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Track Your Creative Commons Works in the Wild With FairShareAttributor Corp. announced a collaboration with Creative Commons today to offer a free service to anyone wishing to track their content on-line. The service is called FairShare. Provide FairShare with...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Apr 2009 | 8:21 am Roku announces Amazon Video on Demand availabilitySection: Video, Content, Video Providers
The new support comes in the form of a software update, which is in the process of being rolled out for all Roku owners to install. Once the update is installed, you will then have access to browse, rent or purchase any of Amazon’s more than “40,000 movie and TV titles,“ many of which become available the same day as the DVD release. One drawback is that Amazon currently lacks any HD video; the content is currently limited to DVD-quality. For a set top box that now supports Netflix, Amazon VOD, and also has built-in Wi-Fi to cost only $99 sounds like a good deal.
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 4 Mar 2009 | 5:00 pm What's New? How the Face of Cameras Will Change This Year
Finally – finally! – the camera market is changing. As tiny sensors fill to bursting with tightly packed pixels, so the camera makers are coming up with new ways to sell you a new model. We have, of course, been whining about the quality problems of zillion megapixel cams for a while now. The irony is that the manufacturers feel the same way, telling us that they keep upping the pixel-counts because of customer demand. Between you and us though, dear reader, we’ve managed to spread the gospel to the masses. Demand is shifting, and things are getting exciting. What can we expect to see in this year’s new cameras? Read on for our predictions. Some of these new features intermingle, so we’ve grouped them based on the tech behind them. High ISO sensors These have been creeping in at the high end on full frame DSLRs from both Nikon and Canon, and are starting to trickle down to the point-and-shoot. Fewer pixels means bigger pixels for a given sensor size, which means more light can be gathered, which in turn means less noise in lower light. This is important. Up until now, the only way to take shots in dark places was to switch on the flash, and on-camera strobes tend to reflect from retinas and wash out faces. The alternative was to crank the ISO and amplify the tiny signals on the sensor. Result: unusable, noisy, low-contrast pictures. Expect more and more consumer cams to get better and better in this regard. Sadly, it’ll probably be marketed as “night shot” mode or some such nonsense. Video Video has been in the point-and-shoot forever. The difference with the new wave is the resolution. Most new compacts are HD shooters, and this hi-def capability is being used in some interesting ways to augment still images. Casio uses it in the FC100 to shoot bursts of pictures at high frame rates so you can choose the best shot. It also runs the video mode constantly when asked, allowing you to effectively step back in time, taking a picture from before you even pressed the shutter. This tech can help with another problem common to pocket cameras — shutter lag. Normally, when you press the shutter, the actual picture is taken up to half a second later. But if the camera is constantly shooting, the computer inside can grab an earlier image. The response time of the machine is still slow, but the video buffer fakes a faster shutter. Neat. HDR We don’t mean HDR (High Dynamic Range) in the ugly, hyper-real, hyper-color sense. We just mean pictures with lots of detail in both shadows and highlights. There are a few manufacturers putting this into their cameras, using two main methods. The first is to take a couple of shots in quick succession, one over exposed and one under exposed, and combine them into a single picture. This is how Sony’s HX1 does it. The other trick, used by Fujitsu, is to build a new kind of sensor. The F200 EXR has a sensor which allows it to effectively take two photos at once, both at different exposures. These are then combined to make a single frame. The advantage with Fuji’s method is that the double-team sensor can also crank out pictures in near darkness — up to ISO 12800. Who needs a flash? Clearly things are just starting to get interesting, and we're starting to get some cameras that will genuinely change the way we can take pictures. Up until now the focus (ahem) has been on copying film cameras. Now we've done that, it's time to start getting creative. Photo credit: Roadgoer/Flickr Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 4 Mar 2009 | 12:41 pm Amazon unveils Kindle Application for iPhone (AP)AP - You may not have the latest $359 Kindle electronic book reader from Amazon.com, but if you own an iPhone or iPod Touch, a new application will let you access the same content on your Apple device.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 4 Mar 2009 | 12:40 pm Spain PM an internet star after F word slip-up (Reuters)Reuters - A video of Spain's prime minister became one of the world's most talked about internet clips on Wednesday after he accidentally uttered the F word in a news conference with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 4 Mar 2009 | 12:39 pm Vodafone To Start Shipping HTC Magic In AprilA tipster points out to Phandroid that the Vodafone website confirms the Android-powered HTC Magic, recently announced, is arriving in April.
Here are the specs: * HSDPA Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: Gizmodo | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:50 am Brando Adds A Tiny Mic To Your iPhoneBy Luke Anderson I’ve seen all sorts of gadgets and accessories that help my iPhone with outputting sound, but rarely do you find one for input that’s not just another Bluetooth headset. Well...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:47 am EU ends full-time monitoring of MicrosoftMicrosoft got a reward for good behavior from European Union regulators on Wednesday when they ended close checks on the company's compliance with a 2004 antitrust order. The European...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:42 am StatoilHydro sets size of triple-tranche bond -IFRLONDON, March 4 (Reuters) - StatoilHydro has set the size of its planned triple-tranche euro and sterling bonds, IFR reported on Wednesday.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:40 am UPDATE 2-Lundbeck profit misses forecast, shares fallCOPENHAGEN, March 4 (Reuters) - Danish pharmaceutical group Lundbeck posted a larger-than-expected 13 percent drop in full-year operating profit, pushing its shares down 8 percent on Wednesday.Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:40 am Panasonic's New Micro Four Thirds Camera Shoots Video
Buyers of Panasonic’s diminutive Micro Four Thirds “SLR” – the G1 – needn’t panic. The updated version has been announced today and brings little more than a few incremental changes. The headline feature of the GH1 is that, like almost every other camera these days, it shoots HD video (1080p at 24fps or 720p at 60fps). The difference is that, unlike DSLRs which can capture movies, the GH1 will continue to auto-focus as you shoot. A newly announced Lumix lens also helps out. The G VARIO HD 14-140mm ƒ4.0-5.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S not only has the word “mega” in its name, it also has a silent motor so as not to pollute the movie sound and a “continuous auto focusing function” which appears to mean that the focus won’t jerk around like your usual still camera lens. Panasonic has also added a stereo microphone to the top of the camera (not the big one in the picture) and a socket to hook up an external mic. As you’d expect, the new Lumix gets a few extra functions courtesy of the upgraded chip inside. You can change picture aspect ratios on the fly, just like the compact LX3 (including a new 1:1 ratio), and also enjoy the gimmicky joys of having the camera recognize your friends and make sure that they are in focus at the expense of strangers. Finally, the newer model follows the trend of higher ISO settings. The GH1 is sensitive to light all the way up to ISO 3200. Price and availability are yet to be announced, but we don't expect it to cost much more than the current G1, which can be had for around $500 street. Press release [DP Review] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:40 am BASF Podcast: The Chemical Reporter - What's the Difference in Carbon Between a Pencil Lead and a Diamond?LUDWIGSHAFEN, Germany, March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The lead of a pencil is made out of the mineral graphite, which is one of the forms - or 'allotropes' - of the...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:36 am Ozone Layer In Sweden Thickest In DecadesSweden’s ozone layer was thicker in February that it has been in decades, according to a report released Tuesday from the Swedish Meteorological Institute (SMHI).The measurements show a dramatic reversal from last year, when the ozone layer was the second-thinnest on record.The instituteSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:30 am Two Twitter Games That Help Make Your Day Less Boring: @TwitBrain And @BeatMyTweetIf you’re procrastinating on Twitter anyway, might as well train your mind while you’re at it. Here are two simple games that make use of the microsharing service’s functionalities and keep your brains busy while tweeting: Follow @TwitBrain and get served calculations on a regular basis (like 3 per hour). If you’re the first person to reply with the correct answer, you’ll earn one point and hopefully make your way to Internet fame (well, not really) by getting on the top 10 lists.
Follow @BeatMyTweet and do the exact same thing, but this time with word scrambles. Warning: it’s ridiculously easy so be fast if you want to be one of the first 10 to reply with the correct answer. Leaderboards here.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: TechCrunch | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:26 am Two Twitter Games That Help Make Your Day Less Boring: @TwitBrain And @BeatMyTweetIf you're procrastinating on Twitter anyway, might as well train your mind while you're at it. Here are two simple games that make use of the microsharing service's functionalities and keep your brains...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:26 am Fishing-Inspired Tattoos - Body Art to Fall for Hook, Line and Inker (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Theres got to be something fishy about anyone who would want a fish-inspired tattoo. I can almost understand getting an image of pets (note: almost), and animals you can cuddle, but...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:19 am Head-to-To Black - Fendi Fall 2009 Went For Casual Blacks a la Angelina Jolie (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Fendis dark Fall 2009 collection looked like it was made for Angelina Jolie, or others who opt to wear head-to-toe black fashion. Fendis Fall 2009 show was marked by black head wraps...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:18 am EU eases antitrust policing of Microsoft (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:17 am Apple introduces new Mac desktop computers (Reuters)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:07 am Apple introduces new Mac desktop computers - Reuters
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:06 am Video: Life-Sized Pinball Sim Running on HDTV
Before you click the play button, take a second to consider the idea behind this video. The project consists of a big screen HDTV laid flat on its back with smaller LCD display at the back. The whole shebang is showing a pinball simulation running the Future Pinball engine. In effect, you have a life-sized pinball game. It sounds great. But wait til you see the video -- it is actually awesome. Awesome, that is, until the maker BadBoyBill gets rather distracted and starts dicking around with both the tables and the video camera. In fact, it kind of reminds us of that guy at the house party who sits by the stereo, playing the first few seconds of a song before deciding he'll play you something even better. Result: total frustration. Learn to edit, BadBoyBill, and better still, learn to sit still for five seconds. Other than that, it's an amazing mod, man. Announcing HyperPin Digital Pinball Frontend [Hyperspin forum via RAW Feed] Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 4 Mar 2009 | 11:04 am Edible Gardens - Chef Heston Blementhal's Cooks With Fake Dirt and Rocks(TrendHunter.com) I just finished watching chef Heston Blementhals new series (in the UK) and just had to write it up. Each week Blementhal tackles a different period in history and recreates amazing...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 10:59 am Pretec Announces Beastly 666x 64GB Memory Card
Pretec has been busy. The flash memory company (whose site ironically relies heavily on Adobe Flash) has, among other things, built the world’s first SDXC card (the 2TB capable cards we saw at CES) and the world’s first miCARD (a teeny, tiny memory card). But the most startling achievements are both on show at the PMA in Las Vegas — a 100GB Compact Flash card and a 666x Compact Flash card (itself a healthy 64GB in size). The theoretical speed limit for CF cards is 133MB/sec. The new 666x card manages an astounding 100MB/sec, and Pretec rather proudly boasts that it “will likely also be the last of the high speed CF card in the CompactFlash industry”. The press release than goes off into the realms of recursive redundancy: “ruggedized construction […] provides extensive ruggedness.” Also announced are two large capacity cards, both running at a speedy 233x (35MB/sec). These come in 64GB and 100GB flavors, and will also likely be very expensive. At these sizes, putting them in a camera seems rather foolish -- unless you have a Hasselblad which lays down 300MB files, 100GB of photos in one place is a scary proposition even for the most carefree photographer. Still, you could always use these to build yourself a homemade SSD RAID drive. 666x Press release [Pretec via Photography Bay] 100GB Press release [Pretec] Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 4 Mar 2009 | 10:43 am Making Your Own Clothes - Germany Embraces the DIY Fashion Movement (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Clothes make the man, but in the wake of the global financial crisis, D.I.Y. projects and online portals like etsy or dawanda are showing a lot of self-made good which are continuing...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 10:39 am Microsoft Envisions Personal Computing In 2019By Evan Ackerman Whatever you may or may not like about Microsoft, their vision for what their products could be in ten years certainly is impressive: What struck me most about this video was how possible...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 4 Mar 2009 | 10:31 am CeBit 2009: Attack of the BLOBbox
Over the last four years, TVBLOB, an Italian-based company with a funny name, has sought to bring about the most comprehensive software of web-based features on a TV set. At this week's CeBit conference in Germany, TVBLOB finally unveiled the first IPTV media box packing that software, the BLOBBox. Judging by the initial specs, it might be too ambitious for its own good and might end up swallowing some engineers by the whole. The BLOBBox is like an Apple TV on steroids. It's a media player/video recorder that connects to TVs and has a 160 GB hard drive, a DTT receiver, is optimized for web connectivity and Bit Torrent downloading (through HTTP/FTP), and also has its own custom Linux OS and browser. Streaming from a PC or network is supposed to be simple (hello Wired colleagues' MP3 collections!), and comes with several sleek on-screen web apps for browsing Google properties like YouTube and Picasa. And with all of that Torrenting going on, it also plays MP4, DivX and XviD files. Most importantly, TVBLOB claims that its kit transfers web content to TV seamlessly (with HTML and Ajax), almost mirroring the same type of service as the net-based widget TVs we heard about during CES. The only difference is these web widgets are more likely to be used as conduits for the main content, as opposed to separate bite-sized snack apps. TVBLOB thinks opening up its SDK (called BLOBKit) will easily encourage developers to come out with widget-style applications for their favorite custom channels. At almost $500 a box and first available only through an Italian reseller, we think it's going to take a lot more distribution to force people to want to build apps for this. But as a project with a lot of possibilities, I can see a few developers going deep and trying to set up as many 'web-widgets' as they can, with some even losing themselves to the tempting power of the Blob's openness. According to TVBLOB, the company is looking to license its software to other OEMs, so we might see actually see a BLOB come to the U.S. sometimes soon.
Photos: TVBLOB/flickr Source: Gizmodo | 4 Mar 2009 | 10:19 am Amazon Brings Kindle to iPhone
The application, like the Kindle itself, is only available in the US of A, which sadly makes sense: you’ll need a US-only Kindle account to use it. The app just grabs the books already bought from Amazon and you can read samples and even buy e-books from the iPhone. Kindle for iPhone also supports Whispersynch, grabbing updates over the air and letting you read your books on various devices. It even supports auto-bookmarking, so you can put down your Kindle, head out to the shops and seamlessly continue reading on your iPhone as you wait at the checkout. I’m outside of the US, so I can’t try it. According to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber, though, the page turning is a little clunky. Unlike Stanza, where you just touch the side of the page to flip to the next, the Kindle app requires a finger swipe every single time. With the tiny page size of the iPhone’s screen, this will get old pretty fast. Still, it's free, and I want it. I also want a Kindle. Sometimes it sucks not living in the US. But hey, at least we have Spotify. UPDATE: Gadget Lab reader Hunter just got in touch to tell us about the new application. He's in Japan right now, but his US iTunes account means that he can download and use the Kindle app. Here's what he told us:
Product page [Amazon] Product page [iTunes] Photo: Hunter Brumfield See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 4 Mar 2009 | 10:02 am Eye-Fi, Now With Added Video
Named “Eye-Fi Share Video and Eye-Fi Explore Video”, the cards work in the same way as the regular photo cards — they connect to your wireless network and automatically send pictures up to your online site of choice. Right now the video versions will send footage to either YouTube or Flickr. The Eye-Fi Explore Video will also use the Wi-Fi networks to triangulate your position and add the geo-location data to the mix. Both are available for pre-order now for $80 and $100 respectively. And don’t worry — both cards still work with photos, too. If only the folks at Eye-Fi would sell these outside of the US. We take photos too, you know. Press release [Eye-Fi] Product page [Eye-Fi] See Also:
Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 4 Mar 2009 | 9:40 am Building a Successful "Open" Game WorldM3rk sends an excerpt from an opinion piece on Gametopius discussing what it takes for an open game world to be successful. Interesting stories and characters are important, but they must be balanced by varied and entertaining gameplay. The lack of either will be a limiting factor in how many people return to play once the primary plot is completed. Quoting: "A game like GTA IV takes itself and its fiction very seriously. It spends a lot of time, effort, and gameplay resources convincing you that the world you are traveling through is the same world that the story and cutscenes take place in. It may not be a game that allows you to own or control property to the degree seen in Burnout Paradise or Saints Row II, but it wants its world to be cohesive, not divided. ... While GTA IV's game systems almost serve its plot, Saints Row II and Burnout Paradise live for their game mechanics. Sure, these worlds are fun to look at and explore, but any exploration and discovery that the player enjoys merely drives them to these games' raison d'être: fun systems to play with."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2009 | 9:39 am Sapiens Reports Strong Q4 2008 Performance With Increased Net Income and Sales GrowthCARY, North Carolina, March 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sapiens International Corporation N.V.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Mar 2009 | 9:15 am Kara Visits Tapulous to Try Out Tap Tap Revenge 2! [BoomTown]
Last night, Tapulous launched the second version of its hugely popular iPhone game app, Tap Tap Revenge. With Tap Tap Revenge 2, the Silicon Valley start-up is hoping to keep up the momentum of its first success on the Apple (AAPL) service. Tap Tap has been downloaded six million times, growing strongly with only a small amount of angel funding. The game has had other versions, but this is the first major upgrade. In it, the TTR sequel got an updated look, new features, more and special songs and, most importantly, an intense focus on social gaming. In challenges, users can try to beat the scores of others. Tapulous also makes other apps like Twinkle and it is hoping to knit them into an interconnected offering. I visited the Tapulous’ offices in a former storefront in downtown Palo Alto, Calif. to interview Co-Founders Andrew Lacy and Bart Decrem to talk about the iPhone ecosystem and where it is all going. Here’s the video:
And here are some screenshots of TTR2:
Source: Gizmodo | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:37 am SAP(R) Midmarket Customers to Gain Improved Visibility Through Tightly Integrated SAP(R) Business Objects(TM) SolutionsPlanned Enhancements to SAP(R) Business All-in-One Solutions are Intended to Provide Affordable and Pre-Configured Business Intelligence Capabilities and Data Migration Tools for Midsized Companies HANNOVER, Germany, March 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Continuing to expand its SAP(R) Business All-in-One solution, SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced plans to integrate pre-configured SAP(R) BusinessObjects(TM) solutions into SAP Business All-in-One solutions.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:30 am The Smart Execs Leave Before The Fall.
But when bunches of them leave, watch out. With obvious exceptions, like a sale that results in a lot of liquidity being sloshed around the founder ranks, fleeing talent is an indication that a company is about to go sideways, or worse. There’s a reason why most of Yahoo’s executive talent bailed out in 2007 and 2008. And that’s just a high profile example. Whenever we hear about multiple executives leaving a startup, there’s always trouble brewing. Today’s news that MySpace’s COO, SVP Product Strategy and VP Technology are leaving to take some time off and then start a new company isn’t an exception. I know each of these guys personally, and they are all highly talented execs with a lot of competitive fire. MySpace needed these guys. Sure, they’ll find replacements. But the real news is that they voted with their feet, and decided that now is the best time for them to branch out on their own. The fact that we’re in the middle of one of the biggest economic downturns that any of us have seen just reinforces the point - the sun is setting on MySpace. There’s no way to deny it any more. MySpace had a banner revenue year in 2008, and they are still by far the largest social network in the U.S. But within a year Facebook will have taken that trophy. And it may not be long after before Facebook revenues eclipse MySpace, too. I won’t go through all of MySpace’s missteps, but there were a few big ones. They’ve generally trailed Facebook in taking risks with new products (News Feed, self serve ads, Facebook Connect), and they made a crucial strategic mistake in how they handled international expansion (Facebook gets its own users to create local translations of the site, MySpace opens offices in every country they want a presence in - guess which one scales). And the things MySpace did right, they didn’t capitalize on. MySpace Music, so promising a few months ago, remains in slow motion development for new features. And it only works in the U.S. But worst of all, MySpace is bogged down in a ridiculous corporate structure. MySpace reports to Fox Interactive Media (FIM), which in turn reports to News Corp. FIM appears to be, little more than another layer of bureaucracy to slow things down. We’ve heard repeatedly that FIM head Peter Levinsohn and MySpace CEO Chris DeWolfe both try to exert direct power over MySpace, leaving employee’s heads spinning. DeWolfe theoretically reports to Levinsohn, but in reality he’s Murdoch’s guy. FIM’s original purpose was to acquire a variety of Internet companies, but those days are gone and we can’t figure out what it actually does any more besides muddle things up at MySpace and get in the middle of petty turf wars. Their best bet would have been to leave the damn thing alone and let DeWolfe do his thing. Add to that the fact that MySpace employees have no stock incentive to stay, and its no wonder top talent is fleeing. Founders Chris DeWolfe and Tom Anderson have employment contracts that come up for renewal later this year. Unless News Corp. pays them a bundle (their current contract pays them an aggregate of $30 million/year already), they’ll likely be gone before 2010, too. They may have already made the decision to leave, which would make today’s defections unsurprising. This is the way of things with tech startups (remember that MySpace is only 5ish years old). In this case FIM may have acted as a big speed bump in MySpace’s race with Facebook, hobbling them and ensuring that it wasn’t even close. But the result is the same. And good news comes out of this - all of these talented execs and engineers will start and grow new companies, and the cycle continues. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:25 am Amazon launches Kindle application for the iPhone
Not looking to drop $360 bucks on a gadget purposed almost solely for book reading, but still want to partake in Amazon’s new found love for eBooks? You’re not alone - and if you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’re in luck. As we’d assumed they would, Amazon has just launched a free Kindle application for Apple’s much-lauded touchscreen, available immediately. While it won’t go and turn your iPhone’s display into an e-Ink screen (we feel bad for our eyes already), the Kindle application does replicate much of the functionality provided by the namesake device. You can read any Kindle-compatible book you’ve purchased from Amazon’s catalog, read the first chapter of other books for free, adjust text size, bookmark pages, and view notations made on the Kindle. Read the rest of this entry >> Source: Gizmodo | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:14 am Amazon launches Kindle application for the iPhone
Not looking to drop $360 bucks on a gadget purposed almost solely for book reading, but still want to partake in Amazon’s new found love for eBooks? You’re not alone - and if you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’re in luck. As we’d assumed they would, Amazon has just launched a free Kindle application for Apple’s much-lauded touchscreens, available immediately. While it won’t go and turn your iPhone’s display into an e-Ink screen, the Kindle application does replicate much of the functionality provided by the namesake device. You can read any Kindle-compatible book you’ve purchased from Amazon’s catalog, read the first chapter of other books for free, adjust text size, bookmark pages, and view notations you’ve made on the Kindle. One of the big features here is WhisperSync, which automatically keeps track of where you left off in each book, allowing you to pick up from that spot from any Kindle-friendly devices you may have. The feature didn’t seem too useful when the Kindle 2 was announced (How many people have more than one Kindle?) - but with Amazon stretching Kindle across multiple platforms, it makes perfect sense. Leave your Kindle on the bed side table, pick up where you left off on your iPhone once you’re on the bus. Buying new books is a bit more tedious for iPhone users, as Apple doesn’t allow third parties to sell content within their applications. To get a new book, you’ve got to pop into Safari, then head to the standard Amazon Kindle store and purchase the book there. Amazon’s syncing sorcery takes over from that point. It’s not too bad, but the experience isn’t as seamless as it is on the Kindle. Will this put Kindle sales at risk? Not likely. The Kindle is a fairly niche product - not that reading is a niche activity (though it’s probably a bit less common than it should be), but the ideas of eBooks/e-Ink/etc are still fairly foreign to most (though Oprah’s mention definitely didnt hurt). This lets Amazon push e-products they’ve already got licenses to sell to more consumers, all the while coaxing the stubborn folks into the idea of reading books on an electronic screen without requiring them to drop $360 bucks on a dedicated device. What it may put at risk, however, are all of the other publishers (ScrollMotion, for example) looking to peddle eBooks on the iPhone platform. Amazon’s eBook library is massive, and almost always cheaper than these other options. Has Amazon just conquered the iPhone eBook market? Check out the free application and catch up on your reading here. [iTunes Link] Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:12 am California featured at world IT trade show - San Francisco Chronicle
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:10 am Why TV Lost [Voices]About twenty years ago people noticed computers and TV were on a collision course and started to speculate about what they’d produce when they converged. We now know the answer: computers. It’s clear now that even by using the word “convergence” we were giving TV too much credit. This won’t be convergence so much as replacement. People may still watch things they call “TV shows,” but they’ll watch them mostly on computers. What decided the contest for computers? Four forces, three of which one could have predicted, and one that would have been harder to. Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:05 am Why Betawave Has Madison Avenue’s Attention [Voices]After a decade of experimentation, companies have yet to find a reliable way to burnish their brands online. Research shows barely more than 1 in 1,000 people click on banner ads. What’s more, they rarely hang around long enough to absorb a brand message. Former Madison Avenue hotshot Matt Freeman aims to change all that. Freeman’s company, Betawave, is developing ways to boost visitor “engagement” and plans to charge advertisers not just by each click or view but also by people’s attentiveness. The concept is untested, but it has generated excitement. Several venture capital shops in December put $22.5 million into Betawave (GOFH). “Matt’s ahead of the curve,” says Sean Finnegan, chief digital officer at Starcom MediaVest, which buys ads for Coca-Cola (KO), Procter & Gamble (PG), Nintendo, and others. Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:04 am The Sizzling Sound of Music [Voices]Are iPods changing our perception of music? Are the sounds of MP3s the music we like to hear most? Jonathan Berger, professor of music at Stanford, was on a panel with me at a meeting of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Mountain View, CA, on Saturday. Berger’s presentation had a slide titled: “Live, Memorex or MP3.” He mentioned that Thomas Edison promoted his phonograph by demonstrating that a person could not tell whether behind a curtain was an opera singer or one of Edison’s cylinders playing a recording of the singer. More recently, the famous Memorex ad challenged us to determine whether it was a live performance of Ella Fitzgerald or a recorded one. Berger then said that he tests his incoming students each year in a similar way. He has them listen to a variety of recordings which use different formats from MP3 to ones of much higher quality. He described the results with some disappointment and frustration, as a music lover might, that each year the preference for music in MP3 format rises. In other words, students prefer the quality of that kind of sound over the sound of music of much higher quality. He said that they seemed to prefer “sizzle sounds” that MP3s bring to music. It is a sound they are familiar with. Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:03 am The End of Paper? [Voices]Never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel. Mark Twain’s advice was apt in its time but sounds downright quaint these days. The ink-stained publishing world is battling against companies like Google and Yahoo that sell ads via any Internet-friendly gadget. And we know how that fight is going: The buy-ink-by-the-barrel types are struggling. Behind all the handwringing is the fact that the Internet has not yet become the moneymaker that the $300 billion global publishing industry had hoped. Online revenue is growing, but not fast enough to make up for falling print advertising. Even The New York Times, a paper that has turned its staff loose online more than most, needed a recent $250 million cash infusion from Mexican telecom billionaire Carlos Slim to keep chugging along. Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:02 am Dial H for Happiness: How Neuroengineering May Change Your Brain [Voices]Sci-fi author Philip K. Dick may have best anticipated neuroengineering in his most famous work, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the basis of the movie Blade Runner. The main character and his wife get up in the morning and select their moods on what Dick called a Penfield mood organ. We’re a long way from building a Penfield mood organ, but we already have ways of prodding our brains. Sometimes we achieve miracle cures, sometimes just trim the edge off the pain, but even the little tweaks can mean the difference between the livable and unlivable life. Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:01 am faceVsion Offers True HD Video Communications to Mass MarketHANOVER, Germany, March 4 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- faceVsion Technology Limited (FVT), a market innovator in empowering consumers and SMEs with face- to-face communications experience anytime, anywhere, on any screen, today announced the availability of 720p/HD video chat service on standard broadband network.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Mar 2009 | 8:00 am SAP and Intel Collaborate to the Benefit of Small Businesses in the Professional Services SectorIndustry-Leading Hardware and Software Vendors Help Small Businesses Lower Costs and Accelerate Solution Time to Value HANNOVER, Germany, March 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) today announced it will collaborate with Intel to optimize SAP(R) Business One applications on Intel(R) Xeon(R) Processor based systems to enable small businesses to lower cost by achieving faster time to value of their IT investments.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Mar 2009 | 7:39 am Amazon launches Kindle application for the iPhone
Not looking to drop $360 bucks on a gadget purposed almost solely for book reading, but still want to partake in Amazon’s new found love for eBooks? You’re not alone - and if you’ve got an iPhone or iPod Touch, you’re in luck. As we’d assumed they would, Amazon has just launched a free Kindle application for Apple’s much-lauded touchscreen, available immediately. While it won’t go and turn your iPhone’s display into an e-Ink screen (we feel bad for our eyes already), the Kindle application does replicate much of the functionality provided by the namesake device. You can read any Kindle-compatible book you’ve purchased from Amazon’s catalog, read the first chapter of other books for free, adjust text size, bookmark pages, and view notations made on the Kindle. One of the big features here is WhisperSync, which automatically keeps track of where you left off in each book, allowing you to pick up from that spot from any Kindle-friendly devices you may have. The feature didn’t seem too useful when the Kindle 2 was announced (How many people have more than one Kindle?) - but with Amazon stretching Kindle across multiple platforms, it makes perfect sense. Leave your Kindle on the bed side table, pick up where you left off on your iPhone once you’re on the bus. Buying new books is a bit more tedious for iPhone users, as Apple doesn’t allow third parties to sell content within their applications. To get a new book, you’ve got to pop into Safari, then head to the standard Amazon Kindle store and purchase the book there. Amazon’s syncing sorcery takes over from that point. It’s not too bad, but the experience isn’t as seamless as it is on the Kindle. Will this put Kindle device sales at risk? Not likely. The Kindle is a fairly niche product - not that reading is a niche activity (though it’s probably a bit less common than it should be), but the ideas of eBooks/e-Ink/etc are still fairly foreign to most (though Oprah’s mention definitely didnt hurt). This lets Amazon push more copies of e-products they’ve already got licenses for, all the while coaxing the stubborn folks into the idea of reading books on an electronic screen without requiring them to drop $360 bucks on a dedicated device. What it may put at risk, however, are all of the other publishers (ScrollMotion, for example) looking to peddle eBooks on the iPhone platform. Amazon’s eBook library is massive, and almost always cheaper than these other options. Has Amazon just conquered the iPhone eBook market? Check out the free application and catch up on your reading here. [iTunes Link] Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: MobileCrunch | 4 Mar 2009 | 7:35 am Tiny moon discovered orbiting Saturn - CNN International
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Mar 2009 | 7:26 am Tons of fun: 8TB NAS by Western DigitalSection: Peripherals, Storage  While it may look like Western Digital has gone into the mini-fridge business, that’s not the case. That giant-looking silver box is an 8TB network attached storage device with gigabit Ethernet. Nope, that’s no typo—eight terabytes in one box with gigabit Ethernet. It is called the WD ShareSpace and is DLNA certified. DLNA certified devices are interoperable which means you don’t have to set up things. If you have a television with DLNA or PS3 or Xbox 360, you ought to be able to access the WD ShareSpace without much work at all. Also, while it looks huge, take a look at another pic after the break to get an idea of how small this device really is—it looks to be the size of a Drobo.  What does this thing cost? This is pretty pricey at $1,699.99. That’s about the same price as a high end computer system, so what makes the WD ShareSpace attractive? Well, you won’t have to manage another computer with this device. The DLNA certification is handy. The ShareSpace also acts as a iTunes server and as an FTP server. Plus, WD has something called “MioNet” which allows remote access to the device for both Macs and PCs. The biggest draw may be the energy consumption. The ShareSpace uses WD’s GreenPower drives; WD claims 33% less power used based on its tests using a 1TB dual-drive system with GreenPower versus 1TB dual-drive system using 7200 RPM drives. This may be a good solution for a small business that doesn’t want to get involved with a backup server. Additionally, this may be good for folks who love to hoard data. WD also offers 2TB and 4TB versions and they cost $699.99 and $999.99 respectively. You can get them at a savings if you shop around. The 8TB version will be available this week. Product Page: [WD ShareSpace] Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 4 Mar 2009 | 7:22 am Luminary Micro Supports ARM(R) Cortex(TM) Microcontroller Software Interface Standard (CMSIS)The Stellaris(R) Family of MCUs, ARM's CMSIS Initiative Share Same Goal of Standardizing the Microcontroller Market with a Single, Scalable Hardware/Software ArchitectureSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Mar 2009 | 7:15 am First impressions of Kindle on iPhone [Mossblog]As I predicted in my review of Amazon.com’s Kindle 2 e-book reader last week, the giant bookseller has moved quickly to make the 240,000 book Kindle catalog available on other devices. On Tuesday night, the first Kindle software reader appeared, and it’s a free iPhone app. Called Kindle for iPhone, the app replicates the basic book-reading functions of the hardware Kindle device, and can be thought of as a complement to that device, which has more features. However, you don’t have to own a hardware Kindle to use this app. You can now choose instead to use your iPhone or iPod Touch as the reader for books from Kindle’s catalog. I tried the new iPhone Kindle app moments after it became available on Apple’s App Store (AAPL), and my first impression is generally positive. But first, let me note the key features of the hardware Kindle that aren’t carried over to the iPhone app. It doesn’t support periodicals. It doesn’t read books aloud. It doesn’t allow you to enter notes or highlight text, look up words in a dictionary, or perform searches.
And, if you wish to purchase a new e-book, the Kindle app sends you over to the iPhone’s Safari web browser to go the Amazon (AMZN) web site; it lacks a built-in Kindle store. However, it is a solid basic app for reading books, and is especially valuable if you already own a hardware Kindle, as I do. In my brief tests, the iPhone app synchronized rapidly and perfectly with my purchased library of Kindle books on Amazon’s servers, and allowed me to retrieve a previously purchased e-book, without paying again, just like my hardware Kindle does. It also synchronized to the furthest page I had read in that book on my Kindle. After reading for awhile on the iPhone, I performed that process in reverse, and my Kindle took me to the same spot where I had quit reading on the iPhone. This means that, if I were in line at the grocery store with my iPhone, I could read a few pages of my book, and then, when I picked up my Kindle at home, I could continue reading, starting from the same spot. I also was able to buy a new book using the iPhone’s web bowser, and Amazon gave me a choice of auto-delivering it to either my Kindle or my iPhone, which it treats as just another Kindle. I did so, and it appeared very quickly. I later downloaded it as well to my Kindle. Reading on the device was easy. You turn pages using the iPhone’s horizontal swiping gesture, and you can change the font size on the fly, and create bookmarks, which then can be synced back to a Kindle device. You can view any notes you made on a hardware Kindle. And there’s a slider to quickly go back and forth through chunks of the book. The only flaw I encountered in my brief testing: if you turn pages too fast you get a fleeting blank page or two. In two key respects, using the iPhone app seems superior to using a Kindle. First, the iPhone’s screen is brighter, and supports color, so book covers and illustrations in my test books looked much better on the iPhone than they did on the Kindle. Second, the iPhone is smaller and thus much more portable.
The new Kindle app isn’t as full-featured as some other e-reader apps for the iPhone, which do allow annotation, searching, and so forth. But it gets the job done and it gives you access to Amazon’s large catalog, which contains more popular and current commercial titles than other e-book sellers offer. If you’re an iPhone or iPod Touch owner who has yearned for a Kindle but balked at its $359 price, or a Kindle owner with an iPhone or Touch already, this new Kindle app is a good bet, even if it is bare-bones. Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2009 | 7:02 am Koobface Wriggles Into Facebook, Again - Techtree.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Mar 2009 | 7:02 am CeBIT 2009: Partnership With BTR Services Provides VASCO With Foothold in Digital Document Signature MarketVASCO's DIGIPASS CertiID embedded in BTR Services' Electronic Signer HANOVER, Germany, March 4 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VASCO Data Security International, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Mar 2009 | 7:00 am Photos: Expansion of Midmarket Program Provides Greater Cost Transparency and Shorter Project CyclesInteractive Online Tool Configures Companies' Solution Blueprint and Outputs Instant Cost Estimates of SAP(R) Business All-in-One Solutions - Now Includes Partner Offerings and Customer Relationship ManagementSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Mar 2009 | 7:00 am Christian salt, a wingnut alternative to Kosher saltDoran sez, "A retired barber named Joe Godlewski wasn't happy with all that 'Kosher salt' TV chefs use, so he's selling sea salt, blessed by an Episcopalian priest and marketing it as 'Christian Salt'. Of course, most chefs use Kosher salt because of its properties, and not because of any blessing which may have been given by a rabbi."Oh, sure, but what if you're not an Episcopalian? What about Mormons, Baptists, Catholics and Scientologists? Where's their salt?
Christian salt seller hopes to shake up market In Praise of the Sales Force: the stuff a publisher does for an author that the Internet can't replaceLocus Magazine's just posted my latest column for them, "In Praise of the Sales Force," a look at the things that publishers can do for authors that the Internet can't replace (yet, anyway!).Hardly a day goes by that I don't get an e-mail from someone who's ready to reinvent publishing using the Internet, and the ideas are often good ones, but they lack a key element: a sales force. That is, a small army of motivated, personable, committed salespeople who are on a first-name basis with every single bookstore owner/buyer in the country, people who lay down a lot of shoe-leather as they slog from one shop to the next, clutching a case filled with advance reader copies, cover-flats, and catalogs. When I worked in bookstores, we had exceptional local reps, like Eric, the Bantam guy who knew that I was exactly the right clerk to give an advance copy of Snow Crash to if he wanted to ensure a big order and lots of hand-selling when the book came in (He also made sure that I got ARCs of every Kathe Koja and Ian McDonald novel — Eric, if you're reading this, thanks!).In Praise of the Sales Force Source: Boing Boing | 4 Mar 2009 | 6:18 am Flurb #7 is out -- Rudy Rucker's awesomely weird and fantastic free sf zineIssue #7 of FLURB, Rudy Rucker's astoundingly awesome free sf zine, has just hit the net, with a collection of stories from some of my favorite authors, including a collaboration between Rudy and John Shirley, and work by Madeline Ashby and Terry Bisson. Also, a great story from Richard Kadrey, "Trembling Blue Stars."FLURB
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 4 Mar 2009 | 6:17 am Setting the iPhone Free from AT&T - BusinessWeek
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 4 Mar 2009 | 6:16 am Meteorite Hunters Find the West Texas FireballAn anonymous reader writes "A fireball streaked over Austin, Texas on February 15 producing sonic booms and startling people for hundreds of miles. The video of the event was shown on national television and viewed by thousands of people on the Net. The first news reports speculated that the fireball might have been debris from a February 13th collision between two satellites over Siberia but space experts said that the object was probably a meteor. Now this has been confirmed: experienced meteorite hunters located a strewnfield about 120 miles north of the filming site of the Austin cameraman and have recovered over 100 freshly fallen meteorites."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2009 | 6:14 am Should Job Seekers Tell Employers To Quit Snooping?onehitwonder writes in with a CIO opinion piece arguing that potential employees need to stand up to employers who snoop the Web for insights into their after-work activities, often disqualifying them as a result. "Employers are increasingly trolling the web for information about prospective employees that they can use in their hiring decisions. Consequently, career experts advise job seekers to not post any photos, opinions or information on blogs and social networking websites (like Slashdot) that a potential employer might find remotely off-putting. Instead of cautioning job seekers to censor their activity online, we job seekers and defenders of our civil liberties should tell employers to stop snooping and to stop judging our behavior outside of work, writes CIO.com Senior Online Editor Meridith Levinson. By basing professional hiring decisions on candidates' personal lives and beliefs, employers are effectively legislating people's behavior, and they're creating an online environment where people can't express their true beliefs, state their unvarnished opinions, be themselves, and that runs contrary to the free, communal ethos of the Web. Employers that exploit the Web to snoop into and judge people's personal lives infringe on everyone's privacy, and their actions verge on discrimination."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2009 | 6:14 am Working couple amass stupendous art collection, circulate it across the USMarilyn sends us this, a trailer for "Megumi Sasaki's award-winning documentary about the Vogels, who used Dorothy's librarian salary for living expenses and Herb's postal clerk salary to buy art, amassing a collection of 4,000 important works. They plan to distribute 2,500 pieces of the collection, sending 50 works to each of 50 states."
Herb and Dorothy Vogel
(Thanks, Marilyn!) Manchester man arrested for alleged sewer-grate photography, held as a terroristStill think that if you're innocent, you have nothing to fear from surveillance and control laws? Have a look at this news-video about Stephen Clarke, a man who was accused to taking pictures of sewer-gratings in Manchester and arrested. Though the police couldn't find any photos of sewer-gratings on his phone (and even though "what a sewer grating looks like" isn't a piece of specialized terrorist intelligence), he was held on suspicion of planning an act of terror, imprisoned for two days while the police searched his home, his phone and his computer. When they couldn't find anything suspicious, they released him, but kept his DNA on file, as the biometric of someone who had been accused of plotting a terrorist act. Source: Gizmodo | 4 Mar 2009 | 5:45 am That Was Fast: Kindle, Meet the iPhone. [MediaMemo]
Now we know. As of today, you can now read Kindle titles on your Apple iPhone (AAPL). The free Kindle for iPhone App is just what it sounds like: It lets you read e-books that you’ve bought from Amazon (AMZN). It won’t let you actually buy the titles from the online bookseller, though. To do that, you will need to use your Kindle or a Web browser. But since you can use the iPhone’s built-in Safari browser to buy a Kindle book, that’s a fairly minor distinction. More important: Once you own a Kindle title, you can sync the titles between your iPhone (or iTouch) and your Kindle. Wait a minute. Aren’t Amazon and Apple competitors when it comes to music and video sales? And won’t they be competing for years to come for all sorts of digital content sales? Sure. But Apple’s Steve Jobs has been publicly dismissive of the e-book market, and Amazon clearly sees the Kindle as a superior e-book reader to the iPhone — it imagines that the iPhone, or any other non-Kindle device, will be something you use to read an e-book when you can’t actually get your hands on a Kindle. The bigger picture: Apple is still, for the moment, a hardware company that uses content to make its gadgets more attractive. And Amazon is basically the inverse: It wants to sell a lot of Kindles so it can sell a lot more Kindle e-books. So the detente here makes plenty of sense. Which is probably what Walt Mossberg had in mind when he reviewed the Kindle 2.0 last week:
Source: All Things Digital | 4 Mar 2009 | 5:40 am Recently on Offworld Recently on Offworld, by a small act of fate, we managed to get that first look at PopCap's upcoming tower defense/strategy game Plants vs. Zombies (above) which -- as it's repeatedly been pointed out -- features a grand total of zero actual flora and instead is rife with fungi, though presumably that's down to the developer being unable to land the rights to call it Lawn of the Dead. Either way, it looks wicked.
We also got another exclusive listen to Daniel Pemberton's soundtrack for LittleBigPlanet as the original score goes up for its BAFTA award, watched the latest preview of Infinite Ammo's ever more brilliant looking iPhone puzzler Heroes & Villains, and saw the Contra 4 DS devs taking on another cult hit property, this time David 'Pitfall' Crane's underdog NES platformer A Boy and His Blob for the Wii.
Finally, we saw an early, fully playable build of Russian developer GSC's excellent post-apocalyptic shooter Stalker officially released for free, saw two iPhone games getting the first stirrings of further social/multiplayer functionality, voted for the Independent Games Festival's audience award, and listened to an EP length soundtrack for Flashbang's just released deep sea tentacle-whipper Blush.Source: Boing Boing | 4 Mar 2009 | 5:31 am Facebook users hit with flood of malwareSection: Computers, Security, Web, Web 2.0, Websites  Facebook users need to be very careful these days. The popular social networking site has been hit with a new wave of malware that pretends to be one of the thousands of third party apps available on the site. One of the most dangerous is the newest version of the Koobface worm, which turns the machines it infects into zombies and adds them to a botnet. Another rogue program that made the rounds last week, causing havoc as it did so was an app called “Facebook-closing down!” which sent fake notifications to users saying one of their friends had reported them to Facebook for terms and services violations. Anyone who clicked on the link in the fake alert was directed to the app, which then sent the same fake alerts to all their friends. Since the fake alerts actually named the friend who allegedly did the reporting, a lot of drama and hurt feelings ensued. A third malicious app going around is called “Error Check System” which sent fake alerts from the user’s friends saying they had experienced problems accessing that users profile. Like the “Facebook-closing down!” app, clicking on the link sends the same fake alerts to everyone in the users friends list. Experts say both apps harvested email addresses and other personal info as they spread. Facebook has since shut down both apps, but you can be sure new ones will pop up in their place. The only way to protect yourself is to be careful of what apps you use, and click with caution. A little common sense helps as well - if someone actually were to report you on Facebook or any other site, you would never be told exactly who it was. Enjoy Facebook, but be picky when it comes to using the site’s third party apps. Read [Sci-Tech Today] Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 4 Mar 2009 | 5:14 am March 4, 1962: Nuclear Age Comes to Antarctica1962: The United States fires up the first — and only — nuclear reactor in Antarctica. While the idea of placing a nuclear plant in such an ecologically sensitive location may seem like madness today, in the pre-Chernobyl, pre–Three Mile Island world of 1962, nuclear power was seen as a cost-effective, efficient and relatively safe way of providing power to permanent Antarctic research stations. Supplying those stations posed a real logistical problem. By the '60s some stations were manned on a year-round basis and the burden of shipping millions of gallons of diesel fuel to the south was both arduous and expensive. When the additional expense of heating the stored fuel (to prevent solidification) was factored in, costs ran anywhere from $1 to $3 per gallon (equivalent to $7 to $21 in today's money), according to a U.S. Navy study at the time. While there were logistical reasons for building the plant, there were political ones as well: President Eisenhower's full-court press to sell the idea of nuclear energy to the American public, through a program known as Atoms for Peace, was in full swing by the mid-1950s, when the planning for an Antarctic reactor began. The reactor, designated PM-3A, was a portable plant designed and built by the Martin Company (a forerunner of Lockheed-Martin). It was intended not only to provide electrical power but to run a water-distillation plant as well. Martin Company designed PM-3A to fit inside a C-130 transport plane, although in the end it was sent to Antarctica by ship. The reactor was set up at McMurdo Station, on a barren spit of land selected by the United States in 1955 for its largest Antarctic research station. There were problems with the plant from the beginning. It underperformed to expectations and frequently fell victim to power failures. It also raised concerns in New Zealand, where U.S. Navy ships transporting the fuel and waste under Operation Deep Freeze would dock for a few days while in transit. Worse, PM-3A ran on strontium-90 pellets, a particularly dangerous fuel because of its high radioactivity before entering the nuclear core. All of these factors led to PM-3A existing on very shaky ground almost from the day it began operating. The coup de grace, however, came in 1972 when a leak in the reactor's pressure vessel was discovered during a routine inspection. A closer look uncovered cracks throughout the reactor, caused by failures in some of the welds, and the decision was made to close and dismantle PM-3A. Disposal presented other headaches. Decommissioned nuclear plants are usually entombed in concrete, but provisions in the Antarctic Treaty made this impossible, so the dismantled plant, along with some of the contaminated ground surrounding it, was bundled aboard the USS Towle for shipment to a disposal site in California. McMurdo returned to diesel power. Source: Various Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Mar 2009 | 5:00 am Gallery: Seeing the Art in AircraftPhotographer Jeffrey Milstein makes formal symmetrical portraits of planes that fly out of LAX airport. He has gathered the images, which strip planes of all surrounding context and focus on the typology of aircraft, into a book called AirCraft: The Jet as Art.Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Mar 2009 | 5:00 am Interact: Watch 24 Brilliant Hours of U.S. FlightsArtist Aaron Koblin layers flight patterns on a Google map representing air traffic across the United States over a 24-hour period. The map illustrates flight paths using color and animation for all the aircraft the FAA tracked on August 12, 2008.Source: Wired Top Stories | 4 Mar 2009 | 5:00 am Recently on OffworldRecently on Offworld, by a small act of fate, we managed to get that first look at PopCap's upcoming tower defense/strategy game Plants vs. Zombies (above) which -- as it's repeatedly been pointed out -- features a grand total of zero actual flora and instead is rife with fungi, though presumably that's down to the developer being unable to land the rights to call it Lawn of the Dead. Either way, it looks wicked.
We also got another exclusive listen to Daniel Pemberton's soundtrack for LittleBigPlanet as the original score goes up for its BAFTA award, watched the latest preview of Infinite Ammo's ever more brilliant looking iPhone puzzler Heroes & Villains, and saw the Contra 4 DS devs taking on another cult hit property, this time David 'Pitfall' Crane's underdog NES platformer A Boy and His Blob for the Wii. Finally, we saw an early, fully playable build of Russian developer GSC's excellent post-apocalyptic shooter Stalker officially released for free, saw two iPhone games getting the first stirrings of further social/multiplayer functionality, voted for the Independent Games Festival's audience award, and listened to an EP length soundtrack for Flashbang's just released deep sea tentacle-whipper Blush. Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 4 Mar 2009 | 4:57 am Gamestop tries to teach its employees how to talk to the ladiesFROM GAMERTELL - GameStop apparently has the opinion that its employees have difficulty approaching women and creates an instructional video to help… MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 4 Mar 2009 | 4:36 am Luther Forest Technology Campus Welcomes GLOBALFOUNDRIES and Unveils Corporate Brand and Web ResourceAnchor Tenant Expected to be First Monumental Sale for the Corporation Behind the Most Advanced Shovel-Ready Commercial Development Site in the World SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y., March 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Luther Forest Technology Campus (LFTC) today announced a new corporate brand and Web destination, as it welcomes its first anchor tenant for the 1,414-acre campus.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 4 Mar 2009 | 4:30 am VIA’s Em-ITX form factor has I/O on two sides
There aren’t going to be any cases meant to use this setup for a while (and likely they’ll be first-party to begin with, like VIA’s Artigo), but it’s a cool idea and one of which you can immediately see the benefits. We have a form of this in our consumer mobos in the form of unused USB pinouts and such for expansion boards, front panels and so on, but having it hardwired would be a lot nicer (my front ports aren’t high-speed USB because of the way I had to set it up). Of course, these Em-ITX boards will be in embedded and proprietary devices first (it’s quite small), but let’s hope some of the design decisions make their way into some more consumer-oriented gear. Source: CrunchGear | 4 Mar 2009 | 4:28 am The 300 Million Year Old BrainPickens writes "Paleontologists recently discovered the world's oldest brain nestled within a 300-million-year-old fish fossil of one of the extinct relatives of modern ratfishes, also known as 'host sharks' or chimaeras. These chimaera relatives, called iniopterygians, represented bizarre beasts that sported massive skulls with huge eye sockets, shark-like teeth in rows, tails with clubs, huge pectoral fins that were placed almost on their backs, and bone-like spikes or hooks tipping the fins. The brain shows details such as a large vision lobe and optic nerve stretching to the proper place on the braincase, which fits with the fish's large eye sockets. The ear canals of the extinct fish only exist on a horizontal plane so the fish could only detect side-to-side movements, and not up or down. 'There is nothing like this known today; it is really bizarre,' said John Maisey, paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. 'But now that we know that brains might be preserved in such ancient fossils, we can start looking for others. We are limited in information about early vertebrate brains, and the evolution of the brain lies at the core of vertebrate history.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 4 Mar 2009 | 4:11 am Pak Datacom Limited Installs iDirect Hub in Pakistan's Financial CapitalLaunches DVB-S2/ACM satellite network to meet growing demand from banks, government and cellular operatorsSource: Gizmodo | 4 Mar 2009 | 3:30 am Video: World BuilderMaybe it’s the beer talking, but this video is frackin rad. What a guy won’t do for the girl he loves. Makes we want to barf. This video was shot in a day, but went through two years of post production. Kudos to Bruce Branit. Source: CrunchGear | 4 Mar 2009 | 3:23 am Eye-Fi announces new memory cards to wirelessly upload videosSection: Video, Content, Portable Video, Gadgets / Other, Imaging, Accessories, Digital Cameras, Web, Websites, Online Music/Video
Eye-Fi is, perhaps, best known for their memory cards that automatically transmits photos from your digital camera to your PC, wirelessly. Taking that idea one step further, Eye-Fi announced two new SD cards, the Eye-Fi Share Video and Eye-Fi Explore Video, that also transfer videos automatically. In fact, Eye-Fi finds that half of all digital camera owners use their digital camera to shoot videos, over an actual video camera or cell phone. According to comScore, more than 144 million videos were watched online this past year, so videos being uploaded to the Internet has become extremely popular in the past few years and this popularity has boomed with the emergence of YouTube. Faster Internet connections have also made videos more popular to watch and use. Now, Eye-Fi has embedded technology into their cards that automatically upload your videos to either YouTube or Flickr. In addition to these services, the cards have the ability to upload videos and pictures to social networking websites such as Facebook. The two SD cards both have storage capacities of 4GB and they automatically geotag the photos and videos. All you need is a good Wi-Fi connection to start the uploading process. The 4GB Eye-Fi Share Video will retail for $79, while the Explore Video will sell for $99. The Explore costs more because it gets you a year of hotspot access. Both of these are set to be available later this month and will be on sale at Apple Retail Stores, Best Buy Retail stores, Amazon.com, Walmart.com, and Costco.com. Read [Eye-Fi Press Release] Source: Gizmodo | 4 Mar 2009 | 3:00 am Facebook Connect + Facebook Ads = A Social Ad Network
The push to ramp up revenues is clearly on at Facebook. If Mark Zuckerberg wants to prove Facebook’s valuation (something he won’t budge on for new investors), he is going to have to start showing some serious revenues. That means figuring out how to make social advertising pay. At Davos, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg told us to expect to see “the evolution of the advertising products” this year. One big evolutionary step the company is working on is the combination of Facebook Connect and Facebook Ads, in effect turning Facebook Connect into a social ad network. We’ve learned this from two independent sources, one with direct knowledge of the product. Asked for comment, a Facebook spokesman offers the following statement:
The introduction of ads through Facebook Connect is an obvious way to expand revenues, and our sources say it is part of Sandberg’s larger efforts to do so. Just last month, as the statement notes, Facebook began testing ads for the first time on third-party application pages. It also introduced a commenting widget for sites that use Facebook Connect which expands the footprint of FB Connect on sites that install it. One can imagine other Facebook Connect apps, and even third-party apps, appearing on partner sites. The more real estate those apps take up, the more room there will be to insert an ad or two. Our understanding is that the ads will initially appear on this expanding real estate rather than in traditional advertising spots, where Facebook would have to compete directly against Google, Yahoo, and all the other established ad networks. Given the known under-performance of ads on Facebook’s own site and social networks in general, that is probably a prudent strategy. For now, Facebook Connect remains a developer program for partner sites to allow visitors to sign in using their Facebook ID and voluntarily exchange data about their activity on those sites back to their Facebook friends via their activity feeds. But targeting ads to Facebook members on partner sites through Facebook Connect could become a potentially powerful revenue generator. At the very least, it would multiply Facebook’s available advertising inventory beyond its own site. At most, it would create better returns by letting Facebook place highly targeted ads in different contexts where people may be more receptive to them. One of the reasons ads perform so poorly on social networks is because they are the worst place to show someone an ad. People on social networks tend to be in a socializing mode instead of a shopping or information-gathering mode. But if you show the same people an ad on another type of site (say, a clothing ad on a fashion blog), and you can target that ad based on their social profile (you know their age, gender, and where they live), that in theory should be a formula for better response rates. Facebook started down this road before with Beacon, before that effort blew up in its face because of privacy concerns. So it has to tread carefully. But it learned from Beacon, and FB Connect is completely opt-in. So far, it is a success. Now it is time to make money off of it, and leverage the data Facebook has about its 175 million members. And have no doubts: If Facebook doesn’t create a viable social ad network, somebody else will. In fact, all the major social networks have plans to use access to their members, and their member data, as a wedge to create social advertising networks that can target ads based on profile or demographic data. For instance, Google Friend Connect, Google’s answer to Facebook Connect, is laying the groundwork for what Google insiders call “Friendsense” (Friends + AdSense). Even MySpace and AOL are working on their own flavors of socially-targeted ads. While these efforts are all couched in terms of making it easier for consumers to share data about themselves between the sites they care about, don’t be fooled. They are less about sharing data than about targeting ads. This is the next evolutionary step in online advertising. it is only a matter of when, not if, it will occur. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 4 Mar 2009 | 2:53 am Motorola co-CEOs Jha, Brown take no bonus in 2008
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We can file this latest announcement as 
When a smart, ambitious executive who isn’t the CEO leaves a company, it isn’t necessarily a sign of trouble. Sometimes that executive isn’t performing all that well, or he/she wants to see if they can make it at their own startup where they call the shots. Top execs leaving to start their own companies is the story of Silicon Valley.
Remember last month, when 
We are now accepting entries for Maker Faire, which will take place May 30 and 31 at the San Mateo County Expo Center. This year's focus is Re-Make America, inspired by President Obama's call for all of us to participate in remaking America. We're looking to showcase "the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things."
The GeoTiger is the “full” version, which includes a GPS unit that sits on your hot shoe. The “Unleashed” is just the little box that connects to your camera’s 10-pin connector; it uses Bluetooth instead of a wired connection to check GPS position, so you’ll need a supported GPS unit.
![nanoedenbis3_x530[1].jpg](http://gadgets.boingboing.net/gimages/nanoedenbis3_x530[1]-thumb-520x346.jpg)
