Breach Exposes 19,000 Active US, UK Credit Cards

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Developers cautiously optimistic about iPhone OS 3.0 - Macworld

Washington Post

Developers cautiously optimistic about iPhone OS 3.0 Macworld Industry analysts see many strengths in the upcoming iPhone software upgrade, but the developers Macworld spoke with were more cautiously optimistic about the release. It's the iPhone, All the Time, on Every Channel TechNewsWorld More evidence arises for future iPhone models in latest beta Ars Technica InformationWeek - PC World - DVICE - NetworkWorld.com all 1,906 news articles

Developers cautiously optimistic about iPhone OS 3.0 (Macworld.com)

Saxo Bank Launches Milan Office in Response to 78% Growth in FX Trading Volumes in Italy

Beambox Pico Projector Boosts Lumen Power, Adds iPod Scroll Wheel

A new pico projector from an up-and-coming UK company is promising to bring out the best projection quality for the popular tiny gadgets.

The Evolution R-1 pico from BeamBox has an LCoS chip that plays images at a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels, and also promises a brightness level at 30 lumens, which is about three times as bright as that of the Optoma EP-PK-101 projector.

The Optoma EP-PK-101, which I reviewed a couple months back, has a pixel resolution at 480 x 320 pixels and I found its projected images to be quite good in an enclosed, very low-light setting. So I'm definitely looking forward to checking this one out and see if I can at least open up the blinds a little and still see a good image.

Using an LCoS chip instead of the DLP used by the Optoma will surely produce a bit of a different quality projection, but we won't know for sure until we try it. LCoS chips use tiny liquid crystals applied directly to the surface of a silicon chip, and have created a higher-res and higher contrast images on TV using DLPs, but we'll see if this difference can be replicated between the tiny projectors.

According to BoomBox, the Evolution R-1 can project images from a few inches wide to up to 100-inches, though other Picos have also promised that and have come up a good 30-inches short.

There's something else that's different about this projector from others -- it comes with 1GB of inset memory and a microSD slot to add more, up to 4GB.

This means that the company is looking to position it as a more self-sufficient gadget than the other picos, which is obvious when looking at its iPod-like scroll wheel controls. Generally, picos have functioned as the conduit between the media that's stored in a computer or a phone, and the projected screen.

With the memory, you could conceivably add a few smallish files of basic media at a time, and won't need it to connect to anything to play some video. It also accepts MP3, AVi, MPEG, and WMV files and the bulb expectancy has been placed at 30,000 hours total.

It also has a tiny (1W) speaker but our expectations for its audio are already quite low -- no pico has so far come up with anything remotely close to accurate audio renders. I'm also concerned that the added light lumen power will sap the battery and cut short projection times. The site has the battery playing without a charge for only 90 minutes, which is already 25% shorter than what the Optoma tested.

The Evolution R-1 pico will be available from the BoomBox site starting April 1, for about $360.

What Will Stimulate Spending? Advertising! [Voices]

The government’s stimulus plan won’t work as planned if we don’t get consumers spending again. But in the nearly $800 billion package, there is one thing missing that would surely help accomplish this: advertising. To get people spending again, and the economy moving, the government needs to provide help for businesses in America to advertise their products and services.

Let me disclose that I do have a horse in this race: I’m an investor in advertising-supported businesses. I’ve spent a large percentage of my working career in businesses that sell advertising–including broadcast and cable TV, radio, magazines, Internet, newspapers and direct marketing. I’ve also led businesses that have used these media to advertise products and services.

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Twitter is so 2007 [Voices]

One week ago I met Kara Swisher in Rome. She asked me about Twitter in Italy and I told her we were about Twitter in 2007 but now we’ve moved on (we had read about Twitter here and here). Mainstream web users are all on Facebook (Facebook has been huge here since last summer) while web-savvy people interested in microblogging now prefer FriendFeed with its richer features.
I thought it was the first time something Americans where going mad for was already out of fashion in Italy.
Maybe that is why Kara was not satisfied with my answer. She was attending an adsellers meeting, and the people she had talked to were not exactly web addicted. I would say not one of them knew who Arianna Huffington was before reading her name on the speakers panel (Arianna! Don’t fire me! Italian bloggers love you!). She stayed at a wonderful hotel near Via Veneto where they know all the tricks to make you believe Dolce Vita still lives on.

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Realistic Game Audio Has Us Pining For Beeps of Yesteryear [Voices]

Last week, a sound clip website made some Internet ripples with two notable retro collections: Super Nintendo and Sony’s PlayStation (SNE). Combined, the two collections feature more than 1,500 “I remember that” clips uploaded by site users. Most of the files are no more than one or two seconds long, but their footprint is immediately felt by players. Why is that?

“Retro gaming sounds like these helped define millions of childhoods and made an impression when they were most sensitive—during one’s formative years,” says Scott Steinberg, a video game insider and author of Videogame Marketing and PR. “As such, they instantly evoke a sense of nostalgia that warms the heart and causes the occasional involuntary thumb twitch.”

Steinberg tells Ars these sounds were also heard a lot more than in modern games. Not by design, but by requirement. “Old-school games were harder—necessitating more plays—and consumed at a point in most players’ lives (their grade school/teen years) when disposable income was minimal,” he argues. “This prompted players to spend countless hours with popular titles to get more bang for their buck, and thus exposed everyone to more plays of each jingle than is common today.”

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Gmail’s New ‘Undo Send’ Feature Saves You From Outbox Regret [Voices]

A new feature for Gmail aims to rid your life of that classic “Oh Sh*t” email moment.

“Undo Send” puts a five to ten-second hold on all outgoing messages. If you addressed an email to the wrong person, let slip with an embarrassing typo or simply said something you really, really shouldn’t have, Undo Send can be a lifesaver. Or, more accurately, a job-saver.

As with most enhancements to Google’s (GOOG) free webmail app, Gmail users can enable the new Undo Send feature by going into their Labs settings and turning it on–click on the little green flask at the top of the screen, or go to Settings and click on the Labs tab. Gmail users can usually access new features shortly after they’re announced, but the features do take time to roll out across all accounts, so be patient if it doesn’t show up right away.

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Nielsen: Twitter’s Growing Really, Really, Really, Really Fast [Voices]

A small new survey from Nielsen about the five fastest growing “member community destinations” in the U.S. reveals what we all kind of knew already: Twitter is at the top. From February 2008 to February 2009, it clocked in at a whopping 1,382 percent growth rate. That’s to be expected, considering the amount of press the still-without-a-business-model microblogging service has gotten in recent months.

In third place is Facebook, with 228 percent growth year-over-year according to Nielsen. That’s not terribly surprising, as Facebook is still growing in the U.S. but not quite as exponentially as it once was.

There are, beyond that, a handful of interesting things to note. Two of Nielsen’s top five, for example, aren’t social networks but rather wiki creation services: Zimbio (240 percent growth) and Wikia (172 percent growth). And in fourth place is Multiply, which probably got a surge of activity when it recently acquired the MSN Groups service that Microsoft (MSFT) was spinning off.

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Daily Crunch: Fish Kill Edition

Mecha-fish to populate the ocean, nibble at silicon reefs
Echo bot, a motion-triggered reminder gadget
DIY Megaman koozies turn cans into ‘E’ tanks
Prepare for outdoor drinking season with Beer Blaster, holster, and belt
Matt Burns, a Ford Fusion, and You

Castle Cover Launch New Regal Insurance Website

Hugo ballot is up -- Little Brother up for best novel!

I can't wait to see who wins (and no matter who wins, I can't wait for the annual Hugo Losers party, which is bound to be a hell of a thing and a half). I'm going to the WorldCon for the awards, of course -- my tux is hanging in its dry-cleaning bag awaiting its annual airing.

And hey, look at that, Patrick Nielsen Hayden, who edited Little Brother, is also up for Best Editor!

Best Novel
* Anathem by Neal Stephenson (Morrow; Atlantic UK)
* The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman (HarperCollins; Bloomsbury UK)
* Little Brother by Cory Doctorow (Tor Teen; HarperVoyager UK) — Free download
* Saturn’s Children by Charles Stross (Ace; Orbit UK)
* Zoe’s Tale by John Scalzi (Tor)

Best Novella
* “The Erdmann Nexus” by Nancy Kress (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)
* “The Political Prisoner” by Charles Coleman Finlay (F&SF Aug 2008) – Read Online
* “The Tear” by Ian McDonald (Galactic Empires)
* “True Names” by Benjamin Rosenbaum & Cory Doctorow (Fast Forward 2) — Free download
* “Truth” by Robert Reed (Asimov’s Oct/Nov 2008)

Best Novelette
* “Alastair Baffle’s Emporium of Wonders” by Mike Resnick (Asimov’s Jan 2008) — Read Online
* “The Gambler” by Paolo Bacigalupi (Fast Forward 2) — Read Online
* “Pride and Prometheus” by John Kessel (F&SF Jan 2008)
* “The Ray-Gun: A Love Story” by James Alan Gardner (Asimov’s Feb 2008) — Read Online
* “Shoggoths in Bloom” by Elizabeth Bear (Asimov’s Mar 2008) — Read Online

Best Short Story
* “26 Monkeys, Also the Abyss” by Kij Johnson (Asimov’s Jul 2008) — Read Online
* “Article of Faith” by Mike Resnick (Baen’s Universe Oct 2008)
* “Evil Robot Monkey” by Mary Robinette Kowal (The Solaris Book of New Science Fiction, Volume Two)
* “Exhalation” by Ted Chiang (Eclipse Two)
* “From Babel’s Fall’n Glory We Fled” by Michael Swanwick (Asimov’s Feb 2008)

Hugos 2009

Sacramento to make its tent-city permanent?

The primitive settlement sits in the shadow of the state capitol and is home to about 300 people who have no toilets or running water, creating unsanitary conditions that advocacy groups worry could promote diseases like cholera. With the downturn in the economy and more working-class people losing their jobs and their homes, the tent city is expanding.

The mayor of Sacramento, Kevin Johnson, said in an interview that he wants to create a permanent tent city for the homeless, although he is not sure where it should be. He said he recognized that doing so would be difficult politically. But he said a permanent site could bring sanitation services and regulations like a ban on drugs and alcohol.

(Image: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)


Source: Boing Boing | 20 Mar 2009 | 6:21 am

Federal State of the Birds report: citizen science at its finest

The first federal State of the Birds report was released Thursday, marking the beginning of an unprecedented collaboration between government researchers and conservation groups — and the underlying data comes from you.

"The data that goes into this report is by and large not collected by a few tin-head scientists or conservation organizations, but by millions of individuals," said John Fitzpatrick, director of the Cornell University Laboratory of Ornithology. "We can begin to put together spectacularly massive databases that show us, in great detail with fine-grained scope, what the trends are."

The trends identified by the report are generally known. Hundreds of bird species are threatened by habitat loss, pollution and climate change. But in other ways, the report is novel. "It's a break from the one-institution, or handful-of-institution, approach," said Cornell University ornithologist Andrew Farnsworth. "This kind of partnership hasn't happened before."

Aliens among us photoshopping contest

Alien Nation 8


Source: Boing Boing | 20 Mar 2009 | 6:15 am

Colorful ecstasy mimic tablets and cocaine in a "ukelele"

The DEA's Office of Forensic Sciences publishes a monthly newsletter called the Microgram Bulletin, which features news and photos about unusual drugs and drug smuggling techniques.

I like reading the newsletter for two reasons: first, it's filled with examples of human ingenuity (the August, 2008 issue has photos of fake kidney bean made to smuggle heroin). Second, it's mind-boggling to see the weird drugs that people like to take: Butanediol? Nandralone? Boldenone? Trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine? Sceletium tortuosum? N,N-dimethylamphetamine? Testosterone cypionate? Bromo-Benzodifuranyl-Isopropylamine Hydrochloride? I've never heard of thse. Apparently, the world is filled with connoisseurs of esoteric inebrients!

The December 2008 edition of the newsletter has photos of colorful ecstasy mimic tablets (above) along with photos of cocaine being smuggled in an "ukelele" (sic), which doesn't seem to be a ukulele.

The Portland Metro Forensic Laboratory of the Oregon State Police recently received 18 vibrantly colored tablets of five different types, all suspected Ecstasy. The exhibits were seized in Portland by the Portland Police Department, incidental to a stop for a traffic violation and subsequent consent search. The tablets were mixed together; there were six round orange tablets imprinted with an Interstate 5 shield logo (total net mass 1.7 grams), four green tablets, shaped and imprinted to resemble a “Transformer” (total net mass 1.1 grams), four round purple tablets imprinted with an JL Audio logo (total net mass 1.2 grams), three pink tablets, shaped and imprinted to resemble the head of Bart Simpson (total net mass 0.8 grams), and one round blue tablet imprinted with the Superman logo (total net mass 0.2 grams). The Transformer and Bart Simpson tablets were very detailed and well-pressed, and more resembled candies or children’s chewable vitamins as opposed to typical Ecstasy tablets. Analysis by color tests (Marquis and nitroprusside), GC/MS, and UV, however, indicated not MDMA but rather a 1 :1 mixture of benzylpiperazine (BZP) and trifluoromethylphenylpiperazine (TFMPP) for the orange, green, purple and blue tablets, and a 1 : 2 mixture of BZP and TFMPP for the pink tablets. The piperazines were not formally quantitated, but were present in a moderate to high loading based on the TIC and UV. The laboratory has received numerous Ecstasy mimic tablets containing this piperazine mixture over the past year, but never before in these unusual tablet shapes. Since this initial submission, the laboratory received an exhibit containing another 30 of the green Transformer-shaped and imprinted tablets, also containing the 1 : 1 mixture of BZP and TFMPP.

Bus tours of AIG executives' homes

We're all mad at AIG. Their executives bear a large share of the responsibility for bringing the economy to it's knees, and now the same folks are getting hundreds of millions of dollars in bonuses -- at our expense. Join us for a field trip to bring them the message.

Predicting creditworthiness from faces

The researchers looked at 6,821 loan applications, 733 of which were successful. Their first finding was that the assessments of trustworthiness, and of likelihood to repay a loan, that were made by Mechanical Turk workers did indeed correlate with potential borrowers’ credit ratings based on their credit history. That continued to be so when the other variables, from beauty to race to obesity, were controlled for statistically. Shifty physiognomy, it seems, is independent of these things.

That shiftiness was also recognised by those whose money was actually at stake. People flagged as untrustworthy by the Mechanical Turks were less likely than others to be offered a loan at all. To have the same chance of getting one as those deemed most trustworthy they were required to pay an interest rate that was, on average, 1.82 percentage points higher, even when the effects of historical creditworthiness were statistically eliminated.

About face (Thanks, Farhad!)


Source: Boing Boing | 20 Mar 2009 | 6:08 am

Building Your Own Solar Panel In the Garage

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

SXSW: Devo, Mohawks and Freaky Fashions Keep Austin Weird

Nokia to shut down Mosh. What’s Mosh?

Section: Audio, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Web, Websites

Instead of buying ringtones, wall papers, games, and videos, there are a variety of services that allow you upload any of these items and send it to your phone.  One of the more popular services is Mosh, which unfortunately, is about to be shut down by Nokia because of some bad apples. 

What in the world is Mosh?

In case you never heard of this service before, you might regret not using it after you hear about all the things it could do.  Basically, you would start off by navigating to their mobile site on your cell phone (phones are not restricted to Nokia) and search for what you want.  If you don’t want other people’s creations, you can opt in uploading your own masterpieces and having it on the go.  Any file that is supported by mobile phones can be uploaded to their service.  Now let’s say you created a game that you want others to enjoy.  With Mosh, you are able to upload it to their main page and people can search for it and download it onto their phone. 

If you can’t or don’t want to download it straight to your phone, you have the ability to download it onto your computer and then transfer it to the cell phone via USB or Bluetooth.  Best of all, the service was free. 

Sounds pretty cool, so why is Nokia shutting it down?

Like I said before, the service is being canceled because of a few bad people.  Well not a few bad people a lot of bad people.  They were bringing in enough ad revenue; the main problem was that users took advantage of the uploading interface by uploading pornography and illegally obtained music.  As you can imagine, not only were people upset by the large amounts of porn, but music labels were upset to see illegally obtained music being promoted and shared even more. 

I imagine it wasn’t an easy choice made by Nokia, so only time will tell whether they made the right choice or not.  Let us know if you used Mosh often and how you feel about the service being shut down.

Check it out [Mosh] Via [NYT]

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

Appletell reviews Twitterlink and Twitfire for iPhone, iPod touch

FROM APPLETELL - Twitterlink and Twitfire are focused on posting information to your Twitter account from your iPhone or iPod touch. Neither allows you read Twitter feeds, but both are free. MORE »

Wizzywig Cartoonist Inks a Phreakin' Comic Book

Ever since Kevin Mitnick's notorious exploits of the early 1990s, commentary inspired by the dark-side hacker has proliferated like a well-crafted computer virus. There have been six books, one feature film, a documentary, and endless hagiography in the quarterly phreaker bible 2600. The latest entry in the canon: Wizzywig, a four-part graphic novel by Ed Piskor.

Why did Piskor—a 26-year-old Pittsburgh cartoonist best known for his work with cranky comic god Harvey Pekar—choose the greasy-fingered milieu of the computer underground for his solo debut? Certainly not out of technolust: He's a self-described semi-Luddite. Instead, he was seduced by the funky phreak culture. Over the course of 14 months, Piskor devoured the archives of 2600, Phrack, TAP/YIPL, and other tech prankster zines; read a shelf's worth of computer-crime tomes; and listened to the entire run (via podcast) of Off the Hook, a radio show hosted by 2600 editor Emmanuel Goldstein. In the process, he found not only a fascinating subculture but also himself. "Cartoonists have a lot in common with hackers," he says. "Both lead very solitary existences."

Wizzywig is a delight, wryly rendered and packed with dead-on details of the hacker life. Though the narrative of protagonist Kevin Phenicle tracks Mitnick's life and crimes, Phenicle (aka Boingthump) is a composite drawn not just from Mitnick but other geek malfeasants like Mark Abene (Phiber Optik) and Wired's own Kevin Poulsen (Dark Dante). Famous incidents and hacker luminaries also make Ragtime-style cameos: the 1971 Esquire article about phone phreaking, Captain Crunch's "war dialer" gizmo, and Robert Morris' 1988 Internet worm. Piskor even brings in Apple's cofounders (below), in a hilariously drawn depiction of the time the two Steves almost got busted selling blue boxes—devices that let phreakers make free long-distance calls. With the publication of volume 2, Hacker, late last year, Wizzywig is now half complete. Volume 3 (Fugitive) is pegged for late 2009.

Piskor is self-publishing Wizzywig and sells it at Edpiskor.com. He prints 100 copies at a time and spends his mornings processing orders and shipping. (It's also a kind of fitness routine: "A lot of cartoonists get really fat, so I walk to the post office every day.") By examining the PayPal paper trail, he has discovered that one of his customers is Mitnick's mother. So far, nothing from Mitnick himself. Better yet, no denial-of-service attacks on his site. The dark-siders must like him.

New Musical Instruments Battle for $10K Cash Prize

It was like a low-stakes X Prize for music as musicians, inventors and hobbyists competed against each other in the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech for cash prizes of $10,000.

More than 60 people applied, and 25 were chosen to show off a stunning variety of musical instruments of their own devising.

The judges — Harmonix co-founder Eran Egozy, Georgia Tech professor Parag Chordia and Wired.com's Eliot Van Buskirk — had to evaluate a diverse field of worthy competitors. Meet the contestants and judge the instruments for yourself.

Jaime Oliver's Silent Drum uses a technique somewhat akin to shadow puppetry to create stunning and engaging music.

As his fingers press the flexible drum head, it forms black shapes in front of a white background. Those get picked up by a video camera and piped to a laptop where Max/MSP software turns the shapes into sound in real time.

The patches are pre-programmed, but Oliver's analog, light-based interface offers a surprisingly expressive range and precision. The judges were impressed; Silent Drum took home the $5,000 first prize.

Second-place Eric Singer's GuitarBot performs guitar parts for Lemur (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots), but it's also capable of surprisingly complex solo compositions.

A single electric-powered fret slides up and down each string, while four-sided rotating picks pluck the strings. The instrument's distinctive sound comes partly from the frets that arrive just in time to play some notes, giving transitions a slightly pitch-bent quality.

Berkeley University professor, electronic music veteran and third-place winner David Wessel performs on the Slabs.

Like many of the instruments at the Guthman Competition, Slabs is an interface for the Max/MSP audio program. Interlink VersaPad touch pads allow for a level of expression not found on most electronic instruments; each pad tracks X and Y coordinates and fingertip pressure levels.

A homegrown ethernet audio driver transmits this torrent of data to a Linux PowerPC Mac, which assembles it directly into sound. Wessel says the high-bandwidth approach is "the future" when it comes to ultra-expressive electronic instruments because it allows so much performance data to be captured.

Finalist Neil Feather's Vibro Wheels rotate vibrating pellets and batteries at varying speeds, from glacial to dizzying. The wheels whip past guitar pickups with the help of a modified drill. This generates harmonic drones that move in and out of phase with each other, based on each wheel's ever-slowing rotation and the remaining juice in the batteries.

The sonic inspiration for this instrument came from the sound of a motorcycle engine, and a motorcycle's limited cargo room inspired its size (Feather needed to make Vibro Wheels small enough to carry on his motorbike).

Jan Perschy's SGSX-H 750 is just what it looks like: a motorcycle engine with a keyboard attached.

As the teeth of the engine's gears travel at varying speeds past pick-ups that normally detect piston position, they generate tones that can be controlled with a keyboard. The third component, pictured to the left of the keyboard in the photo, is the voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) that makes up for relative discrepancies in volume.

Perschy said his goal was to play the gears in a motor the same way that a Hammond organ plays its spinning tone wheels. The VCA module wasn't working when we made the recording below, an apparent victim of rough travel, but this was still a fascinating display.

Before Hye Ki Min can play her Sorisu, she must solve a game of Sudoku using wooden blocks.

Each block has contacts on the bottom edge that lead to an inner resistor. The resistors correspond to various digits, so the board knows which plays she has made and adjusts the music. Successful gameplay adds pleasing layers of melody, while a misplayed block triggers jarring dissonance.

Finalist Arvid Tomayko-Peters' The Toob is like a trumpet on acid. It tracks the air pressure generated by the player's mouth, while six buttons control and manipulate homegrown software on a computer.

Tomayko-Peters coaxes some otherworldly sounds out of the instrument, embellished by his polished stage performance and a synchronized video.

Some of the finest moments of Tomayko-Peters' performance involved adding live vocal samples in real time with the microphone. But sadly our audio sample below does not capture these.

Finalist Skot Wiedmann's untitled instrument houses discrete modular synthesizer circuit boards connected by a neural network of wires in a star-shaped interface. It has oodles of knobs for sound-tweaking.

The instrument's somewhat unpredictable nature is mitigated somewhat by performance controls: Rotating dials and blue touchpads shape and add elements to the sound, from theremin-like whines to shuffling beats. Imagine this magnificent contraption providing live accompaniment to a silent science-fi film screening.

Craig Hanson and Mike Gao built the Lumi consoles for mixing and remixing music on the fly. In their demonstration, Gao recorded a piano riff and was able to chop it up into a 16-step sequence, reconfigure it and match it to a beatboxing sample he also recorded live.

These multiapplication consoles can be networked, so one player can light up buttons on the other's board. The teams says this helps keep both players on time and in the same key, and it can facilitate teaching. With some refinement, the Lumi could come soon to a DJ table near you.

Kathrin Stumreich's fashion background inspired the Fabric Machine, a loop-based instrument that runs fabric at controllable speeds through lasers that react to thread count, thickness and seams.

She designed them to be played as a pair, with one machine focused on drums and the other on bass. To select a new sound, the operator slides the laser to another spot in the loop, so it picks up the next strip of fabric in the loop.

Langdon Crawford put much more into these handheld Air Guitar MIDI controllers than meets the eye. The lead guitar controllers offer a full range of notes for spontaneous shredding, while the identical-looking rhythm controllers handle chords.

Crawford and Air Band bandmate David Fastenow played Ween's "Voodoo Lady" live to a prerecorded drum track. They played guitar parts with finger combinations and strummed them with an accelerometer. Air guitar made real — at long last.

Pieter De Buck crafted this keyboard-like interface to control a rotating electrical engine that vibrates a dilapidated violin that he refers to as simply "the Instrument."

De Buck chose this format not for the violin's unique resonant qualities, but also for what he calls the "nostalgia factor." Rounding out the setup, in addition to the pictured controller, is a homegrown analog synth module with separate outputs for speakers and electrical engine.

Imagine if Edward Scissorhands' fingertips were light-sensitive transistors instead of scissors. If he pointed his fingertips at a cellphone, he may have noticed that its screen gave off a distinct frequency.

Finalist Robert Mathy, by amplifying the signals generated by his four optical sensor fingertips, plays various tones on a set of recycled cellphones while blinking bicycle lights provide the backbeat. The closer his fingers get to a light source, the louder it gets. And if someone turns on the lights, the show's over.

The Multi-Mallet Automatic Drumming Instrument (Madi) pounds multiple brushes and sticks on a snare drum. At the same time, its counterpart, Poly-Tangent Automatic Monochord (PAM) plays a stringed fretboard beside it. Together, PAM and Madi employ techniques that would be impossible for a human musician to replicate.

Troy Rogers, Steven Kemper and Scott Barton compose for their mechanized instruments with the goal of exploring new "temporal, timbral, dynamic and harmonic possibilities." The result sounds like no humans we've ever heard. These Ph.D. students built the instruments on their own dime, constructing Madi for a mere $200 in materials.

Peter Blasser says he built the Radio Zither from a tree that had been struck by lightning — a fitting origin, given that the rest of the instrument also incorporates traditional and electrical elements.

The Radio Zither includes pluckable strings, two theremins and a pressure-sensitive control. It's particularly effective when one of the theremins picks up the motion of the strumming hand, because you hear its motion in two ways.

Andreas Haider and his partner demonstrate the Disc.o, a light-based instrument that toys with the concept of the compact disc.

The lower platform holds a circular sequencer, which holds eight spinning CDs with chunks cut out of them. Rather than reading ones and zeros on the discs with a laser, this instrument uses photodiodes to convert the light passing through each disc into an audio signal. The pair walk around the instrument, activating and deactivating CDs to alter the sequence of tones, which emanate from eight corresponding speakers.

To build one of the strangest instruments at the competition, Thomas Gerhardt (aka DJ Porcelain and The Plates) slapped 5-bit binary RFID chips on the bottoms of the pictured plates. The chips trigger certain samples when spun on the end of the poles. But what really makes the instrument sing are the black-and-white, yin/yang-style patterns — also on the bottom of the plates — which play the samples at varying speeds depending on the rotational velocity of the corresponding plate.

Gerhardt said this unlikely combination of concepts was inspired by a strange cocktail of influences: plate spinners on the Ed Sullivan Show, the notion of DJs spinning records and his own urge to entertain an audience while performing electronic art.

The Tongue Music System is twofold. Hye Yeon Nam taps out a rhythm section by activating magnets inside glass cups, while Ramaldo Martin triggers any of 128 piano notes with his tongue using headgear normally used to control a wheelchair.

Both parts require that a small magnet be glued to the tongue with gentle dental adhesive so that it can activate the cups or communicate with the headgear — although apparently certain tongue studs work too. They hope their system will allow paraplegics to make music.

Finalist Dan Stowell bridges the gap between his larynx and a virtually emulated sound chip in his laptop by speaking the chip's language.

A microphone captures vocal articulations, allowing his voice to power the chip's quirky, 8-bit audio engine.

A tablet slung around his shoulder allows quick transitions between chip parameters, while an onscreen image displayed an 8-bit version of Stowell as well as everything that's happening on his screen.

Using a standard keyboard and homegrown software, Xiang Cao's instrument lets the player tap out melodies (alphabet) and chords (function keys) using guitar samples on the computer's hard drive.

One of the less ambitious designs in the Guthman competition, the Key Board Band makes up for that with pitch-bend and envelope-manipulation keys and the fact that it can be replicated using software, a guitar strap and a little glue.

Greg Kellum uses two ancient technologies as an interface for his hypermodern Touch Plane instrument: paper and ink. An overhead camera and table-clamped infrared lasers track finger movements with only almost no latency, allowing him to use controls that are printed on a piece of paper. In one instance, he played a paper sequencer instrument. In another, he DJed printed discs of color that triggered and manipulated samples. To switch instruments, Kellum places another sheet of paper on the table and toggles to the corresponding software. He hopes to add an acoustic sensor to the Touch Plane to tell the instrument how hard his fingers are hitting the paper.

Talk about more cowbell. Juraj Kojs's fascinating performance involves playing bells that then play other, computer-modeled bells.

The handmade sheep bells are from Kojs's home region in Slovakia and his software program not only models bells, but also allows real-life bells to essentially play other bells in a virtual environment.

His instrument, "cyberbell structures created with physical modeling synthesis," is noteworthy not only for the extensive theory, technology and cultural history that went into it, but also because it works so well in practice.

The T-Stick is a tubelike "gestural music controller" with pressure sensors under its outer plastic membrane and an accelerometer to detect touch, taps, twists, tilts, squeezes, tilts and shakes.

This data, along with data from the pressure-sensitive foot pads, travels over USB where it triggers and manipulates patches in Max/MSP. Built by D. Andrew Stewart (pictured) and Joseph Malloch, the T-Stick integrates the performer's movements more than most electronic instruments which leads to a lively performance.

The Kreol instrument turns the top two rows on a computer keyboard into a musical keyboard. But unlike a normal piano, Kreol players can alter the "Do" note – the root of the scale – in order to play the same melody in a different key, sort of like a guitarist sliding a chord to a new area of the fretboard. Meanwhile, the mouse controls note length and volume.

Mike Block and his colleagues designed the Kreol software instrument to capitalize on the fact that many of us already know where all the keys on a keyboard are. Kreol also includes drums and chord modes, so with three performers you can tackle lead, chords and rhythm (see video).

Seokhwan Cheon's Pondang instrument wasn't working during the competition – no surprise, because he had just traveled to Georgia Tech from Korea and his instrument is made mostly from water.

When it's working, the player dips his hand in the watery interface to produce a theremin-like tone while shapes float past on the screen beneath. Cheon scrambled to get the Pondang working in time for the competition, but one part refused to work, so we have no audio sample for this one. However, the video shows it in action.

See Also:

• Review: beamz Music System Lets You Compose a Symphony With the Power of Freaking Lasers
• Sneak Peek: Musical Instruments of the Future
• Robots Pass Musical Turing Test
• Sounds of Science: 8 Futuristic Musical Instruments

New Musical Instruments Battle for $10K Cash Prize

It was like a low-stakes X Prize for music as musicians, inventors and hobbyists competed against each other in the first annual Guthman Musical Instrument Competition at Georgia Tech for cash prizes of $10,000.

More than 60 people applied, and 25 were chosen to show off a stunning variety of musical instruments of their own devising.

The judges — Harmonix co-founder Eran Egozy, Georgia Tech professor Parag Chordia and Wired.com's Eliot Van Buskirk — had to evaluate a diverse field of worthy competitors. Meet the contestants and judge the instruments for yourself.

Jaime Oliver's Silent Drum uses a technique somewhat akin to shadow puppetry to create stunning and engaging music.

As his fingers press the flexible drum head, it forms black shapes in front of a white background. Those get picked up by a video camera and piped to a laptop where Max/MSP software turns the shapes into sound in real time.

The patches are pre-programmed, but Oliver's analog, light-based interface offers a surprisingly expressive range and precision. The judges were impressed; Silent Drum took home the $5,000 first prize.

Second-place Eric Singer's GuitarBot performs guitar parts for Lemur (League of Electronic Musical Urban Robots), but it's also capable of surprisingly complex solo compositions.

A single electric-powered fret slides up and down each string, while four-sided rotating picks pluck the strings. The instrument's distinctive sound comes partly from the frets that arrive just in time to play some notes, giving transitions a slightly pitch-bent quality.

Berkeley University professor, electronic music veteran and third-place winner David Wessel performs on the Slabs.

Like many of the instruments at the Guthman Competition, Slabs is an interface for the Max/MSP audio program. Interlink VersaPad touch pads allow for a level of expression not found on most electronic instruments; each pad tracks X and Y coordinates and fingertip pressure levels.

A homegrown ethernet audio driver transmits this torrent of data to a Linux PowerPC Mac, which assembles it directly into sound. Wessel says the high-bandwidth approach is "the future" when it comes to ultra-expressive electronic instruments because it allows so much performance data to be captured.

Finalist Neil Feather's Vibro Wheels rotate vibrating pellets and batteries at varying speeds, from glacial to dizzying. The wheels whip past guitar pickups with the help of a modified drill. This generates harmonic drones that move in and out of phase with each other, based on each wheel's ever-slowing rotation and the remaining juice in the batteries.

The sonic inspiration for this instrument came from the sound of a motorcycle engine, and a motorcycle's limited cargo room inspired its size (Feather needed to make Vibro Wheels small enough to carry on his motorbike).

Jan Perschy's SGSX-H 750 is just what it looks like: a motorcycle engine with a keyboard attached.

As the teeth of the engine's gears travel at varying speeds past pick-ups that normally detect piston position, they generate tones that can be controlled with a keyboard. The third component, pictured to the left of the keyboard in the photo, is the voltage-controlled amplifier (VCA) that makes up for relative discrepancies in volume.

Perschy said his goal was to play the gears in a motor the same way that a Hammond organ plays its spinning tone wheels. The VCA module wasn't working when we made the recording below, an apparent victim of rough travel, but this was still a fascinating display.

Before Hye Ki Min can play her Sorisu, she must solve a game of Sudoku using wooden blocks.

Each block has contacts on the bottom edge that lead to an inner resistor. The resistors correspond to various digits, so the board knows which plays she has made and adjusts the music. Successful gameplay adds pleasing layers of melody, while a misplayed block triggers jarring dissonance.

Finalist Arvid Tomayko-Peters' The Toob is like a trumpet on acid. It tracks the air pressure generated by the player's mouth, while six buttons control and manipulate homegrown software on a computer.

Tomayko-Peters coaxes some otherworldly sounds out of the instrument, embellished by his polished stage performance and a synchronized video.

Some of the finest moments of Tomayko-Peters' performance involved adding live vocal samples in real time with the microphone. But sadly our audio sample below does not capture these.

Finalist Skot Wiedmann's untitled instrument houses discrete modular synthesizer circuit boards connected by a neural network of wires in a star-shaped interface. It has oodles of knobs for sound-tweaking.

The instrument's somewhat unpredictable nature is mitigated somewhat by performance controls: Rotating dials and blue touchpads shape and add elements to the sound, from theremin-like whines to shuffling beats. Imagine this magnificent contraption providing live accompaniment to a silent science-fi film screening.

Craig Hanson and Mike Gao built the Lumi consoles for mixing and remixing music on the fly. In their demonstration, Gao recorded a piano riff and was able to chop it up into a 16-step sequence, reconfigure it and match it to a beatboxing sample he also recorded live.

These multiapplication consoles can be networked, so one player can light up buttons on the other's board. The teams says this helps keep both players on time and in the same key, and it can facilitate teaching. With some refinement, the Lumi could come soon to a DJ table near you.

Kathrin Stumreich's fashion background inspired the Fabric Machine, a loop-based instrument that runs fabric at controllable speeds through lasers that react to thread count, thickness and seams.

She designed them to be played as a pair, with one machine focused on drums and the other on bass. To select a new sound, the operator slides the laser to another spot in the loop, so it picks up the next strip of fabric in the loop.

Langdon Crawford put much more into these handheld Air Guitar MIDI controllers than meets the eye. The lead guitar controllers offer a full range of notes for spontaneous shredding, while the identical-looking rhythm controllers handle chords.

Crawford and Air Band bandmate David Fastenow played Ween's "Voodoo Lady" live to a prerecorded drum track. They played guitar parts with finger combinations and strummed them with an accelerometer. Air guitar made real — at long last.

Pieter De Buck crafted this keyboard-like interface to control a rotating electrical engine that vibrates a dilapidated violin that he refers to as simply "the Instrument."

De Buck chose this format not for the violin's unique resonant qualities, but also for what he calls the "nostalgia factor." Rounding out the setup, in addition to the pictured controller, is a homegrown analog synth module with separate outputs for speakers and electrical engine.

Imagine if Edward Scissorhands' fingertips were light-sensitive transistors instead of scissors. If he pointed his fingertips at a cellphone, he may have noticed that its screen gave off a distinct frequency.

Finalist Robert Mathy, by amplifying the signals generated by his four optical sensor fingertips, plays various tones on a set of recycled cellphones while blinking bicycle lights provide the backbeat. The closer his fingers get to a light source, the louder it gets. And if someone turns on the lights, the show's over.

The Multi-Mallet Automatic Drumming Instrument (Madi) pounds multiple brushes and sticks on a snare drum. At the same time, its counterpart, Poly-Tangent Automatic Monochord (PAM) plays a stringed fretboard beside it. Together, PAM and Madi employ techniques that would be impossible for a human musician to replicate.

Troy Rogers, Steven Kemper and Scott Barton compose for their mechanized instruments with the goal of exploring new "temporal, timbral, dynamic and harmonic possibilities." The result sounds like no humans we've ever heard. These Ph.D. students built the instruments on their own dime, constructing Madi for a mere $200 in materials.

Peter Blasser says he built the Radio Zither from a tree that had been struck by lightning — a fitting origin, given that the rest of the instrument also incorporates traditional and electrical elements.

The Radio Zither includes pluckable strings, two theremins and a pressure-sensitive control. It's particularly effective when one of the theremins picks up the motion of the strumming hand, because you hear its motion in two ways.

Andreas Haider and his partner demonstrate the Disc.o, a light-based instrument that toys with the concept of the compact disc.

The lower platform holds a circular sequencer, which holds eight spinning CDs with chunks cut out of them. Rather than reading ones and zeros on the discs with a laser, this instrument uses photodiodes to convert the light passing through each disc into an audio signal. The pair walk around the instrument, activating and deactivating CDs to alter the sequence of tones, which emanate from eight corresponding speakers.

To build one of the strangest instruments at the competition, Thomas Gerhardt (aka DJ Porcelain and The Plates) slapped 5-bit binary RFID chips on the bottoms of the pictured plates. The chips trigger certain samples when spun on the end of the poles. But what really makes the instrument sing are the black-and-white, yin/yang-style patterns — also on the bottom of the plates — which play the samples at varying speeds depending on the rotational velocity of the corresponding plate.

Gerhardt said this unlikely combination of concepts was inspired by a strange cocktail of influences: plate spinners on the Ed Sullivan Show, the notion of DJs spinning records and his own urge to entertain an audience while performing electronic art.

The Tongue Music System is twofold. Hye Yeon Nam taps out a rhythm section by activating magnets inside glass cups, while Ramaldo Martin triggers any of 128 piano notes with his tongue using headgear normally used to control a wheelchair.

Both parts require that a small magnet be glued to the tongue with gentle dental adhesive so that it can activate the cups or communicate with the headgear — although apparently certain tongue studs work too. They hope their system will allow paraplegics to make music.

Finalist Dan Stowell bridges the gap between his larynx and a virtually emulated sound chip in his laptop by speaking the chip's language.

A microphone captures vocal articulations, allowing his voice to power the chip's quirky, 8-bit audio engine.

A tablet slung around his shoulder allows quick transitions between chip parameters, while an onscreen image displayed an 8-bit version of Stowell as well as everything that's happening on his screen.

Using a standard keyboard and homegrown software, Xiang Cao's instrument lets the player tap out melodies (alphabet) and chords (function keys) using guitar samples on the computer's hard drive.

One of the less ambitious designs in the Guthman competition, the Key Board Band makes up for that with pitch-bend and envelope-manipulation keys and the fact that it can be replicated using software, a guitar strap and a little glue.

Greg Kellum uses two ancient technologies as an interface for his hypermodern Touch Plane instrument: paper and ink. An overhead camera and table-clamped infrared lasers track finger movements with only almost no latency, allowing him to use controls that are printed on a piece of paper. In one instance, he played a paper sequencer instrument. In another, he DJed printed discs of color that triggered and manipulated samples. To switch instruments, Kellum places another sheet of paper on the table and toggles to the corresponding software. He hopes to add an acoustic sensor to the Touch Plane to tell the instrument how hard his fingers are hitting the paper.

Talk about more cowbell. Juraj Kojs's fascinating performance involves playing bells that then play other, computer-modeled bells.

The handmade sheep bells are from Kojs's home region in Slovakia and his software program not only models bells, but also allows real-life bells to essentially play other bells in a virtual environment.

His instrument, "cyberbell structures created with physical modeling synthesis," is noteworthy not only for the extensive theory, technology and cultural history that went into it, but also because it works so well in practice.

The T-Stick is a tubelike "gestural music controller" with pressure sensors under its outer plastic membrane and an accelerometer to detect touch, taps, twists, tilts, squeezes, tilts and shakes.

This data, along with data from the pressure-sensitive foot pads, travels over USB where it triggers and manipulates patches in Max/MSP. Built by D. Andrew Stewart (pictured) and Joseph Malloch, the T-Stick integrates the performer's movements more than most electronic instruments which leads to a lively performance.

The Kreol instrument turns the top two rows on a computer keyboard into a musical keyboard. But unlike a normal piano, Kreol players can alter the "Do" note – the root of the scale – in order to play the same melody in a different key, sort of like a guitarist sliding a chord to a new area of the fretboard. Meanwhile, the mouse controls note length and volume.

Mike Block and his colleagues designed the Kreol software instrument to capitalize on the fact that many of us already know where all the keys on a keyboard are. Kreol also includes drums and chord modes, so with three performers you can tackle lead, chords and rhythm (see video).

Seokhwan Cheon's Pondang instrument wasn't working during the competition – no surprise, because he had just traveled to Georgia Tech from Korea and his instrument is made mostly from water.

When it's working, the player dips his hand in the watery interface to produce a theremin-like tone while shapes float past on the screen beneath. Cheon scrambled to get the Pondang working in time for the competition, but one part refused to work, so we have no audio sample for this one. However, the video shows it in action.

See Also:

• Review: beamz Music System Lets You Compose a Symphony With the Power of Freaking Lasers
• Sneak Peek: Musical Instruments of the Future
• Robots Pass Musical Turing Test
• Sounds of Science: 8 Futuristic Musical Instruments

March 20, 1995: Poison Gas Wreaks Tokyo Subway Terror

1995: Religious cultists release the toxic nerve gas sarin at multiple locations in the Tokyo subway. A dozen people will die, and thousands suffer injuries ranging from mild to severe.

Aum Shinrikyo was a Japanese cult combining bits of Buddhism, Hinduism, shamanism and end-of-days Christianity. The name combined the Buddhist mantra om with the Japanese for "supreme truth."

With a worldwide membership of 20,000 to 40,000, Aum had a net worth in 1995 of about $1.5 billion. It made money through standard religious techniques like donations, tithing and paraphernalia sales. It also employed the New Age technique of high-priced indoctrination seminars. In addition, it ran some businesses, including a restaurant chain and a computer factory that assembled Taiwanese electronic components into computers it sold at its own downtown Tokyo store.

The cult also built a facility to manufacture biological and chemical weapons by the ton. Aum experimented with botulin toxin, anthrax, cholera, Q fever and the Ebola virus. Operatives tried to release botulin near the Diet in 1990, and near the imperial palace in 1993. An anthrax release from its Tokyo office building in 1993 caused foul smells, brown steam, pet deaths and stains on cars and sidewalks. None of these attacks is known to have caused death or injury.

Things changed on June 27, 1994. Cult members drove a truck to a residential neighborhood in Matsumoto, about 200 miles northwest of Tokyo, then used a computer system to remotely release a cloud of sarin. Their primary targets were three judges who lived there and were about to rule against the cult in a big real estate case.

Sarin was first created in Nazi Germany. The volatile nerve agent is 500 times more toxic than cyanide: A single pinhead-size drop can kill an adult. The Matsumoto sarin attack killed seven people and injured 500, of whom 200 were admitted to hospitals at least overnight.

Despite all that, Aum Shinrikyo managed to pull off its most audacious — and deadly — attack just nine months later. In the Monday morning rush hour of March 20, five cult members boarded different subway trains converging on central Tokyo.

Four of them each carried two plastic bags loaded with sarin, and the fifth had three bags. At nearly the same moment, they each dropped the bags to the floor of the jam-packed train and punctured them with a specially sharpened umbrella tip. The cultists then quickly stepped off the trains as they pulled into the next station. Getaway drivers were waiting outside the station for each of them.

The liquid began vaporizing, and people began getting sick. Some of them got off the trains at subsequent stations, stumbling onto the platforms. At each stop, more gas spread, and more liquid was tracked off the trains and into the stations. The deadly sarin vapor also clung to the clothes and bodies of its victims, sickening those who rushed to their aid.

Some of the trains continued traveling — one for an hour and 40 minutes — before finally stopping to deal with the emergency ... and stop spreading it. Emergency and hospital services later got heavily criticized for the uncoordinated response.

Symptoms included bleeding from the nose and mouth, coma, convulsions, difficulty breathing, extreme sensitivity to light, flulike symptoms, foaming at the mouth, fevers, loss of consciousness, loss of memory, loss of vision, nausea, vomiting, paralysis, respiratory problems, seizures and uncontrollable trembling. Some survivors suffered these problems permanently, along with disturbed sleep, nightmares and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Many victims with initially mild symptoms went to work before sickening later and going to the hospital. Others probably never sought medical care. Estimates of the injured range from 3,800 up to 6,000. The sarin killed 12 people.

Police began raiding cult buildings and property all over Japan within 48 hours, wearing hazmat equipment that had been issued to them for this purpose ... the week before the Tokyo attack. The cult had in fact gotten wind of an impending crackdown and unleashed its subway attack to kill police officers.

The Japanese government revoked Aum Shinrikyo's status a religion and seized as many of the cult's assets as it could find. Some members later reorganized on a much smaller scale as Aleph (the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet and a key symbol in mathematical set theory).

About 200 people were arrested. About 20 are either still in Japan's lengthy trial process standing trial or have already been convicted. At least eight Aum members, including the founder, have received death sentences for their roles in the attack.

Source: Emerging Infectious Diseases, Japan 101

Molecular Frameworks, the Building Blocks of All Life

Sure, the world is complicated, but not as complicated as you might think. It turns out that most organic molecules—the kind of chemicals that make food tasty, perfumes fragrant, and life alive—derive from a few relatively simple architectures.

Together with a bunch of data-minded colleagues, Alan Lipkus of the Chemical Abstracts Service took a deep dive into his organization's century-old library of 24 million organic compounds—most of them synthetic. They found that more than half are built from just 143 basic shapes, or "frameworks." And the rest? Well, building those requires the other 836,565 cataloged frameworks.

Why do a handful of fundamental shapes get all the work? In part because chemists typically create new molecules—in the search, say, for potential new drugs—from the ones they're familiar with. It's cheaper. But Lipkus hopes that showcasing this lopsided approach will encourage researchers to work farther out on the long tail of molecular geometry. "A lot of structures have not been fully explored," he says. "There could be interesting things to discover." Here's a snapshot of the newly discovered shape-alphabet.

Top 30 Molecular Shapes

Molecules are clusters of atoms joined like Tinkertoys. The range of possible structures is vast, but they can all be categorized by "molecular framework"—the underlying rings and connectors. Most common by far is the hexagon—a ring of six atoms, with one at each corner, that's the basis for nearly 10 percent of known organic compounds. Here are the top 30 most common frameworks, with frequency of occurrence in parentheses.

How to Make Molecules

1. How does one framework produce many different molecules? Take the common hexagon. Make it out of carbon (C), keep adding side chains, and you get a huge variety of chemicals with different properties. The sequence at right illustrates one way to make the pain reliever acetaminophen.

2. Start with a different shape—the pentagonal ring—add side chains, and you generate a whole different set of chemicals. No matter how complex it gets, the underlying structure remains the same. Beginning with a carbon pentagon, one possible result is the hormone-like prostaglandin.

Scientists Crawl the Web to Foretell Ecosystem Collapse

Mecha-fish to populate the ocean, nibble at silicon reefs

Don’t you people see what’s happening? They’re taking over! First our pets, then our fashion models (expensive pets essentially), and now… our fish? Well, if you’re planning on replacing the world’s natural organisms with your own silicon creations (as the machines certainly are), then it makes sense to start small. Self-replicating micromachines, solar-powered bugs, and now mechanical fishies.

Well, I guess it’s not all part of the plot. These fish, created by engineers at the University of Essex, are essentially mobile pollution monitors. They’ll be swimming up and down rivers and exploring seas, recording information as they go. They navigate independently and can return to a docking station to charge, so conceivably you could just turn about a billion of ‘em loose in the oceans and let them drift. Of course, there are two factors to consider: attrition and cost.

These fish are made to look just like real fish, and if you watch the video above, I think you’ll join me in saying that they’ve done a pretty impressive job. If you were a shark or other aquatic predator (assuming you’re not), I doubt you’d discriminate. Okay, so some are going to get eaten. Granted. That won’t be a problem unless they cost like $1000 each, right? Oh, you say they cost $30,000 each? I guess we have a problem then.

I don’t think they’ll be taking over any time soon at that cost, but apart from my fears of the coming robocalypse, I hope they’ll get a couple out there.

Source: Gizmodo | 20 Mar 2009 | 3:00 am

Australia's Vast, Scattershot Censorship Blacklist Revealed

mask.of.sanity writes "Australia's secretive Internet filter blacklist held by its communications watchdog has been leaked, revealing the government has understated the amount of banned Web pages by more than 1000. Multiple legitimate businesses and Web sites have been banned including two bus companies, online poker sites, multiple Wikipedia entries, Google and Yahoo group pages, a dental surgery and a tour operator. Andrew Twaits, CEO of Betfair, a billion-dollar business blocked by the blacklist, was furious the government has potentially annexed tens of millions of dollars in revenue after the Betfair.com gambling site was blacklisted. The blacklists were reportedly leaked by a Web filter operator to wikileaks which has published the full list of banned URLs. Outraged privacy advocates say the government has effectively lied about the amount of URLs included in the blacklists, totalling more than 2300, and the type of content which it would ban. The leak follows a series attacks on the watchdog in which irate users successfully lobbied for web sites to be banned, only to be threatened with an $11,000 fine for publishing the link contained in the PR response. It was also revealed the watchdog can ban Web sites at a whim, with no accountability."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2009 | 2:59 am

Google Street View now encompasses the UK and more

Google has updated its Street View to include such major UK cities as London, Belfast, Birmingham, and Cardiff (hello to my friends in Wales). Predictably, the privacy argument has arisen; I say predictably because it hasn’t died down here in the states yet. And after all, the “surveillance society” controversy is even more hotly discussed over there — what with cameras on every street corner.

At any rate, the usual arguments are coming up and Google’s standard defense is in effect. In addition to the thousands of miles of Street View they’ve launched in the UK, they’re also launching the service in the Netherlands and we hear reports of Googlevans in Belgium. Scary and awesome.

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Mar 2009 | 2:30 am

BlogTalkRadio Now Playing In The Enterprise Space

BlogTalkRadio, the site where anyone can set up a podcast or “radio talkshow” over the web using phone calls, is playing in the enterprise space. The site, which has over 1000 live broadcasts per day, has been launching content partnerships with major publishers and media organizations over the past few months. PBS, Women’s Day Magazine and others are using BlogTalkRadio’s tools to create podcasts and shows, as well as syndicate content across the web. For example, PBS’s Worldfocus TV newscast is syndicated on the BlogTalkRadio.

The site is also creating branded private networks for major corporations like Wal-Mart, Harper Collins, and Sun Microsystems where the companies can create, syndicate and publish their own shows and podcasts. Even the government is trying to take part in this social media movement; the Pentagon has a web radio show on BlogTalkRadio. And the site has been able to monetize the partnerships by charging companies licensing and sponsorship fees for the branded channels. The companies can put their own ads in their shows, which can include banner, pre-roll audio/video or host spoken ads. The companies are also charged a fee if that they want live events streamed to their BlogTalkRadio channel or any website. The radio platform is also rolling out a set of premium services for both consumers and businesses so that hosts can use the advanced switch board, and upload other non-BlogTalkRadio produced mp3’s.

We’ve written about BlogTalkRadio’s unique platform before. Its of no surprise that the enterprise space is seeing this site as a possible place to add viral content. The site simply allows individuals and companies to use a phone to conduct a live broadcast via the web. Participants dial a phone number, enter the broadcast and then the entire conversation is streamed on air live through the BlogTalkRadio Web site. The site also archives all radio shows as podcasts, so they can easily be uploaded to iTunes and then shared on other blogs, sites etc. BlogTalkRadio’s founder and CEO, Alan Levy, says the site’s shows get on average 4,000,000 listens/downloads per month and close 1 million unique visitors to the site monthly.

Another similar site is TalkShoe, a web service that enables anyone to create, join, or listen to live discussions and podcasts, but TalkShoe’s interface is not nearly as comprehensi as BlogTalkRadio’s interface. Plus, BlogTalkRadio seems to have a more diverse set of content, both from consumers and brand partners.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Mar 2009 | 2:15 am

Can you trust user reviews? Tips to find honest evaluations

Section: Web, Websites

PCWorld recently published an article about user reviews in the iPhone app store and how some of them are planted.  Wired actually had a screen shot of a job post offering $4 to anyone who would post a 5 star review of the SantaLive app. Just a few months ago a Belkin employee was caught offering payment for positive reviews, and Amazon’s Kindle 2 user review section are full of reviews from people who don’t even own the device.  Yet, these days more and more people rely on user reviews when deciding to make a gadget purchase, especially these days when every dollar counts.  So how do you know what reviews to trust?

Diversify. Don’t rely on a single site for your reviews. Check out a wide range and compare reviews between them.  By searching around, you’ll get a much better idea of what’s true and what’s not.  If you see the same great review on each site, think twice.

Be wary of the source.  Don’t put much value on user reviews found on the manufacturer’s site.  There’s a reason you rarely see negative ones there.  They are there to sell you something.  Why on earth would they post negative reviews? 

Look for balance and details.  The best reviews include the pros and cons of the device along with lots of details.  A gushing, yet vague, review is likely to be either planted or written by someone who doesn’t even own the device. 

Along with these tips, follow your instincts. If a review doesn’t sound right, it probably isn’t.  In the end, when it comes time to make a purchase decision you need to use your best judgment. User reviews can help, as long as you don’t read them with a blind eye!
     
Read [PCWorld]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Mar 2009 | 2:14 am

Perfect Timing Guys: Bang & Olufsen Unleashes 103-inch, $130,000-plus TV

All the logical signs in the last few months have shown us that Plasma televisions are on their way out, but it looks like Bang & Olufsen hasn't gotten the message.

Now, the Danish company is releasing a massively expensive ($136,220) 103-inch plasma television that spits on the economic frugality of the day and probably no one but its own mother will be able to love.

The Bang & Olufsen BeoVision 4-103's most distinctive features are an admittedly beautiful aluminum frame design and the addition of its BeoSystem 3 and VisionClear tech that automatically adjusts colors and brightness. For the latter, it means that every 120 hours, the TV automatically re-calibrates itself, which is pretty cool and surely useful.

It also has a motorized floor stand that, with one button press, lifts the TV and turns and tilts it to specific position required. Apparently, it takes about 18 seconds to move completely, along with the lower speaker triangle. And using the sleek Beo5 remote, you can control all of your AV gear from the TV.

But there's still no real breakthrough here that will push forward the display quality of televisions in any way. In fact, the display used by B&O for this TV is actually from Panasonic's own 1920x1080 pixel 103-inch TV. So you're just paying for the B & O name.

Pretty lame, right? Considering that the Panasonic 103-inch TH-103PF9 panel costs 'only' $70,000, you could almost get two 103-inch TVs for theprice of one over-priced, premium TV.

But we're really not surprised by this thing. Bang & Olufsen's always maintains a high-end, high-class operation and since the company keeps bringing out these uber-gadgets, someone must be buying them.

Recently, B & O released an impressive $6,000 music system with Pandora-like analysis, but we easily imagined a competing system that used most of the same features for much less than that.

The BeoVision 4-103 will be available in July 2009.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 20 Mar 2009 | 2:09 am

MySpace Launches In-Browser Photo Editing Tools

MySpace has integrated a new Flash-based suite of photo editing tools into its site, giving users the ability to crop, edit, and stylize their photos from directly within the browser. The tools are powered by Fotoflexer, a browser-based photo editing startup that also powers Photobucket’s image editing features (Photobucket and MySpace are owned by the same company, so this isn’t too surprising). To access the feature, select a photo in one of your MySpace photo albums and press the ‘Customize Photo’ button.

The new tools allow users to edit their photos in a variety of ways, including options like red-eye removal, blemish removal, and cropping, as well as a number of image filters like ‘pop art’ and ‘neon colors’. Users can also drag and drop speech bubbles and virtual stickers to embellish their pictures - a feature that I’m sure MySpace users will love, given their propensity to customize their profiles (though I’m a bit worried they might take the photo customization too far). There’s nothing revolutionary here, but it’s fun and convenient.

In contrast to MySpace’s tools, Facebook’s photo editing features are essentially nonexistent (you can rotate images, and that’s about it). I can understand why Facebook might not be keen on helping its users add silly thought bubbles or colorizing effects, but red-eye correction and cropping would certainly be welcome additions.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:53 am

Review: 20 minutes with Fujitsu's Handy Drive 5

If you're looking for a fat portable hard drive, Fujitsu's 500GB HD5 hits the spot. A simple black slab, it's pretty enough, but quiet operation is more important, and it didn't irritate. Read-write speeds hit 20-25MBps (xbench results), and it ran just fine from the USB port. A USB power adapter is supplied for use with unpowered hubs or ports that won't supply overcurrent.

Fujitsu also claims it uses 35% less power in the long run compared to previous models, and provides a copy of Acronis True Image Personal Backup pre-loaded.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:48 am

CrunchGear Travels Cross-Country

Our own car guy, Matt Burns, will be driving from Dearborn, Michigan to San Francisco in a new Ford Fusion Hybrid, a Ford we can all truly be excited about. He'll be running contests and reporting live from the road so if there's anyplace you think he should visit, speak now or forever hold your peace. Matt's trip was even written up in the local Flint news where he describes his job to incredulous reporters. To wit:

Source: TechCrunch | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:33 am

Review: Griffin Technology AirCurve Acoustic Amplifier for iPhone

My initial thoughts upon receiving the Griffin Technology AirCurve to review were, “Great, a speaker that requires no power. That’s cool.” I thought about it some more and began to feel differently though. I came to a new conclusion that for all the coolness and “green-ness” of its lack of power consumption, that it may not be as realistic or as practical as it seems for repeated use. I mean, we know that the battery life on the iPhone is not that great right? So anywhere I would be away from a power source long enough to require the benefits of an “un-powered” speaker would be too long for the iPhone battery to sustain as your sole sound system provider for very long in the first place—like if you were camping for 3 days or something. And if you are at home or at the office, where electricity is abundant, why not just plug in some regular powered speakers and get more volume and bass response?

Whoa now. Lets back up a bit shall we. First of all, what exactly IS the AirCurve?

The AirCurve is an acoustic speaker for the iPhone 2G and 3G that is made by Griffin Technology. It actually amplifies the iPhone’s tiny speaker’s output by about 10 decibels. By itself, the AirCurve’s minimalist design is elegant enough and when propped up on top, the iPhone has a nice visual appeal too. Generally, it seemed like something I would think of as pretty neat. But I kept thinking to myself “is this something I would really use?”

As I stated, I was skeptical, but vowed to use it enough to get a real sense of its capability. Just so you know, it is a naturally amplified acoustic speaker and that means exactly what it sounds like it means. It can only do with what it is given, and the output of that little iPhone speaker is not much to work with, from a fidelity standpoint. I have to say, that the volume it achieves is impressive, but to be frank, it does lack much of the bass response that regular powered speakers provide. But the more I used it, the more I found there was something nice and familiar about listening to music pumping thru the AirCurve—something nostalgic. It reminded me, with familiar brightness, of listening to a transistor radio as a kid, while washing the family car. It reminded of rocking out to Bruce Springsteen at picnics around that same time. There is something about the nice, low-tech echo it emits that grows on me and reminds me that human beings are still analog creatures no matter how digitized we become, as consumers. There is something nice about propping the iPhone up on this little cochlear port and hearing songs in lo-fi easy elegance—outside, inside or in the background. In short, after using it a bit, I found I really liked it for what it is.

Whoa. That’s deep, eh? Ok, maybe I’ve gone too far with the overly quippish anecdotalism. My point is that if you are searching for a high fidelity speaker solution for your iPhone 2G/3G then the AirCurve is not for you. However, if you are looking for a smart, easy and portable way to listen to music, in the background, then this device perfect. At $20 it won’t set you back that much and would be great for use in the backyard, in the kitchen or at a desk.

And if you buy it and are such a stuffy audiophile that you can’t appreciate its simple styling and quality, it would make a sweet fish dorm for your aquarium or an equally svelte container for spare change.

Bottom Line:
The AirCurve is recommended! Griffin does it again with smart, clever and creative tech solutions for mobile audio.

Editor’s Note: Yes, I know we already reviewed the AirCurve. Apparently we never sent Intern Jason the memo and now we have two viewpoints.

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:33 am

Matt Burns, a Ford Fusion, and You

Our own Matt Burns will be driving from Dearborn, Michigan to San Francisco in a new Ford Fusion Hybrid, a Ford we can all truly be excited about. He’ll be running contests and reporting live from the road so if there’s anyplace you think he should visit, speak now or forever hold your peace. Matt’s trip was even written up in the local Flint news where he describes his job to incredulous reporters. To wit:

He’s now associate editor of CrunchGear.com and also freelances to other tech sites, writing about 12 posts a day. Most are 300 to 400 words but a few are longer, on everything from Blu-ray formatting to the latest satellite navigation systems.

“I got the job with a few sentences in an e-mail. That’s how this world works. It’s very informal,” said Burns. “I didn’t even talk to anyone on the phone for three or four months. It’s a pretty weird work atmosphere where you rarely see or talk to people.”

The first time he met fellow staffers was at a big consumer electronics show in Las Vegas.

“But we talk all day long in a chat room. I feel as close to these coworkers as anybody I’ve ever worked with, if not more,” he said.

Look for more reports tomorrow as Matt begins his 10-day trek across these United States. Here’s a bit about Matt’s car, the newest hybrid vehicle in Ford’s line-up:

A selection of specially refitted 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrids are set to embark on a national journey across the United States. Matt Burns, from the gadgets, gear and computer hardware blog CrunchGear is the first participant in the Ford American Hybrid Tour. Beginning his ten-day road trip at Ford Motor Company Global Headquarters in Dearborn, MI, Matt will travel across the country in a brand new, fully-equipped 41 mpg 2010 Fusion Hybrid, while blogging about his adventures en route.

Advice? Stops? Calls for meet-ups? Dump ‘em here.

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:31 am

Report: U.S. bird species declining

From Atlantic beaches to Midwestern prairies and Hawaiian forests, one-third of the 800 U.S. bird species are in danger, a report released Thursday said. The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:30 am

Researcher predicts 2030 food/water crisis

Britain's leading government scientist says the world faces a perfect storm of food, energy and water shortages by 2030. John Beddington said the world's population is estimated to reach more than 8.3 billion by 2030, increasing demand for food and energy by 50 percent and the need for fresh
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:21 am

/C O R R E C T I O N -- hotels.com/

In the news release, "hotels.com Welcomes Spring With Record-Breaking Sale," issued 19-Mar-2009 by hotels.com over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that under the listing for the destination Myrtle Beach, the discounted rate should be "$67.95" instead of "$46.45" as originally issued inadvertently.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:21 am

Appletell reviews Focal XS 2.1 Satellite Speakers

FROM APPLETELL - Have you ever purchased something that changed your life? I’ve found another product to add to that list: the Focal XS 2.1 speaker set. MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:15 am

Review: A few hours with Motorola's Tundra

Motorola's Tundra is a phone built for abuse. Though simply specified given its $200 price tag -- and that's with a two-year contract -- you can drop, kick and even get it wet and expect it to survive. Here's video of it being flung hundreds of feet by a catapult. Here's video of it being stomped, bashed with a rubber mallet, run under the tap, and driven over by a car.

It's military-grade, withstanding the benchmarks of dust, rain, humidity and temperature resistance outlined in MIL-STD-810F. According to Motorola, it will operate at between -10C and 55C, survive four-foot drops onto hard surfaces, and 15 minutes of use in heavy rainfall.

That said, it's still not a particularly great cellphone. It's got a 3G GSM radio, push-to-talk and GPS. The menus are zip-fast, too, and the unit was perfectly reliable. But with little else to distinguish it from models that come free with cellular contracts, every penny of that stiff price tag is a waste if you don't have use for the armor.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:14 am

Tibetan Exiles Fight Online Censorship One Troll at a Time

This week marks the 50th anniversary of the Dalai Lama's flight into exile. With this anniversary, there have been renewed calls for Tibetan autonomy throughout the world, and a correspondingly harsh response by China's military within Tibet. In the UK Times, this profile of a Tibetan exile based in Canada named Thubten Samdup, who heads an online outreach program that seeks to counter anti-Tibetan sentiment in Chinese language message boards and chat rooms. Snip:

In a simple office overlooking the Himalayan foothills of India a young Tibetan man sits at a computer, trying to succeed where the Dalai Lama has failed for 50 years — by talking to the Chinese. Every day, Sonam and ten other Tibetans — all fluent in Mandarin — surf social networking sites in search of Chinese people to talk to about their homeland. It can be painstaking work.

“Hi, want to chat?” Sonam, 32, asks one man from Beijing. “You male or female?” comes the reply. “Male.” “Not interested.” Like this one, many of the millions of Chinese in chat rooms are searching for love. Most do not want to talk politics. Some become abusive when they realise they are talking to Tibetan exiles.

Sonam contacts about fifty or so people every day and says that half are willing to chat and five or six want to talk in depth. He now has 200 “old friends” to whom he sends information on the Dalai Lama to circumvent China’s “Great Firewall”, which blocks websites about the exiled Tibetan spiritual leader. “We don’t say this is right or wrong, or that the Chinese Government should be overthrown,” Sonam told The Times. “We just give people an alternative source of information.”

The aim of the project is bold: to change attitudes towards Tibet among ordinary Chinese in the hope that they will gradually shape Beijing’s policies. Sonam and his colleagues can talk to only a tiny fraction of China’s 300 million netizens — who are notoriously nationalistic. Arguably it offers better prospects, and more immediate results, than the failed negotiations between China and the Dalai Lama, who fled to India 50 years ago yesterday.

Wily Tibetan messengers outfox censors of 'Great Firewall' of China (UK Times -- did they really have to use the adjective "wily?" / Thanks, Oxblood)

Here's the website for the foundation headed by Mr. Samdup.

Related news: fishy reports of pink suitcases packed with TNT in Lhasa (later said to have been detonated by robots), military occupation of Lhasa during the anniversary of the 2008 riots; "How China Invaded California and Took Over Our Legislature", and an article published in Xinhua demanding that the Dalai Lama apologize to China (funny how that logic works).


Source: Boing Boing | 20 Mar 2009 | 1:06 am

Punktronica podcast

BB pal Ian Holmes points us to a fantastically intense electronica mix by Chavy Boys of London. Ian writes:

As a hardcore/punk fan, you might like the following XLR8R podcast...

It's garage/house, but with the choppy, anarchic sampler energy of early rave, and some of the aggression of punk bands like The Exploited.

"Everybody in the club, if you hate someone right now, you need to turn to them and punch them in the fucking face!"

Chavy Boys of London podcast


Source: Boing Boing | 20 Mar 2009 | 12:52 am

Red meat linked to macular degeneration

An Australian study suggests a diet heavy in red meat may increase the risk of age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness. The report, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, said people who eat 10 or more portions of red meat each week are nearly 50 percent more likely to experience deterioration of the retina. Substituting chicken at least three times a week reduces the risk by more than 50 percent, Britain's Telegraph newspaper reported Thursday. Macular degeneration is caused by the growth of blood vessels under the center of the retina.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 20 Mar 2009 | 12:42 am

Review: A day with Asus' Eee Top

+ Small footprint, suprisingly stylish
+ 1366 x 768 Touchscreen works well
+ Custom Opera browser designed to be touch-surfed
+ Affordable
+ Fanless, silent.
+ Perfect for a kid's bedroom

- Nettop performance not top of class
- No optical drive or TV Tuner
- Would make a poor main machine

Asus' Eee Top is a suprise: a cute all-in-one with a great touchscreen and an equally great price. At just $600, it's little more than half the price of HP's cheapest TouchSmart.

Yes, the 15.6" screen is small, and performance isn't stellar——it's a desktop version of a popular line of netbooks, after all--but it makes a neat second computer for the kitchen or a kid's bedroom. Inside is a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive. It weighs 9 pounds and has a webcam, an SD/SDHC card reader, ethernet, WiFi, and a generous five USB ports. The ambient blue light at the bottom can be dimmed or turned off, and there was no audible fan noise.

It even looks nice, with an understated but classy design (in white or black) and matching keyboard and mouse. It also comes with a chunky stylus for getting at small icons.

Eee Top runs Windows XP, and has a nicely-designed touchscreen menu/nav program to make it easy to jump to the included apps and games. Unfortunately, it didn't seem possible to customize it. Included are a selection of Eee-branded apps and games, such as Eee Cinema for watching movies, Eee Cam for recording and dressing up webcam input, and Eee Memo, for taking handwritten notes. The best of them is a custom edition of Opera, designed with touchscreen browsing in mind.

A few changes would be nice. There's no optical drive (Asus will soon offer a matching USB external as an optional upgrade), and I often found myself wishing it had a TV tuner. A larger, more powerful version would also be welcome.

Given its obvious limitations, I'm not going to knock the Eee Top: it's perfect for a dozen niche roles, from the office's reception desk to your offspring's lair. Just don't replace your main machine with it, O.K.?

Product Page [Amazon]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 20 Mar 2009 | 12:35 am

Peek Rumors: Google Maps, cheap e-mail

Peek made a spectacular splash last year winning loads of accolades for doing one simple task - e-mail. Being the technophiles that we are, the entire tech community bitched and moaned about what else the Peek should have in the feature set. Yes, we simply cannot leave things the way they are. So, Peek seems to have heard our whining and it appears a new device or OS upgrade is on the way. It’s unclear whether or not it will be hardware or just software, though.

A Slashgear tipster sent in a shot of Peek device with what appears to be Google Maps. By the looks of the shot they received, it could be anything, like, an image attachment.

BBG was also tipped off with the following info on how Peek plans to undermine RIM with cheaper e-mail access.

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.

Source: CrunchGear | 20 Mar 2009 | 12:30 am

IBM talks with Sun Micro not just about servers (Reuters)

Reuters - An IBM takeover of Sun Microsystems Inc would raise the prospect of creating a clear leader in computer servers, but gaining market share might not be what's behind IBM's expensive overtures in hard economic times.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Mar 2009 | 12:20 am

U.S. video game sales up 10 percent in February (Reuters)

Reuters - U.S. video game sales rose 10 percent in February to $1.47 billion, led again by Nintendo's blockbuster Wii console, as gaming continued to show resilience despite an economic downturn that has sapped consumer spending.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 20 Mar 2009 | 12:18 am

Now you can have your car and fly it, too

Section: Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Transportation

Long lines at the airport.  Flights delayed or canceled.  Increased security making the wait longer and figuring out “Am I allowed to bring this bottle of shampoo or will it be considered a weapon?“  I mean, it’s not even like they give us the free drinks and snacks anymore to make up for all the inconveniences.  Traveling by air has lost the allure for many, and often the wish is that we could have simply done the trip by our own car.  If it wasn’t so impractical mileage-wise that is.  Well, the Terrafugia Transition may just be the genie in your tired-of-airports bottle.

There have been hints and rumors of it coming, and now it arrives…the flying car.  Nope, no joke.  The Transition is a two-seater automobile that in just thirty seconds can transform into an actual plane that goes 115 mph for up to 450 miles.  On the road, it is front wheel drive and can go highway speeds, and it fits in a normal size garage when in “auto” mode.  Both modes run on standard unleaded gasoline that you can buy at any gas station.

The Terrafugia Transition in auto mode

Terrafugia calls the vehicle a Personal Air Vehicle.  The way it works is that the owner drives the car from its parking spot in the garage or wherever, to the airport and then takes off from there.  Then, when you are done, land again (at an airport), fold up your wings, and drive where you want to go.  This isn’t something you are supposed to take off using Main Street as the runaway just because it is also a car.  Keep in mind, drivers/pilots do need to have their pilot’s license as well as their drivers license to operate the vehicle.

The company claims the vehicle is great for several reasons—beyond the obvious.  They claim it is even actually safer on the road than a “regular” car since it does stand out more that people notice it, and give it a little more berth.  Also, the fact that the vehicle is able to switch from flying to driving makes it able to still be used on the road in adverse weather conditions, so a pilot doesn’t have to be up in the air; as well as the fact that automotive crash structures are incorporated into the vehicle.

The prototype was first introduced three years ago, in a project led by five pilots, all graduates of MIT.  Now, after continued work and effort on their part, that prototype has become a very real reality.

Now, the convenience of a two in one doesn’t come cheap.  The Terrafugia Transition will run you $194,000.  But, Terrafugia CEO Carl Dietrich undoubtedly feels it is worth it.  “This breakthrough changes the world of personal mobility. Travel now becomes a hassle-free integrated land-air experience. It’s what aviation enthusiasts have been striving for since 1918.“

via: yahoo

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 20 Mar 2009 | 12:13 am

/C O R R E C T I O N -- Cloakware Inc./

In the news release, Top Five Pitfalls Identified for Securing Retail Cardholder Data, issued March 19, 2009 by Cloakware Inc. over PR Newswire, we are advised by the company that the ninth paragraph in the original release should be disregarded.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 20 Mar 2009 | 12:12 am

Yapta Now Tracks Price Drops For Hotels Too

Yapta.com, an online travel website that tracks airline ticket prices for travelers has added a hotel price tracking service that will help consumers monitor and compare pricing for 110,000 national and international hotels. Basically, Yapta lets consumers choose a hotel that best suits their travel needs and then sign up to be automatically alerted if and when the price drops for a particular stay.

Yapta has included several useful features to help consumers track hotel prices. First, the site will collect the lowest published rate of a tracked hotel and will create a graph that visually demonstrates the price of the hotel over time. Users can also track multiple hotels at once and compare pricing. Alerts can be customized by drop in price or by the frequency of alerts received. And like many travel sites, users can search for hotels by filters, including star rating, price, and amenities.

Yapta previously focused only on airfare flight tracking, where you can track fares from most of the major domestic and international airlines. Similar to the hotel feature, Yapta allows users to select flights to track, and then be alerted when the price fluctuates. If the price declines after you purchase it, Yapta will help you get a refund or credit from airlines that have lowest guaranteed fare policies. (Read our original review here).

The key functionality for Yapta is the tracking feature-it’s definitely a useful and easy way to compare travel prices without the hassle of having to constantly monitor changes in hotel and flight prices. Microsoft’s Farecast forecasts flight and hotel prices and then evaluates if the given price is a deal based on past fare history, but the site doesn’t actually track flights and hotels for you. Originally a browser add-on, Yapta became a website last year and is steadily growing in popularity (the site now has 600,000 registered users compared to 350,000 users in June of 2008). This new feature should be appealing to anyone looking for a travel deal, which is basically the entire world right now.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:58 pm

TomTom Sues Microsoft for Patent Infringement (PC World)

PC World - GPS device maker TomTom has shot back at Microsoft with a claim of patent infringement, after the software giant raised concerns in the Linux community with a recent lawsuit against TomTom.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:50 pm

Tickets On Sale In Sweden For Space Tourism, Starting In 2012

think_nix writes "The local.se is reporting that, for around 200,000 USD, tickets for eager space tourists looking for that outer space adventure will be purchasable from the Sweden's Ice Hotel in Kiruna. The flights are planned to be run by Virgin Galactic, also allowing flights to be taken from New Mexico. The article further states that already around 300 tickets have been purchased."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:50 pm

Gmail Gets A Panic Button

Have you ever sent an email, and just as it was going on its merry way, you realize you misspelled something or you sent it to the wrong person. This happens to me a lot on Gmail because sending an email is not always instant. And you have more chances to experience email regret as you are waiting for one to send.

Well, now you can take advantage of that delay to “undo” the message. (Not to be confused with Gmail Goggles, which is geared more at preventing drunken emails from ever being sent out in the first place). Just enable the feature in Gmail Labs in Settings (Scroll down, it is not at the top for some reason). It only works during that 5 second delay between the time you hit send and the time that Gmail actually sends the message.

What I like about this option is that it turns a bug into a feature. Gmail is really too slow, but now you can occasionally use that to your advantage.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:44 pm

Information Services Group Launches TPI Into China

TPI Expands Global Presence to Meet Increased Demand for Sourcing Expertise from Buyers and Service Providers STAMFORD, Conn., March 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ --Information Services Group, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:38 pm

Reserve Pricing Is Now Available to Domain Name Sellers on Bido.com

BOYNTON BEACH, Fla. , March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The domain community demanded better quality domains auctioned on Bido.com and Bido has responded by addressing the core issue.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:38 pm

Survey Finds Consumers Chop Cell Phone Use To Cut Costs [Voices]

Consumers have begun reducing their cell phone use to save money in the face of the sharp economic downturn, according to a new survey.

Conducted by Opinion Research Corp. for the New Millennium Research Council, the survey of 2,005 Americans found that 39 percent of those with contract-based cell phones are likely to cut back their service to save money if the economy gets worse over the next six months.

The study also found that 26 percent of those with contract-based phones would be more inclined today than six months ago to look at alternatives, including switching to a pre-paid plan. The survey found that 5 percent of American mobile phone users have considered cutting back on extra services like Web access, email and texting, while 15 percent have already cut back on such services in the last six months. Of those users who are using data services, 41 percent say they would be “somewhat” or “very” likely to cut back if the economy worsens.

In perhaps their most startling finding, in the original version of their news release today, the NMRC and Opinion Research claim asserted that 35 million Americans have already discontinued cell phone service in the last six months due to job loss, fear of job loss, the recession or other financial concerns. But that assertion was ridiculous on the face; I called them on it, and they’ve now issued a correction.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:37 pm

Video game industry bucks downturn with Feb. sales (AP)

AP - The video game industry continued to defy the recession in February, posting double-digit year-over-year growth with Nintendo Co.'s popular Wii gaming system leading the way.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:31 pm

California State Assembly Honors Verizon for Its Domestic Violence Awareness and Prevention Efforts

SACRAMENTO, Calif., March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- The California State Assembly has honored Verizon for its commitment to eradicating domestic violence in the state.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:25 pm

Coming Soon To A Windows Live Profile Near You: Facebook Updates

Windows Live Profile, the service that essentially turns Windows Live into a non-isolated social network centered around your Windows Live ID, currently pulls in a good deal of updates from third-party services Flickr, Pandora, Twitter, Yelp, and a couple more. You can also insert any RSS feed into the streams, for instance the one for your own blog, and add it to the mix. In case you don’t remember, Windows Live Profiles was part of the big social roll-out Microsoft launched in December last year.

Microsoft refers to these streams as ‘Web Activities’ and displays update messages from contacts under the header “What’s new” on a variety of Live Services, like at the bottom of the new Windows Live Messenger interface for example, provided these users have given permission to share them either publicly or within their trusted network. I’m not 100% sure that includes the just released embedded Windows Live Messenger chat you can add to other websites, but I’m trying to figure that out.

Notably missing from the list of supported third-party service providers, particularly considering its ongoing business relationship, is Facebook. Especially now that the company has been placing much more focus on real-time status updates - supposedly as a result of Twitter envy - it seems like it belongs right there in the list of Web Activities for Live Services. And in fact, such an integration had been announced earlier this year, at CES in January, where Microsoft and Facebook said they would be creating more ties between their respective user bases (which are both considerably large) “in the coming months”.

Now, if this tweet from Marketing Manager for Microsoft Advertising Southeast Asia Geert Desager speaks the truth, we can expect Facebook feed updates to be added to Windows Live Profile’s Web Activities feature as soon as in April, possibly at the upcoming Web 2.0 Expo event in San Francisco.

April is only 2 weeks away, so if you were dying to get your Facebook status updates and photos shared to your contacts on Windows Live Messenger and Spaces automatically, you need to exercise only a little bit more patience.

(Note that the screenshot embedded at the top of the article depicts the Windows Live Messenger application on Facebook)

CrunchBase Information

Windows Live Messenger

Facebook

Information provided by CrunchBase

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

Source: TechCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:19 pm

Knowledge Computing Corporation Expands COPLINK Functionality Through Asset Acquisition of Visiphor

TUCSON, Ariz., March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Knowledge Computing Corporation (KCC), makers of the award winning COPLINK Solution Suite (R), announced today that it has acquired the assets of Canadian-based Visiphor Corporation.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:10 pm

IGT's sbX(TM) Tier One Installation Live at Ameristar

RENO, Nev., March 19 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- International Game Technology (NYSE: IGT) announced today that it has successfully installed the sbX(TM) Tier One Package at Ameristar Casino St.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 11:00 pm

CP80's Cheryl Preston Suggests "CyberSecurity" Group At ICANN

Beezlebub33 writes "A new petition has been filed under the GSNO (Generic Names Supporting Organization) of ICANN to create a new constituency the CyberSafety Constituency. Existing constituencies include 'Commercial and Business,' 'gTLD,' 'Registrars,' 'Non-commercial,' etc. The new proposed one on CyberSafety is in the 'interest of balancing free speech and anonymity with the values of protection and safety in developing Internet policy within ICANN.' If that doesn't raise red flags all by itself, consider that the person submitting it is Cheryl B. Preston. She's listed in the petition with the organization Brigham Young University, but she's part of CP80. She's suggested limiting content on port 80 to the 'right' things, and other stuff can go on other ports, so it can be appropriately filtered by the authorities. Guess who gets to decide what goes on which ports?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:59 pm

AERS/Calexus Cooperation Creates a New Generation of Business Information

VICTORIA, British Colombia, March 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Advanced E-commerce Research Solutions (Advanced) and Calexus Solutions LLC today announced a partnership that focuses on providing deep market and consumer insights from within some of the world's largest e-commerce platforms.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:55 pm

The New York Times Slaps Another Web Wrist [MediaMemo]

Just in case any of you Web publishers haven’t picked up on it yet: The New York Times (NYT) would like you to stop using the stuff it pays to produce.

The Times is still struggling to figure out how to adapt its business model to the Web era. But it seems to have have embarked on a campaign against after sites that lift too much of its content — a strategy that chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. alluded to in a speech last week.

The Times has already had reached out to aggregators Newser, the Huffington Post and Silicon Alley Insider to complain about various incidents. In the case of Newser, it sent a boilerplate letter threatening legal action.

The latest example: Apartment Therapy, a New York-based design/consumption blog network, says the paper has sent it a takedown notice, citing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, demanding that the site remove “all the pictures we’ve blogged from them in 2009.”

In a post, co-founder Maxwell Gillingham-Ryan complains that the Times doesn’t understand that his sites reprint the paper’s photos because they think they’re great.

We’ll fully admit to loving their pictures, but we’ve been very conscious to never take too much from them, only blogging a visual “taste” of an article and then pushing readers to get the rest on their site. In other words, our editorial policy has been to quote, not appropriate, just like we were all taught in high school.

Times spokeswoman Catherine Mathis declined to comment.

I can already hear the blogosphere getting ready to denounce the paper for “not getting” the “culture” of the Web, where everybody reposts everyone else’s work, and everyone in the “link-based economy” benefits. But like the Newser incident earlier this year, this one seems pretty clear: The paper doesn’t want other people — or at least commercial sites — using its photos without permission.

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:35 pm

Review: Blackberry Curve 8350i for Nextel

Nextel users usually have terrible phones. We don’t get the cool phones like the G1 or the iPhone. Instead, we get mostly Motorola stuff, and even those are typically the ‘industrial design’ versions. Even the smartphones usually stay away. Until recently, the only Blackberry you could get as a Nextel user was the ugly and awkward 7100i, which didn’t even have a QWERTY keyboard. Well, if you’re like me and you were waiting for a newer style Blackberry to be released be happy, the time has finally come.

Design wise, the 8350i is exactly what you’d expect from an 8300 series phone from RIM. It’s roughly the same as a Curve, with some differences. The handset is a little larger, most likely due to the electronics for the push-to-talk features that Nextel users are so familiar with. It’s also got a bit more bulk to it, but it doesn’t feel that much different unless you’re holding an actual Curve in the other hand. Nextel needed a couple of changes to make it fit with their product line, there’s the push to talk button located on the left side, and outlined in yellow just to make sure you don’t miss it. The edges are covered in rubber, I assume intended to add that ‘ruggedizing’ that we all want on our Nextel phone.

The good news is, the screen in the same as the Curve, namely easy to read and very bright. Sound quality is excellent, regardless of if you are making a standard voice call or using push to talk. The speakerphone works well, the keyboard is ‘clicky’ and has good tactile feedback. There are a couple of things that are a quirky however, the Curve’s standard 3.5mm headphone jack has been replaced by a 2.5mm port. Since the earbuds that come with the phone are frankly not the best, that makes upgrading a bit of a pain. Also, since the Nextel network is not necessarily the fastest when it comes to data transfers, you’ll want to use the built in wifi radio whenever possible. This will also save you on the data plan charges.

The best news is, the 8350i runs the latest version of the Blackberry OS, which uses the same menu system as the Bold. Now I’ve been using Blackberry devices for years, and I have to say that the latest version of the OS is the most intuitive I’ve ever experienced. It also means that the 8350i is preloaded with AIM, GoogleTalk, Yahoo messenger, and Handmark’s Pocket Express aggregator.

If you are a Nextel user, and you’re looking for a smartphone, you can do much worse then the 8350i. Personally, I really like the phone and I’m glad to see that Sprint is trying to get some better equipment available to the Nextel masses. All we can do is hope they stop trying to sell that awful 7100i.

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Source: MobileCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:30 pm

Flip Video: Wrong, Wrong, Wrong And Then So, So Right.

Pure Digital Technologies, the creator of the Flip Video line of digital video recorders, got their payday today: $590 million in Cisco stock, a deal we first reported may be happening a couple of weeks ago.

The San Francisco-based company is well known today for creating extremely small, well designed and inexpensive video cameras that take exceptional video. And the software that comes with the devices provides easy to use tools to edit that video and upload it to the web. But Pure Digital wasn’t always selling hit products - it took seven years for the company to get it right. In the meantime, they launched products that just weren’t quite the right thing at the right time.

The company isn’t young by startup standards - it took its first round of funding in April 2002 from Mike Moritz at Sequoia Capital with a plan of creating $20 disposable digital cameras that people brought back to the store for processing. The camera’s memory would then be wiped and the device resold.

Those cameras weren’t a commercial success because of the unexpectedly quick shift towards cell phone cameras. The Pure Digital Camera, at $20, just wasn’t appealing to enough people.

Next up was a disposable camcorder, with a similar model. You bought the device for $30, shot video, and returned to a store for processing to a DVD (the cameras were then wiped and resold). But the video cameras got atrocious reviews, and it was time to move on to something else. By this time the company had raised and presumably spent more than $28 million in capital.

Then, the seed of something great. Pure Digital still wanted to build a cheap video camera for the masses, but forget the in store processing and hope of reselling the same camera over and over to multiple people. The first “Pure Digital Point & Shoot” video camcorder was released in March 2006 and immediately had some success.

But not enough success. The camera couldn’t take still photos, and the video quality wasn’t as good as what you get from normal point and shoot cameras. They also didn’t play nicely with Macs or most video editing software. The cameras were great for low quality YouTube type videos, but they weren’t going to get the company a half billion dollar liquidity event. Most people just bought a high end video camera, or took quick videos with a point and shoot camera. In June 2008 we compared the Flip to a cheap Canon camera, and the Flip lost the battle.

Still, the camera was selling. $50 million in revenue in 2007, and $150 million in 2008. They created a new category of video camera, priced between $100 - $200, which is now being copied by just about everyone.

And then, nirvana. In November 2008, just a few months ago, Pure Digital released the Mino HD, and it is a perfect device. It weighs just 3.3 oz and takes stunning 1280 x 720 high definition video. It handles low light well and sound quality is great. It works with Macs. The editing software that comes embedded on the camera is easy to use. And best of all, there are no cords at all. Recharge the internal battery and access video via a USB connection.

Today Flip says they have 20% or so of the total camcorder market (which doesn’t include point and shoot cameras with a video feature). All product design is done in house in San Francisco, they don’t even outsource industrial design of the beautiful little gadgets.

The Company That Shouldn’t Have Happened

I spoke with Sequoia Capital partner Mike Moritz earlier today about his decision to invest in Pure Digital way back in 2002. It wasn’t easy, he said, to invest in a company that intended to “drive straight into the radiator grill of huge Japanese and Korean electronics companies,” but added that Sequoia like to invest in things that no one else would consider prudent. In later funding rounds Benchmark Capital, Crescendo Ventures and others joined the party, but even then it wasn’t clear that Pure Digital would eventually find success. Consumer electronics is a tough business.

Moritz says serious conversations with Cisco started last Fall. Earlier discussions with Sony had flatlined over price, but he says the company was willing to continue to fight independently, too. They would have had to raise another round of financing, perhaps as much as $50 million, to expand sales significantly outside of the U.S. Whether that was a bluff or not we’ll never know. But Cisco took the bait, and now owns the company. And with their distribution assets, getting Flip cameras into new markets won’t be a problem. Let’s just hope that having a huge corporate parent won’t stop Flip from innovating.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:30 pm

The iPhone Gets A New Weapon In The War On Drunk Dials

The ubiquity of the cell phone has made communication easier than ever, allowing people to reach their friends and family on a whim though phone calls and text messaging. Unfortunately, many of us become especially motivated to use these powers in various states of intoxication, often resulting in incoherent or potentially offense messages to former flames, co-workers, and people with whom we haven’t spoken in half a decade. In the last few months we’ve seen a number of approaches to preventing this phenomenon, widely referred to as the ‘drunk dial’, and today sees the launch of a handful of new iPhone applications that may well be exactly what we’ve been looking for.

The two applications, dubbed ‘The Bad Decision Blocker‘ and ‘Don’t Dial!‘, prevent users from calling designated contacts for a set amount of time (anywhere from hours to days). By banning certain ‘trouble’ contacts before a night out, users can potentially avoid any embarrassing phone calls or text messages.

I tested The Bad Decision Blocker, and Don’t Dial! seems to work the same way. After selecting the contacts that you’re looking to ban, the application asks how long you’d like to keep yourself from calling them. Once you’ve finalized the time period, the application overwrites the data in your iPhone’s address book, making it impossible to recover until you relaunch The Bad Decision Blocker after the alloted time has passed. As far as I can tell there isn’t any easy way to circumvent the block (even deleting the application doesn’t work) - a necessity given the great lengths some intoxicated users will undoubtedly go to in attempts to recover the phone numbers.

One added feature that ‘Don’t Dial’ has is the ability to designate a friend as your phone’s guardian - only after they enter pre-determined password into the phone (presumably after you’ve sobered up) will you be able to start calling your blocked contacts again. This of course assumes that you trust your friends.

For those readers looking to take their Drunk Dialing to the next level, there’s Dudler, which allows you to shake your phone to call a random contact (you can choose to always ignore a few contacts, like your mother, but doesn’t that take the fun out of it?)

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

Source: TechCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:25 pm

Slagsmålsklubben, Little Red Riding hood by faux infographics

A school project set to the song "Slagsmålsklubben" by Tomas Nilsson, retelling Little Red Riding Hood with inforgraphics-style animations.

Beware! There is techno here.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:15 pm

TechDirt's Masnick Responds To Warner's Jim Griffin On Choruss

newtley writes "TechDirt's Mike Masnick writes that the Warner Music Choruss licensing scheme amounts to a Bait-And-Switch operation. Not so, says Jim Griffin, the man charged to put it together. Masnick's story is 'factually incorrect in every respect,' he states. But Griffin 'refused to name a single factual mistake,' Masnick says, noting, 'He fails to address the key problems that we outlined: 1. Why is this program even needed when plenty of musicians are coming up with business models that work today and don't need a new mandatory license (er... 'covenant not to sue') plan? 2. Why do we need a new bureaucracy and won't that divert funds? 3. Will the industry continue to try to shut down file sharing sites? 4. Will the industry continue to push a 3 strikes plan?'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:11 pm

UnPirate: Free accounting software replacements for Quickbooks

Section: Web, Downloads, Web Apps, Websites, Features, Originals

The Pirated: Intuit Quickbooks

QuickBooks from Intuit is software used by many individuals to track their business expenses, create invoices, pay bills online, print checks and get their tax information ready for their accountant.  For the single user version of Intuit QuickBooks, you will pay upwards of $120 or you can try these alternatives instead. 

Check out the new GnuCash

The newest version of this free accounting software has features, like a checkbook style registry to easily see your transactions, balance spreadsheets, multiple currencies, and the ability to import Quicken files.  This is a good choice for users on multiple platforms since the download is supported by GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows.

Site: [GnuCash]

The quick and easy to use accounting software solution

If you want a simple straight forward software, then check out Express Accounts available through NCH Software.  You can manage one or multiple company accounts by tracking different expenses and payments.  You can also fax and email accounting reports directly from the software.  You can also use other free compatible programs, like Express Invoice, HourGuard and FlexiServer.

Site: [NCH Software]

Microsoft’s free accounting software

Microsoft Office Accounting Express has just been released in a 2009 version.  This software is ideal for home and small businesses and performs all of your basic accounting tasks, like sales tracking, invoicing and tax records.  It has similar features to the QuickBooks Simple Start program.

Site: [Microsoft]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 10:00 pm

Simulation Shows Consequences of World Without Earth's Natural Sunscreen

The year is 2065. Nearly two-thirds of Earth's ozone is gone -- not just over the poles, but everywhere. The infamous ozone hole over Antarctica, first discovered in the 1980s, is a year-round fixture, with a twin over the North Pole.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:58 pm

LumoPro LP120, a completely manual camera flash

Charlie Sorrel got a hold of the LumoPro LP120 flash, a low-cost ($120) manual flash for disciplined photographers:

As we mentioned last week, the LP120 contains an embarrassment of options. Not only can you adjust the power down to 1/32, you can trigger it in a multitude of way, all of them open standards: A hotshoe, a slave trigger (which detects the light from another flash firing for wireless use), a PC (Prontor/Compur) socket and a mini-jack socket. On top of this there is a manual zoom (push and pull the head to use it), a 270º swivel and 90º tilt. The body of the unit feels kind of plasticky, but it’s the good kind of lightweight, knock-resistant plasticky as opposed to the drop-it-and-crack kind.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:49 pm

Vintage watches with compasses for Muslim prayer

Watchismo is selling a few vintage "Muslim Mecca" watches that have compasses inside. (And, if I'm not totally dumb, markings for prayer times.)

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:44 pm

Psystar Marches Forward With Beefy Mac Clone

Psystar's legal battle with Apple hasn't prevented it from releasing a high-end Mac clone this week.

Psystar has launched the Open(3), a desktop machine equipped with a 2.53GHz Core2Quad processor, 4GB of RAM, 1TB of storage and a Blu-ray burner. Of course, it ships loaded with Mac OS X Leopard.

That's some pretty bad ass hardware. The desktop starts at $600, and with maxed-out configurations it runs up to about $2,000. However, that's still less than a Mac Pro, which starts at $2,500.

Psystar, a Florida-based company, began selling Mac clones April 2008. Three months later, Apple filed a lawsuit alleging Psystar was committing copyright, trademark and shrink-wrap infringement.

Product page [Psystar via TUAW]

See Also:

• Mac Copycat Psystar Gets Ammo to Countersue Apple
• Apple Finally Sues Mac Copycat Psystar
• Psystar Tags Back Apple With Antitrust Suit
• Apple Demands That Psystar Recalls All Hackintoshes
• Psystar Offers Cloned OS X Servers
• Apple Cries Corporate Conspiracy Behind Psystar
• Psystar: Blu-Ray Hackintosh for Sale; MacBook Clones on the Way ...
• Hack of the Clones: Why Apple Can't Stop the Copies

Photo: Psystar

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:37 pm

Review: A month with Sony's Vaio P

Yay
+ Very small and light, but still has a great keyboard
+ 1600x768 display
+ Fanless and completely silent
+ Stunning looks
+ 3G networking and GPS built-in

Nay
- You'll need to upgrade to Windows XP or Windows 7 to get the most out of it.
- 200 dpi display means text is tiny
- Expensive, and so are accessories
- Intel GMA 500 video drivers badly need updating
- Disabled SIM card slot

It is beautiful, an engineering marvel. It is fanless, silent and slim. For anyone who's ever hated carrying a briefcase—or wanted a computer that goes well with Gaultier—the Vaio P is the ne plus ultra of ultraportable computers.

For the rest, it's a $900 laptop that can barely keep up with netbooks half its price.

Sadly hobbled by Windows Vista's bloat, only those with undemanding performance requirements will enjoy it straight out of the box. Install XP or Windows 7, however, and its promise becomes more apparent.

About as small as a laptop can be while retaining a decent keyboard, the P is 9.7" x 4.7" x 0.8" and weighs just 1.4 pounds. It has a high-definition 8" LED-backlit display, 2GB of RAM, 3G internet, WiFi and GPS. The base model has a 60GB hard drive, with optional SSD upgrades. That keyboard is nearly full-size, and in the chiclet style long used by Sony and Apple, recently adopted by cheaper brands.

It has a GoBi radio, which means in principle that it can get 3G data from both Evdo and HSDPA networks. In the U.S., however, it is exclusive to Verizon. U.S. units also lack the faster processors available in Europe and Japan (you can buy imports from Dynamism) but gain integrated GPS, a feature not found abroad.

It's a nice package, for sure, but it uses a slower version of Intel's Atom chip, the Z520, which leaves it huffing and puffing to keep up with cheaper alternatives like the HP Mini.

Battery life is also poor: you'll get a little over 2 hours on balanced settings. The long-life battery doubles that, but makes the P about a third of an inch thicker. Small type on the 200dpi display can be hard on the eyes. The track-nub is surprisingly good — there was simply no space for a trackpad — but some people find it irritating and difficult to use.

More disappointing was poor video and gaming performance, even accounting for the low specifications. This is almost certainly a software issue: Intel and Sony need to step up and provide better drivers for the P's GMA 500 video chip. While it looks gorgeous, the plastic finish is fingerprint-friendly and it doesn't feel very durable.

It's hard to talk about the Vaio P without talking about its ads. After announcing it at CES to the technology tribes, Sony turned its marketing attention to professional women, deploying a bizarre campaign centered around robot fashion mannequins who wandered Manhattan making geolocated Facebook updates.

At a party at the company's Madison Avenue flagship store, I got to observe the mannequins do their thing--stand very still, looking pretty, holding Vaio Ps out for the fashion press to nervously inspect.

It's art, and I kind of liked it, but it makes one wonder just how much it would have cost Sony to make sure OpenGL worked better.

Whoever Sony wants to sell it to, here's who I think will like it: portability junkies who find netbooks too cumbersome, but who still want a usable keyboard. If the idea of that appeals to you — and you're prepared to pay for it — go for it. If you're even slightly ambivalent, however, wait until Windows 7 is out so you can avoid the hours of tinkering that the Vaio P demands to get the most from it.

Product Page [Sony]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:35 pm

Gmail's New 'Undo Send' Feature Saves You From Outbox Regret

Ever say something in an e-mail that got you into serious hot water? Google now gives users a five second window to "undo" any Gmail message before it's sent out over the tubes.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:32 pm

Mars Express finds depositional process

The European Space Agency says its Mars Express spacecraft has discovered some depositional process in Mars' equatorial regions. Scientists said the geological evidence, revealed by erosion, comes from the mineralogical composition of the Aram Chaos region, a crater about 175 miles in diameter located nearly directly on the martian equator. The ESA said the spacecraft's instrumentation suggests a significant amount of sulfates and ferric oxides.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:27 pm

Furl Changes Hands [Voices]

This week Diigo acquired fellow social-bookmarking service Furl from LookSmart, a San Francisco online advertising company. Terms weren’t disclosed, but LookSmart said in a statement in would receive “a potential equity position” in Diigo in exchange for Furl.

LookSmart bought Furl in 2004, and while it reached one million users, it didn’t quite catch on like Delicious, which has five million users and was acquired by Yahoo in 2005.

LookSmart’s unloading of Furl isn’t the first consolidation made in the social bookmarking space this year. Yahoo (YHOO) recently closed down MyWeb in order to focus on Delicious, and Google (GOOG) just shuttered Shared Stuff.

Yesterday, as LookSmart discussed its earnings with analysts, CEO Ted West said the company faced several challenges with Furl. “We did see substantial commoditization of social bookmarking services and their availability across the web — commoditization in terms of numbers of providers,” he said.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:26 pm

First Pwn2Own 2009 Contest Winners Emerge

mellowdonkey writes "Last year's CanSecWest hacking contest winner, Charlie Miller, does it again this year in the 2009 Pwn2Own contest. Charlie was the first to compromise Safari this year to win a brand spankin new Macbook. Nils, the other winner, was able to use three separate zero day exploits to whack IE8, Firefox, and Safari as well. Full detail and pictures are available from the sponsor, TippingPoint, who acquired all of the exploits through their Zero Day Initiative program."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:23 pm

Complete How-to: Tethering iPhone OS 3.0 on OS X

This took a little time, but we’ve figured out how to tether the iPhone using the instructions written by Erica Sadun. It takes about 20 minutes to get it done. You might need some basic knowledge of editing configuration files.

First you need to check if you have anything in the folder ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Carrier Support (ls ~/Library/iTunes/iPhone Carrier Support). If you don’t have this folder (like me) you have to download the file. To do that, open Terminal and paste the following command:

curl -s -L http://phobos.apple.com/version | grep -i carrier

Now search for your carrier in the list. Copy the URL and open it in your browser. The file will download to your computer.

Now you have to edit the file. If you downloaded it, you right click on it and select Show Package Contents.

There you will find three configuration files: carrier, info and version.plist. Open each of them and change the stuff mentioned in the tutorial:

Step 6: In Info.plist, change the CFBundleVersion to 5.0. Save.
Step 7: In the version.plist, change the CFBundleVersion to 5.0. Save.
Step 8: In carrier.plist do the following and then save:
(a) Add a new dictionary to the apns array:
      apn = internet
      password = password
      username = iphone
(b) In the wap dictionary (mine is wap.cingular, sts's was wap.dol.ie), add a new pair. Do not edit the password or username:
      type-mask = (NUMBER) -2
(c) Add a new pair at the top level dictionary of the carrier.plist file. (We're not sure this is strictly speaking necessary but go ahead and do it.):
AllowEDGEEditing = (BOOLEAN) YES

I didn’t find the wap dictionary so I entered the type-mask= (number) -2 to multiple places.

Now when you edited all three files and saved them, you need to pack them up. That’s easy. Just right click on the downloaded .bundle file and compress it. Right click on the zip file you just made and select get info. Change the file extension and name to [Your_carrier].ipcc. In most cases it should be ATT_US.ipcc.

Connect your phone, option+click on the update button, select the ipcc file, eject, reboot and turn on the tethering option in settings/general/network. Then pair your phone with your computer and click on the little bluetooth icon. To pair, go to the bluetooth settings screen on the iPhone. You will see your phone in the list select it and continue. Soon you’ll see a number that you have to type in to your phone.

After you have paired the iPhone with your computer, select connect to network. The phone will automatically go to tethering mode after a while. When that happens you’re done.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 9:06 pm

Soil Could Offer Help In Climate Change Battle

When it comes to battling climate change, alternative energy sources are always among the top subjects to be discussed. These forms of energy address the usual suspects: wind, water, solar and biofuels. But one man in Britain is using the soil from his family farm to create electricity.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:48 pm

Graphic Novelist Talks Brainy Comics, Sexy Apocalypse

Grant Morrison injects plenty of intellectually challenging ideas into his comics. With Final Crisis, due out in hardcover later this year, he plunges DC Comics' timeless super heroes into a bizarre battle with a powerful alien that's hell-bent on destruction.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:45 pm

Study finds elephant sharks perceive color

Singaporean and British scientists say they used genome sequencing to discover the elephant shark can see colors much in the same way humans can. Byrappa Venkatesh of Singapore's Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, and Professor David Hunt of the University College London's Institute of Ophthalmology said the finding might enhance scientists' understanding of how color vision evolved in early vertebrates during the past 450 million years. The elephant shark is a primitive deep-sea fish that belongs to the oldest living family of jawed vertebrates. It was unexpected that a 'primitive' vertebrate like the elephant shark had the potential for color vision like humans.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:43 pm

Evidence of New iPhone Models Appears in 3.0 Beta

I'm not sure if we even need evidence that Apple will release another iPhone soon, but it's here anyway.

Ars Technica's Chris Foresman reports that a developer discovered a file making references to various iPhone models, a possible new iPod Touch, and two unknown products labeled "iProd" and "iFPGA."

The developer, Steven Troughton-Smith, discovered these references in a USB configuration file. Ars has the complete list of nitty-gritty details on the device models.

A new iPhone is a no-brainer, but we're more interested in what exactly "iProd" and "iFPGA" refer to. If those are unreleased products, we can't imagine they're the official names, since they sound too clunky for Apple's tastes. Anybody have any guesses?

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:43 pm

I stopped worrying about the new movie when I saw how Kirk sat in the Captain's Chair

Thomas Vinciguerra profiles men who have built their own replicas of Star Trek captains' chairs for the Times:

For Mike Paugh, 42, a financial planner in Cranbrook, British Columbia, the appeal goes back to childhood. “I loved the show,” he said. “I had all the model kits and all that stuff, but when I moved I had to get rid of them. Now I’ve started to build again.” He spent about $1,000 on his chair, which he finished in October 2007 and put in his family’s rec room.

Mr. Paugh is one of many Trekkies who are not particularly impressed with what they have seen, in trailers and on the Internet, of the Enterprise from the new “Star Trek” movie, directed by J. J. Abrams and coming out in May. “A lot of guys are saying, ‘They’re wrecking this show, they’re not doing it the way they used to do it,’ ” he said.

“The chair, in particular, looks like some weird office chair,” he added. “But then, that’s what the original was.”

You can buy your own for $2,720 from Skymall.

Previously:

• Star Trek cologne coming in April - Boing Boing Gadgets
• Video: Star Trek Super Bowl teaser - Boing Boing Gadgets
• Here come the new Star Trek toys - Boing Boing Gadgets
• 12 things the latest trailer taught me about the new Star Trek ...
• Update: What was in the Bag? Win! (And Star Trek Pez doods ...
• Resurrecting Star Trek, the 1969 Text Adventure game for the Sigma ...
• Remote Control Star Trek Enterprise: To Boldly Go... Until The ...

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:42 pm

AT&T to sell iPhone without contract for $599 (AP)

AP - AT&T Inc. said Thursday it will start selling iPhones without requiring a two-year contract, but they will cost $400 more.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:37 pm

Recovery.gov Not Very Transparent

Bob the Super Hamste writes "CNN is reporting that the page recovery.gov is not as transparent as it claims to be. The examples pointed out are: 1. The user is greeted by a large pie chart that show the breakdown of money spent by 2 categories, state government distributions and local government distributions. 2. Finding projects involves a complicated search, information on projects is not actually hosted on recovery.gov 3. The format of the information available is of poor quality (the article specifically mentions a PDF document that was created from a scanned sideways copy of roadwork projects from New York state). Given that this site was meant to make the spending of the new stimulus money more transparent to the citizens of the Unites States of America it seems oddly opaque. CNN does seem to praise the ability for government agencies to be able to exchange HTML based information between systems, which for government I would call a massive accomplishment. I tried to find information for my state and searched for Minnesota. I got 4 matches, 2 of which were generic ones: one was the Minnesota state certification that is required for a state to receive funds and one that lays out public transportation spending for all states of which Minnesota gets $94,093,115."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:34 pm

Scientists Investigate Ongoing Volcanic Eruptions in Tonga

Scientists ventured across the South Pacific Thursday with the purpose of inspecting an undersea volcano near Tonga that has been shooting steam and ash thousands of feet into the sky for days.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:23 pm

Palm: Never Mind Our Earnings - The Pre is Going to be Awesome [MediaMemo]

Give Palm credit: The handset maker, which has been struggling to figure out whether it wants to heighten expectations or dampen them, delivered third quarter results that were just as lousy as it had promised.

Palm (PALM) said it lost 89 cents a share — or 86 cents a share after excluding one-time charges — on sales of $96 million. Those numbers are roughly what Wall Street had expected, since Palm had already warned earlier this month that revenues would be bad, and that it would experience “continued margin pressure from its legacy product lines” for a while longer. Smartphone revenue was $77.5 million, down 72 percent year-over-year.

But both Palm and Wall Street have pretty much shut the book on the old company, and its old phones, like the Treo. The future of the Palm, for better or worse, is the Pre, its to-be-released wonderphone that Palm is positioning as a competitor to Apple’s iPhone (AAPL) and Research in Motion’s BlackBerries (RIM).

But even here, Palm isn’t quite sure what to say about the phone it’s staked its future on. Last week, it had  to tell investors to disregard Palm investor Roger McNamee’s Pre hyperbole — specifically about its ability to unseat Apple’s iPhone.

Source: All Things Digital | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:22 pm

Climate Reform: Hansen Warns Democratic Process Not Working

NASA scientist and leading climate expert, James Hansen, said on Wednesday that more drastic measures may be needed in order to change the course of climate change policy."The first action that people should take is to use the democratic process.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:15 pm

Mars rover naming contest begins Monday

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:15 pm

Sony’s bookstore just got bigger by 500,000 titles, reader gets price cut

Section: Gadgets / Other, Green, Household, Lifestyle, Web, Downloads

With all the news surrounding the Kindle 2 it’s easy to forget that there are other eBook readers out there.  Well, Sony isn’t letting us forget that they have a reader out there as well.  Actually, they have two, one which actually has a touch-screen, both of which now have a vastly expanded library thanks to Google Books.

Sony has teamed up with Google to bring 500,000 public domain books to the Sony Readers for free.  Yeah, so you can get all your favorite Mark Twain, Jane Austen and William Shakespeare among others.  While the number sounds impressive, it begs the question of “how many people are actually going to be excited about this?“  Sure there’s college professors, or Literature students who study books from before the turn of the 20th century.  There might not be a huge amount of others that are really dying to read these older books on their Sony Reader.  Although, I wouldn’t mind getting a shot to actually read “The Divine Comedy” or “Beowulf” finally.

Along with the new books, Sony decided to drop the price of its PRS-700 Reader, the touch-screen model.  It used to retail for $400, and now goes for $350.  So it costs $9 less than the Kindle 2, has possibly a smaller official bookstore, but a ton of new public domain books.  The Sony Reader, however, is fully capable of reading PDFs, RTF documents and other formats that the Kindle 2 can’t.  I know I personally have a ton of PDFs that I wouldn’t mind carrying around with me to read on an eBook reader, and I see no reason to pay Amazon a few cents to convert it to a suitable format for me.

Of course, there are other ways to get books on the eBook readers that don’t require going through either Sony or Amazon.  Online stores such as Fictionwise, which was recently purchased by Barnes & Noble, offer eBooks in a variety of formats that can work on the Sony Readers, Amazon Kindle, or even Stanza on the iPhone/iPod touch.

Read [PR Newswire]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 8:00 pm

Video: A/V music gallery installation by VJ Fader

Here's video of a fun A/V toy created by VJ Fader, currently installed at the Spring Arts Gallery in Los Angeles. There's a MIDI keyboard and a drumpad, each triggering sounds in Ableton Live, but most interestingly also triggering visuals created live in Processing. Definitely greater than the sum of its parts—the visuals make it.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:51 pm

iPhone 3.0 MMS arrives

FROM APPLETELL - Proving that only Apple can take a feature that everyone else has and turn it into a product announcement, Apple today announced that the iPhone 3G would support MMS when the 3.0 software becomes available in the summer. MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:27 pm

Demigod's Addictive Strategy Apes Warcraft

Demigod, an upcoming PC game, is an addictive blend of strategy and action that takes heavy inspiration from Blizzard's popular games.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:14 pm

Video: Killzone 2 Spot Could Be Advertising's Interactive Future

A new TV spot for the PlayStation 3 game Killzone 2 will soon be released in an interactive format, allowing gamers to go inside the advertisement in real-time and interact with it.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 19 Mar 2009 | 7:06 pm

BLOG: T-Rex of the Cambrian Sea

Meet Hurdia, one of the most unusual predators ever to roam the seas.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Mar 2009 | 6:00 pm

Microsoft adds shortcuts, security to new browser (AP)

AP - Microsoft Corp. released a new version of Internet Explorer Thursday, adding features meant to speed up common Web surfing tasks and bringing the browser's security measures in line with those of major competitors.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 19 Mar 2009 | 5:48 pm

Samsung to release Android-powered handset by Q3

The DigiTimes has it (via all-knowing “market sources”) that Samsung will launch its own an Android-powered handset as early as the third quarter of 2009:

Based on information leaked from Samsung, the company’s first Android handset will be similar to HTC’s forthcoming HTC Magic handset in design and hardware specifications, and both models will be built with 3.5G chipset solutions from Qualcomm, the sources noted.

This should come as no real shocker since we learned earlier last month that this highly anticipated first “Samdroid” was being delayed.

All that really matters in the end is that Samsung puts out a solid, ‘droid-rockin’ piece of hardware sometime in the near future. And that goes for all the rest of you manufacturers, too. Get to it!

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 5:26 pm

Lightest Material Made Into Powerful Muscle

A new material, made of 99.8 percent air, is stronger than stainless steel.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Mar 2009 | 5:00 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Undersea Volcano Erupts Skyward

An underwater eruption near Tonga is hurling ash 15,000 feet into the sky.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:50 pm

Samsung Movies launched in UK and Germany today, rest of Europe to follow

Samsung Mobile has launched “a dedicated [online] movie store for Samsung customers” aptly named, Samsung Movies.

According to the press release:

[T]he new store will allow customers to download and watch their favourite movies and TV shows wherever and whenever they like on compatible Samsung mobile phones, laptops or PCs. Downloads will be available to own or rent.

The new service will launch with over 500 titles from top studios Warner Bros., Paramount, Universal and Momentum Pictures. By the end of the first quarter of 2009 a further 500 titles will be added, followed by an additional 1,000 movies and TV shows by the end of June 2009. Samsung Movies start from £2.49 for 24 hour rental or from £4.99 to own.

Initially only available in the UK and Germany, Samsung Movies appears to be a newfangled effort to help sell more handsets, specifically Samsung’s new line of Active Matrix Organic Light Emitting Diode (AMOLED) touch screen devices like the Samsung Ultra Touch.

The Ultra Touch also gives 4 hours and 20 minutes of continuous movie viewing on a full charge, meaning you can watch two full movies back to back. Additional devices will be compatible with the Samsung Movies store as they come to market in 2009.

Assuming things work out, the company plans to expand into “other key European markets later in 2009″ and to bring “this service to notebooks, mp3 and mp4 players and Samsung TVs.”

Crunch Network: TechCrunch obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies

Source: MobileCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 4:30 pm

Red Flowers Pack a Cyanide Surprise

An Australian plant uses chemical warfare to protect its red flowers from being eaten.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Mar 2009 | 3:50 pm

Sony Ericsson no longer sitting in tree, no longer kissing

You know you’re in for a treat when the story you’re reading has, in big red letters, “Please note that this story is based upon rumor and/or speculation.” So let’s begin with that and move on to points rendered.

Manager Magazin in Germany is reporting that both Sony and Ericsson are thinking of shutting down or selling their Sony Ericsson joint venture, a partnership that has thus far spawned little more than a few nice feature phones a whole lot of hype. The company has posted a Q4 2008 loss of $187 million.

Ericsson didn’t comment in the article - and they wouldn’t because it has already negatively affected their stock price - but my feeling is that S-E is ready to fold up shop. This reminds me of BenQ’s slow death. The company had a few interesting ideas but couldn’t breach the atmospheric barrier called Nokia.

If they sold the venture they would presumably sell the handset designs and R&D to the highest bidder.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 3:40 pm

Cadillac jumping on the in-car mobile internet bandwagon at $29 per month

Back in August of last year, we caught wind that in-car wireless internet service from a company called Autonet would be an available feature on all 2009 Chrysler cars. Looks like it’s catching on, as starting next month the Cadillac CTS will offer the extra feature as well.

Read the rest of this entry >>

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 3:00 pm

Apple's Delays Could Cost iPhone Developer $600K

An iPhone app developer says his company stands to lose $600,000 due to Apple's refusal to give him an answer on whether his iPhone app has been accepted or not.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 19 Mar 2009 | 2:46 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Flying Car Takes to the Skies

A prototype of a part-car, part-airplane takes to the skies.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Mar 2009 | 2:25 pm

Undersea Volcano Explodes in S. Pacific

An underwater eruption near Tonga spews ash thousands of feet into the sky.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Mar 2009 | 2:04 pm

eBuddy surpasses 10M downloads on GetJar

With the entire tech word endlessly buzzing about the latest new smartphone, it’s easy to forget that around 75% of handsets sold are basic feature phones - often lovingly referred to as “dumb phones”. With these phones generally lacking an official “App Store” of their own, users turn to the web to find new applications. One of the most popular resources for this purpose is GetJar, a repository of over 20,000 free applications. While GetJar offers a number of applications for smartphones, their primary game seems to be J2ME-based applications for phones with a bit less muscle.

Of GetJar’s free offerings, 3 out of 5 of the most downloaded applications are IM clients. Later this morning, one of of these IM clients, eBuddy Mobile Messenger, will be announcing that they have surpassed 10 million downloads on GetJar’s app store.

eBuddy is easily the most heavily downloaded application in GetJar’s catalog, pulling in roughly 375,000 downloads each week. In the 72 weeks since their November ‘07 launch, eBuddy has claimed the #1 download spot for 34 of them. At the time of announcement, they’re already well on their way to 11 million (Currently at 10,783,054).

According to eBuddy, much of their success is due to GetJar’s in-house advertising system, which they call “Get Traffic”. Through this system, developers bid for above-the-fold placement in GetJar’s search and browse pages, only paying when a user downloads their application after clicking through the advertisement. While they aren’t sharing exactly how eBuddy’s download numbers have improved since they began advertising, GetJar does tell us that the ad system generally improves an app’s download rate by roughly 200%, with eBuddy CEO Jan-Joost Rueb saying they’ve grown “exponentially”. No word on how much eBuddy’s campaign has cost them, but we do know that bids begin at $.01 and occasionally go upwards of $.50 per download.

While this Pay-per-download model seems quite beneficial for developers, some of the ads do seem a bit misleading to us. Partnered applications are often placed within a box labeled “Selected”, which our consumer-side would have assumed meant “Apps we’ve manually chosen to highlight”, not “Apps that pay us money to be here”. As far as we can tell, the user is not told that the application is being highlighted due to a paid partnership.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 19 Mar 2009 | 1:45 pm

Mass Dino Graves Suggest Young Banded Together

Juvenile dinosaurs may have congregated in herds as a survival tactic.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Mar 2009 | 1:20 pm

Flying Car Lifts Off in Maiden Flight

A part-car, part-airplane vehicle took off and landed successfully in its first test flight.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 19 Mar 2009 | 1:00 pm

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