|
|
|
|
Breaking: Apple left out? AT&T brings back iPhone online and at-home activationSection: Apple, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile
So, if you’ve waited to get an iPhone for the holidays, AT&T is making it even easier now. No more waiting in line, no more watching the AT&T salesperson hunt and peck your info into their system to activate the phone. Nope, sit at home, order it up and activate it at home. This makes the Wal Mart process much more palatable as you won’t need to hang out while a non phone type agent activates for you. Oddly, the Apple store does not offer it online, you still need to visit the Apple Store. More as it develops or gets announced. Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:28 pm Rumo: UGO to buy 1UP networkFROM GAMERTELL - According to Joystic, UGO is planning to buy the 1UP network of sites. If the rumor is true, EGM and FileFront are likely not part of the deal.. MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:15 pm New Hello Kitty point-and-shoot camera available in Japan (and it’s not available in pink)
Tokyo-based Exemode is selling a new digital camera [JP] that has been designed with French design company Courrèges and Japanese toy giant Sanrio. The 5.17 million megapixel camera features the cutest cat in the universe, Hello Kitty. The device comes with the following specs: 4x digital zoom, CMOS sensor, one USB 1.1. port, 32MB of internal memory, compatibility to SD memory cards (up to 1GB) and a 2.4 inch LCD screen. I don’t know why but the camera is not available in pink, only in white and red. It’s currently Japan-only (price: $150) but if you need a quick Christmas present for your girlfriend or sister, I suggest pinging these guys or these guys. Courrèges, in cooperation with NEC, branded a notebook with Hello Kitty back in October. Source: Gizmodo | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:30 pm CrunchDeals: Panasonic Blu-ray player and 6 titles for $209
Blu-ray players are starting to take off thanks to killer deals like this one. Amazon is running a deal on the Panasonic DMP-BD35K with four Warner Blu-ray titles through December 13. But that alone isn’t good enough to be considered a CrunchDeal. Thankfully, Panasonic is throwing in Ratatouille and The Nightmare Before Christmas via a rebate which makes it worthwhile. Panasonic Blu-ray player with 6 movies for only $209? Nice. Source: Gizmodo | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:12 pm Boyle's "Public Domain" -- a book that balances accessibility with thoroughness; criticism with solutions
Last month, I wrote about the release of Jamie Boyle's The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind a new book by one of copyright's leading and most erudite scholars. I've just finished reading my review copy (you can get a free copy too -- the book is CC licensed and free to download) and I wanted to drop in a short review.
All my early excitement about this book's release was absolutely justified. This is a hell of a book. It starts with a thorough, charming, and extensive grounding in the history and contours of copyright, moving from the 17th century to the DMCA. This is familiar ground, but Boyle gives it new life with witty asides, novel comparisons and clear writing. The second section of this book is where it really sings, though. This is the case studies, particularly the history of the "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People," the scathing political rap spawned by outrage over FEMA's response to, and the press coverage of Katrina. Boyle traces the musicological history of this track all the way back to Ray Charles's appropriation of contemporary gospel compositions to invent soul music (over the howls of protest of the gospel singers he ripped off) to the changes wrought to hip-hop over bad US court judgements on sampling, to the legal safe harbors that allowed YouTube to flourish, giving a home to the fan videos for a political song (noting that Ben Franklin loved to rewrite the words to popular songs to make fun of political scandals) to the unmitigated hypocrisy exhibited by Jib-Jab when they used the DMCA to threaten one of the video-makers for sampling their own remix of Woody Guthrie's "This Land..." The point of this remarkable journey is to illustrate just how complicated and "unoriginal" the most original creativity is, how much even trail-blazing innovators rely on borrowing from other artists to invent their new creations. Following on this are other case studies, including a marvellous report on the failure of the European "Database Right" -- a kind of copyright extended to facts in databases that was meant to spur investment and innovation, but instead crippled and shrivelled Europe's database industry. From there, Boyle moves into solutions -- hacks around the law like Creative Commons and then a comprehensive, simple program for reforming copyright law to use empirical evidence to figure out when exclusive rights make for more vibrant creativity and when they stand in creativity's way, and to apportion (and adjust) copyright accordingly. He cites successful empirical studies and talks about how their methodologies could be adapted for wider use. He describes this as an "evidence-based" approach to copyright, one grounded on the goal of ensuring the most creativity, rather than the most reward for the creators that last year's copyright turned into winners. Finally, Boyle returns to the theme that has dominated his career: the idea that copyright needs an "environmental movement" -- a unifying principle that ties together all the people who want to get a better, more balanced world of copyrights and patents and trademarks in the same way that the notion of "ecology" brought together people who cared about wildlife, about water quality, about smog, about the ozone layer, etc, together for the first time. All told, you'd be hard pressed to find a book that better-balances accessibility with thoroughness, or one that carries so many constructive, reasonable, moderate and achievable proposals for making a system that will improve the lot of creators and the public everywhere.
The Public Domain: Enclosing the Commons of the Mind,
Download The Public Domain,
The Public Domain on Amazon
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:10 pm Voltaic's Sun-Sippin', Laptop Chargin' Generator Bag
Voltaic's Generator bag is a rather excellent product with one huge drawback: it costs $500. Let's be clear on that -- $500 for a bag. But what a bag. If it fulfills its promise, the Generator could give you all-day mobile computing. From the blurb:
The juice is stored in an internal battery, ready to supply your notebook when you plug it in. The battery, similar in capacity to a regular laptop battery, can be charged fully in around five hours by the 15 watt panels. Other than that, it's a fairly normal bag, other than that it is made from old soda bottles and has a "charging" light on the handle. I'd buy one in a second, especially as I live in sunny Spain. But, damn! $500? Product page [Voltaic Systems via Joel 90] 
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:04 pm Atari blasts back from the past with new game plan (Reuters)Reuters - For many gamers Atari is a blast from the past or just a logo on retro T-shirts but the company that dates back 36 years is looking to reclaim a stake of the video game landscape.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:01 pm Microsoft Zune "Gaming" Phone Coming to CES 2009? - ITProPortal
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:56 pm Sony launches PlayStation virtual community (AP)AP - Sony Corp.'s much delayed virtual community for owners of its PlayStation 3 game console will start worldwide Thursday, but it's unlikely to attract many newcomers to the machine, company officials said.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:55 pm Use CrashTheInauguration To Find A Place To Stay In D.C. And See Obama Become President
Hotels were sold out long ago, and without a place to stay it’s basically impossible to be there. That’s where CrashTheInaguration comes in. The site is powered by AirBed & Breakfast, which we covered in August. The service lets people rent out rooms or their entire home to travelers. Unlike services like CouchSurfing, they can also charge for the service, so it effectively lets anyone who wants to launch their own hotel in their home. AirBed & Breakfast charges a fee that averages around 10%; the rest goes to the person renting the room. Cofounder Brian Chesky says that over 2,000 rooms have been listed for rent since the service launched. Later today CNN will be doing a segment on the CrashTheInauguration service, and I expect the number of listings to jump up sharply. If you really want to attend the inauguration and you don’t have a hotel room booked, this may be just what you’re looking for. And if you live in or near DC and don’t mind a stranger in your home, you can make a few extra bucks come January. Get a $20 discount as a renter on CrashTheInauguration for being a TechCrunch reader. Just type TechCrunch at checkout. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:50 pm iPhone hope? Pastebud bringing Copy and Paste between Safari and Mail Source: CrunchGear | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:48 pm Eye-Fi and Evernote Team-Up to Turn Cameras into Notebooks
There is, however, a slight twist. The new service is Evernote, the online note taking service. We've covered Evernote before, in particular the iPhone application which acts as a kind of backup memory for your tired meat-brain. After a moment's thought, you realize what a good idea this is. To remember something, just snap a picture and it is uploaded to your online notebook. If the image contains text (a picture of a restaurant menu or a scribbled phone number, perhaps) then Evernote will perform its usual text-recognition magic and make that text searchable and accessible from your PC (Windows or Mac), the web, your iPhone or your Windows Mobile device. Eye-Fi keeps adding features to its cards, and this one is particularly neat. The price? Nothing. You just need to have an Eye-Fi card and a free Evernote account. If you start going crazy with the pictures, you can upgrade Evernote to the $5, 500MB per month option. And if you were wondering then, yes, that is my mother's recipe for steak and mushroom pie. Feel free to cook it yourselves. Evernote And Eye-Fi open up new possibilities for the digital camera [Eye-Fi] Product page [Evernote] Product page [Eye-Fi]
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:46 pm SKULLS: the skull-a-day book
I'm a big fan of Noah Scalin's ambitious Skull-a-Day project, through which he crafts and posts a skull using a different medium every day. So I was delighted to get a review copy of SKULLS, the book adaptation of his website, which lavishly reproduces his expert photographs of his widely varied projects. Every one of these skulls is an artistic success, though some are better than others (I'm a big fan of the food-skulls like those shown below -- even the simple Soy-Sauce Skull is admirably well-executed given the volatility of the medium). It's always tricky to turn a website into a book, but this is a good one: in addition to the skulls and the brief artist's notes, there's a couple of appendices, one of which will teach to you make skulls from a variety of household objects, the other shows off some of the best fan-skulls Scalin inspired.
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:44 pm PlayStation home opens its doors - BBC News
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:41 pm Drought-Resistant Rice Genes Make Sturdy CropBy zeroing in on genes, scientists create rice crops that thrive even in drought.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:39 pm Verizon's Broader Horizons - Barron's
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:37 pm Takeover of Canada's largest telecom company BCE officially deadThe announcement was made early Thursday by a group of potential buyers led by the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan. Valuation firm KPMG had ruled that a key condition to the $52-billionSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:33 pm Anvato Raises $2 Million to Expand Its 'Human Eye' Search Technology to Contextual AdvertisingAnvato's exclusive technology enables publishers to identify and claim ownership of online videos and monetize them via contextual ads MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.,Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:32 pm Magazines.com Launches Holiday Ads on NBC and YouTube Featuring Wanda and Bill GoldbergWith more than 1,900 titles, Magazines.com offers Time, People, Men's Health, O the Oprah magazine, Cosmopolitan and more. Save up to 90% off the retail price. Make them happy;...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:30 pm Hyper-surveilled handbag in shop-window Donal sez, "I came across this display in a shop window in Dublin, Ireland and thought of Cory... If we this much surveillance on a handbag, the shoplifters have won."
Big Brother's secret handbag fetish
(Thanks, Donal!) Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:27 pm ioDrive drives fast: flash storage at 500 megabits a second Behold the ioDrive. With its passive cooling and stubby PCIe connector, it could be easily mistaken for a cheap video card. A fat bank of memory chips, however, shows what it's really about: 80 gigs of ultra-fast NAND flash memory.
The theoretical specs are breathtaking: using PCI-Express x4, it can write at up to 368 megabits/s and read at 473 megabits/s, several times faster than standard SSDs, even outstripping high-end 15K hard drives from Seagate. With an MSRP of $3,000 and up, it's targeted at servers rather than home computers, in configurations of up to 320 gigabytes. It's 64-bit only. You can't boot to it, either, according to Chris Ram's writeup—but that's just because it's a prototype. Exclusive look at Fusion-io ioDrive [Tweaktown via Engadget] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:27 pm DirectView Technology Group's Wholly Owned Subsidiary to Compete Against Major Global Brand in the Vehicle Recovery MarketCompany Launches Product Comparison Campaign to Compete with LoJack BOCA RATON, Fla., Dec. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DirectView Technology Group, Inc. (Pink...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:21 pm Speed bumps design flattens self for slow drivers If it sometimes seems more comfortable to accelerate gently into a speed bump than to grind over it at 1MPH, you wouldn't be alone. Jae-yun Kim & Jong-Su Lee invented a collapsible speed bump that flattens automatically for slow drivers, taking the rough out of responsible driving.
"Encouraging drivers to retain a constant slow speed will reduce the amount of stops and starts made..." they told Chris Burns of Yanko Design. "It is hoped that this retractable speed hump would therefore have positive effects on energy consumption and pollution.” Speed Bumps That Flatten for Slow Speeds [Yanko] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:20 pm Financial charts converted to computer-generated 3D wooden sculptures A reader writes, "Berlin-based Artist Andreas Nicolas Fischer has completed a pair of financial data sculptures. One sculpture compares the world gross domestic product with the world derivatives volume as a statistical map cnc-milled in wood. The other piece shows the 3 main stock market indices in 2008 as a sculpture consisting of 150+ laser-cut wood polygons."  Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:15 pm Everio GZ-MG880: Victor/JVC rolls out another YouTube-friendly video camera
JVC started selling the Everio GZ-MG880 [JP], a video camera that’s especially geared towards YouTube freaks in Japan on December 5. It costs around $800 and is available in black only. Measuring 53×113x68mm (weight including battery: 350g), the device comes with a 120GB HDD, a 1/6’’ CCD sensor with a 32x optical zoom, 720×480 maximum resolution, a USB 2.0 port, microSD and microSDHC card support and a 2.7-inch LCD screen. The HDD stores 28 hours and 40 minutes of video in maximum resolution. Users can upload a 1-minute clip to YouTube in about 5 minutes and up to 10 videos at the same time. JVC also rolled out a trimmed down version of the camera, the GZ-MG840 [JP], with a 60GB HDD (price: around $750, colors: silver, blue and red). It’s unknown at this point when the devices will be available outside Nippon. Source: CrunchGear | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:10 pm Prototype Sony lampshade steals own lightbulb's energy back
Sony's dye-sensitized solar cells will first see life as light: a desk lamp, to be precise. The Hana-Akari fixture is made up of panels that mimick photosynthesis, storing energy in a low-cost, thin membrane that will be easy to manufacture. Commercial applications are expected to be a "potentially significant contributor" to the feasibility of renewable energy policies. No release date was given at the demonstration, which took place at an eco-products conference in Japan this morning. 
Sony, using dye-sensitized solar lighting equipment "Hana-Akari" [PC Watch] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:10 pm Quite Simply The Best Commercial Ever Made
Only the Danish could get away with something like this (but how great would it be to see Amazon do commercials like this). Danish ecommerce site Fleggaard recently made the commercial below. I don’t know if it was shown on Danish television (I’m trying to find out), but I wouldn’t be surprised. It most definitely contains nudity and is NSFW. I think it would be just as good without the exposed breasts, though. If you don’t watch it, the highlight is that dozens of topless Danish women link hands during a skydive to advertise a Siemens washing machine for 4,999.00 DKK, or about $900. It doesn’t seem like such a great price, but I’ll buy one anyway if they deliver to California.
Link: Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:08 pm New Features From Google Lab - Techtree.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:05 pm Chrome, Firefox, IE Reveal no Major Bugs - Techtree.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:04 pm TuneUp Brings Its iTunes Cleanup Wizard To The MacTuneUp, an iTunes plugin that helps correct wrong or missing song meta data and album art (and also offers a number of complementary features) has released a Mac-compatible version to the public. ...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:00 pm TuneUp Brings Its iTunes Cleanup Wizard To The Mac
TuneUp, an iTunes plugin that helps correct wrong or missing song meta data and album art (and also offers a number of complementary features) has released a Mac-compatible version to the public. We originally covered TuneUp last May (click here to see our full overview of the features), and since then not much has changed in terms of the plugin’s functionality. The application sits as a sidebar alongside iTunes, allowing users to simply drag and drop songs from their playlists into appropriate boxes to have their meta tags ‘cleaned up’ or cover art downloaded automatically. The sidebar also includes a panel called ‘Now Playing’ that features YouTube videos along with album and song recommendations related the song currently playing. Finally, there’s a tab for ‘Concerts’ which offers a listing of upcoming concerts in your area.
The free download includes 500 free song corrections (which fixes meta data and album art), as well as 50 free album art corrections (which just fixes album art and ignores meta data). After that, the service costs $12 for an annual subscription or $20 for a lifetime membership. Data lookup generally works well, and uses information licensed from Gracenote. When we covered the Windows application earlier this year my biggest concern was that few people would be willing to pay for what for many will be a one-time fix - TuneUp does offer some value after fixing your library with its ‘Now Playing’ and ‘Concerts’ tabs, but most people are just concerned with cleaning up their libraries, which only needs to be done once. TuneUp’s Andrew Kippen says that while this was a major concern for the company, the conversion rate from free to paid users has actually been five times higher than expected (though he wouldn’t give any specific numbers). Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:00 pm Vivus says obesity drug leads to 9 pct weight lossLOS ANGELES, Dec 11 (Reuters) - Drug developer Vivus Inc said on Thursday the first of three late-stage trials found that obese patients treated with the highest dose of its experimental drug Qnexa on...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:00 pm TuneUp iTunes Plug-In Debuts for AppleThe #1 Windows iTunes Plug-in Now Cleans Music and Finds Cover Art on Mac OS X SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- TuneUp, the most popular iTunes plug-in for...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:00 pm SINA Announces US$100 Million Share Repurchase ProgramSHANGHAI, China, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- SINA Corporation (Nasdaq: SINA), a leading online media company and mobile value-added service (MVAS) provider for China andSource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:00 pm Business Travelers Expected to Become More Resourceful in 2009Orbitz for Business Year-End Survey Shows Focus on Cost Efficiencies in Corporate Travel Policies 92% Calling In-Person Meetings as Important to their Work ProductivitySource: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:00 pm Global Crossing Reports GCUK's Third Quarter 2008 ResultsLONDON, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Global Crossing (Nasdaq: GLBC), a leading global IP solutions provider, today announced third quarter financial results for its...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:00 pm Nobel Prize Winning Physicist As Energy Secretarybledri writes "Officials close to the Obama transition team say that Physics Nobel Laureate Steven Chu is the likely candidate for Energy Secretary . Some are worried that Chu is not politically savvy enough, but I'm hopeful that a scientist will base policy on evidence. Discuss among yourselves."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:57 am US gains in math and science ed…Really? - ZDNet
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:52 am UK regulators uphold complaint against Virgin download caps
A complaint against Virgin Media has been upheld by Britain's Advertising Standards Authority, which ordered it not to run its "HATE TO WAIT?" ad campaign again. The ad, regulators said, did not accurately depict the speed of its internet service.
A complainant registered by rival British Telecom claimed that Virgin misled users with the ads, because its traffic management policy capped speeds during busy hours, during which the marketed speeds would not be available. In effect, regulators enforced a component of Net Neutrality on somewhat imaginative grounds: if you don't offer a free and fast internet, you may not advertise it. Virgin's response was that it only focused on heavy downloaders and uploaders, whose activities it claims saturates bandwidth. It added that a typo in the ad that made it look more ungenerous than it is (a 300MB cap was printed as 300Mb — a megabit being just one eighth of a megabyte) and that it was essential to manage excessive network use. The ASA's response? That's all fine and dandy, but it's not what you advertised: The ad did not make clear that the 26 minute download time was only possible during off-peak hours, or that by downloading one full TV show in peak hours customers would automatically be in breach of the download limits... The ASA recently ordered Apple not to run iPhone ads without making it clear the depicted internet speeds were simulated. Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:49 am R2-D2 Aquarium For this you can thank Hammacher Schlemmer:
Modeled after the most well-known astromech droid in the galaxy, this R2-D2 holds a 1 3/4-gallon aquarium tank in his central compartment, ideal for a small freshwater family of goldfish, gouramis, or tetras. The domed head rotates with any vocal command you issue and he utters his familiar "bleeps" from the Star Wars movies. It's $130, twenty inches tall, and plugs into the mains. It even comes with a two-sided cardboard insert so that your fishes can enjoy scenes from the movie. [HS via Wired] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:45 am OGCC Day 11 - Another Giveaway! Win An Oral-B Triumph Electric Toothbrush With SmartGuide!By Andrew Liszewski You might think the holidays are all about giving, but that’s only part of it. With all of those candied canes, gum drops and sugar plum fairies, you also can’t forget about...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:16 am Boing Boing Charitable Giving Guide -- the 2008 editionIt's time for another Boing Boing seasonal tradition: our charitable giving guide, a list of charities we personally support and want to give more attention to. And as in previous years, we invite you to add your own favorite charities to the list in the comments section. This is going to be a rough holiday for the charitable sector -- we're all tightening our belts. Don't forget the charities that keep the world fair, free and healthy this holiday season.US Charities
Last year: The Participatory Culture Foundation: I'm on the board of this charity, which produces ass-kicking media software in the public interest. The best-known of these is Miro, an Internet TV program that just works -- add feeds based on YouTube keywords, or published feeds from creators, and new video arrive automagically and just play. Because TV is too important to leave up to Microsoft and Apple.
Canadian Charities
UK Charities
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:13 am Boing Boing Charitable Giving Guide -- the 2008 editionIt's time for another Boing Boing seasonal tradition: our charitable giving guide, a list of charities we personally support and want to give more attention to. And as in previous years, we invite you...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:13 am Who Said Web 2.0 Was R.I.P.? Microblog Tumblr Raises $4.5 Million, Expectations [MediaMemo]
Instead, the New York-based company has just raised a $4.5 million Series B round that its CEO, 22-year-old David Karp, says will fund it for two and a half years. Union Square Ventures and Spark Capital, who led the company’s first $750,000 round a year ago, also led this financing. My educated guess is that its investors now value Tumblr at around $15 million. Tumblr is a “micro-blog” platform that is supposed to let its users quickly create nice-looking posts with a minimum of effort; it sits somewhere between Twitter and full-fledged blogs like Blogger and TypePad. It is popular with a relatively small but prolific user base: Its 500,000 users have created pages that draw 15 million unique visitors and 61 million page views a month, Karp says. Money? Nope. Tumblr is free — and has no ads cluttering up its hipster vibe. Way back in 2007, those kind of numbers would have been catnip for the likes of Google (GOOG) or Yahoo (YHOO). Now, though, even deep-pocketed buyers aren’t racing to snap up revenue-free startups. But Karp says raising money from his previous investors was easy: “These guys came to us with a deal that made us incredibly comfortable.” Karp says he’s going to start generating money in early 2009. Not by selling ads on his members pages — Karp thinks the site will eventually incorporate ads in some way, but not yet — but by selling users “premium” services, most of which he’s not ready to describe. He does promise they will be “really sexy”. More practically, he points out that other Web services, like the Wordpress blogging platform and Yahoo’s Flickr photo service, have been able to upsell many of their users with goodies like extra storage. He figures many of his users will pay up, too. The new money means he’ll have time to prove his thesis. Karp has just doubled his staff — which means there are now all of six people on payroll. One of them, hired in September, is John Maloney, his former boss at Urban Baby, where he started his Web career. He’s now in charge of business operations. The money also means there are heightened expectations. Karp has done much more than people twice his age (and has the press clips to prove it). But the newest funding round means his investors think the company will be worth as much as $50 million by the time he sells it or raises more cash. In order to prove them right, he’s got a lot of work ahead of him. [Image Credit: David's Log] Source: All Things Digital | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Chinese Team Mistakenly Released Unpatched IE7 Exploit (PC World)PC World - Chinese security researchers mistakenly released the code needed to hack a PC by exploiting an unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 browser, potentially putting millions of computer users at risk -- but it appears some hackers already knew how to exploit the flaw.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am No Java, Flash for iPhone this Christmas (InfoWorld)InfoWorld - There is still a little time left, but it doesn't look like Apple iPhone users will see Adobe Systems and Sun Microsystems get Flash and Java up and running on Apple's handheld device by Christmas.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Dec 2008 | 11:00 am Fitbit Tracks Your Fitness And Sleep PatternsBy Andrew Liszewski Basic step counters are like a dime a dozen these days, so why would you need to spend $99 on the Fitbit when you can usually find one for free inside a box of Special K? Well first...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 10:42 am What the hell is a Credit Default Swap?This American Life's hour-long show on "credit-default swaps" is the best explanation I've heard so far for what the hell these things are and how they ended up causing so much havoc. I keep asking economists, bankers, and finance people what this is all about and while I understood that somehow an exotic, unregulated, non-standardised financial instrument had created trillions in semi-illusory wealth, I just couldn't really understand exactly what that meant. This hour-long audio show does a great job of explaining the technicalities of CDSes, and then delves into their history, regulatory context, and problems, ranging from Congress to bankers to people on the street. Great stuff -- an hour well spent.Another Frightening Show About the Economy (Thanks, Alan!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 10:41 am What the hell is a Credit Default Swap?This American Life's hour-long show on "credit-default swaps" is the best explanation I've heard so far for what the hell these things are and how they ended up causing so much havoc. I keep asking economists,...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 10:41 am Duo Digital: touchscreen for laptops and LCD’s
PNF (Pen And Free Co.) released the Duo, so you can turn your laptop into a touchscreen without ripping it apart. You just install the receiving station on top or on the side of your screen, define the area you want to use as a tablet and that’s all. However, you have to use a stylus to operate. The laptop version supports up to 15.4″, the monitor version to 22″. Oh and it is actually pretty cheap: 44$ for a tablet seems to be a deal. For details and such, click here. Source: CrunchGear | 11 Dec 2008 | 10:35 am HOWTO Make melted snowman cupcakesHere's a nice little technique to make sad melted snowman cupcakes:Winter Cranberry Cupcakes (via Craft)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 10:34 am HOWTO Make melted snowman cupcakesHere's a nice little technique to make sad melted snowman cupcakes: Pour a couple of cups of icing sugar (powdered sugar) into a bowl and stir in some cold water, a little at a time until you have...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 10:34 am Designer Plastic Teddy Bears - The Sex Pistols Be@rbricks Are Wildly Hot Sellers (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The Be@rbricks toy company has covered hundreds of pop culture icons including groups such as the Beatles and solo artists like Kanye West. However, I think this Sex Pistols Be@rbrick...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 10:20 am Beforme Stethoscope MP3 Player For Expectant MothersBy Andrew Liszewski You can basically think of the Beforme as an iPod with a built-in stethoscope that would allow an expectant mother to hear and monitor both her and her child’s heartbeat. Not...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 10:11 am Cigarette Butt Socks - Ashi Dashi Isn't Your Ordinary Christmas Footwear (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) For some reason I feel compelled to give people socks at Christmas. I am not sure if, as humans, we are genetically programmed to do so. However, I am sure this brilliant collection...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 10:00 am SpaceX Successfully Tested Draco Thrusterdj writes "The propulsion division of SpaceX has performed another important test. After the test of the Falcon 9's first stage Merlin engines, the smallest engine of the SpaceX family, Draco, has been put to test. During the test, the thruster fired for ten minutes, paused for ten minutes, and then was restarted for an additional minute. The test was performed on a new vacuum test stand built by SpaceX, and put into operation in March 2008 at the SpaceX Test Facility outside McGregor, Texas."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 11 Dec 2008 | 9:52 am Sharp says mulling LCD production cut (AP)AP - Japanese electronics maker Sharp Corp. said Thursday it may cut production of liquid crystal display panels, as global demand falters for personal computers and mobile phones.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Dec 2008 | 9:29 am Government must exit private enterprise in time: SEC head (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Dec 2008 | 9:10 am One-in-five teens has 'tech sex' - Inquirer
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Dec 2008 | 9:09 am Vertu Launches Crumpled Gold PhoneNokia's luxury brand, Vertu has created a rather crumpled looking phone which it says was inspired by Parisan Jewellery house Boucheron, in celebration of its 150th Anniversary. [via Cellular News]...Source: Infocious RSS raw feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Dec 2008 | 9:08 am Savvier Travelers Increase $avings, Decrease Stress & Avoid Trip Planning Pitfalls Thanks to Life123.comBOSTON, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Easing the challenges and costs of travel can seem a daunting.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Dec 2008 | 9:07 am Buffalo LinkStation 240GB SSD
In Hungary, after stealing some IBM tech there were companies selling “super computers”. These machines had two motherboards in them, basically two computers pushed in to one case. I didn’t know they still do that. Source: CrunchGear | 11 Dec 2008 | 8:46 am Report calls government study of nano risk sketchy - San Francisco Chronicle
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 11 Dec 2008 | 8:08 am Five Reasons Apple Should Open Source The iPhone [Voices]By William Hurley, Blogger, Evil Genius You know, BusinessWeek asked me about Apple potentially open sourcing the iPhone over a year ago. Since then: nothing out of Apple, despite mounting pressure from projects like Android that are vying for Apple’s throne. With Christmas only days away, I’ve only got one thing I want to ask Santa Jobs for, and it ain’t a Red Rider BB Gun. All I want from Apple is a more open platform. Sure, the odds are slim as long as they remain dominant. That’s why I’m not asking them to completely open source the iPhone. I’m just asking them to crack the door and let the breeze in. Source: All Things Digital | 11 Dec 2008 | 8:01 am YouTube Opens Enhanced Abuse And Safety Center
YouTube has just launched a new Abuse And Safety Center meant to help make the site as safe as possible for families (YouTube is only meant for ages 13+, but kids still flock to the site in droves). While the site has previously offered safety guidelines, they used to be bundled in the same section as product help and had far less information. The new section offers tips from organizations including the Anti-Defamation League, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, and the National Crime Prevention Council. After entering the Abuse and Safety Center, users are presented with a list of common issues, including Privacy Concerns, Cyberbullying, and Hateful Content. After selecting one of these items, the site displays a list of tips and guidelines from the aforementioned expert agencies, as well as a video guides in some cases. Most of the topics are directly related to YouTube, but they are also relevant to the web as a whole. The new Center also offers a Help and Safety tool that makes it easier to manage irritating or malicious comments and also gives users more control over who can contact them through private messages. Users can now search for all comments left by a given user across their entire channel, allowing them to see if any commentors are making a habit of repeatedly harassing them on their videos. From there, it’s a simple process to delete multiple comments at once or ban that user entirely from the channel. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 8:01 am How to Prevent Digital Snooping [Voices]By Bruce Schneier, CTO, BT Counterpane As the first digital president, Barack Obama is learning the hard way how difficult it can be to maintain privacy in the information age. Earlier this year, his passport file was snooped by contract workers in the State Department. In October, someone at Immigration and Customs Enforcement leaked information about his aunt’s immigration status. And in November, Verizon employees peeked at his cellphone records. What these three incidents illustrate is not that computerized databases are vulnerable to hacking – we already knew that, and anyway the perpetrators all had legitimate access to the systems they used – but how important audit is as a security measure. Source: All Things Digital | 11 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am Accel Partners Raises $1 Billion in “Unique Economic Times” [BoomTown]
Bucking a trend of contraction in the venture capital industry, Accel Partners announced today that it had raised two funds totaling $1 billion. The well-known VC firm said that it had closed the $480 million Accel Growth Fund and the $525 million Accel London III. The first will be managed from its Palo Alto, Ca. HQ, focusing on “growth equity” across several sectors, while the London fund will be managed there and aim to invest in early stage and growth companies across Europe and Israel. Accel’s last fund raised, Accel X, was $500 million dollars, which the VC firm started investing in January. Accel currently has $6 billion under investment. “We’re very pleased with the support of our long-time investors in these unique economic times,” said Accel Partner Jim Breyer, said in a statement. In an interview with BoomTown last night, Breyer added, though, that raising the money was not as hard as he had thought it might be, given that VC firms have been struggling with their investors. “It wasn’t difficult, simply because we are fortunate to have exceptional investors, who stepped up aggressively over the last month,” said Breyer, who noted Accel’s international focus helped. “Despite the times, I think we are going into an exceptional investing environment, as long as we value based on a more reasonable but aggressive set of upside scenarios.” Here’s the full Accel release on the new funds: Accel Partners Closes Two New Funds December 11, 2008–Palo Alto and London: Accel Partners, a leading global venture capital firm, today announced the closing of two new funds, Accel Growth Fund at $480 million and Accel London III at $525 million. “We’re very pleased with the support of our long-time investors in these unique economic times,” said Jim Breyer, Partner at Accel, :and this milestone represents a continued validation of Accels strategy to back the leading technology and media companies globally, from inception through growth.” Accel Growth Fund represents an important extension to the Accel Palo Alto team’s twenty-five year old venture capital practice. The fund will focus on growth equity opportunities across a broad range of sectors, including: information technology, internet, digital media, mobile, networking, software, and services. As with Accel’s early-stage efforts, Accel Growth Fund will play an active role in helping entrepreneurs and management teams build category-defining, global businesses. “We are excited to expand Accel’s early-stage efforts to now include investments in attractive, growing businesses across all stages of the private company life cycle,” said Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Partner at Accel. The Accel Growth Fund will be managed by Andrew Braccia, Jim Breyer, Kevin Efrusy, Sameer Gandhi, Ping Li, Arthur Patterson, Theresia Gouw Ranzetta, Jim Swartz, Peter Wagner, and Rich Wong, the same partners from Accel’s most recent early-stage partnership, Accel X. Accel London III will continue to invest in early stage and growth companies across Europe and Israel in Accel’s historical sectors of expertise, including information technology, internet, software, media, mobile, and communications. “We are proud to have earned the support of our industry’s elite investors,” said Kevin Comolli, Partner at Accel London. “The successful raising of Accel London III is a tribute to the quality of our team and portfolio, the huge market opportunity in the region and the distinctiveness of Accel’s global approach.” “Accel London is uniquely positioned as the only leading venture firm operating in Europe with a Silicon Valley heritage and a global footprint,” said Bruce Golden, Partner at Accel London. “Entrepreneurs who are truly focused on building defining, standalone public companies, are seeking investors with the expertise, global network of resources, patience and ambition to help them achieve their dream of creating the next market leader. Our mission is essentially to find and support this growing community of talented entrepreneurs in Europe and Israel.” Accel London has experienced tremendous success working in the European and Israeli early stage and growth environment, where it has been able to offer world-class entrepreneurs a combination of Silicon Valley best practice experience, and intimate knowledge of local investment requirements in Europe and Israel. A few of Accel London’s current investments include Alfresco, Amobee, Check24, Gameforge, Kayak, Qliktech, Playfish, Super Derivatives, and Varonis. Accel London is led by Partners Kevin Comolli, Sonali De Rycker, Bruce Golden, Harry Nelis, Simon Levene and Kaj-Erik Relander. The team offers a unique blend of experiences in investment, technology, and management. Source: All Things Digital | 11 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am Does Obama Need a Department of Innovation? [Voices]By Andrew C. Revkin, Reporter, New York Times I met the sociologist Fred Block at a recent symposium in Washington, D.C., exploring how to ensure that the Obama administration’s planned burst of government spending to revive the economy, while rebuilding roads and insulating leaky buildings, also invigorates the country’s eroding “intellectual infrastructure.” This is the innovation pipeline — from blue-sky research to entrepreneurial development to market — that transforms basic ideas into new economic building blocks (microchips, lasers, the Internet, the mapped genome and more). Source: All Things Digital | 11 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am Better Off Without Yahoo! [Voices]By Brian Caulfield, Senior Technology Writer, Forbes So, you just got laid off from the struggling portal. Congratulations. Ten years from now Steve Jobs’ iPhone will be just another obsolete gadget. Rob Bailey’s vitamin vodka, however, will still refresh. It never would have happened if Bailey hadn’t left his business-development job at Yahoo! in 2006 to pursue alcoholic immortality. Source: All Things Digital | 11 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am Asymmetrical Follow: A Core Web 2.0 Pattern [Voices]By James Governor, Industry Analyst, RedMonk You’re sitting at the back of the room in a large auditorium. There is a guy up front, and he is having a conversation with the people in the front few rows. You can’t hear them quite so well, although it seems like you can tune into them if you listen carefully. But his voice is loud, clear and resonant. You have something to add to the conversation, and almost as soon as you think of it he looks right at you, and says thanks for the contribution… great idea. Then repeats it to the rest of the group. That is Asymmetrical Follow. Source: Gizmodo | 11 Dec 2008 | 8:00 am Cellcom Israel Ltd. Announces Sale of Approximately 2.3% of its Issued Share Capital by Controlling ShareholderNETANYA, Israel, December 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cellcom Israel Ltd. ("Company") (NYSE: CEL) announced today that Discount Investment Corporation Ltd.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Dec 2008 | 7:56 am SCM Microsystems and Hirsch Electronics to MergeISMANING, Germany and SANTA ANA, Calif., Dec. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SCM Microsystems, Inc. (Nasdaq: SCMM; Prime Standard, SMY) and Hirsch Electronics Corp. today announced they have entered into a definitive agreement to merge.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Dec 2008 | 7:46 am Inventor Builds Robot WifeInventor Le Trung must really like the book, "The Stepford Wives," because he has built the dream of every lonely man without hope, a robot wife. Le's wife, Aiko, starts the day by reading him the newspaper headlines and they go for a drives in the countryside. Le says his relationship with Aiko hasn't strayed into the bedroom, but a few tweaks could turn her into a sexual partner, even redesigning her to have a simulated orgasm. *Shudder*Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 11 Dec 2008 | 7:37 am Playstation 3 will not be streaming Netflix anytime soonFROM GAMERTELL - Sony’s Hardware Marketing Director , John Koller, dismisses Netflix, saying, “concentrated most of our efforts on our download service, both rentals and downloads of movies and TV shows…“ MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 11 Dec 2008 | 7:03 am EMCORE Corporation Announces Preliminary Unaudited Results for Its Fourth Quarter and Fiscal Year Ended September 30, 2008ALBUQUERQUE, N.M., Dec.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Dec 2008 | 7:02 am Mercedes first to implement SPLITVIEW COMMAND
Ideally, this would allow the driver to view travel information while the passenger watches a movie. Or vice versa if you know where you’re going and love getting in accidents. This will reportedly be available on all S-Class models starting summer of 2009. [via engadget] Source: CrunchGear | 11 Dec 2008 | 6:56 am Screw The Downturn. Accel Raises A Cool Billion In New Funds
The Growth Fund will focus on later stage investments information technology, internet, digital media, mobile, networking, software, and services. The London fund will continue to invest in early and late stage European and Israeli startups. Accel has over $6 billion under management. The firm’s current and past portfolio includes Baidu, Brightcove, Comscore, Etsy, Facebook, Walmart.com, Zimbra and dozens of other startups. Accel has offices in Palo Alto, London and Bangalore as well as in China via a IDG-Accel Partnership. If you want some of that new money, start here. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 6:54 am Newest Media Cuts: Newsweek [MediaMemo]
It’s hard to see how Washington Post Co. (WPO), the magazine’s owner, could do anything else. Newsweek loses money, and ad revenue at the magazine has been in free-fall throughout the year: Down 13% in Q3, 21% in Q2 and 15% in Q1. The Wall Street Journal has details:
Also on tap: A move to reduce the magazine’s circulation, which is supposed to make its remaining readers more appealing to advertisers, and a continued effort to “focus … less on costly news gathering than on driving discussion of the day’s issues”. That’s not a terrible strategy for the Internet era, and most weekly publications are headed that way — including Time Warner’s (TWX) Time, which just drastically cut back its international news operations. At some point, though, someone’s going to have to make sure that there’s at least one media company employing actual reporters to go find out what happened — citizen journalists and Twitterers aren’t going to cut it. Note to Newsweek staffers: If you want to report details about your own workplace, you have a forum here. You can reach me directly at peter@allthingsd.com. If you want to be completely anonymous, which is understandable but less useful to me (I won’t have any way of reaching you for follow-up) you can use the blind tip box here. Source: All Things Digital | 11 Dec 2008 | 6:51 am Marissa Mayer At Le Web: The (Almost) Complete InterviewThe video above shows twenty two minutes of my and Loic Le Meur’s half hour interview with Google’s Vice President of Search Product and User Experience Marissa Mayer at the Le Web conference in Paris on Wednesday afternoon. A spotty Internet connection led to some problems with the Ustream stream, but they were able to save most of the footage. Mayer announced that their Chrome browser would shortly be leaving beta and that Google Search Wiki would soon have a toggle button to allow people to turn it off. She also gave some very simple employee hiring advice. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:57 am FTC To Sony: Hey, Record Label, Leave Those Kids Alone [MediaMemo]
Before the blogosphere makes the synaptic leap between Sony + music + online + lawsuit and yells “ROOTKIT!“, some context: Sony isn’t the only record label to run afoul of COPPA, the 1998 law which is supposed to protect the privacy and safety of children — Universal Music Group paid a $400,000 fine in a similar case in 2004. Nor is it the only big company, period: Other culprits include Hershey’s and Mrs. Fields. I’m not quite sure how they ran afoul, mind you — from what I can tell, COPPA pretty much requires sites that may take collect personal information from kids to stick a link to a privacy policy somewhere on the page. Can someone please explain how a company could screw that up — or how such a link actually helps protect kids? Source: All Things Digital | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:49 am Review: Airstream Interstate 3500
Ahh the open road. Is there anything better? Okay how about hitting said open road with an RV that has an interior specially designed by the king of the open road? That's exactly what Steven Leckart and I did in Airstream's Interstate 3500. Essentially a Dodge Sprinter Van modded from the inside out with all kinds of cool tech, we took the 20+ foot long beast on a road trip from San Francisco to LA. From Steven Leckart's review:
You can read the rest of the article on the Airstream Interstate 3500 on our review website. Steve channels his inner David Foster Wallace on this one; it's a little long, but make sure to watch the accompanying vid — it's fairly hilarious.
Source: Gizmodo | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:38 am Intel On Track For 32 Nm Manufacturingyaksha writes "Intel said on Wednesday that it has completed the development phase of its next manufacturing process that will shrink chip circuits to 32 nanometers. The milestone means that Intel will be able to push faster, more efficient chips starting in the fourth quarter. In a statement, Intel said it will provide more technical details at the International Electron Devices Meeting next week in San Francisco. Bottom line: Shrinking to a 32 nanometer is one more step in its "tick tock" strategy, which aims to create a new architecture with new manufacturing process every 12 months. Intel is obviously betting that its rapid-fire advancements will produce performance gains so jaw dropping that customers can't resist."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:01 am A Nikon DSLR That's Smarter Than You AreThe D90 automatically senses the light, locks onto subjects and gives priority to faces. It shoots hi-def movies and plugs directly into your HDTV. But that doesn't mean you'll take good pictures.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am How to Fingerprint a Bullet, the High-Voltage WayA forensics expert has found a new way to lift fingerprints from shell casings left behind a crime scene. It involves the use of 2,500 volts of electricity and some photocopier toner. See how it's done in this gallery.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Gallery: Toys and Tools for Upwardly Mobile Musicians : The back story of every gear nut starts with an "Aha!" moment. That epic instant where a simple device provides an astounding effect or fixes a previously daunting problem. From that moment on, the gear nut will chase the dragon of that intoxicating feeling, buying up gadget after gadget. Musicians are some of the most privileged gear hounds because their equipment ostensibly serves a higher purpose. But sooner or later they mask their addiction with increasingly flimsy rationalizations. This gadget gallery is dedicated to them, with eight "Aha!" devices to covet. Enjoy! Be sure to let us know what your favorite "Aha!" device is in the comments section. Left: Z.Vex Nano Head guitar amplifierPurported to be the world's smallest production tube amplifier, this half-watt wonder of engineering is made by boutique effects-pedal builders Z.Vex Amps. If you're looking for the tone of a cranked Marshall stack, but fears of being evicted from your pad have you playing unplugged or suffering from horrible tone, this little bad boy might just be the answer. Plug your ax in and get huge sound at bedroom volumes. The likes of Billy Gibbons, Angus Young and Tracii Guns are plugging in, so maybe you should to. List price: $500.  : It looks like a Taser, but the most shocking thing about the Zoom H4 is its versatility. Two built-in microphones in an X/Y pattern deliver high-quality stereo recordings, while two combo XLR/quarter-inch inputs let you plug in your favorite mikes or electric instruments. The extremely portable mobile recorder stores 24-bit/96-kHz digital audio files (or MP3s at bit rates up to 320 kbps) on a Secure Digital card. The triple-duty Zoom H4 also works as a four-track recorder or a USB audio interface for recording directly to your computer. List price: $500.  : Getting sweet bass tone doesn't have to be a backbreaking endeavor, as proved by the new LowDown combos from Line 6. Weighing in at just 48 pounds, the 150-watt LD150 packs five tweakable models based on classic amps (Eden Traveler, Ampeg B-15 flip top, Marshall Super Bass and Ampeg SVT, with and without distorted SansAmp PSA-1). The versatile amp gets even freakier with five built-in effects (compressor, bass synth, envelope filter, octaver and chorus) that will have you boomin' like Bootsy. Perfect for practice and low-volume gigs, the LD150's tilt-back design means those custom tones will make it to your ears, rather than firing into the backs of your knees. Onboard tuner, clean XLR out and a jack for adding a snazzy Line 6 foot controller complete the package. List price: $570.  : Get a lick stuck in your head late at night. The wife is trying to watch television. You want to play a little guitar on a road trip. Plug your Gretsch into the AmPlug, throw on a pair of headphones and away you jam to Vox-like tones. You can even plug your MP3 player in and play along with your favorite tunes. Comes in five flavors: Metal, Bass, AC30, Classic Rock or Lead. List price: $40.  : This strange and wonderful contraption from Japanese artist Toshio Iwai combines a digital sampler and sequencer with an animated LED light show. Not only do the lights look cool and act as a performance element, they also give you visual feedback as you use it to manipulate sounds. At its simplest level each row represents a voice and each column represents a note in a sequence, and the Tenori-On plays any marked note as it plays from left to right at an adjustable tempo. All you have to do is press the LED switch of the note you want it to play, and it will loop around, playing the note at each pass. Add more notes and blocks and your own samples beyond the 256 preset voices and you can get lost in this machine for days. List price: $1,000.  : How many times have you had a great idea for a song while out walking around or traveling away from your computer? You can always leave it on a voicemail or get a voice recorder, but what if you want to keep building on the idea? FourTrack makes sure you always have the recording tools you need. This app turns your iPhone into a four-track recorder, allowing you to write, edit and mix rough ideas anywhere you take your phone. The app also makes transferring and importing what you've recorded onto your home recording setup a breeze. It may not have all the bells and whistles you're used to in a desktop program like Pro Tools, but the function and portability it provides are well worth the modest $10 price tag. Check out Wired.com's full FourTrack review here.  : This Nintendo DS software puts a full-fledged KORG synthesizer and sequencer in the palm of your hand. There's even a built-in drum machine that uses sounds made from the synthesizer simulator. With a mind-boggling amount of tone controls — delay, chorus and flange effects — and the ability to connect 4 DS's wirelessly to execute huge musical orchestrations, this is a must-have for sonic geeks of all levels. List price: $40.  : In some circles, Ableton's Live software is as well-known as Pro Tools, but for many musicians it's an untapped treasure trove of goodness. The software can fill many roles, but it's essentially a sequencer for audio loops and samples. If you've been to a show where the musicians are playing some of their music from their MacBook, chances are good this is the program they're using. Performers like Live for its simplicity, speed and customizability. As a performer, you can set up the pattern or sequence of different instruments and samples to play along to and also modify different sounds in real time. A growing number of home-studio musicians prefer its interface and options over Pro Tools or Logic. Source: Wired: Gadgets | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Rocket Scientist's Laser Scalpel Targets Individual CellsNormal surgical lasers aren't very precise. Heat from their pulses tends to build up and vaporize healthy tissue. That makes them lousy for delicate tasks like brain surgery, where all the tissue is, you know, important. So engineer Adela Ben-Yakar, an assistant professor at the University of Texas who cut her teeth in rocket science—designing supersonic engines for scramjets—decided to come up with a laser capable of vaporizing individual cells, one at a time. Using a so-called femtosecond laser, her device emits ultrafast light pulses that don't have enough time to damage surrounding tissue. While femtosecond lasers themselves aren't exactly new—they're standard gear for laser eye surgery—Ben-Yakar is the first to figure out how to make one small enough to be used inside a person. Her blaster fits in a 15-mm surgical probe that shoots the laser's light through a crystal fiber (similar to a fiber-optic strand). Paired with another fiber for microimaging, it lets surgeons work through a small incision and burn off individual cells in places like the pituitary gland (normally accessed rather awkwardly through the nose) and the spinal cord, which is hidden behind bundles of sensitive neurons and axons. "The laser turns the targeted cell into atomic dust," Ben-Yaker says. And the surrounding tissue? Untouched. Not bad for a second career. We're hoping her next project is a supersonic jet with a laser.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Dec. 11, 1964: Dr. King Warns About Science Without Morality1964: Martin Luther King Jr. delivers a lecture at the University of Oslo the day after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize. He argues that progress in science and technology has not been equaled by "moral progress" — instead, mankind suffers from a "moral and spiritual lag." King, then 35, remains the youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize. He was recognized for using nonviolent methods, including civil disobedience and the boycott (as well as the power of his oratory), to fight racial segregation and advance the civil rights movement in the United States. King, a Baptist minister who was the son of a Baptist minister, preached that material advancement was meaningless without an accompanying moral structure. A visit with Mahatma Gandhi's family on a trip to India only reinforced this conviction, while at the same time strengthening King's commitment to nonviolence as an instrument of change. In his Oslo lecture, King acknowledged the advances made by science and technology, but said that growing abundance was undermining the human spirit. "The richer we have become materially, the poorer we become morally and spiritually," he said. "We have learned to fly in the air like birds and swim in the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers." Placing too much value on material advantage while ignoring what he called the "spiritual lag" was a path fraught with peril, King said. "Enlarged material powers spell enlarged peril if there is not proportionate growth of the soul. When the 'without' of man's nature subjugates the 'within,' dark storm clouds begin to form in the world." King was killed by a sniper's bullet on April 4, 1968, as he stood on a motel balcony in Memphis, Tennessee. He had gone there to lend support to striking city garbage workers. Source: Various
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Gallery: Toys and Tools for Upwardly Mobile Musicians: The back story of every gear nut starts with an "Aha!" moment. That epic instant where a simple device provides an astounding effect or fixes a previously daunting problem. From that moment on, the gear nut will chase the dragon of that intoxicating feeling, buying up gadget after gadget. Musicians are some of the most privileged gear hounds because their equipment ostensibly serves a higher purpose. But sooner or later they mask their addiction with increasingly flimsy rationalizations. This gadget gallery is dedicated to them, with eight "Aha!" devices to covet. Enjoy! Be sure to let us know what your favorite "Aha!" device is in the comments section. Left: Z.Vex Nano Head guitar amplifierPurported to be the world's smallest production tube amplifier, this half-watt wonder of engineering is made by boutique effects-pedal builders Z.Vex Amps. If you're looking for the tone of a cranked Marshall stack, but fears of being evicted from your pad have you playing unplugged or suffering from horrible tone, this little bad boy might just be the answer. Plug your ax in and get huge sound at bedroom volumes. The likes of Billy Gibbons, Angus Young and Tracii Guns are plugging in, so maybe you should to. List price: $500. : It looks like a Taser, but the most shocking thing about the Zoom H4 is its versatility. Two built-in microphones in an X/Y pattern deliver high-quality stereo recordings, while two combo XLR/quarter-inch inputs let you plug in your favorite mikes or electric instruments. The extremely portable mobile recorder stores 24-bit/96-kHz digital audio files (or MP3s at bit rates up to 320 kbps) on a Secure Digital card. The triple-duty Zoom H4 also works as a four-track recorder or a USB audio interface for recording directly to your computer. List price: $500. : Getting sweet bass tone doesn't have to be a backbreaking endeavor, as proved by the new LowDown combos from Line 6. Weighing in at just 48 pounds, the 150-watt LD150 packs five tweakable models based on classic amps (Eden Traveler, Ampeg B-15 flip top, Marshall Super Bass and Ampeg SVT, with and without distorted SansAmp PSA-1). The versatile amp gets even freakier with five built-in effects (compressor, bass synth, envelope filter, octaver and chorus) that will have you boomin' like Bootsy. Perfect for practice and low-volume gigs, the LD150's tilt-back design means those custom tones will make it to your ears, rather than firing into the backs of your knees. Onboard tuner, clean XLR out and a jack for adding a snazzy Line 6 foot controller complete the package. List price: $570. : Get a lick stuck in your head late at night. The wife is trying to watch television. You want to play a little guitar on a road trip. Plug your Gretsch into the AmPlug, throw on a pair of headphones and away you jam to Vox-like tones. You can even plug your MP3 player in and play along with your favorite tunes. Comes in five flavors: Metal, Bass, AC30, Classic Rock or Lead. List price: $40. : This strange and wonderful contraption from Japanese artist Toshio Iwai combines a digital sampler and sequencer with an animated LED light show. Not only do the lights look cool and act as a performance element, they also give you visual feedback as you use it to manipulate sounds. At its simplest level each row represents a voice and each column represents a note in a sequence, and the Tenori-On plays any marked note as it plays from left to right at an adjustable tempo. All you have to do is press the LED switch of the note you want it to play, and it will loop around, playing the note at each pass. Add more notes and blocks and your own samples beyond the 256 preset voices and you can get lost in this machine for days. List price: $1,000. : How many times have you had a great idea for a song while out walking around or traveling away from your computer? You can always leave it on a voicemail or get a voice recorder, but what if you want to keep building on the idea? FourTrack makes sure you always have the recording tools you need. This app turns your iPhone into a four-track recorder, allowing you to write, edit and mix rough ideas anywhere you take your phone. The app also makes transferring and importing what you've recorded onto your home recording setup a breeze. It may not have all the bells and whistles you're used to in a desktop program like Pro Tools, but the function and portability it provides are well worth the modest $10 price tag. Check out Wired.com's full FourTrack review here. : This Nintendo DS software puts a full-fledged KORG synthesizer and sequencer in the palm of your hand. There's even a built-in drum machine that uses sounds made from the synthesizer simulator. With a mind-boggling amount of tone controls — delay, chorus and flange effects — and the ability to connect 4 DS's wirelessly to execute huge musical orchestrations, this is a must-have for sonic geeks of all levels. List price: $40. : In some circles, Ableton's Live software is as well-known as Pro Tools, but for many musicians it's an untapped treasure trove of goodness. The software can fill many roles, but it's essentially a sequencer for audio loops and samples. If you've been to a show where the musicians are playing some of their music from their MacBook, chances are good this is the program they're using. Performers like Live for its simplicity, speed and customizability. As a performer, you can set up the pattern or sequence of different instruments and samples to play along to and also modify different sounds in real time. A growing number of home-studio musicians prefer its interface and options over Pro Tools or Logic.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am A Nikon DSLR That's Smarter Than You AreThe D90 automatically senses the light, locks onto subjects and gives priority to faces. It shoots hi-def movies and plugs directly into your HDTV. But that doesn't mean you'll take good pictures.Source: Wired: Gadgets | 11 Dec 2008 | 5:00 am Group wants shark fin soup banThe U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Dec 2008 | 4:57 am Jerry Yang’s Entire Memo to the Yahoo Troops About Layoffs (Except Not the Part About Maybe More to Come) [BoomTown]
Here’s Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s entire internal memo to the staff of the Internet giant about the layoffs, which took place today. (You can see the Yahoo version of the memo here.) There’s no need for translation, except to say–as Yang did–that it is the worst of times for any company. Except, as BoomTown previously reported, that there might be more layoffs to come, which a Yahoo (YHOO) spokesman told the New York Times. Said Yahoo’s Brad Williams: “There could be additional staff reductions next year. It depends on the decisions we make about prioritization, and on things we can’t predict in the economy.” In any case, here’s the whole memo (in consistent Yang-style punctuation, so don’t comment that I have it wrong below!): yahoos,
this is a tough time for all of us and i wanted to take a moment to reach out to you.
thanks, jerry Source: All Things Digital | 11 Dec 2008 | 4:55 am Image Sensor To Improve Webcam Video for Laptops Up to 720p
It's almost 2009, and finding a web cam embedded in a laptop that streams quality video is still not that easy. Face it. You've been conditioned to believe that video web cam feeds should be mostly choppy, and that diluted colors and weird halo spotlights can be passed off as your own attractive self. In the last couple of years, the best embedded cams (along with the best IM clients) have slowly chopped away at these problems but most still remain. They look quite far from a high-definition feed. Enter an improved brigade of image sensors, led by Samsung. This week, the Korean company is announcing the availability of their newest image sensor built specifically for web cams. The sensor promises to be the first to produce 720p-quality video (at 30 FPS). The new S5K4AW CMOS image sensor will also be able to stream VGA video (640 x 480 resolution) at 60 FPS and significantly improves the light sensitivity of the video capture through an innovative pixel processing technique. Understandably, Samsung sees an opportunity to gain traction in a market with plenty of room to grow. Just try trolling through the thousands of poorly lit and blurry images of cam video-bloggers around the net, and one can guess that more than half aren’t using the best external webcams from Logitech and are instead relying on the crappy ones on their computer. The sensor is expected to start showing up in regular laptops by the middle of next year, and hopefully they’ll manage to slide it in a tiny netbook as well. Photo: ThiagoMartins/Flickr See also: Trend: Seniors Using Webcams For Remote Babysitting
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 Dec 2008 | 4:48 am Yoga, massage gain in popularityA U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Dec 2008 | 4:35 am DemandTec Announces Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2009 Financial Results Release Date and Conference CallSAN CARLOS, Calif., Dec. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- DemandTec, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Dec 2008 | 4:01 am Got a new Apple? Time to get your firmware update on
Oh yes I went there! Source: Gizmodo | 11 Dec 2008 | 3:45 am Oppo’s BDP-83 megaplayer gets more detailed
They’re thinking about doing an early adopter program with a limited run of units later this month or possibly in January. The upgradeable firmware means if you get in early you won’t be sacrificing any features they get when they’re out of “beta”. Check out the rest of the specs and update after the fold.
Sweet. Source: CrunchGear | 11 Dec 2008 | 3:35 am Broadcast 2.0 and BBC’s iPlayer
Anthony Rose, head of the iPlayer online broadcasting project for the BBC, is working towards a social networking player where your friends are going to choose what you watch. Upcoming iPlayer features include ratings and discussions that will be restricted to networks of friends, rather than the public (..like Facebook?). The new version will be rolled out in 2009, but whether these new features will increase its popularity is doubtful. Source: CrunchGear | 11 Dec 2008 | 3:30 am Shiro intros a new green MP3 playerSection: Audio, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video, Gadgets / Other, Green
The SQ-S Solar Media player, uses both solar cells and conventional USB to charge its internal battery, so it hasn’t fully gone solar. It takes 6 hours to become fully charged under direct sunlight, but only 4 hours when using normal USB charging. Now, if it were to go fully green, solar charging would have to occur a lot faster, and since the sun isn’t always shining, there has to be some back-up way to get charged. Moving on, it comes with a 1.8 inch screen with 128x160 resolution, integrated FM tuner, and support of formats including WMA, M4A, FLAC, WAV, OGG, and APE. No word on exact internal storage at this time. It seems like a good idea and I expect more MP3 players to become “green” like this, however, it will be a while before big PMP manufacturers like Apple, Microsoft, SanDisk, etc make their players more energy efficient. No word on exact pricing or availability as of yet, but expect it to be released in the Asian market first. Via [EverythingUSB] Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gizmodo | 11 Dec 2008 | 3:00 am Contest: $50 Giftcard Giveaway #2
Long story short, Virgin Mobile sent us an envelope full of $50 dollar gift cards, and we’re passing them on to our readers. (If you really want the whole back story, here you go.) The only catch is that they expire at the end of 2008, so if you nab one you’ll have to spend it quick. This is the second one we’ve given away so far. As a bit of a bonus, we’re extending entry on the first contest until tomorrow (12/10) at 2 pm PST. Why? Too many good entries. We’re going to have to have a staff pow-wow to vote on the winner. If you haven’t entered that one yet, better get on it! (Oh, and don’t tell anyone, but we’ll be giving one away through our Twitter account tomorrow.)
Find the answers to the following mobile trivia questions, and send them to mobilecrunch+contest at crunchgear dot com. I know, i know - the email address has a plus sign in it, and that’s sort of weird. Consider it an entry test. Winner will be picked at random from those with correct answers.
Remember: Send entries to the email above. Don’t post your entry in a comment, or the only prize you get is a big bag of face punches. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: MobileCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 2:58 am iPhone App Pricing Limits DevelopersHardYakka writes "According to this post in the Fortune blog, the iTunes app store has been a boon for users but some developers are saying the number of free and 99 cent apps make it difficult for developers to create complex, higher priced apps. Craig Hockenberry of Iconfactory says the iPhone may never get its killer app like the spreadsheet was for the Mac. If Apple does not do something, the store will be left with only ring tones and simple games. Some are suggesting that overpaid developers are the problem and the recession will soon lower the wages and costs for complex apps."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 11 Dec 2008 | 2:50 am Mozilla Security Chief Calls It Quits (PC World)PC World - Window Snyder, the head of security at Mozilla Corp., will resign her position at the end of the year, she said in a blog post Wednesday.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Dec 2008 | 2:40 am Yahoo amends controversial severance program
Section: Communications, Accessories, Cellphones, Mobile
Using leather (another way the Tekkeon sets themselves apart) in their construction the myPower doubles the standard battery life of the iPhone while allowing charging for both the battery pack and the iPhone’s main battery. The battery is a lithium polymer and features a capacity indicator letting you know the status of the battery’s charge. Interestingly, the company notes, “iPhone not included.“ Bummer. Also, Jerry Yang is the company’s President. The company is taking orders now and expects to ship on the 15th. Product Page [Tekkeon]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 11 Dec 2008 | 2:21 am Obama Selects Nobel Prize Winning Nerd for Energy ChiefPresident-elect Barack Obama is said to be likely to name Steven Chu, the physicist who runs Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as energy secretary. Here are two things I like about this: (1) Chu believes science is real. (2) Chu believes climate change is real. Chu won the 1997 Nobel Prize in physics. If you were at a Christmas party with him and the topic of discussion shifted to atomic physics, he would pwn your ass real fast. But he is not a politician. This fact worries some in Washington, because one of his first and most important tasks in early 2009 will be a landmark energy reform bill. More: CNN, NY Times, Reuters. VIDEO: Chu speaking about "A New Energy Program," at the Climate Change and Global Politics Conference hosted by the World Affairs Council of Northern California. UPDATE: Boing Boing pal Bart Nagel, who is a fine, fine photographer, shot this great portrait of Chu not long ago.
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 2:20 am Catch the Sneaky Bastard Wind With New Thermal Leak Detector
Black & Decker's new thermal leak detector should make things easier for these impertinent procrastinators. Are you listening, family members? The detector works by simply pointing it at the walls (including heavy molding) of the house and determines leaks through color signals. A green light indicates regular temperature, red light shows hot spots, and a blue spot shows you the exact place where cold air is bursting in. The detector promises to catch temperature changes by as little as one degree Fahrenheit. Considering that the gadget will only cost around $40 when it becomes available in a month, it should be a slam dunk as a cash-saver. The loss of money through heating costs is usually triple that amount a month during the winter, and that's if you're lucky and live in California, like I do. Even better, get one and offer your leak detecting services around the neighborhood for $5/house and make a profit. Despite the rumors, there's no word that Chief of Staff-elect Rahm Emanuel will use this gadget as a premature detection device. He might end up shoving it down the piehole of potential leakers around his office, and that would be quite too much.
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:50 am Gmail Enables SMS Messaging From Chat
Only a few days after the launch of its new task manager, Gmail has introduced a new feature allowing users to send free SMS messages through its integrated Chat. To activate the feature, visit the Gmail Labs page and scroll down until you see the appropriate listing (you may also want to activate a few of the other nifty features while you’re at it). To send a message, just type a phone number into the search box at the top of the chat window on the left side of the Gmail interface, and hit ‘Send SMS’. Numbers can be associated with contact names so you don’t have to keep manually entering them. Recipients of these messages can respond by simply hitting ‘reply’ on their cell phones to send their own SMS message (Gmail ties a unique phone number with each of your contacts). According to the Gmail blog post, the site is currently testing out the service with US phones only for now (messages can be sent from abroad, they just need to be directed at a US phone). Gmail first toyed around with the feature in October, but wound up pulling it from Labs for a few weeks because of a number of glitches. This time, it seems like it’s here to stay. This isn’t by any means the first chat service to offer free SMS messaging - major chat networks like AIM have been doing this for years. But it’s a handy feature, especially for the many people who use Gmail all day long.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:47 am PJ O'Rourke on Disney's Future SchlockIn the new issue of The Atlantic, the inimitable PJ O'Rourke tours Disneyland's revived House Of The Future attraction. According to O'Rourke, it's a boring beige abode lacking the imagination that makes futurism fun in the first place. From O'Rourke's piece, titled "Future Schlock":According to Disney, the shape of things to come can be found at Pottery Barn, with a quick stop in Restoration Hardware for “classic future” touches and a trip to Target to get throw rugs and cheap Japanese paper lanterns. HoF II was designed by the Taylor Morrison company, a home builder specializing in anodyne subdevelopmental housing in the Southwest. The company’s president and CEO told the Associated Press, “The 1950s home didn’t look like anything, anywhere. It was space-age and kind of cold. We didn’t want the home to intimidate the visitors...""Future Schlock" (Thanks, Jess Hemerly!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:29 am Vets reattach cat's faceBoston animal surgeons said a cat is expected to make a full recovery after emergency surgery to reattach part of its face. The veterinarians said the Winthrop, Mass., owner of 4-year-old cat Edgar brought the feline to the animal hospital after finding him with half of his facial skin hangingSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:22 am How to get the most out of Netflix Watch Instantly HDSection: Video, Content, HDTV, Video Providers, Gadgets / Other, Household, Lifestyle, Web, Websites, Online Music/Video, Features
So you’ve got one of the devices that plays Netflix Watch Instantly in HD. What’s the best way of getting a lot of HD content out Watch Instantly? If you take a look at individual pages for movies or shows, you won’t find whether they are available in HD or not. You can check out all of the HD titles by logging into Netflix, going into Genres and clicking “HD.“ Make sure you click the “Include rated & seen titles” link so you can see if your favorite titles are available. Going through the Gallery view is pretty, but I highly suggest clicking the “See sortable list view” so you can actually sort the movies by star rating, MPAA rating, year, and title. That offers a lot of control. Unfortunately, there’s no way to create an HD only Watch Instantly queue unless you dump everything in your Instant Queue and start over. You can waste a lot of time putting together you HD queue, but it’s for a good cause—your entertainment. If you’re already logged into your Netflix account, click this link to see the HD list. Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:19 am Yahoo curbs severance pay in event of a takeover (AP)AP - In a move that could make it easier to negotiate a sale, Yahoo Inc. has overhauled a severance program that could have saddled potential buyers with a huge bill after a takeover.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:10 am BBtv WORLD + WITNESS.org: 60 Years of Declaration of Human Rights, and Rights of The Mentally Disabled(Warning: the video embedded in this post contains graphic content that viewers may find disturbing.) Boing Boing tv commemorates the 60th anniversary of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights this week in partnership with WITNESS. Have you read the declaration lately? You can do so here. It is as timely and essential to our world today as it was on December 10, 1948, just after the end of World War II. WITNESS was founded by musician and activist Peter Gabriel with other human rights groups in 1992. They use video and online media to open the eyes of the world to human rights violations. We'll be airing reports from the WITNESS archives this week, and tomorrow Boing Boing tv will present an interview with the organization's digital archivist, Grace Lile. She spoke with us about how WITNESS gathers videos like the one I'm embedding here, and why collecting and sharing this footage matters. She also tells us about the recently-launched hub.witness.org, which is a sort of gathering place for people who want to get involved. Today, as a special edition of BBTV WORLD, we present a video from WITNESS that was produced by Mental Disability Rights International (MDRI) and the Center for Justice and International Law (CEJIL). With this video, they sought to "prevent continued unlawful acts that threaten the rights to life, liberty and personal security of two boys, Jorge, age 18, and Julio, age 17, and 458 others detained in the Neuro-Psychiatric Hospital of Paraguay." The two boys were detained in approximately six-by-six feet isolation cells, naked, and without access to bathrooms. Hospital staff said the boys have been detained in these conditions for the past four years. The video is deeply disturbing. I found it very painful to watch. But the producers, and the people behind WITNESS, hope that by documenting these abuses and making the documentation available to the world in this explicit form, we will be inspired to stop the abuse -- in this case, and in others around the world. Here is a direct MP4 link, if you prefer to download. Below, a video from WITNESS commemorating the Declaration of Human Rights, and what it means to us today.
(Special thanks to Yvette Alberdingkthijm, Sameer Padania, Martin Tzanev, Matisse Bustos Hawkes, and Bryan Nuñez of Witness, and BB Patron Saint Joi Ito.) Source: Boing Boing | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:09 am Gadgets, Games Help Musicians Offset Declining Sales
As album sales continue to decline, gadgets and games may help ensure the survival of the music business. Indeed, the most tech-savvy bands are already recording songs for distribution exclusively through new channels opened up by the iPhone, the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3. "I don't really look at the last 10 years of music business as a negative," Weezer bassist Scott Shriner told Wired.com. "A lot of people are sad -- nobody buys records anymore and everyone's downloading and all that. But I think there's more interest in music than ever, and I just want to use technology to reach people as much as possible." Sad or not, the rise of digital music has been a double-edged sword for artists and their record labels. The fourth quarter of 2008 looks to be the worst ever in terms of CD sales -- down 27 percent to date -- as consumers abandon physical media in favor of downloads. On the plus side, the streamlined distribution of music by services such as the iTunes Store as well as illegal P2P channels has people listening to more music than ever before. Given the exploding popularity of digital music, MP3 players and music-based videogames, many bands have embraced, rather than resisted, the newly gadget-centric universe. Hoping to gain exposure and give album sales a boost, artists are distributing their music through iPhone games, Rock Band and remixing wizards. What do they have in common? They give fans a way to engage the music more interactively, turning them from listeners into participants, riding the social-networking wave better known as Web 2.0. And we can expect this trend to continue, moving beyond game consoles and the iPhone onto other handsets and mobile devices. Why simply play music when you can play with it? "Working with videogame developers, it's not surprising that they have an innovative take that the music industry can capitalize on," said Susan Kevorkian, program director of consumer markets at IDC. "This is just a time when the music industry needs to develop not just one key new channel, but multiple ones." Weezer has used the new technology to promote and distribute its music more than most bands have, and in innovative ways. For instance, lead singer Rivers Cuomo fielded a collaborative songwriting project recently, posting a series of videos collecting contributions from fans on YouTube. Cuomo will choose the best video responses and knit them into a song titled, "Let's Write a Sawng." Also, Weezer's latest Red Album was one of the first to be sold on a microSD card in October 2008. And most recently, Weezer recorded covers of Christmas songs exclusively for an iPhone rhythm game called Christmas With Weezer, selling it through the phenomenally successful App Store. Another group piggybacking off the iPhone's success, Nine Inch Nails, is selling a similar rhythm game in the App Store for $5. It includes tracks from the albums The Slip and Ghosts I-IV. Developers and bands are loath to disclose just how much artists are making off these iPhone games. But we know that Apple takes 33 percent of each sale in the iPhone App Store, so the remainder is shared between the game developer Tapulous and the artists. That's potentially a far better split than most artists get from music labels. The idea to sell songs through iPhone games comes from the vastly popular console game Rock Band, a booming success. Artists old and new, including Weezer, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Radiohead, are selling some of their songs through the Rock Band music store for $2 a track. This method is an effective hook to get players to pay for music, because the fans get to play with the music, not just listen to it. (Downloading Radiohead's song "My Iron Lung," for example, allows Rock Band players to sing, bang drum pads and play fake guitars along with the original track.) Rock Band developer Harmonix announced last week that its store surpassed 28 million song downloads. And the sequel -- Rock Band 2 -- was the third bestselling game in the United States in September. Gerd Leonhard, a media futurist who authored the book Future of Music, explained that hopping on digital distribution channels such as Rock Band will take awhile to pay off, but the earnings will be big. According to Leonhard, the Rock Band Store takes about 30 percent of each transaction, while 65 cents of every dollar goes to the label, and the artist earns about 6 cents. "It's all about getting an audience," Leonhard said. "When they get
the audience, eventually they get the money. Part of the problem in the
current industry is they're thinking money before they have an
audience. With [games like Rock Band] we're seeing a shift in priorities." On top of giving album sales a boost, distribution methods like Rock Band are just plain fun for bands, too, Weezer's Shriner said. "Down the street these kids had me come down and play 'My Name Is Jonas,' and they played on Expert and they absolutely annihilated me, so that was a good time for them," Shriner said. "It's kind of bad to get beat by a bunch of 15-year-olds playing your own song, but I'm a good sport." Radiohead took a bold step when it offered the new album In Rainbows using a donation model, asking listeners to pay anything they wanted. Analysts estimated that the band earned millions in donations, and there was a glimmer of hope that this method would revitalize the music industry. But three months later, the band shut down the promotion, saying it was a short-lived success that likely couldn't be repeated. Radiohead hasn't given up, though. The band's internet campaign remains one of the most noteworthy in the music industry: Instead of asking for donations, the band is inviting fans to remix its music. The latest song up for grabs is "Reckoner." For the same amount you'd pay for a regular track, you get the song broken into "stems" -- bass, lead vocals, backing vocals, guitar, piano, strings and drums. But why should huge bands like Radiohead be the only ones to bank off community-mixed music? Radiohead's idea gave birth to a startup called MixMatchMusic that's aimed at getting smaller and independent bands in the interactivity game, too. Like Radiohead's remix project, MixMatchMusic allows artists to sell their music as remixable stems. Participating artists earn 85 cents for every dollar of sales on the site. "A remix promotion is a great way to give fans a new interactive music experience that really makes them care about the music, and it also really more actively engages them," said Alan Khalfin, director of music at MixMatchMusic. "You could argue Beethoven is a remix of his own creativity of Mozart. You can argue that early rock and roll is a remix of African rhythms and the mashup of R&B and country.... This idea of remixing is going to become more and more important in the overall music landscape."
With 1,500 members, MixMatchMusic is still in its infancy, but the site is quickly gaining momentum. Just recently punk rock band Slightly Stoopid signed up to do a remix promotion through the site. And smaller artists such as The Bayliens, Trifonic and MC Lars are working on remix campaigns as well. "It's really hard developing fans when there are a million other bands on MySpace," said Laurence Trifon, keyboardist of electronica duo Trifonic. "So with MixMatchMusic we're just trying to get the fans engaged with our music. I feel you have to do anything you can to stand out and be more appealing." Clearly, new tech-savvy methods are working, and they're effective enough to sway The Beatles. The British pop-rock band recently entered into a deal with Harmonix to make a Beatles music game. This move signifies a change of heart for The Beatles, who are continuing to avoid selling their music through the iTunes Store. "The Beatles continue to evolve with the passing of time and how wonderful that The Beatles' legacy will find its natural progression into the 21st century through the computerized world we live in," said Beatles drummer Ringo Star, in a statement. "Let the games commence." Screenshot: Weezer, Nine Inch Nails and Daft Punk recently released music games for the popular iPhone. Photo: Brothers Laurence and Brian Trifon are using a remix wizard to promote their electronica band Trifonic. Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:02 am The Shorty Awards Honor Twitter’s Elite Tweets
After my first few weeks on Twitter I quickly came to realize that most people are not nearly as interesting as they think they are - my Twitter feed was constantly inundated with tweets describing such mundane topics as my friends’ favorite day of the week and what they had for breakfast. But within this apparent pool of mediocrity I found a few gems - Twitter users who managed to entertain me on a regular basis, and have kept me addicted to my Twhirl client for months on end. Now the time has come to bestow these great Tweeters with the honors they truly deserve. The Shorty Awards, currently the top trending topic on search.twitter.com, is setting out to reward Twitter’s best and brightest with their own awards show. The contest is meant to identify the best Twitter users in over twenty predefined categories ranging from Business to Food, as well as any number of user-submitted custom categories (the site will weed out the ones that don’t get enough participation). Beginning today, users can nominate their favorite users by sending a Twitter message with the following format (you can also use a form on the event’s homepage):
After the initial round of voting, which will last until midnight December 31, the five Tweeters with the most nominations in each category will take part in a final round between January 5th and 14th. An awards ceremony will be held in New York in late January, where the winners of the “most important categories” (the site doesn’t say what qualifies as important) will be able to deliver acceptance speeches in person or via video in 140 characters or less. You can find the complete rules here. The site is a production of Sawhourse Media, which also is behind Musebin and News Groper. Also check out The Twitties, a Twitter awards show that has already concluded. And while you’re at it, be sure to place your final nominations for the Crunchies - voting ends at midnight PST tonight. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 1:01 am iPhone Developer E-Mails Jobs About App Store's Flaws
iPhone applications are likely to get dumber and less innovative if Apple doesn't revise the store's model, a developer said in his e-mail to Steve Jobs. Despite having developed some of the most successful iPhone apps (Twitterific and Frenzic), IconFactory engineer Craig Hockenberry says his company is likely to suffer. "It hasn’t been easy, but we’ve learned what it takes to make a kick ass product for the iPhone," Hockenberry wrote. "The problem now is funding those products. We have a lot of great ideas for iPhone applications. Unfortunately, we’re not working on the cooler (and more complex) ideas. Instead, we’re working on 99¢ titles that have a limited lifespan and broad appeal." Hockenberry's concern is valid. The iPhone's App Store recently surpassed 10,000 applications available for download. Currently, the only way for an app to receive major attention is making it to the "Top 25" most downloaded (either free or paid) list. But once an app drops off that list, it practically gets lost in the clutter of apps available. So the long-term result, Hockenberry says, is that developers will code $0.99 simple apps with limited utility for the sake of trying to make it to the Top 25. And he says $0.99 apps aren't going to be enough to sustain his company. That's an interesting point, but Hockenberry chooses not to make suggestions to Jobs on how to improve the store. "You and your team are perfectly capable of dealing with it on your own terms," Hockenberry wrote. Still, it couldn't hurt to suggest a way for apps to receive more attention. Perhaps a section that lists weekly favorites picked by Apple staff? Or another list of "top rated apps of the week"? Those are just some basic ideas that come off the top of my head. Have any ideas, Gadget Lab readers? See Also:
Photo: Stuck in Customs/Flickr
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:48 am FTC Kills Scareware Scam That Duped Over 1M Userscoondoggie writes "The Federal Trade Commission today got a court to at least temporarily halt a massive "scareware" scheme, which falsely claimed that scans had detected viruses, spyware, and pornography on consumers' computers. According to the FTC, the scheme has tricked more than one million consumers into buying computer security products such as WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe, and XP Antivirus. The court also froze the assets of Innovative Marketing, Inc. and ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC to preserve the possibility of providing consumers with monetary redress, the FTC stated."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:45 am Citysearch Vs. Yelp On The iPhone: Can You Tell Them Apart?Citysearch now has an iPhone app. It looks a lot like Yelp’s iPhone app, which came out two months ago looks and is currently the third most popular travel app (after Urbanspoon and Google Earth). Both tap into the iPhone’s GPS to let you find nearby restaurants, bars, clubs, hotels, and stores. Both let you rate and review the places you visit. Both even share the exact same navigation buttons on the bottom: Nearby, Search, and Bookmarks. Only the first button on Citysearch is different. It shows Featured editorial content from Citysearch editors for the city you are in. Yelp opted for a Recent button instead, which Citysearch places on its Bookmarks page. The two apps are really similar in look and feel (see screenshots above), but under the hood they are different because they are pulling from different databases. Citysearch is taking advantage of its recent overhaul, which reclassified every piece of data by neighborhood. That helps when you search for a place to eat nearby. You still can’t search by neighborhood (only zipcode and city), but that is coming soon. Also coming soon will be the ability to upload photos and other multimedia along with your reviews. What is powerful about both of these apps is giving people the ability to rate or review a restaurant or a store right as they are eating or having whatever experience they want to share. Ultimately, the one you prefer will boil down to the one whose reviews you trust the most. (Correction: The Yelp app actually only lets you upload photos, not reviews. So advantage, Citysearch on that one). But next time you have an amazing meal or have a nasty run-in with a waiter, just whip out your iPhone and tell the world.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:33 am Today on Offworld Today on our specially Doom-15th-anniversary themed Offworld (see it now before the skin swaps back!) we, most excitingly, got an exclusive first listen to LittleBigMusic, a collection of LittleBigPlanet's original music (outside the relentlessly hip guest artists) by Daniel Pemberton. It's worth mentioning here that Daniel is also the composer behind brit-com Peep Show's original season one theme song (the not- pop-punk Harvey Danger one), and the track he gave us is no less wicked, a big band/ragtime turntablist romp not too far outside the likes of Kid Koala.
We also got the second installment of Margaret Robertson's One More Go, in which she explains why the "beautiful, enigmatic, alluring and unmasterable" shooter Ikaruga is "her Mona Lisa," and elsewhere got a deeper look at the design behind excellent freeware PC platformer Knytt Stories. Finally, we read, happily, just what Steven Spielberg knows about games, saw Sony's fair-enough response to its temporary closure of LittleBigPlanet social networking site Sackbook, saw 'Buffalo Bill's game room, Guitar Hero heading to the arcade, and clever Left 4 Dead hacks, and celebrated that Doom anniversary with some recommendations, remembrances, and eBay auctions. Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:29 am Endeavour spends night in TexasThe U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:19 am Microsoft Declares Quarterly DividendREDMOND, Wash., Dec. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp. today announced that its board of directors declared a quarterly dividend of $0.13 per share.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Dec 2008 | 12:05 am Last Call For Those Crunchies NominationsThe Crunchies awards are right around the corner. Who will be named the Best Startup of 2008? The Best CEO? The Best app? The Best mobile? The Most Likely to Make the World a Better Place? You have until midnight PT tonight to enter your nominations. There are 15 different startup and product categories. Who is worthy of consideration? After nominations close tonight, we will sift through them all (well, okay, our computers will—165,000 have been submitted so far) and select five finalists in each category for the final round of voting, which will begin on December 15. So get those nominations in now if you haven’t already. The Crunchies award ceremony will be held on Jan. 9, 2009, 7:30 pm at the Herbst Theater across the street from City Hall in San Francisco. The reception will follow and tickets will be released in December. Here are photos from last year, when we introduced the noble-yet-noticeable Crunchies gorilla statuette. This year, they will be even more apropos as we celebrate the survival of the fittest. We are lucky once again to be partnering with some of the leading tech blogs on the Web: GigaOm, Silicon Alley Insider, and VentureBeat. They will be co-hosting the event with us. On the video front, 1938 Media will be on hand to document the evening. Together, and with your help, we hope to bring the Web community together and recognize the best to has to offer. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 10 Dec 2008 | 11:47 pm Best Introduction To Programming For Bright 11-14-Year-Olds?firthisaword writes "I will be teaching an enrichment programming course to 11-14 year old gifted children in the Spring. It is meant as an introduction to very basic programming paradigms (conditions, variables, loops, etc.), but the kids will invariably have a mix of experience in dealing with computers and programming. The question: Which programming language would be best for starting these kids off on? I am tempted by QBasic which I remember from my early days — it is straightforward and fast, if antiquated and barely supported under XP. Others have suggested Pascal which was conceived as an instructional pseudocode language. Does anyone have experience in that age range? Anything you would recommend? And as a P.S: Out of the innumerable little puzzles/programs/tasks that novice programmers get introduced to such as Fibonacci numbers, primes or binary calculators, which was the most fun and which one taught you the most?" A few years ago, a reader asked a similar but more general question, and several questions have focused on how to introduce kids to programming. Would you do anything different in teaching kids identified as academically advanced?Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 10 Dec 2008 | 11:40 pm Nobel-Winning Physicist May Be Obama's Pick for Energy SecretaryPresident-Elect Barack Obama is rumored to have tapped Nobel Prize-winning physicist Steven Chu for Energy Secretary. Chu is currently the director of the Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory where he has worked tirelessly on major alternative energy initiatives.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 10 Dec 2008 | 11:37 pm Competitive Companies, Inc. (CCI) Announces Board of Directors Nomination for Dr. Ray PowersRIVERSIDE, Calif., Dec. 10 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Competitive Companies, Inc. (CCI) (OTC Bulletin Board: CCOP) announced today the Nomination of Dr. Ray Powers to its Board of Directors. Dr.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 10 Dec 2008 | 11:34 pm 'Star Trek' Tweaker Talks Perils of Remastering Original SeriesDigital upgrades, including some not-so-subtle changes that annoyed a handful of purists, bring the pioneering sci-fi show into the 21st century.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 10 Dec 2008 | 11:17 pm Verizon 4G Next year: A Pipe Dream?
Verizon's Long Term Evolution (LTE) service or 4G for cellphones could be available as early as late next year in the U.S., said company Chief Technical Officer Richard Lynch at a conference. Verizon is also hoping to go beyond 4G access for cellphones and have femtocells, or base stations that create indoor hotspots, available shortly after the 4G service makes its debut. It's an ambitious statement. If Verizon can stick to its plan it will be able to deliver 4G through LTE standard ahead of its peers. The company's rival T-Mobile is still rolling out its 3G network, while AT&T is likely to continue with HSPA standard till 2011. Competitor Sprint is betting on WiMax, the competing 4G level standard to LTE, though LTE allows for faster throughputs. Earlier this week, LG showed the first handset modem chip for LTE that can theoretically support wireless download speeds of 100 Megabits Per Second (Mbps) and upload speeds of 50 Mbps. Photo: Cellphone Tower (Woody Thrower/Flickr)
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 10 Dec 2008 | 11:06 pm HP to bring out batteries that degrade more slowlySection: Computers, Laptops, Gadgets / Other, Green
The new technology will allow for about three years without decreasing from its original maximum capacity. It could even be pushed to four years if the laptop isn’t used heavily everyday. In a way, it’s another way of taking a small step to go green, since it would decrease the number of lithium-ion batteries thrown out every year. Currently the batteries are only planned to be used by HP, but it is possible for Boston-Power to license the technology to other companies. It would be nice if they did. Especially with the rise of laptops for college students who can’t afford to buy a new battery every year and a half, any company adopting these batteries would be welcome. Read [Electronista] Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 10 Dec 2008 | 11:03 pm A Telescope In a Cubic Kilometer of IceRoland Piquepaille writes "University of Delaware (UD) scientists and engineers are currently working at South Pole under very harsh conditions. This research team is one of the many other ones working on the construction of IceCube, the world's largest neutrino telescope in the Antarctic ice, far beneath the continent's snow-covered surface. When it is completed in 2011, the telescope array will occupy a cubic kilometer of Antarctica. One of the lead researchers said that 'IceCube will provide new information about some of the most violent and far-away astrophysical events in the cosmos.' The UD team has even opened a blog to cover this expedition. It will be opened up to December 22, 2008. I guess they want to be back in Delaware for Christmas, but read more for additional details and references, including a diagram of this telescope array built inside ice."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 10 Dec 2008 | 10:53 pm Sad: R2-D2 Becomes a Children's Aquarium
He is debasing himself as a full-time aquarium. Currently available for purchase at the Hammacher Schlemmer store for $130, the Aquarium R2 robot holds a 1.75 gallon tank in his belly and that is barely enough to hold two or three small fish. If you want to get an up close look inside the aquarium, you can look through the visual radar of the poor bot. Yes, the wily peeper that once laid eye upon a free Endor has now been converted to an embedded periscope. This means that the only vision he has of the world is the constant churning of water in his innards. If that's not enough to send you weeping to your lap, the hacked bot’s head still rotates with any voice command, but he's likely now imperceptible to specific commands, which means he’ll dumbly move even when you just say 'dog' or 'fish.' What's really sad is that at the end of the day, the money he's making as a glorified aquarium won't even go to his tiny bots but to the corporation he's indebted to. Why do you allow this George Lucas, why?
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 10 Dec 2008 | 10:44 pm SendOutCards Saves Time and Money, Prompting Warm Exchanges This Holiday SeasonSendOutCards.com Presents Custom Holiday Greeting Cards - Stuffed, Stamped and Mailed to Recipients Worldwide SALT LAKE CITY, Dec.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 10 Dec 2008 | 10:43 pm On the 1st Day of Christmas a Gift From us to TheeA Partridge in a Pear Tree...PLUS an O2 Wireless Phone! ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, N.J., Dec.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 10 Dec 2008 | 10:19 pm Why a Music Tax Is a Bad IdeaAn anonymous reader writes with a followup to the story posted last week about Warner Music's plan for a music tax for universities. "There's been some debate about this plan and Techdirt has a detailed explanation of why a music tax is a bad idea, noting that it effectively rewards those who failed in the marketplace, punishes those who innovated and sets up a huge, inefficient and unnecessary bureaucracy. Meanwhile, plenty of musicians who are experimenting with new business models are finding that they can make more money and appeal to more fans. So, why stymie that process with a new bureaucracy that simply funds the big record labels?"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 10 Dec 2008 | 10:09 pm Gadgets, Games Help Musicians Offset Declining SalesBands both big and small rely on gadgets like the iPhone and game consoles, as well as YouTube and other websites to revitalize the music industry.Source: Wired: Gadgets | 10 Dec 2008 | 10:00 pm Gadgets, Games Help Musicians Offset Declining SalesBands both big and small rely on gadgets like the iPhone and game consoles, as well as YouTube and other websites to revitalize the music industry.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 10 Dec 2008 | 10:00 pm Producer Directs Video via Webcam
Online marketer Barak Kassar did just that, helping to direct a video his firm was shooting in San Francisco while he was in Spain. His San Francisco employees aimed a webcam at one of the video monitors and fired up Skype, enabling Kassar to see exactly what the video cameras were shooting. Later, they found a codec that enabled them to pipe the video directly into Skype. "The tools worked well enough for me to be able to talk with the actor early on (after observing for a while) and set a certain tone," Kassar wrote in a brief blog post. "So… in this case Skype beat United Airlines." As a bonus, his crew found that they could just mute Kassar, forcing him to try more creative ways of getting their attention (see below). Come to think of it, maybe our bosses should try management-by-Skype....
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 10 Dec 2008 | 9:59 pm North Smithfield and Woonsocket, Rhode Island Residents to Benefit from Verizon Wireless Network ExpansionInvesting to Stay Ahead of Growing Demand for Wireless Voice, Multimedia and Internet Access NORTH SMITHFIELD, R.I. Dec.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 10 Dec 2008 | 9:59 pm New Biodiesel Fuel From Used Coffee GroundsResearchers in Nevada are reporting that waste coffee grounds can provide a cheap, abundant, and environmentally friendly source of biodiesel fuel for powering cars and trucks.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Dec 2008 | 9:41 pm Is The Snowy Owl A Marine Species?Wildlife satellite studies could lead to a radical re-thinking about how the snowy owl fits into the Northern ecosystem."Six of the adult females that we followed in a satellite study spent most of last winter far out on the Arctic sea ice," said Université Laval doctoral student Jean-Francois Therrien, who is working with Professor Gilles Gauthier as part of an International Polar Year (IPY) research project to better understand key indicator species of Canadian northern ecosystems.The finding flabbergasted the biologists who are now curious to find out if Inuit seal hunters ever encounter the large white birds on the ice in winter darkness."As for what the birds were doing there, they were possibly preying on seabirds," said Gauthier.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Dec 2008 | 9:33 pm Another Yahoo investor seeks Microsoft search deal (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 10 Dec 2008 | 9:29 pm MySpace introduces toolbar for WindowsSection: Web, Downloads, Web 2.0, Websites, Google
Need a toolbar? No? I didn’t think so. MySpace figures you do need a toolbar. If your life is still on MySpace, the toolbar will let you get updates on your friend’s activities, automatic login, links to MySpace services and is powered by Google. The toolbar works with Firefox 2.0 (or better) and Internet Explorer 6.0 (or better), but only on Windows. If you’re up to adding the toolbar, you can pick it up today at MySpace. Link [MySpace Toolbar] Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 10 Dec 2008 | 9:28 pm Report Finds US Lacks Safety Plan For NanotechnologyImage Caption: More than 600 products involving nanomaterials are currently on the market. Most are skin care and cosmetic products, but researchers are developing ways to use the materials for food additives, medical therapies and electronics.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Dec 2008 | 9:18 pm Carbon Dioxide and Water Found On ExoplanetOff the Rails writes "The BBC reports that evidence has been found for both water vapour and carbon dioxide on a planet 63 light years away. The planet is a 'hot Jupiter' with a surface temperature of 1173K and an orbital period of just 53 hours. The gases were found spectroscopically once its orbit had been deduced from observation. NASA hailed the news as proof that Kepler will be able to do its job of finding planets capable of supporting life." Wikipedia also has an entry on the planet, dubbed HD 189733b.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 10 Dec 2008 | 9:18 pm Legalize Brain-Enhancing Drugs, Scientists SayRather than trying to quash the growing off-label use of brain-enhancing drugs such as Ritalin and Adderall, scientists say we should legalize it. Mentally competent adults should be able to decide whether or not to use the drugs, particularly when side-effects are minimal, they argue.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 10 Dec 2008 | 9:09 pm Peru sues Yale over Incan findsThe government of Peru has sued Yale University in the U.S. courts seeking the return of Incan mummies, bones and pottery excavated decades ago. Hiram Bingham III, a Yale lecturer in South American history and future U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Dec 2008 | 8:47 pm Street View, walking direction find their way to Google Maps for S60 and WinMo
With the iPhone, BlackBerry, and Android platforms all getting their Street View wings a few months back, anyone running S60 and Windows Mobile might be feeling like they’ve been left out in the cold. Don’t worry - your time to come snuggle up next to the toasty street-perusing fire has come. Besides Street View, these newest releases also tote walking directions, transit alerts, and support for Google’s local business review service - plus they’ve made the whole thing a bit snappier. Head over to google.com/gmm on your handset to grab the latest version. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: MobileCrunch | 10 Dec 2008 | 8:07 pm Logitech unveils G13 advanced gameboard; orthopedic doctors weep at lost revenueFROM APPLETELL - The Logitech G13 advanced gameboard features an ergonomically inspired shape and envelope-pushing functionality to provide more comfort during prolonged gaming sessions. MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 10 Dec 2008 | 8:03 pm MPAA Urges Obama to Embrace Internet FilteringThe Motion Picture Association of America, Hollywood's lobbying arm, is urging the incoming Obama administration to embrace internet filtering to crack down on online piracy. The announcement comes weeks ahead of an Obama inauguration. Obama is set to become the nation's first chief executive with a cabinet-level copyright czar.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 10 Dec 2008 | 7:57 pm Spinal muscular atrophy genetic test urgedThe American College of Medical Genetics says a genetic test for spinal muscular atrophy should be offered to all couples. The statement appears in the November issue of the organization's journal Genetics in Medicine. ACMG officials said spinal muscular atrophy is a severe neuromuscular genetic disease caused by mutations in the SMN1 gene.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Dec 2008 | 7:39 pm Hubble finds CO2 on extrasolar planetThe U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 10 Dec 2008 | 7:36 pm Why are awesome phone apps dying?Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile
What Hockenberry suggests is the risk of developing a kick-butt application is too high, now that the risk of getting lost in a sea of applications or charging an otherwise seemingly reasonable $9.99 or even $4.99 gets heckled for lower prices. The payoff for producing a $0.99 ringtone application is a much easier risk to take and many developers are going that route. But, as Hockenberry points out, we are losing the programs that take time to develop and thus become a riskier proposition with programmers charging $150/$200 per hour. Hockenberry posits,
While my economics background suggests competition is always a good thing, the problem is in an extremely limited preview of what you are buying from the App Store. Just a few screen shots cannot convey properly what the proposed software accomplishes. Many of the negative reviews of software could probably be attributed to the lack of understanding about what the program does before purchasing. Here’s a solution: free trials. Nothing new in the software world, for sure. But a free trial in the form of a set time limit would help users try before they buy without having to find the “lite” version as is done now. Often, when searching the App Store, I am unaware of a lite version exists of an app I’ve stumbled across. Another solution would be a better way to search the store. Better search criteria would be the simple way to go. Base it on the total number of reviews, or the rating or number of downloads, all this data suggests something worth checking out. Without more information navigating through 10,000 apps today is only going to get more difficult. Read [furbo.org] Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 10 Dec 2008 | 7:17 pm Verizon aiming for LTE rollout in 2009
Wuh oh - looks like it’s time to start sweating for
While the “this time next year” bit technically only pins things a month earlier than the expected roll-out time of 2010, a month is a real long time in the mobile world. Each month, thousands upon thousands of contracts reach their end, making the competitor’s offerings a whole lot more intriguing for the now unshackled mobile consumers. With Clearwire already rolling out the 4G goods in a limited number of cities, getting LTE up and running a month earlier might just save them some customers. [Via Phonescoop] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: MobileCrunch | 10 Dec 2008 | 7:11 pm Zeemote JS1 bluetooth controller rolls out in MexicoI don’t think I can express how much I wanted to add something about tacos to that headline. Yes, I realize Mexico has more to offer besides tacos. I just really loves me some tacos. Oh, right - back on topic. This morning, Zeemote, Inc is announcing a partnership with Telcel and Sony Ericsson to bring the Zeemote JS1 down to Mexico. Following Zeemote’s now standard practice of bundling, the JS1 will come tucked inside as an accessory for the Sony Ericsson W760i.
Still no where to be seen, however, is any means of purchasing a JS1 by itself. I understand Zeemote’s desire to get these things bundled; they’re a bit niche, so they’d probably have a hell of a time pitching them by themselves. But with the Nokia N86 and Sony Ericsson W760i already compatible, why not make a few available to the people that do want them? Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies Source: MobileCrunch | 10 Dec 2008 | 6:40 pm Don't use an iPhone to send your Dad a text message after you make love for the first time This has all the hallmarks of a fake to me, but it's so easy to imagine it happening — I manage to accidentally send text messages to the wrong people on my iPhone all the time — that I'm posting anyway: according to the Inquisitr, 18 year old Elizabeth Frisinger accidentally texted her dad instead of a friend with a short txtspk account of the loss of her virginity. Summary: it was gr8, Dad! Wish you were here! Her father was stoically unamused, demanding her immediate return on the next plane.
It's doubtlessly fake, but still, it's plausible. I think the iPhone is so easy to send text messages to people because it stores them like iChat conversations: you open the SMS app and are presented with your last "conversation." It's hard to get over the training of other phone's SMS systems to just start enterting text as soon as you open the app, though: I find myself assuming that after I enter my message and hit "Send," I'll then be asked what contact to send it to. It's merely an issue of retraining — the iPhone's system makes just as much sense as the other — but I've been finding it a big difficult to get over years of interface indoctrination. Lost her virginity and texted her Dad [Inquisitr] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 10 Dec 2008 | 6:17 pm Casio calculator watches refresh their colors
If you still hanker for the convenience of wrist calculating but hanker for in-season colors, Casio has just refreshed their decidedly retro-line of calculator watches. All cost $59 a piece, except the black, which Apple MacBook style costs more than its colored (and, I think, swanker) companions: the black is $69. I like the yellow and green. Casio Databank gets new colors [SlipperyBrick] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 10 Dec 2008 | 5:57 pm Android Market may be getting Ringtones, Wallpapers, and Google Checkout
Can’t live without Fergie ringtones on your Android handset, but can’t take the time to throw together your own? You may be in luck. While rummaging around through the files tucked away within the Android Market package, the guys over at Phandroid noticed a couple of unused icons lingering. If these icons are any indication of functionality thus far unseen, we might be seeing ringtones, wallpapers, and Google Checkout support make their way into the Android Market before too long.
Now, with ringtones and wallpapers, the first interpretation most people seem to be pulling from this is, “Wow! User-made ringtones and wallpapers along the lines of the application set up!” That’s probably not the case, due to one big nasty obstacle: copyright. As nice as it may be for your Ferrari fund, you just can’t go peddling unauthorized Fergie ringtones for 99 cents a pop. Same story with wallpapers - for the things folks tend to use as cell phone backgrounds (sports teams, cars, celebrities, models), someone needs to be gettin’ paid. So if the users can’t supply the ringtones, who will? There are two options: Either Google will do all of the licensing and content creation themselves (which I really, really doubt), or it’s being put there for the carriers as a venue for their goods (much more likely). Trivial as they may seem to the technically inclined, ringtones and wallpapers pull in a substantial amount of money from the crowd who just wants to add a bit of personality to their handset without having to lift a finger. Google can either force the carriers to come up with their own separate solution - essentially adding a second market - or they can give carriers a bit of space in the Android Market. It makes the carriers happy, and potentially pulls in some more eyes to browse around the Application section. It’s win-win and, as long as no one tries to clamp off make-your-own solutions like Ringdroid, the user doesn’t lose anything either. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: MobileCrunch | 10 Dec 2008 | 5:45 pm Firefox adds multitouch gestures for Macs Allthough Mozilla's Eddie Lee had successfully proven the concept in a beta back in October, the latest beta of Firefox 3.2 brings multitouch gestures to the MacBook line... even on previous generation MBPs!
Gadget Lab's Charlie Sorrel was impressed: I gave it a try, and the gestures are even better than those in Apple's own browser, Safari... I'm distrustful of Firefox upgrades after being burned after every upgrade as yet another indispensable extension defuncts, otherwise I'd give it a go. Anyone in our readership taken it for a spin? Firefox Adds Multitouch Gestures for Macs [Gadget Lab] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 10 Dec 2008 | 5:42 pm Fifth of World's Corals DeadCarbon emissions are largely to blame for the death of many of the world's reefs, say scientists.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Dec 2008 | 5:03 pm Voltaic Generator solar bag now shipping, capable of charging a laptop Voltaic Systems has announced the "Generator" bag, a laptop case with a solar panel that finally, blessedly has enough oomph to charge a laptop. An hour in the sun will get you 20 to 45 minutes of run time, depending on the power draw of the laptop itself. And of course like all the other Voltatic bags, you can charge up phones, cameras, and the like.
It's not cheap, though, in large part because the 15-Watt solar panel has a 20% efficiency, which is quite good for a consumer piece. The Generator also has a larger 58-Watt-hour Li-ion battery that it uses for power storage, which also isn't cheap. Very slick. If I weren't already in a heavy backlog of reviews I'd try to take one out for a spin, but haven't used previous Voltaic bags in the past, I'm sure that this one is quality. Voltaic Generator solar bag product page [Voltaic Systems] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 10 Dec 2008 | 4:37 pm Fingerprints Can Reveal Drug UseA fingerprint could soon reveal much more than your identity.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Dec 2008 | 4:03 pm Hubble Spots CO2 on Extrasolar PlanetThe Hubble Space Telescope finds CO2 in the atmosphere of a planet orbiting another star.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Dec 2008 | 3:00 pm Maxing Out on Oil Could Speed Up Climate ChangeAs oil reserves dwindle, scientists fear we may use more planet-choking coal.Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 10 Dec 2008 | 2:49 pm Firefox Adds Multitouch Gestures for MacsThe Firefox browser now supports multitouch gestures on Mac notebooks, letting you control many aspects of the browser by swiping, pinching and twisting your fingers on the trackpad.Source: Wired: Gadgets | 10 Dec 2008 | 1:05 pm GPS, Hidden Cameras Watching Over Baby JesusA number of churches, synagogues, governments and ordinary citizens have given up on old-fashioned padlocks -- or trust -- and are putting their faith in technology to protect holiday displays from pranks or prejudice. Eager to avoid the December police blotter, many jumped at a security company's offer of free use of GPS systems and hidden cameras to guard their mangers and menorahs.Source: Wired: Gadgets | 10 Dec 2008 | 12:54 pm Rumor: Zune Phone is Coming to CES 2009After years of rumors and brusque denials, it appears the Zune phone is the real deal. According to Trip Chowdhry, an analyst at Global Equities Research, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer will announce a Zune-style mobile device during his keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, on January 7, 2009.Source: Wired: Gadgets | 10 Dec 2008 | 11:52 am
|
The government is issuing around 240,000 tickets to President Elect Obama’s inauguration on January 20. But many more people than that want to be there, and there are plenty of parties and other activities for them to attend. The big problem, though, is finding a place to stay.
Xeni sez, "Fundacion Sobrevivientes (In English, "Survivors Foundation") works to end "femicide" in Guatemala. They provide legal aid, psychological care, and protection for rape victims -- including children. They assist women whose children have been snatched from them to be sold illegally into adoption. They provide support for families of female assassination victims. Founder Norma Cruz was featured in the documentary 
Twenty five year old venture capital firm 
Unibody Macbooks and MacBook Pros, along with newer MacBook Airs, have gotten a firmware update from Apple, ostensibly addressing “stability issues.” I think they’re talking about 
“Broadcast 2.0″: a swanky new term for the convergence of Internet video and social media. BBC is working on integrating this idea into their iPlayer, launched a year ago in December 2007.
Shiro recently announced the availability of a more green MP3 player, which uses solar cells on the back to recharge its internal battery. A pretty cool idea, but the question remains, is it practical? Before I get into the specifics of the player, I want to mention how the solar cells work in terms of battery life. 
With the holiday travel season upon us, I’ve been thinking long and hard about what battery back up I’ll need for the iPhone. To date, you’ve had the option of a battery pack that connects in and charges or a form fitting battery pack that you put the phone in. The packs by themselves are the cheaper option, but make it awkward to talk. But now, Tekkeon intros their myPower at $69.99 and the line begins to blur.
It happens eventually to all laptops, the battery starts to last for a shorter period of time to the point where you can’t bring it anywhere without also bringing the power supply as well. Normally this point comes about 18 months into the life of the laptop, and is the point at which you need a new battery, Now, HP has licensed technology from Boston-Power that will not make is buy new laptop batteries so often.
If you're 6,000 miles away but you still need to look over your employees' shoulders, why not try a webcam?
Craig Hockenberry, designer of Frenzic and Twitterific applications for the iPhone, tells of tough choices he has to make, and he is forced to err on the side of crappy applications. Why? In a word, risk. The model he presents will affect all phone app stores such as the Google Android store, BlackBerry application store and any other with customer traction. 
