclaim explains that Mac OS performs the same functions as other operating systems,” Judge William Alsup wrote in his order dismissing the suit. “The counterclaim admits that market studies indicate that, although Apple computers with Mac OS enjoy strong brand recognition and loyalty, they are not wholly lacking in competition. Psystar also points to Apple’s extensive advertising campaigns. Those advertising campaigns more plausibly support an inference contrary to that asserted in the counterclaim — vigorous advertising is a sign of competition, not a lack thereof. If Mac OS simply had no reasonable substitute, Apple’s vigorous advertising would be wasted money. The advertising campaigns suggest a need to enhance brand recognition and lure consumers from a competitor. … Apple asks its customers to purchase Mac OS knowing that it is to be used only with Apple computers. It is certainly entitled to do so.” Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:20 pm LG and PRADA release the PRADA II with matching PRADA Link watch
Info about the PRADA II mobile phone by LG has been widely available for some time now, but the two companies finally went official ’bout the handset and released a matching watch at the same time. The PRADA Link (really, that’s the best name?) is simply a Bluetooth-enabled device that displays not only the Caller ID, but also full SMS text messages in modern Dick Tracy fashion. The phone and watch come separately though with the PRADA II carrying 600 Euros ($755 USD) and Link going for 299 Euros ($376 USD). Unless LG built-in some fancy proprietary system, there probably isn’t any reason why the watch wouldn’t work with any ‘ol Bluetooth 2.1 device - that is if you want to spend that much cake on something that shows your laziness. Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:20 pm JuicyCampus Gets Banned From TSU, Cries Foul
Get ready for some drama, with Ivester claiming TSU is “joining the ranks of the Chinese government in internet censorship, and spitting in the faces of everyone who believes in free discourse online”.
JuicyCampus claims nearly 1 million unique visitors per month, but both Quantcast and Compete suggest it’s more likely around 1/10 of that. The website recently expanded, opening support to over 500 new campuses. We’d be surprised if TSU will remain the only institution to block access to the website, and we’re still doubtful if Ivester will be able to avoid being slapped with a lawsuit by upset students and/or their parents. He acknowledged to us earlier that JuicyCampus was under investigation by Attorneys General in New Jersey and Connecticut, but we remain unsure about the current status. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: TechCrunch | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:16 pm JuicyCampus Gets Banned From TSU, Cries FoulJuicyCampus, a public, anonymous message board that basically encourages college students to gossip about each other (often using full names and with malicious intentions), got its first ban from a public...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:16 pm A Video Smorgasbord from the Churchill Club’s “Sixth Annual What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” [BoomTown]
Last night, Walt Mossberg and I hosted yet another annual “What’s Hot and What’s Not in Personal Technology” event for the Churchill Club. A brief rundown of the Palo Alto gadgetfest show-and-tell: An animatronic singing Elvis freaked out my No. 1 son Louie, who played an excellent Luke Skywalker/gadget boy for my presentation; our guest gadget geek was Twitter Co-Founder and CEO Evan Williams, who was a delight with a mini-helicopter, a flat-screen reader and a wry wit; Walt showed off the new Blackberry Storm from RIM (RIMM), the alleged Apple (AAPL) iPhone killer (maybe not so much), as well as a fuel cell and more; and, our crazy gadget maven, Greg Harper, co-founder of Gadgetoff, went perfectly insane with everything from tiny projectors to a creepy probe to mini-cell phone towers to USB ties and eyepads. It was a lot of fun with a packed crowd, even in this econalypse impacting Silicon Valley. Here is a rather longish video, which is well worth watching. Yes, BoomTown is–along with Louie and Elvis–wearing a Yahoo (YHOO) hat. Here’s the video:
Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:15 pm Wing Man Carbon Fiber Baby SeatBy Andrew Liszewski I’m sure there are plenty of gearheads who would jump at the chance to buy their kid this Wing Man child seat that features a body made from carbon fiber which everyone knows...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:12 pm New Bells and Whistles for Xbox - Washington Post
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:09 pm Witch Doctor Skeleton Unearthed in IsraelA 12,000-year-old skeleton found in a communal grave may be the remains of a shaman.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:06 pm MSI has a nettop, too, and it’s called the Neton
Behold, the MSI Wind Neton. It’s a nettop, a new category of computer that can best be described as an all-in-one desktop version of a netbook. Think mini iMac. This here Neton, which was just shown off in China, comes in three sizes: 22 inches, 18.5 inches and 15.6 inches. (Those are monitor sizes, obviously.) All three models, named the M22, M19 and M16, respectively, use the Intel Atom processor, just like every other netbook and nettop. MSI will release the M19 in January with prices starting at $500. The top-of-the-line M22 will see a March release for $800. MSI v. Acer is the new Hogan v. Warrior. Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:00 pm Etherpad Shows Google Docs How It’s Done
A team of ex-Googlers, with backing from Y Combinator, the Friendfeed founders and others, have created what might be both the ugliest and most useful group productivity app we’ve seen. Etherpad, a new product from Appjet, launches this morning, and you must try it out. It’s comparable to Google Docs or a wiki, but it’s far more useful. You start off by creating a new workspace. You type basic text on numbered lines at will. Then invite someone else in and have them type as well. Each user’s edits are highlighted a different color. Changes are made in absolute real time, something even Google hasn’t been able to do (Google docs update every fifteen seconds). Users can also chat in the sidebar, save versions and make a few tweaks to the settings like removing line numbers. One great feature optionally highlights Javascript syntax (making this a great way to write code collaboratively) And that’s it for now. There is very little bling to the site at this point. In the future, co-founder Aaron Iba says that they’ll have features for exporting documents into text files, Word format, etc. Eventually they’ll offer businesses premium features for a fee, like controlled access, private URLs, etc. They’ll even offer non-hosted version that companies can install on their own servers for higher security. This instantly became a must-use application for me. It makes phone calls a lot more productive - just open up a workspace and take notes together, in real time. A screencast is here. Like Yammer (which spun out of Geni), Etherpad wasn’t the core focus on the company (see our previous coverage of Appjet here and here). Iba says the team needed a tool like Etherpad and just created it for internal use. Now they’re unleashing it on the rest of us, which is quite nice of them. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:00 pm Etherpad Shows Google Docs How Its DoneA team of ex-Googlers, with backing from Y Combinator, the Friendfeed founders and others, have created what might be both the ugliest and most useful group productivity app we've seen. Etherpad, a new...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 2:00 pm Penguin, Now Extinct, Discovered in New ZealandAfter one species of penguin was hunted to apparent extinction, another emerged.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:56 pm Lost in Space: Astronaut's Toolbag Floats Away During Spacewalk - DailyTech
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:55 pm Six Apart Gives Journalists Free BlogsSan Francisco-based blogging startup Six Apart has announced they will be giving away free accounts on their TypePad blogging system for professional bloggers and journalists who recently lost their jobs...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:54 pm Google brings past LIFE to the future - Inquirer
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:54 pm Yang's Departure Could be Perfect Timing For Another Microsoft Bid - DailyTech
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:52 pm Ray Kurzweil Wonders Can Machines Ever Have Souls?Celery writes "There's an interview with Ray Kurzweil on silicon.com talking up the prospects of gene therapy as a means to reverse human aging, discussing different approaches to developing artificial intelligence, and giving his take on whether super intelligent machines could ever have souls. From the interview: 'The soul is a synonym for consciousness... and if we were to consider where consciousness comes from we would have to consider it an emerging property. Brain science is instructive there as we look inside the brain, and we've now looked at it in exquisite detail, you don't see anything that can be identified as a soul — there's just a lot of neurons and they're complicated but there's no consciousness to be seen. Therefore it's an emerging property of a very complex system that can reflect on itself. And if you were to create a system that had similar properties, similar level of complexity it would therefore have the same emerging property.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:52 pm ASUS 800 MHz-powered P565 demoed on video
Asus launched the incredibly powerful P565 just the other day and here are the first videos showing off what’s under the hood. The left is a HTC Touch Diamond with a not-to-shabby 528 MHz CPU but on the right, is the new champion, rock’n the powerhouse 800 MHz processor. To bad Windows Mobile is the OS of choice, eh? One more video after the jump. Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:50 pm Coming Soon, Fiber to All of Netherlands[qi:046] KPN and FTTH operator Reggefiber are planning to roll out a fiber-to-the-home network that could cost as much as seven billion euros. The network might take up to seven years to build out and...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:47 pm Members Of Twisted Sister Now Willing To Take It [Digital Daily]In a stunning reversal of their long-stated reluctance to take it, members of heavy-metal band Twisted Sister announced Monday that, after 24 years of fervent refusal, they are now willing to take it. Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:43 pm Microsoft to offer free security - BBC News
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:42 pm IBM To Acquire Virtualization Specialist Transitive - InformationWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:41 pm 30 Artistic Vases and Unique Decanters (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) Most vases and decanters are beautiful but boring, chained to traditional globular or fluted glass forms that do little to complement the delightful things they are designed to showcase...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:39 pm Saving Rainforests With Better Carbon CoordinationA single entity focused on controlling the use of carbon credit trading to stop deforestation could be in the near future, as rainforest nations plan to lobby the United Nations at a conference next month in Poland."A new body should be built to coordinate initiatives (on cutting emissions from deforestation) that are going around now," Federica Bietta, Deputy Director of New York-based Coalition for Rainforest Nations, which represents about 40 countries, said during a deforestation conference in Milan.Supporters of the United Nations'-backed scheme, called REDD, or reduced emissions from deforestation and degradation, want to include it into a successor of the Kyoto Protocol on climate change after 2012."There is money floating around...Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:30 pm Personics: The original iPodBBG found a great ad from the 80s for a jukebox that offered “1,000s of songs at your fingertips.” You’d pick your songs, enter your name, and a record store clerk would “pour” and hand over your cassette. You would then wear an oversized dress shirt and jeans and then walk with a swagger as you listen to Foreigner on your Walkman. Classic stuff. Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:28 pm 35 Salutes to Rock N Roll Icons (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) Rock n Roll still rules, just this week we are being treated to previously undisclosed songs and images of the The Beatles. Its no secret; call it retro, classic or eternal, the music...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:19 pm Fashion Your Firefox - Digitaltrends.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:13 pm Fewer Than 1% Arrested From TSA's "Behavior Detection"An anonymous reader writes "Fewer than 1% of airline passengers singled out at airports using the much vaunted 'suspicious behavior detection' techniques are arrested, Transportation Security Administration figures show. The TSA program, launched in early 2006, looks for terrorists using a controversial surveillance method based on behavior detection and has led to more than 160,000 people in airports receiving scrutiny, such as a pat-down search or a brief interview. It has resulted in only 1,266 arrests, often on charges of carrying drugs or fake IDs, the TSA said. The TSA has not publicly said whether it has caught a terrorist through the program." In related news, the odds of sanity coming to the TSA plummeted today when Schneier said he's not interested in the top job there.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:01 pm Apptera Raises $10.5 Million More To Get Ads To Your Phone
Mobile advertising network Apptera has closed a $10.5 million funding round led by Alloy Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Walden International. The company is also announcing that David Karnstedt, Yahoo’s former SVP of North American Sales who has extensive experience in advertising, has joined its board. Apptera offers a suite of audio and visual advertising solutions for companies looking to place ads on mobile devices. The company is behind many of the voice ads when you hear on free 411 services, as well as the ads found on AOL’s Moviefone. The company estimates that its ads reach over 100 million users a year, with huge growth rates as more companies expand to take advantage of mobile platforms. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:00 pm Apptera Raises $10.5 Million More To Get Ads To Your PhoneMobile advertising network Apptera has closed a $10.5 million funding round led by Alloy Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Walden International. The company is also announcing that David Karnstedt,...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:00 pm Psystar’s counterclaims against Apple to get thrown out of court
Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 1:00 pm Snow Leopard, she is coming in Q1 2009
Can’t wait for the next iteration of OS X? Well, it’s coming in Q1 2009 which means you still have about 2 more months to sit on your hands and think happy thoughts. Apple’s Director of Engineering of Unix Technologies Jordan Hubbard said that the OS would launch Q1 2009 which places it in the January-March timeframe. The new version should have improved multi-core and GPU support and considerably smaller application footprints. No major UI changes are expected, however, so this next version will definitely not have a Start menu. Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 12:45 pm Konica Minolta develops a USB stick-sized projector
Konica Minolta (or its subsidiary Konica Minolta Opto, to be more exact) has developed what sounds like it’s one of the smallest projectors around today. Measuring just 20×40x7mm, the projector is reportedly about as small as a USB stick and needs less than 1W of power. The projector can project 20-inch color images in XGA resolution when positioned 50 to 60cm away from the screen. Red, green and blue lasers are used as light sources. Piezoelectric elements are used to vibrate micro mirrors (2mm in diameter) Konica Minolta used instead of a projector lens at 30KHz. The lasers are being shot on these mirrors, which move both vertically and horizontally. Konica Minolta apparently aims at commercializing the technology within the next two to three years. I looked around everywhere on the Japanese web (including Konica Minolta’s home page in Nippon) but unfortunately couldn’t find any pictures of the prototype. Once they become available, I will post them here. Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription] Source: CrunchGear | 19 Nov 2008 | 12:41 pm iPhone sex: Google application baffled by British accents (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Nov 2008 | 12:14 pm Japanese mobiles to offer psychotherapy sessions (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Nov 2008 | 11:32 am MacBook Air Prototype Sold on Ebay
This MacBook Air was sold by the Californian iTech Systems on Ebay for $730. As it that wasn't bargain enough, the notebook appears to be an Apple prototype with a temporary plastic botton casing and a misplaced power button. The full listing reads more like a typical Chinglish Ebay description: Yes, Tiger, an OS that never shipped on the Air. It actually turns out that the Air was running a pre-release build of OS X 10.5 Leopard, rather than Tiger, but for someone who writes "The Hinge of the LCD is Losing", we can forgive the slip. How did this mystery Mac make it out of the Cupertino campus? We don't know for sure, but MacRumors forum member brett33 is the buyer, and he's as mystified as everyone else. He's also aware that Apple may want it back: Fake / Prototype Macbook Air [MacRumors Forums via Apple Insider]
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:49 am Psystar Antitrust Claim Against Apple DismissedCNet has a report that a federal judge has dismissed Psystar's antitrust suit against Apple. Observers had said that the counter-suit embodied the Mac clone-maker's best chance of prevailing and staying in business. We've been following Psystar and the dueling lawsuits since the beginning.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:37 am Nanoscaffolding Regrows Limbs, Organs
By using ultra-fine polymer fibers, military researchers have been able to regrow damaged or missing organs and limbs. They will announce their findings officially next month at the 26th Army Science Conference in Florida.
One example given by John Parmentola, a director of research and lab management, involved a man who lost the entire tip of his finger while starting up a model airplane.
"That has been completely regrown . . . the nail, the bone, the tissue," he said. Source: TechCrunch | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:34 am iTunes in the analog 80's didn't burn your music, it pouredThe always wonderful Retro-Thing reminds us of Personics, iTunes analog 80's antecedent. Personics music delivery system was to install jukebox-like kiosks in record stores and allow you to pick a selection of "cassingles" to fill it with, which would be served up twenty minutes later by a surly teenage clerk. The television advertisement is breathless enough — "Imagine! A jukebox with thousands of songs you can play in any order you want!" — but the print advertisement is equally striking: although now, we use the term "burn" to describe the process of making our own discs out of different songs, Personics seemed to prefer the equally intelligible "pour" metaphor. 
Personics: iTunes in the Analog 80's [Retro-Thing] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:34 am Canon Beats the Squeeze By Marking Up Accessories
The imaginary email also had something about a Nigerian prince, but I left that out -- you get the idea. These prices are crazy. 5D Mk II Accessories [Canon via Photography Bay]
Source: Gizmodo | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:18 am Guitar Hero goes Bike HeroI feel like I'm missing something. This viral Bike Hero video shows in first person a bicyclist navigating the Guitar Hero tab sheet for the song "Prisoner of Society" by the Living End, which have been slapped as decals on a city street. As he follows the path, LED lights on the front of his bike flash, indicating hit frets, and occasional posted signs proclaim his score. Star power is activated via a light show (although regrettably, without popping a wheelie). It's all a lot of fun, but what I feel like I'm missing is the skill. I could get psyched if he was hitting each and every note with the front of his bike wheels, but he's clearly not: he's just riding around a pre-determined course as programmed lights flash on his bike. That's cool, and there's no doubt the video took a lot of work, but not as jaw-dropping as the YouTube comments make it seem. Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:10 am HP introduces the TouchSmart TX2 laptopSection: Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops, Features
HP is rolling out their newest TouchSmart and it’s a Tablet PC. What’s the big deal? Well, Gadgetell got a chance to actually play with the HP TouchSmart TX2 and it is really something. At first blush, the TX2 looks like a standard Tablet PC with a hinge that allows the entire 12.1-inch screen to be turned around and folded down for a slate style experience. The real fun is in the touch screen which is capacitive and not resistive; that means you don’t have to press the screen very hard for the computer to register inputs. A simple tap to the screen is enough for the TX2. Multi-touchThe laptop supports multi-touch input as well. While Windows Vista doesn’t do multi-touch yet, HP has built this technology into the drivers. The multi-touch inputs are translated into keystroke commands so you can have multi-touch beyond HP’s MediaSmart software. The screen was pretty responsive to touch, although there were instances where my touch didn’t register. Strangely, the same thing happens to me on my iPhone. Perhaps I do not play well with touch screens, but when others tried the screen, it was very responsive. It was very easy to close apps, hit the Start button, and it was even possible to get into the system tray using a touch if you were careful. Considering that the TX2 has a 12.1-inch screen, I was rather impressed.
QuirksSince this is a Tablet PC and not a desktop, there were some quirks. The HP MediaSmart software, HP’s multi-touch enabled photo/video/music player, does not play well in portrait mode. In fact, if you are running the software and switch to portrait, a message will pop up on the screen saying that the HP MediaSmart software is not optimized for this display and will now quit. The app doesn’t just disappear, you do have to click an “OK” button. Also, the HP MediaSmart music player did not have any onscreen volume controls. This is not really a problem in most cases, but if you are using the TX2 in slate mode, you will have to go into your Windows system tray to adjust the volume. The HP rep was a bit confused by this oversight as well, so I would imagine it will be fixed in the long run. The HardwareThe laptop hardware is very nice. The hinge on the device seemed pretty sturdy as it required some force to turn the monitor around. The hinge locks into place after you’ve turned it 180 degrees. If you push down on the monitor, you can turn the TX2 into a slate-style PC. A latch locks the monitor down once you’ve converted it into slate mode. The keyboard was fine. While it looked a bit glossy, my fingers did not slip at all. The function and escape keys on the top row are smaller than average, but the main part of the keyboard is very comfortable. HP has packed in an optical drive, an ExpressCard34 slot (which HP has filled with an IR remote for media center) and dual headphone jacks so you can share your screen with someone. The laptop comes equipped with two IR sensors so that you will be able to use that included remote in any of the laptop configurations. That’s a small thing, but very helpful. The laptop weighs a little over 4 pounds and is available today starting at $1,149.99.
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 19 Nov 2008 | 10:02 am OS X Snow Leopard coming in Q1 2009?
This is hardly official, but at a presentation about the evolution of OS X at the LISA '08 conference last week, Apple's director of engineering of Unix technologies, Jordan Hubbard, pushed up a slide noting a Snow Leopard release of Q1 2009. That's not outside of the realm of possibilities: Snow Leopard is a stabilization and future-proofing OS X release, and with 14 odd months since Leopard, a Q1 release would still indicate a baking time longer than average. I'm looking forward to Snow Leopard. Sure, it's not a flashy, feature-filled release like Leopard, but smaller program files, a svelter OS and performance gains for multi-processors are all appealing... especially since Leopard has felt sluggish on my ancient MacBook Pro ever since I upgraded from Tiger. Mac OS X Snow Leopard 10.6 Due In Q1 2009 [Mac Rumors] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 9:58 am Hack Allows Flash Video on iPhone, Touch… With a Catch
When I first saw this I thought "Where have you been all my life?" Then I realized the answer: In 1.x iPhone and iTouch firmware. iMobileCinema is a homebrew app for 1.1.1-1.1.5 firmware and must be installed on jailbroken phones. This tool is all but useless to early adopters who are already into the 2.x version of the firmware but a version that should work with 2.1 is coming soon, according to the website.
The question, then, is whether this app breaks the terms of use? And it does.
Source: TechCrunch | 19 Nov 2008 | 9:55 am Yelp Throws Down On CitySearch
CEO Jeremy Stopellman, noticing our Comscore comparison of the services - “According to comScore, Citysearch brought in 14.6 million unique visitors in the U.S in October, compared to 143 million uniques across its ad network. (Yelp, by the way, did 6 million uniques)” - emailed us with some of their internal traffic numbers and stats. Yelp’s Google Analytics stats for the past thirty days show 15.8 million unique visitors, way above the six million Comscore records. And Yelp also shows other interesting stats in the chart below: 4 million reviews, with 34% restaurants, 23% shopping, 8% beauty and fitness, etc. Users are 51% male and 49% female, and 65% have a college degree. Not bad for a company that was born just four years ago.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: Gizmodo | 19 Nov 2008 | 9:45 am Tron Guy is a PCCrunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 19 Nov 2008 | 9:40 am The Peek unlimited email PDA gets text messaging, image support Most reviews of the Peek were content to review it based on things it had no interest in doing, but Beschizza really liked the tiny pocket email client, describing it as "the perfect simplifier, but only if you're a Peek kind of person."
Peek doesn't seem to be content to rest on its laurels, though. The latest firmware update not only adds unlimited text messaging to the mix, but also the ability to view image files: .JPG, .PNG, .GIF, .BMP. If you've got a smartphone, that's still not going to make this compelling — most of us aren't going to be Peek kinds of person — but image support makes it a better bet than ever for grandmothers and relatives you want to send pictures of the kids to. Peek e-mail device gains unlimited texts, image viewing [JKontherun] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 9:23 am A finger massaging robot for those hard blogging days Christ, what a day. Control C, Control V, Control C, Control V. Pithy snark, pithy snark. Mr. Johnson.... what a slaver. I just want to shoot him in the face with a bazooka. But Christ... the way my fingers ache. I don't even think I could manage to pull the trigger.
Oh, my aching fingers. Where is that christing parakeet? We had a deal: I keep him stocked in millet and set him up in a nice cage, and he massages my tired fingers with his tiny little talons first thing when I come home from work for the day. Is this what I got myself into? That little hussy. If he doesn't start putting out with the finger massaging, there's plenty of younger hens down at the pet store with plump, glistening cloacas who will. Wait. Didn't I see something like this the other day? Some sort of finger massaging robot? Oh man, that would hit the spot. How much was it again? ... $1950.00? Jesus, my fingers would have to be breaking off to justify that, even against my millionaire blogger salary. What do these guys take me for? An idiot? My nostrils do the same damn job for free. Danball Shiatsu Finger Massager [Japan Trendshop via Red Ferret] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 9:13 am DoCoMo, KTF to sell Google phone next year: report (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:39 am The iCEphone folds itself thrice, from smartphone to mini-notebook
The iCEphone is a curious little mobile that features a triple hinge that allows it to expand from a relatively slim three inch candy bar into a full keyboard mini-notebook. When fully unfurled, the top panel contains a 3-inch touch screen, the middle panel a QWERTY, and the bottom panel the odd assortment keys usually left off of cell phone keyboards: the caps lock, the shift, the alt and function keys, all organized in a D-pad like array which doubles as arrow keys or a mouse tracker pad for gaming, of all things. The iCEphone runs on Windows Mobile 6.0 Pro, and also features a 3G connection with support for GPRS and EDGE, two SIM card slots, built-in WiFi and a 3.1 megapixel camera. That's a hell of a lot of phone, although the price matches: when it's released in the UK in Spring, it'll go for a little shy of $1000. iCEphone [The Medical Phone via Slashgear] Source: Gizmodo | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:32 am Andy Baio sniffs out Google voice search for the iPhoneWaxy.org's Andy Baio has been doing some digital sherlocking, trying to discover how Google's voice search on the iPhone actually works. As it turns out, it's a lot more mysterious and clever than it would first appear: ere's my best guess: When you first start speaking into the microphone, the iPhone app opens a connection to Google's server, waits for you to finish talking, and then does a quick and dirty conversion into a smaller binary representation of the waveform. The next step: spoofing requests. Deconstructing Google Mobiles Voice Search on the iPhone [Waxy] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:16 am Oldest Nuclear Family Found Murdered In GermanyPickens writes "The oldest genetically identifiable nuclear family met a violent death, according to analysis of remains from 4,600-year-old burials in Germany where the broken bones of these stone age people show they were killed in a struggle. Comparisons of DNA from one grave confirm it contained a mother, father, and their two children. 'We're really sure, based on hard biological facts not just supposing or assuming,' says Dr. Wolfgang Haak, from The Australian Centre for Ancient DNA. The stone-age people are thought to belong to a group known as the Corded Ware Culture, signified by their pots decorated with impressions from twisted cords. The children and adult males had the same type of strontium in their teeth — which was also found locally, but the nearest match to the women's teeth was at least 50km away, suggesting they had moved to the area. 'They were definitely murdered, there are big holes in their heads, fingers and wrists are broken,' says Dr. Alistair Pike from Bristol University. He noted that one victim even had the tip of a stone weapon embedded in a vertebra. 'You feel some kind of sympathy for them, it's a human thing, somebody must have really cared for them. ... We don't know how hard daily life was back there and if there was any space for love,' added Dr. Haak."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:16 am HP's new Touchsmart TX2 is multi-touch capable tablet notebook
HP's new Touchsmart tx2 is a sexy little machine: a tiny convertible notebook that functions as a laptop, a tablet and a multi-touch display. At 12.1-inches, it nudges just north of netbook size, and comes with a 1200x800 display capable of working with up to two fingers or a stylus. Specs include a 2.1GHz AMD Turion X2 processor, ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics, 8GB of RAM, integrated web cam, a digital pen and hard drives up to 500GBs: all together, the Touchsmart only weighs about four and a half pounds. You can pre-order one now starting at $1150. HP Touchsmart TX 2 [HP] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:05 am Oil-less turkey fryer In my fraternity days, my brothers and I discovered that a keg licked clean, filled with cooking oil and placed over a propane flame would cook a fine bacon-stuffed Thanksgiving turkey. This oil-less turkey fryer takes the same approach, but without the forty gallons of biohazard at the end (we solved the problem by just putingt it next to the toilet until September and made pledges drink it). It's $200 and is capable of cooking up to sixteen pounds of turkey at around 8-10 minutes per pound.
Oil-Less Turkey Fryer [Frontgate via Uncrate] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:02 am Depression 2009: What Would it Look Like? [Voices]By Drake Bennett, Staff Writer, Boston Globe Over the past few months, Americans have been hearing the word “depression” with unfamiliar and alarming regularity. The financial crisis tearing through Wall Street is routinely described as the worst since the Great Depression, and the recession into which we are sinking looks deep enough, financial commentators warn, that a few poor policy decisions could put us in a depression of our own. Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:01 am Xeroxing the Brain [Voices]By Nicholas Carr, Blogger, Rough Type Anders Sandberg and Nick Bostrom, of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute, have published an in-depth roadmap for “whole brain emulation” - in other words, the replication of a fully functional human brain inside a computer. “The basic idea” for whole brain emulation (WBE), they write, “is to take a particular brain, scan its structure in detail, and construct a software model of it that is so faithful to the original that, when run on appropriate hardware, it will behave in essentially the same way as the original brain.” It’s virtualization, applied to our noggins. Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:00 am Pausing To Rate YouTube’s Sponsored Video [Voices]By David Berkowitz, Contributing Writer, MediaPost Let’s agree right away that YouTube’s Sponsored Video isn’t the next Google Killer. It’s not even the next Yahoo killer, even though comScore recently reported that YouTube is now the second largest search engine. Fittingly, around the time that the comScore news broke, Google publicly launched search-triggered Sponsored Video ads on YouTube. Does this mean marketers need to consider YouTube over Yahoo and Microsoft? Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:00 am With Jerry Yang Gone, What Yahoo Should Do Next [Voices]By Om Malik, Founder and Senior Writer, GigaOM With Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang gone, and the company actively seeking his replacement, the big question is what should it do next and whom should it hire to replace Yang? Kara Swisher has a lot of names on her short list, though I don’t think any one of them will prove to be Yahoo’s knight in shining armor. Regardless of the company’s final choice, here is what Yahoo shouldn’t do. Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:00 am More CEO Choices for Yahoo: Freston, Jordan, Bonnie and Two Rosenblatts! [BoomTown]
BoomTown might have been remiss in my post yesterday on top candidates for the Yahoo CEO job, after the news Monday that Jerry Yang is stepping down, by leaving out several key possibilities. Yesterday’s roster included News Corp.’s Peter Chernin, Google’s Tim Armstrong, Kevin Johnson of Juniper Networks (JNPR) and also two Yahoo board members, among others. (The main internal candidate, Yahoo President Sue Decker, seems unlikely to get the nod.) So here is an addendum to my initial list–all of whom are Yahoo (YHOO) outsiders. Tom Freston:
Chernin is not the only media mogul whose name is being bandied about–the other prominent one is former Viacom head Tom Freston. Freston was apparently canned by the–let’s be polite here–disturbingly volatile founder of Viacom (VIA), Sumner Redstone. for not buying Yahoo. In fact, News Corp. (NWS), which owns this site, did. But Freston remains a well-respected and creative exec and has been dabbling in the Internet space since leaving Viacom. Also, Oprah and Arianna love Freston–which is all I need to know. Jeff Jordan:
Jeff Jordan, the former top eBay (EBAY) exec who is now the CEO of OpenTable, was also on the short list for COO at Facebook, a job that went to former Google exec Sheryl Sandberg. While the restaurant reservations Web start-up has been headed for a public offering, that event has obviously been pushed out indefinitely by the econalypse, which might be just the impetus to convince Jordan that bussing tables all day is too dull. Some speculate that Yahoo could buy OpenTable and get Jordan in the process. Richard Rosenblatt:
Another interesting idea is Richard Rosenblatt of Demand Media, a company that Yahoo was sniffing around not too long ago. The network of social networking sites and apps maker is an innovative play in the space and might give Yahoo some much-needed Web 2.0 DNA. Demand could still be bought by Yahoo, in order to put Rosenblatt into place. (Rosenblatt, for those who do not remember, ran the company that owned MySpace and he was key to selling it to News Corp.) Also, Lance Armstrong likes Rosenblatt. Shelby Bonnie:
A reader actually made the excellent suggestion of former CNET head Shelby Bonnie, who is now investing in start-ups. Bonnie is another steady exec–despite leaving CNET, now owned by CBS (CBS), under an options backdating controversy–and is well-liked in the Internet industry. Yahoo would be a much bigger job than he has ever held, although he certainly has both tech and advertising experience online. David Rosenblatt:
Lastly, especially if Yahoo is interested in an exec who has turnaround talent, there is probably no better a choice than DoubleClick CEO David Rosenblatt. An experienced online advertising exec, he is also sharply outspoken and knows how to get companies in line and fast. He is also impossibly rich after Google (GOOG) bought DoubleClick out from under–wait for it–Yahoo recently. While he is still running the show for Google, after having decided to stay, Yahoo might present an interesting challenge for the very savvy Rosenblatt. Please see this disclosure related to me and Google. Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:00 am Computing From Weather to Warcraft [Voices]By Ashlee Vance, Reporter, New York Times For years, Western governments have used supercomputers to model weapons of nuclear war. Now a company in China uses the powerful machines to tend the fantasy realms of World of Warcraft. Source: All Things Digital | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:00 am Power On Self Test: Steve Jobs opines on the IBM / Papermaster dispute
Image: Gearfuse Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 8:00 am Virtual worlds increasingly generated by software, not made by artistsHere's Far Cry 2 technical director Dominic Guay talking about the importance of "procedural content generation" for massive online games -- basically, using software to create worlds that had previously been hand-built by artists. It makes a lot of sense, but what fascinates me is the narrative possibilities for fiction about games: these procedural systems have or will shortly attain a level of complexity that makes it impossible to predict their outcomes. It's the Halting Problem -- worlds where software off the rails could generate impossible situations, upside-down worlds, treasure heaps, cowardly monsters and brave grass. I'm thinking especially of abandonware worlds where only a few players remain and the gamemasters have stopped paying close attention. What odd maps might be drawn as the die-hards explore the outermost reaches of these worlds?MIGS: Far Cry 2's Guay On The Importance Of Procedural Content (via /.) Source: Boing Boing | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:39 am FCC Transition Team co-chairs are virtual worlds nuts, tooWagner James Au sez, "Not only are [Obama's FCC Transition Team leaders] Kevin Werbach and Susan Crawford great Net Neutrality advocates, they're also into online games/virtual worlds-- Werbach belongs to not one but *two* WoW guilds, and Crawford calls herself a "big fan" of Second Life. Agreeing with his guildmaster Joi Ito, Werbach's also a big supporter of WoW as a model for the future of work and software development."“What [Warcraft] does,” he continued in that post, “is provide an incentive for people to develop new software and ideas for collaborative production. Many of those ideas will translate to other group activities, including those within the business world. I think MMOGs will be, at a minimum, a significant testbed for these new technologies, because users see a direct benefit and are willing to experiment with new things.”Obama’s FCC Transition Team Co-chair a WoW Player
See also: Net Neutrality fighters to head Obama's FCC transition team Source: Gizmodo | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:30 am IT Crowd third season starts on Friday!Hurrah! This Friday marks the return of The IT Crowd, my favorite sitcom/nerd media EVAR, back for a triumphant third season!The IT Crowd (Thanks, Alan!) Source: Boing Boing | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:28 am LIFE and Google bring us 10 million historic images
LIFE and Google have teamed up to put 10,000,000 historic images online -- about 20 percent of the images are live now. The Disneyland images are great -- here's the old Submarine Ride.
LIFE photo archive hosted by Google
(Thanks, Neil and Slashdot!)
Source: Boing Boing | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:24 am Thanks Twilio, No One Is Safe From The RickRoll Now If you don’t know what being RickRolled is, go look it up because you don’t want to be the last person to figure it out. YouTube even RickRolled its own users as an April Fools joke. Anyway, tonight I get a call on my mobile phone. And it’s that damn song. Apparently it’s some new startup called Twilio, and according to a Facebook message it was initiated by Dave McClure, who is probably advising them. Congratulations Dave, you’ve found a unique way of bugging me. Hope there’s more to the business than that. Did you get my text message thanking you? Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:09 am The Importance of Procedural Content Generation In GamesGamasutra reports on a talk by Far Cry 2 developer Dominic Guay in which he discussed why procedural content generation is becoming more and more important as games get bigger and more complex. He also talks about some of the related difficulties, such as the amount of work required for the tools and the times when it's hard to retain control of the art direction. Quoting: "Initially, the team created a procedural sky rendering approach based on algorithms — which led to a totally unconvincing skybox that was clearly inferior to what a hand-authored skybox would be. 'We considered it to be a total failure,' he said. He explained that a great deal of focus must be put on the tools that surround the algorithms, to allow the systems to be properly harnessed. In the end, the game shipped with a revamped procedural sky system that ended up much more effective than the first attempt."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:09 am Microsoft to cut prices on the Zune starting tomorrowSection: Audio, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video
Microsoft sure has been busy with their Zune lately. First, they announce a new 3.1 software update which includes a few free games and now they are set to cut prices on the Zune. The price cuts aren’t jaw-dropping, but they are pretty nice, nonetheless. Price cuts around the holiday season might just do the trick to persuade some potential PMP buyers to go with the cheaper Zune. The 4GB version’s price goes down to $99. Meanwhile, the 8GB model goes from $149 to $139. The last model, the 16GB model, goes down by $20, from $199 to $179. If you want to pick up some Zune accessories to go with your new Zune, then you will be happy to know that Microsoft has also cut prices on several Zune products. You might recall that Canada had already received a small price cut for a week when Future Shop sold the 8GB player for $82. In case you missed out on that offer, then you will be happy to know that these price cuts are also affecting Canadian Zunes come this Friday. For us Americans, the price cut will take place tomorrow. Will this price cut make it a happy holidays for Microsoft? Adam Sohn, Zune marketing director, said the price cut will “ensure hopefully we have a good holiday season.“ Via [cnet] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:07 am Humanoid Robot To Be Ready For Prime Time In 2010
Nao developed by the French company replaced Sony's Aibo dog as the standard platform for the competition last year and that has helped boost its popularity among a select crowd of enthusiasts. But the robot still has a way to go before most general users can get near it. The fully programmable robot is packed with features. With its humanoid appearance can be made to do any number of tasks and comes with x86 AMD Geocode 500 Mhz CPU, 1 GB flash memory, 256 MB SDRAM, two speakers, vision processing capabilities, Wi-fi connectivity and Ethernet port. The robot has 25 degrees of freedom, which means it can do a lot more than just tilt is head, look right, left and take a few steps. This makes it a very attractive machine for researchers and robot enthusiasts that want to take a blank-slate robot and program it themselves, says Chris Kilner, software engineer for Aldebaran Robotics, a Paris-based company. It's also the reason Aldebaran says it is working to create a behavior exchange site where different programs written to manipulate the robot can be shared. Aldebaran has shipped a little more than 100 robots since it launched in April. But the robots have been restricted to research labs and universities. Next year, the company hopes to expand distribution to some early adopters. But general users are unlikely to get it before 2010 as the company tries to create a version that will appeal to general consumers and manufacture it on a larger scale. With the 10,000 Euros ($12,600) price tag on the robot, that may be out of the reach for most anyway. For consolation, there's always the Femisapien robot from WowWee, equally charming but a lot less functional. See the Nao Robot in Action
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 19 Nov 2008 | 7:01 am HP Launches First Multi-Touchscreen Notebook
The new HP TouchSmart tx2 notebook PC's convertible design allows for three modes: PC, display and tablet, says the company. It comes with a rechargeable digital ink pen that users can use to draw and take notes on the screen. The notebook includes an enhanced HP MediaSmart digital entertainment software suite that supports the familiar touch computing gestures such as pinch, flick, tap and drag with two fingers that can be used to interact with photos, video and other multimedia on the computer. The laptop weighs about 4.5 pounds, has a 12.1-inch diagonal display and has an AMD Turion X2 processor. It is priced starting at $1,150. HP already has a TouchSmart touchscreen desktop that it launched earlier this year. Photo Gallery: HP Touchscreen Notebook
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 19 Nov 2008 | 6:45 am Xobni Adds Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, Hoovers, And The Kitchen Sink
Jeff Bonforte never met an API he didn’t like. The CEO of Xobni, a startup that makes an outlook plug-in that makes your e-mail smarter, has been busy getting his team of engineers to integrate every possible API they can think of into the service. Xobni already added LinkedIn last June. Today it is adding integrations with Yahoo Mail, Facebook, Skype, and Hoovers. Data from all of these services appears in the Xobni sidebar in Outlook. Let’s take them one by one.
Xobni has been working on its Yahoo Mail integration since last April. Now in the sidebar, users can search their Yahoo Mail messages and see contacts and attachments. To send or receive email through your Yahoo account, however, you still have to click through to Yahoo Mail in your browser, which is sub-optimal. Every time someone sends you an email who is also a Facebook member, you can see in the sidebar their current Facebook status message, general profile information, their Facebook picture, and recent updates made to their profile.
The Skype feature lets you send instant messages, SMS messages, and make Skype or regular calls to contacts who are also Skype users. Again, as with Yahoo Mail, actually making a call or sending an IM automatically launches the Skype application. Finally, the Hoover API brings up Hoover company information for each contact. That provides some helpful context when responding to business emails, although I find the LinkedIn data more useful. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: Gizmodo | 19 Nov 2008 | 6:20 am Court Slams Door On Sale of Spywarecoondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission yesterday had a US District Court issue a temporary restraining order halting the sale of RemoteSpy keylogger spyware. According to the FTC's complaint, RemoteSpy spyware was sold to clients who would then secretly monitor unsuspecting consumers' computers. The defendants provided RemoteSpy clients with detailed instructions explaining how to disguise the spyware as an innocuous file, such as a photo, attached to an email."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:39 am Adobe and ARM parter to optimize Flash for ARM powered devicesFROM APPLETELL - Adobe and ARM have announced they are working together to optimize Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR to run on ARM powered devices. Adobe Systems Incorporated and ARM today announced a technology collaboration to optimize and enable Adobe Flash Player 10 and Adobe AIR for ARM Powered… MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:15 am Should You Get Paid While Your Computer Boots?An anonymous reader notes a posting up at a law blog with the provocative title Does Your Boss Have to Pay You While You Wait for Vista to Boot Up?. (Provocative because Vista doesn't boot more slowly than anything else, necessarily, as one commenter points out.) The National Law Journal article behind the post requires subscription. Quoting: "Lawyers are noting a new type of lawsuit, in which employees are suing over time spent booting [up] their computers. ... During the past year, several companies, including AT&T Inc., UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Cigna Corp., have been hit with lawsuits in which employees claimed that they were not paid for the 15- to 30-minute task of booting their computers at the start of each day and logging out at the end. Add those minutes up over a week, and hourly employees are losing some serious pay, argues plaintiffs' lawyer Mark Thierman, a Las Vegas solo practitioner who has filed a handful of computer-booting lawsuits in recent years. ... [A] management-side attorney... who is defending a half-dozen employers in computer-booting lawsuits... believes that, in most cases, computer booting does not warrant being called work."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:01 am 'Moonlight' heads to beta (CNET)CNET - Microsoft and Novell said Tuesday that they are nearly ready with a beta version of Moonlight--a Firefox add-on that allows Silverlight content to play on Linux PCs.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:01 am The New Citysearch Launches in Beta, Goes Hyper-Social With Facebook Connect
Citysearch is finally coming around to replacing its creaking site design with something a little more contemporary. Today, it is launching in a major rethink of its entire site in beta that drills deeper into neighborhoods, uses Facebook Connect as an optional identity system, and lets users vote reviews up and down. The beta will quickly become the default Citysearch experience. During a demo at IAC headquarters yesterday, Citysearch CEO Jay Herratti told me:
Citysearch’s engineers stripped out the decade-old proprietary code that runs Citysearch and replaced it with open-source code. By replacing what’s under the hood, they were freed up to make some major improvements that are immediately apparent. The main changes are: 1. Hyper-local content. Citysearch is currently organized by city, so no matter what neighborhood you are looking at you get the same city guide. With the beta, Citysearch has mapped each city by neighborhood and placed each restaurant, bar, hotel, theater, or other local business in a specific neighborhood. So now when you are looking for things to do in a given neighborhood, Citysearch can dynamically create a neighborhood guide complete with restaurants, shops, and other businesses. With this one change, Citysearch is going from 140 cities to 75,000 neighborhoods by the end of the year. 2. Hyper-social content (Facebook Connect). This is one of the biggest changes. Citysearch has only 4 million registered users, but it will now adopt Facebook Connect as an optional identity system. That means anytime someone wants to submit a review or rating who isn’t already a registered Citysearch user will be able to simply type in their Facebook username and password. Any review or rating can then appear on your in Facebook feed, just like with the old Beacon program, except with Facebook Connect it’s all opt-in. (Citysearch was an original Beacon partner, but it shut that down long ago). “Friends love to talk to other friends about local businesses,” notes Herratti. Even better, anytime you see reviews for a particular restaurant or business,reviews from your Facebook friends will show up first. We were wondering when Facebook Connect partners would start announcing their implementations.
3. Rebalancing the power between reviewers, merchants, and editors. Instead of highlighting Citysearch’s editorial voice, the design has been tweaked so that underneath each entry thereare now three columns representing the voice of the business owner, the Citysearch editor, and the user reviewers. Citysearch reviews have become so crucial for many restaurants and bars that they’ve also become suspect in that many businesses try to game the system. Herrati says:
So not only do business owners now have their own more prominent column to promote their business, but the reviews are now voted up or down so that the community can self-moderate the most obviously abusive comments. 4. A better mobile experience Finally, since everything has been remapped by neighborhood, Citysearch is well positioned for mobile apps. But Citysearch is also working hard to optimize the experience for mobile browsers. It is using the geo-location API in Google Gears to surface nearby results for anyone using a phone running Windows Mobile 5 or higher. For everyone else, it remembers the last destination you specified by typing into your phone. t is also working on specific apps for phones with GPS chips. An iPhone app will come later this quarter, and Android and Blackberry apps are also in the works. Overall, Citysearch is taking some big steps in the right direction. Facebook Connect is going to be huge for the site. With the turn of a switch, it now has social features it would have been nearly impossible to build on its own. Who wantsto become someone else’s friend on Citysearch? But if you can find your existing friends there, that is one more reason to use it. In practice, it still has a ways to go in terms of bringing up the best results at the neighborhood level. At least that was the case for my neighborhood in Brooklyn. The top result for dining brought up a restaurant that went out of business a long time ago. Too bad you can’t vote search results up and down.
In terms of Citysearch’s business, though, the hyperlocal results will really help with its local search business. The one part of the new Cityseearch that is not open-source is Citysearch Pay, its pay-for-performance ad engine that turns up sponsored results on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood level. In teh future, it will introduce “event variable price per lead.” Basically, that means businesses will be able to bid on how much they are willing to pay for different types of leads. Viewing a geo-proximate ad on a mobile phone could be one type of lead, texting an address to a friend could be another, as could playing a video profile of a business or making a reservation. And these types of ads would not be limited to its own site. Citysearch also operates an ad network for partner sites looking to bring more local content. Herrati explains:
The ad network’s reach crushes it by ten to one. According to comScore, Citysearch brought in 14.6 million unique visitors in the U.S in October, compared to 143 million uniques across its ad network. (Yelp, by the way, did 6 million uniques). By doing abetter job mapping all of its data on local businesses, Citysearch should be able to boost the relevance of its search results and therefore how much it gets paid for them. Maybe Barry Diller should start breaking out results for Citysearch now that IAC is a smaller entity.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: Gizmodo | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:00 am Phonecam Stunner Adds Web, GPS and Image Editing to Super OpticsThe Nokia N82 is still the best phonecam on the market. Fine optics and a good image-editing suite pal around with GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi and a music player to make this one well-rounded rig.Source: Wired: Gadgets | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:00 am Phonecam Stunner Adds Web, GPS and Image Editing to Super OpticsThe Nokia N82 is still the best phonecam on the market. Fine optics and a good image-editing suite pal around with GPS, Bluetooth, WiFi and a music player to make this one well-rounded rig.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:00 am Datastream: Measuring Our World, From Decibels to BloodDatastream: Normal Blood Composition Per Microliter
Datastream: Decibel Levels
Datastream: Ph of Common Acids (concentration of 0.1 normality)
Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:00 am Nov. 19, 1981: Marcos Regime Puts the Kibosh on Games1981: Citing their socially destructive effects, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos bans videogames in his country. Filipinos are given two weeks to hand over or destroy their game consoles. Marcos was no stranger to imposing draconian solutions. The Philippines lived under martial law throughout the 1970s, Marcos' way of dealing with the increasingly radical elements — a restive university population and a resurgent Communist movement, mainly — that grew in opposition to his corrupt regime. In this case, though, he was responding to pressure from parents and educators, who claimed that games such as Space Invaders and Asteroids were a "destructive social enemy, the electrical bandit" that was weakening the moral fiber of the young and turning them into a generation of obsessives. While ample evidence exists — including testimonials from game players themselves — to support the argument that excessive videogaming can be both highly addictive and behavior altering, it's probably safe to characterize Marcos' reaction as a tad heavy-handed. It was not without its supporters, however, nor was the Philippines the only country to impose restrictions on videogames. Marcos' outright ban on all videogames, though, was unique at the time, at least in the so-called free world. Just this year, Afghanistan's Islamic government proposed an absolute ban on videogames, while also considering the outlawing of dog- and bird-fighting, and billiards. In the West, the violent content that is the central feature of so many games continues to prompt various restrictions. In the United States, for example, individual states have imposed sales restrictions on games deemed too violent or sexually explicit for younger gamers. The videogame industry has been encouraged to be self-policing, and a ratings system exists, similar to what the movie industry uses. But enforcement is difficult, and the industry's policing efforts — in the face of such enormous profitability — have been half-hearted at best. Source: Various
Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Nov 2008 | 5:00 am BBtv: SELK Bag, Boing Boing Gadgets review with Joel Johnson |
There are a lot of add-ons for Firefox out there. Over 5,000 of them to be more precise. But, its a bit hard to actually find the most useful ones unless you’re searching for them specifically. Mozilla is trying to help us all out with that. It recently opened a page called “Fashion Your Firefox,“ an easier way to find the add-ons that you might find useful.
Psystar’s ideological crusade against Apple (AAPL) is fast turning into a boondoggle for the Mac clone maker. On Tuesday 
Local review site 
"Another big benefit [of procedural content creation] is that you end up being able to do stuff you simply couldn't do otherwise," Guay continued. "It opens up innovation fields. If you're creating things through code, you have a deeper understanding of what you're doing, and you can bake in some limitations."
