Previously:

• New IDEO book, Thoughtless Acts - Boing Boing
• More on social mobiles from IDEO - Boing Boing
• Ex-IDEO lectures on creativity and management - Boing Boing
• Ideo designs the coolest stuff - Boing Boing
• IDEO has a new concept-cubicle, - Boing Boing
• Outlandish business cards from IDEO. - Boing Boing

Previously:

• Cool robot sculpture gallery - Boing Boing
• Junk robot sculptures from Guy Robot - Boing Boing
• Junk robot sculptures from Jason Lane - Boing Boing
• Junk robot sculptures - Boing Boing
• Philip K. Dick robot - Boing Boing

Source: Gizmodo | 9 Feb 2009 | 9:53 am

Last Gasp on My Doorstep

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.

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There are a lot of things that can suck about being a freelance writer: long, solitary hours, throwing pitches at magazines like so much spaghetti against a wall (with nothing sticking), low pay, no benefits, having to discipline yourself to stay in the saddle, while sunshine, or a nap, or The Daily Show play their sexy siren songs. One thing that does not suck is getting lots of free shit: books, CDs, movies, t-shirts, free trips to exotic locales (if you're the type that succumbs to the latter, somewhat questionable, job perk). When I knew I was going to be doing this Boing Boing Guest Blogging gig, I wrote off for some books I might want to review. I saw in my latest issue of Hi-Fructose that there was a new Chris Mars book, called Tolerance. And there was that new Attaboy postcards collection. Oh, and there was also that last Ron English book. I sent an email off to the Last Gasp PR person and asked if I could see review copies of these. He wrote back and said sure and he'd send some other titles I might be interested in as well. A week or so later, a box showed up on my front porch which was so heavy, I could barely muscle it into the house. I can't tell you how excited I was as I recklessly knived into it. It was crammed with thick, nutritious tree meat. Besides the books I'd asked for, there was a collection of legendary montage artist Winston Smith's work, called All Riot on the Western Front, the horror-comedy manga of Tokyo Zombie, a book from the godfather of low-brow Robert Williams, called Through Prehensile Eyes, an oversized book of unsettling kiddie-pink perversion from Gary Baseman, called Dying of Thirst (taken from his "I Melt in Your Presence" show), Limited Edition: The Art and Design of GAMA-GO (the only place you'll find all of GAMA-GO's limited-release designs), a hefty tome of Basil Wolverton's lifework, called The Original Art of Basil Wolverton, the list goes on. This motherload of fringe-art awesomeness arrived just days before Christmas. It was like my very own Christmas Story, except my winning prize sucked a lot less than a mannequin leg lamp. I ended up getting some nice gifts for the holidays, but I couldn't help coming back to that box, both literally and figuratively, as the real Yuletide cheer. So, a million thanks to Last Gasp. I cherish these amazing books that you sent, but I may have to boil and eat some of them if times get any tougher. Interestingly enough, with all of these books to ogle and sniff, it was the two I asked for in the first place, Chris Mars' Tolerance and Ron English's Abject Expressionism, that got the biggest rise out of me, and my art-student son, Blake. Chris' work is undeniably strident in its political message, but the rawness of the anger, the clarity of the shouting, is so compelling, and its all rendered with such admirable technical virtuosity. This guy is definitely the George Grosz of the 21st century. I love the way all of his figures look almost like they've been flayed alive to reveal the naked truth beneath. Like Grosz, he manages to render macabre beauty in the most staggering depictions of ugliness and horror. My son and I reverently paged through Ron English's book, laughing, gasping, and generally marveling at the perverse genius behind it. It reminded me of being high and watching TV with the sound off, the true idiocy of it all so clearly revealed. English Cuisinarts cultural icons, commercial trash, and sacred cows (literal cows, even) into such an intoxicating slurry, I literally felt like my consciousness had been altered by the time we were through. Ron English shreds icons and brand identities like a guitar hero. He's the Jimi Hendrix of culture jamming.

Source: Boing Boing | 9 Feb 2009 | 9:36 am

Nexperience Selected by Vodafone to Support Delivery of Mobile Applications on New Handsets

TEL AVIV, Israel, February 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Nexperience, a leading provider of remote access and automated testing solutions for mobile devices, today announced that Vodafone, the world's leading international mobile communications group, has selected the Nexperience system.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Feb 2009 | 9:00 am

Finjan Announces New Secure Web Gateway - Unified Web Security Solution for Enterprises

SAN JOSE, California, February 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Finjan Inc., a leader in secure web gateway products, announced today the launch of its unified Secure Web Gateway (SWG) version 9.2.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Feb 2009 | 9:00 am

UK Government Plans 10-Year Database of Citizens' Travel

moderators_are_w*nke writes "The UK government is planning yet another database to track its citizens, this time keeping track of their movements in and out of the country for ten years. Just like all their other databases, this one 'is essential in the fight against crime, illegal immigration and [of course] terrorism.'" I'd be very surprised if the US is not already doing this, and just not making a point to let anyone know.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 9 Feb 2009 | 8:54 am

CrunchGear Week in Review: Trapped Under Arm Edition

Purported Kindle 2 images and price leaked
Creepy ‘Hug Me Pillow’ is on sale!
The Suima crib is the world’s first fully automatic baby bed
Review: Health Energy Potion
How to recognize different types of speaker from quite a long way away

Source: CrunchGear | 9 Feb 2009 | 8:00 am

Longtop to Develop Treasury Management System for an Overseas Branch of a Big Four Bank in China

XIAMEN, China, Feb.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Feb 2009 | 8:00 am

Autonomy Receives 2008 Product of the Year Award for Customer Interaction Solutions

Qfiniti Enterprise Honored for Outstanding Innovation CAMBRIDGE, England and SAN FRANCISCO, February 9 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Feb 2009 | 8:00 am

AU Optronics Corp. Reports January 2009 Consolidated Revenue

HSINCHU, Taiwan, Feb.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Feb 2009 | 7:07 am

SAP Provides Additional Revenue Potential for SME Ecosystem Members

Variety of Collaboration Options Provides More Opportunities to Work With SAP WALLDORF, Germany, Feb.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Feb 2009 | 7:00 am

ADVANCED SEMICONDUCTOR ENGINEERING, INC. ANNOUNCES MONTHLY NET REVENUES

TAIPEI, Taiwan, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- Advanced

Source: Gizmodo | 9 Feb 2009 | 6:51 am

/C O R R E C T I O N -- Acision/

In the news release, "Acision Prepares Telenor Pakistan for Exponential Messaging Growth" issued on 9 Feb 2009 01:01 GMT, by Acision over PR Newswire, we are advised by a representative of the company that the final sentence of the second paragraph should read "As of December 2008, the subscriber base has reached 19.3 million, so an increase in messaging infrastructure capacity to meet anticipated messaging volumes was required." and not "As of January 2009, the subscriber base has reached the 20 million mark, so an increase in messaging infrastructure capacity to meet anticipated messaging volumes was required." as originally issued inadvertently. Complete, corrected release follows: , /PRNewswire/ -- - Acision Increases Capacity by 250% to Cater for Boom in SMS Traffic Acision, the world's leading messaging company, announced today that Telenor Pakistan, one of the leading mobile operators in Pakistan, has again selected the Acision SMSC to expand its messaging capacity to cater for

Source: Gizmodo | 9 Feb 2009 | 6:19 am

Undying love in ≤150 characters: the contest results

Following an extended wrangle, our distinguished panel of judges has settled on a winner for the Undying love in ≤150 characters competition: Misery4Brett, comment #39. Misery's entry, which Shapeways will be transforming into a 3-D candleholder, is:

It is dark
and when we kiss
my fingers find you
like candlelight

We're still waiting for Kevin Jackson-Mead's opinions on the three best entries of a romantically scientific or mathematical nature, whose authors will be receiving copies of Strange Attractors: Poems of Love and Mathematics.

If you haven't read the contest thread, you should. It's full of ingenious romantic geekery -- and, as our judges demonstrated, there's something there for everyone.

Source: Boing Boing | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:53 am

German Bundeswehr Recruiting Hackers

bad_alloc writes "Heise.de tells us about the German Bundeswehr's idea of recruiting hackers in order to 'penetrate, manipulate and damage hostile networks.' (Note: The following passage has been translated from German into English: 'The Regiment is stationed in Rheinbach, near Bonn, and consists of several dozen graduates from Bundeswehr universities. They're training at the moment, but the 'hackers in uniforms' are supposed to be operational by next year. This regiment officially belongs to the "Kommando Strategische Aufklärung" (strategic reconnaissance) and is commanded by Brigadier General Friedrich Wilhelm Kriesel. The Bundeswehr has not said anything to this regiment yet.' You can find the full article in German."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:46 am

Feb. 9, 1870: Feds Get on Top of the Weather

1870: President Ulysses S. Grant signs a bill creating what we now call the National Weather Service. Forecasting models were simple but generally effective.

It had been obvious for centuries that weather in North America generally moves from west to east or southwest to northeast. But other than looking upwind, that knowledge was little help in predicting the weather until you could move weather reports downwind faster than the weather was moving.

The telegraph finally made that possible. The Smithsonian Institution in 1849 began supplying weather instruments to telegraph companies. Volunteer observers submitted observations to the Smithsonian, which tracked the movement of storms across the country. Several states soon established their own weather services to gather data.

Congress thought the nation needed a centralized weather office, and that the new system would be best served by military precision and discipline. Hence, the resolution signed by President Grant in 1870 required the Secretary of War:

The War Department assigned the new function to the Signal Service Corps, where Brig. Gen. Albert J. Myer matter-of-factly named the new unit the Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce.

The network went online Nov. 1, 1870. Observers at 24 stations in the eastern United States started taking synchronized readings at 7:35 a.m. and telegraphing them to the division's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Cleveland Abbe, a private forecaster who (name notwithstanding) operated out of Cincinnati, had a reputation for consolidating telegraph reports into top-notch weather maps. The Army hired him as Special Assistant to the Chief Signal Officer. Abbe began work in January 1871 and made his first official forecasts the following month. He soon exceeded public expectations with daily weather reports like this:

In 1872, Congress extended the Signal Service's weather responsibility to include the entire country. The weather division was renamed the U.S. Weather Bureau and transferred to civilian control as part of the Agriculture Department in 1891. President Franklin D. Roosevelt moved it to the Commerce Department in 1940.

The bureau was renamed the National Weather Service in 1970, when it joined the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey and the Bureau of Commercial Fisheries in the Commerce Department's newly created National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Abbe served the government's weather service in various capacities until 1916, the year of his death, and is often called the "father of the U.S. Weather Bureau."

Source: NOAA

Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am

Petite Weekender Tucks It in Tight

Samsonite misses the plane by not building this bag to the max carry-on dimensions. The hard-shell suitcase does a nice job of protecting your stuff, but you can only shove so much into it.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am

Games Without Frontiers: Sweet Success, Fascinating Failure: 48 Sleepless Hours at Global Game Jam

NEW YORK — Team A-to-Z was in trouble.

The four-person, game-design group had a great concept: They were crafting a zombie-fighting strategy title that would unfold entirely in text, like Zork. Players would type commands to peer into different rooms, get back text descriptions ("3 zombies are present on this floor"), then activate guns to kill the monsters.

The problem? The game was getting way too complex to finish on time. They'd hoped to include typical strategy elements — complicated room layout, different types of weapons, chesslike resource management. But after 24 hours of nonstop work, they blearily realized they'd never finish on time if they didn't make some tough and brutal decisions.

And the clock was ticking like never before. Team A-to-Z wasn't a normal game-design house, spending two years on a new title. They were participants in the crazed, pell-mell Global Game Jam, a festival held a week ago in which teams of geeks were given 48 hours to design videogames from scratch. When they filed into the fourth floor of a building at New York University — one of 54 Game Jam locations worldwide — all they knew is that by Sunday night, they had to have a playable game that took less than five minutes to play (one of the competition's rules).

The thing is — they pulled it off. With less than a day to go, Team A-to-Z made a bold move — and drastically simplified their game. When I showed up Sunday morning with only five hours to go, their creation had transformed: The game now consisted of a five-story building, with you perched on top, trying to kill zombies as they raced upward at a blistering pace. When I tried it out, I quickly found myself typing text commands — turnon 3 to fire the guns on the third floor, query 4 to use the cameras on the fourth floor — so frantically it felt like I was trying to disable a nuke. I was dead in barely 45 seconds. It was a blast.

"We turned Zork into a twitch game," laughed Bob Clark, one of the A-to-Z members. (Download their game, From A to Z and Back Again, and see for yourself.)

I went to the New York location of the Global Game Jam in part because I was interested in watching game design happen quickly. A typical $60 game for the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 takes years to develop, so it's hard to see the designers thinking on their feet, making the sorts of decisions — How powerful should this weapon be? How strong should gravity be in our physics? Should rival players be able to communicate? — that form the essence of game design. By watching people forced to design and code up a game in only a weekend, I could watch game design evolve before my eyes.

The weird thing is, the process wasn't that different from making a game in two or three years. The Game Jam designers all slammed headfirst into precisely the same Mount Everest-like challenges that "pro" game designers complain about. Indeed, if you watch the Game Jam people scramble around groggily for a weekend, you can understand much better why so many commercial games succeed — and why so many go down in flames.

For example, half the teams bit off more than they could chew. One group tried to make Sciencology, a fighting game in which two scientists race to leave a room — slowing each other down by hurling chemicals that hurt their opponent (like freezing him or slowing her down). They worked quickly: A few hours after forming their team Friday night, they'd drawn up a comprehensive whiteboard flow chart showing how the gameplay would work, and it looked awesome.

The thing is, the game required physics and art so complex that they spent the whole weekend programming the movement and characters. They only had something playable by Sunday, which didn't give them enough time to "play-test" their concept — to figure out what parts of it were a fun-suck. And play-testing is insanely crucial: Indeed, it's sort of where game design happens, because very small tweaks can produce a massive difference in whether a game is a nail-biting thrill or sheer drudgery.

In contrast, another Game Jam team developed a game called Lucid, with a supersimple concept: A little, dreaming boy floats upward, and you guide him past obstacles while trying to collect Lego bricks. The gameplay was pretty derivative; on paper, I thought it sounded dull. But they had a playable demo done in only 24 hours, which left them a full day for play-testing.

They nailed the physics perfectly: When you steer the little boy, you have good but not precise control, making what would otherwise be a too-simple game into a surprising challenge. Lucid became one of the most polished and enjoyable games of any Game Jam team worldwide. (Ditto for Wiki Paths, an incredibly cool game that gives you two randomly chosen Wikipedia pages and challenges you to get from one to another in five minutes by surfing links.)

In essence, the Game Jams teams were navigating the two eternal poles of game design — should I make a game ambitious and new? Or should I try to innovate on a well-known formula? What can I get done with a tight budget, and an even tighter ship date?

Ever wonder why Halo 2 had such a weird cliffhanger and unbalanced two-handed combat? Because Bungie Studios bit off more than it could chew, and the designers couldn't finish their story and play-tweaking before the game got shipped out the door. The makers of Mirror's Edge clearly spent a ton of time carefully tweaking the game's movement physics, but this deep attention may have come at the cost of level design: Many gamers found the levels too similar and monotonous.

All of which makes me think: Maybe participating in a Game Jam ought be a required rite of passage for anyone who wants to make videogames. It's a deep, oxygen-less dive into the depths of the industry, compressed into 48 hours. Survive it, and you can survive anything.

Postscript: After watching these derangedly energetic and creative teams go like gangbusters for a sleepless weekend, I feel like an absolute cretin pronouncing judgment on the games — and claiming some of the results weren't fun. Dude, they only had 48 hours!

So I feel bound to note that all of the games I saw being developed that weekend seemed like extremely fun concepts. For all the ones that couldn't quite get it together to have a fully polished entry finished on time, I suspect that another 24 hours — or even a decent night of sleep for the poor developers — would have been enough to make them as playably fun as their rivals.

- - -

Clive Thompson is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a regular contributor to Wired and New York magazines. Look for more of Clive's observations on his blog, collision detection.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am

Verizon Business Customers to Benefit From Global Network Expansion, Enhancements

Company Further Strengthens Foundation for Delivering Communications, IT and Security Solutions Worldwide BASKING RIDGE, N.J., Feb.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am

Petite Weekender Tucks It in Tight

Samsonite misses the plane by not building this bag to the max carry-on dimensions. The hard-shell suitcase does a nice job of protecting your stuff, but you can only shove so much into it.
Source: Wired: Gadgets | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am

Make It Quick, Play It Quick at Global Game Jam

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These miniature videogame marvels sprang from the frantic minds of developers during last week's Global Game Jam.

The international exercise in lightning-fast game design challenged creative types to crank out fully functional (and fully fun) videogames in just one weekend.

These screenshots show some of the titles cooked up, from a text-based zombie massacre to a Wikipedia-based puzzle game. For more on the Global Game Jam, read Clive Thompson's column on the subject.

Left: Lucid was one of the most polished games of the New York Game Jam because the team was large and diverse — game designers, programmers, music wranglers and an excellent artist who drew all the visuals by hand. The game literally looks like a pencil-and-watercolor picture.

:

Another reason the Lucid team got its game done on time and in polished format: They kept the gameplay supersimple. It's basically just a side-scroller flipped on its end — collecting goodies as your player floats slowly upward.

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Since they nailed the gameplay concept early, the Lucid team had lots of time to work on other stuff — like designing the obstacles and putting the colored blocks in hard-to-reach areas. The control scheme is nicely balanced: You have good but not perfect control, making an otherwise too-easy game quite challenging.

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Wiki Paths was an ingenious idea: The game gives you two randomly chosen Wikipedia pages and you have five minutes to navigate from one to another, by surfing links the connect pages. Everyone knows what it's like to surf idly through Wikipedia: This turns that common experience into an uncommon game.

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The Wiki Paths team had one big advantage: Because they could test their concept by simply picking random Wikipedia pages, they knew within hours — by late Friday night — that the concept was fun. Because implementing the game in Greasemonkey turned out to be difficult, they were coding up until the last second when the Game Jam ended.

:

From A to Z and Back Again is based on a hilarious concept: You're fighting zombies using a purely text-based interface. "We want it to be like you stumbled upon this ancient terminal in a locked-down, zombie-infested building, and it's your last chance for survival," said Bob Clark, one of the design-team members.

:

The team originally wanted to create a complicated strategy game, where you had to manage resources, spy into a complex of rooms and track complex zombie movements. But after 24 hours they realized they'd never get it done, and simplified everything: Five floors, one camera and one gun on each floor, and the zombies climbing up to get you on the roof.

:

When you die in From A to Z and Back Again, this is what it looks like. And you almost always die the first time you play. The gameplay is fast and furious, with the player frantically typing commands to check the cameras and fire guns: It's like trying to disarm a nuke.

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Materialism is a great concept: Your plane blows up, and as you fall you cut open luggage with a chainsaw in an attempt to find the single on-board parachute. Game Jam games had to last only five minutes, so this one integrated the time element neatly: If you don't find the parachute in five minutes ... splat.

:

Materialism was ambitious — the designers successfully hacked a Wii to control the chainsaw, composed a heart-thumping soundtrack and designed spinning 3-D luggage. But pulling together those elements took so long that the design team didn't have enough time to make the gameplay really work before the Game Jam finished.

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Pendulum 'Pocalypse is a "one switch" game — playable with a single button (perfect for phones!). As the pendulum swings, you hit a button to drop objects, trying to create piles that protect the humans from the attacking aliens. The upside: awesome sound effects, simple and funny concept. The downside: This team, too, hit the deadline wall, with quite not enough time to fully polish the game.

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In Sciencology, two people play as scientists each trying to escape a room first -- while throwing chemicals at each other to slow their rival down. The team utilized terrific, kitschy artwork: This image is from an opening cartoon that tells the game's back story.

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The gameplay in Sciencology was complex, because in addition to throwing weapons -- a green gas cloud, a blue freeze-bomb -- the scientists could zip across the game field using teleporters (those blue TV-like things). But the gameplay physics were so complex that the design team didn't really have Sciencology up and running until Sunday -- so they didn't have enough time to make the game totally fun.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am

Burning Question: Why Can't We Control Gadgets by Voice Alone?

It's a recurring pipe dream for technophiles and luddites alike: computers that not only listen but understand our every command. And each year, like clockwork, someone claims this day is upon us—that we can toss out our keyboards and warm up our larynges for a new relationship with our machines.

Press or say "1" for a cold, hard dose of reality.

Despite being crammed into nearly every imaginable electronic receptacle—from cell phones and desktop operating systems to cars and aircraft cockpits—speech-recognition software remains light-years away from tackling the general- purpose applications that would change the way we interact with computers. Sure, we've seen modest improvements, but breakthroughs have been rare. One of the most recent occurred more than a decade ago: Rasta, developed at the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley, enabled different kinds of hardware to use the same speech-recognition software. It was widely implemented in mobile phones in 2001, and nothing game-changing has happened since.

What's the holdup? Part of the problem is that, unlike with other types of software, processing power alone doesn't solve your problem. Moore's law only boosts a machine's ability to navigate larger pronunciation databases.

Those databases do help. By compiling massive lists of pronunciation variants, engineers try to minimize errors. But with some 30 ways of saying "of," and nearly infinite spoken iterations for more complex words, even the largest inventory is easy to foil. "There's not a speech recognizer today that you can't break by stretching out certain syllables," says Deb Roy, director of the Cognitive Machines Group at the MIT Media Lab.

So scientists continue to hack away at the problem, and they're learning a ton about how we meatbags process and understand sound. It turns out that we aren't flawless speech recognizers either. Rather, we often eke out meaning based largely on context and expectations.

"The next major thing in speech recognition is letting machines train themselves on the context," Roy says. His group is programming machines to analyze the listening environment and factor that new data into their sound-deciphering processes. Thus far they've experienced spikes in accuracy as high as 23 percent.

So while we're waiting for machines to start meeting us halfway on the speech front, please have a little patience with the automated voice on the other end of the line. You're really hard to understand.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am

Burning Question: Why Can't We Control Gadgets by Voice Alone?

It's a recurring pipe dream for technophiles and luddites alike: computers that not only listen but understand our every command. And each year, like clockwork, someone claims this day is upon us—that we can toss out our keyboards and warm up our larynges for a new relationship with our machines.

Press or say "1" for a cold, hard dose of reality.

Despite being crammed into nearly every imaginable electronic receptacle—from cell phones and desktop operating systems to cars and aircraft cockpits—speech-recognition software remains light-years away from tackling the general- purpose applications that would change the way we interact with computers. Sure, we've seen modest improvements, but breakthroughs have been rare. One of the most recent occurred more than a decade ago: Rasta, developed at the International Computer Science Institute at UC Berkeley, enabled different kinds of hardware to use the same speech-recognition software. It was widely implemented in mobile phones in 2001, and nothing game-changing has happened since.

What's the holdup? Part of the problem is that, unlike with other types of software, processing power alone doesn't solve your problem. Moore's law only boosts a machine's ability to navigate larger pronunciation databases.

Those databases do help. By compiling massive lists of pronunciation variants, engineers try to minimize errors. But with some 30 ways of saying "of," and nearly infinite spoken iterations for more complex words, even the largest inventory is easy to foil. "There's not a speech recognizer today that you can't break by stretching out certain syllables," says Deb Roy, director of the Cognitive Machines Group at the MIT Media Lab.

So scientists continue to hack away at the problem, and they're learning a ton about how we meatbags process and understand sound. It turns out that we aren't flawless speech recognizers either. Rather, we often eke out meaning based largely on context and expectations.

"The next major thing in speech recognition is letting machines train themselves on the context," Roy says. His group is programming machines to analyze the listening environment and factor that new data into their sound-deciphering processes. Thus far they've experienced spikes in accuracy as high as 23 percent.

So while we're waiting for machines to start meeting us halfway on the speech front, please have a little patience with the automated voice on the other end of the line. You're really hard to understand.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am

Cognitive Computing Project Aims to Reverse-Engineer the Mind

An ambitious research project aims to invent a new architecture for computing, one that is modeled on the structure of the human brain. It might enable computers that are far smaller, faster and more power-efficient. And they should be able to adapt and learn on their own.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 9 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am

Show Us Your Saints

Ed Note: Boingboing's current guest blogger Gareth Branwyn writes on technology, pop and fringe culture. He is currently a Contributing Editor at Maker Media. Recent projects have included co-creating The Maker's Notebook and editing The Best of MAKE and The Best of Instructables collections.

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I was raised Catholic (thanks, I'm better now). I also spent my teen years studying meditation, yoga, and eastern religions. So maybe through this upbringing, I tend to think in terms of teachers, gurus, saints, heroes, muses, angels, and daemons -- no longer in a theological sense, but I still find use for these concepts, at least in a poetic, symbolic sense. When I was kid, I loved all of the trappings of the saints: the icons, the medallions, the miracle stories, the statues, relics, the veneration. I'm a pagan at heart, and when you think about it, this is nothing more than high paganism, ceremonial magick. I loved the idea that there are different saints that help, guide, and protect you under different circumstances. And I loved that they represent different virtues and qualities you could meditate on and try to emulate, as you lit candles and prayed to icons. Recently, I've come to the realization that I still engage in something of this practice. I have various "teachers" in my life -- writers, philosophers, artists, and scientists -- whose work holds a powerful influence over me. They've become hugely symbolic in my life and have come to represent different aspects of myself that I wish to improve and magnify. I keep them close to me, mainly in collections of books in my library that I browse and "meditate" on whenever I am in need of a little inspiration. Below is my list of "saints." Do you have such a pantheon? These are more than your heroes. These are the people that you think have taught you the most, that you near-venerate in your love and respect for them, and whom you feel have helped form the bedrock of your beliefs and worldview. My "Saints" (and what they represent to me) William Blake - I venerate this guy above all others. He's the closest thing I have to a guru. His entire mission in life was to use his art and ideas to wake us all up from the somnambulism he believed the State, organized religion, even our own sensoria, were cursed to induce in us. I use him as my constant reminder to stay awake and creative, keep my imagination expansive, and to "fight the power." Gregory Bateson - A father of cybernetics. Bateson was something of a saint to the Whole Earth folks and Whole Earth was a huge influence on me. Bateson was the one who introduced me to Blake. Bateson reminds me to look at relationships over objects and for patterns that connect. And to tie all of my ideas and beliefs with slipknots. Robert Anton Wilson - In the CD interview series with Bob Wilson, Robert Anton Wilson Explains Everything, the interviewer states that RAW had spent a career collecting, trading in, and writing about conspiracy theories, the paranormal, and the like, but he doesn't appear to buy into much of it. So why does he spend so much time exploring such things? "It keeps my mind supple" is Wilson's reply. That elevates him to sainthood in my pantheon. Wilson also embodied the virtue of hilaritas to me. And he remind me to embrace the absurd. Wilson was also "open to anything, but skeptical of everything." Bucky Fuller - Fuller's mission in life was to see how much a single "human intelligence unit" could create, learn, and experience -- what one person could do to make the world a better place -- in a lifetime. Amazingly, he embarked on that mission, on the other side of an aborted suicide attempt, in his mid-30s. Everything we know about Buckminster Fuller happened after that. I also venerate Bucky's optimism, faith in human ingenuity, and in the transformative powers of science and technology. Aleister Crowley - I hate "The Beast" as much as I love him. He represents my faith in the powers of thelema (will) and agape (love) and the notion of syncretism. And I try to live by his motto "The method of science, the aim of religion." Say what you want against him (and there's plenty to say), but his influence on modern, at least bohemian, culture and on alternative religions has been huge. He was such a significant influence on me in my youth it would be disingenuous to not include him. And every list of apostles needs a Judas. (Sadly, there are no women on my list. I racked my brain. I could come up with women I greatly admire, lots of artists and musicians, but no one who's risen to the level I'm thinking about here.) So, who are YOUR saints? What lessons, virtues, ideas, or qualities do they represent for you?

Source: Boing Boing | 9 Feb 2009 | 4:12 am

Recession-O-Rama Deals for the Weekend 2.8.09

Section: Computers, Gaming, Console, Imaging, Digital Cameras, Features, Originals

Yep, the economy still is in shambles.  How can you help?  By pumping money into stores of course!  But you don’t have to go broke buying things.  Continuing with our weekend deals, here’s what we have for you today: a digital camera, an Xbox 360 Elite console with a $50 gift card, and a PC game.

Digital Camera

OfficeMax has the Sony DSCS750 Digital Camera for $90, after $40 of instant savings.  This camera comes with a 2.5-inch LCD display, High ISO sensitivity, 7.2MP, and face detection technology.  The instant savings discount ends on 2/14, so you have several days to pull the trigger on this deal.  Also, there is free shipping.

Xbox 360 Elite console

The next deal is an Xbox 360 Elite console from Best Buy.  You don’t save any money on the console itself, but you do get a $50 Best Buy gift card.  It sells for $400, and $9 for shipping.  The 360 comes with a 120GB hard drive, an HDMI port, and a 500Mhz ATI graphics processor. 

Prince of Persia

The last deal for today is brought to us by Amazon.  They have the Prince of Persia PC game on sale for $30, and you are saving $20.  Also, there is free shipping with this order.

From Amazon:

  * Enjoy the franchise’s debut on Ubisoft’s proprietary Anvil engine, the same engine used to develop Assassins Creed.
  * Utilize the Prince’s old skills, along with a whole new combat system, to battle Ahriman’s corrupted lieutenants to heal the land from the dark Corruption and restore the light.
  * Escape to a fantasy world set in ancient Persia brought to life through masterful storytelling and sprawling environments and that rivals the blockbusters of Hollywood.
  * For the first time in franchise history decide how the storyline unfolds by choosing the Prince’s path in an open-ended game world.
  * Wield the acrobatic and puzzle-solving power of the Prince’s beautiful and powerful AI companion Elika as you explore the perils of ancient Persia.

Hopefully if you want to buy a new camera, gaming system, or a game for your computer, you can save a little bit of money today.  Come back next week for more Recession-O-Rama deals!

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 9 Feb 2009 | 4:01 am

Ray White Selects Tableau Software for Enterprise-Wide Deployment to More Than 5,000 Employees

Australia's No.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 9 Feb 2009 | 4:01 am

Wake Up Call: Facebook Isn’t A Safe Haven

Facebook just turned 5 years old. But a week that should have been filled with reflection and good times was instead marred by a series of breaking news reports detailing sex scandals, phishing, and other malicious activity on the world’s largest social network.

In his blog post announcing the 5-year milestone, founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote that “Facebook has offered a safe and trusted environment for people to interact online, which has made millions of people comfortable expressing more about themselves.” But is Facebook really as safe as everyone seems to think?

It’s Been A Long Week

On Tuesday, February 3rd, we reported that thousands of sex offenders (many of whom were previously booted from MySpace) were lurking on Facebook (they’ve since been removed). As CNET’s Caroline McCarthy pointed out, these might not have necessarily been MySpace ‘refugees’ in the sense that they migrated en masse from MySpace to Facebook - they likely maintain profiles on multiple social networks. But the fact remains that there were thousands of convicted sexual offenders on a social network that is generally perceived as safe.

On Wednesday, news broke of an elaborate and disturbing sex ring involving at least 31 high school students. An 18 year-old man named Anthony Stancl has allegedly been masquerading as high-school girls on Facebook, flirting with underaged male classmates and convincing them to send him nude photographs. He would then use the photographs to blackmail the boys into performing sexual acts with him, which he took pictures of using a cell phone. Stancl has been charged with 12 felony counts and up to 300 years of jail time. (In a somewhat bizarre twist, Facebook responded to news of the sex ring by stating that fewer than 1% of its 150 million users are affected by impersonation schemes. So, around 1.5 million people. Not exactly a confidence-inspiring statistic.)

The same day, Facebook updated its Terms of Service, rewording many of its rules to make them easier to understand and explicitly prohibiting some common transgressions, like including false information in profiles or creating fake accounts. But there was one far more timely addition: “If you are required to register as a sex offender in any jurisdiction, you may not use the Facebook Service.” Facebook spokesman Barry Schnitt says that sex offenders had previously been banned through a number of other more general statements in the Terms of Service, but that the company wanted to make it more explicit.

On Friday, CNN reported on an increasing number of phishing attacks seen on Facebook, using a technique we first heard about in January. After gaining access to compromised accounts, scammers are now using Facebook to ask the victims’ “friends” for cash. The attacks can be particularly effective because the scammers can easily look up personal details of the people they’re contacting.

Finally, Maryland banned both Facebook and MySpace from its General Assembly Computers, as they had been the primary sources of numerous malware attacks (though we should note that the rumored ban of Facebook in Apple stores was overblown).

Had each of these stories broken on their own, they probably would have been met with little more than raised eyebrows. After all, with over 150 million users, it’s inevitable that some bad things are going to happen (and they have before). But taken together, it’s clear that Facebook isn’t quite the safe haven we might perceive.

How We Got Here

Since launching in 2004, Facebook has benefited from its public perception as a safe, clean site - especially compared to its biggest competitor, MySpace. Whereas MySpace allows users to customize their profile pages with graphics and audio (sometimes to the point of making them obnoxious), Facebook has maintained a more pristine environment, which certainly helps bestow a feeling of safety.

Facebook is also theoretically more secure. When it first launched, only users with valid university (.edu) Email addresses could sign up. Over the years the site expanded to allow high school students, and eventually opened up to everyone. But each group of students or coworkers is still segmented into different ‘networks’ - you can’t browse through anyone’s profile unless you belong to their university or company network, usually verified through Email. These roadblocks add up to make creating fake profiles more of a challenge, but as we’ve seen in the last week, they can be overcome.

Perhaps most important to note is Facebook’s relatively good security record up until this point. Parry Aftab, an independent online security expert who heads WiredSafety, says that there have been fewer sexual predator attacks on Facebook than its competitors and that her studies have found its security measures to exceed those seen elsewhere. She also notes that in general, users have behaved better on Facebook, and that teenagers have reported that they “feel safer” on the site.

But Aftab says that given how quickly Facebook has grown - it jumped from 100 million users last August to over 150 million users today - she isn’t surprised that some registered sex offenders slipped through the cracks. In her words, “if you have 150 million users, you’re going to have all kinds of bad people”.

So what measures can Facebook take to maintain its wholesome image?

What Needs To Change

Last May, Facebook announced that it had forged a deal with Attorneys General from 49 states to implement new safety and privacy rules (MySpace had adopted similar measures a few months earlier). Among the new policies were agreements to “aggressively remove inappropriate images and content” and to “more prominently display safety tips”.

At the time we noted that this was probably a tough measure for Facebook to swallow - such initiatives can be very costly in terms of manpower, especially when it comes to moderating content. And frankly it looks like Facebook hasn’t really lived up to its promise. For starters, MySpace has a pair of human eyes looking at every photo uploaded to the site. Facebook doesn’t - instead, it relies on users to flag any content they find inappropriate. Aftab says that this system is effective, but I don’t regard it as “aggressive” - I’d much rather hear that Facebook employs a dedicated team to scan through photos, even if only for those shared by minors (or even better, a combination of flagging and human scanning).

This events of this week, and the sex ring case in particular, will likely be a wakeup call for Facebook, akin to MySpace’s tragic suicide case a few years ago. As it continues its rapid growth, Facebook needs to step up both its technological and manpower efforts to more effectively deter malicious behavior. And Facebook’s Chief Privacy Officer Chris Kelly, who plans to run for Attorney General of California, can’t afford to let these issues fall to his successor.

But the reality is that no matter what these social networks do, they’ll never have the technology or the manpower to stop every threat. Which is why they need to stop pretending that they’re safe. Facebook’s (and MySpace’s) goal is to connect as many people as possible, and the sad truth is that many people are very naive when it comes to online safety. These social networks need to step up their education and awareness efforts, perhaps even offering a ’safe mode’ for users (even adults) who aren’t adept at navigating the web’s pitfalls. Because sharing is only fun until someone gets hurt.

Image Source

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

Source: TechCrunch | 9 Feb 2009 | 3:08 am

CBS Hosts Ad-Funded TV Series, Incl. Original Star Trek

eldavojohn writes "On Friday, CBS launched a TV Classics section to their ad based online service. Which means that Trekkies can now watch all three seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series online at the expense of a few commercials. Alongside this CBS is offering all of MacGyver, Twin Peaks and even three seasons of the original Twilight Zone. A side note, they seem to work perfectly fine in Linux. "

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 9 Feb 2009 | 2:44 am

Bankers can't possibly afford NYC on a mere $500K/year

The lead story in today's New York Times Styles section is all about the tremendous difficulties that executives at bankrupt companies receiving public bailouts will face if their salaries are capped at only $500,000. For example, many of these people might have to give up necessities like armed chauffeurs, twice-annual $16,000 vacations, and $4,000,000 summer homes. It's really heartbreaking.

Barbara Corcoran, a real estate executive, said that most well-to-do families take at least two vacations a year, a winter trip to the sun and a spring trip to the ski slopes.

Total minimum cost: $16,000.

A modest three-bedroom apartment, she said, which was purchased for $1.5 million, not the top of the market at all, carries a monthly mortgage of about $8,000 and a co-op maintenance fee of $8,000 a month. Total cost: $192,000. A summer house in Southampton that cost $4 million, again not the top of the market, carries annual mortgage payments of $240,000.

Many top executives have cars and drivers. A chauffeur’s pay is between $75,000 and $125,000 a year, the higher end for former police officers who can double as bodyguards, said a limousine driver who spoke anonymously because he does not want to alienate his society customers.

“Some of them want their drivers to have guns,” the driver said. “You get a cop and you have a driver.” To garage that car is about $700 a month.

A personal trainer at $80 an hour three times a week comes to about $12,000 a year.

The work in the gym pays off when one must don a formal gown for a charity gala. “Going to those parties,” said David Patrick Columbia, who is the editor of the New York Social Diary (newyorksocialdiary.com), “a woman can spend $10,000 or $15,000 on a dress. If she goes to three or four of those a year, she’s not going to wear the same dress.”

Total cost for three gowns: about $35,000.

You Try to Live on 500K in This Town

Source: Boing Boing | 9 Feb 2009 | 2:38 am

YouDiligence Helps Parents Combat Cyber Predators

In light of recent reports of sexual predator growth on Facebook and MySpace sites, we wanted to mention start-up YouDiligence.com, a service launched late last year that alerts parents and educators to questionable content on Facebook, MySpace and other social networking websites. The company says that business has been exploding since MySpace recently cooperated with Connecticut Attorney General Richard Blumenthal to hand over the names of 90,000 registered sex offenders that were identified and blocked by the social networking site.

Here’s how it works: When a child (or one of their friends) post inappropriate or questionable content on their page, an email alert is sent to the parent. A pretty comprehensive report is also stored on the user’s dashboard. Reports include time, the inappropriate words used, the context of how the terms was used, where it was posted (i.e., on a profile page, caption, wall comment, or if child writing a comment on someone else’s page) and a link to the exact URL.

From a business model point of view, YouDiligence has had a few hiccups. A paid service, YouDiligence had slow growth after its launch and recently rolled out a 30-day free trial. The cost of the service ranges from $9.99 a month to monitor one child to $19.99 to monitor four or more kids. The company reports that it has seen sign-ups increase since the implementing the free trial. YouDiligence also started using retargeting start-up Fetchback to get customers back to their site. So far, they have a re-subscription rate of 95 percent.

YouDiligence’s technology does has have overlap with competitors in the child internet monitoring space, including ReputationDefender and Sentinel Safe, who partnered with MySpace to find the sexual predators in the social networking site.

Despite the competition, YouDiligence provides a valuable service in a marketplace that can be unsafe for young children.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 9 Feb 2009 | 1:10 am

Hot gaming news for the week of 2-01-2009

Section:

No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you!  Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…

• Dead Space is Wii bound
• Madden 09 simulation almost hit Super Bowl score on the nose
• Apple App Store gaming update for the week of January 26 - February 1, 2009
• Gamertell Review: Harcos’ Health Energy Potion
• Wii Virtual Console and WiiWare update for February 2, 2009

Source: Gizmodo | 9 Feb 2009 | 12:15 am

Linux Phones on Tap for 2009 from Verizon, Others (PC Magazine)

PC Magazine - Your next cheap phone might be a Linux phone – but you might never know it. The LiMo Foundation announced Monday that Verizon Wireless and other global carriers will be rolling out Linux-based phones in 2009, possibly including low-cost devices capable of running advanced Web apps.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 9 Feb 2009 | 12:10 am

Kaspersky Customer Database Exposed

secmartin writes "A hacker has managed to gain access to several databases via a SQL injection vulnerability on Kaspersky's US website. He has posted several screenshots and a list of available tables; judging from the table names, the information available includes data on bugs and user- and reseller accounts. The hacker has indicated that no confidential information will be posted on the Internet, but since a large part of the URLs used was visible in screenshots, it will only be a matter of time before somebody else manages to duplicate this."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 8 Feb 2009 | 11:00 pm

So Hot Right Now: Top 10 Gadgetell posts for the week of February 01, 2009

Section:

Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week?  Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!

• Countdown to Kindle 2: 7 days to go
  “ We are 7 days away from Amazon’s press conference in New York City.  The popular belief is that on February 9th, Amazon will unveil the new version of the Kindle.  Gadgetell will be there and…“ MORE »
• Recession-O-Rama deals for the weekend 2.1.09
  “ Here we go—continuing with our weekend deals.  A new month and I hope the economy straightens itself out a little.  It’s the last month of winter, it’s almost time for spring, that’s always a positive thing.  Today, we…“ MORE »
• Got $45?  Get a T-Mobile G1 Google phone
  “T-Mobile, recognizing that folks don’t want to part with a big chunk of change these days, has decided $179 is a big chunk.  Instead of parting with nine $20 bills all at once, customers desiring the Android OS G1 smartphone can leave the store after paying just…“ MORE »
• Internet Explorer losing ground to competitors
  “ After surviving US and European Antitrust lawsuits for bundling their Internet Explorer browser with Windows, Microsoft is finally feeling the hit from a group they never expected — the consumer.  It seems that less…“ MORE »
• Upcoming Sidekick rumored to be the Sidekick Blade, running NetBSD
  “ An official announcement has yet to come, but details of the next Sidekick are beginning to leak out.  While these details are still unofficial, they are coming courtesy of a Microsoft job posting…“ MORE »
• UnPirate: Finding the best substitute for Microsoft Office
  “ The Pirated: Microsoft Office It is not surprising that users rely on Pirate Bay to access the programs found in Microsoft Office.  The software costs close to $300 for the standard version while the professional version retails for double that…“ MORE »
• Google planning to release GrandCentral 2.0, but when?
  “It has been a very long time now since we have seen any changes with GrandCentral and most people expect it to be killed off.  After all, GrandCentral has sat…“ MORE »
• New Samsung Memoir boasts an 8MP camera, coming to T-Mobile
  “ If you love taking pictures of anything and everything, having a cell phone equipped with a good camera is essential.  Unfortunately, normal phones don’t come with great cameras.  Samsung is changing that by putting an 8MP camera into its newest phone,…“ MORE »
• New T-Mobile G1 update rolling out this week
  “ If you are a member of the T-Mobile network, you’ll be able to access a new update this week for your G1 phone.  The G1 has been a hot seller for T-Mobile since its release. The G1 has features like real time…“ MORE »
• Facebook’s selling your information
  “Facebook has been quickly gaining on MySpace as the top social networking website.  However, MySpace has better luck capitalizing on site traffic while Facebook has struggled to make money through advertising.  As a way to reverse their fortunes, Facebook plans to start…“ MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Feb 2009 | 10:32 pm

Mathematics Reading List For High School Students?

Troy writes "I'm a high school math teacher who is trying to assemble an extra-credit reading list. I want to give my students (ages 16-18) the opportunity/motivation to learn about stimulating mathematical ideas that fall outside of the curriculum I'm bound to teach. I already do this somewhat with special lessons given throughout the year, but I would like my students to explore a particular concept in depth. I am looking for books that are well-written, engaging, and accessible to someone who doesn't have a lot of college-level mathematical training. I already have a handful of books on my list, but I want my students to be able to choose from a variety of topics. Many thanks for all suggestions!"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 8 Feb 2009 | 10:30 pm

The Kindle 3

via BBG

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Feb 2009 | 10:26 pm

CrunchNotSoDeal: BlackBerry Storm $99 on Amazon

Go ahead and head over to Amazon for a red hot deal on the BlackBerry Storm. RIMs lose-a-phone will cost you $99 with 2 year contract, provided you don’t throw it on the ground and step on it after a week of trying to type “google.com” into the browser.

via Gear Diary

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Feb 2009 | 10:18 pm

Nokia planning it’s own app store? Meh, we say

Robin "Sassafrass" Wauters at TC is comment on the idea that Nokia could be opening an app store. Our take? Bleh. But that didn't stop Robin from thinking about how dreamy it would be.

Our sister site MobileCrunch may be convinced that not every company needs an app store, but for Nokia to launch a central platform for distribution and sales of micro-programs developed for the Symbian OS, it would make a whole lotta sense. And if what Eldar Murtazin, editor of Mobile-review.com (both blogs are in Russian) writes is true, then that's exactly what the Finnish juggernaut in mobile is going to launch at the upcoming Mobile World Congress. I concur with Engadget who says launching an application portal/store is a logical step to take for any mobile handset maker these days, but if Nokia is in fact going to launch one it will be worth taking a look at, and not only from a consumer or developer standpoint.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Feb 2009 | 10:07 pm

Nokia planning it’s own app store? Meh, we say

Robin "Sassafrass" Wauters at TC is comment on the idea that Nokia could be opening an app store. Our take? Bleh. But that didn't stop Robin from thinking about how dreamy it would be.

Our sister site MobileCrunch may be convinced that not every company needs an app store, but for Nokia to launch a central platform for distribution and sales of micro-programs developed for the Symbian OS, it would make a whole lotta sense. And if what Eldar Murtazin, editor of Mobile-review.com (both blogs are in Russian) writes is true, then that's exactly what the Finnish juggernaut in mobile is going to launch at the upcoming Mobile World Congress. I concur with Engadget who says launching an application portal/store is a logical step to take for any mobile handset maker these days, but if Nokia is in fact going to launch one it will be worth taking a look at, and not only from a consumer or developer standpoint.

Source: MobileCrunch | 8 Feb 2009 | 10:06 pm

Samsung S8300 TouchWiz slider AKA Ultratouch coming tomorrow

Hey, you. Get off the couch. Samsung’s S8300 TouchWiz slider with 8-megapixel camera is coming out tomorrow. Pricing and carrier are unknown at this time, but if you’re into sexy sliders with big touchscreens and Samsung’s pretty nice Croix interface, you, friend, are in luck.

This thing comes packed tight with a 2.8″ WQVGA AMOLED touchscreen, 8 megapixel camera with autoflash, GPS, microSD support, FM radio (with RDS), Bluetooth 2.1, and 7.2 Mbps HSDPA. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before in brickphones, but in a 12.8mm thick (just a millimeter thicker than the Samsung-made Helio Mysto, and one thinner than the Samsung Soul) slider? We’re impressed.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 8 Feb 2009 | 9:58 pm

What I Learned At Davos: How Networking And Feedback Loops Can Make A Better World

The following is a guest post by Eric Clemons, Professor of Operations and Information Management at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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After returning from the World Economic Forum in Davos, I have been thinking about how to build more perfect human societies out of the visibly and demonstrably imperfect human decision makers we have to rely upon. Any classically trained techie knows the answer — it’s feedback loops for error correction. That’s how affordable class B amplifiers are made out of cheap off-the-shelf components.

But what does that have to do with the governance of societies or the future of the high tech sector? So before Davos I was asked the typical “let’s diss Davos” question … “Is Davos anything more than a networking event?” I’d never been to Davos, I didn’t really understand Davos, and I gave the wrong answer. I tried to explain that it was more than networking. The correct answer, of course, is that there is nothing more than networking when trying to plan, to impose structure, and to create even more wealth from otherwise uncoordinated actions. There is nothing more important for the governance of civil and commercial society than people interacting, working together, learning about each other in a full frontal, full bandwidth interaction.

So…what did I learn from my high tech full frontals?

• Google is scarier than I thought. They know exactly what they are doing … from the launch of new free products to their settlement of class action litigation … and they have only one goal. Their successes are no accident and their setbacks are investments, not mistakes. They know what their goal is and you can probably guess. And no, they are not subsidizing the gPhone, the gDrive, or Google Office as their only remaining meaningful charitable contributions now that Bill and Melinda have already solved Malaria, HIV, and the other medical problems that beset Africa.
• Microsoft is now cuddlier than I thought. I have more affection than I used to for the beleaguered team in Redmond (Hell, I have affection for them for the first time). And I am counting on them to ensure that there is a counterbalance to Google. I like bipolar worlds, at least on the technology side.
• Facebook is worth a couple of looks below the obvious surface. If Google has had a plan, the Zuckerbergs may have been merely lucky at first. They (Mark and Randi) are a couple of delightful kids, the brother and sister team of idealists, making a better world one friending at a time. I know there is a business model in here somewhere. I know that they Zs will implement it without abusing my privacy. I hope that they can do it without trying to rely on push-it-out, in-your-face advertising.
• Before Davos I had thought that Michael Arrington of TechCrunch was a jerk. I now know that a lot of this reaction was envy on my part. I learned by watching up close that he is faster with a sound bite, a summary, or a quick insult than anyone else in the field, and that he would rather be physically assaulted than change what he writes. If he is a jerk he is definitely my kind of jerk.

More later on the future of paid search, the future of advertising, the future of online social networks and their impact on the marketplace, the relationship between internet penetration and the quality of American beer, the future of petites digerati in the workplace, later, if Arrington will have me back.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2009 | 9:28 pm

February 13th, UNIX Time Will Reach 1234567890

mikesd81 writes "Over at Linux Magazine Online, Jon maddog Hall writes that on Friday the 13th, 2009 at 11:31:30pm UTC UNIX time will reach 1,234,567,890. This will be Friday, February 13th at 1831 and 30 seconds EST. Matias Palomec has a perl script you an use to see what time that will be for you: perl -e 'print scalar localtime(1234567890),"\n";' Now, while this is not the UNIX epoch, Alan Cox does assure us that Linux is now working on 64-bit time, and the UNIX epoch 'roll-over' would happen about the time that the sun burnt out."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Feb 2009 | 9:26 pm

Step Brothers brings community ratings to Blu-ray

Section: Video, Content

Not only does Blu-ray provide superior picture quality to DVDs and that crappy HD signal from your cable/satellite provider, it also gets interactive.  BD-Live, the relatively new Blu-ray feature that enables you to access content via your Internet-connected Blu-ray player has begun to make its way into more and more titles.  BD-Live can allow you to download a variety of up-to-date content (i.e. video previews and exclusive special features), and can also enable an exciting state of the next generation possibilities such as ringtone/wallpaper downloads, peer to peer interactions, live events and gaming activities.

This new release of Step Brothers goes one step further, with access to a “Boats N Hoes” music video editor, allowing you to quickly put together your very own version of the video used in the film, using clips from the movie.  Once you’re done, you can upload the video using your BD-Live connection to share with friends and check out other people’s efforts online.

Reason #2384 not to leave your couch - interactive Blu-rays.

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Feb 2009 | 9:15 pm

First 1-gigabit, 44-nano DRAM chip made

Hynix Semiconductor has developed the world's first 1-gigabit dynamic random access memory chip, the company announced Sunday. The South Korean company said mass production of the 1-gigabit DDR3 DRAM chip, which uses 44-nanometer technology, will begin in the third quarter of this year, Yonhap News Agency reported. The new chip is expected to be 50 percent more productive than the previous standard 54-nanometer technology, the company said. DDR3 DRAM is a random access memory technology used for, among other applications, high bandwidth.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Feb 2009 | 9:02 pm

CCP To Discontinue EVE Online Support For Linux

maotx writes "CCP's recent support for EVE Online in Linux is now set to be discontinued this March. Released last November along with the Mac OS X client, it has failed to share the expected continual growth as seen with Mac client. Feedback on the EVE Online forums, which includes the e-mail in which CCP announced this decision, suggest that the client was not preferred for Linux users as it did not support the Premium graphics client and did not run as well as the win32 client under Wine. For those who wish to stop playing EVE Online, CCP is offering a refund towards unused game time. Select quote from the e-mail: 'The feedback and commitment we obtained from players like you helped both CCP and Transgaming with our attempts to improve on the quality and stability of the client. Many of us in CCP use Linux and are convinced of its merits as an operating system.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Feb 2009 | 8:21 pm

Researchers Discover Iron Deep In The Ocean

Image Caption: Iron spewed from hydrothermal vents and carried away by seawater does not rust. Credit: Nicolle Rager-Fuller, National Science Foundation
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Feb 2009 | 8:14 pm

Pay TV providers fret over penny-pinching viewers (AP)

AP - Porter McConnell gave up on pay TV last summer after noticing that monthly rates kept creeping up.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Feb 2009 | 7:48 pm

Nine year old child from Singapore developing iPhone apps

FROM APPLETELL - It seems as if Apple has made it so easy that even a nine year old can develop for the iPhone. MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Feb 2009 | 7:34 pm

Designer melds tech, fashion in crafty electronics (AP)

AP - With her carefully styled blond hair, expertly applied makeup and fashionable blue dress, nothing about Alison Lewis even hints at the word "nerd" at a Manhattan party for her first book.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Feb 2009 | 7:15 pm

Wikileaks Publishes $1B of Public Domain Research Reports

laird writes "Wikileaks has released nearly a billion dollars worth of quasi-secret reports commissioned by the United States Congress. The 6,780 reports, current as of this month, comprise over 127,000 pages of material on some of the most contentious issues in the nation, from the U.S. relationship with Israel to abortion legislation. Nearly 2,300 of the reports were updated in the last 12 months, while the oldest report goes back to 1990. The release represents the total output of the Congressional Research Service (CRS) electronically available to Congressional offices. The CRS is Congress's analytical agency and has a budget in excess of $100M per year. Although all CRS reports are legally in the public domain, they are quasi-secret because the CRS, as a matter of policy, makes the reports available only to members of Congress, Congressional committees and select sister agencies such as the GAO. Members of Congress are free to selectively release CRS reports to the public but are only motivated to do so when they feel the results would assist them politically. Universally embarrassing reports are kept quiet."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Feb 2009 | 7:15 pm

Mo. patent fight shows perils of `tech transfer' (AP)

AP - Mere months ago, the University of Missouri routinely touted chemical engineering professor Galen Suppes for his innovative research into renewable energy.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Feb 2009 | 6:59 pm

Canon’s newest all-in-one office machines

Section: Computers, Peripherals, Printers / Scanners

With more and more people working from home, the demand for better home office printers is on the rise.  Canon, the camera and photo conglomerate, has released a new set of all-in-one printers for the home office.

The Canon PIXMA MX330 and PIXMA MX860 both have an impressive list of features that include Auto Duplexing which allows for printing double-sided documents automatically, wireless LAN, Ethernet, Auto Scan which automatically detects the type of media being scanned, and Super G3 fax.  Both are Energy-Star compliant as well.

The PIXMA MX330 prints at color resolutions up-to 4800 x 2400 dpi and scans at up-to 1200 dpi.  It also comes with a 4 cartridge ink setup and a 1.8 inch color screen.  Printing speeds range from 4.5 to 7.5 images per minute for color versus black-and-white.  It is the more affordable of the two.

If you are looking for a little more printing power, the PIXMA MX860 prints at color resolutions up-to 9600 x 2400 dpi and scans at up-to 2400 dpi.  It comes equipped with a large 2.5 inch screen and a 5 ink tank-style system.  Printing speeds range from 506 to 8.4 images per minute for color versus black-and-white.

Canon’s new line of PIXMA printers are nice looking and both printers are small for sitting on a desktop and as someone with a small office, I find this to be as important as the capabilities of the printer.  Unfortunately, no information on ink usage could be found for these specific printers but the systems they both use are designed to use less ink that traditional two or three cartridge systems.

Source: [Press Release]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Feb 2009 | 6:11 pm

Google Latitude to come to iPhone, provides location and people tracking

FROM APPLETELL - Latitude will allow users to see where friends and family are via requests and GPS.  Communication with these contacts and more is provided on the Google end of things, and Latitude will easily allow users to know where their contacts are. MORE »

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Feb 2009 | 5:26 pm

Aggressive African bees dominating in Fa.

Up to 80 percent of the entire wild bee population of South Florida has been hybridized by an aggressive African bee strain, experts say. Experts said since the first reported sighting of African bees in Tampa, Fla., seven years ago, the insects have been slowly colonizing domestic bee colonies and reproducing at an alarming rate, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported Sunday. The increase of Africanized bees in the area has already resulted in multiple bee attacks, including the death of a 51-year-old man last April.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Feb 2009 | 5:10 pm

Nokia Shaping Up To Launch Its Very Own App Store?

Our sister site MobileCrunch may be convinced that not every company needs an app store, but for Nokia to launch a central platform for distribution and sales of micro-programs developed for the Symbian OS, it would make a whole lotta sense.

And if what Eldar Murtazin, editor of Mobile-review.com (both blogs are in Russian) writes is true, then that’s exactly what the Finnish juggernaut in mobile is going to launch at the upcoming Mobile World Congress. I concur with Engadget who says launching an application portal/store is a logical step to take for any mobile handset maker these days, but if Nokia is in fact going to launch one it will be worth taking a look at, and not only from a consumer or developer standpoint.

According to UnwiredView, this is what Murtazin wrote in Russian:

At first glance, for now, the app portal looks so so, there is some confusion. But they are trying, polishing it and a lot has changed for the better in a matter of days. A right step in a right direction… And the distribution and revenue sharing model between app makers and Nokia looks very attractive.

At this point, this is nothing but a rumor, but such a move would definitely make sense and Muzartin is known to have strong insider connections in the mobile industry so this isn’t just a random thought from a blogger.

It’s worth noting in this context that Nokia now fully owns Symbian Limited, but contributes the mobile operating system and S60 software to the Symbian Foundation, which is readying its official launch with a slew of members from the industry, including Sony Ericsson, Samsung, LG, Sharp and dozens more. There’s also an active community site for Symbian developers already in place, so they wouldn’t be creating an ecosystem from scratch.

Then again, as someone pointed out in the comments of the Engadget post, Nokia already has a couple of half-baked portals for mobile software, e.g. Mosh, Download! and Software Market, so it’s unclear what would happen to those or how they would be able to morph these sites as well as the N-Gage platform for games into one single application store.

We’ll find out more about Nokia’s plans at the Mobile Word Congress, which is being held from 16 to 19 February in Barcelona.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2009 | 4:23 pm

Darwin’s Diaries Reveal Meticulous, Caring Husband, Dad

The name Charles Darwin is synonymous with the infamous theory of evolution that infuriated many because it conflicted with the Biblical view of creation.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Feb 2009 | 4:15 pm

LHC Slated For September Restart

Scientists will soon come to a decision on when to restart the Large Hadron Collider, the so-called “Big Bang” machine that suffered a costly malfunction after being switched on last September.The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), the builders of the multibillion-dollar project have been in meetings this week to discuss a re-launch of the LHC as well any possible new problems it could encounter.CERN is expected to make a final decision on the exact re-launch date following a meeting on Monday, adding they hope to get the collider up and running in time to deliver the first batch of data for experts to begin experiments by the end of the year."The workshop was absolutely phenomenal," said Steve Myers, CERN's director for accelerators and technology, who chaired the workshop.The LHC is the biggest atom-smashing machine ever built and straddles the borders of France and Switzerland.It is designed to simulate the "Big Bang", which started the universe 15 billion years ago, by smashing sub-atomic particles together at energies never before achieved.It was originally slated to start up in 2007, but it experienced a series of setbacks due to a poorly designed magnet and electrical connectors that bent when the machine was cooled to its operating temperature and warmed up again, knocking its operating date back to September 10, 2008.Nine days after being switched on in September, the LHC broke down again because of faulty electrical connections, which led to a leak of super-cold helium, causing damage.The damage, which happened just before it was due to collide its first protons, resulted in 53 of the magnets used to accelerate sub-atomic particles around the machine's 17-mile underground tunnel to be brought to the surface for repair.This week's meeting in Chamonix also detailed two further "suspect connections" that have since been found and engineers are working to remedy the problem.Myers is confident the recommendations are the best way forward for the LHC and for the field of particle physics in general."CERN's priority for 2009 is to get collision data for the experiments, but with caution as the guiding principle.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Feb 2009 | 3:40 pm

ShopIt Acquires Triana Global, Launches Ad Network For Social Networks

ShopIt, a social commerce platform that enables people to set up an online store and sell goods through a variety of social networking services, has finished integrating its recently acquired Triana Global publisher network and relaunching it as ShopIt Media, another social advertising platform.

Like many others, Triana Global claims to have been one of the first ad networks that started focussing on monetizing facebook applications after the social networking service started opening up for outside developers with the launch of Facebook Platform back in May 2007. Its biggest competitors are Adknowledge (which recently picked up both Cubics and Lookery Ads), Social Media, Offerpal Media and Appssavvy.

The service has managed to stay largely under the radar since its launch, and even when they started guaranteeing floor CPM rates of $0.15 and $0.08 CPC rates on standard banner sizes for new developers joining the network they seem to have gotten the silence treatment and were also downright criticized for developing their own Facebook apps besides acting as a social advertising network. It didn’t help that Triana Global claimed to have hundreds of applications in their network, which they later expanded to other social networks like MySpace, hi5 and Bebo, but never published a portfolio or customer reference list.

Either way, apparently the company was acquired by ShopIt in October 2008, and that startup is now relaunching the service as ShopIt Media, essentially providing a way for their users (1 million according to the company) to market the products they have for sale across a multitude of social communities. New publishers are being wooed with a 80% revenue share for all campaigns on Facebook, Ning, MySpace, hi5, Bebo and Orkut that are kicked off in February.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2009 | 3:37 pm

Is Noca The Next PayPal?

Noca, an online payments start-up we wrote about last year, is launching its official payment service today. Formed by ex-Visa employees, Noca originally offered a micro-payments system via two Facebook applications, OneClickPay and HelpYourWorld. The company is now offering payment services for unlimited amounts. Currently, Noca has two clients; digital content provider Klatcher.com and a local little league site. The advantage of Noca’s system is that it allows online merchants to bypass high transactional fees (usually 2-3 percent plus $0.30) imposed by credit card companies on consumer purchases.

Whether using Google Checkout, PayPal or Amazon Flexible Payment Service, merchants have been unable to avoid these fees, which can be pricey on expensive or luxury items. Until now. Noca’s online payment service only charges 0.25 percent on transactions and eliminated the fixed $0.30 fee all together. Once Noca’s system is enabled, the consumer’s issuing bank underwrites the risk so that the merchant receives payment within 1 to 2 business days.

On the consumer side, Noca assures security and prevention of identity theft because the transaction avoids credit cards and uses debit transactions instead, where the money goes directly from the buyer’s checking/savings account to the merchant. The user enters account and routing numbers into a virtual check, in a process which the company insists is secure. After entering routing and checking numbers, Noca will then send a text message with a code to the user’s cell phone, which needs to be inputed for the transaction to be completed.

With credit tight, consumers might feel more comfortable paying for items directly from a checking account. And it assures security for both merchants and consumers. Can Noca give PayPal a run for its money?

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

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Feb 2009 | 2:00 pm