FROM APPLETELL - I’ve got a few apps for the love birds this week. There’s a piano app so you can make a sweet love song, and an Emoji enabler, so you can send your true feelings to your partner. MORE »
Microsoft has announced it is offering a $250,000 award for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the Conficker Worm. The worm, also known as Downadup, is the worst worm outbreak the net has seen in years.
It takes advantage of a security hole in the Windows OS. Even though the hole was patched months ago, the worm rages on and has infected over 10 million PCs around the world, including those belonging to the French and British militaries. It’s believed Conficker was designed by a new group of cybercriminals determined to build the biggest botnet ever.
When installed it takes over the infected computer, harvests any personal information it finds and sends it to its command center and downloads even more malware. It also disables Windows Updates, Windows Defender, Error Reporting Service, and resets all System Restore points. It even senses if the user visits an anti-virus site and blocks any downloads from them. Very nasty bugger!
Microsoft said it’s also working with ICANN and various domain name registrars to try and take down the servers being used by the criminals to launch these attacks.
“The best way to defeat potential botnets like Conficker/Downadup is by the security and domain name system communities working together,“ said Greg Rattray, ICANN chief Internet security adviser, in a statement released Thursday. “ICANN represents a community that’s all about coordinating those kinds of efforts to keep the Internet globally secure and stable.“
This isn’t the first time Microsoft has issued a bounty. A few years ago, two individuals pocketed a $250,000 reward after turning in the teenager who was responsible for the infamous Sasser worm. It’s not clear if the reward will work similar magic this time. If the person or persons responsible for Conficker are located in a cybercrime friendly area such as Romania or Estonia, finding them and bringing them to justice may be next to impossible.
This was one of the weirdest incoming pitches I’ve received in a while. Finnish startup Comeks, which I’d never heard of before, contacts us to tout its product, a nifty application that lets you generate funny cartoons based on the pictures on your phone and enables you to push them out to social networking services, and then casually lets us know they’re up for sale.
I got in touch with co-founder and CEO Arto Viitanen, who told me the startup simply ran out of money, after raising €400,000 from Accel Partners about two years ago when the outlook for internet and mobile startups was way better than in the current economy. With the seed funding, the company produced a tool called Comeks Shorts, which lets you send visual SMS messages for the price of a normal SMS message.
Last week, they added to that service “Fun Photo Blogger”, a tool that lets you create funny cartoons with available artwork (speech bubbles, add-on stickers etc.) in combination with your own pictures, both on the web and from your mobile device (with the help of custom applications for J2ME, the iPhone and Android).
I tested Comeks on my iPhone (App Store link) and actually liked playing around with it. It’s pretty fun to mess with pictures from your photo gallery, and you can easily share cartoonized images to other sites like Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and Tumblr, which basically turns it into a (free) visual microblogging application. You can see a bunch of examples of that on Viitanen’s Tumblr blog.
I have the feeling that the company was a bit too early for this type of thing, and that the story would have been different had they only started out now, even though it would have been virtually impossible to raise venture capital for it in the current climate.
The startup attracted about 170,000 registered users to date, but Viitanen admits that many of them are not active.
The team has been taking on other projects for the past 6 months to be able to keep paying the bills, but has no intention of pulling the plug out of the Comeks service just yet.
They’ll keep the servers running for the thousands of users that still make use of the application, and meanwhile they’re looking for a buyer to step in and pick up development where they stopped.
Hope springs eternal.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Motorola previously stated that the company is fully committed to Android development and now it seems the company is working diligently getting the OS functional on an e-ink display. So far the development guys have succeeded on a proof of concept device, but it’s still far from production quality. Android’s open source code and e-inks low power consumption could be match made in heaven if the two can work nicely together. Video demo after the jump.
And suddenly, all the late nights of IRC channel bragging seems like a bad idea: Microsoft has put up a bounty of $250,000 to anyone who can identify the author or authors of the Conficker or Downadup worm, which takes advantage of a buffer overflow vulnerability in Windows to propagate, steal personal information and infect the machine with malware. Note that the dripping, decapitated coconuts of the suspected perps aren't good by their own... Microsoft will require some proof before ponying up the gees.
MILAN, Feb 13 (Reuters) - Italy's oil and gas major Eni will cut capital spending on refining and marketing by 30 percent to 2.8 billion euros ($3.62 billion) under 2009-2012 business plan as it aims... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:29 pm
NEW YORK, Feb 13 (Reuters) - CenterPoint Energy said late Thursday its Champlin natural gas compressor station in Texas sustained "heavy damage" in a fire at DCP Midstream's gas processing plant and hub... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:20 pm
chaz373 writes "CNET reports that Microsoft is going retail. In the 'Beyond Binary' blog Ina Fried reports, 'After years of brushing off the notion, Microsoft said on Thursday that it will open up its own line of retail stores. Without detailing the plans, Microsoft said it has hired David Porter, a 25-year Wal-Mart veteran, to lead the effort. Sources say that Porter's mission will be to develop the company's retail plans and that the effort is likely to start small with just a few locations.'"
⌦ Game Consoles – I don't know why Dell decided to become the place to buy Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s, but I like it: Xbox starts at $160 for Arcade, but I'd go $240 for the Pro. 80GB PS3 for $320. [Slickdeals]
⌦ Sander – Craftsman 0.5 amp 3D sander for $5. I don't even need one and I'm about to get it. [Dealoco]
⌦ Camcorder – Canon FS100 flash memory camcorder for $250, shipped. It's like a Flip that actually has controls and optical zoom! (I kid.) [Dealhack]
⌦ Netbooks – Dell has some refurbished Mini 9s in stock for as low as $220. A fine deal, and I'm sure they're just returns for people who didn't realize what a netbook could and couldn't do. Maybe. I actually went through the entire checkout process but couldn't get the coupon to work. [Dealnews]
⌦ HDTV – Costco members can get the Westinghouse TX-52F480S for $1,200 shipped or $1,100 for in-store pick-up. It's a 52-inch 1080p LCD television. [Dealnews]
⌦ iPod Dock – That cute ghostly iBoo dock that looks a little like Pac-Man enemies is available for about $100. [Dealnews]
⌦ Art Set – That 101-piece art set from Boscovs is still on sale for $20, shipped. This sort of thing was a treasure to me when I was younger. [Dealnews]
⌦ R/C Car – Today's Woot is an Ed Hardy 1:12 Scale RC Car for $45, shipped.
Reuters - Technology firms like Nokia and Microsoft are rushing to open their mobile software stores, hoping to follow the runaway success of Apple's online App Store.
GAITHERSBURG, Md., Feb. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- BroadSoft, Inc., the leading worldwide provider of VoIP applications, today announced that it has joined the GSM Association's Rich... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm
SANTA MONICA, Calif., Feb. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Once honored by Metallica with seven Motorhead covers performed as "The Lemmys," GRAMMY(R) Award-winning legend and lead... Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm
SAN JOSE, Calif., Feb. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Xilinx, Inc. (Nasdaq: XLNX) today announced participation in the following upcoming events with the financial Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 1:00 pm
As far as Apple rumors go, this one's pretty insignificant, but here it is: according to iPod Observer, they've attained leaked images of the new 16GB iPhone, and while there isn't anything new spec-wise to report, it will apparently come with a matte black shell as an option.
There's plenty of reasons not to accept this as gospel, but it's not wholly unlikely: Apple has retained the same look for both iterations of the iPhone so far, with the exception of the back casing. It makes sense for them to change it again to differentiate the 3G's successor from the past two models while retaining the iPhone's iconic front design.
In Japan, the usage of bamboo in computer products is pretty much the generic equivalent of using charcoal gray or opalescent white plastic in the States: wholly unimaginative, perhaps cloying. But what's a design cliche in one hemisphere is fresh and invigorating in another, and I'm not ashamed to say I find the polished bamboo look of Micro Innovation's latest accessory line-up to be pretty swank. They should start filtering through electronics retailers in April or May.
For the Berliner, the vodka-reeking hawkers of Soviet kitsch are a ubiquitous site around the Disneyland spectacle of Checkpoint Charlie. Wearing faux-beaver caps and decked out in a horrifying array of replica Soviet medal celebrating the wearer's capacity for murder and oppression, they grab any tourist by the arm who seems interested and drunkenly attempt to foist upon them a replica rubber gas mask, accompanying it with a slurred story of underground bunkers and recovered military surplus hordes.
It's all a sham, of course, and these gas masks are only usually good for one thing: sadomasochistic sex games. They don't work, and they are too terrifying for casual display. But Joel Veitch over at Rathergood did figure out one use for them outside of the realm of Marilyn Manson's bedroom: they make fine housings for the installation of kazoos! Yes!
An anonymous reader writes "Tuxradar did some benchmarks comparing Firefox's Windows and Linux JavaScript performance. 'We did some simple JavaScript benchmarks of Firefox 3.0 using Windows and Linux to see how it performed across the platforms — and the results are pretty bleak for Linux.' Later on, they tried Wine. 'The end result: Firefox from Mozilla or from Fedora has almost nil speed difference, and Firefox running on Wine is faster than native Firefox.'"
By Evan Ackerman This little hamster is wearing a special jacket with a nanogenerator in it that harvests the biomechanical energy that the hamster creates as it moves. Each generator module can produce... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:24 pm
By Evan Ackerman This week on BotJunkie, we decided we might not entrust our infants to a robotic crib, decided that $0.20 a minute was probably too much to pay for an artificial general intelligence program... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:05 pm
(TrendHunter.com) The Star Wars era seems to be really closing in, given innovative concepts such as the E-Ball personal computer. For those of you looking not for other thinner and faster PCs but something... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 11:59 am
Nat Turner, the co-founder of Philadelphia-based ad-tech startup Invite Media, was in a fire Thursday night. How do we know? Because he broadcast the experience via Twitter and documented it on Flickr.
To get this out of the way: Turner says he and everyone else who was in his office, near Rittenhouse Square in Philadelphia’s Center City district, is OK. So the story, which kicks off just before 9pm, has a happy ending.
9:50 “They just broke the floor down. Flames everywhere. 17th and chestnut. I really hope they play my 911 call.”
10:57 “Can’t go back in the building. Everyones ok. Our floor may have lucked out.”
The upshot, Turner writes via email: “The first floor is gone. We are on the 3rd.”
There’s more documentation now up at his Flickr stream, which seems to indicate that he and his co-workers didn’t spend much time in the building while it was ablaze. So that’s good. But one of these days, one of these “I’m Twittering live from the scene of something hair-raising or worse” incidents isn’t going to end well. Glad this one did.
(TrendHunter.com) The inspiring campaign of the 44th president has ignited all sorts of possibilities of change, not excluding the prospect of changing the White House itself. Challenging aspiring architects... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 11:39 am
(TrendHunter.com) The new solar-powered Samsung Blue Earth cell phone is made from PCM recycled plastic from drink bottles. It can help keep track of your CO2 offsets and let you know how many trees... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 11:20 am
By Luke Anderson [ The following concerns a paid campaign currently running on the site. ] As the week draws to a close, you can tell that love is in the air. Everywhere you go you’re hearing and... Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 13 Feb 2009 | 11:15 am
Reuters - The world's mobile telecom industry will gather in the Spanish city of Barcelona next week, hoping to find ways to outwit the downturn, powerful new rivals and software developers threatening to steal their thunder. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Feb 2009 | 9:46 am
It’s no secret that Silicon Valley is teeming with wealthy tech veterans, many of whom are eager to try their hand at angel funding a few new startups. Unfortunately, the vast majority of them are put off by the logistics of figuring out exactly what they’re supposed to do (handing out money isn’t as easy as it sounds). In light of this, Paul Graham and the team at Y Combinator are putting on a special event, dubbed AngelConf, that will bring together some of the Valley’s most prominent investors to tell these prospective Angels how it’s done - and hopefully help give a new wave of startups a chance to make it big. The event will be held on March 5th at Y Combinator’s office in Mountain View and will be free of charge, though you’ll need to request an invitation from its homepage.
Graham believes that there are probably 100 times as many would-be angels who haven’t actually gotten around to investing as there are actual ones. He should know - he spent seven years after selling Viaweb before he started his Y Combinator incubator. And during the time since founding Y Combinator he’s also found that the number of startups emerging is directly related to the amount of angel funding available. Even a modest boost in the number of angel investors could be a boon to the startup community, especially in light of the economy.
From the event’s homepage:
Have you thought about investing in startups, but didn’t know how? You’re not alone. Investing in startups seems mysterious and difficult. How much are you supposed to invest? What legal agreements do you need? Where do you find startups to invest in? How do you pick winners?
AngelConf was designed to answer these questions. Silicon Valley’s most prominent angels have generously agreed to spend an afternoon explaining the secrets of angel investing, from mundane matters like deal terms to questions we all still wonder about, like how to tell which startups will succeed.
Here’s the roster for the event, which includes our own Michael Arrington:
goran72 writes "In a development which could reveal the links between modern humans and their prehistoric cousins, scientists said they have mapped a first draft of the Neanderthal genome. Researchers used DNA fragments extracted from three Croatian fossils to map out more than 60 percent of the entire Neanderthal genome by sequencing three billion bases of DNA."
CamSpace, the innovative technology that allows gamers to use their computer cameras to play Wii-like games, has added support for Flash, making its platform accessible to a much broader range of developers (prior to today CamSpace was restricted to traditional .exe games). To get started, users will still have to download the CamSpace client here, which includes a few dozen games and will be adding more on a frequent basis (sorry Mac users, CamSpace is still Windows-only).
CamSpace’s technology revolves around detecting up to four objects in real-time, and translating their movement and rotation into in-game actions. To get started, users are asked to activate their webcams with their objects out of frame for a few seconds, then they hold them in front of the camera briefly until the system recognizes them. Any object will do, provided it is bright and has a near-uniform color (we used highlighters), and the tracking seems to work very well provided there’s adequate light.
While many Flash games probably wouldn’t work with CamSpace, some of them translate surprisingly well. For example, the classic ‘Kick-Ups’ game that involves clicking on a soccer ball with your mouse to keep it bouncing in the air is very fun and addictive - I spent far longer testing it than I needed to, and looked a little ridiculous in the process as I waved a highlighter wildly trying to get the ball to stay up.
CamSpace isn’t the first system to merge video with gameplay (I recall the PS2’s EyeToy did something similar if a little more basic, though it never really seemed to catch on). But it works surprisingly well and only takes a few minutes to install. That said, it still needs some work - the interface can be confusing, and the fact that it is still Windows-only is frustrating (though a Mac version is on the way).
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
One thing that’s nice in these volatile times is that the Winklevoss identical twins–aka the Olympic rowing hunks whom Facebook Founder Mark Zuckerberg seems to have repeatedly dunked since college–can always be relied upon to create non-stop entertainment for those riveted to their increasingly kooky lawsuit against the hot social networking site.
(Tyler Winklevoss is pictured here and Cameron Winklevoss is below.)
This week, the latest news came from a bizarre cut-and-paste technique that allowed the Associated Press to get redacted financial details of the settlement related to a lawsuit between Facebook and the Winklevosses, in which they alleged Zuckerberg stole the idea for Facebook from them.
The method of how AP got to the numbers–getting to the “blacked-out portions by copying from an electronic version of the document and pasting the results into another document”–was perhaps the most interesting piece of news in the hubbub.
That’s because the $3.7 billion valuation for Facebook uncovered Harry Potter-style in the court papers–although treated as new news by the blogosphere–was actually old news from a while back.
For those not paying attention, the legal document revealed that Facebook agreed to pay the Winklevoss-founded social site ConnectU $20 million in cash and 1,253,326 shares of common stock.
The worth of those shares depends if you are using Facebook’s “own appraisal” to set the value of the start-up at $3.7 billion or the fictional-from-the-get-go $15 billion from when Microsoft (MSFT) forked over $240 million for preferred shares in Facebook in late 2007.
In any case, it’s only the legal hijinks–either via rank incompetency or, more likely, creative leaking–that I want to know more about, especially since release of heretofore confidential information seems to keep seeping out of this case like some hole-plagued rowing shell.
Besides the invisible ink trick, there was also the “accidental” leak earlier this week by law firm that once represented ConnectU against Facebook about how well it had scored for the Winklevosses.
In a marketing newsletter, Quinn Emanuel Urquhart Oliver & Hedges bragged it had earned them the higher $65 million figure, based on the Microsoft valuation, rather than the lower Facebook one.
ConnectU fired Quinn Emanuel over the settlement–likely because the lower figure was the right one–and, presto, the new information suddenly emerges.
Of course, the documents that still have not gotten leaked yet is the alleged “smoking gun” that shows Zuckerberg to be guilty and the Winklevii redeemed. While many on the twins’ side have persistently insinuated they exist, such proof has not surfaced as yet.
That’s why, until then, this whole legal circus remains a ship of fools.
I tend to try to moderate my opinions here a bit more than I do in person. Like everyone, I have gut instincts that lead me to certain conclusions–but I try to keep what I put up here to more concrete ideas. But I feel I need to share a hunch I’ve had for a year or so–and one that seems to be increasingly at odds with the conventional wisdom–if only because I feel I should be held accountable if I’m wrong:
Like Napoleon marching into an abandoned Moscow, Larry Page and Sergey Brin have led Google’s advance into traditional advertising only to find nothing to loot. Now begins Google’s long imperial retreat, starting with 40 layoffs.
Susan Wojcicki, the millionaire sister-in-law of Brin who also holds a management role in the company, announced the job cuts in a blog post, as she laid out plans for Google to exit the business of brokering radio ads, a business it entered in 2006 when it bought dMarc Broadcasting for $102 million.
Up to 40 Googlers will lose their jobs, a small percentage of the 20,000 remaining employees at the search giant. But the real cut here is to Google’s ambitions.
Twitter is falling prey to a major security flaw right now. The service is getting swamped with messages that say: “Don’t Click” and a URL. Apparently, this hack has been around for over two weeks, but it only really took off today. If you actually click on the link while you are logged into Twitter, another “Don’t Click” message will be posted to your Twitter account, which then propagates the cycle.
Law professor Eric Goldman loves Wikipedia, but he’s also convinced that the site contains the “seeds of its own destruction.” In other words, not to put too fine a point upon it, Wikipedia will fail.
Goldman made his provocative point at the Silicon Flatirons conference this weekend in Boulder, Colorado, standing at a heavy wooden podium in a multiuse room that had been donated to the University of Colorado by a graduating class back in the 1960s. Those students could not have foreseen Wikipedia at the time, but by 2008, everyone gathered in that room—from corporate vice presidents to think tank bosses to academics—had made use of the collaborative online encyclopedia.
In Goldman’s view, the very popularity of the site stands in tension with its goal of radical openness. The freely editable nature of Wikipedia has made it a canvas upon which vandals, spammers, and pranksters can paint at will.
SAO PAULO, Brazil, Feb. 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VIVO Participacoes
S.A. (VIVO) (Bovespa: VIVO3 [ON = Common Shares] / VIVO4 [PN = Preferred
Shares]; NYSE: VIV), announced its consolidated results for the fourth quarter
Anonymous Pirate writes "Operators of The Pirate Bay stand trial on Monday in Stockholm. The four defendants from the popular file-sharing web site are charged with being accessories to breaking copyright law and may face fines or up to two years in prison if found guilty. The four defendants have run the site since 2004 after it was started in 2003 by the Swedish anti-copyright organization Piratbyrån. The Swedish public service television announced that they are going to send a live audio stream from the trial. It will be broadcast without editing or translation."
Still thinking about what sort of chocolates to get for your loved for Valentines day? How about something really special, really different - chocolates in the shape of beetles...
Celebrate Valentines Day the Japanese way: with chocolates shaped like kabuto-mushi beetles! Dating an entomologist? Trying to introduce a little entomophagy into your relationship? Namco's Namja Land in Ikebukuro has your back. 4,500 yen (49 USD) for a set of four: one Hercules beetle, one stag beetle, one male rhinocerous beetle, and one female rhinocerous beetle.
FROM APPLETELL - The Eikon to Go is a fingerprint scanner that allows you to keep your user account secure without requiring you to memorize a War and Peace length password. MORE »
MONTREAL, Feb. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- GWAVA, Novell's largest technology
partner for GroupWise, announced today that Vertigo is able to quickly
generate reports on user-related information in a GroupWise system. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Feb 2009 | 5:47 am
There’s nothing solid on this yet, but there are murmurs (from respectable, if not necessarily reliable sources) that Panasonic may be girding its loins to buy itself some Leica. Perhaps not all of it, perhaps just a little bit, but they’re definitely sniffing around. Given Leica’s skill with glass and Panasonic’s with consumer electronics, they might make a good team in the digital camera sector.
Panasonic is no stranger to purchasing a missing piece; they just bought Sanyo after a few tense months, and that’s (they hope) a match made in electronics heaven.
At the end of a star's lifetime, when it's burned all there is inside it to burn, it often collapses into what's called a white dwarf star. These dense globes have roughly the mass of the sun packed tight into a ball the size of the Earth. Since there is no fuel left for fusion in white dwarfs, they shine only faintly, by emitting stored heat. A white dwarf is thought to be the end stage awaiting most of the stars in our galactic neighborhood, including the sun — only about 3 percent of nearby stars have masses so huge that they collapse even further in supernova explosions. Here are some especially interesting white dwarfs:
Left: Blazing Young Dwarf
One of the hottest white dwarfs known to scientists lies in the heart of this nebula, called NGC 2440, about 4,000 light-years from Earth. The star (the bright dot near the photo's center), has a surface temperature of roughly 360,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Since white dwarfs cool as they age, this one must be relatively young. The glowing purple aura around it is the left-over material cast off by the star when it became a white dwarf at the end of its life.
: Image: NASA, ESA, H. Bond (STScI) and M. Barstow (University of Leicester)
The blazing blue star dominating this photo is not a white dwarf, but the faint white dot to the lower left is. The two stars are called Sirius A and Sirius B, respectively, and form a binary system. Sirius the Smaller is the nearest white dwarf to Earth (at a mere 8.6 light-years distant), so offers a particularly intriguing opportunity for research, as long as astronomers can separate its light out from the dominating brightness of its companion. Sirius B is smaller than the Earth, but with a mass many times greater, giving it a gravitational field about 350,000 times stronger than our planet's. Thus, if a 150-pound person were to stand on the dwarf's surface, he would weigh 50 million pounds.
This illustration shows the two white dwarf stars in the binary system J0806, which are frantically circling each other in an ever-quickening spiral. The two dwarfs orbit each other once every 321 seconds, and astronomers think this pace is speeding up, meaning they're destined to ultimately collide into each other and merge. The dense system, about 1,600 light-years away, is thought to be creating gravitational waves, or warps in the curvature of space-time, first predicted by Einstein's theory of general relativity.
: Credit: Casey Reed
Another strange binary system, called AE Aquarii, is composed of a normal star and a white dwarf. The smaller, denser white dwarf seems to be sucking material off its larger companion. While usually this would cause the dwarf to build up mass, the white dwarf in this case seems to be flinging the matter away from itself with great force. Astronomers think the white dwarf's rotation and strong magnetic field are behind the strange behavior, causing the star to propel a stream of material outward that emits a broad spectrum of radiation visible to us, 330 light-years across the galaxy.
: Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)
A white dwarf called G29-38 seems to be eating the comets orbiting around it, apparently leaving behind a cloud of shredded comet remains that were detected by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope. The finding offered the first observational evidence that comets could outlive their suns. Scientists think G29-38 died and became a white dwarf about 500 million years ago, engulfing its inner planets as it did. The comets, however, which orbited farther out, may have survived. The dust Spitzer identified was probably created when a comet got knocked into the inner region of the system and was torn apart by the white dwarf's gravitational tides.
: Image: NASA, WIYN, NOAO, ESA, Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), & T. A. Rector (NRAO)
This photo of the Helix Nebula shows a star on its way toward becoming a white dwarf. The colorful rings of the nebula represent the cast-off outer gases of a star in the process of dying. The view of this star, close in mass to the sun, offers a glimpse of what our own parent star might look like one day as it nears the end of its life. The system lies about 650 light-years away toward the constellation Aquarius.
: Image: Garrelt Mellema (Leiden University) et al., HST, ESA, NASA
Speeding winds send ripples of gas through the Red Spider Nebula, located about 3,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. The double-winged nebula houses a burning white dwarf inside it, whose stellar winds spew out at speeds of about 4 to 10 million miles per hour. These harsh winds send waves of gas through the nebula that can reach out 60 billion miles.
: Image: David A. Aguilar (CfA)
The least-massive white dwarf known in our galaxy is about the size of Saturn, yet contains only one-fifth the mass of the Sun. This lightweight, designated SDSS J091709.55+463821.8, lies about 7,400 light-years from Earth. At first, astronomers were puzzled about how such a small white dwarf could form in the first place. Scientists now think the star used to be heavier, but a companion white dwarf star has been sucking mass off its sibling.
Eco-crunchn. A natural-resource shortage caused by overconsumption. With humans now devouring a third more than the planet can replenish, environmentalists say the coming ecological recession will make our current economic crisis look like a golden age.
Pre-pre-pre-SATn. An epithet for ReadiStep, the College Board's new standardized test for eighth graders. Touted as a diagnostic aid for teachers and parents, the two-hour exam will begin demoralizing pre-pre-pre-adults this fall.
Space Invadersn. pl. A nickname given to the transposons responsible for injecting reptilian and amphibian DNA into mammalian genomes 15 to 46 million years ago. We have good reason to dread the return of the virus-borne gene reprogrammers—their first appearance coincided with mass extinctions.
Mycodieseln. Natural diesel fumes secreted by a fungus living in the Patagonian ulmo tree. Similar to diesel fuel, the substance is produced as the fungus digests cellulose, making mycodiesel a potential biofuel that won't eat into the human larder.
The polycarbonate shell of this tough little suitcase protects your stuff from rough handling, wet baggage carts, freeze/thaw cracking and possibly the apocalypse.
The polycarbonate shell of this tough little suitcase protects your stuff from rough handling, wet baggage carts, freeze/thaw cracking and possibly the apocalypse.
PARIS, February 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --
Business transformation and refocusing continued during 2008, resulting
in:
- 5.6% growth in revenues in the fourth quarter of 2008
- Annual EBIT ahead of target, up by 8.3% for the full year
- Strong increase of operating cash generation, which stands at EUR27.5
million
- Net cash at a historically high level of EUR302 million
Bull (Euronext Paris: BULL), the expert in open, flexible and secure
information systems and one of Europe's leading players in the IT industry -
today announces its full-year results for 2008, following the meeting of the
Board of Bull (Euronext Paris: BULL) which approved the consolidated accounts
for the financial year ending 31 December, 2008.
Summary income statement
EUR million 2007 2008 Variation %
Revenues 1 117.0 1 132.8 +1.4%
EBIT (see glossary) 27.8* 30.1 +8.3%
Net income (Group share) 4.6 5.6 +21.7%
*recast(1)
2008 key figures:
- Increase in consolidated revenues of 1.4%, which reached
EUR1 132.8 million; the Services & Solutions business growing by 14.7%;
Hardware & Systems Solutions increasing by 5.6%; and the Maintenance
business seeing a 6.8% fall
- As a result of anticipated changes in the product portfolio
mix and the growth in Services & Solutions activities, gross margin of
EUR254.9 million, or 22.5% of revenues, fell by 2.2 percentage points
of revenue compared with 2007
- 8.3% increase in EBIT (see glossary) to EUR30.1 million
compared with EBIT (recast[1]) of EUR27.8 million in 2007; exceeding
the objective[2] set for 2008
- Operating profit of EUR20.9 million includes the overall
impact, which is globally positive, of modifications in scope, as well
as provisions for restructuring costs designed to support the Group's
continued business transformation
- Net income (Group share) of EUR5.6 million increased by
21.7% compared with 2007
- Continuing business operations generated positive cashflow
of EUR27.5 million for the year; once non-recurring cashflow elements
are taken into account, positive cashflow was EUR11.3 million
- Gross cash (see glossary) stood at EUR344.1 million as at 31
December 2008, an increase of EUR11.9 million compared with the end of
2007
- Net cash (see glossary) stood at EUR302 million, a
historically high level, and reflects a significant fall in debt
following the implementation of a new program of sales of receivables.
At the end of 2007, net cash stood at EUR192.5 million
Key figures for the fourth quarter of 2008[3]:
- Consolidated revenues of EUR341.5 million grew by 5.6%, with
18.6% growth in the Hardware & Systems Solutions business and a 12.3%
increase in Services & Solutions activities
Didier Lamouche, Bull Chairman and CEO, commented: "Our 2008 results
confirm that we have made the right choices, and reflect the now tangible
results of the Group's business transformation.
"In 2008, we adopted a new business segmentation which better reflects
our activities. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Feb 2009 | 5:00 am
2004: Astronomers announce the discovery of the largest known diamond-like object in the galaxy, a pulsating white dwarf star 50 light-years from Earth.
Known by its prosaic catalog number, BPM 37093, the dwarf was also given the more whimsical nickname Lucy, after the Beatles' song "Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds."
Lucy, the remnant of a dead star in the constellation Centaurus, was identified as a "chunk of crystallized carbon" by its discoverers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. The dwarf vibrates, creating pulsations that allowed astronomers to make their calculations.
What they came up with amounts to the biggest diamond ever identified, since the composition of this type of white dwarf is similar to that of a girl's best friend. Lucy's physical composition — primarily carbon and oxygen, with a thin layer of hydrogen and helium — is typical of a white dwarf, which is what remains of a star after it exhausts its nuclear fuel and dies.
But because of its unusually high mass — 1.1 times that of the sun's — Lucy is a whopper. It measures only 2,500 miles across (less than one-third the size of Earth) yet weighs 5 million trillion trillion pounds, making it the largest dwarf yet identified.
In converting that weight into carats, astronomers came up with 10 billion trillion trillion, a number that would put it somewhere north of whatever rock Melania Trump is wearing on her finger these days.
Millions of years ago Lucy was as bright as any star, but now generates only 0.06 percent of the light of our sun. As goes Lucy, so will go the sun — in about 5 billion years. The silver lining? No more worries about global warming.
U.S. researchers say data from the Human Genome Project are shedding new light on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Over the ages we cataloged the anatomical differences between people and eventually biochemical differences, too. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:48 am
We saw Garmin-Asus announce the G60 a little over a week ago, and now they have followed up with their latest model—the nuvifone M20. This time it is running Windows Mobile 6.1, of course we can still hope to see something Android based in the future. In the meantime, the nuvifone M20 specs are pretty impressive. You can expect to see a 2.8-inch VGA quality touchscreen, accelerometer, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, Bluetooth, 3-megapixel camera, microSD card slot and either 4 or 8GB of internal storage.
Additionally, the M20 has support for quadband EDGE, triband HSDPA and comes preloaded with Garmin’s navigation and maps. The M20 will also ship with a car mount that will allow drivers to take full advantage of the GPS capabilities right out of the box. Sadly, the pricing and availability have still not been announced. All we can say is that it is expected sometime in the first half of the year.
BARCELONA, Spain/February 12, 2009/Business Wire — Garmin-Asus, a co-branded alliance between Garmin® Ltd. (NASDAQ: GRMN), and ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (TAIEX: 2357), today announced the Garmin-Asus nüvifone M20, an all-in-one phone, mobile web-browser and premium navigation system with a Windows Mobile operating system. The Garmin-Asus nüvifone M20 will be on display at GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, February 16-19, 2009, at the Garmin-Asus exhibit (Hall 7, #7C37).
As the first Garmin-Asus nüvifone powered by Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional with enterprise email, the sleek and colorful nüvifone M20 is designed for on-the-go professionals who want a fashionable and functional smartphone to manage their busy work and personal lives. This powerful device combines a dual-band 3.5G/tri-band GSM phone with Wi-Fi connectivity, desktop-like internet browser, push email, document viewing, multi-media capability, Bluetooth® and Garmin sat nav.
The nüvifone M20’s full QWERTY soft keyboard makes it easy to send and receive SMS, MMS and emails. The nüvifone M20 can also be synched with a computer so that contacts and emails are always available. HSDPA wireless connectivity and enterprise grade Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g) ensure messages are sent and received quickly, including those with attachments.
Recognizing that location is relevant to every aspect of every day, the nüvifone M20 is designed with location based services (LBS) at its core and has the most advanced LBS experience of any Windows Mobile phone. Navigation functions are linked to frequently used applications such as calendar, contacts, email, internet applications and more, simplifying the nüvifone user’s day as they travel from one location to another.
The nüvifone M20 supports download speeds of up to 7.2 Mbps and offers a desktop-style web browsing experience. Users can zoom and pan web pages with their finger as they view the information in either portrait or landscape orientation. In addition, they can easily navigate to an address on a web page with only a few taps of the screen.
The GPS features of the nüvifone M20 usher in a level of sophistication never seen before on a Windows Mobile smartphone. It has the navigation capability of a premium Garmin nüvi® sat nav, and comes with preloaded maps and points of interest (POIs) – hotels, restaurants, stores, fuel stations and more – for North America, Eastern and Western Europe, or other regions. Selecting a destination is straightforward and requires limited input from the user. For example, users can search for a destination by typing in the specific name or address of an establishment, search by category, or navigate to addresses in the nüvifone M20’s contact database or on the web. The device then gives turn-by-turn voice-prompted directions and automatically recalculates if a turn is missed along the way. In addition, the nüvifone includes quick access to online points of interest through internet enabled local search. The nüvifone harnesses the power of the worldwide web and information about local merchants and attractions is continually updated.
The nüvifone M20 takes GPS navigation one step further via Connected Services, a suite of online applications and data from Garmin-Asus that adds location intelligence to navigation, phone and browser functions. The expandable list of applications includes content like real-time traffic information, White Pages, weather, flight status, local events, and movie times.
The nüvifone product line also includes Ciao!™, a ground-breaking LBS application that helps users stay up to date on their friends’ whereabouts and status by linking numerous location-centric social networks. Through Ciao!, nüvifone users will see their friends’ location on a map and then be able to navigate to that location with ease. Nüvifone users can also choose to have the nüvifone automatically update their social network location information.
The nüvifone M20 has exceptional entertainment capabilities with the combination of a 2.8” TFT touch lens display, built-in microphone and speakers, built-in 4Gb/8Gb My Storage, and ActiveSync® for Outlook®, Microsoft® Office, and multi-media synchronization. The VGA (640×480) display brings action to life when watching video or looking at photographs. The three megapixel camera automatically geotags images with the exact latitude and longitudinal coordinates. Users can then save the image on their phone, email it to a friend, or navigate to where the image was taken.
Garmin-Asus expects to announce the nüvifone M20’s pricing and availability information in the first half of 2009. Journalists should contact Garmin-Asus media representatives to arrange product demonstrations or interviews. Additional information about the nüvifone product line is available at www.GarminAsus.com.
About Garmin-Asus
Garmin-Asus is a co-branded strategic alliance that enables Garmin Ltd. and ASUSTeK Computer Inc. to combine their complementary resources to develop world class LBS-centric mobile phones.
About Garmin Ltd.
The global leader in satellite navigation, Garmin Ltd. and its subsidiaries have designed, manufactured, marketed and sold navigation, communication and information devices and applications since 1989 – most of which are enabled by GPS technology. Garmin’s products serve automotive, mobile, wireless, outdoor recreation, marine, aviation, and OEM applications. Garmin Ltd. is incorporated in the Cayman Islands, and its principal subsidiaries are located in the United States, Taiwan and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit Garmin’s virtual pressroom at www.garmin.com/pressroom or contact the Media Relations department at 913-397-8200.
About ASUS
ASUS is a leading company in the new digital era. With a global staff of more than ten thousand and a world-class R&D design team, the company’s revenue for 2008 was 8.1 billion U.S. dollars. ASUS ranks among the top 10 IT companies in BusinessWeek’s “InfoTech 100”, and has been on the listing for 11 consecutive years. ASUS was also selected by the Wall Street Journal Asia as No.1 in quality and service.
ASUS is a registered trademark of ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Garmin and nüvi are registered trademarks, and nüvifone and Ciao! are trademarks, of Garmin Ltd.
All other brands, product names, company names, trademarks and service marks are the properties of their respective owners. All rights reserved.
Depending on what sort of headphones you’ve got going into your MacBook, you may have encountered some trouble keeping the things plugged in. It seems that unibody MacBooks are a bit picky on just how far in the headphone jack has to be.
Users claim solid performance with the latest iPhone-compatible headphones with the built-in mic, but older headphones (including Apple ones) tend to disconnect with the slightest jar. Sounds to me like the headphone jack gripper (below) at the very end isn’t in the correct position. It’s possible, I guess, that if it isn’t secured well that it might be knocked out of place or loosened by rough usage.
Well, that picture really is quite big.
Anyhow, that wouldn’t really explain why some headphones work and some don’t. Either way, it seems some people have success with an adapter like this iFrogz one, at least if you don’t need the microphone functionality.
Midway ran into this difficulty after media baron Sumner Redstone sold his 87 percent stake to private investor Mark Thomas. This triggered a change-of-control provision that allows shareholders to sell their shares. Midway warned share holders earlier that they wouldn’t be able to pay if asked for money back. Looks like they were telling the truth.
Mr. Redstone sold his stake after losing hundreds of millions of dollars last year while the stock tanked. This comes after almost nine years of straight losses starting in June 2000.
Midway says that the Chapter 11 filing includes only operations within the U.S. and that they will continue as a player in the videogame industry.
This is still sad news. With other former giants bleeding cash or closing up shop, these are going to be dark times for the supposedly recession-proof games industry. Get better soon, Midway. Without you, where will I ever find a use for all those Mortal Kombat combos I memorized?
PC World - The U.S. market for video game software and hardware registered another month of year-on-year growth in January adding further weight to the theory that the sector is relatively insulated from recession. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Feb 2009 | 4:10 am
AFP - US videogame veteran Midway Games on Thursday said it has filed for bankruptcy despite strong sales of hot titles such as "Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe."
FROM GAMERTELL - If you have a PlayStation 3 and have yet to register or explore Sony’s Home, this is the month to do so. Several events have already been started in celebration of Street Fighter IV, Killzone 2, Resident Evil 5, Warhawk and… MORE »
An anonymous reader writes "Novell has unveiled some of the fruits of its technical collaboration with Microsoft in the form of Moonlight 1.0, a Firefox plug-in which will allow Linux users to access Microsoft Silverlight content. Officially created by the Mono project, it is available for all Linux distributions, including openSUSE, SUSE Linux Enterprise, Fedora, Red Hat and Ubuntu. Also included in Moonlight is the Windows Media pack, with support for Windows Media Video, Windows Media Audio and MP3 files."
AP - Microsoft Corp. on Thursday announced plans to open its own stores despite the economic downturn that has left many retailers struggling. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Feb 2009 | 2:59 am
The shocking 'rape simulator', Rapelay, is set in Japan and carries a sickening game description on the Amazon website. An MP said last night that he plans to raise the issue in Parliament.
Reviews by gaming websites have expressed horror at the basis for the game.
One website review describes "tears glistening in the young girl's eyes" as she is attacked in graphic detail.
Players begin the game by stalking a mother on a subway station before violently raping her. They then move on to attack her two daughters described as virgin schoolgirls.
Players are also allowed to enter 'freeform mode' where they can rape any woman and get other male game characters to join the attacks.
So Microsoft is going to have themselves a little retail space. This is, of course, ripe for mockery, and I'm sure tomorrow will bring the fruits of photoshop contests from around the web. Will it be wall-to-wall Vista boxes? Will you have to sign a license agreement to get in? Will they avoid the color "BSOD blue"? All very funny questions, but the fact is that Microsoft's stores could be the beginning of... well, another beginning for the oft-maligned software baron. After all, despite what the web has to say, they do manufacture more than error screens.
What have they even done to put themselves out there lately? Their silly booths were too passive, Mojave was too obscure, and "I'm a PC" was capitulation, pure and simple. And while they're dabbling in this and that, their entire media image is being created out of whole cloth by their competitors. They need a main event, not a sideshow.
So Microsoft is going to have themselves a little retail space. This is, of course, ripe for mockery, and I’m sure tomorrow will bring the fruits of photoshop contests from around the web. Will it be wall-to-wall Vista boxes? Will you have to sign a license agreement to get in? Will they avoid the color “BSOD blue”? All very funny questions, but the fact is that Microsoft’s stores could be the beginning of… well, another beginning for the oft-maligned software baron. After all, despite what the web has to say, they do manufacture more than error screens.
What have they even done to put themselves out there lately? Their silly booths were too passive, Mojave was too obscure, and “I’m a PC” was capitulation, pure and simple. And while they’re dabbling in this and that, their entire media image is being created out of whole cloth by their competitors. They need a main event, not a sideshow.
The obvious yardstick here is the Apple Store. The Apple Store (like pretty much every store) provides a place where the purveyor can show the consumer what their product looks like ideally. The computers all work, they’re all up to date, they have pro applications installed, and a bunch of compatible media and accessories are lying at hand, giving the illusion that all is right in Apple’s little world. It says to you, “Your life can be like this store.” It’s not original, and it’s not terribly hard to do — IKEA does it right (perfectly assembled furniture, perfectly arranged), so does Tiffany’s (perfectly maintained jewelry, perfectly displayed). All Microsoft has to do is replicate this kind of environment, although their retail branding and packaging in the past do suggest we exercise optimism with a measure of caution.
So what would be in there? Vista, of course, all dressed up — although if they’re smart they’d have 7 around as well and push the buy-now-upgrade-free idea. Load it up with Live stuff, programs and services nobody’s heard of from Microsoft Research, and so on. Microsoft hardware puts out some solid stuff, so they can have the place stocked with their latest wireless keyboards and Bluetrack mice. They can have Zunes stocked with music (how many people have actually touched one?) and Zune clients open on Surface Tables with all the Live connections that come with. Maybe a gaming rig with the new Sidewinder gear. Having these actually coolshirts there wouldn’t hurt.
They mustn’t push too hard, though; the idea they’ve been trying to put out forever is that Microsoft products are just as approachable, just as intuitive as the other guy’s. So Microsoft needs to set it up right and let it ride. If you build it, they will come… eventually.
With a little work, they can provide the kind of ideal hands-on experience that Apple Stores famously give (and which is famously effective), although I think they can do without the tiringly obsequious employees. They have the hardware, they have the software, but what remains to be seen is whether they have the sense to do this thing right.
Google is pulling the plug on its Google Audio Ads and Adsense for Audio products, and is looking to sell off its Google Radio Automation software business. The moves come less than a month after the company decided to stop selling print ads, another experiment to expand beyond Web advertising that went nowhere. Google expects to lay off as many as 40 people as a result of exiting the broadcast radio advertising business. We’ve added teh number to our Layoff Tracker.
It also marks the failure of Google’s $102 million acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting two years ago, which formed the basis of these businesses. The dMarc deal could have been worth as much as $1.13 billion if the business hit certain milestones. But radio stations and the companies that own them never gave Google the advertising inventory it needed to make it a real business, despite Google’s outright attempts to buy market share.
You’ve got to wonder whether dMarc would have made more inroads on its own had it not sold to Google. As it was, fear of Google’s growing power no doubt played a role in the lack of cooperation from the radio industry. And in this environment, even Google can’t fund money-losing projects forever. So it decided to take its marbles and go home, staying in the audio ad business only as it applies to streaming audio on the Internet. Google says it will still continue to pursue its dreams of serving better TV ads, but it is not clear Google is making much progress on that front either.
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Well, I can’t….but mind reading is no longer a thing of sci-fi channel episodes and ladies in turbans charging you $9.99 a minute. This is thanks to Canadian researchers who have developed a way to use infrared light brain imaging to decode an individuals preference for something.
The researchers are from Canada’s largest children’s rehabilitation hospital and their goal is to “give children who are ‘locked in’ by disability a way to express themselves through subtle body processes like breathing pattern, heart rate and brain activity.“ According to Sheena Luu, the University of Toronto PhD student in biomedical engineering who led the study under the supervision of Tom Chau, Canada Research Chair in pediatric rehab engineering. this is the first system that decodes preference naturally from spontaneous thoughts.
So how is this all done? They use a special headband that is fitted with fiber optics. These fiber optics emit light into the part of the brain known as the pre-frontal cortex. By measuring the intensity of near-infrared light absorbed in the brain tissue, scientists in the study were able to decode a persons drink preference with 80% accuracy. In the study, the subjects were shown two drinks (these were on a computer monitor), and asked to make a decision mentally about which one they liked more. “When your brain is active, the oxygen in your blood increases and depending on the concentration, it absorbs more or less light,“ Luu says. “In some people, their brains are more active when they don’t like something, and in some people they’re more active when they do like something.“
What separates this from other brain-computer interfaces already out there designed to read thoughts is that the ones already out there require training on the part of the subject. For instance, if the person being asked the question wanted to indicate the answer “no” to a question asked, he or she would need to do an unrelated mental task like singing a song in their head. There were nine adults in Luu’s study, none of which received any special training.
Luu stresses that “Preference is the basis for everyday decisions. When children with disabilities can’t speak or gesture to control their environment, they may develop a learned helplessness that impedes development.“ She sees herself one day creating a portable, near-infared sensor that fits on the forehead and works off wireless technology, which would open the world of choice to children who are unable to speak or move.
Although she does admit that the brain is too complex to decode a person’s random thoughts. So, sorry guys, you won’t be able to buy one of these to understand women.
PC World - Hewlett-Packard, News Corp.'s MySpace.com division, Bank of America and even Nokia rival Qualcomm have joined the foundation that was formed last year to shepherd the new open-source version of the Symbian mobile operating system. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 Feb 2009 | 2:10 am
Rebecca from the Electronic Frontier Foundation sez, "EFF has revamped its legal guide for bloggers, adding new FAQs about, for example, disemvowelling. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn't use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. So consult EFF's roadmap of the legal issues and blog away!"
The difference between you and the reporter at your local newspaper is that in many cases, you may not have the benefit of training or resources to help you determine whether what you're doing is legal. And on top of that, sometimes knowing the law doesn't help - in many cases it was written for traditional journalists, and the courts haven't yet decided how it applies to bloggers.
But here's the important part: None of this should stop you from blogging. Freedom of speech is the foundation of a functioning democracy, and Internet bullies shouldn't use the law to stifle legitimate free expression. That's why EFF created this guide, compiling a number of FAQs designed to help you understand your rights and, if necessary, defend your freedom.
Over on Boing Boing Gadgets, our John's found this delightful video: "A working Gameboy costume built buy a cosplayer at Ohayocon 2009, replete with built-in emulator, which is accessed by hammering the d-pad perpendicular to his junk."
Sometimes something demands posting at the BB, but is not quite ready for life on the front page. Our invincible tolerance for the uncouth makes BBG--never overwhelmingly strict about keeping to gadgets at the best of times--a perfect home for such overspill. This is Joel Veitch's striking animation, Wanky Shit Demon. You have been warned.
YouTube and Sony Music Entertainment have signed a deal that will keep the music label’s videos and music on the site. The contract accomplishes what YouTube and Warner Music Group have been unable to do–figure out a way to keep the label’s music on the world’s biggest video site while sharing revenue with both sides.
The deal, which extends a previous agreement, has been finalized but not formally announced, multiple sources familiar with the matter tell me. A spokesman from Google’s (GOOG) YouTube said the company would not comment on “rumor or speculation”; Sony’s (SNE) music label declined to comment. Last week, CNET reported that the two companies were “very near” to a deal.
It’s unclear what the final deal terms are, but people familiar with the matter tell me that the negotiations revolved around three components: an upfront payment from YouTube to Sony, the minimum amount Sony will receive each time someone plays a Sony video on the site, and the way the two sides will split revenue generated by any of the label’s videos.
Those terms had previously tripped up Warner Music and YouTube in December, and Warner Music (WMG) artists have been taken off the site while the two companies try to work out a new licensing deal. Sony Music’s artists range from Britney Spears and Beyoncé to Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan.
Music videos are some of YouTube’s most popular offerings, but they have also been expensive for the video site. Under the terms of its old deals with the labels, YouTube agreed to pay the music companies either a per-stream fee or a share of ad revenue associated with the clip, whichever is greater. Since YouTube is just beginning to get serious about selling ads next to its content, it’s usually paying the per-stream fee, which industry executives peg at about half a penny per clip.
The music labels have been angling to increase that fee to perhaps eight-tenths of a penny, while Google has been pushing in the other direction, where the two sides would simply share any revenue the clips create.
Infuriatingly, seemingly all of Sony Music’s official YouTube videos have had their embedding function turned off, which means I can’t share them with you. So here’s an unofficial but still excellent clip of The Clash, who recorded for the company’s Columbia label.
Gateway sure likes to aim high. Sometimes they have a hit. Other times it's a miss. And then there's the Gateway MD7826u, which is more of a mess. This entertainment laptop gets a few things right but mostly it's a glitch-prone affair.
Gateway sure likes to aim high. Sometimes they have a hit. Other times it's a miss. And then there's the Gateway MD7826u, which is more of a mess. This entertainment laptop gets a few things right but mostly it's a glitch-prone affair.
I guess it had to happen: Microsoft is opening retail stores with the help of some guy named Dave Porter who used to work for Wal-Mart. Super synergy. I can see it now: these stores will be the exact polar opposite of the Apple Store - brightly lit, overstocked, and oddly jarring (kind of like Windows - ZING!!!)
No real information on these stores just yet, but Dave is going to start planning a slow and steady roll-out. Will they have Smartie Stations with crack technicians? Weekly training in Windows Paint? What I suspect will happen is that Microsoft will launch a set of pop-up stores using distressed retail space and then roll out if and when these spaces become popular. Nothing like a boom or a bust to build out bricks and mortar.
I guess it had to happen: Microsoft is opening retail stores with the help of some guy named Dave Porter who used to work for Wal-Mart. Super synergy. I can see it now: these stores will be the exact polar opposite of the Apple Store - brightly lit, overstocked, and oddly jarring.
No real information on these stores just yet, but Dave is going to start planning a slow and steady roll-out. Will they have Smartie Stations with trained technicians? Training in Windows Paint? What I suspect will happen is that Microsoft will launch a set of pop-up stores using distressed retail space and then roll out if and when these spaces become popular. Nothing like a boom or a bust to build out bricks and mortar.
Microsoft Appoints David Porter as Corporate Vice President of Retail Stores
Twenty-seven-year retail veteran will focus on transforming the PC and device-buying experience for retail consumers and developing and rolling out new Microsoft-branded stores.
REDMOND, Wash. — Feb. 12, 2009 — Microsoft Corp. today announced that David Porter will join the company as corporate vice president of Retail Stores. He will lead Microsoft’s efforts to create a better PC and Microsoft retail purchase experience for consumers worldwide through the development and opening of the company’s own retail stores. Porter will report to Microsoft Chief Operating Officer Kevin Turner. He is joining Microsoft from DreamWorks Animation SKG, where he was head of worldwide product distribution.
“I am delighted to welcome David to Microsoft,” Turner said. “This is an exciting time with our strong lineup of upcoming product releases including Windows 7 and new releases of Windows Live and Windows Mobile. We’re also working hard to transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience at retail by improving the articulation and demonstration of the Microsoft innovation and value proposition so that it’s clear, simple and straightforward for consumers everywhere. David’s unique and diverse background, coupled with his deep retail roots and distribution understanding, will be an invaluable asset in this long-term effort.”
“There are tremendous opportunities ahead for Microsoft to create a world-class shopping experience for our customers,” Porter said. “I am excited about helping consumers make more informed decisions about their PC and software purchases, and we’ll share learnings from our stores with our existing retail and OEM partners that are critical to our success.”
Defining the time frame, locations and specifics for planned Microsoft-branded retail stores will be Porter’s first order of business. The purpose of opening these stores is to create deeper engagement with consumers and continue to learn firsthand about what they want and how they buy.
Porter, whose new role and focus will complement the work Microsoft is already doing with its retail partners, will work in close partnership with leaders of existing retail programs in Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices Division.
Before joining DreamWorks Animation in 2007, Porter spent 25 years at Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in roles of increasing responsibility and seniority in store operations, merchandising and information technology. In his last role at Wal-Mart, Porter was vice president and general merchandise manager of Entertainment, where he served as a strategic point of influence throughout the Wal-Mart business.
Porter’s first day at Microsoft will be Feb. 16, 2009.
Check out Ars’ take on the stores and chime in on what you’d like to see at GatewayMicrosoft retail.
OTTAWA, Feb. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - ZIM Corporation (OTCBB: ZIMCF), a provider of software products and services for the database and mobile markets' today announced its financial results for its third quarter ended December 31, 2008. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 Feb 2009 | 12:45 am
We’ve dug a little deeper into today’s latest set of Comscore data. As we noted earlier today, Facebook continues to show tremendous growth, and may well catch up to MySpace in terms of U.S. unique visitors by 2010. But another interesting trend, and one that is important to advertisers, are the increases in engagement both networks have seen over the past year - a metric that MySpace has been building a firm lead in.
Since last month, MySpace saw the number of minutes each U.S. user spent on the site per month grow 15%, to 266.3 minutes - a new record for the social network, and a 31% increase since last January. Facebook has also shown an increase over the last month, growing 4% since December to an average of 176.6 minutes per user, but has only grown around 3% year over year. And MySpace is still besting Facebook by around 90 minutes per user.
As the graph below shows, MySpace has had the advantage here for quite a while, but the recent spike is likely due to the site’s launch of MySpace Music, as well as growth in MySpace Video. In the struggling economy people are spending more time at home, which tends to benefit these media-heavy sites.
Page views are also up for both social networks, at least in the short term. MySpace’s page views are up nearly 10% since December to 579 pages per user per month, while Facebook has grown around 3% in the same time period to 337. Figures for both sites are smaller than they were a year ago, likely because they have both been introducing UI improvements like AJAX that don’t force users to refresh their page for every action. Such improvements generally help with lengthening visits as users are less likely to get frustrated, but they also lead to deflated page views.
Crunch Network: CrunchBasethe free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Sprint has recently gone live with the technical specs on the Palm Pre website and with it comes plenty of details, as well as a few questions. Perhaps one of the more exciting bits is that the Palm Pre will be able to tether and share its 3G EVDO Rev A high-speed data connection. The tethering will be possible using either a USB or Bluetooth connection. Of course that is where question number one comes in. How much extra will that tethering feature cost?
Aside from the ability to tether, the Palm Pre will also include 8GB of total storage with about 7.4GB available for the user. Which again, brings me to one disappointing point, the Pre will not allow for any extra storage because there is no external card slot.
Feature wise, the Pre will have a 3.1-inch touchscreen display with a 320 x 480 resolution, accelerometer, proximity sensor, slide-out QWERTY keyboard, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, GPS, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, 3-megapixel camera with LED flash, a standard 3.5mm headphone jack and a USB mass storage mode. Additionally, it will also feature a light sensor that will automatically adjust the display brightness to help battery life.
The Pre will also have support for plenty of messaging options to include IM, SMS, MMS, POP email, IMAP email and Outlook with Microsoft Direct Push. This latest information release just gives me a little more excitement, and I feel the possibility of parting with my iPhone 3G becoming a little greater.
MIT students develop a regenerative shock absorber that uses bumps in the road to generate electricity, a development they say increases fuel economy as much as 10 percent.
As Mozilla ponders adding new, cutting-edge features like Ubiquity and Prism to the next version of Firefox, the company is facing more accusations of bogging down its once-svelte browser with unnecessary bloat. Yet the software maker insists that's not the case.
CWmike writes "A post-beta version of Windows 7, Build 7022, leaked to Internet file-sharing sites also includes an updated version of IE8, according to searches at several BitTorrent trackers. With Microsoft halting new Windows 7 beta downloads on Tuesday, and blocking all downloads as of noon (EST) today, users are again turning to illegal sources to get the new operating system."
With nearly 2,000 “friends” on Facebook, I should be a regular visitor to the site. I am not. Instead, I prefer to use Facebook’s mobile application on my iPhone to send messages, update my status, upload photos taken on the go and sometime even scroll through the news feed to see what my friends are up to. The ad- and clutter-free interface has fewer distractions and makes using Facebook a breeze.
Apparently, I am one of 25 million Facebook mobile users and one of 4 million who access the service on a daily basis. That’s a sizable portion of Facebook’s 150 million (and growing) registered users, and with them lies Facebook’s future. With the rise of superphones such as Apple’s iPhone, the BlackBerry Bold and Nokia’s E71 and N96 devices, we are at the cusp of a new era in which the mobile and the wired web converge. This convergence, when married to location-based services, would create a new real-time and highly contextual Internet experience.
Images purporting to be leaked photos of the next iPhone are making rounds on the web.
MacRumors and iPodObserver both claim receiving images capturing a new 16GB black iPhone.
In the images, the black iPhone case appears to ditch the smooth, plastic surface of the iPhone 3G in favor of a matte finish.
We can't vouch for the validity of the images, but they do appear believable. Developers and analysts are predicting the next iPhone will sport very similar dimensions and resolution to its predecessors, so as not to require applications in the App Store to undergo major rewrites.
Otherwise, not much is known about what Apple has in store for the third-generation iPhone. However, there is strong, well-supported speculation that the next iPhone will be souped-up for gaming.
It was inevitable, really. With $150 million in debt coming due on Feb. 19 and not nearly enough cash on hand to pay it off, Midway, the sinking ship of a game publisher responsible for Mortal Combat (and little else), has filed for bankruptcy.
“This was a difficult but necessary decision,” Matt Booty, Midway’s president, chairman and CEO, said in a statement. “We have been focused on realigning our operations and improving our execution, and this filing will relieve the immediate pressure from our creditors and provide us time for an orderly exploration of our strategic alternatives. This Chapter 11 filing is the next logical step in an ongoing process to address our capital structure. Midway enters this process with strong underlying fundamentals, as evidenced by solid fourth-quarter sales that exceeded expectations in spite of a challenging retail and general economic environment.”
Apparently, Booty wrote that last line without a hint of irony. But clearly it’s soaked through with it. Fact is, Midway hasn’t had a profitable year in nearly a decade. And given the somber outlooks of far more potent rivals like Electronic Arts (ERTS) and Take-Two (TTWO), and its anemic game catalog, this year will be no different.
FROM APPLETELL - This is a great product for those who spend a lot of time talking on the cell in the car. You could even get a lot of use out of it in your office. You just have to decide if having a wireless speakerphone is worth $100 to you. MORE »
NewsFactor - Late last fall, Microsoft servers came under attack from a particularly vicious worm called Conficker/Downadup. The worm may have been specifically written to exploit a vulnerability that Microsoft revealed in Security Bulletin No. MS08-067. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 11:30 pm
YouTube took a step towards monetization by allowing partners to charge users for downloads. In this “test” initiative, selected YouTube partners can offer their video downloads for free or for a fee (determined by the partner) paid through Google Checkout. Most videos in the test are currently charging about $1 each. The partner can also decide how the downloadable video will be licensed to the user - whether it will be restricted to a private non-commercial use video, or whether it can be used under Creative Commons.
YouTube’s university partners, which include Stanford, Duke and UC Berkeley, are also testing free downloads of lectures and events. And a small group of YouTube partners (YouTube mentioned partners khanacademy, householdhacker and pogobat in their blog post) are using the test offer as a revenue generation and distribution tool. This initiative would also allow users to access videos offline.
YouTube is a innovative product but very expensive and not profitable. Everyone knows that Google has been looking for ways to make money from YouTube, especially in a struggling economy, and it looks like as thought they are flirting with this option as a revenue generator. Google has rolled out several ways to generate revenue, including through YouTubevertorials, selling search results, and ad revenues from big content partners. Google hasn’t indicated how much YouTube would be making from this partnership but we assume that they are hoping to make some cut from this down the line. YouTube is soliciting applications from partners to collaborate on the pilot partnership, but it is restricted to US-based partners only.
Will this work? We have a huge amount of traffic to our YouTube download tool so that may be an indication that this new venture could work out to Google’s advantage.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunchMobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Buffy's Eliza Dushku plays a revolving-door role in a new show about a shadowy corporation that uses implanted memories to fulfill its customers' wildest, and weirdest, desires. Joss Whedon and his leading lady talk sex, brainwashing and creative nightmares.
Throwing down some sort of Captain Planet voodoo, Samsung has managed to take a bunch of plastic bottles and recycle them into the Blue Earth, a solar-powered touchscreen phone backed to the brim with eco-friendliness.
If you opt to hoof it rather than drive, the Blue Earth has a built in pedometer that calculates how much CO2 you’re keeping out of the air. Run out of juice during your stroll? The back of the phone is decked out with solar panels, allowing you to charge up wherever you are. Well, as long as the sun is out. And “wherever you are” is outside. You know what I mean.
Of course, solar panels aren’t efficient enough to charge you up the way a good ol’ 2 prong can, so they include a standard charger in the (recycled) box). But don’t feel guilty: it’s designed for energy efficiency and, like the handset, free of harmful materials.
The Blue Earth will launch in the UK in the second half of 2009, and it probably won’t be alone. We’re hearing a good number of manufacturers talking about solar phones for Mobile World Congress, primarily for emerging markets where power outlets aren’t necessarily common place - so keep an eye out for more.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Lawyers for the Guantánamo detainee whose case we documented in a previous episode of Boing Boing Video are appealing directly to Barack Obama to release classified information about his treatment while in US custody. They faxed a letter to the White House asking the president to review the case of detainee Binyam Ahmed Mohamed, who they claim was tortured "in truly medieval ways" for more than two years after "extraordinary rendition" to secret foreign prisons. Snip from NYT story:
Attached to the letter was a two-page memorandum outlining the alleged torture; the memorandum was first reviewed by the Pentagon, which redacted it, saying it contained classified information. A copy of the letter and redacted memorandum was provided to The Times by Mr. Mohamed’s legal team, which appeared at a news conference here on Wednesday to publicly press for his release and transfer to Britain, where he lived as a teenager and is a legal resident. At the news conference, one of the lawyers, Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne Bradley, said that Mr. Mohamed had been on a hunger strike since Jan. 5 and was being fed through a tube; she said that when she saw him two weeks ago, he was “skin and bones.”
The Pentagon confirmed that Mr. Mohamed was on a hunger strike, along with 40 other detainees. “We recognize it as a form of protest,” Cmdr. Pauline Storum of the Navy said Wednesday in an e-mail response to questions. She said that Mr. Mohamed “was in good physical and mental condition.”
Mr. Mohamed’s lawyers are also pressing for the details of his treatment to be declared unclassified, contending that what the government considers state secrets are not secret at all, having been revealed in news reports and in the work of investigations around the world. “To reach any other conclusion conflates national security with national embarrassment,” the lawyers say in their letter to Mr. Obama.
(...) The tortured he endured there “would make waterboarding seem like child’s play,” [Air Force Lt. Col. Yvonne] Bradley said. Court papers in the San Francisco lawsuit describe horrific abuse in overseas prisons. Mr. Mohamed claimed that during his detention in Morocco he was routinely beaten and that once his interrogators cut his genitals with a scalpel then poured a hot stinging liquid over the wound. He said he was frequently threatened with rape, electrocution and death.
One of Binyam's lawyers is the truly remarkable, wonderful gentleman who is Clive Stafford Smith. Somewhat strangely, he's not named directly in the article, even though he signs the letter they so heavily reference. (He founded and is the Director of Reprieve.) The closing paragraphs of this letter, which serve to highlight how heavily censored the information provided to the President of the United States on this case is, are brilliant:
"[President Obama]…you should be aware of the bizarre reality of the process under which we operate: That you, as Commander-in-Chief, are being denied access to material that would help prove that crimes have been committed by US personnel. This decision is being made by the very people who you command. This is a state of affairs that you may wish to redress."
Here’s one for you tin foil-wearing privacy advocates. (God bless you, but constantly being attuned to The Man watching your every move must be exhausting.) The Federal Trade Commission has set up a whole slew of new suggestions—not quite regulations, then—for Web sites in order to make their privacy policies more clear, and to regulate (without actually regulating) how they gather data and what they do with it.
Apparently the FTC is weary of Internet Service Providers being able to track your every move online, so it’s enacted these new guidelines to help you out, citizen. Whether or not Time Warner of Comcast cares that you spend all hours of the day reading FAIL Blog is another matter entirely.
And to be fair to the tin foil hat types—I say that with no derision in my voice; it’s merely a convenient metaphor for this tired soul to use as a crutch—it’s not like it’s entirely unheard of for ISPs and related companies to employ extreme methods to protect their own backside, legally. It wasn’t too long ago that so-called deep packet inspection dominated an Internet news cycle: is it appropriate to use the technology, if yes when is it appropriate, and so on.
Again, I’d stress that these new FTC guidelines are just that—guidelines; nothing is binding here. But the message the FTC is sending is clear: if you guys (the ISPs) don’t play nice, we’ll have to regulate you the good ol’ fashioned way.
alphadogg writes "The spreading Conficker/Downadup worm is now viewed as such a significant threat that it's inspired the formation of a posse to stop it, with Microsoft leading the charge by offering a $250,000 reward to bring the Conficker malware bad guys to justice. The money will be paid for 'information that results in the arrest and conviction of those responsible for illegally launching the Conficker malicious code on the Internet,' Microsoft said today in a statement, adding it is fostering a partnership with Internet registries and DNA providers such as ICANN, ORG, and NeuStar as well as security vendors Symantec and Arbor Networks, among others, to stop the Conficker worm once and for all. Conficker, also called Downadup, is estimated to have infected at least 10 million PCs. It has been slowly but surely spreading since November. Its main trick is to disable anti-malware protection and block access to anti-malware vendors' Web sites."
The funniest thing about this whole Steorn/Orbo business is that my dad essentially built the same thing last year with a bike wheel, some paper clips, and some fridge magnets. This “revolution for energy production” is repeatedly pooh-poohed by the community, though they are denounced by Steorn as being closed-minded for being so. Really? Maybe they just see how incredibly limited this technology really is — and no amount of fund-raising and talk-giving will change that.
If I understand it correctly (their doubletalk “How does it work” page is uninformative), what’s essentially happening is there is a mostly frictionless spinning element with a magnet on the outer end, constantly propelled by magnets embedded in the edge which push it along. Technically, that is a “clean and constant supply of energy,” but the amount it produces is so unbelievably small that you’d probably have to have 10 of the paperback-sized units to power a small light bulb.
You see, the amount of energy that can be harvested from something that size must be less than the total amount of “push” provided by the magnets spinning the center element. That’s a simple matter of physics — there are no other forces at work here to create energy. Technically the magnets would eventually wear each other out and align with one another, but that’s a minor concern compared with the fact that this system simply isn’t practical for creating a useful amount of power. And no matter how they try to obscure that simple truth, that’s a limitation of the physics they’ve decided to get behind. And if that wasn’t enough, the fact that their company is giving talks in Dubai instead of issuing peer-reviewed papers is enough for me to dismiss them outright.
FREMONT, Calif., Feb. 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Exar Corporation
(Nasdaq: EXAR), today announced the appointment of Dr. Izak Bencuya to its
Board of Directors.
"The Board of Directors and I are excited to announce that Dr. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:47 pm
AP - AsusTek Computer Inc. upended the laptop market when it brought out the tiny, cheap Eee PC a year and a half ago. As a follow-up, the plucky Taiwanese company is trying something harder: conquering the kitchen.
Apple's iPhone application store is as crowded as a Beyonce concert, with more than 20,000 apps available. But one independent developer still managed to rake in $600,000
in a single month with a single iPhone game.
Ethan Nicholas, developer of a tank artillery game called iShoot, told Wired.com he quit his job the day his app rose to No. 1 in the App Store, earning him $37,000 in a single day.
"I'm
not going to be a millionaire in the next month, but I'd be shocked if
it didn't happen at the end of the year," he said in a phone interview.
"If it weren't for taxes I would be a millionaire right now."
Until recently, there has been no realistic way for individual programmers to make serious money on their own. Most of the software market is dominated by big companies, and the traditional distribution method for independent developers -- shareware -- isn't conducive to striking it rich. By contrast, Apple's iTunes App Store provides a platform for marketing, selling and distributing software; all a developer needs to provide is a good idea and some working code.
Nicholas'
success story proves that there's still plenty of potential to strike
it rich in Apple's seven-month-old App Store. In September, iPhone
developer Steve Demeter said he made $250,000 in just two months with
his puzzle game Trism. But as the App Store expanded rapidly,
many developers thought the store would get too crowded with apps and
business would inevitably slow down.
It wasn't easy for Nicholas, either. After getting off his shift as an engineer at Sun Microsystems, he worked on iShoot
eight hours a day, cradling his 1-year-old son in one hand and coding
with the other. He didn't have the money to buy books to learn how
to write an iPhone app, so he taught himself by reading websites.
When iShoot launched in October, business was slow for a while. And then Nicholas found some spare time to code a free version of the app — iShoot Lite, which he released January. Here's how that helped: Inside iShoot Lite he advertised the $3, full version of iShoot. Users downloaded the free version 2.4 million times. And that led 320,000 satisfied iShoot Lite players to pay for iShoot.
The game soared
to the No. 1 spot — and it stayed there for 26 days. It's only
February, so Nicholas is still awaiting payment from Apple, and he couldn't
provide documentation to substantiate his earnings. However, Media
Bistro reporter Bryan Barletta confirmed that iShoot Lite was No. 1 for
about three weeks. As of this writing, iShoot sits at No. 6 in the App
Store's top 25 paid apps.
Rana Sobhany, vice president of iPhone
app analytics company Medialets, said the math made sense and Nicholas'
success is very believable.
Nicholas' story shows how a clever marketing strategy can pay off with money and recognition on the iPhone story -- and he
didn't even have to hire a PR agent. He said the ingredients to his
success were simply word of mouth, luck and a quality game.
What compelled him to code an iPhone game? Hard times for him and his family — and he was inspired by Trism, he said.
"I never expected to get anywhere near where I did," Nicholas said. "And of course I've more than doubled [what Trism accomplished] in one month."
Despite nearly becoming a millionaire, Nicholas said he and his family haven't made any lifestyle changes -- yet. The first item on his agenda is to hire a nanny.
PARIS, February 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Eutelsat Communications
(Euronext Paris: ETL) today announced the successful launch of its HOT
BIRD(TM) 10 satellite by an Ariane 5 ECA rocket from the European spaceport
in Kourou, French Guiana.
Speaking in Kourou after the launch, Giuliano Berretta, Chairman and CEO
commented: "The successful launch of HOT BIRD(TM) 10 marks a further step
forward in our extensive in-orbit investment programme for 2008-2011. Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:37 pm
AP - Google Inc. will stop selling ads on broadcast radio stations this spring, marking the Internet search leader's latest flop in off-line media. Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 Feb 2009 | 10:35 pm
Bryan Haggerty and his partner Jeannie Choe call themselves "Romantech" because they're geeks at heart. So it only made sense for him to propose to her this week with an iPhone app, which he designed by himself.
The technological Casanova on Wednesday asked the big question, only after putting his girlfriend through a video scavenger hunt of sorts guided by his iPhone app.
"I thought about all the typical kinds of ways, and they all kind of just weren't working for me," Haggerty said. "I said, 'That's not really how I would do it.' So I came up with the idea."
Haggerty designed the web app, befittingly titled Romantech, to display a map containing location points throughout San Francisco. Each point was accompanied by a video of Haggerty giving clues on where to go next.
Eventually the two met at Dolores Park, where all the dots connected to form the shape of a <3 symbol. There, Haggerty sat on top of a hill, greeting her upon her arrival. And he proposed.
"I kind of had a feeling," Choe said. "When I first saw the app I knew what was going to happen."
The caret-heart symbol harbors a lot of sentimental value for the tech savvy couple. When the two first starting dating two and a half years ago, Haggerty gave Choe a necklace containing <3.
Haggerty, who's 27, attributed his coding skills to his job at LinkedIn, where he works as a user interface designer. Choe, an industrial designer and a former Core77 writer, will be 27, too, on Valentine's Day.
An anonymous reader writes "I am curious to know what vermin prevention/eradication methods are used in other locations. I am working at a dealership and we have an exterminator man who puts out glue traps and bait stations, but they still come and eat my cable. The latest was a couple of fiber runs — very expensive. I have threatened my boss with a cat for the server room (my office), going so far as to cruise the local Humane Society's website and eye-balling a nice Ragdoll-Siamese mix. Even if I do feel like dealing with a litter box, cat hair in the equipment and pouncings on my keyboards (and I'm not sure I do), that only covers the server room. We have multiple buildings on the campus which get locked up to prevent theft, but it isn't secure enough to keep out the critters and the latest chew spot was in the ceiling. Any ideas?"
Twitter hits the mainstream, where people are using it for all sorts of practical purposes. Where's the fun in that? We interview six Shorty Award winners and nominees to find out.
Rosetta Stone is one of the top applications downloaded from Pirate Bay. The software teaches foreign languages by using audio and visual tools to help memorize different words and phrases. Since the paid software costs upwards of $250, you will want to look into other language instruction applications.
Learn to Speaker
Learn to Speaker has several free language instruction downloads available on their website. The software is simple to navigate and covers everything from pronunciation, prepositions, verbs, possessive pronouns, and much more. The software covers more of the nuts and bolts of learning a language instead of just a vocabulary lesson. However, to build your vocabulary a wizard character appears on your screen and translates common words and phrases. Languages includes on the site are Spanish, French, Italian and German. The download supports Windows 95 and higher.
Praxis
If you are more of an audio learner, then Praxis Language may be a better application for you. The company offers podcasts that provide lessons in Chinese, Spanish, French and Italian. You can customize the lessons, so that you are learning the language skills that are on par with your level. Download the content onto your MP3 player and listen to the lessons at your convenience.
Byki
Not everyone is looking to learn a popular language, like French or Spanish. You may want freeware that has lessons in more exotic languages, like Urdu or Vietnamese. If this is the case, then download one of the free software packages from Byki. It includes the selected language rules, vocabulary lessons, words of the day and more. If you like the software, you can purchase the premium version for extra content.
Short Version: A good value for a NAS drive thanks to nice extras like a built-in print server, easy setup, and a straightforward interface. The Iomega Home Media Network Hard Drive would be right at home in a small office or a multi-user household.
Features (according to Iomega):
Simple to use—Three step set-up - simply plug into your router, power on, and install the software CD. Friendly web screens for easy management.
Sharing—Access files from any networked Windows PC or Apple computer for easy file sharing.
High Performance—Gigabit Ethernet connectivity combined with a high performance processor.
UPnP AV Media Server—Compatible with DLNA certified media players, able to stream photos, audio content and videos to a variety of media devices like game consoles, audio bridges, DMAs (digital media adapters), picture frames and more.
iTunes™ Server—Store your audio content in one central location and share it across your iTunes players.
Expandability—Add storage capacity by connecting external USB Hard Disk Drives. Supports FAT32 and NTFS formatted hard drives.
Network Discovery—Automatic network discovery by Apple Bonjour and Microsoft Windows Rally devices.
Data Protection—Touch-free professional-level backup for all your critical data with EMC® Retrospect HD backup software. Effortlessly back up files on a pre-set schedule.
Print Server—Intelligent network print sharing capability for one USB printer directly attached to the HomeMedia drive
MSRP: $159.99 for the 500GB version, $229.99 for the 1TB version
Setting up and using the drive
Believe it or not, this NAS drive is ridiculously easy to set up. You power up the drive, plug it into your router, and install the software on your computer. When the installation’s all done, a window pops open with five default drives: Music, Movies, Backups, Public, and Photos.
They’re all accessible using Iomega’s interface or as separate networked hard drives inside your operating system. Notice that, again, they appear as five distinct drives.
There’s a pretty straightforward web-based interface for creating new drives and tweaking various settings. As you can see, I created some extra essential drive-spaces: Bucketlist, Dreams, Enemies, Fashion, Hopes, Hotpants, Raffle, and Recipes.
Unfortunately, I meant for “Raffles” to be “ROFLs” – a place to store hilarious jokes and whatnot but I wasn’t able to easily change the name from Raffles to ROFLs, so I just deleted it and made a new drive. Also, each drive name has to be all one word without any spaces. I would have liked to have “Bucket List” and “Hot Pants” but, alas, t’was not allowed. Any new drives that you create will appear as network drives in your operating system as well.
Once everything is set up, you can add users and dole out various levels of access, or just keep everything open to everyone. This drive would work really well in a small office or in a family where the parents are into some weird voodoo that they don’t want their kids to see.
Nice extras
The drive comes with EMC Retrospect, which is automated backup software. It’s easy to use and lets you set a schedule for backing up important files. The getup also comes with 2GB of free Mozy online backup service. You can get 2GB free from Mozy no matter who you are or what drives you own, though, so it’s mostly just a little extra fluff.
From a hardware standpoint, there’s a USB port on the back of the drive that can be used to hook up a second external hard drive or as a print server. That’s a great little feature that I think adds a fair amount of value to this thing. You can just place your printer and your backup drive next to your router and be done with it.
The drive also works seamlessly with iTunes, Xbox 360, PS3, and various other network-enabled devices. My Xbox 360 picked the Iomega up as a networked hard drive and streamed an HD movie file (Ethernet to Ethernet) with ease.
Noise and heat
The drive doesn’t get too hot thanks to a built-in fan, but it’s that same fan that emanates a dull whine all the live-long day. I had this drive sitting right next to me on my desk and I’d have to turn the whole thing off after about an hour. It’s not loud, so it’s possible that the noise could easily be drowned out if you work around other people or listen to music all day but I prefer to work with as few distractions as possible, so I could definitely hear the drive. If I were to use this drive as my own, it’d be in a drawer or on the other side of the room for sure.
As you can hear, it’s not that bad at all. It’s just that dull whine bobbing up and down every so often that gets agitating after a while.
Transfer speed
The internal drive has a 7,200 spindle speed but most of the bottleneck is going to occur at your router. I transferred a 3.64GB file wirelessly (802.11g) from my laptop to the drive and it took just under a half hour. Naturally, hard-wired speeds will be much faster but keep in mind how you usually access your network and plan accordingly.
Conclusion:
The Iomega Home Media Network Drive is an easy-to-use, affordable solution if you need a backup solution that multiple computers can access. The included print server and user management features make it a great option for any small business or medium-to-large family.
Brazilian designer Anderson Horta made these delightful Pac-man ghost lamps. Brandon has the details over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Blinky & Pinky & Inky & Clyde"
pnorth writes "Officials from New Mexico's Los Alamos nuclear weapons laboratory have confessed that 67 of its computers are missing, with no less than 13 of them having disappeared over the past year alone. A memo [PDF] leaked by the Project on Government Oversight watchdog brought the lost nuclear laptops to the public's attention, but the Energy Department's National Nuclear Security Administration dismissed fears the computers contained highly-sensitive or classified information, noting it was more likely to cause 'cybersecurity issues.' Three of the 13 computers which went missing in the past year were stolen from a scientist's home on January 16 and the memo also mentioned a BlackBerry belonging to another staff member had been lost 'in a sensitive foreign country.' The labs faced similar issues back in 2003 when 22 laptops were designated as being 'unlocated.'"
Today's episode of Boing Boing Video is our mini-documentary of the Global Game Jam 2009, a worldwide, networked gamebuilding marathon in which participants have exactly 48 hours in which to conceptualize, design, and build a web-based electronic game.
Boing Boing Video's Jolon Bankey was the head organizer for GGJ Costa Rica, and team members there sent in video reports as the 48 hour game-in unfolded. I attended the Los Angeles edition with Matty Kirsch. Boing Boing Gadgets editor Rob Beschizza represented us at GGJ Pittsburgh. And Boing Boing friends around the world uploaded video sitreps, shoutouts, and random moments of weirdness with which we've produced this piece. We received video submissions from places as diverse as Australia, Scotland, Israel, Turkey, and Venezuela.
Play some of the games! You can browse winning entries, and all of the others who participated, and play on Mac, PC, or other OSes: Game Entry Browser.
Photos below: At top, Jolon's 7-year-old son Gibson Bankey (clearly destined to be a future gaming titan) passes wrathful judgment on entries at the Costa Rica Game Jam. Below that, the winners of that competition (Team Vara Blanca for the game "Muu") proudly holding their trophy. Image by Laura Pardo, here's her entire (lovely) photoset. Bottom 2 photos are iphone snapshots I took during the BB Video shoot at the LA Game Jam, including our BBV guest host Matty Kirsch. Here's my photoset.
Boing Boing Video wishes to thank Global Game Jam founders Susan Gold, Gorm Lai and Ian Schreiber. Special thanks to the GGJ organizers and participants who contributed footage to Boing Boing Video: Caracas, Venezuela (Ciro Durán); Capetown, South Africa (Patrick Marais); Glasgow, Scotland (Romana Khan); Tel Aviv, Israel (Yuval Sapir); London, England (Fiona French); Los Angeles, PA, USA (Joseph Spradley); Newport, Wales (Mike Reddy); Perth, Australia (Simon Witt); Pittsburgh, PA, USA (Tracy Kobeda Brown); San Jose, Costa Rica (Jolon Bankey, Rene Zuleta, Shirley Monge, Daniela Calderon); Waco, TX, USA (Casey Jones); Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill, NC, USA (Michael Lee).
Lego, the toymaker that cemented colorful plastic bricks into our childhood memories, is growing up into a gadget manufacturer.
At the Nuremberg Toy Fair this week, Lego showed off a prototype of a digital camcorder sporting the Lego aesthetic. The camcorder isn't composed of actual Lego bricks, but the company is considering the possibility as it continues to test prototypes, according to Hobby Media.
The company is clearly responding to rampant Lego fanaticism in the tech community. On Wednesday a hot item was a cellphone from Alcatel featuring a colorful plastic case, which could be switched with other case colors as easily as you'd snap on a Lego piece.
Several electronic hobbyists have used Legos to construct gadgets, too. One of our favorites was a model of a Mac Pro composed of 2,588 Lego bricks (below). On top of the Apple stem stood a Lego man resembling Steve Jobs.
Ever seen a pop culture clickable game on MTV or Entertainment Weekly asking you to predict and vote on who is going to be a winner in a latest awards show? Or asking you to vote on who is hotter, Beyonce or Britney? Chances are the game was made by San Francisco start-up VoxPop.TV.
The under-the-radar VoxPop.tv (the company’s services were launched in 2007) is tapping into a relatively niche market by creating pop culture contextual games for publishers like Entertainment Weekly, E! Online, and Maxim. Unlike traditional casual games, these highly contextual and sometimes ad-supported games are based on opinions and predictions on topics and current events (like the Oscars or the Grammy awards). Games range from an E! Online game on what celebrity wore the best outfit to an awards show to picking brackets for March Madness at NCAA.com.
VoxPop has turned the games into free, shareable widgets for anyone to post on a blog, social networking site or website, and users can even create a “game lobby” of sorts by adding multiple games to a page. Users are able find games through VoxPop’s own Game Lobby or through publisher sites like Entertainment Weekly or BillBoard.
VoxPop seems to be creating a solid revenue base from creating both ad-sponsored games for publishers and publisher-sponsored games. The turnaround for a game is around an hour, so VoxPop can create a “Who wore it best” game for the Oscars for a publisher and post it by the end of the awards show. And VoxPop hasn’t seen much of a dropoff in sales with the economic downturn. The company said that publishers have less staff and less content and are looking for online games, like VoxPop’s applications, to fill content. There doesn’t seem to be another company doing this niche work out there; and VoxPop said its main competitors are the in-house capabilities of publishers. But VoxPop says creating a pop culture games in-house can be costly and time-intensive. We recently wrote about Heyzap, another online gaming start-up hoping to break into the digital space. VoxPop’s co-founders, Mike Derezin, Bill Armistead, and Michael Hoffman, said the hardest battle was forming partnerships with publishers. Word-of-mouth publicity has helped tremendously, they added.
VoxPop received around $2 million in series A funding from True Ventures in 2007 and currently creates close 60 new games a month. The company is hoping to create even more innovative games down the line and wants to offer self-service game production to publishers in the future.
Here’s a sample game and screenshot:
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Heavily pixelated Japanese pornography featuring school girls, scarily gnarled tree roots and suckling cephalopods is now available on USB flash drives for outrageous prices, considering that Google can instantly deliver all your Japanese pornography pretty much for free.
A working Gameboy costume built buy a cosplayer at Ohayocon 2009, replete with built-in emulator, which is accessed by hammering the d-pad perpendicular to his junk.
The credit crunch has slowed the progress of many small European green energy projects, which may lead to larger firms having to take up the slack. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 Feb 2009 | 8:53 pm
Here we go. Again. The Mac Observer has a shot of a 16GB iPhone with a new model number, A1303, and what appears to be a matte black finish. Who really knows if this is true, but if that matte finish comes with a metal backing then I may have to bite. It sure looks legit. What do you think? Is this the new iPhone? I mean, it’s not like they’re going to completely overhaul the design, right?
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An anonymous reader writes "When the mainstream media first announced Barack Obama's 'victory' in keeping his BlackBerry, the focus was on the security of the device, and keeping the US president's e-mail communications private from spies and hackers. The news coverage and analysis by armchair security experts thus far has failed to focus on the real threat: attacks against President Obama's location privacy, and the potential physical security risks that come with someone knowing the president's real-time physical location. In this article, a CNET blogger digs into the real risks associated with the President carrying around a tracking device at all times."
Unix weenies everywhere will be partying like it's 1234567890 this Friday.
That's because, at precisely 3:31:30 p.m. Pacific time on February 13, 2009, the 10-digit "epoch time" clock used by most Unix computers will display all ten decimal digits in sequence. (That's 6:31:30 Eastern, or 23:31:30 UTC.)
Unlike time systems intended for humans, Unix time simply counts the number of seconds since midnight UTC on January 1, 1970. It's a convenient way for computers to measure elapsed time, provided the start date wasn't before 1970. On Friday, the number of seconds will hit 1,234,567,890. Celebrations are planned in San Francisco, Vancouver, Seattle, Los Angeles and about 10 other locations worldwide, so don't be surprised if it takes the guys in IT a little longer to respond to your calls tomorrow afternoon, or if the Gadget Lab crew is hard to find.
We couldn't find any watches that display Unix time, but the above desk clock from ThinkGeek, will do the trick. It will also display the time in binary, octal, hexadecimal or Roman formats. Mark your calendars: It's only 11 and a half years until XX:XX:XX X/XX/XX day.
Serious computer geeks around the world will be watching their computers' time clocks late Friday, when the internal clock used by Unix reads 1234567890.
The indigenous Samis in Sweden’s far north, once known for rounding up their reindeer on skis, have apparently traded in their skis for snowmobiles."Everything progresses in this world. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 Feb 2009 | 8:14 pm
Ornithologists have reported smaller numbers of birds native to the wetlands of the Philippines due to urbanization and growth of agriculture. Such outside influences have caused the marshes to shrink from 32,000 hectares thirty years ago to just 72 hectares today. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 Feb 2009 | 8:05 pm
This past December we reported on how Facebook was coming up on Blogger to steal its top spot among social media sites when measured by total unique visitors worldwide.
Now, it appears as though Facebook has finally done it. Data from comScore, which unfortunately goes only through December 2008, shows how Facebook’s visitors (221 million) basically matched Blogger’s (225.5 million) by the end of the year. That’s a gap of just 4.5 million versus the gap of 21 million that existed in November. Assuming Facebook’s upward trend continued in January (and Blogger’s remained flat), the social network sits on top of the roost now.
Facebook stands out from the others not only because it’s the most popular; it’s also the only one showing consistently healthy growth. Chris DeWolf in a recent interview with Charlie Rose said how he doesn’t expect Facebook to pass MySpace by 2010 in terms of U.S. unique visitors (as we’ve predicted in the past). But that prospect is still inching towards reality, as shown by the graph below.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoardbecause it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Lipstick on a pig? Still a pig. A bit of makeup and some chin surgery on the G1? It’s.. significantly more attractive.
Though they’re not saying when, Telefónica has announced that they’ll be carrying the G1 - albeit under the name it was originally known by before T-Mobile went and rechristened it: the Dream. In addition to the name change throwback, it’s also getting a bit of polish around its infamously ugly chin. The menu button is dropping down ever so slightly from the edge of the screen, and the individual, round buttons have become a much less awkward looking row of keys. Beyond the facelift, it looks to be the same device. It’s not the G2, but it’s not quite the G1. G1.1?
Spaniards will be able to nab it up for between €0 and €199 depending on their subscriber status with Telefónica - no word yet if this aesthetic revision will hit stateside.
A leading scientist said on Thursday that atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide are hitting new highs, providing no indication that the world economic downturn is curbing industrial emissions, Reuters reported.Kim Holmen, research director at the Norwegian Polar Institute, said the measurements taken by a Stockholm University project on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard off north Norway are in line with the long-term trend.Carbon dioxide is the main greenhouse gas emitted from human activities, and experts say levels rose to 392 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere in Svalbard in December, a rise of 2-3 ppm from the same time a year earlier.Holmen said carbon dioxide concentrations are likely to rise further in 2009, indicating they usually peak just before the start of spring in the northern hemisphere, where most of the world's industry, cities and vegetation are located.As they grow, plants consume carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which is released by burning fossil fuels. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:12 pm
U.S.-led research is providing strong support for the idea that one of the key functions of sleep is the consolidation of memories.
University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine researchers say although sleep is thought to facilitate memory and learning, the molecular links between sleep and synaptic plasticity aren't well understood. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 Feb 2009 | 7:04 pm
Aerosols may have a greater impact on patterns of Australian rainfall and future climate change than previously thought, according to leading atmospheric scientist, CSIRO’s Dr Leon Rotstayn.“We have identified that the extensive pollution haze emanating from Asia may be re-shaping rainfall patterns in northern Australia but we wonder what impact natural and human-generated aerosols are having across the rest of the country,” Dr Rotstayn said.Aerosols are fine particles suspended in the atmosphere. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 Feb 2009 | 6:56 pm
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia has upheld (pdf) a FCC decision finding that Verizon’s use of proprietary information of rival companies for marketing purposes violates federal law.
To make more sense out of this holding, we’ve gotta back up a few steps. When a customer informs her carrier that she plans to switch operators, the consumer’s current company puts out a notification to assist in transferring (aka porting) her existing number over to a new service. Apparently, Verizon had been offering customers sweetened deals to stay with the Nation’s #2 telecommunications company once it learned that the particular customer was planning to defect.
After learning about these shady dealings last year, Comcast, Time Warner, and Bright House Networks called upon the FCC to investigate Verizon’s actions, arguing that they violated the U.S. Telecommunications Act’s restrictions on the use of rivals’ proprietary information for marketing purposes. The FCC agreed, issuing a decision stating that the intention of the federal law was to ensure the losing carrier played a neutral role in transferring a customer’s phone number. Verizon then moved to challenge the FCC decision, arguing that it put Verizon at an unfair disadvantage.
Then, two days ago, the Court of Appeals sided with the FCC, holding that the regulatory body’s interpretation of the particular section (222(b) to be exact) of the Telecommunications Act was reasonable and rejected Verizon’s challenge. This ruling will effectively prevent all communications companies from actively trying to persuade customers to reconsider their pending move to a new service. Too bad it won’t stop these same companies from providing spotty coverage and terrible customer support…
Fans everywhere are celebrating the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin, the man whose controversial book "On The Origin of Species" captured the mind of some of the world’s most important thinkers.David Attenborough, whose television programs on the natural world have been watched by millions, said Darwin turned natural history into a science.According to Reuters, Darwin’s naturalist influence is being celebrated at his old university in Cambridge, at his home in Kent -- now preserved for the nation -- and in the Pacific islands off Ecuador where his studies began.Thousands of people have flocked to the biggest exhibition of his work at London's Natural History Museum, where patrons could catch a glimpse at the mockingbirds from the Galapagos Islands that gave Darwin the first clues to his famous evolutionary theory. Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 Feb 2009 | 6:05 pm
Garmin's first GPS-centric phone is still vaporware but the company is saying it has a second phone ready.
In partnership with Asus, Garmin plans to launch the nuvifone M20, a phone running Windows Mobile operating system. The M20 will be have a 2.7-inch touchscreen, 3.5G/tri-band GSM support, Wi-Fi connectivity, desktop-like internet browser, push email, Bluetooth and Garmin GPS navigation capability.
Getting the M20 to the market will be a big challenge for Garmin, which has been struggling to enter the cellphone business. The company had announced its plans to launch a cellphone in third quarter of 2008. But the phone was delayed until this year. Finally Garmin said last week it would partner with Asus and rebrand its entire range of phones as the Garmin-Asus nuvifone series.
At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Garmin plans to show the M20 and its first nuvifone, the G60.
The G60 will be a quad-band GSM phone with 3G and Wi-Fi support, says Garmin. The phone sports a 3.55-inch touchscreen display and features three primary icons on its screen, 'Call', 'Search' and 'View Map.' The icons emphazize the GPS navigation focus on the phone, with offers turn-by-turn directions and re-routes users if they miss a road or exit.
Garmin will also have an location centric applications such as real-time traffic information, White Pages, weather, flight
status, local events, and movie times available on its two phones. The nuvifone product line will also include the Ciao application that is similar to the recently launched Google Latitude. Users of the app can see their friends' location on a map and navigate to it. The G60 also comes with a three megapixel camera that automatically geotags images.
The G60 and M20 phones are expected to be available in the first half of the year. Garmin and Asus are yet to announce the pricing for both the phones or the telecom carriers that it will be available at.
HTC G1 mobile users can soon leave their Garmin and TomTom navigation devices at home. TeleNav is set to launch the first turn-by-turn GPS navigation application for G1 phones.
Starting Feb. 24, T-Mobile G1 users can have full color maps on their phones with features such as speech recognition, traffic alerts, weather updates and restaurant reviews. If they miss an exit or go down the wrong road, the app will automatically re-route them. The navigation feature will be available in both landscape and portrait mode on the phones.
TeleNav's app comes even as navigation devices maker Garmin struggles to get its GPS centric phones out. Garmin's nuvifone device has been in the works for more than a year. Earlier this month the company said it will rebrand those phones in partnership with Asus. The new Garmin-Asus nuvifone series are expected to launch at the Mobile World Congress conference in Barcelona next week. No carrier announcements for the phones have been made so far.
Meanwhile, TeleNav says its GPS Navigator will be
available for a free 30-day trial. After the free period, customers will have to pay $10 a month in subscription fees.
Instead of the Android Market, the online app store for G1 phones, the app will be available on TeleNav's website. Android Market currently does not support paid apps.
Looks like Ed at HipTop3 has been exchanging e-mails with someone claiming to have already manhandled the Sidekick 2009. If you recall, the first true whispers of the new Sidekick popped up a couple weeks back about the Sidekick LX 2009 that was spotted in an online survey. Turns out that device is the “Blade” or as T-Mobile calls it, “Montreal.” Blade is apparently the internal codename for those at MS/Danger. There’s a gaggle of purported hands-on details after the jump. But before we get to that, Ed did some sleuthing in his server logs and found hits from “Danger hiptop 5.0” from the last few weeks. Read on to see what that entails.
* It looks pretty much like the mock-ups we’ve seen so far, stripe along the back and all
* It’s lighter and “has a more grown up feel to it”
* The keys are more flush with the device and are “flat not round like the lx”
* The USB and headphone jacks are indeed on the bottom of the device
* There is a flash for the camera
* There’s an app for your “My T-Mobile info” that lets you pull up your info (minutes used, sms sent, account info, etc)
* There are lights running along the top of the screen part. Mood-lights anyone?
* It’s being called “Montreal” as an internal codename for T-Mobile. “Blade” is the internal name at MSDanger. It will be sold as the Sidekick 2009.
* It will be running DangerOS 5.0
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Skyfire, a mobile browser for Windows Mobile and S60 which quickly became a favorite around these parts for its abilities to playback Flash video and a number of other rich media formats, has just gotten the update treatment.
While it brings the obligatory bug fixes and optimizations that any pre-1.0 release should, the biggest new feature is what they’re calling the “real-time activity wall”, which is essentially an aggregator for RSS feeds, Facebook, and Twitter. It comes preloaded with Digg, ESPN, Google News, Hulu, YouTube and Yahoo! News, but adding in new feeds is a matter of 3 or 4 clicks. Once you’ve plugged in your Facebook/Twitter account info, you can change your status directly from this aggregation screen.
Facebook and Twitter clients are nothing new - especially in the mobile realm. There are countless varieties. The primary benefit of it being in the browser, however, is sharing: if you’ve stumbled across a new page you want to tweet about, you can do so directly from the “Share” menu. No copying and pasting URLs or, worse yet, retyping them.
Also new in this release is WVGA and WQVGA support - so if you’re toting around a Samsung Omnia or an Xperia X1, Skyfire now plays friendly with your handset.
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This amazing shop is in Southampton, England, a rather dull and gray town which I used to live near -- far too near. Apparently the owners have decided to brighten their drab existence with a Spinal Tap-like Fender tribute: the dials on the top go to eleven.
After a very long wait, Apple finally started to ship its new iPhone and iPod Touch-friendly earbuds. IPhone users won't see very much new, but the 'buds, which feature an in-line remote and a microphone, bring some seriously useful features to the iPod Touch and also the latest Nano.
Apple makes two kinds -- the basic 'buds, similar to those that come with every iPod, and the fancier in-ear, dual driver set. Here we take a look at the cheaper ones, as bought yesterday here in Spain, where they have only just arrived in stores.
The most important thing is that they work, unlike Griffin's execrable TuneBuds Mobiles which we reviewed at the end of last year. You might remember that these were tinny-sounding and, worse, started and stopped the music every time the jack moved even slightly in the socket. In fact, this got so bad that I threw the buds into a rain-slicked street in a fit of frustration. There they lie still.
Apple's cans, on the other hand, work great. The sound is exactly what
you'd expect, the same passable but uninspiring quality in the standard
iPod buds. The remote, though, makes a huge difference. The Touch MkII
has some external volume buttons, which helps a lot when listening, but
skipping tracks is still as annoying as it ever was: remove from
pocket, press home button to wake screen. Press button twice more,
quickly, to bring up the music controls. Press skip (or pause, or play).
Now all I have to do is squeeze once for play/pause, twice to skip forward and thrice to skip back. As you can see, the center section of the lozenge is sunken and this is where you press. The plastic is very light and doesn't drag at your ears at all, but the right part of the remote is easy to find with your fingers.
Another advantage over the Griffin buds is the volume control. Squeeze to go up or down -- one more less reason to put hand in pocket.
The earbuds use the same slippery cable that Apple has used for the past few years. It prevents tangling but doesn't scrape and boom like the cord-covered Griffin cable. And there is one new tweak. Remember the little piece of rubber that slides up the cables when not in use? The one that holds the actual earbuds together to further prevent tangles? Well, it would be useless on these new headphones as it couldn't slide over the switch. Here's the solution:
One side is now open and can be clipped into place. I never used the old version, and I doubt I'll start now, but the attention to detail is nice to see.
Last, and most important for some, is the in-line microphone. Essential
for iPhone use, and pretty useful for the iPod Touch, too, allowing
VoIP calls (Skype works great on Wi-Fi with Fring, a third party VoIP
and messaging application. I recorded my voice and played it back with
Griffin's iTalk app and the quality was great -- background noise is
filtered out well and my voice was pretty clear. Verdict: acceptable.
One oddity: The headphones don't work with the Mac, specifically my MacBook Pro. Listening is fine, but pressing the buttons does nothing, neither skipping tracks or changing volume. Likewise the mic. Whether connected via the mic or the haedphone jack, nothing. Not a problem for me, but reports on the web lead me to think this would work.
It's odd that these aren't standard kit with all iPods. They cost the same €29 as the old, non-remote ones, and in the US they are $29, so you'd think Apple would include them. Then again, perhaps the factories just aren't churning out enough of them yet.
For me, these are worth the money just for the remote. It makes it way more convenient to walk around listening to music and podcasts. If you want better quality than the stock buds, though, you won't find it here. For that, try the in-ear version, which I'll likely be picking up when they finally arrive on Spanish soil.
Looks like Alltel’s finally beginning to rub off on Verizon, with the latter adopting one of the finest features of their new found property. Earlier this morning, Verizon announced that they’d be taking on Alltel’s My Circle option, but under the name “Friends and Family”.
The new plan option will make its way to Verizon customers on February 15th, allowing any VZW customer to pick 5 or 10 numbers for their calling group. If you’ve got a single line (with 900 or more anytime minutes), you get 5 friends; if you’ve got a family share plan, you get 10. Not a bad deal, Verizon.
FRIENDS & FAMILY WILL FOREVER CHANGE THE WAY CUSTOMERS VIEW THEIR VERIZON WIRELESS CALLING PLANS
New Feature Lets Customers Customize Plans to Include Numbers They Call Most
BASKING RIDGE, N.J. – Verizon Wireless today announced Friends & Family®, a new feature that gives customers total control over how they use their plan minutes. Beginning Sunday, Feb. 15, Verizon Wireless customers will be able to identify five or 10 numbers as a Friends & Family calling group. Minutes used when placing or receiving calls to anyone in the calling group will not count against customers’ plan minutes. Customers can even include landline numbers or wireless numbers of those who haven’t yet switched to the nation’s largest, most reliable network. Friends & Family gives customers a flexible way to control their wireless spending and still talk to those individuals who are most significant to them. Changes to the Friends & Family directory are quick, easy and free.
“This is a milestone in the industry,” said Mike Lanman, vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless. “For the first time our customers can take control over their personal calling plans, build it to suit their needs yet still reap the benefits of being on the nation’s most reliable wireless network. And since there are no long distance charges, those numbers can be anywhere in the country. There is no charge to sign up and no charge, ever, to make changes to their Friends & Family calling directory.”
Customers wanting to take advantage of Friends & Family must have a Verizon Wireless Nationwide Single Line plan with 900 or more Anytime Minutes or a Nationwide Family SharePlan® with 1,400 or more Anytime Minutes. Customers on an eligible Nationwide Single Line plan, which starts at $59.99 monthly access, may select up to five numbers to add to their Friends & Family directory. Customers on an eligible Nationwide Family SharePlan, starting at $89.99 monthly access for the first two lines, may select up to 10 numbers for their Friends & Family directory to share among account users. Nationwide plans include Unlimited Night & Weekend minutes, no domestic roaming or long distance charges, and access to Mobile Web. Verizon Wireless customers also enjoy unlimited Mobile to Mobile calling with America’s largest calling family of more than 80 million customers.
Existing Verizon Wireless customers can visit www.verizonwireless.com/myverizon to sign up for My Verizon and check their eligibility for Friends & Family. Once a customer makes a change to his or her Friends & Family numbers, the new numbers will be effective the following day. Verizon Wireless expects to offer Friends & Family lines for business customers later this quarter. With this offering, business customers will have the convenience of managing their Friends & Family through the My Business online account management tool.
For more information on Verizon Wireless products and services, visit a Verizon Wireless Communications Store, call 1-800-2 JOIN IN or visit www.verizonwireless.com.
Crunch Network: CrunchGeardrool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Somewhere in the heart of Mount Fuji, Acer’s crack team of designers are listening to Hail to the Thief and pounding back Zima because they have finally gotten the world’s attention. You see, Acer’s smartphone division has been completely forgotten within the company - someone tasked them with creating a touchscreen phone back in 2003 or so and then forgot to let them out of the factory, forcing them to live in complete isolation - cultural and technical - as the world passed them by.
Now, however, they’ve sent a message: “We’re here! Look! We made phones! Let us out!”
The company is proud to announce the fruits of their labor, some crazy ass DX650 smartphone with a WinMo touchscreen on the front and - get this - a numeric keyboard and one-color OLED. Best of all, it looks about as thick as a nice BLT. We all know how well the Sprint Upstage did with that design.
The X960 is basically a Glofiish DX900. Glofiish is an OEM that offers ready-made phones for companies to rebadge. Clearly the guy they shut under Mount Fuji in charge of knocking off the iPaq died during his incarceration and this is the best they could do.
Maybe I’m missing something here. Maybe the phones will cost $5 and be sold in bulk to third-world countries. I really hope this is a joke.
Were you disappointed by this mornings news that the other nuvifone wouldn’t be sportin’ the droid? So were we. Then we realized it wasn’t so much because we cared for the new nuvifone, but because we just wanted turn-by-turn navigation on an Android phone. Turns out, we don’t have much longer to wait.
According to their new product page, we should be using Telenav’s GPS Navigator for Android to find the nearest Starbucks by February 24th. You’ll get 30 days free, after which point it’ll set you back $10 bucks a month. So what does a monthly Hamilton get you?
3d maps, portrait and landscape support
Name and speech recognition
Auto reroute
Traffic Alerts
Business Finder
Gas prices
Search along route
Restaurant ratings
Commute alerts
Weather
Night-mode
In other words, just about everything you might ask of it. We’d rather have dropped a one-time fee of $50-$80 bucks than pay for it by the calendar - but hey, we’ll take what we can get.
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In light of MWC next week, Garmin-Asus has made a full announcement about the upcoming nuvifone product line. Which, btw, isn’t nearly as fun as spy shots and rumors, but we’ll take it. The original G60 that we have been hearing about for nearly a year seems like it will finally be released and might be a solid contender judging by the specs. Garmin-Asus is announcing a new player however, in the smallish WinMo 6.1, M20 handheld that naturally runs Garmin’s mapping software which might make a larger splash at MWC than it’s big brother.
The original nuvifone, now called the G60, was announced, demoed, and delayed numerous times in ‘08 but it is finally here. The OS runs on a custom flavor of Linux and it comes pre-loaded with your regions maps (North America, Europe, Asia) Plus, Garmin has a new location area software suite named Ciao! that seems similar to Google Latitude but built over the Garmin Maps and compatible with social networking sites.
Quad-band HSDPA 3G connectivity
Bluetooth & WiFi
Accelerometer
3.5-inch touchscreen
3MP geo-tagging camera
Pre-loaded maps
Car dock included
The M20 might not run Linux like it’s big bro, but this little WinMo device seems to have the stuff to stand out. It’s smaller, retains the 3G speed, and available in cute colors. Everyone likes color options. Thankfully, Windows Mobile has been skinned with a Garmin-like home page with quick links to navigation and such. The M20 also comes loaded with Ciao!.
Quad-band HSDPA 3G connectivity
Bluetooth & WiFi
Accelerometer
2.8-inch touchscreen
Micro-SD card slot
4 or 8GB of on-board storage
3MP geo-tagging camera
Pre-loaded maps
Car Dock included
Pricing and availability has unfortunately been left out of the press release but hopefully we find those tid-bits out next week at MWC. Chances are that both T-Mobile and AT&T are interested in the 3G devices though, but it’s anyones guess which company would end up with the pair.
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Fujistsu is taking a stab at the e-book market. A rather expensive $900 stab, but an interesting one nonetheless.
The "FLEPia" (We know. That's one ugly name) is bigger than Amazon's Kindle, and also has a color screen. The bezel surrounding that screen is also a lot thinner but Fujitsu has still managed to make a pretty fugly piece of kit.
The reader, which is being tested in the Tokyo restaurant Termina Kinshicho Fujiya, pulls down content via Wi-Fi using a service called "BB Mobile Point" -- a public WLAN network. The restaurant is using the FLEPia as a high-tech replacement for dead tree newspapers, although we don't know whether the devices are being tied to wooden poles to stop them from being stolen.
Other specs include a touch screen (no ugly keyboard like the Kindle), a USB port, an SD card slot, a pair of speakers, and a decent battery life of 50 hours thanks to the e-ink display. The problem is, of course, the price. The oversized screen also makes us wonder about the ideal size for an e-reader. Big is better for newspapers and magazines, but for reading novels you need something a little more portable.
One thing is certain. E-books will soon be mainstream. We can't wait.
⌦ Game Consoles – I don't know why Dell decided to become the place to buy Xbox 360s and PlayStation 3s, but I like it: Xbox starts at $160 for Arcade, but I'd go $240 for the Pro. 80GB PS3 for $320. [Slickdeals]
Microsoft has announced it is offering a $250,000 award for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for the Conficker Worm. The worm, also known as Downadup, is the worst worm outbreak the net has seen in years. 
This was one of the weirdest incoming pitches I’ve received in a while. Finnish startup 
I tested Comeks on my iPhone (
: Image: NASA/R. Ciardullo (PSU)/H. Bond (STScI)
: Image: NASA, ESA, H. Bond (STScI) and M. Barstow (University of Leicester)
: Image: : NASA/Tod Strohmayer (GSFC)/Dana Berry (Chandra X-Ray Observatory)
: Credit: Casey Reed
: Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)
: Image: NASA, WIYN, NOAO, ESA, Hubble Helix Nebula Team, M. Meixner (STScI), & T. A. Rector (NRAO)
: Image: Garrelt Mellema (Leiden University) et al., HST, ESA, NASA
: Image: David A. Aguilar (CfA)
We saw 
So Microsoft is going to 
I guess it had to happen: Microsoft is opening retail stores with the help of some guy named Dave Porter who used to work for Wal-Mart. Super synergy. I can see it now: these stores will be the exact polar opposite of the Apple Store - brightly lit, overstocked, and oddly jarring (kind of like Windows - ZING!!!)
No real information on these stores just yet, but Dave is going to start planning a slow and steady roll-out. Will they have Smartie Stations with crack technicians? Weekly training in Windows Paint? What I suspect will happen is that Microsoft will launch a set of pop-up stores using distressed retail space and then roll out if and when these spaces become popular. Nothing like a boom or a bust to build out bricks and mortar.
Looks like Ed at HipTop3 has been 
