Street Level Cruise Ships - Docked Harbour Restaurant Mimicks Luxury Yacht (GALLERY)

NBCU, Microsoft Pact on '10 Olympics - Adweek

CNET News

NBCU, Microsoft Pact on '10 Olympics Adweek NEW YORK NBC Universal will partner with Microsoft to support its online delivery of the Winter Olympics in 2010. As it did during NBC's much-ballyhooed Web coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics, Microsoft will provide both the video-streaming ... Microsoft releases first beta of its potential Flash-killer ... TopNews United States Microsoft Takes The Wraps Off Silverlight 3 Beta ChannelWeb PC Pro - Register - CNET News - InformationWeek all 139 news articles

Pictures: iPhone 3.0 USB Tethering Already Activated

IPhone developer Steve Troughton Smith has managed to switch on and successfully use the tethering service in the new beta version of the iPhone 3.0 OS. How? He can't remember. From his Twitter: "To all: I have no idea how I did it. Sorry! I was hacking around with APNs in the Carrier.bundle itcc file"

He did manage to take a few screenshots, though, and it looks to be the real thing -- his Twitpic feed also contains shots of the new copy and paste functions, for instance.

It appears that a new network preference pane opens up with the tethering options, and that the service works not only over Bluetooth but also USB, a great battery saver. In fact, Steve says it was the USB tethering that he tried out.

It'll be interesting to see how this works on a PC -- the Mac OS will presumably support it out of the box, and if those settings are to be belived the hooking up a network connection should be as easy as hooking a iPhone Remote up to iTunes. But the PC? Unless networking is also going to be done via iTunes, it could be a little trickier.

Steve's tweet [Twitter via MacRumors]
Screenshot [Twitpic]

Sony sees huge loss coming, freezes wages for all workers for one year

Japanese media today are reporting that Sony plans to freeze the monthly wages of all regular workers for one year starting as soon as this April. The company also announced a number of pay cuts that include top management positions.

From fiscal 2009 (which begins April 1 for Sony Japan), managers with non-board posts have to live with 35 to 40% annual bonus cuts. Sony cuts annual income for board members, including chairman Howard Stringer (pictured) who moved up the Sony food chain last month, by 30 to 50%. In Japan, Panasonic and Sharp were in the news yesterday with similar moves.

Stringer announced in January that he wants to trim 16,000 Sony jobs worldwide and completely restructure the company. The company is expected to incur a record loss of $2.7 billion for the current fiscal year. Sony shares today fell 1.5% at the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Twitterville Falls For Premium Accounts Hoax

Twitterville Falls For Premium Accounts Hoax

It’s mildly funny and very obviously a hoax, but this article on humour site BBspot didn’t stop many a Twitter user from thinking it is real.

The author of the post mocks Twitter’s lack of an apparent business model after 3 years in operation, and writes that the startup’s CEO Evan Williams today finally announced plans to introduce a paid premium account scheme. Never mind that the news would have gotten broken on an obscure blog when the U.S. is mostly asleep, but other things should have given away that this concerns a hoax.

For instance, the words.

Premium accounts will come in four tiers: Sparrow, Dove, Owl and Eagle.

The details of the accounts are as follows:

- Sparrow ($5/month) – Users get 145 character limit, 5 extra random followers.

- Dove ($15/month) – Users get 160 character limit, 25 extra random followers, 1 random celebrity follower, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” T-shirt.

- Owl ($50/month) – Users get 250 character limit, 100 extra random followers, 2 random celebrity followers, 30 minutes on recommended list, auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” hoodie.

- Eagle ($250/month) – Users get 500 character limit, 1000 extra random followers, 3 celebrity followers of their choice, 5 hours on recommended list each month, Twitter Concierge for Tweeting while user is asleep or busy (and more), auto-spell check, “Fail Whale” tuxedo, custom “Fail Whale” page when service is down.

As I said, only mildly funny but so blatantly tongue in cheek that I’m surprised that so many are buying it (pun intented).

That said, what would be your opinion if Twitter would turn charging users for premium accounts into a revenue stream, instead of what it seems they’re actually doing (paving the way for text advertising on-site)?

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

Microsoft Ships Internet Explorer 8 Browser - eWeek

BBC News

Microsoft Ships Internet Explorer 8 Browser eWeek By Darryl K. Taft Microsoft will release its Internet Explorer 8 (IE 8) browser for download on March 19. Microsoft said security, ease of use, and improvements in RSS, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and Asynchronous JavaScript and XML (AJAX) support ... Internet Explorer 8 available as of noon EDT today ITworld.com IE8 released at Mix; will it cripple the web-user experience? ZDNet Register - VNUNet.com - MarketWatch - ITProPortal all 421 news articles

China Mobile Outlines Big 3G Marketing, Spending Plans (PC World)

10 Beautiful Bento Box Innovations (CLUSTER)

Sony Adds Half a Million Public Domain Google Books to Reader

Sony has inked (e-inked?) a deal with Google to bring half a million public domain books to its Reader e-book device, but surprise! Being a Sony service it looks to be awkward to use and no better than just grabbing the texts from Project Gutenberg.

Google has been scanning and textifying public domain texts in its attempt to organize the world’s information, and now they’ll be available for Sony’s e-book reader. This initiative, while certainly laudable as a way to get free books properly formatted for the device, really shows up the Sony Reader and its lack of a wireless internet connection.

First, you need to go to the Sony eBook Store and grab the PC software. Then you can search from the comfort of your own computer the half million books Sony has grabbed from Google. Then you need to sideload the content onto your Reader.

Worse, try going to the eBook site to find the Google link. You’ll have to scroll around. Sony’s web designers have decided to make the word “Google" appear only in jpeg form, so no quick page-search to find it.

Oh, Sony. It’s a nice try, but we think you already lost this one. The Kindle is currently the iPod of e-book readers, and while it doesn’t do everything, what it does do it does right. Plus, you can download any of Project Gutenberg’s free books, or even Google’s, directly, even on the beach. If you really want to read  Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility", that is.

Product page [Sony]

Press release[PR Newswire via Reuters]

Sony e-book reader gets 500,000 books from Google (AP)

AP - Google Inc. is making half a million books, unprotected by copyright, available for free on Sony Corp.'s electronic book-reading device, the companies were set to announce Thursday.

Collar-Bone Grazing Coiffures - Fashion Bible Vogue Declares the New Hair Length (GALLERY)

Amazon faces new legal challenge over Kindle - VNUNet.com

Techtree.com

Amazon faces new legal challenge over Kindle VNUNet.com Amazon's Kindle 2 electronic book reader is the target of a new lawsuit from the company behind the Discovery Channel. Discovery Communications stated in its legal filing (PDF) that Amazon violated its patents regarding copyright protection. Discovery v. Amazon: A lawsuit with legs CNET News Discovery sues over Amazon's Kindle Reuters Ars Technica - VentureBeat - ChannelWeb - Wired News all 306 news articles

Readings

Pystar Further Taunts Apple By Releasing Yet Another OSX Desktop

Chalk Guns Find Middle Ground Between Paintballs And Nerf Darts

China Mobile Subscribers Sent 607 Billion SMSs Last Year

Source: Gizmodo | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:10 am

AMD Adds Windows 7 Support To Catalyst - InformationWeek

PC Magazine Middle & Near East

AMD Adds Windows 7 Support To Catalyst InformationWeek Version 9.3 includes compliance with Windows Display Driver Model 1.1, bringing developers a number of graphics-related benefits in testing and updating applications. ATI gets graphics ready for Windows 7 CNET News AMD's New Graphics Driver Unifies Vista, Windows 7 PC Magazine Inquirer - Neoseeker - TG Daily - TechSpot all 56 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:09 am

Autonomy Completes Integration of Idol Into Interwoven Teamsite

CAMBRIDGE, England and SAN FRANCISCO, March 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:00 am

dotMobi to Release DeviceAtlas for Microsoft ASP.NET

dotMobi now accepting beta applicants to trial award-winning DeviceAtlas mobile device database for the ASP.NET programming framework DUBLIN and WASHINGTON, March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- dotMobi today announced it is now accepting applicants into beta trials for a new edition of the award-winning DeviceAtlas(TM) mobile device database designed exclusively for developers building sites with Microsoft ASP.NET.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:00 am

IBM could shake up Silicon Valley with Sun deal (AP)

AP - If IBM Corp. scoops up Sun Microsystems Inc. for at least $6.5 billion in cash, as the companies are discussing, IBM would be making an opportunistic grab for a deep well of technology that Sun has nearly buried itself developing.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:56 am

Nokia to shutter its "Mosh" success story (Reuters)

Reuters - To spearhead its push into Internet services, Nokia put users in charge when it opened in 2007 the networking site Mosh, which lets people post anything they want.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:45 am

Concept DJ Phone Takes Design Cues from Wiimote, Pacemaker

A young designer has came up with a phone concept that smashes together design elements from Nintendo's Wiimote, Tonium's Pacemaker Portable DJ, and the iPhone to make an interesting portable music system.

Jose Tomas DeLuna came up with his KRE8 project during a school design session sponsored by Motorola, and the result shows the difficulty of scaling down a full-bodied DJ or music system to a small portable. Previous attempts have involved complicated dial systems (Pacemaker), or PMP versions with crippled tuning apps.

DeLuna decided that the best way to increase functionality was by splitting the phone into two parts. Each part has a sensor and an accelerometer, so when a user makes a specific gesture, the phone determines which of three different operating modes it uses: Instrument Mode (for guitar, drums, violin playing), Mix Mode (for DJ-ing) and Record Mode.

For Mix Mode, the touch-enabled software allows the user to slide in instruments, clips, and effects in the middle of a song. Through the simple control system on the right-hand menu, you're supposed to edit levels on the four main corners of the screen, including gain and bass. While this option doesn't give you the ability to use a real dial like the Pacemaker, one can see that a large visual is much more helpful in determining mixes on the go.

In fact, I can already see somebody coming up with an improved version of this as a software upgrade for any other touch phone, including the iPhone.

But the differentiating factor is the use of accelerometers to build beats on the go. You hold on piece in each hand, and like the Wiimote and control, you can sound out beats like you would in Wii's Music game. Hold up the pieces along an outstretched arm, and you should be able to 'play' the violin.

DeLuna says that in his ideal version of the phone, the output of the beats are recorded as a MIDI Signal and could be shared to other phones through 3G. This is different from the social networking aspect of the Pacemaker, which places its social networking and music sharing options on the web only.   

As some people noted on Yanko, the concept does have serious flaws when it comes to potentially being produced. For example, using one main screen that's separated into two would cause serious manufacturing and design difficulties by doubling the overall price and the drivers needed.

But we like the design and a version of this could definitely be fun to play with.

Check out more pics of the design after the jump. 

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Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:23 am

Beejive IM Moves To Block Out iPhone Pirates

BeeJive IM, a popular instant messaging application, saw an update to its iPhone variant this week which added Facebook support to its corral of services. In the hours after the release, reports began to trickle in that something wasn’t quite right. For what seemed like a random group of people, the screen would read “PC LOAD LETTER” whenever the user tried to establish a connection to any IM service, then quickly switch to a Youtube clip from the movie Office Space.

What had happened? Had Beejive been hacked? Was it an easter egg gone awry? Turns out, it was completely intentional: it’s an anti-piracy measure.

This evening, we’ve received an official statement from Beejive on the matter:

We have recently implemented new anti-piracy measures in BeejiveIM for iPhone. We have tried to keep our approach fun with an error message and a video. But we hope our message is clear: please respect the work of developers.

A quick Google search for “Beejive” and “PC Load letter” turns up only a few dozen results, a number of which are people complaining that they’ve been banned unfairly. We have been unable to confirm any of these reports. Some are theorizing that Beejive is simply banning any jailbroken iPhone they detect. We’ve got at least one jailbroken iPhone floating around the office running legitimate copies of Beejive, and it is still fully functional. Other reports indicate that deleting the pirated app and purchasing a legitimate copy does not immediately fix the issue. This leads us to believe they are detecting if the user is running a modified version of the application (likely the info.plist file, which requires a specific line to be added during the application cracking process), adding any user flagged as using a modified copy of the application to a blacklist by way of their handset’s unique device id ID.

Beejive nearly always makes references to the movie Office Space in their promotional iPhone screenshots, generally using character names as screen name placeholders. The “PC LOAD LETTER” message continues this tradition - it’s the error message that the office printer displays up until it meets its end at the business end of a baseball bat, as shown in the clip users see immediately after the error.

Screenshot of the error:

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

Source: TechCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:56 am

CONNECTIONS(TM) Europe to Examine Opportunities, Implications as Home Networking Exceeds 150 Million Households Worldwide

/PRNewswire/ -- International research firm Parks Associates today announced the final agenda and speakers for CONNECTIONS(TM) Europe Summit
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:30 am

Shell Ditches Wind, Solar, and Hydro

thefickler writes "Shell has decided to end its investment in wind, solar and hydro projects because the company does not believe they are financially sound investments. Instead Shell is going to focus on carbon sequestration technologies and biofuels. Not surprisingly, and perhaps unfairly, bloggers have been quick to savage the company: "Between Shell's decisions to stop its clean energy investments and to increase its debt load to pay for dividends, the company is solidifying an image of corporate greed over corporate responsibility." Is Shell short sighted, or is it just a company trying to make its way in an uncertain world?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:08 am

Investigative Journalism Done Better, Faster And Cheaper Without Newspapers [Voices]

There have been a series of ridiculous articles lately claiming that, with the collapse of some newspapers recently, somehow investigative reporting and local coverage won’t work, meaning an era of corruption and the collapse of democracy. Fortunately, some are demonstrating the fallacies underlying these proclamations of doom.

Jay Rosen has been running an interesting experiment trying to find out just how many truly local stories an average newspaper includes in its paper, between all the national wire service stories. A look through a recent Seattle Times issue showed a grand total of seven locally produced stories. And a look at an issue of the Chicago Tribune found a total of eight locally produced stories. We’re not talking about huge numbers here.

And, in fact, the finding of eight stories in the Trib comes from Geoff Dougherty, a guy who created quite a stir in newspaper circles when he claimed he could provide the equivalent (or better) local coverage of the Chicago Tribune for just $2 million a year, and provided the spreadsheet to back it up. And he’s not just talking in theory. He’s doing it. Today. For much less than the Tribune (which is bankrupt).

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:05 am

Traffic Cameras Billed as Answer to Chicago’s Budget Deficit [Voices]

The Windy City, like a lot of other metropolitan areas of late, is facing major budget deficits in the face of the recession’s strong bite. State and local governments alike have been hunting for additional sources of revenue, so it’s not surprising that a Chicago alderman would entertain the possibility of installing red light cameras along the city’s major thoroughfares and intersections. This time around, though, the company trumpeting the addition of these digital watchdogs isn’t portraying them as useful tools for catching speeders—instead, camera provider InsureNet claims to have developed “a simple yet complete answer that delivers totally accurate, instant insurance status verification. An additional unique advantage is that this system is also non-invasive, ensuring protection for every insurer and policyholder.”

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:04 am

Chief Information Officer Is Quietly Reinstated [Voices]

Vivek Kundra, who was on leave from his new appointment by President Obama as the federal government’s chief information officer, has been reinstated, the White House said today.

White House officials confirmed to The New York Times (NYT) that Mr. Kundra had been reinstated today; it was first reported this afternoon by Techpresident.com without confirmation.

The reinstatement comes a few days after F.B.I. agents had raided his former office at the District of Columbia’s technology department. Mr. Kundra was not a target of the raid. A former employee of his, Yusuf Acar, has been charged with bribery. The F.B.I. said that Mr. Kundra was not implicated in the bribery case, but he took a leave from his new federal job anyway.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:03 am

Downturn or Not, Mobile Broadband Is Growing Fast [Voices]

Earlier this week, comScore (SCOR) reported that daily web usage on mobile devices had doubled in the last 12 months, with nearly 22.4 million U.S. mobile users using their devices to go on the web.

Today, another research firm, Infonetics Research reported that despite the global economic downturn, the demand for mobile broadband is only going to increase. They expect that there will be more than 1 billion mobile broadband users by 2013 vs. 210.5 million at the end of 2008. These are connections that use 3G technologies such as W-CDMA, HSPA, CDMA 2000 and EVDO. The sales of mobile broadband PC cards (and embedded 3G modules) were around $4.1 billion in 2008 and show no signs of slowing down.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:02 am

The Lessons of ‘Mad Men’ on Twitter [Voices]

For many fans of the hit TV series “Mad Men,” one of the biggest events of 2008 was the sudden emergence of a number of the show’s characters on Twitter.

At first, it seemed as though whoever was posting regular tweets from within the fictionalized 1960s world of the AMC network show was doing so on behalf of the producers. But as is well known now, they were a group of people who had taken on the task themselves, and who quickly found their project shut down. As is equally well known now, a public outcry and some fancy footwork by AMC’s digital marketing agency eventually allowed them to continue, as they do to this day.

On Tuesday at the South by Southwest Interactive festival (SXSWi) here, three of the people involved in the so-called fan fiction appeared on a panel to discuss the experience of Twittering deep from inside the “Mad Men” story line, and to share their thoughts on lessons that producers and marketers alike could learn from the project.

First up to speak was Carri Bugbee, who Twitters as Peggy Olson, one of the leads on the show.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:01 am

Daily Crunch: Forge Ahead Edition

Flying car/rolling plane makes debut flight
Review: Oregon Trail for the iPhone
BioWare announces Mass Effect 2
Samsung starts churning out more LED TVs, viral video sheepishly makes its debut
Laptops and Diapers: Two essentials in one bag

Source: CrunchGear | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:00 am

Stratos to Distribute New ViaSat Ruggedized BGAN Terminals

--Terminals offer high functionality for military and first-responder applications-- BETHESDA, MD, March 19 /PRNewswire/ - Stratos Global Corporation, the leading global provider of advanced mobile and fixed-site remote communications solutions, today announced it has signed an agreement to become a global distributor of two new ViaSat ruggedized BGAN terminals.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:00 am

SinoHub Appoints Board Members to Newly Formed Audit Committee

SANTA CLARA, Calif. and SHENZHEN, China, March 19 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- SinoHub, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:00 am

News bits: Pioneer, Cisco, and OS X for your PC

Section: Business News, Computers, Networking, Software / Applications, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation

When news falls through the cracks… wait, that’s the intro to “The Daily Show’s Back in Black” segment. There’s lots of stories in the tech world and sometimes they get buried by Google, Microsoft, and Apple’s every move.  Here’s a round up of stories that you may have missed.  Pioneer wants to be in your car, Cisco wants to make splash with the business world, and OS X for everyone is coming. 

Pioneer to partner up, but not with Mitsubishi

Pioneer is jumping out the television market, but they aren’t done making consumer electronics just yet.  The rumor was that Pioneer was speaking to Alpine, Clarion, and Mitsubishi with a focus on making in-car tech.  Pioneer has cleared things up by saying they are not speaking to Mitsubishi, but did confirm they are speaking with others.  On the surface, it seems like a strange move the company to focus on in-car tech, but who knows—maybe the profit margins are higher.  [Source].

Cisco entering server business

IBM may be trying to bolster its position on servers by picking up Sun Microsystems, but they’re about to have some company in the form of Cisco.  Cisco announced they will be entering the server business.  Also of note is the fact that Cisco is working with VMware.  Sure, plenty of folks put VMware on servers, but Cisco will be working with the company to better take advantage of virtualizing machines.  [Source]

Leo4All still paused

Perhaps influenced by a recent Gadgetell article, you’ve been looking at alternative OSes.  Maybe you’ve been looking at installing OS X on your PC.  Well, we all know Apple’s position on that.  The simple fact is, people will just keep trying to get OS X on a generic PC.  Leo4All is a project that tries just that.  The newest version was slated to be released early this month.  However, more than two weeks later, the latest version of Leo4All has yet to surface.  This version was to have a LiveDVD which would also give you an option to install.  It’s an ambitious project.  When there’s an update, we’ll let you know.

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:46 am

Naveen Jain’s Intelius Scam Begins To Crumble. Good.

A year ago we wrote about Naveen Jain’s current startup, Intelius. Jain left previous the company he founded, InfoSpace, in disgrace in late 2002 after violating insider trading laws and other sketchy activities. After leaving InfoSpace Jain started Intelius, across the street from his old offices in Bellevue, Washington.

In that post we outlined how Intelius, at the time in the process of becoming a public company, was growing revenue via a scam:

Intelius has been on the receiving end of hundreds of consumer complaints alleging fraud, many of which are around a partnership the company has with Adaptive Marketing and a “product” they offer called Privacy Matters Identity.

Every time a customer buys a product at Intelius, they are shown a page telling them “Take our 2008 Consumer Credit Survey and claim $10.00 CASH BACK with Privacy Matters Identity.” The user is then shown two survey questions and asked to enter their email and click a large orange button. They can choose to skip the survey by clicking on a small link at the bottom of the page.

Undoubtedly a lot of consumers do the survey and move forward to the next page - it only takes a second. But what most people don’t do is read the fine print, which gives no real details on the $10 cash back (in fact, it is never mentioned again, anywhere). Instead, in light gray small text, users are told that by taking the survey they are really signing up to a $20/month subscription. Intelius forwards your personal information, including your credit card, to Adaptive Marketing. The next day a $20 charge appears on your credit card, and each month afterwards.

Now, nearly a year later, Intelius is being deservedly buried in lawsuits and consumer complaints. A long Seattle Weekly expose on Jain and Intelius describes the various legal issues facing the company: 121 complaints to the Washington State Attorney General’s Office, 822 complaints to the Better Business Bureau, a lawsuit in King County Superior Court accusing Jain of inflating financial figures and a Federal Trade Commission investigation for possible violation of laws regulating how credit information is disseminated. More at TechFlash.

As an aside, all these negative stories are really piling up for Google searches on Naveen Jain. Jain has clearly been using basic SEO tacticts to try to drive those stories down. He maintains at a handful of sites, Naveenjain.com, naveenjain.org and naveenjain.us, naveenjain.info, all of which use his full name in almost every sentence and talk about his philanthropic efforts. All of the sites link to eachother, creating a small link farm. Still, the bad news is out there.

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

Source: Gizmodo | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:30 am

iPhone OS 3.0: Everything you need to know…so far

FROM APPLETELL - Apple states there are well over 100 new features or improvements to be experienced in iPhone OS 3.0 coming this June, so let’s take a look at what’s in store. MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:23 am

Wikileaks reveals secret blacklist behind proposed Great Firewall of Australia

Wikileaks has published the secret list of sites blocked by Australia's state-sponsored parental filter -- a list that the government plans to expand to the entire Australian Internet, making it the basis for a new Great Firewall of Australia. The list is compiled in secret and is not readily inspected or appealed, and the officials who maintain it have secretly expanded its mandate so that "half of the sites on the list are not related to child porn and include a slew of online poker sites, YouTube links, regular gay and straight porn sites, Wikipedia entries, euthanasia sites, websites of fringe religions such as satanic sites, fetish sites, Christian sites, the website of a tour operator and even a Queensland dentist."

Julian Assange, founder of Wikileaks, dug up the blacklist after ACMA added several Wikileaks pages to the list following the site's publication of the Danish blacklist.

He said secret censorship systems were "invariably corrupted", pointing to the Thailand censorship list, which was originally billed as a mechanism to prevent child pornography but contained more than 1200 sites classified as criticising the royal family.

"In January the Thai system was used to censor Australia reportage about the imprisoned Australian writer Harry Nicolaides," he said.

"The Australian democracy must not be permitted to sleep with this loaded gun. This week saw Australia joining China and the United Arab Emirates as the only countries censoring Wikileaks."

Leaked Australian blacklist reveals banned sites

ACMA list on Wikileaks (down as of 0618h GMT 19 MAR 09)

Mirrors of ACMA list


Source: Boing Boing | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:19 am

Newspaper box graveyard and other images of the econopocalypse

The Boston Globe's "Images from the Recession" page features pictures from around the world showing the stark reality of the econopocalypse. Here's a storage yard filled with disused newspaper boxes and racks in San Francisco.

Scenes from the recession (Thanks, Jeff!)

(Image: AP Photo/Noah Berger)


Source: Boing Boing | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:12 am

Sony adds half a million public domain books to Reader library

More than 500,000 copyright-free titles will be made available for Sony's Reader thanks to a deal with Google, which is opening its massive scanning project for portable use for the first time. The L.A. Times quotes a Sony spokesman saying something we are not accustomed to hearing from Sony spokespersons:

"We have focused our efforts on offering an open platform..." said Steve Haber, president of the digital reading business division at Sony Electronics.

The effect of this deal with Google is to make old public domain texts more convenient to access on the Reader. Bottom line: no more arsing around with Project Gutenberg's mammoth disclaimers or fixing flow problems caused by hard wrap.

Without WWAN, however, Sony's Reader's got its work cut out for it, no matter how much better it looks than Amazon's Kindle 2.

After praising the Reader's new selection of classic titles, the L.A. Times all but writes it off, casting Sony's refusal to add a cellular modem as "mystifying." [LA Times]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:10 am

Google: the majority of takedown notices are bogus

Google has filed a submission with the New Zealand government in response to the new law there, which compels ISPs to terminate your Internet connection if you're accused of copyright infringement three times. In its submission, Google discusses its experience with "notice and takedown," which allows people to censor web-pages merely by asserting that they infringe copyright -- and they note that this process is routinely abused -- check out the numbers they proffer:

In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.

This doesn't surprise me: what did the world's governments expect when they allowed the entertainment industry to talk them into notice-and-takedown? If you create a free, easy, largely consequence-free means for censoring the Internet, that it wouldn't be abused?

Google submission hammers section 92A (via /.)


Source: Boing Boing | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:09 am

Open source hardware bank: P2P lending for hardware hackers

A microcredit co-op bank has sprung up in Northern California, using money pooled from hardware hackers to fund other open source hardware hacking projects. They've found 70 lenders,

Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

The fledgling bank is funding only open source hardware projects using capital raised from other hardware geeks. It's like a community of Facebook friends borrowing and lending among themselves — a peer-to-peer bank.

"This speaks to the rise of the do-it-yourselfer, someone who is not just a consumer but also a producer, inventor and investor," says Huynh. "But someone also ought to be thinking about the money problem when it comes to open source hardware and we are doing just that."

So, this is a major plot element of my science fiction novel Makers, coming from Tor next October: microcredit-funded open source hardware hackers laboring in dead malls (the first third of the book was syndicated on Salon as "Themepunks"). It's always a little weird when sf starts to leak into reality.

Open Source Hardware Hackers Start P2P Bank

Liquidware Antipasto: site for Open Source Hardware Bank


Source: Boing Boing | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:05 am

Sapolsky on primate sexuality part two: required viewing for the horny

Here's part two of Stanford's Robert Sapolsky incredibly fascinating and illuminating lecture on primate sexuality (I posted part one last week). Sapolsky is a great lecturer: funny and engaging, and his material will make you rethink your relationship with your bits. Required viewing for anyone who has ever been horny, or who ever plans to be.

Prof. Robert Sapolsky on the Neurobiology of Primate Sexuality: Part 2 (Thanks, Avi!)

Previously:

• Stanford's Sapolsky on primate sexuality: funny, fascinating ...
• Stanford's Sapolsky and National Geo produce a documentary on ...
• Mind-opening lectures on the physiology of stress - Boing Boing

Source: Boing Boing | 19 Mar 2009 | 5:55 am

Urban chickens of the Bronx

Here's a short National Geo piece on Abu Talib overseeing the 13 chickens at the Taqwa Community Garden in the Bronx:

In 19th-century Manhattan, hogs roamed the streets and cattle grazed in public parks. Today, chickens are the urban livestock of choice, and not just in New York. City dwellers across the U.S. are adding hens to their yards and gardens, garnering fresh eggs, fertilizer, and community ties, with localities debating and updating their ordinances accordingly.

Urban Chickens (Thanks, Marilyn!)

(Photo: Ira Block)

Previously:

• Chicken lays odd egg - Boing Boing
• Plymouth Rock Monthly -- old magazine for chicken aficionados ...
• Man builds giant chicken manure catapult to battle vandals - Boing ...

Source: Gizmodo | 19 Mar 2009 | 5:38 am

Oracle manages 3Q feat: healthy contract signings

Source: Gizmodo | 19 Mar 2009 | 5:30 am

Researchers want beavers back in Britain

British researchers say returning beavers to the countryside could save money and help the environment. John Gurnell of Queen Mary College at London University describes beavers, which largely disappeared from Britain in the 1600s, as eco-system engineers that would help clean waterways and reduce major flooding, The Times of London reported Wednesday.

Source: Gizmodo | 19 Mar 2009 | 5:00 am

'Fuzzy' dinosaur fossils found

Fossils found in China indicate dinosaurs may have started developing feathers much earlier than previously thought, researchers say. The dinosaur, dubbed Tianyulong confuciusi, had protofeathers or dino-fuzz that were the precursors of modern feathers.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:56 am

Now I’ve seen it all: Man replaces lost finger with USB drive

Section: Computers, Gadgets / Other, Household, Lifestyle

A Finnish computer programmer has went ahead and replaced his long finger with a USB 2GB flash drive.  Jerry Jalava had his finger severed after getting into a severe motorbike accident last summer. 

Jalava crashed into a deer near Helsinky and was treated for wounds, including the severed digit.  Doctors had joked about replacing his digit with a USB finger drive and Jalava thought that it wasn’t such a bad idea considering his line of work. The specially designed prosthetic that replaced his digit has the appearance of a real finger, but has the ability to be detached.  The USB 2GB storage drive built in can house Jalava’s software, photos, music, videos, and more.

Jalava has talked of plans of eventually upgrading his USB finger and include a removable fingertip that has an RFID tag and even more storage space.  According to reports at this time, this is not a hoax and has been verified by several sources.

Read: [PC World]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:33 am

Polar bear protections under review

Representatives of five countries are meeting in Norway to discuss the ongoing conservation of polar bears. Canada, Denmark/Greenland, Norway, Russia and the United States last met in Oslo in 1981, when they voted to extend their 1973 protection agreement indefinitely, the Norway Post reported Wednesday. The World Wildlife Federation, however, said the meeting has excluded outside groups and other observers from parts of the meeting that involve discussion of climate change. We do not know what these countries have to say about protecting polar bears that cannot be shared with the world, Geoff York, polar bear coordinator for the federation, said in a release.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:27 am

Microsoft Releases IE8, Stresses Security (PC World)

PC World - Microsoft plans to make its Internet Explorer 8 browser available on Thursday, along with a company-commissioned report claiming IE8 is more secure against malware than rival browsers from Mozilla and Google.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:20 am

Peek Pronto: new model with Exchange support, faster hardware?

A teaser for the Peek Pronto was up briefly earlier today. From an anonymous tipster:

It looks like there is a new Peek handheld model coming out. Rumor has it that the new model is going to undercut even the cheapest BlackBerry, and deliver cheap push e-mail. I personally think that tactic works pretty well, with the iPhone eroding into RIM's high-end and mid-end devices market.

I liked the Peek a lot, dinging it only for its sluggish menus and POP-only server hookups. It's always nice to see a great single-purpose gadget get real refinement.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:14 am

Four overlooked gems in iPhone 3.0

FROM APPLETELL - Sure there are the big, huge features in iPhone 3.0, but what about the little stuff that was too trivial for Scott Forstall to do any more than mention? This is usually the stuff that really makes a release. MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:04 am

Activists Use Wikipedia To Test Aussie Net Censors

pnorth writes "Editors at Wikipedia have removed a link to a blacklisted web site that sat uncontested for over 24 hours in the main body of the Australian regulator's own Wikipedia entry. The link, which directs readers to a site containing graphic imagery of aborted foetuses, was inserted into ACMA's Wikipedia entry by a campaigner against Internet filtering to determine whether Australia's communications regulator had a double-standard when it came to censoring web content. The very same link motivated the regulator to serve Aussie broadband forum Whirlpool's hosting company with a 'link deletion notice' and the threat of an $11,000 fine. Last night, the link became the subject of 'warring' between several Wikipedia administrators in the lead up to its removal, with administrators saying they didn't want to be used to prove a point."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:04 am

Microsoft Announces Availability of Internet Explorer 8

New browser focuses on top customer needs, including security, ease of use and performance.

Source: Gizmodo | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:01 am

Prostate screening not reducing deaths

U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

March 19, 1981: Shuttle Columbia's First Fatalities

1981: Five technicians are asphyxiated while setting up a ground test for the space shuttle Columbia, then in preparation for STS-1, the first operational shuttle mission. Two of them die.

The accident occurred during a nitrogen purge of the orbiter. John Bjornstad, 50, one of the five Rockwell International technicians who entered a rear section of the orbiter above the engine, died en route to the hospital. The second fatality, Forrest Cole, died two weeks later.

The nitrogen purge was a routine procedure that used nitrogen to flush all the oxygen out of the engine compartment prior to test-firing, when any errant spark could touch off a fire. No oxygen = no possible fire.

Following a successful simulated countdown, the technicians were cleared by NASA safety supervisors to enter the compartment. Believing the conditions inside Columbia to be safe, they entered not wearing air packs. Because nitrogen is both odorless and colorless, the five men lost consciousness before realizing anything was amiss.

A sixth technician discovered them and alerted a security guard, who donned an air pack and dragged the victims from the compartment. Rescue efforts were further complicated when the ambulance responding to the emergency call was stopped and searched for seven minutes by security guards near the launch-pad perimeter at the Kennedy Space Center.

The front gate was unaware that anything had gone wrong inside.

Following a three-month investigation, a NASA board of inquiry concluded that a last-minute change in testing procedures, coupled with a breakdown in communications at the space center, caused the accident.

The two deaths were the first fatalities for the U.S. space program since Jan. 27, 1967, when astronauts Virgil Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee were killed when fire swept through their capsule during ground testing for the first Apollo mission.

The accident did not delay the scheduled launch of Columbia on April 12. The orbiter, commanded by Apollo veteran John Young and piloted by rookie Robert Crippen, returned Americans to space for the first time in nearly six years and kicked off the mostly successful space shuttle program.

But tragedy can bide its time — and often does in inherently risky ventures — and struck Columbia again on Feb. 1, 2003.

Source: Various

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Robo-Voice's Greatest Hits, or How Advanced Spy Tech Topped Music Charts

From Lil Wayne's cyborg-slick singing on "Lollipop" to the Twiki-tweaked vocals of T-Pain, use of the voice-enhancing software Auto-Tune has reached a fever pitch. But it turns out that the irresistible robot sound was also a big hit with the allies way back in World War II, when a not-so-young MC named Winston Churchill dropped some knowledge over a voice-masking gizmo called the vocoder—and pretty much ended the war. (It's got a great beat, and you can plan D day with it!) Herewith, the surprising history of pop's favorite "new" sound.

1935

Bell Labs' scientist Homer Dudley files a patent for a "signal transmission" device. Bell would unveil a speech synthesizer, based on Dudley's vocoder tech, at the 1939 World's Fair in New York City.

1943

Vocoder amps and filters are incorporated into bulky, expensive terminals that encrypt conversations between FDR and Churchill during World War II. (Stalin, always kind of a Chatty Cathy, is left out of the loop.)

1961

The NSA develops the HY-2, which would pave the way for the first digital channel vocoder for a mainframe computer. With 16 channels, it could process secret messages at 2,400 bps.

1971

The vocoder makes its electronica debut when composer Wendy Carlos invokes the device's spooky tones on the soundtrack for Stanley Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange.

1972

Stevie Wonder's Music of My Mind album introduces the masses to the talk box, a gizmo that allows singers to "speak" through their instrument via a plastic tube, making them sound like one of Charlie Brown's teachers.

1974

An epochal time for robot voices: Kraftwerk releases "Autobahn," a 22-minute vocoder jam; a year later, Peter Frampton hitches his ax to a talk box—and his career comes alive!

1976

Using audio signals to map Earth's subsurface, oil-industry researcher Andy Hildebrand masters auto-correlation (tracking sound reflections to detect repeating patterns) and creates the tech behind Auto-Tune.

1978

A vocoder is used to voice Battlestar Galactica's evil Cylons. Meanwhile, on-set tensions run high after Lorne Greene uses the device to prank Dirk Benedict's bungalow.

1983

Dudley lives long enough to see his beloved invention employed in a rock opera about space prisons. Domo arigato, Dennis DeYoung!

1985

Zapp, fronted by talk-box maestro Roger Troutman, hits the charts with R&B slow jam "Computer Love." Troutman would later be tapped to "sing" the chorus on the Tupac/Dre hit "California Love."

1997

Exploiting his findings from the '70s, Hildebrand releases Auto-Tune, recording software that can detect pitch and automatically correct vocals in real time. It quickly becomes one of the best-selling plug-ins ever.

1998

Cher scores the best-selling single of her career with "Believe," thanks to her use of Auto-Tune; the blippy sound—which many mistook for a vocoder—is now known as the Cher Effect.

2007

T-Pain drowns his single "Buy U a Drank" in Auto-Tune effects, leading to a number-one hit. He later stars in a Funny or Die spoof called "T-Pain v. His Vocoder." The machine wins.

2008

Auto-Tune overload on albums by Lil Wayne and Kanye starts the robo backlash. Melodyne, another pitch-altering plug-in, generates buzz.

2009

Indie darlings Bon Iver bring Auto-Tune to alt-folk, layering and looping the a cappella vocals on "Woods" into one blissfully synthetic hymn. Hallelujah!

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Gadget Gallery: Itty-Bitty iPods, Revved-Up Runners, Pretty PCs, Enviro Escalades

: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.com

Apple's newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it's completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don't have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What's worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you're totally hosed — you'll have to endure the 'buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you're prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we'll admit, it's another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of "actuator lugs" just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don't return it.

WIRED So cozy they're like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn't without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it's huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird's streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can't put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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I shouldn't love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac's hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo's favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he's trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It's actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love 'em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won't have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it's clear that Amazon's biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren't compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more "immersive" sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you're listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting's "Fragile," a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck's "Cold Brains") the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device "dynamically locates and restores audio detail" and creates a more natural sound. We're not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won't work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir's not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone's 100 MB of storage (and it's an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn't a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it's pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn't close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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From the outside, the 1000HE doesn't look much different from other netbooks. But it's the machine's heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It's not lying. This is the fastest netbook we've tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it's one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn't super pricey, but then it's not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it's water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500's body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn't. It's got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn't blare "nerd," "Swatch-wearing poser" or "too lazy to take off my gym watch." Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say "solar" and "atomic" in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that's much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It's the touch-based kitchen computer that won't put you out of house and home. Don't go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top's sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would've been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we've seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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Kodak’s Theatre HD's raison d'être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it's not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you've downloaded Kodak's EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player's USB ports and you're ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

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Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm's mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel's torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won't run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It's cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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It's no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you'll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won't pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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The pocket rocket we've been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It's also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a '40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it's not size that matters to us, it's the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq's gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it's remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours' use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin' hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can't project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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Are you the schlemiel who's always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you're the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you're looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it's dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM's revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn't as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we've seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don't perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

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This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I've ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone's address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone's calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States ... yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull's eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP's first multitouch convertible tablet, it's got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.

TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

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Nero's LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain't no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that's where you're gonna get pissed. The remote can't launch the software, so you'll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can't put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it's a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn't, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

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Source: Wired: Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Big-Shot Game Designer Crafts Interactive Art After Hours

The Marriage
Release date: February 2007
Development time: One evening, plus a few months of debugging
What it is: A Kandinsky-esque "love poem to my marriage."
How it plays: Manipulate blue and pink squares, balancing their need to stay close with their drive to interact with other things. Mess up and the squares become increasingly opaque—a sign of emotional detachment.
Response: Mixed. Rave reviews and 500K downloads, but Humble's wife hated it. "She didn't like that the rules were asymmetrical for the pink and blue squares. She said, 'That's not how I view a perfect marriage.'"

Stars Over Half Moon Bay
Release date: February 2008
Development time: Five months
What it is: "It's about one of the oldest forms of creativity, how you look at something simple and find patterns in it."
How it plays: Mouse around gathering stars to form constellations. "The ancients had all the time in the world to lay patterns in the sky. We moderns grab moments when we can."
Response: 100,000 downloads. "It was a total reversal of reactions. Most people who liked The Marriage really didn't like Stars, and people who didn't like The Marriage really liked Stars."

Perfect distance
Release date: March 2009
Development time: Eight months
What it will be: "It follows the thought processes of an unspecified man. He starts off as an artillery officer in some war, and then the game tracks back and forth through his life. It's about decisions. Most games give you a set of binary choices. I wanted to show a variety of options, and the point of view pops in and out of the protagonist's mind."
Anticipated response: "It may be an utter disaster. It's probably the most depressing game I've ever played; people will want to kill themselves at the end. This could be my Ishtar."

Rod Humble is a busy guy. As the head of the Sims division at Electronic Arts, he oversees the development of scores of big-budget games, the kind of mass-market blockbusters designed to please millions. Recently, chief among them has been Sims 3, the latest installment in the best-selling PC game franchise of all time, which took three years and a team of up to 100 geeks to produce. Humble had a hand in everything, from the look of the characters and the feel of the controls to the packaging that'll sit on shelves at Best Buy.

When Humble, a 42-year-old Brit who once led development on EverQuest for Sony Online Entertainment, has some free time away from the grind of game design, he likes to unwind by... designing more games. But these creations are the opposite of his day job's output. At his home in Half Moon Bay, California, he codes crude-looking interactive art on his laptop, designed just to please Rod Humble. When he deems the works complete, he offers them as free downloads on his personal Web site (rodvik.com/rodgames).

For Humble it's a way to blow off steam and toy with uncommercial ideas. "I've got a job where I have to bring in a large amount of revenue," he says. "So at home, I'm doing all this weird stuff that I know won't make any money, to get it out of my system." We asked Humble to tell us about his home-brewed concoctions.

Q&A: Game Designer Juggles Intimate Indies and Big-Budget Blockbusters

When Rod Humble isn't heading up Electronic Arts' Play label, which oversees all of the company's Sims and casual titles, he's churning out small indie games on his own. His homebrew creations- including Stars Over Half Moon Bay and The Marriage -strip gameplay to its barest elements,. He's currently working on his next DIY game (placeholder name: Perfect Distance) while working with his team at EA to put the finishing touches on Sims 3, due this summer. Here's an excerpt from our interview. —David Kushner

Kushner: How's your new homemade game coming along?

Humble: It's been a nightmare. This is much, much bigger than the other ones and really tough. I started last April thinking "I'm not going to leave the game development until the last minute", and so I thought it would be done by June. But beware of game developers bearing ship dates!, It's probably the most depressing game I've ever played in my life. People will want to kill themselves in the end.

Kushner: What's your personal game development process like?

Humble: For the stuff I do at home, I like to do it by myself. I usually work late at night after the kids are in bed. I goof around and make something for at least an hour in bed with the laptop. Rob Kauker, the head of audio for the Sims, did the music on Stars Over Half Moon Bay. At the end, I'll bring him and a couple voice actors in on my new game.

Kushner: Meanwhile you're working on The Sims 3 during the day. How does that compare?

Humble: It's three years of development with a team of 10 ramping up to 100 people!

Kushner: What do you like most about the new Sims?

Humble: It's fascinating. What I thought the key features were and what they turned out to be are different. I'm in love with the open world. You can go anywhere and see your neighbors living their lives. People are going to fall in love with the characteristics of the individual Sims.

Kushner: Like what?

Humble: In The Sims 2, we had fixed variables - they were all kind of the same. But with The Sims 3, they have personality traits and quirks, and they all have an impact on the game. The other day, I hit the "random" button and made a Sim who was evil, wanted to take over the world, but was afraid of the outdoors and didn't like plants. I put him in the game. The first thing that happened was he wanted to donate money to undermine a child's charity. Because he's evil, he can troll Internet forums. He gets a job in the crime career track. Every morning he wakes up and does evil, yet he's afraid of walking across town.

Kushner: How do you balance doing small personal games with doing big games like The Sims 3?

Humble: Games have been my chosen form of entertainment and art. Now I'm running a label, and so I'm less able to focus on small very, very creative games. I've got a job to bring in a large amount of revenue each year. So I decided that I'm going to do all the weird stuff that I know I won't make any money off of at home. That's the appropriate place to do it. My day job is making entertainment—this is a noble profession and will make millions of people happy. At home, I like to make games that are art, and I don't care if the audience is just one person. It doesn't matter if a dozen people like it or a half million, I'm just focused on the art itself.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Souped-Up Scanner Blabs Books Back at You

It may sound silly, but the rather expensive Plustek reader is pretty fun. Just slap a book on the flatbed scanner, switch the thing on, and in a moment, a computerized voice speaks the text back at you.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Souped-Up Scanner Blabs Books Back at You

It may sound silly, but the rather expensive Plustek reader is pretty fun. Just slap a book on the flatbed scanner, switch the thing on, and in a moment, a computerized voice speaks the text back at you.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Gadget Gallery: Itty-Bitty iPods, Revved-Up Runners, Pretty PCs, Enviro Escalades

: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.com

Apple's newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it's completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don't have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What's worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you're totally hosed — you'll have to endure the 'buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you're prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we'll admit, it's another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of "actuator lugs" just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don't return it.

WIRED So cozy they're like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn't without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it's huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird's streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can't put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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I shouldn't love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac's hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo's favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he's trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It's actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love 'em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won't have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it's clear that Amazon's biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren't compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more "immersive" sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you're listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting's "Fragile," a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck's "Cold Brains") the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device "dynamically locates and restores audio detail" and creates a more natural sound. We're not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won't work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir's not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone's 100 MB of storage (and it's an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn't a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it's pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn't close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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From the outside, the 1000HE doesn't look much different from other netbooks. But it's the machine's heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It's not lying. This is the fastest netbook we've tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it's one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn't super pricey, but then it's not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it's water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500's body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn't. It's got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn't blare "nerd," "Swatch-wearing poser" or "too lazy to take off my gym watch." Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say "solar" and "atomic" in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that's much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It's the touch-based kitchen computer that won't put you out of house and home. Don't go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top's sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would've been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we've seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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Kodak’s Theatre HD's raison d'être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it's not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you've downloaded Kodak's EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player's USB ports and you're ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

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Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm's mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel's torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won't run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It's cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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It's no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you'll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won't pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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The pocket rocket we've been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It's also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a '40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it's not size that matters to us, it's the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq's gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it's remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours' use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin' hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can't project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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Are you the schlemiel who's always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you're the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you're looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it's dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM's revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn't as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we've seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don't perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I've ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone's address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone's calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States ... yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull's eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP's first multitouch convertible tablet, it's got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.

TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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Nero's LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain't no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that's where you're gonna get pissed. The remote can't launch the software, so you'll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can't put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it's a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn't, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Open Source Hardware Hackers Start P2P Bank

Two open source hardware enthusiasts are pioneering the idea of a peer-to-peer lending community as a way for enthusiasts to fund open source hardware projects.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Open Source Hardware Hackers Start P2P Bank

Two open source hardware enthusiasts are pioneering the idea of a peer-to-peer lending community as a way for enthusiasts to fund open source hardware projects.

Source: Gizmodo | 19 Mar 2009 | 3:45 am

Watch what you Tweet about!

Section: Communications, Computers, Web, Downloads, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Websites

We’ve been talking about how the use of social networking is on the rise—be it with networking sites like Facebook getting more popular, or Twitter, who is now legal even in a criminal courtroom.  However, be careful what you say on these sites.  Do the words “social networking” not make people realize it’s out there in the big old blog-o-sphere for other people to see?  Apparently not everyone does.

Cisco fiasco

Thoughtless comments have caused at least two people to have a major impact with their work.  In the most recent incident, a job applicant went and excitedly tweeted “Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.“  Now, unfortunately for this job applicant, that tweet was seen by Tim Levad, who is a channel partner advocate for Cisco.  Uh-oh.

Levad added his own tweet in response.  “Who is the hiring manager. I’m sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web.“  Dang.  Busted. Even though the original tweet was quickly hidden after this by the account going private (shoulda thought of that before), it didn’t help much since Twitter saves the record in searches.

Memphis

Another such incident occurred back in January when an agency person from the NY office for Ketchum made some rather less than flattering remarks about Memphis when he was there to present on digital media to the big-wigs, the worldwide communications group at FedEx.  There were over 150 people there to see him.  Now, they hold their city in high regard and were not happy to hear what he had to say about it.  Here’s his tweet.

True confession but I’m in one of those towns where I scratch my head and say “I would die if I had to live here!

So, the person that found it didn’t fume in quiet.  The tweet was forwarded to the FedEx Corporate VP, Directors, and every manager of the communication department as well as the chain of command at Ketchum.  MAJOR busted. 

He got his response back.

Mr. Andrews,

If I interpret your post correctly, these are your comments about Memphis a few hours after arriving in the global headquarters city of one of your key and lucrative clients, and the home of arguably one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of business, FedEx founder Fred Smith.

Many of my peers and I feel this is inappropriate. We do not know the total millions of dollars FedEx Corporation pays Ketchum annually for the valuable and important work your company does for us around the globe. We are confident however, it is enough to expect a greater level of respect and awareness from someone in your position as a vice president at a major global player in your industry. A hazard of social networking is people will read what you write.

Not knowing exactly what prompted your comments, I will admit the area around our airport is a bit of an eyesore, not without crime, prostitution, commercial decay, and a few potholes. But there is a major political, community, religious, and business effort underway, that includes FedEx, to transform that area. We’re hopeful that over time, our city will have a better “face” to present to visitors.

James, everyone participating in today’s event, including those in the auditorium with you this morning, just received their first paycheck of 2009 containing a 5% pay cut… which we wholeheartedly support because it continued the tradition established by Mr. Smith of doing whatever it takes to protect jobs.

Considering that we just entered the second year of a U.S. recession, and we are experiencing significant business loss due to the global economic downturn, many of my peers and I question the expense of paying Ketchum to produce the video open for today’s event; work that could have been achieved by internal, award-winning professionals with decades of experience in television production.

Additionally Mr. Andrews, with all due respect, to continue the context of your post; true confession: many of my peers and I don’t see much relevance between your presentation this morning and the work we do in Employee Communications.

Ouch!  But, it just goes to show you…watch what you say.  And more so, don’t say anything you wouldn’t say in person or is unprofessional in the first place.  Big brother is all over the place and you never know if you are going to need him to hire you.

via: bhc3 and shankman

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 2:15 am

Social Search Reveals 700 Comcast Customer Logins

nandemoari writes "When educational technology specialist Kevin Andreyo recently read a report on people search engines, he decided to conduct a little 'people search' on himself. Andreyo did not expect to find much — so, imagine the surprise when he uncovered the user name and password to his Comcast Internet account, put out there for the entire online world to see. In addition to his personal information, Andreyo also discovered a list that exposed the user names and passwords of (what he believed) to be 8,000 other Comcast customers. Andreyo immediately contacted both Comcast and the FBI, hoping to find the ones responsible for divulging such personal information to the public. While the list is no longer available online, analysts fear that the document still lives on in various cache and online history services."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Mar 2009 | 1:56 am

Appletell unboxing: The new iPod shuffle

FROM APPLETELL - I’ve owned every generation so far; why stop now? I went to my friendly local Apple Store to pick one up, and thought I’d unbox it on video for you guys. Let’s see what I got. MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 1:47 am

20 Years of Doh: The cheers and jeers of The Simpsons video games

FROM GAMERTELL - With so many great titles, and equally horrible titles (like the seasons of the show ironically), it would be too hard to make a top ten list of one or the other. So I have instead compiled the top 5 and bottom 5 Simpsons games of all time. MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 1:17 am

Early Beta Data From Microsoft Adsense Competitor Encouraging

We are getting reports that Microsoft’s PubCenter, a self serve thirty party ad publishers platform through AdCenter, is doing quite well with beta testers. Microsoft began testing PubCenter last summer.

One beta tester we spoke with said PubCenter is paying significantly more than Google AdSense and Yahoo Publisher. All three of these programs let third party publishers add contextual ads next to their content via a self-service format.

Google has dominated this space in the past (and all other contextual advertising) because it offers publishers higher fees for ads. But this might change when Microsoft unveils PubCenter to the greater publisher community, particularly if Microsoft is aggressive in revenue splits to gain market share.

Currently, PubCenter is being tested by a small subset of web publishers. Our tipster says that he receiving from four times more in revenue Microsoft than Google AdSense. And the money isn’t the only advantage PubCenter has over AdSense. The advertisement themselves are are higher quality than Google’s ads, he says, and equally as targeted towards the content. He says that Microsoft seems to be more stringent about letting advertisers into the program, versus what seemed like an advertiser free-for-all though Google’s AdSense. Of course, with a smaller inventory of advertisers, it’s tougher to provide contextual ads for obscure content.

We also heard that Microsoft is allowing publishers to get creative with ads by allowing them to set background images. Google AdSense only allows publishers to change the color of the ads.

Microsoft is allowing test partners to publish Google ads on their site as long as the publisher doesn’t have an exclusivity agreement with Google. Third party ads are a controversial concept, since advertisers expect the click throughs and conversions that they get from search. Google has been sued for fraud because ads placed on parked pages weren’t producing results. But if Microsoft is offering a better program, with nifty, more targeted ads, then publishers and advertisers alike might make the switch (or use both, if possible).

Microsoft recently enlisted digital media executives, including execs from IAC, Wall Street Journal Digital Network, The New York Times Co., Time Inc. and Viacom Inc. to consult on next-generation advertising platform.

Microsoft said this about PubCenter in February:

PubCenter will be built on the existing adCenter Publisher architecture that is currently in beta and will include the convergence of technologies and tools provided by the former Atlas and Rapt solutions, as well as a self-serve offering. The new platform will provide innovative forecasting and order management solutions, advanced analytics tools, and enhanced targeting functionality to enable all digital media publishers to have access to the tools and technology they need to provide valuable and relevant ad content to their advertising partners.

Here are some screenshots of Microsoft’s ads on a publisher’s site and an ad with an image in the background:

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

Source: TechCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 1:10 am

Microsoft Ups Ante With New Browser [Personal Technology]

The Web browser is arguably the most important piece of software on a computer. No longer just a tool for perusing or searching for information, it has become, for many people, their principal communications medium, their photo album, their newspaper, social club, bank and shopping mall.

And, among Web browsers, by far the most popular is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, or IE, which comes on every new Windows computer. So when Microsoft (MSFT) changes Internet Explorer, those changes affect vast numbers of people, and the Web itself. This week, Microsoft is changing its browser in a major way. On Thursday, the company will release IE8, the biggest overhaul of Internet Explorer in years.

I’ve been testing IE8 for months, first using its prerelease versions and, more recently, the final version. I’ve found it to be a big improvement over its predecessor, IE7, and a much closer competitor to its main rival, Mozilla’s Firefox. IE8 is more stable than IE7, more compatible with industrywide Web standards, and packed with new features that improve navigation, search, ease of use, privacy and security.

Some of these features can’t be matched out of the box by its main rival browsers. For instance, related tabs are color-coded, the search field can show images along with text, you can get instant fly-out maps of place names in Web pages, and you can easily hide your tracks online from the prying eyes of advertisers.

But, in my tests, IE8 wasn’t as fast as Firefox, or two other notable browsers — the Windows version of Apple’s (AAPL) new Safari 4 and Google’s (GOOG) Chrome. IE8 loaded a variety of pages I tested more slowly than any of the other browsers, and it grew sluggish when juggling a large number of Web pages opened simultaneously in tabs.

For that reason, I can’t say that IE8 dethrones my previous browser champ, Firefox. If you’re a light-duty user and attracted to the new IE’s strong suite of fresh features, you might prefer it to Firefox. But if you would be bothered by the speed difference, or the slowdown I saw under a heavy load, Firefox would still be better.

The new IE8 lets you see images in results from the built-in search box and quickly switch sources.

Microsoft is making IE8 available, free, at noon EDT Thursday, for both Windows XP and Windows Vista, at microsoft.com/ie8. A version also will be tailored for the forthcoming Windows 7, the next edition of the company’s operating system. But that version won’t be available until the next prerelease iteration of Windows 7 comes out. It will also be automatically offered via the Windows Update system over the next few months.

Unlike its competitors, IE8 won’t be available in a Macintosh version, though I found it worked fine on a Mac that is running Windows alongside the Mac’s own operating system.

Favorites and Tabs

This new Internet Explorer looks a bit different, right away. It finally displays, by default, the old Links bar, now renamed the Favorites Bar. This is a toolbar near the top of the screen where you can store your most-used Web sites or folders containing groups of frequently visited sites, for convenient access. It’s like the Bookmarks Toolbar in Firefox or the Bookmarks Bar in Safari. This bar was available in older versions of IE, but was hidden unless you turned it on.

And this Favorites Bar has a couple of nice features. There’s a one-click button that will add any Web site to the bar, as opposed to adding it to the longer Favorites list of less-frequently visited sites. And, to help fit as many sites as possible on the bar, IE8 has a command that automatically condenses the titles of the entries.

There are also big changes in the way tabbed browsing works. In IE8, tabs you open from links on the same Web site are grouped together and color-coded. And when you have too many tabs to see at once, you can click on a button to see mini images of the pages they represent, or, alternatively, you can get a quick text list of all of them.

In addition, when you create a new, empty tab, IE8 displays a number of choices inside the page. These include the ability to reopen tabs you’ve closed or to perform various actions on text you’ve copied, such as emailing or blogging it.

There also is an optional Suggested Sites feature, which pops up a list of other Web pages that might be similar to, or related to, the page you’re viewing. This feature doesn’t always do a great job, but when it works, it’s handy. For example, when I was reading the BBC’s Web site and clicked Suggested Sites, IE8 listed a variety of other British news sources I hadn’t bookmarked.

Addresses and Search

Like the other major Web browsers, IE8 now also makes smart suggestions about what you might be looking for when you type something into its address bar or its search box. In the address bar, these are based on your history and your Favorites. In the search box, they are based on suggestions from whatever search engine you choose to view in the box, plus your history. All of these suggestions are organized nicely. (If you are using Windows XP, you must install Microsoft’s desktop search product for all of these features to work.)

But the IE8 search box does two cool things the other browsers don’t. First, it allows search engines to show images in the search results that drop down from the box, something Microsoft calls Visual Search. With some providers, like Google, you don’t see images, at least not today. But with others, such as Wikipedia and Amazon (AMZN), images show up.

Microsoft’s new browser IE8 includes a feature called Accelerators, which can perform specific tasks on Web pages.

Second, and more important, IE8’s search box lets you switch search providers on the fly by just clicking on an icon at the bottom of the results list. So, for instance, you could type in Red Sox, see the results in, say, Google, and then without retyping your search term, almost instantly get different results from Yahoo (YHOO) or from Microsoft’s Live Search engine, by just clicking their icons.

Surfing Tools

IE8 includes a new feature called Accelerators, which can perform specific actions on any text you select in a Web page, often without taking you to a new page. When you select text, a light-blue icon appears near it. When you click on that icon, you get a list of options. For instance, you can translate the text to another language, email it, blog it or, if it’s a place name, map it.

Depending on which company’s services your chosen accelerator is using, these actions can happen right on the page you’re viewing, in a fly-out panel. For example, I selected the word “Beijing” in a news story, chose Map with Yahoo from the Accelerator list, and got a map showing Beijing in a small window atop the same page.

When you install IE8, Microsoft suggests you use its own set of accelerators, but gives you the option to choose from Google, Yahoo and other competitors. A full list of accelerators, search engines and other add-ons for IE8 is at ieaddons.com at the bottom left of the page.

Another nice feature is called WebSlices. This requires some effort on the part of Web page publishers and is on only a small number of pages right now. But it allows a user to add to her Favorites bar a constantly updating section of a Web site, complete with graphics, by just clicking a green icon that appears on the site. For instance, I added to my Favorites bar a slice that shows the top stories on digg.com.

Speed and Stability

Microsoft claims IE8 is very fast, but in my tests, speed and performance were its worst attributes. Using two computers, one running Windows XP and one running Windows Vista, I timed the loading of a half-dozen popular Web sites, plus two folders containing numerous news and sports sites. I repeated the test in IE8, and in Firefox, Safari 4 and Chrome. In every case, IE8 loaded the pages and folders more slowly than most of the other browsers, and in most cases it came in dead last.

In some instances, the differences were tolerable — a few seconds. In others, primarily the folders containing nine or 21 sites, respectively, IE8 took two or three times as long as one or more of the other browsers to complete the task. Microsoft conducted its own tests, which show IE8 winning similar tests, but I rely on mine, which I also use when evaluating its competitors. You can judge for yourself.

IE8 never totally crashed on me. This is partly because when one tab crashes, it’s designed to leave the others unaffected. However, in my tests on both machines, I found that IE8’s general operating speed — things like opening menus or switching among tabs — slowed down noticeably when I had 15 or 20 sites opened in tabs, even after they finished loading.

Security and Privacy

By contrast, IE8 shines in the areas of protecting you on the Web. Like other browsers, it warns you when a Web site you’ve reached might be a phishing page, designed to steal your identity, or a page that’s known to distribute malicious software. And, like others, IE8 allows you to conduct a private browsing session that won’t leave any history or other evidence on your own PC.

Color-coded tabs make it easy to organize searches.

But IE8 also has a feature, called InPrivate Filtering, that the company says will optionally allow you to surf multiple Web sites without leaving the kinds of tracks on Web servers that allow advertisers and others to know where you’ve been and what you did there. I was unable to test the effectiveness of this feature, but assuming it works, it’s a step forward in privacy.

Compatibility

IE8 had good compatibility with most Web sites I visited. But in some cases, it didn’t render a page properly. This is mainly because some sites were designed for older versions of IE, which used proprietary page-rendering features that made some sites look good only in IE. With the new version, Microsoft is moving away from those proprietary features.

To solve this problem, IE8 includes a compatibility button you can click that will cause the browser to behave like older versions of IE and render the page properly. You have to click the button only once for each page, and IE8 will automatically do it for you on subsequent visits.

Bottom Line

Internet Explorer 8 is a well-done advance on an important product used by most people to surf the Web. If it were faster, I would say it was the best browser currently available for Windows. But even so, it will be an improvement for current Internet Explorer users, and might even tempt some folks to switch.

Find all of Walt Mossberg’s columns and videos online, free, at the All Things Digital Web site, walt.allthingsd.com. Email him at mossberg@wsj.com.

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 1:02 am

Open Source Hardware Hackers Start P2P Bank

Getting a business loan in this economy can be more difficult than landing a reservation at French Laundry in Napa, California. Now try selling the loan officer on an open source hardware project where the blueprints will be given away.

That's why the hardware hacking community is turning inwards to fund its ideas. Two open source hardware enthusiasts, Justin Huynh and Matt Stack, have started the Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects such as the microcontroller board pictured above.

The fledgling bank is funding only open source hardware projects using capital raised from other hardware geeks. It's like a community of Facebook friends borrowing and lending among themselves — a peer-to-peer bank.

"This speaks to the rise of the do-it-yourselfer, someone who is not just a consumer but also a producer, inventor and investor," says Huynh. "But someone also ought to be thinking about the money problem when it comes to open source hardware and we are doing just that."

The open source concept has traditionally been applied to software, but open source hardware is rapidly gaining ground. A fast-growing community of inventors is publishing the specs for a wide range of hardware, from CPUs and graphic cards to MP3 players and even a laptop. The idea is to let anyone take the designs, build on them, and profit from the work of the group — while contributing enhancements back to the community at large.

But open source hardware requires more financial investment than open source software. It isn't as easy as downloading a few open source programs on to your existing computer, explains Stack. "With open source hardware you don't get a finished product until you have put in some money," he says. For instance, there's the cost of the printed circuit boards, the solder and the components.

"To build open source software you just need to set up a project on Sourceforge," says Huynh. "But if you get open source hardware wrong, it burns a hole in the wallet."

The Open Source Hardware Bank, which isn't yet fully up and running as a federally regulated lending institution, allows those interested in open source hardware to make investments in specific projects, then (hopefully) reap returns ranging from 5 percent to 15 percent from the successful sale of the projects. For the creators, the bank offers funding that could bring down the costs of their project and give them the stimulus to try out new ideas.

"The way the bank works is the more you build, the cheaper it gets," says Stack, who in the true open source spirit first laid out the idea on his blog.

So far nearly 70 people have signed up as lenders for the bank. Huynh and Stack are managing the process through a Excel spreadsheet. They soon hope to bring it online through the Open Source Hardware Bank website that lists some of the initial projects that have been funded.

Lenders are offered returns based on a rolling six-month average so dud projects will be offset by sales of profitable ones. It takes just a few deals to strike it big, Huynh and Stack say, and because it is a community that is not just passionate but also knowledgeable, better projects are likely to get funded.

The promise of returns is enough to get former investment banker Andrew de Montille excited.

"I put money in the bank not because I consider it as a charitable investment," says de Montille. "Rather, I am very confident that some of the projects will do well enough to be profitable to the investors."

De Montille won't disclose how much money he's pumped into the bank but says it is "somewhere in the five digits." And the returns the bank offers is more than he can find anywhere else in this economy, he says.

"It can be a market-leading investment at this point," says de Montille. "Here the loans are being backed up by the actual product, rather than the credit profile of someone."

The bank borrows a page from the playbook of peer-to-peer lending sites such as Prosper and Zopa. Before the credit crunch squelched their dreams, the two sites offered borrowers and lenders a way to connect with each other instead of going to banks or other traditional credit institutions.

"There weren't people really speculating and profiteering off that model," says Huynh. "It was more about the community getting together and helping."

Huynh and Stack hope to bring a similar spirit to the Open Source Hardware Bank.

"Groups of people that have strong shared interest are really the perfect place for peer-to-peer financing to work," says Scott Pitts, former managing director of Zopa U.S. "As a group they are not out to make a billion dollars, they just want to fund their passion and do it in a sustainable way."

Huynh and Stack met at an event in New York and found a mutual interest in open source hardware. Huynh, a pharmaceutical consultant by day, is no open source hardware obsessive. But he has tinkered with open source electronics enough to realize that there's a need for more community-funded projects.

Finding the money to chase pet projects is a challenge for hardware geeks. The Open Source Hardware Bank hopes to help alleviate two main financial problems for DIYers: throwaway costs that result from repeated revisions to physical hardware during the design process, and the inability to take advantage of volume discounts for raw materials.

For every project that comes to the bank, the community will provide funds to build twice as many units as there are potential buyers. The move would double the number of pieces created and could reduce per-unit costs by around 10 percent to 30 percent.

A promising idea it may be, but in this case the geeks are likely to face serious opposition from the financial regulators, says Paul Kedrosky, angel investor and a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, which focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation. The Open Source Hardware Bank founders don't have to flip the pages of history too much to see the fate of peer-to-peer lending ideas in the United States, points out Kedrosky.

Last year, major community lending startup Prosper was forced to shut down by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for not registering with regulators.

"If I put money into a project and am offered some kind of return on a system-wide basis, that requires issuing a security," says Kedrosky. "Which means the open source hardware guys will have to go through the same kind of securities registration as Prosper was forced to."

Zopa's Pitts agrees that the Open Source Hardware Bank needs to figure out how to navigate through the financial rules of the U.S. market. "These guys do not have a regulatory strategy and they need one," he says.

Huynh and Stack say they are still trying to develop the idea and it is still far from its final shape. On Wall Street, the blood bath of the banks is likely to continue. But for the Open Source Hardware Bank, the doors have just opened for business, they say.

Pitts says they could make it work. "They have done a good job of articulating their goals and objectives so far," he says. "What they need to do is to figure out a way to make it work."

For more, see Liquidware Antipasto, the open source hardware blog that has details and updates on how the bank will work.

Top Photo: Illuminato microprocessor that was partly funded by a group of open source hardware enthusiasts.

Side Photo: Open Source Hardware Bank Logo includes a wreath of resistors that are not completely connected, with 16 stars etched in hexadecimal to denote the number of initial investors in the bank. The little circuit in the middle is meant to evoke the back of a printed circuit board.

Photos: Justin Huynh/Matt Stack

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 19 Mar 2009 | 12:24 am

Y Combinator Demo Day Spring 2009

The 16 startups from Y Combinator’s spring session presented their ideas and initial products at Y Combinator’s Silicon Valley office this afternoon. Of the 16 startups in this group, 8 have already launched, 6 are in the process of launching and 2 remain in stealth mode. Most of them have been in development for only three months. Y Combinator celebrated some good news recently. They are raising $2 million in capital themselves, from Sequoia Capital and a number of prominent angel investors for a new entity, managed by Y Combinator, that will make investments in new startups going forward.

Foodoro
Foodoro is an online marketplace marketplace where people can buy specialty food directly from artisanal foodmakers. Launched a few weeks ago, Foodoro aims to be an online e-commerce site for artisanal food makers, exposing these vendors to a greater audience of food aficionados than they would get from their own sites or selling solely to specialty food stores and managing their e-commerce completely. We wrote a review of Foodoro here.

Skysheet
Skysheet, not officially launched, is a web-based spreadsheets service that has the speed and feel of Excel.

AirBnB
AirBnB, a startup we wrote about a few weeks ago, is like the eBay of space. Its an online marketplace for any sort of accomodation, including hotels, extra bedrooms in peoples’ homes, apartments, and commercial properties. We reviewed AirBnB here.

reMail
reMail is a mobile iPhone app that allows you to import your Gmail or AOL mail accounts and then search conversations and emails by topic, person or subject. The app also has built in folders that let’s you easily access emails that pertain to certain subjects, like flight information.

Cloudkick
Cloudkick is a web-based cloud management system of servers on Amazon’s EC2 or Slicehost. Cloudkick allows you to manage all your servers in once space, letting you set up new servers with the click of a button and also offers voice, gives you easy to read graphs and monitoring of servers and email alerts in the event of a server problem. We reviewed Cloudkick here.

Divvyshot
Divvyshot is a “dead simple” group photo sharing web platofrm where people can upload hundreds of photos and then be able to share them with anyone. The startup also has an iPhone app that lets users upload and monitor event activity in real-time. We recently wrote about Divvyshot here.

Echodio
Echodio syncs your iTunes libraries across multiple computers and devices using Boxee. Using cloud sync, the Echodio lets you drop music tracks into an Echodio playlist and then streams them to computers and devices. We reviewed Echodio here.

Heyzap
Heyzap, sort of the YouTube for casual games, allows any website to access over 6,000 games and then be able to embed the games into their own blogs or websites through a widget. The games update automatically, giving publishers fresh game content. We wrote about Heyzap here.

Nambii
Nambii produces dating iPhone applications, including the Mobile Dating, a Match.com-like dating app; Kiss or Miss, a kissing app; and DateMap, a location-based date finding app that lets users find people looking for dates by geographic location and availability.

Picurio
Picurio is trying to replace iPhoto. It’s a webased application that is made to feel like a desktop app. You can drag and drop photos into albums and then automatically sync them with Facebook, with virtually little to no upload time.

Propable
Propable is a property management system that rest apartments from property owners at market rate, then furnishes them, and rents them out as rooms to young professionals. Propable charges a rent fee that includes wifi, cable, maintenance, gas, and cleaning, clearing a large markup for the unit and making property owners money.

thesixtyone
thesixtyone is the Digg for indie music. The startup has built filter for rating music, while also being able to listen to tracks and albums, earn a ranking reputation, and achievement badges for rating good music. Read our review of thesixtyone here.

Voxli
Voxli is a simple web-based voice conferencing services for gamers. Anyone can create a voice conference room on the Voxli homepage for up to 200 participants. The startup is planning to expand beyond the gaming market, hoping to become a convenient replacement for Skype. We recently reviewed Voxli here.

Wattvision
Wattvision makes it easy for you to monitor the power use of a home or business by installing a sensor on your energy meter. You then get a live view of your home’s energy use online, with fast updates and easy to install sensors.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 12:21 am

Know your enemy: Understanding the Blue Screen of Death

Section: Computers, Hardware, Networking, Security, Software / Applications, Web, Downloads, Web Apps, Web Browsers, Websites, Features, Originals

Just about everyone has probably seen that dreaded Blue Screen of Death (“BSoD”) at some time or another.  Or, at very least you’ve heard someone screaming about it coming up on their system.  When it happens, you can feel a sick feeling in your stomach.

The origin of the BSoD

The term “Blue Screen of Death” first came about during an OS/2 pre-release activity held by the makers of an early Windows and OS/2 compiler, Lattice.  At some point during the whole show, while porting some of Lattice’s other tools, the BSoD came up.  The developers used the term “Blue Screen of Death” in their description to IBM Austin, Texas when trying to explain the screen and the finality of what was happening.

What the heck is it?

A BSoD can be caused by several different reasons.  Pretty much boiled down to basic terms, when your operating system comes up against a problem that it can’t recover from, it shows a Stop message.  These Stop messages are text-mode error message and they report information about what’s going on.

So great, what does that mean to you?  You’ve still got a blue screen and a bunch of white text all over your screen and you aren’t going anywhere.  Actually, it could mean something to you if you know what to look for.  These BSoD messages, or Stop messages, contain certain information that can help you to figure out what went wrong and hopefully fix the problem that the Windows kernel detected. 

I’ve got it…now what?

Chances are pretty darn high that if you are getting this message, that someone else already has too.  One way to get help with your error code is to simply do a search on it and see what you find.  Go to a reputable tech newsgroup or to the Microsoft site and enter the name of the Stop code. 

The good news is, later versions of Windows have fewer and fewer problems with the BSoD.  With Vista what you usually get is the “system is not responding” message, with the option to close or wait for the program to respond.  In Windows XP, the BSoD wasn’t quite as frequently seen.  Many times it was just a flash before it went right into an auto reboot. 

There is a feature in Windows that allows you to start the blue screen manually.  To do so, you have to add the value to the Windows registry (with regiedit.exe).  Then, you will have a BSoD pop up when the SCROLL LOCK key is pressed twice while at the same time holding the right CTRL key.  This is sometimes useful for getting a memory dump of the computer while it is in a given state.  Because of this, it’s used most of the time to troubleshoot system hangs.

Random Blue Stuff

By the way, you can see the Blue Screen of Death other places too.  Some Macs have it, Playstation Portable has it, GameBoy Advance has it, Nintendo DS has it (although those that run version 5 firmware get the magenta screen instead of blue), the Apple IIgs has it, complete with a bouncing apple for added fun, although the Apple iPod’s BSoD is actually white.

Common BSoD stop error messages

The following is just a couple of the error messages that you might come across.  This list is clearly in no way exhaustive, so chances are good you may get a message not shown here.  If you do, again, try Google or Microsoft or a good newsgroup.

Stop 0x0000000A or IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL - The Stop 0xA message indicates that a kernel-mode process or driver attempted to access a memory location to which it did not have permission, or at a kernel interrupt request level (IRQL) that was too high. A kernel-mode process can access only other processes that have an IRQL lower than, or equal to, its own. This Stop message is typically due to faulty or incompatible hardware or software.

Possible Resolutions -  A Stop 0xA message might show up after installing a faulty device driver, system service, or firmware. If a Stop message lists a driver by name, disable, remove, or roll back the driver to correct the problem. If disabling or removing drivers resolves the issues, contact the manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, and CD mastering tools.

A Stop 0xA message might also be due to failing or defective hardware. If a Stop message points to a category of devices (video or disk adapters, for example), try removing or replacing the hardware to determine if it is causing the problem.

Stop 0x0000001E or KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED - The Stop 0x1E message indicates that the Windows XP kernel detected an illegal or unknown processor instruction. The problems that cause Stop 0x1E messages share similarities with those that generate Stop 0xA errors in that they can be due to invalid memory and access violations. This default Windows XP error handler typically intercepts these problems if error-handling routines are not present in the code itself.

Possible Resolutions -  Stop 0x1E messages typically occur after installing faulty drivers or system services, or they can indicate hardware problems, such as memory and IRQ conflicts. If a Stop message lists a driver by name, disable, remove, or roll it back to correct the problem. If disabling or removing applications and drivers resolves the issue, contact the hardware manufacturer about a possible update. Using updated software is especially important for multimedia applications, antivirus scanners, and CD mastering tools.

If the Stop message mentions the file Win32k.sys, the source of the error might be a third-party “remote control” program. If such software is installed, you might be able to disable it by starting the system in safe mode. If not, use Recovery Console to manually delete the system service file that is causing the problem.

Problems can result from system firmware incompatibilities. Many Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) issues can be resolved by updating to the latest firmware.

Other possible causes include insufficient disk space while installing applications or performing certain functions that require more memory. You can free up space by deleting unneeded files. Use Disk Cleanup to increase available disk space. From Recovery Console, remove temporary files (those with .tmp file extensions), Internet cache files, application backup files, and .tmp files generated by Chkdsk.exe or Autochk.exe. You can also choose to install additional applications to another hard disk with more free space or move data files, paging files, and so on.

Stop 0x00000024 or NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM - The Stop 0x24 message indicates that a problem occurred within Ntfs.sys, the driver file that allows the system to read and write to NTFS file system drives. A similar Stop message, 0x23, exists for the file allocation table (FAT16 or FAT32) file systems.

Possible Resolutions -  Malfunctioning SCSI and Advanced Technology Attachment (ATA) hardware or drivers can also adversely affect the system’s ability to read and write to disk, causing errors. If using SCSI hard disks, check for cabling and termination problems between the SCSI controller and the disks. Periodically check Event Viewer for error messages related to SCSI or FASTFAT in the System log or Autochk in the Application log.

Verify that the tools you use to continually monitor your system, such as virus scanners, backup programs, or disk defragmenters are compatible with Windows XP. Some disks and adapters come packaged with diagnostic software that you can use to run hardware tests.

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 12:00 am

Google's Information On DMCA Takedown Abuse

Binestar writes "According to a PC World article, Google has submitted a brief to New Zealand about its proposed copyright law (section 92A). "In its submission, Google notes that more than half (57%) of the takedown notices it has received under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act 1998, were sent by business targeting competitors and over one third (37%) of notices were not valid copyright claims.""

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:59 pm

The Financial Times Launches Its Own Business News Search Engine (Newssift).

The Financial Times Group, which is owned by the British publisher Pearson, is not exactly the place you’d expect to find the latest search engine. But a startup deep within the bowels of the organization called FT Search is launching one at 8PM ET tonight called Newssift. It is a semantic search engine that sifts through business news, and it is not half bad, especially for bigger companies and broader topics.

Robin Johnson, the CEO of FT Search, used to run the Financial Times in the U.S. as its president. He’s been working on Newssift for the past two years, and currently employs a team of 25 people. “The object was to create a tool to allow a busy business person to assess what is the skinny on a problem they do not know the answer to,” he tells me.

Newssift indexes about 4,000 business news sources, from online newspapers and blogs to news portals and research sites. It is ingesting about 120,000 articles a day right now and applying semantic tags to each one. In the end it can categorize each article by business topic, organization, place, person, and theme. When you type in a search term, each of those columns gets filled in with associated keywords, allowing you to drill down to exactly what you want even if you are not sure at the outset what you are looking for. The back-end clustering is powered by Endeca.

A search for “Sun Microsystems” brings up further suggestions for refinement, including “IBM,” “Jonathan Schwartz,” and “market share.” You sort of graze around, adding new keywords as they are presented to you. Each keyword you select is added to your string, and corresponding article results appear below. A sentiment pie chart indicates what percentage of the stories are positive, negative, or neutral. Another one breaks the results down by source (Online News, Magazines, Newspapers, Blogs, Research). Clicking on any shaded area filters the results further.

Searches can be saved, creating an interesting prospective news search tool. You can create your own memetracker for any industry or topic. I am not sure I would use Newssift every day to stay on top of the latest news, but I can see it as a useful research tool when I have to really dig deep into a topic. It does better with business news than technology. Still, it is worth checking out in that it employs several subtle navigational techniques that make it more of a discovery engine than a search engine.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:55 pm

Korean Company Announces Cheaper Flexible OLED Light Panels

The Modistech company from Korea has announced it is working on a relatively affordable and flexible OLED light panel that should be used in a variety of practical situations in houses.

According to the company, people will be able to buy the panels for approximately $212 for one square meter, by 2011. It's not clear, however, whether this is a calculation based on the overall investment from electronics companies that will feature the panel in their products (like futuristic lamps).

An OLED panel at that size, for that price, would be a significant reduction from the currently available $2,000-plus price of OLEDs in the market, for panels ranging from only 10-25 inches. 

Personally, I think it would be awesome if anyone could actually call in to Modistech and request their own specific OLED panel needs. That way, I could pay for a few yards' worth and finally build my OLED baseball hat, which I can take to poker tournaments and increase brightness to fully psych out opponents.

Modistech says that their process for building the OLED is based on a roll-to-roll (newspaper-style) machine that facilitates fast mass-production 'printing' and will lower the high costs of building the displays. This sounds a lot like the same process that General Electric has been working on for the last year and that the European Union recently funded. Mainly, it's a system where OLEDs are printed on top of flexible protective film resulting in a single display sheet that's later separated into individual pieces.

Most current OLED displays are made in a suspended glass substrate, often causing delays and waste.

We recently took a look at a couple of transparent OLED prototypes from companies in Japan that are also looking to make their mark in the lighting market.

Since OLEDs generally consume less energy, last longer, and produce more vibrant light, many companies are bound to try to get in on this tech before it takes off in a few few years.

See also:

• DisplaySearch Says the OLED Era Will Begin in 2011
• New OLED Printing Process Copies Old Model, Creates Rolled-up Displays
• SRIOE and Philips Show Transparent OLED Prototypes at Tokyo Fair

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:19 pm

Greek Beaches Filled With 90,000 Pieces Of Trash

A leading local environmental organization said on Wednesday that Greek beaches were covered in over 91,000 items of garbage last year.An official at the Hellenic Marine Environment Protection Association told AFP that volunteers picked up trash over the year, which included plastic bottles
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:16 pm

10% Layoffs At Ustream

Ustream, a live streaming video service based in Mountain View California, has laid off 4 people, or about 10% of staff, we’ve confirmed. At least two of the four staff let go were Director level or higher.

The downsizing has been added to the Layoff Tracker, which has tracked over 300,000 layoffs since last year.

Ustream has been in the news a lot lately and continues to innovate on the iPhone. The company has raised $13.1 million over two round of financing. The most recent round was a year ago, in April 2008.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:15 pm

Cisco: Skepticism Abounds About Foray into Servers [Voices]

Seems the more the Street thinks about Cisco Systems’s (CSCO) announcement Monday that it will sell servers, the less the Street is inclined to be enthusiastic. As I noted Monday, Cisco is expected to lose current revenue from partners Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and IBM (IBM) as it comes into deep competition with both. And the effort Cisco will need to make to actually be successful in selling a server against both vendors seems somewhat formidable–however enthusiastic Cisco is about its server, dubbed the “Universal Computing System,” or UCS.

JP Morgan’s Ehud Gelblum sounds the most skeptical of the lot. His colleague Mark Moskowitz, who covers HP and IBM, today put out a note saying that it’s going to be pretty tough for Cisco to put together the necessary software and services to match the top vendors of servers. Gelblum agrees, but he’s more interested in what seems to be a rather skimpy return even if Cisco does succeed.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:12 pm

How BlackBerry Models Differ [Mossberg's Mailbox]

Here are a few questions I’ve received recently from people like you, and my answers. I have edited and restated the questions a bit, for readability.

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I get confused by all the different models of the BlackBerry — Bold, Storm, Curve, Pearl and so on. Can you briefly explain the differences?

There are too many models to list here, because RIM, the maker of BlackBerry, makes varying versions for competing wireless carriers, and these may have different features, even if they look the same. However, here’s a quick breakdown of the main flavors.

The Bold is the top-of-the-line BlackBerry, relatively large and costly, with a wide keyboard and a big, vivid screen. The Curve is its little brother — still sporting a good, full, keyboard, but lower-priced, smaller and lighter. The newest Curve, called the 8900, has a beautiful screen and is even sleeker than its predecessor.

The Pearl is a slimmer, low-priced, more fashion-oriented model with a truncated keyboard that has two letters on each key and relies on software to guess which one you meant to hit. The Pearl Flip is much like the Pearl, except, as its name implies, it’s a flip phone.

The Storm is the BlackBerry line’s most direct competitor to the Apple iPhone. It’s the only BlackBerry without a physical keyboard, instead relying on a large, beautiful touch screen for typing and navigation. Unlike on the iPhone, however, the Storm provides physical feedback each time you press down on the screen.

I’d be interested in the new, tiny iPod Shuffle, except that I dislike Apple’s earbuds. And, because they have now moved the playback controls to the earbud cord, I can’t use my favorite third-party set. What are my options?

Well, one option is to buy the old model of the Shuffle, which Apple is keeping on the market. It’s larger, but still very small, and has the controls on the player itself, rather than on the earbud cord, so you can use plain old earbuds or headphones from other companies. Plus, at $49, it’s $30 less, though it has only 25% of the capacity of the new one and lacks the new model’s voice features.

Another, costlier, option is to buy better earbuds that have the new controller built in. Apple sells a pair of $79 in-ear buds with a control module on the cord. They were designed for the iPod Touch, but the company says they work perfectly with the new Shuffle. Several other headphone companies, such as Klipsch, have announced plans to offer either headphones or adapters with Shuffle-compatible controls in coming months.

Is it safe to upgrade my Vista PC to the beta version of Windows 7?

Since it is a beta version, there is always some danger of problems. But I have upgraded a couple of Vista computers with no special tricks or help, and with no significant problems. Still, there are a couple of caveats. First, Microsoft will be replacing the beta with a more polished “release candidate” that could involve a re-installation process, so you may want to hold off. Second, Microsoft isn’t guaranteeing that every hardware feature on every computer or peripheral will work properly under the pre-release versions.

• You can find Mossberg’s Mailbox, and my other columns, online free of charge at the new All Things Digital Web site, http://walt.allthingsd.com.

Source: All Things Digital | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:12 pm

Boing Boing Video: In Case You Missed...

I'm back in the US after a few weeks on the road in Africa, just now personally catching up on all of daily Boing Boing Video episodes I missed -- internet was too thin where I was to stream or download video. You may have missed some BBV, too! So below, a recap of recent episodes blogged by my BBV colleague Derek Bledsoe (big round of applause -- thanks, Derek, for keeping the blog warm while I was gone!). Our YouTube channel is here, you can subscribe to our daily video podcast on iTunes here.

* The Mae Shi are "Professionals" A music feature with our UK-based correspondent Russell Porter about a cool, experimental punk band who recently hit SXSW. download the MP4 here.

* Gödel ????? Film School," excerpt from the PSST! 3 Animation Project. Brilliant, surreal short from a collaborative animation project. One of the contributors on this one is the lovely and talented David O'Reilly, about whom we are admittedly apeshit. You can download the MP4 here.

* United Nations Drug Policy- Skeptics Chime In. You can download the MP4 here. Working with Witness and the Hungarian Civil Liberties Union, we cut together excerpts from "Dare to Question? Using Video to Take on UN Drug Policies" and other testimonials appealing to the United Nations to reconsider its hardline policies combating the cultivation and use of illicit drugs.

* Cyberpipe's Mecca of Vintage Computers. You can download the MP4 here. Mononchrom’s Johannes Grenzfurthner takes us backwards through time to Cyberpipe’s Computer Museum, a huge collection of functioning vintage computers located in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

(Special thanks to Boing Boing Video's hosting and publishing provider Episodic.)

Source: Boing Boing | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:02 pm

Scientists turn tobacco into medicines

Italian scientists say they've used genetically modified tobacco plants to produce medicines for autoimmune and inflammatory diseases, including diabetes. European researchers, led by Professor Mario Pezzotti at the University of Verona, wanted to create transgenic tobacco plants that would produce biologically active interleukin-10, a potent anti-inflammatory cytokine.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 11:00 pm

Kansas Private Colleges Unite for Web-Marketing Effort

TOPEKA, Kan., March 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Eighteen Kansas private colleges have combined resources to launch a new Web site, Proud2bPrivate.com.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:55 pm

Vidgame about the lousy economy

LAYOFF is a Web-based casual game about today's economic insanity and its impact on average people. Brandon has the details over at Boing Boing Offworld. "Layoff: financial crisis through a match-three casual game lens"


Source: Boing Boing | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:51 pm

Diebold Admits Flaw In Voting Software

NewYorkCountryLawyer writes "At a public hearing in California, Diebold's western region manager has admitted that the audit log system on current versions of Premier Election Solutions' (formerly Diebold's) electronic voting and tabulating systems — used in some 34 states across the nation — fails to record the wholesale deletion of ballots, even when ballots are deleted on the same day as an election. An election system's audit logs are meant to record all activity during the system's actual counting of ballots, so that later examiners may determine, with certainty, whether any fraudulent or mistaken activity had occurred during the count. Diebold's software fails to do that, as has recently been discovered by Election Integrity advocates in Humboldt County, CA, and then confirmed by the CA Secretary of State. The flaws, built into the system for more than a decade, are in serious violation of federal voting system certification standards."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:44 pm

David Lynch Is So Weird. 500 Beta Invites For His Transcendental Meditation TV Site

Filmmaker David Lynch is weird. But you already knew that. It is what makes him a great filmmaker. I’ve always been a big fan. But I’m not so sure about his new Website, David Lynch Foundation TV. The foundation is “dedicated to providing students with the opportunity to learn how to meditate.” Apparently, Lynch is really into transcendental meditation.

The new video site shows Lynch talking about the benefits of transcendental meditation and what it is. It will also showcase documentary footage from Foundation events and benefit concerts. Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, Sheryl Crow, and Eddie Vedder are giving one at Radio City Music Hall on April 4. The site promises to deliver a daily dose of David Lynch (he talks about movies as well a meditation) and free concert footage. I would share a video here, but they are not embeddable (actually they are, see below). I told you he was weird.

The DLTV site doesn’t publicly launch for another six days, but if you are into David Lynch or meditation, you can get beta access by registering here with the code twinpeaks. We have 500 invites for TechCrunch readers. You guys need to learn how to relax.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:36 pm

Flying car/rolling plane makes debut flight

This is one silly-looking machine. Really, if flying cars look like this, who will want one? I guess functionality comes first, then they can make something cool-looking.

This flying contraption, called the Transition, is made by a company called Terrafugia. The idea is obviously that you have a plane you can land and then drive right out of the airport. Not sure there’s a big market for that in this economy, but maybe AIG will take a few.

The Transition probably makes for a rather poor plane, being weighted down by an engine and transmission, and it certainly makes a poor car, what with the wings on the sides. Sure, they fold up, but they don’t just disappear. Plus, it is certain to get abysmal gas mileage. That said, it’s a flying car. So let’s not make it jump too many hoops just yet.

[via The Register]

Source: CrunchGear | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:31 pm

Alliance Distributors Holding Inc. Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2008 Financial Results

NEW YORK, March 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Alliance Distributors Holding Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:26 pm

Finally, a full color reader to surpass the Amazon Kindle

Section: Gadgets / Other, Miscellaneous

Not everyone is yet sold on the amazing qualities of the Amazon Kindle.  You may be waiting for a reader that has better graphics and actually has color imagery.  Well, your wait may be over with the release of the Fujitsu Flepia, the first color e-book reader in the world.

The Flepia has just been pre-released today for orders in Japan and could be heading stateside before we know it.  Right now, it carries a whopping price tag of $1000, but hopefully that figure will drop with time.  The Flepia includes some cool features, like Bluetooth and Wi-fi capabilities, a mini USB port and an 8 inch touch screen that displays in full color.  The battery lasts 40 hours and allows users to access a full keyboard.

You can do more on the Flepia than just read books; it comes fully loaded with the latest version of Windows CE.  Users are able to browse the web, read emails and more.  The device will begin shipping out on April 20. 

Read: [Wired]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:17 pm

Windows Live Messenger Now Lets You Add Chat To Your Website

In a move to extend the reach of its Windows Live Messenger chat service, Microsoft today released some tools to add chat to Websites. Any Website can add a chat feature and tap into the 320 million active Windows Live Messenger users. It is quick and dirty way to add a social element to any Website, and at the same time it is yet one more distribution point for Live Messenger (consumers who want to chat on Websites with the feature will have to sign up if they don’t already have an account.).

The growing acceptance of Facebook Connect, which offers Websites much more than chat, is lighting a fire under other Web companies to offer similar services. Chat is the sort of feature that most sites wouldn’t build for themselves, but which increase visitor engagement on a site (even is that is engagement with other users instead of with the site itself).

AIM, ball is in your court.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:15 pm

MGMT tune played by iPhone orchestra

Here are The Mentalists using iPhones and iPod Touches to cover "Kids" by MGMT. (Thanks, Gabe "TuneUp" Adiv!)


Source: Boing Boing | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:12 pm

Non-iPhone Coders Can't Run 3.0 Beta; Jailbreak Is on the Way

iPhone owners who are not registered iPhone developers cannot install the beta version of the handset's new operating system — iPhone 3.0 — due for official release this summer. Many who attempted to do so reported bricking their iPhones, requiring a software restore to revive them.

Fortunately, curious iPhone fans won't have to wait for long. The iPhone Dev-Team, famously known for Jailbreaking (i.e., hacking) the iPhone, is already working on a solution to get the iPhone 3.0 Beta working on any iPhone.

"Yes the 3.0 OS is jailbreakable on all devices," the group wrote in its blog. "It's just those using 3G yellowsn0w that have to show some restraint and wait for PwnageTool to create a custom IPSW that avoids the baseband update."

So if you're itching to try out the beta, you'll be able to soon enough. Or if you just can't wait, I suppose you could always pay the $100 to register for an iPhone developer account just to install the beta. That's a hefty price to pay for a buggy OS, though, isn't it?

Photo: ifranz/Flickr

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:06 pm

ESA postpones Herschel-Planck launch

The European Space Agency says it has postponed the Herschel and Planck spacecraft launch that was initially planned for April 16. The ESA said the Herschel and Planck missions will study the formation of stars and galaxies and the relic radiation from the Big Bang.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 10:02 pm

Review: Oregon Trail for the iPhone

Short Version: If you like the original, you’d enjoy this version. Rather than tarnishing the memories of our childhood, Gameloft has built upon them; almost everything we loved about the original has returned, and the new platform and enhanced graphics have only improved them.

Long Version: Oh, Oregon Trail. Multiplication and division be damned - it was the only thing I really cared about in second grade. When Computer Lab day rolled around, I’d just about fight a kid if it meant I got to sit at one of the computers with it tucked away within. I’m pretty sure Oregon Trail indirectly made me a faster typist; the faster I finished my typing exercises, the sooner I’d be westward bound.

It may seem a bit odd, but the news that Gameloft would be bringing Oregon Trail to the iPhone excited me more than just about any gaming news this year. Without a Windows 3.1 PC or old Mac laying around, it had been a long time since I’d played through. Sure, I could have emulated it (right in my browser, even!), but I’d never found the time. With the game on my iPhone, I could be on the wild frontier while I stood in lines or rode the bus - it could be perfect. Excited as I was to have an on-the-go version, I was also quite wary that Gameloft might not be able to pull it off. This memories were dear and fragile; could any remake really satisfy?

Yes.

Gameloft has taken the original and built upon the details, rather than actually trying to change the game. The improvements all seem natural. The new cartoony art style isn’t overly flashy, nor is it so cartoony that it might limit its audience.

If you’ve never played the original, here’s the basic idea: You and your party are traveling for Missouri to Oregon in 1848, a time of limited technology and rampant disease. At its very core, the game has one element: push a button, walk to the west.

Of course, there’s more to it than that. You’ve got to manage your supplies and keep your party healthy, which can be tougher than it sounds. Mini-games are interspersed throughout, most of which are new to the iPhone version:

• Hunting: This was every kid’s favorite part so, thankfully, it made it in. It has changed a lot over time. In the first iteration of Oregon Trail, players just typed various alternatives to “BANG” as fast as they could (Seriously.) Later versions relied on the keyboard, then the mouse. The iPhone version makes us of - what else? - the touchscreen. Tap where you want to shoot - if your bullet connects, animal instantly turns into meat. Oddly, players now have an unlimited supply of bullets, which is one of the only questionable changes from the original.
• Berry picking: Berries pop up on screen, and you tap them as fast as you can. Don’t tap the rotten ones, though!
• Gold panning: Shake your iPhone to pan for gold, stopping only to pluck your treasures out of the water. It’s fun, but the floating gold pieces seem to have a hard time detecting when they’re touched. Not bad enough to ruin the mini-game, though.
• River crossing: In the original game, you could float down the Columbia River as a little side game. In the iPhone port, you can float across every river as an alternative to attempting to cross it or waiting for a ferry. Tilt to steer, collect coins and supplies that are floating in the water. It’s a bit hard to control.
• Wagon Repair: If your wagon gets busted up or you come across a downed traveler, you can opt to manually patch things up with a mini game, using less supplies than the automatic option. To play, you wait for a nail to fall within your hit-zone, and then tap the screen. Imagine Guitar Hero without music, a tiny plastic guitar, or a subconscious feeling of shame.
• Telegraph: It’s the game “Simon”, with telegraphs instead of colored buttons. You can opt to play it when you pass through towns, but it sort of seems like it’s just there to give you something to do in towns besides restocking supplies. Beating it once unlocks an Endless mode which can be selected from the main menu.

One thing that may upset the purist fans of the original is that the game’s inventory system has been simplified a bit. You no longer have to deal with your meat stock in pounds - it’s just a slider now. You don’t have to keep track of bullets, nor do you buy wagon parts individually. You buy wagon parts in bulk now, and fixing your wagon just requires that you have some quantity of these generic parts.

What we liked:

• They improved the original without changing the overall game mechanics or the feel of it all.
• The new mini-games keep things interesting
• The new graphic style is gorgeous
• The developers have somehow managed to pack some humor into the idea of traveling 2,000 miles with little but your family, your wagon, and a box of food. Pay attention to the stuff your party says on screen while they travel - there are some gems in there.

What we didn’t:

• Loading screens. Lots of them. They’re short, but they’re frequent. Each loading screen displasy 1 of around 10 Trail-related facts to spruce things up a bit, but you’ll be able to recite them all by about 1/4 of the way through the game.
• They simplified your inventory. We don’t mind that you don’t need to think as much about the specifics of your wagon or food supply, but having unlimited bullets makes hunting too easy.
• Steering your boat when you’re floating down the river is a pain.

Overall, we love it. If you liked the original, you’ll love it to. If you never played the original, the concept may seem a bit strange, but you’ll probably love it anyway. It’s by no means the most involved or complex game ever, but it’s a fantastic way to burn time - and you might learn something, too!

Oregon Trail for the iPhone is available for 6 bucks in the App Store [iTunes Link].

Source: CrunchGear | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:47 pm

Feds: Hacker Disabled Offshore Oil Platforms' Leak-Detection System

A disgruntled tech employee is accused of temporarily disabling a leak-detection system monitoring three Southern California offshore oil platforms' underground pipelines. Luckily, there were no leaks off the Huntington Beach coast, authorities said.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:47 pm

Google Returns Chrome To Beta, Touts Speed Boost

CWmike writes "Google yesterday reversed its decision to ditch the beta label from its Chrome browser, saying it is restoring the moniker to some builds to get faster feedback to developers. 'Since we took the 'beta' tag off Google Chrome in December, we've been updating two release channels: developer and stable,' said Brian Rakowski, a Chrome product manager, in a new blog Google kicked off on Tuesday. 'With our latest release, we're re-introducing the beta channel for some early feedback.' The first beta, Chrome 2.0.169.1, includes several new features, said Rakowski, and it boasts a significant speed increase over the current stable version of the browser, 1.0.154.48. According to Google's tests, the beta is 35% faster than the stable build when measured by the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark suite, and 25% faster on the company's own V8 tests."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:44 pm

Songbird Bug Accidentally Wipes Users' iPods

Users of the open-source alternative to iTunes have uncovered a bug that deletes all the files off their iPods when they connect to the software. The problem is only affecting a small number of users, and Songbird is working on a fix, but that's cold comfort for irate users who've lost 60 or 70 gigabytes of music.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:35 pm

Metal Gear Solid Touch for the iPhone/iPod Touch now available

Ahoy hoy, MGS fans, who might also happen to own an iPhone and/or iPod Touch, Konami has pushed out Metal Gear Solid Touch today. So, go download the 87.3MB game and pony up $7.99. The game already has over 50 reviews with a 4.5 star rating, so it must be good!

iTunes

Source: CrunchGear | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:31 pm

Engineer finds ways to improve gas mileage

A U.S. engineer says he is trying to develop methods of reducing vehicle drag so as to improve the gas mileage of planes, automobiles and trucks. Washington University in St.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:28 pm

American Software, Inc. Announces Tender Offer to Purchase Shares of Logility, Inc. at $5.10 per Share

ATLANTA, March 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- American Software, Inc. (Nasdaq: AMSWA) announced today that it intends to purchase up to all the outstanding common stock of Logility, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:21 pm

LeapFrog Announces Changes to Its Board of Directors

EMERYVILLE, Calif., March 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- LeapFrog Enterprises, Inc. (NYSE: LF), announced today changes to its board of directors. Jeffrey G.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:20 pm

The comic art of Lucy Knisley

I recently found out about the work of cartoonist Lucy Knisley (thanks, Drawn!) and have been enjoying her portfolio, blog, and songs. As Drawn! points out, her ligne claire style, reminiscent of Joost Swarte and Herge, is very appealing.


Source: Boing Boing | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:18 pm

Hose Bibb Lock prevents water theft, unauthorized Slip 'n' Slide activation

I've just learned two things: you can buy a $14 "Hose Bibb Lock to prevent nogoodniks from stealing your water; and the spigots on the sides of houses (or, I presume, any building) are called "silcocks". [via Toolmonger]


Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:10 pm

Viacom CEO Dauman: Yep, We’re Still Suing Google [MediaMemo]

Viacom (VIA) CEO Philippe Dauman just spent more than an hour giving the most detail-free answers he could possibly deliver to BusinessWeek’s Ron Grover, who was interviewing him at an industry conference.

So no surprise that Dauman had little to say about his company’s giant, glacial lawsuit–two years and counting–against Google (GOOG) over copyright infringement at YouTube. But for the record, Dauman still thinks… something will happen, someday.

“We’re in U.S. litigation-land. We are in discovery. A lot of documents have been produced. One thing about technology, there’s so many more documents now,” Dauman noted, accurately. And so what does that mean? “We continue to be confident in our position. There’s not much more we can say, and there will be an outcome.”

So there you have it.

Dauman did say that his suit helped push Google to install a filtering system that susses out videos that shouldn’t be on the site (more on that soon). And he did say that his son, Philippe Jr., continues to enjoy working at Google–a hire that Dauman says both he and Google CEO Eric Schmidt signed off on. “He’s doing very well there. He loves it, it’s a great company.”

Source: All Things Digital | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:10 pm

iPhone 3.0 Takes the Sheen off Palm Pre

Apple's preview of the iPhone 3.0 operating system Tuesday may put Palm on the defensive.

If it sticks to its planned summer release for the Pre, Palm will be going head-to-head with iPhone 3.0 -- and that's a problem, since many of the Pre's features were aimed directly at gaps in the iPhone 2.0 operating system.

With the iPhone 3.0 OS, Apple has significantly narrowed the gap with the Palm Pre, says Lawrence Harris, an analyst with C L King & Associates.

"The issue now for Palm is that it has a narrow window to get the Pre into the market before the iPhone 3.0 software and hardware comes out," says Harris, "if they want to avoid head-on comparisons."

Palm introduced the Pre at the Consumer Electronics Show in January to much critical acclaim. The phone won kudos for its sleek design and a slick user interface based on a completely new operating system.

What seemed to give the Pre an edge over the iPhone were features such as a removable battery, copy and paste, integrated contacts and universal search. The Pre also offered a touchscreen and a physical keyboard in a single package.

But Apple's announcements Tuesday brought some of those missing features to the iPhone. The iPhone 3.0 will offer multimedia messaging, copy and paste and a global search feature called Spotlight that will allow users to search content from various applications on the iPhone from a single interface.

"Apple is not standing still," says Harris. "It is continuing to innovate."

Apple's moves may have increased the pressure on Palm to get the Pre out as soon as possible. Palm has said it expects to make the Pre available on Sprint by the middle of the year.

"It is critical that Palm successfully execute the introduction of the Pre," says Harris. "Its operating system, webOS, is completely new and Palm has had problems in the past obtaining timely carrier certification."

The Palm Pre still has some features that the iPhone lacks. These include an integrated contact database, which pulls together contact information photos and current online status data from different places such as Facebook, Gmail, and Exchange; Apple's contacts app still lacks online integration. The Pre also offers multiple applications to be open at the same time, which means users could run a search and listen to an app like Pandora at the same time; the iPhone won't let apps run in the background but is trying to address the shortcoming with a "push" notification service. And the Pre has a slide-out hardware keyboard; the iPhone has no keyboard at all.

Still, the ball is now in Palm's court as the company tries to prove the Pre can be a viable iPhone competitor.

See also:
Palm Energizes Developers for the Pre
6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special
Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
Video: Hands-On With the Palm Pre
New WebOS Is Palm's Secret Sauce
Up Close and Personal With the Palm Pre

Photo: Palm Pre (Jon Snyder/Wired.com)

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:02 pm

Video: The wild longhorn BigDog

With this latest advance in biomimetic weaponry, BigDog will truly be striking fear into the hearts of America’s enemies. When they see his burnished horns bobbing at them out of a background of terror and carnage, they’ll drop their weapons and cower. I think they’ve got a little to work on with the speed of the charge, but that’s just a technical quibble.

[via HardOCP]

Source: CrunchGear | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:00 pm

How To Get High-Schoolers Involved In Real Science?

Wellington Grey writes "I'm a physics teacher and have been wondering what ways it's possible to get students to participate in or donate to real science projects. I encourage my students to help out with things like Galaxy Zoo (which has just released a new version) and to get them to install BOINC on their personal computers. Do Slashdotters out there have any other suggestions that would be appropriate for the 11-18 age range? Extra credit if you can think of a way that I can track their progress so that I can give them extra credit."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:00 pm

Microsoft's Silverlight 3 Adds HD, Multitouch, Offline Apps

The latest beta release of the Silverlight rich media platform, a competitor to Adobe's ubiquitous Flash Player, was demonstrated by Microsoft at the company's MIX09 conference in Las Vegas. Silverlight 3 adds support for HD video, offline access to web apps and several features for touchscreen hardware devices.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:00 pm

Don't Miss These Bands, Panels

With thousands of bands, panels and parties, the music segment of Austin's South by Southwest festival can be overwhelming. Here's a list of key opportunities you shouldn't skip.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 18 Mar 2009 | 9:00 pm

Google Launches Chrome Experiments To Showcase JavaScript Applications

Nearly all of the time I dedicate to work and personal life on my computer is spent inside a browser, so speed and using software that ‘just works’ are very essential to me. As a Windows user, I currently use both Firefox and Google Chrome, but unless I really need a certain extension lacking on Google’s browser I’ll use Chrome as much as I can and avoid opening the many tabs I usually need to fire up in Firefox. I don’t even look at all the tests comparing the speed of all the browsers anymore. I tried all the latest versions of all the familiar browsers on my machine, and Google Chrome - which yesterday got an even speedier beta version - just makes my browsing experience more of a delight than an annoyance, even if it only feels faster.

Even so, it’s safe to say its adoption rate can hardly be deemed staggering, which is why Google puts so much effort into promoting the software program on its own (vast) advertising network. (The fact that Google Chrome is lacking a Mac-compatible version doesn’t help). Today, Google is launching another initiative that is meant to drive more awareness for the JavaScript processing speed of its browser and the V8 engine it runs on, in the hopes that it will lure more users into trying it out and subsequently sticking with it.

The project is called Chrome Experiments and basically features - at launch - a total of 19 JavaScript-based games, tools and visualizations created by a number of external designers and developers such as REAS, Toxi and Mr. Doob. I tested most of the mini apps and they’re nothing special as such, most of them are basic games and random visualizations, although some stuff I’ve never actually seen inside a browser and particularly not built with JavaScript. For instance, some of the experiments include a visual effect controlled by the user’s physical movement caught via Webcam, a video puzzle spread across different browser windows, and Flash-like graphics done in Javascript.

The website, besides being distinctly black, lets people try out the browser apps and rate, comment on and share them. Developers and designers are meanwhile encouraged to voluntarily create other experiments using JavaScript (and other languages) and submit them for review.

And we thought the team was focused on building a version supported on Macs.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 18 Mar 2009 | 8:58 pm

Climatologists Gain Insight From Massive West Antarctic Melt

Two new reports published in the journal Nature illustrate possible flooding due to climate change and a meltdown of the massive West Antarctic ice sheet.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 8:45 pm

CPU cooler dissipates heat with bubbles

This thing really does make bubbles, but not in the way you want it to. I know you had pictures of a fairyland heatsink that blows hot air out with gossamer wings, while blowing edible bubbles for the user to pop on his or her tongue. Sorry princess, but that’s not the case. Man, now I really want that setup.

Seriously, though, this cooler from Noise Limit really uses bubbles. Heat from the CPU boils a liquid in an evaporator, and the hot gas escapes as bubbles, which rise and push each other into the heatsink area to cool down, then condense and return to the evaporator chamber (that is, if I understand correctly). It’s an elegant design that uses simple physics to its advantage, and the creators say it’s very versatile. Of course, I’d say that too if I’d invented something.

Source: CrunchGear | 18 Mar 2009 | 8:30 pm

Study: Adult-to-young ratio important

French scientists say they've determined the adult-young ratio is much more important to a child's social development that just the mere presence of adults. Marie Bourjade, Alice de Boyer des Roches and Martine Hausberger of the University of Rennes, France, studied the effects of adult-young ratios in naturally-formed groups of Przewalski horses on aggression rates and social cohesion of young horses. Przewalski horses constitute a very adequate model for investigating the educational roles of experienced adults as the species forms year-round stable groups with both maternal and paternal carers, as well as the presence of unrelated adult females, Bourjade said The scientists said their findings revealed striking differences, depending on the adult-young ratios. When in a group in which adult-young ratios were low, young horses were more aggressive and more segregated from adults and they established tighter bonds with other young, the scientists reported.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 18 Mar 2009 | 8:26 pm

Choruss Pitching Bait and Switch On P2P Music Tax

An anonymous reader writes "A few months back, Warner Music Group started pitching universities on the idea of a new program where they would pay a chunk of money to an organization named Choruss to provide 'covenants not to sue' those students for file sharing, leading many in the press to claim that the record labels are looking to license ISPs to let users file share. Even the EFF has called it a 'promising new approach.' However, the details are quite troubling and suggest that the plan is really a bait-and-switch idea." (More below.)

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 18 Mar 2009 | 8:11 pm

March 26 brings “No-Commit” iPhone 3Gs to existing AT&T customers

Attention existing AT&T customers who have been eyeing an iPhone 3G. Stop whatever you are doing, grab a red Sharpie, and circle March 26, 2009 on your calendar. Why? Because according to BGR (who got their hands on some internal AT&T slides), that is the first day you will be able to purchase a "No-Commit" iPhone 3G for the economy-boosting price of $599 (8GB) / $699 (16GB).

Source: CrunchGear | 18 Mar 2009 | 8:00 pm

The wait is finally over as Targus releases its first ‘Netbook Accessory Kit’

Glory be, ladies and gentlemen. We can all breathe a sigh of relief now, knowing that all netbook purchases from this day forward can be adorned with the handsome and useful “Netbook Accessory Kit” from Targus.

The company went to painstaking lengths “asking hundreds of netbook users what they needed most with their new netbooks,” according to a recent press release.

Judging by the contents of the kit, those users said something along the lines of “a tiny mouse, a squishy-zippy cover thing, and one of those things where when you plug it into the hole it makes more of the holes for plugging in other stuff.”

And lo, the Netbook Accessory Kit was born. It features the Targus 10.2-inch Slipskin Peel Netbook Case (normally $20), the Targus Ultra Mini Retractable Optical Mouse (normally $25), and the Targus Ultra Mini-USB 2.0 4-Port Hub (normally $25).

It’s not actually for sale on Targus’ site yet but when it goes live, it’ll cost $39.99.

Source: CrunchGear | 18 Mar 2009 | 7:40 pm

Kodak photo archives to be shown in the U.K.

As you can well imagine, Kodak has built up an incredibly complete archive tracking the evolution of photography. Covering over 120 years, the Kodak archive has long been of interest to historians and researchers, however very little of it has ever been seen by the public.

This is all about to change, because the Kodak archive announced that they have donated a large portion of their images to the British Library, with the intent that they be conserved and displayed to the public. The archive contains advertising photos, along with images of the Kodak buildings and their employees.

The British Library has the the first exhibition is scheduled for October, and this particular show will be focused on 19th century photography and the technical side of development.

Source: CrunchGear | 18 Mar 2009 | 7:20 pm

UK Gov't May Track All Facebook Traffic

Jack Spine writes "The UK government, which is becoming increasingly Orwellian, has said that it is considering snooping on all social networking traffic including Facebook, MySpace, and bebo. This supposedly anti-terrorist measure may be proposed as part of the Intercept Modernisation Programme according to minister Vernon Coaker, and is exactly the sort of deep packet inspection web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee warned about last week. The measure would get around the inconvenience for the government of not being able to snoop on all UK web traffic."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 18 Mar 2009 | 7:20 pm

Antarctica's Past Offers Clues to Future Melting

An Antarctic ice sheet collapse millions of years ago lends clues to future melting.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 7:16 pm

Early Dinosaur Fossils Show Hints of Feathers

The origins of feathers could reach back to the earliest dinosaurs.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 6:52 pm

Space Tourist Flights to Launch From Sweden

Suborbital space flights, at $200,000 each, will launch from Sweden, starting in 2012.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 5:12 pm

The inevitable peroration of cheap R/C helicopters

A "fully remote-controlled flying word," perhaps not coincidentally the same uttered by owners of these cheap choppers after they've run them into the fireplace. £25 from a UK crapvendor. [via Oh Gizmo!]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 18 Mar 2009 | 5:03 pm

Rong Yiren's LEGO mechGORILLA

Rong Yiren's mechanical LEGO animal designs are all captivating—in no small part because he does a great job posing them to convey movement—but mechGORILLA is tops. (Check out the "medBOTS", too, if crab-legged cyclops wielding bone saws sound alluring.) [via Bros. Brick]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 18 Mar 2009 | 4:50 pm

Video: Tuning a pipe organ

The organ in Boston's Old South Church has been offline for three years, but will be honking its return to greatness next Sunday. Before then, two organ technicians gave the 88-year-old machine a tune-up. Boston.com shot this video. [via Girlhacker]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 18 Mar 2009 | 4:39 pm

Max Sprecher's antique straight razors

Though they'll happily sharpen your straight razor for just $20 (and restore it for an additional fee), Max Sprecher will happily sell you a fully restored antique model for $90 to $160, depending on vintage and materials. [via Cool Hunting]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 18 Mar 2009 | 4:07 pm

Have Atoms, Will Travel: Mobile Soviet nuclear power plants

Before Chernobyl, Russian engineers deployed autonomous nuclear power plants to remote locations, many of which rode on self-powered tank treads. [via Red Ferret]

Previously:

• MODEM: Cold War Power Plant Transformed into Berlin Art and Music ...
• Power On Self Test: Power Plant - Boing Boing Gadgets
• Our new offices - Boing Boing Gadgets

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 18 Mar 2009 | 4:00 pm

Elecom Scope Node, a mouse fit for Solid Snake

By moving the laser sensor between the thumb and forefinger, Japanese manufacturer Elecom can claim its new "Scope Node" mouse has the precision of a pen. I couldn't care less—I just think it looks really badass, designed with the clinical asymmetry that the Japanese do so well.

It'll sell for around $65, but getting it in North America might be a challenge until importers like Audiocubes bring it over. [via Technabob]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 18 Mar 2009 | 3:33 pm

Chernobyl Radiation Still Harming Animals

Surveys at forests around Chernobyl show residual radiation effects on birds and insects.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 3:20 pm

Fujitsu Flepia is slow, expensive, but heralds a color e-paper age

Fujitsu is set to sell its own Kindle-like e-book reader in Japan, with one critical difference from Amazon's offering: the new heart of the new Flepia reader is an 8-inch, 1,024 by 768 pixel touch screen...in color.

Pretty pennies must be shined: it costs $1,000, or the price of an industrial newspaper press in five years.

Consider a Flepia when doing your Christmas shopping for me. And my birthday is just 11 months away!

Don't expect this in the Kindle 3 just yet, as the technology needs time to mature: a three-pass screen refresh necessary to rebuild a full 260k color page takes eight seconds. (Even a 64-color image takes almost two.) But it's out of the labs and into a product, which is a huge step towards ubiquity.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 18 Mar 2009 | 3:12 pm

First Humpback Whale Sighting in Hong Kong

A 33-foot humpback is seen swimming in the East Lamma Channel near Hong Kong.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

CO2-Sucking Rocks Explored to Slow Warming

Geologists consider injecting rocks with carbon dioxide to slow global warming.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 2:40 pm

Glaucoma Drug Makes Eyelashes Longer, Thicker

From the company that gave us Botox comes a new lash-boosting eyedrop.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 18 Mar 2009 | 2:22 pm

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