Source: Gizmodo | 2 Dec 2008 | 10:52 am

Reading Guide To AI Design & Neural Networks?

Raistlin84 writes "I'm a PhD student in theoretical physics who's recently gotten quite interested in AI design. During my high school days I spent most of my spare time coding various stuff, so I have a good working knowledge of some application programming languages (C/C++, Pascal/Delphi, Assembler) and how a computer works internally. Recently I was given the book On Intelligence where Jeff Hawkins describes numerous interesting ideas on how one would actually design a brain. As I have no formal background in computer science, I would like to broaden my knowledge in the direction of neural networks, pattern recognition, etc., but don't really know where to start reading. Due to my background I figure that the 'abstract' theory would be mostly suited for me, so I would like to ask for a few book suggestions or other directions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Dec 2008 | 10:49 am

Apple Hints That Macs Can Catch Viruses

       

Don't worry. Mac owners are still (currently) immune from the plagues of the internet, but Apple has issued a curious update to it's Knowledge Base article concerning Mac anti-virus software:

 

Apple encourages the widespread use of multiple antivirus utilities so that virus programmers have more than one application to circumvent, thus making the whole virus writing process more difficult. Here are some available antivirus utilities:

It goes on to list the usual system-killing utilities (seriously, don't install any of these unless you really know what you are doing) that are available for OS X. But why? So far, Macs have remained blissfully virus-free. Apple even touts this in its Mac vs PC ads, as you can see above.

Our guess is that, while it still believes that Macs are perfectly secure without any such software prophylactics, Apple has posted these guidelines to ward off moronic lawsuits if a virus should affect OS X. It's easy to imagine the stupid customer's words: "What? You didn't tell me I needed an anti virus." Curiously, the article mentions the Mac OS, not Mac OS X, although the software suggestions are very much up to date.

And remember. PC power users (ie. people smart enough not to click on links in email) don't bother with anti-virus software on their Windows machines, either. As my Dad used to say to me, before it was too late: "If you can't be good, be careful."

Mac OS: Antivirus utilities [Apple via Apple Insider]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 2 Dec 2008 | 10:41 am

Michael Wolff Has Been Trash-Talking the Internet Since 1998–See the Video! [BoomTown]

Ah, Michael Wolff! Always throwing stinkbombs and making deliciously wackadoo declarations about the Internet.

This time, it’s in a dinner interview the author had with BusinessWeek’s media columnist Jon Fine recently.

Wolff (pictured here) slaps around the News Corp. (NWS) social networking site MySpace, with a series of his trash-buckling phrases, some of which are true and some a bit more of a stretch.

But he sure is entertaining!

One of Wolff’s more controversial moments:

“If you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.”

This is vintage Wolff to make a big hissy-fit fuss at an opportune time.

Surprise! His latest book, a bio of media mogul Rupert Murdoch (who owns this site), titled “The Man Who Owns The News,” is coming out right about now.

And speaking of vintage, Wolff can be seen in the video below whacking away at the early Internet just over a decade ago, with me and Feed’s Steven Johnson in an appearance on the “Charlie Rose” television show.

It was the era of AOL’s dominance, with Yahoo (YHOO) as the comer and Web 1.0 in its fully, overvalued glory.

“It’s craziness, it’s loco, it makes no sense,” said Wolff about the Internet circa July 27, 1998.

His caustically funny book “Burn Rate” on his naughty early Internet adventures, wherein he was the only person not to get rich in Web 1.0, had just come out.

(And I had just come out with my book on the rise of AOL–the fall of AOL sequel came out in 2003.)

Later in the interview, Wolff could not help himself and makes a truly bad prediction: “I think the myth of the Internet is that it is going to come into everybody’s home.”

Oops, the Web is pretty much ubiquitous only 10 years later.

But Wolff does go on to make a lot of the same salient points he makes today about MySpace and the Web’s hot-today-gone-tomorrow ethos.

The video of our segment starts at the 30-minute mark.

Michael has not aged a day, but please, please excuse my shoulder pads and deeply unfortunate haircut (how did I ever get a date?):

Source: All Things Digital | 2 Dec 2008 | 10:39 am

Optical Mouse with Built in Weighing Scale: You Know What it's For

Precision Pocket Scale. Sounds useful, right? Actually, no. Who on Earth would want to carry a scale around in their pocket? It gets worse. The scale is built into a mouse. A two button, scrolling optical mouse, rechargeable via USB cable.

Now, a scale is useful for many things –baking, weighing the mail, dividing up cocaine – but not many of those, except the rather illegal latter, needs to be done on the go. No matter how hard we try, we can't come up with any real use for this overpriced piece of junk. Other than the drug angle, of course, which might explain the 0.1 gram (0.004 ounce) sensitivity.

Nerdy, convergence drug-dealers can buy this from American Weigh (hoho) and undoubtedly very soon from the head shop in your local strip-mall. $50

Product page [American Weigh via BoingBoing Budgerigars]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 2 Dec 2008 | 10:19 am

Nikon Readies Camera-Top GPS Unit

Nikon is finally ready to ship its GPS dongle, the rather lazily named GP-1. First announced back in August, the device slips into the hot-shoe connector of compatible cameras (D200, D3, D700, D90, D300 and the brand-new D3X) and records the positional information to the image. This can be picked up later for geo-tagging images, either at home (most image processing software now supports geo-tagging, including Nikon's own ViewNX) or by online services like Flickr.

The unit goes about its job pretty quietly. The only tech specs listed concern the GP-1's flashing blinkenlights -- green and red LEDS which indicates just how many satellites have been locked onto. We expect this to be of the usual Nikon set-and-forget quality. Unfortunately, it also has another, less attractive, Nikon trait -- the outrageous $240 price tag.

Product page [Nikon via Rob Galbraith]

See Also:

 
• How to Geotag Your Photos
 
• Eye-Fi Adds Geotagging And Hotspot Support
 
• Clip-On Geotagging for DSLRs
 
• PMA08 : Automagically Geotagging Your Shots

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 2 Dec 2008 | 10:03 am

Nokia N97 demo video

I’m not too sure what I think about this one just yet - so I’ll let the above demo video and Scott’s hands on photos do most of the talking until I get a chance to prod at it myself. From what I can tell from pictures and specs alone, however, I’m a bit disappointed at the lack of a dedicated row of number keys (likely sacrificed to allow the screen tiltage). I’m also a bit wary of the resistive touchscreen, having been spoiled by a few amazing capacitive screens as of late.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 2 Dec 2008 | 9:58 am

Apple Gives Away Mini DisplayPort Licenses

Apple is hoping to boost the industry (and presumably user) adoption of the DisplayPort technology by licensing its own, proprietary take on the standard, the Mini DisplayPort found on the new unibody MacBooks and the 24" Cinema Display. And best of all, the license will be free.

It's easy to see why. Apple is often early to the game with what it sees as superior technology, but it doesn't always mean that that tech will become widespread (AAC audio, anyone?) Freely licensing the rather well appointed mini version of DisplayPort should not only make Apple's invention a viable standard, it also means that MacBook owners will be able to buy third party monitors that actually work with their notebooks.

DisplayPort has a few advantages over DVI. First, it is two-way, like Apple's power-hungry ADC connector. This means that it can talk back to the computer, allowing such UI niceties as brightness controls on the keyboard. Interestingly, DisplayPort could also be used as a high-bandwidth video-in for the computer, which could go some way to quelling the fuss about Apple abandoning that other connection standard, FireWire 400.

Software Licensing - Mini DisplayPort Connector [Apple via Macworld]

See Also:

• Apple Quietly Kills FireWire 400
• SuperSpeed USB: FireWire's Replacement?

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 2 Dec 2008 | 9:50 am

Nokia Announces Chunky, Full-Featured N97 'Cellphone'

Nokia, once King of the Mobiles, has been dragging its heels of late. It's almost like the Finnish company was having a party and the iPhone turned up, ate all the cake and started playing hide and seek with the girls. Nokia threw its toys from the pram and refused to play until the iPhone went home.

One zillion iPhones later and Nokia has realized that nobody is listening to its cries anymore. Today we see the company's new N97, a touchscreen and QWERTY equipped "multimedia computer" (remember, Nokia doesn't make phones anymore) that is a clear answer to Apple's precocious device. What's inside?

On paper, it's a solid iPhone-beater. In fact, it should probably come with a dirty white undershirt and half a bottle of whiskey. The camera is a Zeiss lens equipped 5MP model with an LED flash and a video mode, the phone sports a huge 32GB of memory, boost-able to 48GB with microSD cards, 3G comes in HSDPA flavor and there is Wi-Fi in the shape of 802.11b and g.

In addition, there is real and faux GPS, just like the iPhone,and an accelerometer and a compass (like the G1 Googlephone). But take a look at it. Fitting in all that gear has made the N97 a little chubby. There's another problem, too -- the handset won't be available for another six months, time enough for the rest of the world to move on. How much? €550, or around $695 in today's dollars.

Press release [Nokia]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 2 Dec 2008 | 9:32 am

Nokia Announces Chunky, Full-Featured N97 'Cellphone'

On paper, Nokia's new N97 is a solid iPhone-beater: A Zeiss lens equipped 5MP with an LED flash and a video mode, a huge 32GB of memory, boost-able to 48GB with microSD cards, 3G comes in HSDPA flavor and there is Wi-Fi in the shape of 802.11b and g. But take a look at it. Fitting in all that gear has made the N87 a little chubby.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 Dec 2008 | 9:32 am

Nokia Announces Chunky, Full-Featured N97 'Cellphone'

On paper, Nokia's new N97 is a solid iPhone-beater: A Zeiss lens equipped 5MP with an LED flash and a video mode, a huge 32GB of memory, boost-able to 48GB with microSD cards, 3G comes in HSDPA flavor and there is Wi-Fi in the shape of 802.11b and g. But take a look at it. Fitting in all that gear has made the N87 a little chubby.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 2 Dec 2008 | 9:32 am

Boing Boing tv Update: Econopocalypse, Julie Amero, Holiday Gifts, Mumbai.

Embedded above, and in glorious technicolor downloadable MP4 here: this week's Boing Boing update on Boing Boing tv.

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♦ We begin with a video chat about O'Reilly Media cofounder DALE DOUGHERTY's guestblog post on why television networks, including CNN, seem to be struggling to cover "The Economic Panic." Why is the current "this great-or-not-so great depression" such a difficult story for TV? Dale believes part of the challenge is that it's big, slow-moving, and abstract. There are no videogenic focal points, no crash scenes or hurricanes for which to don yellow jumpers, no perp mugshots (well, okay, there was this, video here.). We're also in the middle of "a peculiar period inbetween an election and an inauguration," Dale says -- more from him in today's video review, and don't miss the comment thread on the post, either.

♦ Next, we speak with JULIE AMERO, the 41-year old Connecticut schoolteacher accused of showing porn to students on a classroom computer when a computer with malware displayed popup windows with sexual content.

Last week, she accepted a misdemeanor plea deal to avoid felony charges, despite proof she was innocent, and that her case was mishandled. The deal allows her to avoid a previously-imposed jail sentence, but means she has to surrender her teaching credentials. A forensic report showed Amero was not responsible for the infection of porn pop-up windows on the PC in question. There is also ample proof that the school district's IT manager, detectives and prosecutors misled the court.

Here's last week's post by Rob at Boing Boing Gadgets about the plea bargain reached in her case, and here are earlier Boing Boing posts by Mark, starting back in 2007: one, two, three, four, five. I'll be posting the full audio and transcript of our phone interview this week on boingboing.net.

♦ Also in today's BB Update: my co-blogger Cory has been posting some HOLIDAY GIFT ROUNDUPS (so far: DVDs and CDs, kids' stuff, fiction, gadgets, comics and nonfiction.)

♦ And finally in today's episode, eyewitness snapshots from the MUMBAI TERRORIST ATTACKS, shot by 27-year-old amateur photographer Vinu Ranganathan. He lives in the Colaba distict, near the attack sites. WIRED's Threat Level blog has an interview up with him. Snip: "For hours [on the day of the attacks], his graphic photos of the destruction wrought by the terrorists in the Colaba district on the photo-sharing site Flickr seemed to be the only relevant ones available online." Related Boing Boing posts: Mumbai Attacks: Day 1, Mumbai Attacks: Day 2.

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Previous Boing Boing updates on BBtv:

* Boing Boing tv Update: Virgin WiFi, Obfuscated Code, Comment Poetry, Downfall Housing Remix
* Boing Boing tv Update: OFFWORLD, YES MEN, and THIS IS THE FIRST.

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:44 am

45nm Opteron Performance, Power Efficiency Tested

An anonymous reader writes "Now that Intel has unleashed its next-generation Core i7 processors, all eyes are turned to AMD and its incoming wave of 45nm CPUs. To get a feel for AMD's future competitiveness, The Tech Report has taken a pair of 2.7GHz 45nm Opterons (with 75W power envelopes) and put them through the paces against Intel Xeons and older, 65nm Opterons in an extensive suite of performance and power efficiency tests — from Cinema 4D and SPECjbb to computational fluid dynamics and a custom XML handling benchmark. The verdict: AMD's new 45nm quad-core design is a notable improvement over the 65nm iteration, and it proves to be a remarkably power-efficient competitor to Intel's Xeons. However, 45nm AMD chips likely don't have what it takes to best Intel's Core i7 and future Nehalem-based Xeons."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:23 am

Nokia World 2008: Nokia Messaging

Nokia is pushing hard for consolidation, looking to make their smartphones the go-to device for communication. One of the major announcement at Nokia World 2008 this year is about their Nokia Messaging solution. Read on for the press release.

• Experience mobile email as a standard part of the Nokia device experience
• Create and access Ovi email accounts as well as cross-access to other Ovi services with just one sign-on account
• 1GB of storage space and spam filters to block spam emails
• Full access to built-in push email and IM access
• Email delivery of Yahoo! Mail accounts to Nokia devices
• Access Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger on the majority of Nokia devices
• Access Yahoo! Mail directly from the homescreen, giving one touch access to your inbox
• Set your status and customize status messages, see which of your contacts are online or offline, send and receive instant messages, and use emoticons to enhance your messages

Nokia Messaging comes to Nokia devices with support for Mail on Ovi and the world’s
most popular email and IM solutions
New service for consumer email and instant messaging on Nokia devices, along with Ovi email address for email and cross access to other Ovi services from a mobile phone or a PC
Barcelona, Spain - Nokia today announced the launch of Nokia Messaging, which mobilizes consumer email and consumer instant messaging (IM) solutions on Nokia devices. Nokia Messaging will give millions of consumers access to email and IM accounts from Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Hotmail, Gmail and Google Talk, and AOL Mail as well as email solutions from thousands of ISPs around the world on the majority of Nokia devices. Nokia also introduced the online portal for Mail on Ovi, which will enable PC users to create and access Ovi email accounts as well as gain cross access to other Ovi services with just a
single sign-on account.
”We believe everybody should have mobile messaging – it’s not a privilege service that’s meant only for a certain segment of the market. With Nokia Messaging, our customers can simply and affordably gain mobile access to the world’s most popular email and IM accounts. We are making mobile messaging an affordable experience for everyone, not just for those with specialized phones designed for messaging, but for everyone with a Nokia device. In response to overwhelming consumer feedback that messaging is a critical, must-have feature, Nokia has responded with solutions to bring messaging to the broadest range of devices and to ensure the service works with the most popular messaging services in the market. Windows Live Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, Gmail, email accounts provided by thousands of ISPs around the world, and even brand new Nokia-provided email accounts, can now be accessed from mobile phones with a few simple clicks, directly from the home-screen,” said Tom Furlong, Senior Vice President, Consumer Messaging, Services & Software, Nokia.

Mail on Ovi
Nokia announced the introduction of web access to Mail on Ovi, which gives users 1GB of storage space and spam filters to block unwanted emails. Creating a Mail on Ovi account will give users access to their email, as well as cross access to other Ovi services, both on the mobile phone and on the PC. The beta version of Mail on Ovi will roll out globally in December 2008 in 12 languages, including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Hindi, Bengali, Tagalog, Bahasa Indonesia and Bahasa Malaysia on all currently shipping Nokia Series 40 devices, with many more languages to be added later. The web access version will launch in February 2009.

Nokia Messaging
Nokia Messaging will launch commercially in the first quarter of 2009 in Australia, Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, the United Kingdom and Venezuela, and in select countries later in the year. Agreements with key operators will establish Nokia Messaging as an operator supported service so that users who purchase a data plan that includes Nokia Messaging will be able to take full access of the built-in push email and IM access without additional service charges.

The Nokia Messaging push email service is available today for free as a limited-period beta trial. Owners of popular Nokia S60 devices such as Nokia E71 and Nokia N95 can immediately go to email.nokia.com and install the service on their devices. Nokia Messaging is an email application that’s been designed from the ground up to support mobile email. The application makes it simple to set-up the email account – all users have to enter are their email address and password, and emails are seamlessly pushed to their mobile device. Nokia Messaging also makes it simple to read, send, forward and reply to emails, download and read
attachments, and attach files to emails directly on the Nokia device.

Nokia Messaging is immediately available on a wide range of Nokia S60 devices to mobilize consumer email. Instant messaging and support for Nokia Series 40 devices will be enabled in the second half of 2009.

With Nokia Messaging and Mail on Ovi together, Nokia will enable consumers with and without email accounts to experience mobile email as a standard part of the Nokia device experience. To date, Nokia has shipped about 200 million devices that immediately enable the launch of its messaging solutions, including Nokia Messaging, Mail on Ovi and corporate mobile email (Microsoft Exchange Activesync).

For more information and materials on Nokia World 2008 event and announcements, please visit:
http://events.nokia.com/nokiaworld
www.nokia.com/press/nokiaworld08

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:21 am

Nokia World 2008: Nokia Maps

At Nokia World 2008, Nokia announced their new Nokia Maps product. The most compelling feature is the ability to plan your trip on your PC, and then sync the route to your Nokia phone. Also included are 3D landmarks for 216 cities, to help users visually identify where they are! Camera locations are included for select cities, so folks can avoid those pesky speeding tickets. Neat stuff.

• High-resolution aerial images
• 3D landmarks for 216 cities and terrain maps
• New route overview during routing and during Drive
• Purchasable turn-by-turn car navigation guidance
• Instant access to real time information such as camera alerts, safety spots and traffic information for selected countries
• Access to Wcities event guides, giving real-time information for events and movies in over 450 destinations
• Straight-line guidance allows you to walk the shortest distance between point A and point B
• View multiple entrances to the same underground metro station

The Nokia Maps story unfolds with new integrated web services and other upgrades
New version with Ovi integration offers 3D landmarks and other enhancements including online planning on the web
Barcelona, Spain - Nokia has released the latest version of its award-winning mobile mapping and navigation service, Nokia Maps, as well as its personalized online mapping experience on Ovi by Nokia. This combination of Nokia Maps plus Ovi is the first free service that allows people to pre-plan their journey at home on their PC and synchronize with their mobile, giving access to pre-planned routes and favorite destinations while on the move.
In addition, Nokia Maps has been updated to include a number of new features such as high-resolution aerial images, 3D landmarks for 216 cities and terrain maps, as well as a new route overview during routing and during Drive, the purchasable turn-by-turn car navigation guidance.

“Nokia has clearly increased the usability of Maps, and now with the integration of Ovi services, the functionality of this service can also be seen online,” says Michael Halbherr, vice-president, Nokia location based experiences. “Enabling Nokia Maps the ability to synchronize my favorite places between my mobile and PC. becomes the main reason for anyone to switch from other personal navigation devices to Nokia Maps.”
Maps on Ovi is becoming more than just a mapping tool. Over the coming months, Maps will become a destination for people to save and organize places, pre-plan trips and post-edit them. People can share their location and all their personally and socially meaningful content with friends, inviting them to join in activities and share experiences.
Other new options for Nokia Maps include instant access to real time information such as camera alerts, safety spots and traffic information for selected countries, as well as Wcities event guides that give real-time information for events and movies in over 450 destinations.

Walk, pedestrian navigation, improves from where the last version left off, by adding straight-line guidance, which allows you to walk the shortest distance between point A and point B. Should your journeys be more urban, beeps and vibrations during Walk navigation alert you when you need to make a turn along your route. The level of detail in the maps has increased to the point that you can view multiple entrances to the same underground metro station.
The higher map quality is a direct result of the relationship that now exists between Nokia and NAVTEQ. The close working relationship allows Nokia to better utilize the map data that NAVTEQ supplies, which provides a higher quality and extensive coverage that enables more effective location based experiences.
The new version of the Nokia Maps application for selected devices is available on the Nokia Beta Labs website: http://www.nokia.com/betalabs. The online version will be accessible from http://maps.ovi.com. As both versions are released as a Beta, some product features may not be available in the Beta release, but instead, will be added into future releases.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:20 am

Nokia World 2008: Nokia N97

Introducing the Nokia N97, the next generation high-end mobile phone from Nokia. Described by Nokia folks as a “handheld computer” this device is a pretty comfortable high-end phone. It has a tilting (resistive) touch-screen display, and is the first N-series phone with a QWERTY keyboard. It has 32 gigabytes of memory, expandable to 48 GB via 16 GB memory card. It has a digital compass, a 1500 milliamp battery, and DVD quality video capture. It’s extremely comfortable to hold, easy to use, and represents a solid solid evolution of the Nokia smarthphone line.

• Size: 117.2 x 55.3 x 15.9 mm* *18.25 mm at camera area
• Weight: Approx. 150 g
• Memory: Up to 48GB (32 GB on-board memory, plus 16GB expansion via microSD memory card slot)
• Display: 3.5 inch TFT with up to 16 million colors nHD 16:9 widescreen (640×360 pixels)
• Talk time: Up to 320 min (3G), 400 min (GSM)
• Standby time: Up to 400 hrs (3G), 430 hrs (GSM)
• Video playback: Up to 4.5 hours (offline mode)
• Music playback: Up to 37 hours (offline mode)
• Image capture: Up to 5 megapixels (2584 x 1938) JPEG/EXIF (16.7 million/24-bit color)

Desktop. Laptop. Pocket: The era of the personal Internet dawns with the Nokia N97

Tilting touch display, QWERTY keyboard and personalized home screen – a true mobile computer Barcelona, Spain – Nokia today unveiled the Nokia N97, the world’s most advanced mobile computer, which will transform the way people connect to the Internet and to each other. Designed for the needs of Internet-savvy consumers, the Nokia N97 combines a large 3.5” touch display with a full QWERTY keyboard, providing an ‘always open’ window to favorite social networking sites and Internet destinations. Nokia’s flagship Nseries device introduces leading technology – including multiple sensors, memory, processing power and connection
speeds – for people to create a personal Internet and share their ‘social location.’
“From the desktop to the laptop and now to your pocket, the Nokia N97 is the most powerful, multi-sensory mobile computer in existence,” said Jonas Geust, Vice President, heading Nokia Nseries. “Together with the Ovi services announced today, the Nokia N97 mobile computer adjusts to the world around us, helping stay connected to the people and things that matter most. With the Nokia N97, Nseries leads the charge in helping to transform the Internet into your Internet”.
Sensing your ‘So-Lo’

The Nokia N97 introduces the concept of ‘social location’. With integrated A-GPS sensors and an electronic compass, the Nokia N97 mobile computer intuitively understands where it is. The Nokia N97 makes it easy to update social networks automatically with real-time information, giving approved friends the ability to update their ‘status’ and share their ‘social location’ as well as related pictures or videos.

Widescreen - Internet and entertainment

The home screen of the Nokia N97 mobile computer features the people, content and media that matter the most. Friends, social networks and news are available by simply touching the home screen. The 16:9 widescreen display can be fully personalized with frequently updated widgets of favorite web services and social networking sites. The Nokia N97 is also perfectly suited for browsing the web, streaming Flash videos or playing games. Both the physical QWERTY and virtual touch input ensure efficiency in blogging, chatting, posting, sending texts or emailing.
The Nokia N97 supports up to 48 GB of storage, including 32 GB of on-board memory, expandable with a 16 GB microSD card for music, media and more. This is complemented by excellent music capabilities, full support for the Nokia Music Store and continuous playback time of up to 1.5 days. The Nokia N97 also has a 5-Megapixel camera with high-quality Carl Zeiss optics, 16:9 and DVD quality video capture, and support for services like Share on Ovi for immediate sharing over HSDPA and WLAN.

The Nokia N97 is expected to begin shipping in the first half of 2009 at an estimated retail price of EUR 550 before taxes or subsidies.

The N97 is comfortable to hold, and the prototype model we examined was easy to operate. It’s not a revolutionary addition to the N-series product line, but offers a decent evolution to Nokia smartphones.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:18 am

Sweet steampunky shed

Outa Spaceman of the ReaderSheds site has a gallery showing off his sweet steampunk/apocalyptic shed. I'm generally pretty content with my little flat, but every now and again I wish I had a garden just so I could install a shed like this!

Steampunk Sheddie O.S.M (Thanks, Uncle Wilco!)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:16 am

Sony preparing a WWAN-equiped VAIO? The FCC says yes

Section: Communications, Broadband Cards, Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops, Wireless

It looks like Sony is about to enter the netbook market.  Of course, there are little details so far, but from the looks of the FCC image, it appears that Sony is preparing a small WWAN-equipped VAIO.  The image shows off what appears to be a netbook that measures in at 9.5 x 4.5-inches, but carries an official description of “notebook PC.“  Perhaps we can assume that description is just because of the fact that Sony does not like the netbook market.  Call it what you want, but a “netbook,“ “notebook,“ or even a “laptop,“ the size is what will determine the correct market.

The few details that were listed, have this as model numbers PCG-1P1L and PCG-1P2L.  Additionally, they are shown to feature Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth as well as EVDO and HSPA.  So far, there is not any information regarding a display size, operating system or other features.  The one drawback that I can see here is that, assuming this is truly a VAIO netbook, the price will most likely not be at the same level as other netbooks.

Via [Engadget]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:10 am

Now Hiring in Silicon Valley [Voices]

By Michael V. Copeland and Adam Lashinsky, Senior Writers, Fortune

Nature abhors a vacuum, but apparently not in Silicon Valley, where it may not be easy to fill some very prominent vacancies. Right now you’ve got Jerry Yang abdicating at Yahoo, and Microsoft is looking for someone to run its online division. And there are persistent rumors that another huge job might be opening up at Google.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:01 am

Econalypto [Digital Daily]

Good thing the National Bureau of Economic Research wasn’t established with the goal of providing timely economic analysis; otherwise its announcement Monday that the country has been in a recession since December 2007 might seem, you know, ludicrous. But the NBER’s business is quantitative historical analysis, not timely economic intelligence. As Jeffrey Frankel, a Harvard professor and member of the NBER’s business cycle dating committee, notes, “Our job is to be definitive, not fast.” And that makes today’s pronouncement even more worrisome. Because, according to the NBER, the current contraction, already the longest since 1982, is entirely likely to grow longer still. Certainly, that’s what all the leading economic indicators suggest. “It is clearly not going to end in a few months,” explains Frankel. “We would be lucky to get done with it in the middle of next year.”

If that proves true–if the economy doesn’t hit bottom until the second quarter of 2009–this recession will have been the longest since the Great Depression. What a horrific thought….

Source: All Things Digital | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am

An Ethical Question Involving eBooks [Voices]

By Theodore Ts’o, Blogger, Thoughts by Ted

I recently purchased a short story from Fictionwise, which was not DRM’ed, so I could easily get it into a form where I could read it on my Sony eReader. Thanks to that short story, I was introduced to an author, and a character, which I found very engaging. When I decided to find out more about the character, I found that the author had written two additional short stories, and three additional novels many years ago, but has since stopped writing any more books involving that character. Furthermore, the novels have gone out of print, and are only available from amazon.com as used books.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am

The End of Online Anonymity [Voices]

By Sarah Perez, Blogger, ReadWriteWeb

It seems we’re approaching a new age here on the Internet. Instead being anonymous, faceless IP addresses, social computing and changing technologies have allowed the lines between the “real” world and the “virtual” world to blur. Web 2.0 helped create a world where your identity is revealed in bits and pieces as you share snippets of your life online - a photo here, a Stumble there, a tweet, a Digg, etc. However, the rise of social media is only one of the changes that is busy shaping the new Web.

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Source: All Things Digital | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am

Widgets Are Made for Marketing, So Why Aren’t More Advertisers Using Them? [Voices]

By Bob Garfield, Columnist, Advertising Age

Some guy lives in Albuquerque, which is great, because it is sunny and really convenient to Vista Encantada and Hoffmantown. But he has relatives in Denver, a limited budget, a lot of outstanding family obligations and a seven-hour, 450-mile gulf between them. Then, one hot and dry Thursday, he’s sitting at a computer, and it goes … “DING!”

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Source: All Things Digital | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am

Open Source: The Model Is Broken [Voices]

By Stuart Cohen, CEO, Collaborative Software Initiative

For anyone who hasn’t been paying attention to the software industry lately, I have some bad news. The open-source business model is broken. Companies have long hoped to make money from this freely available software by charging customers for support and add-on features. Some have succeeded. Many others have failed or will falter, and their ranks may swell as the economy worsens. This will require many to adopt a new mindset, viewing open source more as a means than an end in itself.

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Source: All Things Digital | 2 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am

Dentata photoshopping contest

Today's Worth1000 photoshopping contest is Om Nom Nom Nom, "Inanimate objects eating people and stuff." Pictured here, "banana eat banana !!!!" There's some great dentatae here!

Om Nom Nom Nom

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Dec 2008 | 7:40 am

Wal-Mart Cyber Monday 2008 video game deals

FROM GAMERTELL -  Wal-Mart’s Cyber Monday deals are now in full effect.  There is no shortage of games here at all.  Granted, a lot of them are titles a lot of us have never heard of before, but the list is so expansive you’re bond to find something to pick up… MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 2 Dec 2008 | 7:40 am

Just How Stupid And Poor Are MySpace Users, Exactly?

If you thought Randall Stross’ attack on Tesla yesterday was in poor taste, wait until you read what Michael Wolff has to say about MySpace. In a dinner interview with BusinessWeek columnist Jon Fine, Wolff says:

…if you’re on MySpace now, you’re a [expletive] cretin. And you’re not only a [expletive] cretin, but you’re poor. Nobody who has beyond an 8th grade level of education is on MySpace. It is for backwards people.

That’s just part of a much longer interview in which Wolff goes into detail on exactly why he thinks MySpace will go the way of AOL. He also makes some blatantly incorrect statements, such as “All of the growth now in MySpace is international,” which is incorrect. In the last year MySpace has grown about 10% in the U.S., adding 7.5 million monthly unique users to a total of 76.4 million. Non-U.S. users have grown from 45 million to 54 million, a 17% increase. (source: Comscore)

And those comments about MySpace users being poor and uneducated aren’t entirely correct either. Of MySpace’s U.S. users, 52% make more than $60,000 per year, which is far from poor. 23% make more than $100,000 per year. Just 11.6% make less than $25k/year.

Facebook’s numbers are 65% and 33%, respectively, which is more impressive. But MySpace has 30 million more U.S. users than Facebook (76 million v. 46 million), so MySpace’s aggregate numbers are higher. 17.6 million U.S. MySpace users make more than $100,000 per year.

Also true of MySpace users, according to Nielsen: 63% own homes, 86% are registered voters and 28% are college graduates. Facebook has similar numbers.

And a whole lot of people smart enough to work a Blackberry device seem to like MySpace, too.

See the graph below for more details.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 2 Dec 2008 | 7:05 am

App Store to reach 10,000 apps soon

FROM APPLETELL - 10,000 applications. 10,000.  Wow.  Now, if I only see a need for 1% of those, I am still downloading 100 applications from the App Store. MORE »

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Source: Gadgetell | 2 Dec 2008 | 7:04 am

PayPal Gets In Trouble With Australia’s Aborigines

Apparently at least some Australians aren’t happy with a PayPal advertisements that include legendary Aborigine David Unaipon with a motorcycle police helmet added on to suggest PayPal has heightened security. The ads, which are on the sides of buses in Australia, says the Sydney Morning Herald, are disrespectful and degrading according to Unaipon’s relatives.

The ads also apparently feature other bills as well. And PayPal, instead of just not commenting or removing those specific ads, makes a mess of it. “PayPal spokeswoman Kelly Stevens said the ads were “perfectly legal”" - which doesn’t really address the issue.

Best quote from the article: “It is very disrespectful because for a start no Aboriginal people have a helmet - we’re not bikies and we’re not Vikings.”

It’s not clear that many other Aborigines are offended. And the two Unaipon relatives seem to be in the process of shaking down the government for permission to use Unaipon’s portrait on Australian currency at all. Maybe they’re just looking for a little something from PayPal, too.

Sometimes I feel bad for PayPal and all the negative publicity they get. Then I remember how terrible their customer service is, and how many times I’ve been angry at them, and I feel a lot less bad.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 2 Dec 2008 | 7:04 am

UK to punish "publishing police info" with 10 years in jail

Ken sez,

Indymedia UK has info on an update to Section 58 of the Terrorism Act 2000. This amendment will make it an offence, punishable by up to ten years imprisonment, to publish or elicit information about any police constable "of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism".

Given the overreach of basically all legislation having to do with the Global War on Nouns, there's fear in blogging, independent journalism, and activist communities that this could make publishing information that the police finds disconcerting, embarrassing, or troublesome problematic (to say the least).

The amendment also apparently applies to internet service providers and web hosting services...no safe harbor there. Hopefully enough of an outcry will be heard to get some realistic analysis brought to bear!

We will not be intimidated – Mass resistance to new offence of publishing inform (Thanks, Ken!)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Dec 2008 | 6:44 am

Configure your BMW on a Microsoft Surface

Section: Computers, Software / Applications, Gadgets / Other, Miscellaneous

BMW has recently become the first car manufacturer to begin using the Microsoft Surface to allow potential customers to configure their car with the fun of multi-touch.  The BMW Product Navigator will let customers change and configure the exterior and interior colors, rims, and more through the use of color tiles that are placed on top of the Surface table.  The Product Navigator even allows for optional accessories to be added. 

Additionally, it has a secondary monitor that lets the customer see, and also share what they have configured with others.  Once the customer has their car ready and complete they can then choose to print or e-mail the details, and even save them to a USB flash drive to take with them.  I am not sure this would make be buy a BMW, well maybe if I had the money, but if nothing else it would sure make car shopping a little more enjoyable.  Now, they just need to find a way to deal with the annoying salesperson.  Keep reading to check out a video showing off the process…

Read [BMW Blog]

 

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 2 Dec 2008 | 6:15 am

Steampunk sewing machine

Becky Stern's Steampunk Sewing Machine still functions as a sewing machine -- and the superfluous propellor spins when the drive-wheel moves! "I got an old sewing machine at goodwill and steamed it up with brassy bits!"

Steampunk Sewing Machine (via Make)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Dec 2008 | 6:14 am

Why Candyland doesn't suck

The latest installment in Greg Costikyan's indespensible game-review site, Play This Thing!, is a long, serious, thoughtful look at Candy Land, the game everyone loves to hate. Not so fast, says Greg, there's plenty of juice in that orange. Pieces like this are why Greg's one of my top five games-writers of all time.

To begin with, let us view Candy Land as a mathematical entity. It is very nearly a Markov chain, a stochastic process in which, given the current state, future states are independent of past states. (It would be a pure Markov chain if the deck were shuffled after each play; instead, it is a crippled Markov chain coupled to a push-pop stack.) As such, it is a metaphorical representation of the fundamental ideology of the United States; the past is no constraint on the future, and each individual should strive resolutely for personal advance despite whatever the past may hold. The child born in a log cabin may achieve the presidency, an immigrant boy who grows up in the slums of Brooklyn may become a real-estate magnate, an Ivy-educated scion of wealth may wind up on a bread line, and a double green will speed you to the fore. Though there are winners and losers, initial conditions are no determinant of outcome in the freedom of America. The subtext, of course, may be that success and failure is entirely random and has nothing to do with individual initiative and hard work, a concept alien to the Platonic ideal of the American dream, but perhaps a more accurate representation of reality than the Horatio Alger myth.

Next, let us consider the role of Candy Land in the acculturation of the American child. The characters represented in the game, through whose desmenses the players pass, are all representations of sickly, in many cases objectively repulsive, sweets: Princess Frostine, the Gingerbread People, Mr. Mint, Gkoppy the Chocolate (formerly Molasses) Monster. There's a clear message to the American child here, one our business establishment is at pains to transmit through all forms of media -- most importantly, of course, through the thundering waterfall of commercial blandishment none of us is permitted to escape, whatever media we peruse. That message is, of course: CONSUME. Consume candy. Consume everything. But for children, candy above all; the natural childish instinct to like what in more mature mouths is repulsively lachrymose is the key, the first way in for inculcation of the consumer instinct. Candy good. Consume candy. Whine at your parent until she, or as it may be, he, buys you the packet of Lifesavers. St. Francis Xavier, founder of the Jesuits, said "Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man," meaning, of course, that if you brainwash small children with any idiot set of beliefs (like, say, the virgin birth, divinity of Christ, necessity for ritual cannibalism, and triune nature of the Godhead), you'll have them by the frontal lobes of the brain for the rest of their lives. They will never escape it. Thus, while Abbot no doubt had no such intention for her game, Candy Land also serves as an important element in the indoctrination of American youth in the cult of excessive consumption and extravagant and unnecessary use of resources, the fundament of our society and economic growth since the end of the Second World War.

Candy Land

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Dec 2008 | 6:09 am

Chainsaw "bayonet" mounted on rifle

In this short but riveting video, YouTube's Pfcthiel demonstrates a chainsaw "bayonet" he mounted on an assault rifle (he'll make you one for $300). As Neatorama points out, this may just be the world's greatest anti-zombie weapon. Also handy for loggers who fear attack-squirrels.

Chainsaw Bayonet (via Neatorama)

Source: Boing Boing | 2 Dec 2008 | 6:06 am

Study Confirms That Cars Have Personalities

Ponca City, We love you writes "A study has confirmed that many people see human facial features in the front ends of automobiles and ascribe various personality traits to cars. Forty study participants assessed cars based on a system known as geometric morphometrics by viewing high-resolution, 3D computer reconstructions and printed images of 38 actual 2004-06 car models and rating each model on 19 traits such as dominance, maturity, gender, and friendliness, and if they liked the car. Study participants liked best the cars scoring high in the so-called power traits — the most mature, masculine, arrogant, and angry-looking ones. Researchers theorized that over evolutionary time, humans have developed a selective sensitivity to features in the human face that convey information on sex, age, emotions, and intentions. The lead researcher explained, 'Seeing too many faces, even in mountains or toast, has little or no penalty, but missing or misinterpreting the face of a predator or attacker could be fatal.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:54 am

Nintendo DS taps into e-reader market

Section: Gaming, Portable

One of the growing markets within the tech world at the moment is the e-reader, a futuristic answer to the book.  Lots of manufacturers are getting in on the act following in the footsteps of the Amazon Kindle and the Sony Readers, it was only a matter of time till portable consoles caught up with this trend.  It would appear that Nintendo is ready to go the e-reader route with their first eBook software allowing you read books on your DS.

The DS would seem like a good solution: it is small, it has a touch screen, it can connect to the Internet and many people have them which translates to a large user base. 

Nintendo’s offering is miles behind Amazon and Sony on so many levels.  Firstly, you are limited to a choice of the 100 books that come on the card which instantly puts you behind the thousands of novels, magazines, and newspapers that the e-readers have.  Secondly, and most crucially, the only reason that these books are available is because they are out of copyright, so don’t expect anything written in this century.

Look at the size difference between a DS screen and a book and you will see that the DS is tiny in comparison which will make reading harder on the eye.  This is something that is perhaps easy to overlook now, but when you have to “turn the page” every sentence it is not so good.  Also the Wi-Fi function is utterly awful, merely allowing you download 10 different books which are probably classics as well (so why didn’t they just put them on the software?) and rate the books.

Now, it’s not all bad.  If you already have a DS then this is a great way to get to know some classic novels made especially easy by the search function that allows you to look for specific phrases.  This, coupled with the ability to zoom and turn pages with the stylus, makes it fun for children as well, and the $27 price tag isn’t bad either.

Source [ElectricPig]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:44 am

Study links blacks' birthplace to asthma

A study of blacks living in a Boston-area community found those born in the United States were more likely to have asthma than those born elsewhere. Doug Brugge, an associate professor at Tufts University School of Medicine in Boston, said a review of 479 asthma screening questionnaires from children and adults in Dorchester, Mass., suggests black adults who were born in the United States and living in Dorchester were three times as likely to be diagnosed with asthma as black adults in the community who were born outside the United States. Brugge, however, warned that the results cannot be generalized to the U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:29 am

uTest Raises $5 Million More For Crowdsourced Bug Testing

uTest, the crowdsourcing QA startup that lets companies rely on external developers to help them identify bugs, has closed a $5 million Series B funding round led by Longworth Venture Partners and Egan-Managed Capital, along with existing investors Mesco Ltd. and Massachusetts Technology Development Corp. The new round brings the startup’s total funding to around $7.8 million after a $2.3 million Series A round last year and some early seed funding.

The site offers customers a web based platform and tools for monitoring testing and QA cycles, which are available to them free of charge (they only pay for the testing completed by the crowdsourced community). Community members are paid depending on the number and type of bugs they find, and the marketprice for bug finds fluctuates depending on the number of bugs left to find, the demand for testers, and other criteria. Since launching in Febuary, the uTest community has grown to 11,000 users.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

Stylin' Chairgonomics: Pricey Herman Miller Seat Is Kick-Ass Comfy

The ergoheads at Herman Miller design its new Embody chair to support your body in such a way that it's actually decompressing while you work.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

Plug In Player, and Jet Engines, Crying Babies Disappear

Crank up the volume, add noise-canceling headphones and this video player has you in another world – noise irritants are all yours. Great battery life means it'll last awhile.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

Digging for Diamonds 24/7 Under Frozen Snap Lake

Plink. Plink. Tink. One billion dollars of up-front investment and it all comes down to this: a slow but steady trickle of milky white pebbles dropping from a funnel into an acrylic jar. The jar is locked inside a glass case that's inside a vault that's inside the high-security Red Area of a prefab aluminum building on the Canadian tundra. Every 24 hours, seven days a week, 365 days a year, miners for the South African company De Beers blast 3,150 tons of rock — enough to fill 80 trucks — from under the earth near this aluminum building and feed it into crushers, scrubbers, sifters, and x-ray machines. It's a lot of effort for a little, but the little is a lot: the equivalent of two coffee mugs a day full of rough diamonds.

Running a diamond mine in the Arctic is a mind-boggling undertaking. "This is a camp in the middle of nowhere," says Peter Mooney, manager of the processing plant at Snap Lake, "and a bloody horrible winter's day in Africa is the nicest summer day here. The real problem with diamonds isn't even their scarcity," he says. "It's that getting them takes a lot of science and engineering and lots and lots of money."

Fipke doesn't work for De Beers — they're competitors — but the Snap Lake project, just like the ones at Ekati and Diavik, is part of the new era that Fipke created. The only way in is by air on company charter flights, except for six to 10 weeks in winter when ice road truckers — just like on the History Channel show — cart in fuel, mining machines and haul trucks, dormitories and parts for generators, conveyor belts, explosives.

On a 4,000-foot gravel runway, commuter planes and 737s trade approaches and takeoffs with C-130 Hercules flights full of cargo. After my ATR threads its way to the ground, a yellow school bus picks me up and drops me at a snaking series of linked prefab trailers containing sleeping quarters, offices, and a cafeteria. I fill out forms. I agree to be searched at any time. I agree not pick up any rocks from the ground, even the smallest pebble. Hundreds of closed-circuit cameras watch my every move.

Snap Lake is unusual — instead of blowing straight up to the surface, the magma followed a crooked path through fissures in the surrounding granite. Snap Lake's kimberlite is a 9-foot-thick, 2.5-by-1.6-mile seam angling slightly downward. It's also about 200 feet under a lake that's frozen most of the year. So all of Snap Lake's mining is underground — a cold, wet, black world of rising and falling tunnels constantly leaking water from the lake above.

The operation consumes 25,000 gallons of fuel a day — and the work never stops. Miners drill holes in rock faces, insert explosives, and blow out over 1,500 tons of gray kimberlite per blast, twice a day. Trucks carry the ore to a large bin where it's stored. Then it's sent to a crusher that feeds the rock onto a mile-long conveyor belt that carries it to the surface, to the Blue Area, specifically a 5-story building of more crushers and sifters and shakers and screens and heavy liquid cyclone separators that pick out all the heavy ore. It's a roaring maze of steel grates and 60-foot staircases.

Eventually the conveyors pass into a more secure building-within-the-building, the Red Area. It's accessible only via a room the size of a closet; when the door behind me locks, cameras confirm that I'm alone. A green light tells me to proceed through zigzagging rooms that would be difficult to, say, kick a diamond through.

The ore passes down through another tower of sorters — x-rays illuminate diamonds. A secondary (and secret) process uses lasers to further refine the stream. At the end of the line, past an 8-inch-thick steel door and a set of steel bars, is the vault itself, a small room with half a dozen cameras and a big, rectangular glass box shot with glove-lined holes, like an incubator for premature infants. Stones — some the size of pin heads, others the size of gum balls — drop into a jar. Sometimes five minutes pass with nary a gem, and then two or three tumble out at once. Over the course of a year, there will be 1.2 million carats. Some are opaque; some are as clear as glass. Of the 430 men and women working here, no more than 60 will ever see this vault — or any diamonds. Ever. I slip my hands through the holes and into gloves, and pick up the biggest rock I see, a perfect 5-carat octahedral crystal three times older than the human species, formed during the age of the mastodons. A chunk of pure carbon, beautiful and banal. I ask how much it's worth. "Not allowed to say," Mooney says. "Put it this way: That's a hell of a lot of diamonds."

Diamond jewelry has never moved me. But suddenly, holding this stone, I can't help it. I want one. The gears in my mind whir. And it's as if Mooney can hear them. "People get very clever," he says, "and very determined. We haven't had any theft here yet, but we check the gloves for holes every day." I gently place the stone back in the pile.

Exiting requires an additional turn into a room with an x-ray machine and a glass wall. Under the gaze of a man who says, "Don't worry, I've seen it all," I strip to my underpants, place my clothes and shoes and socks through the x-ray machine. Open my mouth. Show behind my ears. Sit in a chair and show the bottoms of my feet. Stand and run my fingers under the band of my underpants. There's only one hiding place left, which happily they don't check. I'm cleared and allowed to dress.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

As Facebook Connect Expands, OpenID's Challenges Grow

Facebook Connect has been adopted by several high-profile websites, including Digg, Hulu and Discovery.com. The news is sure to be welcomed by Facebook's 120 million users and its potential partners, but it presents a new challenge to proponents of the so-called "open stack" for ID management -- OpenID, OAuth and the related technologies that allow users to share data across multiple websites.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

Geek Hotels Pass the Nerd Test

: Photo: scottroberts/Flickr

Whether your fantasy hotel is a Star Wars-style cave dwelling or a Hobbit hole in New Zealand, specialty accommodations around the world will fulfill your nerdy needs.

Other hotels geek out with crazy gear, from Apple- and Microsoft-themed suites to virtual golf courses. And while WiFi has become a common hotel offering, a high-tech hotel in the Middle East extends internet access all the way to its private beach.

These and other specialty accommodations make Wired.com's list of top geek hotels.

Hôtel Sidi Driss, Matmata, Tunisia

Left: The Tunisian town of Matmata is riddled with troglodyte dwellings, vertical caves dug out by humans and turned into homes. The Hôtel Sidi Driss is one such desert delight.

Geek factor: Does the cave hotel look strangely familiar? The interior was used as a Star Wars filming location — it's the Lars' homestead on Tatooine.

: Photo courtesy Hotel Sax

Hotel Sax, Chicago

Plenty of businesses have gotten into bed with Microsoft. Now you can, too: Chicago's Hotel Sax has a partnership with the software giant that lets weary travelers relax into "the Microsoft Experience."

Geek factor: The Studio, Hotel Sax's "Entertainment Lounge" available to all guests features Microsoft gear like Xbox 360s and Zunes. Don't want to share? Book your own private "Entertainment Technology" studio or suite.

: Photo courtesy Hotel 1000

Hotel 1000, Seattle

The operators of this high-tech hotel sank millions of dollars into the latest gear. With luxuries like ubiquitous WiFi, HD TVs and a "fully converged IP infrastructure" that allows for internet-enabled personalization of everything from room temperatures to the art on the walls, Hotel 1000 was a shoe-in for Hospitality Technology magazine's 2008 award for overall technology innovation.

Geek factor: After playing around on the hotel's virtual golf course, just flip the electronic "do not disturb" sign to keep hotel staff or annoying co-workers at bay.

: Photo: Mark Darley

Hotel Avante, Mountain View, California

Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Hotel Avante is making a big play for big players. The 91-room boutique hotel bills itself — and its guests — as "smart, visionary, iconoclastic and artistic."

Geek factor: To further its "creative clubhouse" atmosphere, each room includes an "executive toy box" with a yo-yo, an Etch A Sketch, a Rubik's Cube, playing cards and a Slinky.

: Photo: maurizio_mwg/Flickr

Capsule Inn Akihabara, Tokyo

Capsule Inn Akihabara is one of only a few places to stay in "Electric Town," Tokyo's anime/otaku hub and the site of the largest electronics market in the world. The tiny capsule rooms look like washing machines from the outside.

Geek factor: The hotel's sleeping units are "designed in the image of a jet airplane's cockpit" with every device in the capsule — TV, radio, alarm clock, lighting — designed to be controlled from a sleeping position.

: Photo courtesy The Pod Hotel

The Pod Hotel, New York

With free WiFi, iPod docks, relatively inexpensive rooms (called "pods") and the opportunity to make new friends in its shared bathrooms, The Pod Hotel in Manhattan's Midtown East neighborhood is making a play for the Facebook generation. Antisocial guests will be pleased to know that some rooms have private baths.

Geek factor: Nicknamed the "Facebook Hotel," this place has its own social networking site to help guests find someone for dinner, drinks, shopping or whatever.

: Photo courtesy Tribeca Grand Hotel

Tribeca Grand Hotel, New York

With its plush bar and 98-seat screening room, the Tribeca Grand is definitely swanky. But book an iStudio and you'll be pampered, Apple-style.

Geek factor: The iStudio rooms. They're decked out with Apple products, including a Power Mac G5, photo- and video-editing software and an iPod.

: Photo: stephenr/Flickr

Woodlyn Park, New Zealand

Woodlyn Park is home to Billy Black's Kiwi Culture Show, with sheep shearing and a dancing pig. But the real star of the complex is The Hobbit Motel, two polystyrene-block units with circular doors built into a hillside.

Geek factor: You can pretend you're a hobbit.

: Photo: Ben Nilsson/Big Ben Productions

Icehotel, Jukkasjärvi, Sweden

The Icehotel says it offers "an experience of a lifetime as well as an encounter with art and design that will surprise your senses." Since it's made of ice and snow, that claim sounds perfectly believable. You can book hot or cold accommodations at the Icehotel. Each ice room is designed by an artist, such as the one shown here by Andrea Thomson. Got the shivers? Heat up from the inside out at the Absolut Icebar.

Geek factor: The ice palace in the Bond flick Die Another Day was inspired by this hotel.

: Photo courtesy Emirates Palace Hotel

Emirates Palace Hotel, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

Everything's superdeluxe at this Middle Eastern resort hotel, and it's even better if you step up a notch: All suites boast 61-inch plasma TVs (regular rooms have puny 50-inchers). All guest rooms have handheld computers that control switches and outlets — set your language preference for the interactive screens upon check-in.

Geek factor: Free WiFi reaches all poolside areas and even the private beach.

: Photo courtesy Joie de Vivre Hospitality

Hotel Tomo, San Francisco

From anime-inspired wall paintings to glow-in-the-dark desk blotters, Hotel Tomo kicks out the J-pop jams. See Wired.com's photo gallery on this Japanophile find, "San Francisco's Hotel Tomo Jacks Into Japanese Culture."

Geek factor: Deluxe gaming suites come with PlayStation 3, Wii, beanbag chairs and a 6-foot LCD projection screen.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

How a Rogue Geologist Discovered a Diamond Trove in the Canadian Arctic

Behind an unmarked door in a faded business park outside Kelowna, British Columbia, in a maze of rooms crowded with desks, computers, and floor-to-ceiling shelves, Chuck Fipke sifts through 20-pound bags of dirt.

"We take samples, hey, from gravel and streambeds all over the world," Fipke says. He sieves the earth, runs it through magnetic drums and centrifuges and electromagnetic separators. Then his technicians, working with scanning electron microscopes, separate out grains and mount them on postage-stamp-sized squares of epoxy. It's painstaking work but worth the trouble. Fipke has learned to understand those grains of dirt, and that understanding has led him to diamonds.

Eighteen years ago, there was no such thing as a Canadian diamond — as far as anyone knew. Diamonds came mostly from Australia, Botswana, South Africa, Namibia, and Russia. De Beers mined 75 percent of the world's output, much of it tainted by controversial "blood diamonds," sold to fund African wars.

Today, Canada is the world's third-largest producer, by value, of rough stones. In the Northwest Territories, BHP Billiton's Ekati mine has been producing since 1998 and Rio Tinto's Diavik mine since 2003. De Beers opened its first Canadian mine, at Snap Lake, in July — a confirmation that Canada is the new center of the world.

The story behind the addition of Canada to the ranks of diamond-producing nations leads back to one man: a short, absentminded Canadian geologist named Chuck Fipke. When he discovered diamonds in Lac de Gras, Northwest Territories, in 1991, he started the largest staking rush in North America since George Carmack found gold in the Klondike a century earlier. And he's not finished: He's prospecting around the world, toting gravel samples back to his lab in British Columbia to figure out where to look for his next big strike.

In 1970, fresh out of the University of British Columbia with a degree in geology, Chuck Fipke signed on with mining company Kennecott Copper to look for gold and copper in Papua New Guinea. A helicopter would drop him off alone in the middle of a jungle, and pick him up at the end of the day. The terrain was so rough that the chopper often couldn't land — Fipke would just leap out as it hovered close to the ground. One day he turned around to face 20 locals, arrows strung. He raised his arms, slowly removed his vest, and offered it to "the one who looked like the chief." By the time the helo returned for him, Fipke was in his underpants clutching a fine array of tribal shields, bows and arrows, and fetishes. "I've got an amazing collection of stuff!" he says.

Fipke is a small man with a shaved head, a burnished tan, piercing blue eyes, and forearms like Popeye's. As a kid, his frantic start-stop mind made people think he was stupid. After getting his high school girlfriend pregnant, he agreed to marry her ... and then failed to show up for the wedding. (The couple eventually married after the baby was born.) He stutters and says "hey" in almost every sentence. He frequently loses his glasses and his keys, shows up late to appointments, and has a history of spending prodigious amounts of money in strip joints. His nicknames have included Captain Chaos and Stumpy.

After stints in the Amazon, Australia, and South Africa, Fipke opened a mineral separation laboratory in British Columbia in 1977. A year later, Superior Oil hired him to go back into the field — to look not for metals but gems.

The company already had a search method. A couple of years prior, a geologist named John Gurney, working with Superior's money at the University of Cape Town, hypothesized that certain common minerals might reliably form alongside diamonds. He used an electron microprobe to analyze geological structures called kimberlite pipes — the places you occasionally (but not often) find diamonds — and discovered that the presence of chromite, ilmenite, and high-chrome, low-calcium garnet did indeed predict a rich strike. He examined a host of pipes in South Africa that had these so-called indicator minerals and published a paper explaining his results.

Fipke heard about Gurney's work on a tour of De Beers' Finsch Mine in South Africa and quickly turned himself into an expert on indicator minerals — combining what he understood of Gurney's work with results coming out of Russian labs and his own skills with field sampling. Superior had worked with Fipke before, back in his gold mining days, so by the time the company wanted someone to go look for kimberlite pipes northwest of Fort Collins, Colorado, Fipke was the best choice. He found half a dozen, but like 98 percent of the kimberlite formations in the world, they didn't contain diamonds in commercially viable quantities.

But Fipke knew that, 100 miles under those pipes, was a craton, a thick, old chunk of continental plate where diamonds form. Kimberlite pipes are created when magma bubbles up through a craton, expanding and cooling on its way up. If the craton has diamonds in it, the result is either a carrot-shaped, diamond-studded pipe reaching up to the surface or a wide, flat underground structure called a dike.

Fipke also knew that the craton underneath the pipes he had found ran all the way up the Rockies. With Superior's backing, he teamed up with a geologist and pilot named Stewart Blusson, formed Dia Met Minerals, and headed north.

By 1981, the two men were sampling the ground in Canada; they would eventually secure mining concessions on 80,000 square miles. "It was just me and Sewart and a floatplane," Fipke says. "We took all the supplies and all the samples in ourselves."

De Beers geologists, it turned out, were already there, relying on their own indicator mineral formulas. But Fipke and Blusson surmised that the indicators De Beers found had in fact been dragged far from the kimberlite pipe eons ago by a passing glacier. What they needed to do was look "upstream" for the point of origin. Fipke got a helicopter and flew back and forth over the Arctic Circle, using a magnetometer to track variations in magnetic field that would suggest kimberlite. After thousands of miles and hundreds of hours in the air, he found a promising site near Lac de Gras, a barren world of lakes and rock and muskeg a few hundred miles outside the Arctic Circle.

He'd been surveying for eight years. He hadn't found a single diamond. Superior had abandoned the diamond business. Dia Met's stock was trading at pennies a share. But based upon a few samples, Fipke estimated a diamond concentration at Lac de Gras of more than 60 carats per 100 tons — with about a quarter of the stones of good quality or better. (In kimberlite pipes that have gem-quality stones in commercial quantities, a concentration of 1 carat — 0.2 grams — per 100 tons can be profitable.) After six months of sampling, Fipke went public. It was 1991, and he had found a kimberlite pipe (buried under 30 feet of glaciated sediment) with a concentration of 68 carats per 100 tons — the first Canadian diamonds ever found. Shares of Dia Met rocketed to $70. Fipke had partnered with mining giant Broken Hill Proprietary Company (now BHP Billiton) to get the diamonds out; BHP opened the Ekati mine at Lac de Gras in 1998. Soon Dia Met's 29 percent share of the mine was worth billions. Fipke would go on to sell his chunk to BHP for $687 million, retaining 10 percent ownership in the mine, worth another $1 billion.

Today Canada's diamond business is soaring. The country's four working mines produced 17 million carats in 2007, up 23 percent from 2006. Diamonds from Canada now account for 10 percent of all diamonds by carat sold in the world. And the addition of more diamonds to the global market hasn't driven prices down. Average carat value has actually risen 15 percent, and the gems from the far north are untainted by the bad publicity that comes from an association with African wars.

Shortly before Fipke sold most of his Ekati claim to BHP Billiton, his marriage, faltering for years after so much time in the field, fell apart. At the time it was the largest divorce settlement in Canadian history. "Cost me $200 million, hey," Fipke says. "Best money I ever spent!"

Fipke now has mining projects in Morocco, Greenland, Canada, Angola, and Brazil. His laboratory bookshelves are heavy with mineral guides — and the family histories of thoroughbreds. Besides diamonds, he's now obsessed with horse racing. "It's a huge challenge, hey, and I like challenges even if they're risky," he says. "And I think I'm really going to do spectacularly well with horses." So far, so good: He has more than 50 brood mares in Ireland and Kentucky and 20 racehorses all over the world. His horse Tale of Ekati placed fifth in this year's Kentucky Derby. "I always go to the Derby with Bo Derek," he says, unlocking the door to a windowless room piled with maps and electron microscopes and computers. "She's a good rider, and she knows horses. And she's a lot of fun, hey! I'm gonna do for horse racing what I did for diamonds!"

Whether or not Fipke actually turns out to have an eye for horseflesh, his eye for the characteristics of crystals is unparalleled. He shows me rooms of glass flasks and tubes, the equipment for analyzing all those gravel samples. I peek through a microscope and see a rainbow treasure of sparkling gems: green chrome diopsides and red garnets — the low-calcium, high-chrome G-10s that mean diamonds are nearby.

Over many years in the field and the lab, Fipke has refined his understanding of this unique stew of minerals. "Everyone now knows that G-10 garnets with low calcium might lead you to diamonds, hey," Fipke says. "But how do you distinguish between a Group 1 eclogitic garnet that grew with a diamond and a Group 2 eclogitic garnet that didn't? They look the same." Custom software compares the grains' shapes and chemical compositions, analyzes them against 1,000 minerals that are intergrown with diamonds, and compares them against 10 fields of mineral groupings. If seven to 10 of the fields from one pipe overlap, Fipke says, "there's no doubt; it's full of diamonds. No one else out there can distinguish between these similar tiny particles of minerals that grow with a diamond and ones that don't."

"Look," he says, opening a folder on a table. He has thousands of photos of mineral grains magnified to the size of golf balls. Some are all sharp corners and jagged edges, some rounded. Since erosion and age wear the minerals down, "we can tell when we're getting closer to the source. If the edges are sharp, hey, we know they haven't traveled far from the pipe."

That level of geographic precision has allowed Fipke to stake more claims. He's even working in areas of Brazil where De Beers hasn't been able to turn a profit. "And Angola. Angola has the richest alluvial diamond river in the world," he says, "and there are thousands of diamond works there. But we're looking for the source pipes." Five years ago Fipke started making magnetometer survey flights over the Kwango River. Having identified 100 possible targets, he now has 40 men taking core samples 900 to 1,200 feet under the riverbed. "I'm there at the camp at least three times a year, hey, and it's much harder than in the Arctic. Your drilling equipment just gets buried in enormous piles at customs in Luanda and you can't get it. In the Northwest Territories it was cold, hey, and full of snow, but you get a good parka and you're a bug in a rug. Angola is the most inefficient place on earth!"

I start to ask another question, but Fipke has something else in mind. "I'm hungry, hey," he barks, as the door to the map room slams shut behind us. "Do you like oysters?" But we're not going anywhere: He has locked his keys in the room and has to call someone to drive in and open up his office.

We finally head into town. "Hi, Chuck!" says the hostess, leading us to the back room of a hip Asian fusion place. Around a long table sit 23 young women, all sporting stilettos and big hair. "Chuck!" they shout. We have, it seems, shown up at the bachelorette party for Fipke's granddaughter. The hostess seats us at the next table. Fipke orders four dozen oysters and a bottle of wine that has to be driven to the restaurant from some special cellar, and a young women shimmies into the booth next to Fipke. "Chuck," she says, kissing him on the cheek, "do you think you can pay for us all tonight?"

"Sure," Fipke says, beaming.

"Do you remember this?" says another woman — his daughter, it turns out, who slides in next to him, holding up a purse. "You bought it for me!"

With Fipke suddenly bankrolling the night, the girls break loose, and the restaurant staff starts hauling out the bottles of champagne. Pretty soon a couple of lasses are dancing on the tables, the oysters are slipping down, a second bottle of rare wine is being decanted, and Fipke is remixing the menu like Danny DeVito in Get Shorty.

And the tales spill forth: three week forays into the Peruvian Amazon, travels with the Kalahari Bushmen of Southern Africa, visits to the pygmies of the Ituri forest in the Congo. "I'd just leave my family and go, hey," he says. "I was really into native culture."

Somebody asks him about Brazil, and it reminds him of something important. "Caipirinhas!" he shouts out of the blue. "I want 25 caipirinhas!"

When the bill arrives, it's 3 feet long and $4,000. Fipke pays up, and we spill into the night — his daughter and granddaughter and their friends and now boyfriends, who joined us in the restaurant. On the street, Fipke suddenly leaps into the air and delivers a solid, suede loafer-clad foot to the head of a parking meter. "I fucking hate parking meters, hey!" he shouts. He jumps and kicks another one, and then erupts into a fit of giggles.

We are ushered past the velvet rope at the Cheetah Lounge, Kelowna's classiest strip joint, and Captain Chaos orders another round of caipirinhas for everyone. Three generations of Fipkes pound drinks as naked women dangle upside down from poles onstage.

The room is spinning by the time Fipke takes me aside and lays a big warm hand on my arm. "Hey," he says, "here's the thing. I learned that I did my best. I mean, I really tried my best. How many people can say that? I worked hard, and I mean really hard. I worked seven days a week from 8 am until 3 am. Every day. We drilled and drilled all winter when it was dark and the windchill was 80 below. Everyone thought I was crazy. But most people just never do their best, hey. And I did."

Contributing editor Carl Hoffman (carlhoffmn@earthlink.net) wrote about the private space company SpaceX in issue 15.06.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

Stylin' Chairgonomics: Pricey Herman Miller Seat Is Kick-Ass Comfy

The ergoheads at Herman Miller design its new Embody chair to support your body in such a way that it's actually decompressing while you work.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

Plug In Player, and Jet Engines, Crying Babies Disappear

Crank up the volume, add noise-canceling headphones and this video player has you in another world – noise irritants are all yours. Great battery life means it'll last awhile.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

Dec. 2, 1942: Nuclear Pile Gets Going<br />Dec. 2, 1957: Nuclear Power Goes Online

Dec. 2: It's a double milestone for nuclear energy. The first man-made sustained nuclear chain reaction was created this day in 1942. And just 15 years later, the first full-scale nuclear power plant went online.

1942: Enrico Fermi, Leo Szilard and their colleagues achieve a successful, controlled chain reaction in a squash court underneath the football grandstand of the University of Chicago's Stagg Field. It lays the groundwork for the first atomic bombs.

Fermi and Szilard had been working on nuclear fission at Columbia University in New York, when Einstein wrote of their work to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Einstein feared that German nuclear researchers might gain an unbeatable lead in the field and develop an atomic weapon that could win the war.

The Roosevelt administration responded with the then-secret, now-famous Manhattan Project. Top U.S. atomic scientists soon gathered in Chicago to see just how feasible it was to start a nuclear chain reaction, starting with a controlled rather than explosive one.

The original idea was to build a nuclear pile at a location in the Argonne Forest about 30 miles outside Chicago, but there were construction problems. Remarkably, the experiment was relocated to the University of Chicago campus inside city limits.

Construction began Nov. 16, 1942. The team got uranium from an Iowa State University researcher and Westinghouse Electric. Staffers worked around the clock to build a wooden structure on which they placed a lattice of 57 layers, comprising six tons of uranium metal and 40 tons of uranium oxide embedded in 380 tons of graphite blocks.

The whole apparatus was encased in a custom square balloon built by Goodyear Tire. The Chicago Pile-1 cost $2.7 million (about $36 million in today's money).

The Dec. 2 experiment began at 9:45 a.m. with more than 50 people in attendance. A three-man "suicide squad" was ready to douse the reactor in case it threatened to get out of control. Besides the main On/Off switch, there was a weighted safety rod that would automatically trip if neutron intensity got too high, a hand-operated backup safety rod, and "SCRAM" — the safety control rod ax-man, a top staffer wielding an ax to cut a rope to drop the safety rod, if all else failed.

The suicide squad wasn't needed. The pile achieved a sustained nuclear reaction at 3:25, and Fermi shut it down at 3:53. Those 28 minutes changed the world.

So secret was the project that at a party a few days later, the scientists' spouses didn't know what the all the congratulations were about. They wouldn't find out what had happened and where the technology was headed for another two-and-a-half years. And then, the world knew.

1957: The light-water breeder reactor at Shippingport, Pennsylvania — the first in the United States — goes to full power on the anniversary of Chicago Pile-1.

An experimental breeder reactor devised by Chicago Pile-1 veteran Walter Zinn had created the first nuclear-generated electricity in 1951. President Dwight D. Eisenhower broke ground for the first commercial plant, to be operated by Pittsburgh's Duquesne Light Company, in 1954.

Westinghouse Electric designed the plant in conjunction with the Atomic Energy Commission. When it was in operation, nuclear fission heated water, which transferred its heat to convert the water in a secondary system into steam, which drove the turbine that created the electricity.

Shippingport shipped its first power into the Pittsburgh grid Dec. 18, 1957. Eisenhower returned to formally dedicate the plant the following May 26.

The plant was decomissioned in 1982 after a quarter-century of use. In the first complete U.S. decontamination, the reactor vessel was shipped to a low-level waste disposal facility at the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington.

After the Shippingport site was cleaned, the government released it for unrestricted use in 1987, suitable for picnicking or a children's playground. The American Society of Mechanical Engineers designated the plant as a landmark, and it's now open to visitors.

Sources: Argonne National Laboratory, American Society of Mechanical Engineers

Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am

Asus Eee PC 1002HA now available with US retailers

Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops

As we expected, the Eee PC 1002HA has begun showing up with US based retailers.  The 1002HA appears to be replacing the now fast dwindling 1000H and is retailing for around $500.  Of course, as of now, these listings are simply for pre-order but they are expected to begin shipping shortly. 

The Eee PC 1002HA offers the nice brushed metal design that is found on the S101 and as for features it has a 10-inch display, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n.  Based on the specification listing it seems the one item that is lacking is built-in Bluetooth.  Otherwise, another potential drawback is that it is shipping with a small 2-cell battery.  If you are looking for something with similar specs and a larger battery, you can always check out the 1000HA, that model is available for around $430 and ships with a 6-cell battery.

Product [ZipZoomFly]  Product [Buy.com]  Product [Amazon]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 2 Dec 2008 | 4:24 am

New Massive Botnet Building On Windows Hole

CWmike writes "The worm exploiting a critical Windows bug that Microsoft patched with an emergency fix in late October is now being used to build a fast-growing botnet, said Ivan Macalintal, a senior research engineer with Trend Micro. Dubbed 'Downad.a' by Trend (and 'Conficker.a' by Microsoft and 'Downadup' by Symantec), the worm is a key component in a massive new botnet that a new criminal element, not associated with McColo, is creating. 'We think 500,000 is a ballpark figure,' said Macalintal when asked the size of the new botnet. 'That's not as large as some, such as [the] Kraken [botnet], or Storm earlier, but it's... starting to grow.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Dec 2008 | 3:29 am

HP Magic Giveaway: Register for an account now to get a head start

Section: Features, Announcements, Contests

Howdy gadget fans.  As Iyaz mentioned last week, we’re taking part in The HP Magic Giveaway along with 49 other great blogs.  What’s the grand prize?  How about we give away $6,000 worth of HP hardware and software on Dabbledoo sites alone?.

Want a chance to win?  Sign up for a Dabbledoo account/profile so we can notify you right when the contest goes live!  Also with that account, you’ll be able to comment without entering your information, create a profile, upload a pic / avatar, and more!

You don’t want to miss out on $6,000 worth of computer stuff, do you?

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 2 Dec 2008 | 3:09 am

An In-Depth look at Nokia’s hardware damage labs

Of all the complex and expensive toys that have become standard objects in our lives, mobile handsets probably get the worst treatment. Think about it: they’re the result of many hours of engineering and design and cost hundreds of dollars to obtain, yet within days of purchase they’re generally being smashed into coin-filled pockets or carelessly tossed into cupholders. How do they last a week, much less the years we expect of them?

To help answer that question, Nokia invited us down to their San Diego Test Center to check out some of the trials a new handset goes through before they make their way into our dangerous hands. Of course, we couldn’t leave our readers out of the fun - so we shot video throughout the entirety of the tour and brought it back for all to see.

While we captured much of the physical testing/examination process, there’s a whole lot that goes into device testing that we didn’t see - mainly because it wouldn’t be all that exciting to watch. If you’re looking for extreme code debugging videos, you’ll have to search elsewhere. Apologies for the sound quality of some of the videos. A room filled with the whirs of a dozen or so never sleeping robots isn’t an optimal recording environment, but we did our best to make things audible. If all else fails, headphones help.

Impact testing (AKA “Spanky”):

This one was probably the most visually entertaining of the lot. The device is lightly held in place, and a big ol’ mallet is dropped from a user-specified height. While it’s not often that phones go up against big metal bats, this helps to simulate overall physical damage resistance from just about any desired angle. Plus, it tells you whether or not you can play baseball with the handset.

Electron Microscope:

Got the problem area pinned down, but need to take a closer look? Once the problem area is isolated, it’s removed from the handset and encased in epoxy to ensure that no further damage occurs. After that, the surfaces of the epoxy casing are grinded down to the problem area, and polished for better visiblity. Then it’s pushed into the electron microscope, which lets you get a close look - a really close look.

2D X-Ray Machine:

When you’ve got 5 devices all showing the same symptoms, are you really going to want to tear apart each and every one unless you absolutely have to? Heck no. Instead, you can jam that thing into the X-ray machine - with the ability to see circuits running between the layers of the PCB, a quick scan is often more effective than disassembly.

3D X-ray machine:

Pft, 2D X-ray microscopes are so 1950s. Plus, sometimes you just need to look at a problem in a different way - literally.

Abrasion testing:

In your pocket. Out of your pocket. Onto the table. Into the backpack. On a daily basis, your handset is thrown into multiple epic battles with pocket lint, dirt, coins, and keys. If you can’t put your phone into your pocket without scratching it, it’ll be a faded mess within the first week. As one form of Abrasion testing, Nokia throws handsets into a big mixer with a bunch of beads of varying hardness and lets them dance.

Strap/Charm hole snag testing:

If you’re swinging your phone around by the strap, having it snap off and nail someone in the face might be a pretty serious downer. That said, if you’re holding onto your phone while hopping off the bus and the charm gets caught in the door, being dragged down the street would be a pretty big upset as well. There’s a fine balance that needs to be maintained in the resistance of that little charm port, which is exactly what this test is purposed for.

Rain resistance testing

Nobody expects to be able to take a standard cell phone with them for a swim in the deep end. Everyone, however, expects their phone to phone to survive a walk in the rain. For this test, Nokia puts the device on a rotating platter below a rapidly dripping tank of water, checking to see if it’ll make it through to see the flowers of May.

The pant leg test:

Exactly what it sounds like. Like the abrasion test, this one simulates the trials of your pants. Each pant leg contains a phone, and assorted pocket regulars: keys, coins, etc.

Flip tension test:

We’ve all done it: Flip it open. Flip it closed. Flip it open. Flip it closed. Swoosh. Snap. Swoosh. Snap. It just feels good, doesn’t it? It’s like cracking your knuckles after writing for an hour. Turns out, that’s intentional. The “feeling” of opening and closing the handset is actually fine tuned, and then tested repeatedly to ensure that it’ll feel just as good the 1,000th time.

Flip durability test:

With that flipping habit you’ve got, you’re bound to wear those springs out eventually. This test determines when.

Drop testing:

You’re 4 shots of tequila in and your phone just dropped your call for the 15th time. “Just do it.” says the pavement, “Don’t worry - I’ll catch it.” It’ll catch it, no doubt. It’s just not very gentile. This one raises the phone to a user specified height, and then “drops” it at various speeds. The impact is caught on a high FPS camera, allowing you to watch the destruction frame by glorious frame.

Dust/Particle testing:

The phones, they dance! Besides being fun as all hell to watch, this test checks how resistant a handset’s various nooks and crannies are to dust and other small particles.

Cover/SIM/Battery removal and insertion:

Dang, my battery died. (cover off) Good thing I have a new one! (battery out, battery in, cover on) Crap, I forgot to put the SD card in. (cover off, battery out, sd card in, battery in, cover in). Done daily, that’s a lot of wear and tear on those little plastic tabs and metal pins.

Plastics vs Household chemicals testing:

“Oh crap! I got nail polish on my phone. Good thing I have this AJAX here, we’ll just put it on.. scrub a little.. and OH MY GOD MY PHONE IS MELTING.” A few years after a chemistry class, it’s pretty easy to forget how destructive some household chemicals can be. This test is to ensure that it’s not too easy for end users to wreck their phones.

Ball Drop test:

This one’s just in case you have your phone beneath a metal tube that happens to drop fairly hefty ball bearings from time to time. Fine; it’s really just to check resistance against direct screen impacts. But it’s that first one, too.

UV testing cage:

Congratulations - you’ve found it! The most riveting video of the lot: the UV test. Scared and alone, the handset is locked into a pitch black cage. Big bad UV rays are blasted at it from every direction, running across every inch of the surface for a spot weak enough to allow the kill - can it survive the horrors?! This is intense stuff, folks - look for the bear that walks by.

(There’s no bear.)

USB/Headset insertion testing

Another repetition test. Are you seeing a pattern here? Actually, you should see lots of patterns. That’s kind of the point.

As the title implies, this one tests the repetitive insertion/removal of the USB and headset plugs. And yes, everyone realizes that it looks kind of dirty.

Tumbler:

This one is meant to simulate the only way I’ve ever managed to severely damage a phone. Because I have far more crap to carry then I have pants pockets, my phone occasionally finds its way to my shirt pocket. There it sits, until I bend over, jump, or back flip, at which point it finds it makes a quick trip to the floor. There are actually two tumblers: one meant to simulate repetitive falls from a shirt pocket , one meant to simulate repetitive falls from a pant pocket.

Temperature testing:

While the weather doesn’t really get too radical here in California, things can get a bit more intense in Nokia’s Finnish homeland and other parts of the world. Cell phone components stretch and shrink with temperature changes just like anything else - this one sees just how hot or cold the device can get before damage is done. Though I didn’t grab video of them, they also have “shock” temperature test chambers; they look exactly the same, but get hot/cold at a much faster rate. If you suddenly catch fire while snowboarding, at least you know people can still call you.

Over-extension tests:

While they say this one is to see how an open phone fairs against someone blindly sitting on it, I’d imagine it’s more about how well it can handle angry girlfriends and little kids playing strong man. Gradual pressure is applied to the screen in effort to find the point of failure.

Screen Clarity testing

This one is almost as riveting as the UV testing chamber. Light shines from point a, passes through the screen, and is measured at point b. Different plastics and protection coatings are tested to measure their effect on screen clarity.

LCD intensity measuring:

If one half of the screen is two shades darker than the other, things aren’t going to look right. Through the magic of heat maps, design engineers can adjust lighting arrangements to make sure that things are coming through as intended.

Screen Scratch resistance:

Just how tough is that screen? To find out, a sharp pin is ran across the surface. More weight is added gradually, determining just how much pressure it would take to leave a mark.

Paint adhesion test:

Scratching your phone sucks. Having a small scratch grow bigger and bigger as the paint around it chips off is even worse. This test checks to see how well paint (damaged or not) adheres to the handset over time.

Key press testing:

One. Two. Three… each button on the test models are pressed up to one million times. Dang robots, taking all the good jobs.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 2 Dec 2008 | 2:49 am

Nokia E71 on Rogers for $50 with 3-yr contract

I have to say, as interesting a phone as the E71 is, I’m not sure a three year contract is something I’d be willing to agree to. I mean, who does anything for three years? Well, laying out only $50 for all the capabilities of the E71 — full HTML browsing, GPS, tons of stuff available for the S60 OS — is a pretty good deal if you’re already into that Symbian thing. Of course, it’s only available to Canucks at the moment, but if it sells I’m sure we’ll see more of it on this side of the 49th Parallel.

If you’re the type of person who lives in Europe (a “European”), you can always go with the E63, although the performance problems I encountered in the E71 would be exacerbated in that little guy.

[Mobilesyrup via Uber, Unwired]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 2 Dec 2008 | 2:47 am

Bush Demands Amnesty for Spying Telecoms

The Bush administration and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are poised to square off in front of a San Francisco federal judge Tuesday to litigate the constitutionality of legislation immunizing the nation's telecoms from lawsuits accusing them of helping the government spy on Americans without warrants. " 'The legislation is an attempt to give the president the authority to terminate claims that the president has violated the people's Fourth Amendment rights,' the EFF's [Cindy] Cohn says. 'You can't do that.' "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Dec 2008 | 2:14 am

Notebooks Could Run 40 Hours With Power-Saving Displays

We don't have super batteries yet, but soon we might see ultra-low power displays that could keep a notebook running 20 to 40 hours before needing a charge.

Mary Lou Jepsen, designer of nonprofit One Laptop Per Child's famous green-and-white XO netbook, has plans to ship energy-efficient screens for laptops and e-books in the second half of 2009. Like the XO's screen, the new low-powered displays will be readable under direct sunlight and consume a small fraction of the power of a traditional display.

Battery life has become a prominent issue as the tech industry demands smaller, more powerful gadgets. Manufacturers have been slow to make major strides in improving battery life; the technology has been stagnant in recent years. Therefore, it makes sense that Jepsen is thinking beyond batteries and looking at screens instead.

Jepsen Works to Raise Laptop Battery Life to 20-40 Hours [PC World]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 2 Dec 2008 | 2:13 am

Canada Gives Obese Flyers an Extra Seat for Free

The country's highest court says charging the obese for an extra seat is discriminatory. Although the ruling applies only to domestic flights, it could pave the way toward similar policies in other countries that have been grappling with the issue.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 2 Dec 2008 | 1:33 am

Tessera: ITC Finds No Infringement of Wireless Patents [Voices]

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

Tessera Technologies (TSRA) shares have fallen nearly in half in late trading after the company announced that the Administrative Law Judge overseeing its patent infringement case before the International Trade Commission asserting violation of its wireless patents by a group of semiconductor companies had found no infringement.

The company said that the Initial Determination of the judge upheld the validity of the patents, but found no infringement. Tessera had asserted infringement against the ATI Technologies unit of Advanced Micro Devices, Fresscale Semiconductor, Motorola, Qualcomm, Spansion and STMicroelectronics.

Tessera said it is “disappointed” in the ruling and will review the decision before determining its next steps.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 2 Dec 2008 | 1:26 am

iPhone App Delivers the Gift of Free Texting

A new application enables iPhone owners to type text messages in landscape mode -- and even better, it sends these messages for free.

SMS Touch, a $5 app available through the App Store, displays a landscape keyboard and works with your contacts list to send SMS messages. The messaging is free because instead of sending an SMS, the app e-mails the message through an SMS gateway, which eventually reaches the recipient's phone in the form of a text. True, you can already do this manually over e-mail, but that would require memorizing the phone numbers. (Who does that anymore?)   

I downloaded the app and texted a few friends with it. It took a few seconds longer to send a message than normal texting would, but that's not a big deal. Here's what I didn't like: When my friends received the text, it didn't show up coming from my name. Instead the messages said, "From: 11000101001," which makes texting a bit more impersonal than it already is. I can't see this replacing SMS messaging entirely for iPhone owners, but it's nice to have as a back-up option in case one month you feel you've exceeded your limit.

Download Link [iTunes via Gizmodo]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 2 Dec 2008 | 1:22 am

French "Three Strikes" Law Gets New Life

Kjella writes "A little over a week ago we discussed the EU's forbidding of disconnecting users from the Internet. But even after having passed with an 88% approval in the European Parliament, and passing through the European Commission, it was all undone last week. The European Council, led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, removed the amendment before passing the Telecom package. This means that there's now nothing stopping France's controversial 'three strikes' law from going into effect. What hope is there for a 'parliament' where near-unanimous agreement can be completely undone so easily?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Dec 2008 | 12:54 am

Retro Phone Handset Brings Back the 80s, Attracts Hipster Ladies

The most well-known phone design of all time is probably the classic Western Electric 500. Its simple and easy two-holed receiver design endured for generations and led to the classically charming no-handed cheek-to-shoulder phone hold.

Over the years, the portable phone took away that simple crutch – the thinner they became, the more likely people smartly avoided craning their necks to talk into them.

Now, the Yubz Talk accessory company is bringing back the classic tubing handset of the WE 500 (along with the classic hold) with its own designer-only retro handset adapter. It won't make your connection any more clear, and it will cost you more than some of the newest Bluetooth adapters at over $45.

Instead, it allows retro-focused hipsters to easily telegraph their cultural inspirations to the rest of the world, while at the same time, showing an utter disdain for them. This gadget will most likely fly in large American cities. Everywhere else, not.

Yubz cell phone adapters come in different colors and can also be plugged into the USB of a computer to make Skype calls (There's also a new wireless option). And it comes with an answer button that tells you when a call's coming in. Despite repeated inquiries, it does not come in an avocado color, which would match the phone in the house I grew up in.

The largely unnecessary phone accessory is sold in Neiman Marcus, Pottery Barn and Urban Outfitters and it’s definitely not part of our top Cyber deals of the day.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 2 Dec 2008 | 12:46 am

BitTorrent Calls UDP Report "Utter Nonsense"

Ian Lamont writes "BitTorrent has responded to a report in the Register that suggested uTorrent's switch to UDP could cause an Internet meltdown. Marketing manager Simon Morris described the Register report as 'utter nonsense,' and said that the switch to uTP — a UDP-based implementation of the BitTorrent protocol — was intended to reduce network congestion. The original Register report was discussed enthusiastically on Slashdot this morning."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 2 Dec 2008 | 12:03 am

Welcome to Macintosh Documentary Coming to DVD

Directors Robert Baca and Josh Rizzo have slapped together Welcome to Macintosh: a documentary on all things Apple. Covering the corporation's successes, failures and cultural impact, the filmmakers interview some of the biggest name's in the Apple world, including Guy Kawasaki, Andy Hertzfeld and even Wired.com's very own Leander Kahney.

Unfortunately, the directors didn't get a chance to interview the legend himself, Steve Jobs, but we all know how "shy" the CEO is with the media. Still, looks promising, and the DVD's available for pre-order for $20. It starts shipping mid-December.

Official Site [via Cult of Mac]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 Dec 2008 | 11:59 pm

Regulators hang up on cell tower backup rules (AP)

AP - Federal regulators have rejected proposed changes by the Federal Communications Commission that would require all U.S. cell phone towers to have at least eight hours of backup power.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 Dec 2008 | 11:23 pm

Technology Could Help Treatment Of Diseases Of The Eye

Technology could help in the monitoring and treatment of diseases of the eye that may cause blindnessResearchers used a new imaging technique to take high quality color photographs of the clinical stages of ocular inflammation in mice, and the technology could help in the monitoring and treatment of diseases of the eye that may cause blindness.The study, "The Clinical Time-Course of Experimental Autoimmune Uveoretinitis Using Topical Endoscopic Fundal Imaging with Histologic and Cellular Infiltrate Correlation," was published in the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology journal Investigative Ophthalmology and Visual Science (Invest.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Dec 2008 | 10:10 pm

Palm Pilots Can Benefit People With Personality Disorders

Palm Pilots already perform a variety of functions, and in the future, they may be used as a therapeutic tool that benefits people with personality disorders.  In a new study, a University of Missouri researcher used Palm Pilots as electronic diaries to record and analyze mood variability in patients with borderline personality disorder (BPD) and found that the devices helped bridge an important communication gap between therapists and patients."In the clinical setting, patients are not good at assessing their mood retrospectively," said Tim Trull, professor of psychology in the MU College of Arts and Science.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Dec 2008 | 10:00 pm

Sawfish Focus Of Collection, Recovery Efforts

Image 1: Courtesy WikipediaImage 2: George Burgess, a University of Florida ichthyologist with his collection in the background, is shown here next to saws from both the endangered smalltooth sawfish and its close relative, the largetooth sawfish, in this photograph from Nov. 6, 2008. UF is now keeper of the national records collection on sawfish, just as it oversees the world’s database on shark attacks. Distinguished by its long rostrum or saw, the sawfish is a historical and cultural icon that is rapidly disappearing. (Ray Carson/University of Florida)
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Dec 2008 | 9:25 pm

Nokia Expected To Announce New High-End Smartphones

The world’s top mobile phone maker is widely expected to unveil new high-end phones and announce its push into Internet services this Tuesday during an industry event in Barcelona, Spain.Although the company is still the world leader in the smartphone market, its year-over-year sales were down during the third quarter as Nokia lost market share to Research in Motion (RIM) and Apple.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Dec 2008 | 8:40 pm

2009: 'Year of the Gorilla'

The U.N. commits to raising awareness about the plight of gorillas in 2009.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 Dec 2008 | 7:54 pm

A Picture Paints More Than A Petabyte Of Data

In the age of the petabyte, we all need help digesting and understanding massive amounts of information.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Dec 2008 | 7:49 pm

New Inventory Of Species Taken In Antarctica

British and German Scientist have put together the first comprehensive inventory of sea and land animals living in a polar region.Teams from the British Antarctic Survey (BAS) and Hamburg University found that Antarctica's South Orkney Islands had a bigger abundance of life than expected.Over 1,200 species were found, including five new to science.The findings were published in the Journal of Biogeography, and are expected to help monitor how the animals respond to future changes."This is the first time this has been done, not just anywhere in Antarctica, but anywhere in either polar region," said David Barnes, from BAS.Scientific literature was studied by researchers that dated back more than 100 years, as well as more recent surveys of the land, sea and shores of the archipelago.There were 1,224 species found in total, 1,026 of which were found in the Antarctic waters, including sea urchins, worms, crustaceans and mollusks."There is a widely held belief that life is very rich in the tropics and decreases through temperate areas, through to polar regions, which are thought to be barren," said Dr Barnes.He said, "That is partly because we see life from the land point of view, and when we see the Arctic and Antarctic, we just see ice.  But below the surface of the sea, it is an incredibly rich environment, and diving there is a bit like diving on a coral reef." He added, "If we look at other archipelagos across the globe that are also isolated, we can see that the South Orkney Islands are actually richer than the Galapagos in terms of the number of species we find in the sea."Also discovered by the team was five species that were new to science, including moss-like animals and marine "woodlice".This is considered a low number compared to other surveys in the polar regions.  However, finding so few new species was an indication that the team had picked the right spot to survey, according to Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Dec 2008 | 7:35 pm

Rivers Are Carbon Processors

Microorganisms in rivers and streams play a crucial role in the global carbon cycle that has not previously been considered. Freshwater ecologist Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Dec 2008 | 7:15 pm

QiGi 6 offers Windows Mobile 6.1 or Android - but not both

Looking to dabble with Android, but the T-Mobile G1’s wonky banana-chin just doesn’t fit the bill? Well, how about a random touchscreen handset from an obscure Chinese manufacturer, instead?

As an added bonus, this one actually comes in two flavors: Android, or Windows Mobile 6.1 Pro. Unfortunately it’s a one-or-the-other setup - there’s no dual booting to be had here, which would make the device significantly more notable.

Specs after the jump.

While we could break down the specs for you, it’s oh-so-much more entertaining to let Google Translate do the talking:

• Phone type: smart
• Operating System: Android
• Standard configuration: Li-Ion Battery (1250mAh), charger, rechargeable car, GPS support, 1GB microSD card (including “Kay Lide” map)
• Network standard: 850/900/1800/1900MHz-wide-band, GPRS, edge (2.75G)
• Expansion card: the greatest support for the 4GB microSD (T-Flash) expansion cards
• WLAN: support Phone
• appearance: straight
• The main screen parameters: color screen, 65,536 colors, TFT, 240 × 320 pixels, 2.8 inches, Touchlens
• Camera parameters: 2,000,000 pixels, to support macro shooting, the greatest support for the resolution of 1600 × 1200 photo shoot
• CPU: Marvell Monohans (624MHz GHz CPU)
• Time to call :150-240 minutes
• Standby time: 220 hours
• Shell color: Black
• Size: 109.5 * 58 * 14.9mm

While it’s pretty unlikely we’ll ever see this thing hit the shelves outside of China, that doesn’t stop you from importing one. Sure, the lack of 3G is a downer - but at least you can say that your phone’s appearance is “straight”. No word yet on pricing, be it in dollars or yuan.

[eprice via IntoMobile via AndroidCommunity

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Dec 2008 | 7:06 pm

AIDS Crisis Overblown, Some Dare Say

On World AIDS Day, some experts say HIV consumes too much health funding.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 Dec 2008 | 6:54 pm

Forest Vs. Biofuels

Scientists from seven nations released a new study on Monday that finds clearing tropical forests in order to plant biofuels harms the environment by reducing animal and plant diversity.Biofuels are considered greener than fossil fuels because plants absorb greenhouse gases from the atmosphere as they grow."Keeping tropical rain forests intact is a better way to combat climate change than replacing them with biofuel plantations," the scientists wrote in a report about the study.In South East Asia, millions of hectares of forest land have been converted to palm oil plantations to produce biofuels.  The study, conducted by scientists from the U.S., Netherlands, Malaysia, Germany, Indonesia, Britain and Denmark, was unveiled on the opening day of a meeting in Poland of 187 nations that seek consensus on a new U.N.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Dec 2008 | 6:50 pm

Study Identifies Oetzi’s Last Supper

Study identifies six different mosses from the Tyrolean Iceman’s alimentary tract What we eat can say a lot about us – where we live, how we live and eventually even when we lived.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Dec 2008 | 6:42 pm

Study: Cell movements are totally modular

U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 Dec 2008 | 6:40 pm

Verizon looks at what everyone else is selling, drops Omnia to $199

Step one of pricing a product: look at what the competitors are getting for theirs.

Now, let’s see here: AT&T has the iPhone 3G, which is blessed with the insta-hype generating Apple logo on the back, selling at $199. T-Mobile has the G1, an object of much desire to many a geek as the first Android handset to hit the market, for $179. So when Verizon was finally ready to push out the Omnia, a handset which (while rather gorgeous) doesnt have all that much pull in the US, did they think to squeak it down into the sub-$200 range where their biggest competitors sit? Nope - not right off the bat, at least.

Just eight days after the Omnia’s launch on Verizon, the carrier has lopped an additional $50 bucks off of the $249.99 entry fee, matching it penny-for-penny with Cupertino’s finest. While $50 bucks of savings is never bad news for the consumer (well, except for early adopters. Excited enough about a new phone to buy it on launch day? Screw you!), a price cut after just a week on the market isn’t exactly a sign of strong sales.

[Via EngadgetMobile]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Dec 2008 | 6:18 pm

XOHM and Clearwire merger finalized

Just under a month after the FCC gave them the go ahead, Sprint’s XOHM WiMax service and mobile broadband provider Clearwire are now one.

There’s nothing new actually going on here - just the finalization of a deal that has been in the works for months.

Miss something along the way? Here’s what’s going on:

• XOHM is Sprint’s WiMax service, which launched on September 29th of this year in Baltimore. Testing and roll-outs are also in the works in Chicago, Washington D.C., Boston, Dallas, and Philadelphia.
• Clearwire is a “pre-WiMax” service - essentially just meaning that their products/services were developed prior to the WiMax Forum finalizing their certification standards.
• They’ve dropped the XOHM name for the time being, with the new WiMax service taking on the Clearwire “Clear” brand.
• Seeing as neither company is exactly swimming in a river of cash, they’re taking on a $3.2 billion investment from Comcast ($1b), Intel($1b), Time Warner ($550m), Google ($500m), and Bright House Networks ($100m). Is this a good deal for everyone involved? Maybe not.

Of note, however, is a comment from CEO Ben Wolff indicating that from here on out, Clearwire network expansions will be flexible enough that they can make the jump to competing technology LTE if the market heads that way. “We are taking steps to ensure that it’s as future proof as possible…It’s not the technology war that some have made it out to be. It’s nothing like the format battles that we’ve seen between VHS and Beta Max.”

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Dec 2008 | 5:12 pm

Web Health Info Creating 'Cyberchondriacs'

The wealth of health information on the Web may be creating a generation of so-called cyberchondriacs who develop irrational health fears based on information they gathered on the net, said a team of researchers at Microsoft.Researchers found that people who searched the Web would often assign themselves with the worst possible diagnosis.Researchers surveyed 515 employees and analyzed data from popular Web search engines.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Dec 2008 | 5:10 pm

Yahoo Releases Top Searches For 2008

Yahoo reported on Monday that Barack Obama's presidential victory got more clicks than any other story on yahoo.com this year, but the most searched term was "Britney Spears".Yahoo said that in the top 10 searches, Spears was the most popular, and has been for seven of the past eight
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Dec 2008 | 5:02 pm

Fuel Cell-Powered Devices Closer to Reality

The removal of a government roadblock paves the way for fuel cell-powered devices.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 Dec 2008 | 4:54 pm

Cell Phones Distract Drivers More Than Passengers

Image 2: University of Utah psychology graduate students Russ Costa and Janelle Seegmiller demonstrate the driver and passenger roles used by participants in a study of how drivers are affected by conversations with passengers versus conversations over a cell phone. The study, which used the sophisticated driving simulator shown in the photo, found that when drivers talk on cell phones, they are more likely to drift out of their lane and miss exits. Credit: Nate Medeiros-Ward
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Dec 2008 | 4:20 pm

Pair of BlackBerry Storm firmware updates leaked

As if Thanksgiving left-overs and a bit of time off weren’t enough, Storm owners got a bit more to be thankful for over the weekend. After a somewhat shaky launch and a whole lot of complaints about some fairly rough bugs, RIM is set to release the first firmware update some time this week. Fortunately for those ready to throw their Storm out to sea, some folks at RIM (or Verizon, perhaps) decided to bring the goods a bit early for their more technologically apt crowd by leaking not one, but two firmware updates.

Anyone can nab the first leak, which comes in at version 4.7.0.75. Here’s the download link. As it doesn’t appear that any patch notes were leaked with the release, the list of fixes is all conjecture at the moment. In general, however, stability seems to be on the up-and-up.

The second and most recent leak, which bumps it up to 4.7.0.76, isn’t quite so easy to obtain. In fact, it seems that only the Boy Genius has managed to get his hands on it thus far and, for one reason or another, is holding on to it real tight. He does share a whole lot of details of what the update entails, however, and it sounds like it might be just what the Storm needs.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 1 Dec 2008 | 4:17 pm

New Laser Technique Produces Bevy of Antimatter

Blasting a gold target with lasers creates a vast supply of antimatter.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 Dec 2008 | 3:54 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Adventurer Steve Fossett

Highlights from the life, and mysterious death, of Steve Fossett.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 Dec 2008 | 3:54 pm

New Fan-Like Coral Found in Deep Sea

A spectacular new coral species is found off the Pacific Northwest.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 Dec 2008 | 2:37 pm

Executive Denies Microsoft-Yahoo Acquisition Talks

A key Microsoft executive said that a recent Sunday Times report suggesting the company had reentered talks with Yahoo to buy the U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 1 Dec 2008 | 1:30 pm