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Practice safe surfing: Don’t get hijacked on TwitterSection: Computers, Networking, Security, Software / Applications, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Miscellaneous, Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps, Web Browsers, Websites  Oh, is Twitter making the news as of late. And the latest is really not for a positive reason. If you, like many, are a Twitter user, you better be careful since it was just found out that they are vulnerable to a major cross-site scripting (XSS) hack vulnerability which could let someone in the hijack someone’s account. When the hacker does this, they could also use other exploit code to have a have a hey-day on the users computer. Click a link, get pwnedSecure Science researchers Lance James and Eric Wastl posted evidence of this proof-of-concept exploit code. Although they did notify Twitter, they say they have yet to receive a response back. On the page offering proof-of-concept, there is a link where Twitter users can choose whether they want to be exploited or not. (I can see everyone yelling “pick me! pick me!“) If you do happen to click the decide exploitation is your thing, and click the button, you will then kick start the exploit. A posted message will show up saying “I just got owned!“ on the Twitter XSSExploits account. Wastl says that “The vulnerability is still active. Basically, we produce a link and if a Twitter user clicks on it, it allows us to hijack their accounts.“ Be careful everywhereWith an XSS vulnerability, malicious code can be placed into Web pages, these can include HTML and client-side scripts. Access controls can be bypassed, information stolen, and then you’ve also got the good old phishing going on. James stresses that it is important to keep in mind that these XSS vulnerabilities are not to be taken lightly since they can go beyond just web pages. “A lot of people think XSS is limited to the Web,“ he said. If there’s another vulnerability in the victim’s browser, the Twitter flaw could be used to launch additional malicious code, he explained. Why this is especially applicable to Twitter is since a vast majority of them do rely on third-party Twitter browsing apps. And usually, these applications are subjected to the same securities that major Web browsers are subject to. Spam and TwitterThis isn’t the first security breech Twitter has seen. Just last week, around 750 accounts were hacked and then used to send spam tweets. (Although I have to say it sounds much friendlier being labeling a “tweet” than junk mail at least). In January, 33 celebrity Twitter accounts were hacked. Twitter said that month that it was conducting a full security review. So far, there have been no findings provided. The Washington Post also reported last week that Twitter had fixed spoofing vulnerability that was almost the exact same one reported by a different security researcher way back in 2007. It’s thought that the fact that Twitter is growing by leaps and bounds is also making it more and more attractive for those wanting to use it maliciously. And Wastl feels the just the basic design of Twitter makes the problem even worse. “The structure that Twitter uses makes it the perfect architecture for spreading something virally,“ said Wastl. As with social networks, the feeling that one is among friends on Twitter may lead to insufficient caution. Is Twitter being careless?James feels that Twitter doesn’t do enough to encourage safe security practices, instead, they do precisely the opposite by doing things like using URL redirection and displaying links that promote a false sense of security since that trust really isn’t necessarily deserved. “It breeds bad human behavior to serious security problems,“ said James. So, on Twitter, as on any social networking site, or any site, caution is key. Don’t go clicking on links unless you are darn sure where you are going or that it is safe. Always practice safe surfing. Via: techweb Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 21 Mar 2009 | 6:32 pm Astronauts Catch 'March Madness' in Space - Space.com
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:24 pm Who Needs Real Friends? I'm On Facebook And Twitter! - FOXBusiness
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:20 pm Sportsman's Warehouse files for bankruptcyNEW YORK, March 21 (Reuters) - Sportsman's Warehouse, a Utah-based sporting goods retailer, on Saturday filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection citing a liquidity crisis triggered by declining sales...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:19 pm Astronauts gear up for 2nd spacewalk, choresTwo astronauts are getting ready to go out on a spacewalk and do some chores at the international space station. Astronauts Steven Swanson and Joseph Acaba are scheduled to float out of...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:19 pm Qatar-ExxonMobil to delay gas JV - MEEDDUBAI, March 21 (Reuters) - Qatar Petroleum [QATPE.UL] (QP) and Exxon Mobil Corp will delay by up to 12 months the development of the $5-billion Barzan gas field joint venture, primarily to cut costs,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:18 pm Want a Science Degree In Creationism?The Bad Astronomer writes "In Texas, a state legislator wants the ironically-named Institute for Creation Research to be able to grant a Masters degree in science. In fact, the bill submitted to the Texas congress would make it legal for any private group calling themselves educational to be able to grant advanced degrees in science. So, now's your chance: that lack of a PhD in Astrology and Alchemy won't hold you back any longer." The Institute for Creation Research made a similar request to the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board last year, but were shot down.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:16 pm Weekly Wrapup: iPhone 3.0, Facebook Privacy Controls, Web-based Books, And More...In this edition of the Weekly Wrapup, our newsletter summarising the top stories of the week, we cover the iPhone OS 3.0 announcement, review the highlights from Microsoft's MIX event, look at Facebook's...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:00 pm Their WorldSource: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:23 pm DC Fires Tech Contractors, Puts Employees On Leavetheodp writes "After Gov. Tim Kaine intervened on his behalf, Vivek Kundra was quietly reinstated to his Federal CIO post on Tuesday after a brief leave following an FBI raid on Kundra's former DC office (Kundra was not implicated). Now, the Washington Post reports that the City of DC plans to fire 23 Technology Office contractors and place 4 employees on leave in the aftermath of the arrests of a Security manager and contractor on bribery charges last week. Another government employee has since been arrested for his role in the scam, and the mayor has promised that the tech office will undergo a 'full and formal review.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:15 pm Paper Bag Couture - Grocery Sacks Become Gorgeous Gowns in Hands of Design Students (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Would you believe these stunning dresses are made from brown paper bags? Thats right; placed in the hands of creative designers, recycled grocery bags can be transformed into gorgeous...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 11:59 am Twitters Constant Stream Of Update Messages Suddenly Grinds To A HaltEveryone's always raving about the huge popularity of Twitter given its limited feature set. After all, the service lets people share whatever they're doing, eating, listening to, reading, etc. in 140...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 11:42 am Twitter’s Constant Stream Of Update Messages Suddenly Grinds To A Halt
Everyone’s always raving about the huge popularity of Twitter given its limited feature set. After all, the service lets people share whatever they’re doing, eating, listening to, reading, etc. in 140 characters, and that’s basically the gist of it. Of course, we’ve learned that it can be extremely powerful for a variety of reasons, like enabling people to keep up with your friends’ social activities without cluttering your e-mail inbox or Facebook account, for instant news, real-time search, etc. But some time ago, about two hours at the time of this writing, the constant waterfall of Twitter messages has abruptly stopped updating. Status update messages are simply no longer being published, neither on the Twitter home page or through any of the third-party clients, and even Twitter search no longer crawls for recent messages, as you can tell from the screenshot below. The basic functionality of Twitter is still there though, so you can still update your own stream, but the conversation has ended. All you can do is go to individual profile pages for people you’re following and take a look at what they’re tweeting about, but that’s it. Suddenly, Twitter feels like a pretty lonely place for people to hang out, and complaining about the problems on the service itself feel kinda stupid. The Twitter team is based in the U.S., where it’s now the middle of Friday night, so there’s no way of knowing how long it will take before the issue is resolved. Twitter Status remains silent on the problem so far, but to the best of my knowledge no messages seem to have gotten lost. Thank God. We’ll update as soon as the Twitter train starts rolling again. Update: messages seem to be trickling in again, but with a lag. Update 2: should be back now. Lucky for Twitter this happened on a weekend during the night (at least U.S. time) so most users won’t have even noticed. But it goes to show how dangerous it is to rely on a free third-party service for important communication.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: TechCrunch | 21 Mar 2009 | 11:42 am Sandy Desert Editorials - Camilla Akrans Captures Sean O'Pry On a Dune (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) The desert is not the first place to come to my mind if I were to choose a location for a photo shoot. I mean, it is either scorching hot or freezing cold. And with a slight wind, the...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 11:39 am Presidential Betting - Barack Obama Creates March Madness Bracket With ESPN's Andy Katz (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) President Barack Obama filled out his NCAA March Madness bracket on Tuesday with ESPNs Andy Katz. Obamas picks for US college basketball glory come just ten days before the 2009 NATO...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 11:19 am Middlespot Is An Alternative Visual Search EngineA company profile that was just submitted: Middlespot, another startup taking a crack at making the web search experience more visual, joining the likes of SearchMe, Snap and Viewzi. Like its counterparts,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 11:11 am Middlespot Is An Alternative Visual Search Engine
Like its counterparts, Middlespot aims to enhance searching for websites, images, news, Amazon and even Twitter by returning screenshots of results rather than just text links. Kicking off a keyword-based search opens two columns: to the left, you’ll get standard stuff like title, summary and full link, and on the right you’ll get a visual representation of search results. In the latter column, you can make the frames bigger or smaller by using the slider or scrolling your mouse wheel, and hovering over the boxes will highlight them and offer a couple of options. It’s all pretty straightforward, so check it out. Next to visual search, Middlespot is also somewhat of a social bookmarking service, since it lets you save search results in a so-called ‘workpad’, an extra layer that saves your favorited pages and wraps a number of social services around them, like commenting, sharing via e-mail and embedding (see below). It lets you rename the workpad results, add a custom URL and also offers related search results on-site. If you register for an account, you can backup your workpad, but if you note your workpad ID elsewhere you don’t even have to do that since you can fetch the saved results later. Last but not least, Middlespot offers a number of tools like bookmarklets and browser plugins that make it easier to remember to use the service when looking for something on the web. The problem with Middlespot is that its overall website design is below par, and it’s horribly slow with current response times that will prove to be unacceptable for the majority of people who are used to getting search results much faster. But since Middlespot is just two guys doing this in their spare time, those gripes feel like splitting hairs and frankly it’s impressive what they’ve built without a dime of funding and limited time resources. Check it out and let us know what you think.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 21 Mar 2009 | 11:11 am Frosted Fish Cakes - Swimingly Brilliant Fish-Inspired Birthday Cakes (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) I found these seriously cool fish cupcakes, which sent me on a fishing trip for some more. It went well at first, with some really beautiful examples by talented bakers. It then...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 10:59 am tomtom files patent infringement countersuit against Microsoft - TopNews United States
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 21 Mar 2009 | 10:42 am Words in Waterfalls - Aquascript Gets Your Message Across Both Indoors and Outdoors (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) There are few things more beautiful and soul-satisfying than running water. USE Enterprises UK LTD, which stands for United Synergic Enterprises, is a company that offers futuristic...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 10:39 am Barbie Birthday Parties - Celebs Flock to Malibu to Honor Barbie's 50th (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) In true royal fashion, Barbies 50th birthday celebration will last all year long. In honor of Barbies birthday, a life-sized Malibu Barbie Dream House was decorated in true Barbie...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 10:19 am How Barclays Ensured That Everyone Would See Their Confidential Tax Avoidance Documents
Last Wednesday a UK judge, in an emergency 2 AM session, granted an emergency temporary injunction requiring the documents to be removed from The Guardian website. The order was complied with, and yesterday the ban was upheld. The problem, of course, is that the documents have already spread around the Internet, and they are certainly no longer confidential. And now that we aren’t supposed to be reading them, they become infinitely more interesting. As of the time of the ban the documents had been accessed by just 127 people. Now, two days after the legal ban, a website that continues to host the documents, Wikileaks, has been overloaded with traffic. And we’re publishing them here as well. The seven documents highlight Barclays structured finance deals that use a variety of complicated finance vehicles to move profits to low tax countries and generally away from the UK. Parts of the documents were disclosed to the UK tax authority. But portions of the documents containing legal advice on the risk of challenge to aspects of their schemes were removed before disclosure. A 2007 scheme called Project Knight proposed to avoid taxes by structuring more than $16 billion in loans through an elaborate offshore network involving entities in the Cayman Islands, Luxembourg and the U.S. As to why we’re publishing them, I agree with The Guardian’s editor Alan Rusbridger that the precedent being set by this UK court has a chilling effect on free speech and public debate. Courts should understand that the purpose of the press is precisely to uncover issues like these, and that trying to gag the press will only spread the information more efficiently. And I also have the opinion that if you believe in something, you need to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the guys fighting on your side, or not complain when the same thing happens to you.
The full documents are below: BarclaysLux Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: TechCrunch | 21 Mar 2009 | 9:43 am London imposes de-facto 9PM curfew on under-16sLondon cops have been given the power to "disperse" anyone under 16, gathered in groups of two or more, from almost all of central London, after 9PM. The police don't have to see the kids doing anything wrong, they only have to believe "the presence or behaviour of a group of two or more persons in any public place in the relevant locality has resulted, or is likely to result, in any members of the public being intimidated, harassed, alarmed or distressed."the kids are alright (via Wonderland)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 21 Mar 2009 | 9:33 am Nanotube Muscles Are Strong As Steel, Light As AirAl writes "Scientists from the University of Texas at Dallas have created nanotube-based artificial muscles that are light as air and work even under extreme temperatures. The 'muscles' expand width-wise by about 200 percent when a voltage is applied, but are stronger than steel lengthwise. The nanotubes within the fiber naturally stick together. Applying a voltage makes them obtain a charge and repel one another. The researchers created them by stretching bundles of entangled carbon nanotubes into long threads. Several cool videos show the strange stuff in action. Some experts, including one from NASA, believe that the nanotube muscles' ability to withstand extreme heat and cold could make them suitable shape-shifting materials for future space missions."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 21 Mar 2009 | 7:15 am Daily Crunch: Roadside Edition
Guess the MPG! Win a Navigon 4300T MAX GPS Source: CrunchGear | 21 Mar 2009 | 7:00 am Sony Charges Publishers For DLC Bandwidth UsagetlhIngan writes "Since October 1, 2008, Sony has been billing game publishers for DLC bandwidth usage. The game companies are forced to pay 16 cents per gigabyte downloaded by users (the 'Playstation Network Fee') regardless of whether the content is free or paid. The good news is that free content will only be billed during the initial 60 days it's up, but paid content will require fees forever. (No word on whether free content will mysteriously disappear after 60 days, though.) Given that some popular game demos run over a gigabyte by themselves, it could easily start costing publishers serious money (16 cents each for a few million downloads adds up). So far, it hasn't cut down the content available (or few publishers have started pulling content), but it's too soon to tell. It should be noted that Microsoft isn't charging publishers any money for content on Xbox Live, though some may argue that the 'gold premium content' is the same thing." Perhaps this is one of the reasons various publishers are pressuring Sony for a PS3 price cut.Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 21 Mar 2009 | 6:05 am Deal of the (Yester)Day: eCost’s continued kookiness with Wii dealsFROM GAMERTELL - eCost has tried to one-up its own Black Friday $99 Wii sale with $69 Wii. The bad part is that there are so many catches, it’s hard to get excited… MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 21 Mar 2009 | 6:00 am China clears Johnson & Johnson baby products after probeBEIJING, March 21 (Reuters) - Chinese health authorities said on Saturday that they had found no evidence of cancer-causing chemicals in baby products made by U.S. company Johnson & Johnson .Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 5:57 am White House considers reforms for nonbank fin firmsWASHINGTON, March 21 (Reuters) - Establishing a formal process for the U.S. government to unwind failing non-bank financial firms, like AIG, has moved to the top of the Obama administration's financial...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 5:05 am Detroit Tries Muscle: The Return of the Camaro - TIME
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:52 am Oddball Tech: Frack IE6 users, ink technology, and bionic peopleSection: Computers, Software / Applications, Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Web, Web Browsers, Websites That is one descriptive title. It totally explains the content of this post.  Frack IE6Microsoft has recently come out with its IE8 and I’m sure Firefox is shaking in its boots (if Firefox had boots and actually was afraid of Redmond). Either way, it means that IE6 is even more outdated. If you didn’t know browsers can get served particular versions of sites because sites can auto detect what kind of browser is visiting that site. Some folks try to make their page work with every browser. Some people have other ideas. At Hugs for Monsters, they have a line of “overly judgmental IE6 splash pages.” The site officially does not care what browser you use, but they mocked up a whole bunch of these pages. [Source]
Get some special inkThere’s a lot of information about electronic ink floating around thanks to the Kindle 2 and that new color ebook reader. But what about the venerable non-electronic ink? Ink is making advances on its own. Some enterprising folks in Sydney, Australia have applied a special ink to their beer labels. What does the ink do? Does it tell you that you beer is at optimal temperature? Nah. Some of the ink disappears as you drink your beer. Oh, and they used that ink to put a bikini on a drawing of a woman. So as you drink your Skinny Beer, she loses her clothes. [Source]
Bionic people from Texas are coming!Science in America isn’t dead yet. The University of Texas at Dallas has put together artificial muscles. These muscles can be used for prosthetics and for robotic applications. The muscles are using nanotubes and aerogel sheets which make them incredibly light. These artificial muscles are also able to withstand temperatures from 25 degrees Celsius to 1200 degrees Celsius (that’s 77 to 2192 degrees Fahrenheit). Outside of that range, the properties of the material are somewhat unstable. So, expect bionic people in warm weather places or keep a look out for people in sweaters. [Source] Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:50 am Nifty iPhone app lets you air-write a custom ticker
It should work with regular eyeballs and not just a long exposure, and you can put up some graphics as well as text. You’re limited only by your imagination — and some other stuff. You can get the “Light Writer - POV Effect” app just like you would any other, and it costs a buck. Man, a dollar don’t buy what it used to. [via Gizmodo] Source: CrunchGear | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:40 am CT scan shows eggs inside coelacanthJapanese researchers say they've used CT scans to see the eggs inside a coelacanth, a prehistoric fish that was once considered extinct. The Tokyo Institute of Technology said the ancient species is of great interest because it is thought to represent an early step in the evolution of fish to amphibians, Kyodo News Service reported Friday.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:39 am Weekend Deal: Blu-ray bargains on AmazonFROM GAMERTELL - Amazon’s offering some worthwhile Blu-rays at decent discounts to help build your library. Click through for a quick look and a link to the bargains… MORE » Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:18 am IE8 Web Slices - not so much
The issue is, both them have to be enabled and optimized on the site you’re browsing. This means that until IE 8 becomes much more mainstream, it’s not gonna happen. So is this a deal breaker? Not a chance. IE 8 is still a big step up from IE 7. The anti-malware portion alone makes it a clear upgrade. I think that for now, the accelerators and Web Clips are nice, but not the big deal that Microsoft would like them to be. Source: CrunchGear | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:16 am Major Decline Found In Some Bird Groups - Washington Post
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:04 am Acidification putting sea life at riskA U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:01 am Man in "I [Heart] My Marriage" t-shirt arrested for domestic batteryThis gentleman was arrested on Monday for attempting to strangle his wife. Bradley Gellert, of Apollo Beach, Florida, was indeed wearing the "I [heart] My Marriage" t-shirt at the time of the arrest. From WTSP:Man wearing an "I Heart My Marriage" t-shirt arrested for choking wife (Thanks, Tara McGinley!) Source: Boing Boing | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:01 am Report Links Russian Intelligence Agencies To Cyber Attacksnarramissic writes "A report released Friday by a group of cyber-security experts from greylogic finds it is very likely that the Foreign Military Intelligence agency (the GRU) and Federal Security Service (the FSB) directed cyber attacks on Georgian government servers in July and August of 2008. 'Following a complex web of connections, the report claims that an Internet service provider connected with the Stopgeorgia.ru web site, which coordinated the Georgian attacks, is located next door to a Russian Ministry of Defense Research Institute called the Center for Research of Military Strength of Foreign Countries, and a few doors down from GRU headquarters.' But Paul Ferguson, a researcher with Trend Micro who has reviewed the report, says it's a 'bit of a stretch' to conclude that the Georgia attacks were state-sponsored. 'You can connect dots to infer things, but inferring things does not make them so,' he said. One other interesting allegation in the report is that a member of the Whackerz Pakistan hacking group, which claimed responsibility for defacing the Indian Eastern Railway Web site on Dec. 24, 2008, is employed by a North American wireless communications company and presents an 'insider threat' for his employer."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 21 Mar 2009 | 4:01 am Facebook Bug Reveals Private Photos, Wall Posts
Earlier this evening we came across a privacy flaw on Facebook that allowed users to gain access to portions of their friends’ profiles that they should not have been able to see. We contacted Facebook about the issue over an hour ago (it remains unresolved), and they have asked us to refrain from going into too much detail as to how to reproduce it until it is fixed. Facebook is well known for its granular privacy settings, allowing users to selectively choose which of their friends have access to their photos, videos, and ‘Walls’. As the social network has grown beyond schools to include many users’ employers and family members, these privacy controls have become even more essential. Users often create “Friends Lists”, segregating friends who they don’t want seeing their most personal content into lists with limited viewing rights. The new bug allowed users to temporarily bypass these Limited Friends Lists, instead displaying profiles in their entirety, including photos and wall posts. Given the personal and often unprofessional nature of some photos and messages shared on Facebook, this was a potentially damaging security lapse. It’s unclear how long the bug lasts - I found that refreshing a friends’ profile once or twice seemed to correct the issue and display only the information I was supposed to be seeing. But even if the bug only works temporarily, it’s easy enough to perform repeatedly that users could potentially view multiple profiles without much effort. This isn’t the first privacy bug to affect Facebook - users have previously been able to access private photos and view private profile information in search results. The error also serves as yet another blemish on the privacy controls of web-based services. Only two weeks ago, Google Docs revealed that it had inadvertently shared thousands of documents with users who should not have had access to them. Thanks to Anjool for the tip. Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 21 Mar 2009 | 3:40 am Elevator Pitch Friday: Song.ly Lets You Share Music Via TwitterThis week’s elevator pitch comes from Song.ly, a service that takes the URL of an MP3, shortens it for Twitter so that a user can tweet the url of the song, and then puts it into a compact Flash player for listening. The pitch is short, sweet, and gets bonus points for articulating the concept behind the startup’s business model. Song.ly allows users to submit the link for an MP3 (you can’t download music, it must have a url) and then transforms the link into a short url that you can then tweet to friends. Your friends don’t have to download the music, it opens in a Flash player. Song.ly also has cool Firefox add-on that allows you to share songs with just two clicks. Song.ly makes money from affiliate fees and premium services for business clients. As we’ve reported earlier, there are a lot of ways music is being integrated with Twitter. Tra.kz and TinySong do similar things as Song.ly. In fact, TinySong seems to be providing more comprehensive song selection, and like Song.ly, converts the song into a tiny url with the click of a button. But, Song.ly has a Tweet button that automatically adds the url to your Twitter post-all to do is click the “update” button. Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: TechCrunch | 21 Mar 2009 | 3:38 am Teeth tell tales of Columbus crewCrew members Christopher Columbus left behind after his second voyage to the Americas are telling tales of their past, U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Mar 2009 | 3:27 am Alberta extends Fort Hills oil sands leasesTORONTO, March 20 (Reuters) - Petro-Canada and partners in its Fort Hills oil sands venture said on Friday they reached an deal with the Alberta government on extending leases, one of the steps needed...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 3:13 am GalacticaIt had a satisfactory ending. Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 21 Mar 2009 | 3:11 am 17-inch iMac for $899? Mamma Mia!
This odd Apple Education page seems to suggest a 17-inch iMac for $899. It appears in Apple’s enews but, as you see after jump there are only 20- and 24-inch models available. What a twist! The educational newsletter this appeared in seems to have been written for March and, considering we’re almost done with March this could have been a false alarm or a real leak.
Source: CrunchGear | 21 Mar 2009 | 2:56 am Light smokers slip under research radarU.S. researchers say light and intermittent smokers tend to fall under the research radar, despite the risk that cigarette smoke poses for them. While one-fifth of U.S.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 21 Mar 2009 | 2:27 am Cisco acquires Flip camera maker, Pure DigitalSection: Business News, Video, Portable Video, Imaging, Camcorders  Pure Digital, makers of the very poplar Flip Mino camera, has been acquired by Cisco. Cisco isn’t really known for meddling with its purchases too quickly. Linksys was bought by Cisco in 2003. It wasn’t until 2007 that Cisco announced plans to retire the “Linksys” brand. The phase out has been slow and today’s Linksys devices bear the “Linksys by Cisco” label. Now what will Cisco do with a camera company? There’s really no need for too much guessing because Cisco already gave an answer:
“Visual networking” is an interesting phrase. Cisco has a vast wealth of networking knowledge. Adding networking features to Flip devices could be pretty interesting. Hopefully they didn’t just mean capturing video from a Flip and then uploading that video to a network. Cisco is also heavily involved in the world of networks. Businesses will soon be able to connect a Cisco router to a Cisco server. The company is also involved in security products. Perhaps Cisco will also make use of its Flip properties in networked security devices as well. Read: [Press Release] via [Cisco Blog] Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 21 Mar 2009 | 2:12 am $400 Retro-style Watch Takes Pics, Video, and Phone Calls
Now, another company is trying to beat LG to the dorks-with-flush-money market by bringing out a watch phone of its own. One good look at it and you can see it's not really in the same style league. On paper, its features don't seem so bad. Neutrano's Nutec WristFone is not tied to any telcom, making it open for any GSM network. The SIM card port is under the face of the watch, which is also a touch screen, albeit one that is quite small. The watch comes with a 2 megapixel camera placed on top of the face, which also takes video. It supports Bluetooth accessories, has access to FM radio, can play different music files, and even records audio. A digital clock watch dial is used as the main screen saver, and when you're ready to make a call, the screen brightens to open up the menu. But one sign that the watch's touch screen is bound to be disappointing (other than the ridiculously small face screen) is that it comes with a stylus. Using a stylus to move around within the UI comes from a long tradition of portable devices that basically reject hand touch commands and overall user simplicity. The WristFone has tiny touch-command areas where you can check on your messages, phone book, and main media menu, but they look so tiny, making mistakes seems a given. The WristFone has a battery lasting approximately 3-4 hours of talking time and a 3-day stand-by. It's available now starting at $400. LG's GD910 watch phone has a 1.43-inch touch screen, 7.2 Mbps HSDPA compatibility and also picks up still pics and video. It's not out yet, though it's been speculated to be available in the summer for upwards of $1,400. Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 21 Mar 2009 | 2:06 am Twins commit perfect heist?DNA evidence from a multimillion-euro jewelry heist in Berlin leads to twins with a criminal record, but since the evidence could point to either one, German law says that neither can be convicted:German law stipulates that each criminal must be individually proven guilty. The problem in the case of the O. brothers is that their twin DNA is so similar that neither can be exclusively linked to the evidence using current methods of DNA analysis. So even though both have criminal records and may have committed the heist together, Hassan and Abbas O. have been set free.(via Kottke) Source: Gizmodo | 21 Mar 2009 | 2:00 am Free money for sf writers over 50Corie sez, "The Speculative Literature Foundation is offering a grant of $750 to any writer of speculative literature of 50 years or older at the time of application who is just beginning to work professionally in the field. There are no restrictions on the use of the grant money."
SLF Older Writers Grant
(Thanks, Corie!) eBay Describes the Scale of Its Counterfeit Goods ProblemIan Lamont writes "As the Tiffany vs. eBay lawsuit winds its way through a federal appeals court, eBay has trotted out some numbers that show how many sellers attempt to sell fake goods on the auction site. Millions of auctions were delisted last year, and tens of thousands of accounts were suspended after reports were made to eBay's Verified Rights Owner program, which lets trademark owners notify eBay of fake goods being sold on the site. eBay says 100% of reported listings were removed from the site last year, most within 12 hours, and the company uses sellers' background information to make sure that they don't create new accounts to sell delisted items. Tiffany brought the suit against eBay in 2004, alleging that eBay was turning a blind eye to counterfeit luxury goods and demanding that eBay police its listings for bogus goods. Tiffany lost the case last July and will shortly present its arguments to the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York. A similar case in France cost eBay $61 million."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:58 am Hi-rez Tetris after two weeks Anne sez, "I quickly got bored with the hi-res Tetris game profiled by BB here. So I left it running in a window and forgot about it, until the next morning, when the screen was only filled by a fraction. I've managed to leave it going for almost 2 weeks now, and my friend Dave made a tribute to it. He will continue to post images (and accompanying ungrammatical text in always-apropos Comic Sans) as the screen slowly fills."
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:57 am UPDATE 1-Canadian Oil Sands cuts 2009 Syncrude estimateTORONTO, March 20 (Reuters) - Canadian Oil Sands Trust said on Friday it is cutting its 2009 outlook for production from the Syncrude Canada Ltd oil sands venture, the world's largest producer of synthetic...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:53 am Tags Is The Organization Tool For Mac Users Who Have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Tagging can be the super-organizers dream tool. Apple application developer, Gravity Applications, recently launched a tagging software, Tags, that allows Mac users to tag all their files, including emails, bookmarks, pictures and files. The tags allow users to assign keywords for files, grouping many different files that have something in common. The tagging feature also allows you to apply many different types of tags to a single file or apply the same tag to multiple files, giving the user a little more flexibility than just the file/folder system. The software costs $29 but you can set up a 30-day free trial to see if the application works for you. With Tags, you can access your tagged items via its own Tag Manager, Spotlight, or Finder. You can tag a file, website or photo by pressing “Control” and “Space.” This will bring up the Tags interface, letting you tag the item with the desired name. The software will remember past items that you’ve tagged and suggest tags as you type. In order to see all of your tags, you can click on the Tag Manager, which is featured on the Menu Bar, where you can see your groups of tags and which files are associated with each tag. If you are using Mac’s Spotlight search app or Finder, you can easily find tagged items by putting “Tag:” in front of name the tagged item in the search box. Tags are saved into the file’s metadata automatically. The software is definitely useful if you are incredibly organized and perhaps a little obsessive compulsive about finding files easily on your Mac. But there is a drawback. Tags only works on applications that are fully supported by Applescript. So that means that you can tag items in native Apple applications like MS Word, iPhoto and Safari, and emails in a Mac desktop email application but you cannot tag items in Firefox or via Gmail in Firefox. TagLauncher is a similar software that works on PCs only (and is $14), but the interface is not nearly has slick as Tags’ interface. And Taglocity uses a comprehensive tagging feature to make Microsoft Outlook seem more like Gmail. Punakea is another Mac-exclusive tagging application and is also integrated with Spotlight. Tags is worth a try if you are a Mac user-it’s an good idea in theory, but you may find it tedious to constantly “tag” files. That is, unless you are a control-freak about organizing your files. Here’s Gravity’s screencast on hot-to use the Tags application: Tags Screencast from Hilo Media on Vimeo Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:52 am Terrorism pundit accused of astroturfing extremist Jihadi message-board posts, then reporting on themRichard sez,For some time now, a self-proclaimed "freelance anti-terror investigator" named Glen Jenvey has been feeding stories to the media about on-line Islamic extremism, particularly in British tabloids (but also in the famous "Obsession" DVD). However, a blogger, Tim Ireland, has uncovered overwhelming evidence that Jenvey made bogus postings to Muslim discussion sites himself to create panics. Jenvey also boasts of having influenced the James Ujaama trial by releasing videos at strategic moments.Obsession Pundit Glen Jenvey in Meltdown (Thanks, Richard!) Source: Boing Boing | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:51 am NOAA Set for Larger Policy Role Under First Female Chief - Washington Post
Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:47 am Darth Vader money DeviantArt's Diablo2003 whipped up these Vaderbucks for Star Wars Fan Days 2007, where he was an artist guest. Thomas, who suggested the link, says he thinks they're cooler-looking than greenbacks and I agree -- best note since the hyperinflationary 100 billion Dinar note with Tesla on it.
Starbuck by diablo2003
(Thanks, Thomas!) Review: Locavore for the iPhone The term Locavore is one that I’m not very familiar with - and to be honest, I was under the impression that throwing out a blanket term like “eating organic” was good enough. The whole organic movement hit the mainstream as I was making an exodus from the west coast, so concrete and constant car honking have muddled my green/hippie roots.
The thought of going to a farmer’s market or even grocery shopping in an actual store makes me cringe a little bit when I can order groceries online and have them delivered. But Buster McLeod’s Locavore iPhone app has me thinking twice about what I’m putting into my body. I mean, I don’t think Panda Express or any other fast food slinging joint is healthy or tasty like Greg does (Editor’s Greg’s Note: It is true. I do loves me some Panda.), but I probably don’t buy things that are local either and that’s just as bad.
So what exactly is Locavore you ask? According to the iPhone app’s description a “Locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius.” In other words, a locavore tries to purchase and consume only locally grown foods with the idea that they tastes better and are better for you.
Source: TechCrunch | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:15 am UPDATE 3-Petrobras oil workers say to strike from Monday(Adds Petrobras meeting with union ends without deal, byline)Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 21 Mar 2009 | 1:13 am Slick Website Builder SnapPages Gets A Big Upgrade
SnapPages, an impressive browser-based website publishing platform, has released a major new upgrade that introduces blogging functionality. Other changes to the service since we covered it last September include an improved control panel, support for favicons, and more flexibility for the service’s free accounts (though premium accounts, which run $50/year, still have much more functionality). SnapPages is an all-in-one publishing platform that also includes a rich photo album and web-based calendar. The site tries to differentiate itself from competitors like SynthaSite, Wix, and Weebly by offering an intuitive interface that actually cuts back on the amount of customization options available to users. This isn’t to say you can’t make your site look the way you want it - there are quite a few themes and color schemes available, but SnapPages tries to prevent users from putting together ugly color combinations or oddly placed images, which can often ruin a perfectly nice looking webpage. The new blogging system isn’t particularly unique, but it has been a oft-requested feature by many of the site’s users. The system features most standard features you’d find on platforms like WordPress, including tagging, multiple author support, and threaded commenting. The system plugs into the service’s other applications, so you can import photos from SnapPages’ rich photo application directly into your blog posts. And for the most part, it’s easy to use, especially because there is a minimal amount of setup involved. I’m a big fan of SnapPages, not just because it has a very slick and polished interface but because the company consists of one full-time worker: founder Steven Testone (he says he’s planning to hire his first full-time employee next week). He has hired some part-time contractors, but he put together the vast majority of the site himself and it is very impressive.
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily. Source: Gizmodo | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:53 am LG Dare vs LG Versa: fight!
So who wins in the end? I don’t want to spoil it for you. Okay, fine — it turns out the Dare was dead the whole time! I know, isn’t that insane? Source: Gizmodo | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:30 am New Hitwise Stats Show How Bad Hitwise Data Is
It’s no secret how bad most of the analytics firms are at gathering statistically relevant data about Internet traffic. All of them, Quantcast, Comscore, Hitwise, Compete, Alexa, etc., are flawed in various ways and to various degrees. But today’s blog post by Hitwise shows just how bad their data really is. They say that Craigslist is now the top searched term on the Internet, taking that honor from MySpace. Facebook is third. But the real data is out there for the taking. Google Trends shows Google search data, and since Google commands such a large lead in search in most countries, presumably the data is accurate. Google trends shows exactly the opposite data as Hitwise - Facebook is by far the most queried term, followed by MySpace and then Craigslist. I’m putting my money on Google when it comes to accurate search trends. And if I were Hitwise, I’d make very sure my search data conformed to whatever Google was saying. Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware. Source: TechCrunch | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:29 am CrunchBoard Jobs: Web Sales Manager, Senior Metrics Engineer, Lead Qualifier
It’s time for CrunchBoard Jobs. This week we saw layoffs at UStream and companies hit the deadpool, but never fear as new ways to find a job came to light. Are you a Rails UI Engineer? How about a (soon to be) Director of Blogger Networks? We’ve got jobs all over the country, from a Salesforce Developer in New York to an Interaction Designer in Colorado. Job hunters in Europe can check out our Europe CrunchBoard. New jobs on CrunchBoard:
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 Source: TechCrunch | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:15 am Calling Tech Show Bloggers: Please Cover Al Gore's 'Off the Record' Keynote SpeechDan Gillmor is a BoingBoing guest blogger. Former VP Al Gore is speaking at the CTIA Wireless show on April 3. But the giant trade show says:
The press, whatever that is these days, has been barred from coverage, too, according to a letter on the Romenesko media blog: No one with a press pass will be allowed in. This calls for a) lots and lots of blogging of the event by attendees who are not registered as press; and b) "official" press interviews of attendees and publication of those interviews. (I might also note, just for the sake of noting it, that you don't have to be obvious about waving around a smart phone with a video camera; audio and video recording gear has gotten really small and cheap.) It would be great if the good folks attending this trade show could help make clear to Al Gore and others in similar positions that a speech to 4,000 people is not off the record no matter how much they may wish it to be so, not anymore. My own suspicion about Gore's reasons: He probably imagines he's saving the material for a new book or movie. Otherwise the only possible explanation is that he's giving the dullest speech in history and knows that already. Source: Boing Boing | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:08 am TomTom launches countersuit against MicrosoftSection: Business News, Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation  One of the top GPS manufacturers, TomTom has filed a patent infringement against Microsoft. The suit alleges that Microsoft is infringing on at least four patents held by TomTom by releasing the popular Microsoft Streets and Trips software program. The complaint is launched in response to a lawsuit filed by Microsoft against TomTom last month. Their complaint alleges that TomTom infringed on eight of their patents by using Microsoft’s file allocation table technology. Despite the new complaints launched by TomTom, Microsoft is not expected to withdraw their original lawsuit. In a statement issued yesterday by Microsoft, the company has said, “We are reviewing TomTom’s filing, which we have just received. As has been the case for more than a year, we remain committed to a licensing solution, although we will continue to press ahead with the complaints we initiated in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington and the International Trade Commission.“ Read: [ZDNet] Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:04 am IBM Said to Be Poring Over Sun's Contracts (PC World)PC World - Lawyers for IBM are examining Sun Microsystems' contracts and other documents in a due diligence process that could precede an acquisition, the Wall Street Journal reported Friday, citing unnamed sources.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:00 am Palm: yeah, so we lost $100m - who cares, here comes the Pre!
Would you cut your losses and leave the arena? Hell no! I can’t wait to try the Pre, and I hope it brings Palm all the success they deserve. So buck up, Palm-lovers, and see if they can’t land that haymaker. Source: Gizmodo | 21 Mar 2009 | 12:00 am Apple site suggests 17" iMac on its way back
Picked from an Apple newsletter at its education site, this image appears to depict a new 17" iMac. At just $900, call it the "Fuck Ballmer" special. Origine [SetteB.IT via Apple Lounge] Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 20 Mar 2009 | 11:59 pm Oracle's Take On Red Hat Linuxdarthcamaro writes "For nearly three years, Oracle has had its own version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, claiming the two versions are essentially the same thing. But are they really? As it turns out, there are a few things on which Oracle and Red Hat do not see eye-to-eye, including file systems and virtualization. The article quotes Wim Coekaerts, Oracle's director of Linux engineering, saying, 'A lot of people think Oracle is doing Enterprise Linux as just basically a rip off of Red Hat but that's not what this is about. ... This is about a support program, and wanting to offer quality Linux OS support to customers that need it. The Linux distribution part is there just to make sure people can get a freely available Linux operating system that is fully supported.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Gizmodo | 20 Mar 2009 | 11:36 pm Heartwarming Watch Storytime Hour (TM): “The hooker sold my watch for a tattoo”
Check out the whole thread for more hijinks. Source: CrunchGear | 20 Mar 2009 | 11:30 pm Palm: yeah, so we lost $100m - who cares, here comes the Pre!
Would you cut your losses and leave the arena? Hell no! I can’t wait to try the Pre, and I hope it brings Palm all the success they deserve. So buck up, Palm-lovers, and see if they can’t land that haymaker. Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors Source: Gizmodo | 20 Mar 2009 | 11:20 pm The Next Target For Google: Corporate IT Budgets [Voices]There’s an old debate in the Valley about whether Google (GOOG) is really a media company or a technology company. In a sense, it is a silly debate, which is mostly a matter of semantics. A better question is this: now that Google has become one of the world’s largest media companies, at least as measured by advertising dollars, what does it do next? After all, the company has tried but generally failed to extend its approach to selling advertising into offline media sectors like television and radio. Nonetheless, as Thomas Weisel Partners analyst Christa Quarles notes this afternoon in the latest edition of her Internet Quarterly report, Google is already the largest media company in the world as measured by ad dollars, with about 3 percent of the total market. She suggests comparing that to Wal-Mart (WMT), with about 4 percent of the global retail market. Quarles notes that the company intends to extend its advertising reach into the mobile, display and video sectors “by improving relevancy and efficiency.” But the more lucrative opportunity might lie elsewhere, with corporate IT budgets. Quarles notes that Google has barely put a dent into global IT spending, with only about a 0.1 percent share of what was a nearly $400 billion market in 2008; she sees this as “a large and untapped market for Google.” Source: All Things Digital | 20 Mar 2009 | 11:15 pm FSF Files Amicus Brief In RIAA CaseNewYorkCountryLawyer writes "The Free Software Foundation has requested permission to file an amicus curiae brief in an RIAA case, SONY BMG Music Entertainment v. Tenenbaum, defending the defendant's Due Process defense to the RIAA's claim for statutory damages. In the brief [PDF], FSF cites some of the leading authorities for the defense, including the 2003 decision of the US Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in Parker v. Time Warner, which held that excessive statutory damages are subject to the same due process test applicable to punitive damage awards by juries. Additionally, the brief cites three district court decisions, including UMG v. Lindor, and two law review articles — all of which deal specifically with Copyright Act statutory damages applicable to infringement of an MP3 file — to like effect."Read more of this story at Slashdot. Source: Slashdot | 20 Mar 2009 | 11:04 pm Review: Locavore for the iPhone The term Locavore is one that I’m not very familiar with - and to be honest, I was under the impression that throwing out a blanket term like “eating organic” was good enough. The whole organic movement hit the mainstream as I was making an exodus from the west coast, so concrete and constant car honking have muddled my green/hippie roots.
The thought of going to a farmer’s market or even grocery shopping in an actual store makes me cringe a little bit when I can order groceries online and have them delivered. But Buster McLeod’s Locavore iPhone app has me thinking twice about what I’m putting into my body. I mean, I don’t think Panda Express or any other fast food slinging joint is healthy or tasty like Greg does (Editor’s Greg’s Note: It is true. I do loves me some Panda.), but I probably don’t buy things that are local either and that’s just as bad.
So what exactly is Locavore you ask? According to the iPhone app’s description a “Locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius.” In other words, a locavore tries to purchase and consume only locally grown foods with the idea that they tastes better and are better for you.
Source: CrunchGear | 20 Mar 2009 | 11:00 pm Connecticut Man Sentenced for E-card Scam
|
 PC World | Ballmer Is Right: Mac Users Do Pay Dearly for Apple Logo PC World Steve Ballmer is trash-talking Apple again. No surprise there, as Microsoft's famously loud-mouthed CEO has taken plenty of swings at Cupertino over the years, such as when he snickered at the iPhone back in 2007. Ballmer Says He Loves Yahoo For Its Search Volume Report: Ballmer dishes on Apple |
Disappointed that the iPhone OS 3.0 announcement didn’t bring video recording? Sure - you’re not alone. With jailbreak-only applications like Cycorder having been recording videos for months now, many iPhone users are having a hard time understanding why Apple has yet to make it official - or why they haven’t allowed video recording applications in the App Store.
If this latest rumor (#5,432,938 for those keeping track at home) rings true, it might be yet another case of what Apple does best: good ol’ planned obsolescence. According to AppleInsider’s source “who’s proven extremely reliable when predicting changes to the Cupertino-based company’s hardware offerings”, a third revision of Apple’s finest will be announced later this year complete with an upgraded camera.
Their source also indicates that the new revision would bring dramatic improvement’s to the handset’s gaming prowess, though nothing specific was mentioned.
As much as our contract-locked selves may hate to admit it, it’s quite likely that Apple is planning to continue the trend of yearly iPhone updates. The iPhone and iPhone 3G were announced in June and July respectively; if a 2009 model is on the way, a mid-year announcement is quite likely. The iPhone 3G brought no upgrades to the camera of the original, so such an improvement is long overdue.
Would you be annoyed if Apple limited video recording to this (currently mythical) third iteration? Voice out in the comments below.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
An independent iPod repairman faces charges of fraud and money laundering after he allegedly scammed Apple out of 9,000 iPod Shuffles.
Prosecutors say Michigan resident Nicholas Woodhams, 23, guessed serial numbers and punched them into Apple's web site, fooling the company into sending him 9,000 replacement Shuffles.
Here's how it would work: Apple's Shuffle warranty program sends you a replacement unit and charges your credit card if you don't send a defective Shuffle in return. However, Woodhams used cards that rejected the charges, according to prosecutors. Woodhams allegedly sold thousands of replacement Shuffles for $49 apiece.
The government plans to seize Woodhams' real estate, seven Apple computers, two vehicles, his motorcycle and $571,000.
That's a clever trick, but who in their right mind would think it would work 9,000 times?
Michigan iPod repairman charged with fraud [Boston Globe via Gizmodo]
Photo: yinyang/Flickr
I swear to God, sometimes I think Microsoft and Sony allow their executives to be interviewed simply to catalyze message board flame wars (and subsequent CrunchGear posts). Take this latest salvo from Microsoft, which says that the Sony brand (presumably PS3, PS2 and PSP) is “hemorrhaging” at retail. Evidence? Xbox 360 sales just showed a 53 percent year-over-year growth; PS2 sales are down 62 percent from last year (but doesn’t everyone on planet Earth already have a PS2?); and consumers see Xbox 360 as a better value, what with the Arcade SKU starting at $199.
I can’t imagine too many people arguing that the PS3 has had an amazing run thus far, but it’s not as if you’ll have buyer’s remorse the minute you crack open the box. You’ve got some of the same great games as the Xbox 360 does—Street Fighter IV, Resident Evil 5 being two recently released examples—and a handful of decent exclusives like Killzone 2 (even if it’s a bit simple, as some would argue). Look, some covert, secret police could round up All Video Game Systems Ever and I wouldn’t bat an eyelid, but these silly “my system is better than yours” is tremendously pointless. Be smarter than that, readers.
As for the numbers Microsoft referenced, yes, we know: Xbox 360 is doing better than the PS3, but why not mention how well the Wii is doing? Oh, right, because you’re “not” competing with Nintendo this time ’round. How convenient.
I guess all I’m trying to say here, friends, is to fly above this nonsense; you’ll get nothing but grief otherwise.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 IntoMobile | YouTube for Mobile (Windows Mobile) CNET News CNET Editor's Note: The 'Download Now' button links to m.youtube.com, where you'll be able to directly download You Tube for Mobile via your mobile browser. Google releases YouTube mobile application YouTube App Comes To Symbian, Windows Mobile |
The first movies from a new POV camera released this week seem so stable that it's as if a leprechaun with film-school experience is perched upon your shoulder.
VIO gained notoriety among the daredevil set last year with its first POV camera, but its new POV 1.5 adds higher-res video (at 720 x 480 pixel resolution), more shooting speed options (up to 30 fps), and a smaller body weighing only 2 ounces. Videos shot with it (see below) show detail you wouldn't expect from a camera at that size.
According to the company, it's also way more rugged, with a shock- and water resistant red anodized body. Part of the gadget's durability also involves a new mounting design that tethers the camera within a large metal ring grip/Velcro combo, preventing it from flying off mid-jump.
The camera records up to 8GB of video (with an SDHC card), its focal length is at 2.97mm, and the wide-angle lens takes in 110-degree views.
But what's interesting for a camera of this type is that it also has a wireless control and a live-view LCD in an additional mounted player, which means you can check on videos in the middle of a ski run.
This might not seem like a big deal for all the Flip camera owners out there, but other adventure POV cameras tend to record video without a live preview. If you point in the wrong direction at some point in the jungle or mountain, you can't find out about until you check on your computer at the end of the day. By then, any mistakes are irreversible and the experience is over.
And of course, the difference between this rugged high-res cam and using a Flip cam on your helmet to capture fast adventures is that the latter would probably end in useless, jumpy footage.
One bad thing about the VIO set-up is that there's a cord that runs between the body with the screen and the camera. That is potentially restrictive and even dangerous. If you're an adventurer, though, it is probably not enough to stop you from adding it to your arsenal.
At $650 dollars, it is a specialty item. If you're a city dweller who sees the same trail of drudgery day after day, buying it is a waste of money. But if your point of view is exciting enough to be recorded, by all means, put in on YouTube and let others live through your crazy adventures.
Check out videos shot with the VIO 1.5 after the jump.
Downhill Mountain Biking in the Swiss Alps from big mountain on Vimeo.
Once you’ve completely filled every surface of your home with pictures of the kids, vacations, cat, dog, car, grandparents, cousins, aunts, uncles, and strangers, what’s a person to do? Well, not to worry, Photojojo has you covered with these Wrap Around Corner frames.
Be prepared to pay for this slice of wonderfulness, however: Photojojo thinks you should pay $119 dollars for this magical product. They are however offering a very special deal where if you blog about their product, they’ll give ya $20 off the price.
Section: Communications, Gadgets / Other, Web, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack
Welcome to Crack 2.0. Clearly this stuff is more potent as this past weeks antics suggest the game is at a whole new level. What am I talking about? I am talking about what they did and said and tweeted this week. Here is made me fall of my stool, if, you know, I sat on stools:
This ranks up there with the beer-goggle drunk email test that is in labs too. Our Robert Nelson posted GMail’s latest victory and frankly, celebrating this is like giving a Woot! out to the iPhone for adding copy and paste. The new feature allows you to pull back an email for up to five seconds after you send it.
If you are like me, it takes nearly 5 seconds to blink. You can’t pick up food off the ground and expect it to be safe as the five-second-rule was disproved by Mythbusters. Wait, wait. Maybe I am being unfair to five seconds. After all, check this video for your favorite movies, all in 5 seconds:
Oh, brother. HTC announced they’ll have “more than 3” new Android phones out this year. Could it be that HTC was feeling left out of the parties the past two weeks with Palm and Apple showing off shiny things you can’t have yet? I say heck yeah. Here are my possible reasons why HTC doesn’t have a finger on the exact number:
Fine, maybe I don’t know why HTC doesn’t know. Do you?
I feel bad for XM/Sirius. I liked them five years ago, shout out to Fred on 49. But times are a changing and competing on the iPhone with an app that more or less duplicates what Pandora and others can offer seems, well, silly. I should note that I am cheap and hold no allegiances. Stern fans (he is still on the satellite broadcaster right?) can stop sending me hate mail.
For casual listeners like myself, I just don’t see it. My latest coup is streaming Pandora though my iPhone to my car stereos. I love that set up.
You have to feel for Nokia. They just can’t catch a break in the US market. Their Mosh initiative was aimed at making the Nokia experience more customizable with a program that allowed you to swap ringtones, videos, and more. It ended up being a trading place for porn and copyrighted music. So close.
It has got to be frustrating ruling Europe while gaining little traction over here in the US. Now faced with a tough decision of having to shut down a program cause it got spoiled, as Natesh opined, by a “few bad apples” has to be like a kick in the face.
That is my list for the week. Join us next week when XYZtells us they XXX their customers, it is sure to be a hoot!
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
 Siliconrepublic.com | Microsoft Internet Explorer Users Slow To Adopt New Release ChannelWeb Microsoft Internet Explorer users aren't exactly rushing to embrace IE 8, the new release of the Web browser that debuted Thursday. Microsoft asks IE8 beta testers to keep reporting bugs What response Microsoft is getting on its Internet Explorer 8? |
 Phones Review | Video recording, faster networking on next iPhone? CNET News by Tom Krazit Does Apple have a video camera and faster 3G chip in mind for the next iPhone? Two reports involving a purported next-generation iPhone dovetailed quite nicely Friday. Apple's 2009 iPhone to support faster 3G networks - report What could be the new features of Apple’s next-generation iphone? |
The term Locavore is one that I’m not very familiar with - and to be honest, I was under the impression that throwing out a blanket term like “eating organic” was good enough. The whole organic movement hit the mainstream as I was making an exodus from the west coast, so concrete and constant car honking have muddled my green/hippie roots.
The thought of going to a farmer’s market or even grocery shopping in an actual store makes me cringe a little bit when I can order groceries online and have them delivered. But Buster McLeod’s Locavore iPhone app has me thinking twice about what I’m putting into my body. I mean, I don’t think Panda Express or any other fast food slinging joint is healthy or tasty like Greg does (Editor’s Greg’s Note: It is true. I do loves me some Panda.), but I probably don’t buy things that are local either and that’s just as bad.
So what exactly is Locavore you ask? According to the iPhone app’s description a “Locavore is someone who eats food grown or produced locally or within a certain radius.” In other words, a locavore tries to purchase and consume only locally grown foods with the idea that they tastes better and are better for you.
Locavore the app tells you what’s in season in your area, how much longer it’s in season for, what’s coming into season, and what’s grown in your state, pulling fruit and vegetable availability from the NRDC. But it does much more than that and it kicks much ass.
When you launch the application you’re greeted with the main splash page that says, “Rolling up to the market…” Once the app is fired up you’ll see the following icons across the bottom: In Season, Markets, Food, States and About. Locavore automatically detects where you are based on cell phone triangulation or GPS (depending on which iPhone model you have) and lists what’s “Currently in season” and what’s “Coming in season soon.” Each food item has a small pie chart next to it that indicates how much longer the food is in season or when it’s coming into season. The pie charts are filled in with shades of red, yellow, orange and green to indicate freshness. Red means it’s going out of season so be quick about picking those up, while green means you have plenty of time to pick up a bushel of whatever it is that you like to eat, hippie. When the foods of your region are populated you can tap each one to get a more detailed breakdown of where else it grows in the US and how much longer it will be in season.
“Markets” lists all the local Farmers’ Markets in your immediate vicinity. I’m not sure what the distance cut-off is but there are approximately 25 markets within 2.4 miles of where I am. Local Harvest populates this section of the app. Tapping into any listing leads to an in-app web page for that market, though you can break the page out to Safari if you choose to do so.
The “Food” screen lists all 234 foods in Locavore’s database. By tapping into one of them, it pulls up a map of the US and breaks down where it grows, where it’s in season and when it will be in season.
The “States” tab does exactly what you’d expect, telling you which foods are in season and what’s coming into season in a specific state.
And last but not least is the “About” section of the app. It’s here that you can get news and updates from the Locavore Twitter account without ever having to leave the app. You can also ask questions and submit bugs via Get Satisfaction.
Well, that’s the Locavore app in a nutshell. It’s simple to use and it’s a hippie/foodie/chef’s dream come true.
But it’s not perfect. Like any first release, it has its bugs. One bug we stumbled upon: If you hit the “In Season” tab after launch while you’re already viewing it, it pulls up the loading graphic, which isn’t a big deal since you can get back to the list of foods by tapping it again. But that bug renders the “In Season” tab useless if you happen to accidentally hit that “In Season” tab while you’re in it and decide to navigate to a certain food in the list. If that happens, you won’t be able to get back to the main list without restarting the app. The Locavore guys have told me that they’re working on fixing it for the next release.
The Locavore iPhone app is available now from iTunes for an introductory price of $2.99 for the first thousand buyers. I suggest you jump on it now.
Note: Ex-CrunchGear writer Matt Hickey had a part in the development of this application, which we felt was worthy of a disclosure. We judged it as we would judge any other iPhone application that was submitted for review.
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U.S. telecom executives are cautious about speaking their minds when it comes to tech heavyweights like Apple (AAPL) and Google (GOOG), but not Mikhail Shamolin, president of MTS, Russia’s largest cellphone company.
In an interview with Wall Street Journal editorial staff, he said the negotiations to bring the iPhone to Russia last fall were like “the negotiations of a junkie and a narcotics salesman,” because of the pent-up demand for the device.
But “Apple was operating on a take-it-or-leave-it strategy,” he said, resulting in a high price–about $1,000–that puts it out of reach for many Russians, since operators in the country don’t subsidize handsets.
The largest wireless operators in Russia all offer the iPhone 3G now, but they’ve only sold “a few hundred thousand” units, Mr. Shamolin said, because of the price tag and the dwindling supply of consumer financing amid the global financial crisis. Such credit “was one way to sell iPhones and that went away with the crisis,” Mr. Shamolin said.
FROM APPLETELL - The big news this week is, of course, Boxee’s remote app, but I have some games for you to try out, as well. MORE »
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
This week, Apple heated up the smartphone war with its sneak preview of iPhone 3.0 — the next version of the iPhone's operating system, which lands this summer. We discuss the OS's new features, as well as their larger implications for Apple's revolutionary handset.
We then dive into a story about an Open Source Hardware Bank to fund hardware projects whose blueprints are made free to anyone. Cool concept, but perhaps more welcome in a less crappy economy?
We also summarize discoveries made about a special chip inside the iPod Shuffle's earbuds. There's no DRM conspiracy here, folks!
Lastly, Wired.com reviews editor Danny Dumas gives us his take on two new desktop computers — Dell's Studio XPS 435 and HP's Firebird 803.
This week's podcast features Dylan Tweney, Danny Dumas, Priya Ganapati and Brian Chen, with audio engineering by Michael Lennon.
If the embedded player above doesn't work, you can download the Gadget Lab podcast #67 MP3.
Use iTunes? Subscribe to the Gadget Lab Audio Podcast in iTunes. Do it now!
Like video? Aim your browser at the Gadget Lab Video Podcast — available on iTunes and right here on the Gadget Lab blog.
Excited about iPhone 3.0? You can't have it until summer, but you can at least see the beta in action in today's episode of the Gadget Lab Video Podcast.
A tall, mysterious, masked developer visited the Wired.com office this week to give us a walk-through of the beta, documented in this video. We discuss the highlights — copy-and-paste, MMS and Spotlight search — and of course we reveal some of the bugs.
This video podcast was shot, produced and edited by Annaliza Savage.
I’ve only watched a couple minutes of March Madness so far, and I haven’t watched a second on my laptop. But apparently I’m in the minority: CBS, which is streaming the entire college basketball tournament for free on the Web, says traffic to its video player is up 56 percent compared to last year.
CBS (CBS) says it logged more than 2.7 million uniques to the player in the first day of tournament; last year it logged 1.75 million during the same period. And it says it has streamed 2.8 million hours of live video and audio so far, up 65 percent from last year.
Bonus stat for the good people of Comcast (CMCSA), who are sponsoring the player’s “Boss Button”–users have clicked on the defraud-your-employer tool 1.5 million times. Last year’s figure was 2.5 million for the entire tournament. But no stats from CBS on the number of people who have used Microsoft’s (MSFT) Silverlight software to watch the games on HD.
Most important stat for CBS and its advertisers: Television viewing, which is still much more important than any Web metric, was up nine percent for the day. Another vote in favor of the “Web video is additive, not cannibalizing” argument.
Section: Business News, Communications, Smartphones
As the company has already predicted, Palm has posted a rather disappointing quarter yet again. For its third quarter, Palm has reported a loss of $98 million. It’s not all that surprising considering it only shipped out 482,000 units during the quarter, down 42 percent from the third quarter the previous year.
Despite the Treo Pro, Palm fully expected to post a down quarter as it puts the finishing touches on the Pre. It would be safe to assume that a majority of people who would consider buying a Palm product at this point are just waiting for the Pre’s release. With the promises of what it is supposed to do, this just makes sense. Who would want an outdated Treo Pro when they could have the new shininess of WebOS? If the iPhone could convince people to buy into AT&T, I’m sure the Pre could sway people into getting a Sprint contract.
Given the dismal seven quarters Palm has shown, it is hard to say if the Pre will be capable of saving the company. With the features shown off in the iPhone 3.0 preview earlier this week, Apple may have convinced some naysayers, swaying them from the promise of WebOS, BlackBerries, Android and the upcoming WinMo 6.5. Palm has said that they will have WebOS upgrades similar to the iPhone updates, but the Pre needs to hold its ground first.
The Pre does look like a promising device with an interesting OS, but it’ll be hard to say just how many people it will attract. Tech die-hards alone can’t sustain a device and a whole company. Or maybe I’m just underestimating Palm’s relevance in the current mobile market.
Read [InformationWeek]
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A few years ago, for reasons that are still unclear, restaurants that created web pages went wild for Flash and graphics. You'd go to a restaurant's website and be forced to watch some lame animation or other alleged art, and then have to endure even more of it just to find out what was on the menu. You still do, in many cases.
This customer-unfriendly system is made worse with mobile phones. I'm heading to North Carolina early next month to give a couple of talks and was looking for places to eat in Chapel Hill, one of the stops. Bad move (on an iPhone, anyway). I did a Google map search and got a link to a place that, when selected, produced this image:
Not terribly helpful. But aha -- when I expanded the page I noticed a link called "Menu":
This was promising, until I clicked that link and got this:
Maybe they'd have more customers if potential patrons could actually see what they have to offer.
FROM APPLETELL - If you’re a gamer with a laptop, the G13 is a necessity. If you’ve got a full keyboard, it’s simply a luxury. I can’t imagine the G13 will ever really improve your gaming performance, but it will certainly make it more comfortable. MORE »
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Congress is a tech-savvier place today than it was when Edward Amoroso, AT&T’s (T) chief security officer, started making trips to Washington more than 20 years ago.
Back then, he says, he would discuss virus threats at length before a lawmaker would raise his hand. “You’re expecting some question that might impress you, and they’d ask, ‘Can you tell me what a virus is?’”
Yesterday, however, when he addressed the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, he was surprised to hear senators fluently discussing botnets and the recent cyber-attack against Estonia.
Exchanging glances with colleagues after the hearing, he recalls, “We made that face that you make when you’re kind of impressed.”
The subcommittee handles a wide range of communications, security and technology issues, and it conducted the hearing, titled “Cybersecurity: Assessing Our Vulnerabilities and Developing an Effective Defense,” to identify security threats and changes the government needs to make to fend them off.
Understatement of the day: Apps are in. Having already released an iPhone app, it should come as no surprise that Photobucket has teamed up with T-Mobile and Danger to create mobile Photobucket apps for select T-Mo handsets and Danger’s Sidekick.
More specifically, Photobucket worked with T-Mobile to create an exclusive mobile photo/video service “that enables users to send photos directly from mobile handsets to several destinations: a Photobucket album, a PC hard drive, or any an email address.”
Initially, the app (both free and premium versions) will be available on T-Mobile’s BlackBerry Curve, BlackBerry Pearl, and three select (unnamed) WinMo handsets. According to the press release:
Following the 21-day trial, users can continue using the free version or purchase the full software for a special holiday one-time purchase price of $19.99. The expired trial version allows users to upload only to Photobucket, while the premium version gives users access to Photobucket, as well as the ability to send photos to their home PC or to any email address.
As for Sidekick owners, Photobucket partnered with Danger to develop an app specifically for everyone’s favorite hiptop (screenshots below). The app allows users to upload photos and videos directly to a Photobucket album from their Sidekick where they can add/edit titles, descriptions and tags, and even rotate and/or resize their images.
In addition, users can:
The Sidekick Photobucket app is available only on a subscription basis for $1.99/month.
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The latest iPhone rumor is even more vague than usual: Sources in the mobile industry told Silicon Alley Insider that the next iPhone will come with faster internet access. Just how the iPhone will do it, they couldn't say.
What we do know is this won't be because of AT&T's 4G network: Silicon Alley Insider points out 4G won't be around for another year. And even if 4G were deployed by the time of the next iPhone's release, it would take several years for AT&T to optimize the network. (We all know that the 3G network is far from perfect.)
In any case, we think faster internet is pretty much a given with the next iPhone. Seeing as it will be a major upgrade, it will undoubtedly have a faster processor. A boost in performance equates to a faster web browser, and that's all you would need to say the next iPhone has "faster internet access."
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Does Android dream of Sekai Camera? The answer is yes. The augmented reality app, which was unveiled for the first time during TechCrunch 50 last September, isn’t iPhone-only anymore. Sekai Camera is supposed to make it possible for phone users to tag objects and locations in the real world by using their camera phones.
On Wednesday, I had the chance to attend the world premiere of the Android version in Tokyo, which was part of an Android info event organized by Nikkei, Japan’s biggest business newspaper. There wasn’t an opportunity for a hands-on test this time (I could test Sekai Camera for the iPhone last month), but I was able to take some exclusive pictures and videos for MobileCrunch.
And I must say Sekai Camera for Android looks more promising than the iPhone version (CEO Takahito Iguchi demonstrated the app live in front of an audience of several hundred people). The most striking difference is the use of the compass function, which does away with the need to flick fingers left or right to find relevant tags that are around the user.
Iguchi said that Sekai Camera could be used for social gaming in the future. The icons and comment boxes seemed to be a tad prettier in the Android version, which isn’t really that unimportant in a tagging app.
Watch the videos below and decide for yourself if there is a big difference to the iPhone version, which will be released as an open beta in the App Store “before this summer”, as Iguchi told MobileCrunch exclusively. (Some readers commented in our recent Sekai Camera post the app might not be in line with Apple’s camera API. Let’s hope the iPhone version will find its way into the App Store somehow.)
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It's a difficult time for Palm as sales of its current smartphones have dropped off as the company tries to build demand for its yet-to-be-released Palm Pre phone.
Sales of smartphones at Palm plunged 42 percent in the third quarter compared to a year ago, the company reported as part of its quarterly financial results.
Still Palm presented an optimistic note to analysts on its conference call. The company is betting the farm on the Palm Pre, which is scheduled to be available on the Sprint network by the middle of the year.
And that will just be the beginning, it says. After the launch of the Pre, Palm will work on bringing new devices based on the company's newly designed operating system, webOS that powers the Pre. "You will see a whole product line come from Palm based on the WebOS," Ed Colligan, CEO of Palm told analysts.
This news should come as no surprise to company watchers. Palm said last month it will drop its long time favorite, Palm OS, in favor of the new webOS. The company also uses Windows Mobile operating system for some of its phones. But Windows Mobile OS lacks the breezy interface that gives webOS its sheen.
See also:
Palm Energizes Developers for Palm Pre
6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special
Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
Video: Hands-On With the Palm Pre
New WebOS Is Palm's Secret Sauce
Up Close and Personal With the Palm Pre
Make: Talk episode 3In this episode of Make magazine's Make: Talk, you'll meet our new "Country Scientist" columnist, Forrest M. Mims III. He's the author of the famous "Getting Started in Electronics" book published by Radio Shack, and was recently named one of the top 10 amateur scientists by Discover magazine. In addition, the editors of MAKE will present news from the world of making, as well as our favorite tricks, tips, and tools. Be sure to call in for prizes that we'll award during the program!
Unlike Microsoft's silly but sort of understandable proscription against mice on home consoles, Sony doesn't mind letting gamers use a mouse on their lap. Swiss peripherals maker SplitFish has released a new model of their FragFX mouse, the V2, with offers "significant improvements", but is presented here primarily because it looks odd. It is eighty of your dollars.
Solarfun Power (SOLF) shares are getting whacked today by a report from Jefferies solar analyst Paul Clegg, who basically points out that the company is suffering from the dual maladies of sagging demand and a weakening balance sheet.
Clegg, who has an Underperform rating and $3 price target on the stock, cut his numbers on the company today ahead of its Q4 results, which are due March 25. Clegg slashed his 2009 EPS estimate to 12 cents a share, from 51 cents. He now sees SOLF producing 200 MW in 2009, down from his old estimate of 244 MW. And he sees ASPs for SOLF this year falling more than 30 percent, to under two euros/watt. His revenue forecast drops to $645.8 million, from $815.9 million; he sees $733.8 million in 2008. Clegg asserts that the company’s outlook is “weakened by somewhat undifferentiated modules and a lack of strong distribution relationships in key markets.”
NZXT's Panzer, when not crossing the Rhine and crushing human skulls, is designed to keep powerful gaming components cool with the minimum of neon bling. It's reasonably-priced, too, at $120.
SanDisk's Sansa slotRadio digital music player, unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show earlier this year, will ship starting March. 31.
The company is betting on the idea that consumers want to carry music cards, instead of depending on digital downloads.
The new Sansa music players come with a slotRadio card, a memory card that is preloaded with 1,000 songs from the Billboard charts and playlists featuring a variety of genres. The players have a 1.5-inch OLED screen and FM radio.
SanDisk believes slotMusic cards and a player combination offers consumers a plug and play model. Instead of connecting their music players to their computers and downloading files to it, the slotRadio cards come preloaded with music. It's not for the tech savvy but for the Janes and Joes who just want to plug in a card, pick a genre and listen to music, says a company spokesperson.
The new players will be first available online on the SanDisk.com website and in stores shortly after that.
SanDisk's latest product hasn't met with many positive comments. The idea has been criticized by bloggers for the restrictions the cards impose on consumers. The slotMusic cards are tied to a player, and listeners cannot choose the order in which the songs will be played.
As more consumers give up CDs and move towards digital music, there is also the question of whether the market really wants to take a step back towards physical media, this time in the form of memory cards filled with music.
[via Engadget]
Some 8 months after the launch of the Nokia E71, the AT&T-branded E71x (which made its unauthorized internet debut four months ago) is finally set to hit the shelves next Tuesday.
According to BGR, AT&T locations from coast to coast began receiving boxes full of’em sometime in the past few days. Whispers from the inside are pinning the handset at $199 bucks after rebate, which seems a bit steep considering unlocked and unbranded versions can be found for just $100 bucks more online (though the E71x is purportedly running S60 3rd Edition Feature Pack 2, while the E71 is stuck at Feature Pack 1 - for now.) Anybody out there going to be banging down AT&T’s doors come Tuesday morning?
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Similar to the Asus model we just reviewed, Shuttle's X50 is another nettop all-in-one. It too has a touchscreen 15.6" display with a 1366x768 screen resolution, 1 GB of RAM and an Atom CPU from Intel.
I has a 160GB hard drive, a webcam, gigabit ethernet and WiFi, and is sold with Windows XP. There are 5 USB ports and a memory card reader.
How, then, does it differ? Where the Eee is round, the X50 is square. And it has a handle.
Shuttle x50 [Slashgear]
YouTube can now be widely accessed through an application on most Window Mobile and Nokia S60 devices. You can visit m.youtube.com from your phone to download the app. YouTube says that the devices will have a faster application start-up, searching capabilities, and video loading and will allows users to easily access YouTube via an icon on the device's screen. YouTube has also improved the quality of the videos on mobile devices by providing the highest available stream quality and improved buffering (which will help videos play in weak coverage areas). Once the app is installed on the mobile device, no configuration is required outside of the application.
A year ago, Google Mobile started offering all YouTube videos on m.youtube.com, so any mobile device could access an assortment of YouTube videos via their devices' browser. Google Mobile also added a YouTube application for some Sony and Nokia cell phones. And there's been a custom app for the iPhone and Android for a while now.
So, uh, wasn’t Dell (DELL) supposed to be working on a cellphone?
Well, that was the scuttlebutt. But Dell has failed to show at recent mobile trade shows. Shaw Wu, an analyst at Kaufman Bros., asserts in a research note today that the company’s first attempt was basically rejected by the carriers as too, well, Dell-like.
He asserts that Dell showed a prototype to the carriers, but that they weren’t all that impressed. “From our conversation with supply chain and industry sources, it appears that it ultimately came down to lack of carrier interest and small subsidies, making it difficult for Dell to make a profit,” he writes. “In our view, the last thing Dell needs is to enter another money-losing business as it seeks to preserve its operating margins of 5-6 percent.” (Which he notes compares to Hewlett-Packard at around 11 percent, and Apple and IBM at 15 percent.)
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On left: Old and busted. On right: New hotness.
When Windows Mobile 6.5 ROMs started floating around the Internet, people complained about the Honeycomb interface. When Microsoft made Windows Mobile 6.5 official at MWC, people complained about the Honeycomb interace. And when Microsoft started soliciting feedback from employees? You guessed it: complaints about the Honeycomb interface.
Growing tired of the nagging, Microsoft has decided to drop the Honeycombs. In a 6.5 overview presentation at MIX09, Loke Uei Tan, Senior Technical Product Manager of Mobile at Microsoft, puts the slightly modified look out there for all to see. They’re keeping the staggered icon arrangement, but nixing the hexagonal outlines in favor of bigger icons. They’ve also brushed up the overall usability, making it a whole lot easier to scroll right to the icon you’re looking for. You can see all the changes in motion in the video after the jump - scrub over to around 6:50 for the meaty bits.
Note: You’ll need Silverlight for the video.
[Via ArsTechnica]
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Ostensibly this essay by Bruce "Is Loose (The)" Sterling in Metropolis is advice to industrial designers on what to design in the whirlwind markets of 2009, but I don't actually understand what he's saying. I tried Googling some of the products he used as examples and I can't even find them.Except for cheap cell phones, which the global poor truly dote on, the lowest billion rarely buy “appropriate” objects designed for them by soft-hearted liberals. But formerly rich guys buying up-market peasant products? Man, that market should boom! It’s high time for designers to plunder and upgrade the vernacular technologies of the Third World: wheelbarrows, bicycle rickshaws, rainwater barrels, window boxes, awnings, and mosquito nets; or weird and whimsical wind toys, bamboo-and-Mylar windup shortwave radios. If they’re cheap and blithe, you can’t go wrong here. You want to vividly display a host of eye-catching solar gizmos, while quietly installing some humble weather stripping, which has a terrific ROI.
It's the golden jubilee of Fisher-Price's Little People toys, even though they've been around in some form since 1950. They didn't become the little peg-bodied Little People we know today until 1959, however, with the launch of the "Safety School Bus", which included six figures that could removed from the bus, although the driver stayed inside. (His head was attached to a mechanism that caused it to move back and forth as the bus was pulled. Despite being a child of the '80s, I recall playing with this bus. I had no idea it was so old!)
The two Little People sets I recall playing with the most as a kid, the "Play Family Farm" and the "Play Family House" were introduced in the late '60s. I'd always presumed mine were new—and perhaps they were, as the line wasn't redesigned until 1991 (and again in '97), with the Farm in production until '85—but it's possible that I could have inherited them. Looking at the little chickens and dogs and farmers now in Fisher-Price's faux vintage photographs makes me wistful; I remember the personality I had imbued in every one of those little pegs.
After the jump, some vintage commercials for Little People, as well as some trivia about the line that I cut-and-pasted from a Word doc.
Video: Play Family Farm commercial (1960s)
Video: Play Family Farm System commercial (1971)
Q: Of what material were the first Little People figures made? A: Wood. The first plastic figures were introduced in 1968 – they had plastic bodies, with wooden heads. Q: How many different types of Little People animals have there been? A: Since 1959, Little People has created over 80 different animals, from alligators to zebras! Q: What was the first playset for Little People? A: The Little People Farm in 1968. It was one of the hottest toys in the industry that year. Q: For how much did the first Little People playset retail? A: $9.99. Q: In what year did a Little People playset feature its first licensed characters? What were they? A: 1975. Sesame Street. Q: How many Little People products have been sold between 1959 and today? A: More than 1.5 billion. Q: When were Little People figures redesigned with more real-life features? A: 1997. Q: What are the names of the most popular Little People figures? A: Sara Lynn and Eddie. Q: What Little People figures were the first to be based on fairy tales? A: Cinderella and Little Red Riding Hood. Q: When was the first Little People seasonal toy introduced? What was it? A: 1997. Santa & His Sleigh.
There has been some speculation that this nine-minute video, "What's in the Box?", is some sort of teaser for Half-Life. And that makes a lot of sense: the character audio track is "missing"; it's all shot from a first-person perspective; it's set in an empty European city; the sky is yawning open to puke down fireballs over a giant tower. Oh—and it uses Half-Life sound effects.
But it's all far too similar for me to think it's actually something sanctioned by Valve, especially when one of the things that makes the Half-Life series feel like it does is Valve's commitment to making the game experience itself tell the story, not cut scenes or accompanying films.
I'd go along with "Half-Life tribute film"—and it's a very good one, at that.
Basketball fans, beware.
Hackers are taking advantage of bracket-related Web surfing and initiating some madness of their own, with tactics as sneaky as spreading malicious software through March Madness blog posts.
Online security company Websense discovered two March Madness-related malware scams earlier this week, one in the form of URLs posted in blog comments that took users to a phony anti-virus scanning site, and another as a search engine optimization scam that infected basketball-related terms and pushed them to the top in Google (GOOG).
It’s a clever and common tactic, particularly for an event like the NCAA tournament, which has fans checking sports sites, blogs and mobile devices for updates on their favorite teams. Websense’s chief technology officer, Dan Hubbard, says that hackers try to capitalize on popular events or stories on the Internet, whether it’s a major athletic event such as the Olympics, the recent presidential election, or a celebrity breakup that drives Web traffic. Users need to be wary of links to fake anti-virus scanners that urge installation. “Just because something comes up on your screen and tells you to install it doesn’t mean you have to actually do it,” he says. “That’s a really hard message to get across to the consumers.”
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New York Times (NYT) chairman Arthur Sulzberger Jr. may not have figured out how his paper can adapt to the Web age yet. But give him credit: He’s been thinking about the idea for more than a decade.
Here he is in 1995, at a Harvard University forum on journalism in the “on-line era,” thinking outloud about the ways his company might make money in the Internet era.
This is all an experiment. We don’t know where this is going. In the end, it’s going to have to pay for itself. We do know that. In the end, it’s going to have to pay for itself. And there’s not a lot of ways to make money.
As far as I know, there are only four–three, if you exclude blackmail–“Mr. Roberts, I won’t put that information up in exchange for $100,” which may be the only way to make money at this business today. Either the reader is going to pay or the advertiser is going to pay, or we’re going to get a piece of the transactional action. If the reader decides that she wants to get theater tickets from the Shubert organization for “Cats,” one, we’ll try to talk her out of it, but if she still goes out to see “Cats,” then maybe we’ll get, you know, one one-hundredth or one-tenth, or whatever the heck it is, of that transaction.
I had no idea Sulzberger harbored such an anti-”Cats” bias. Who knew?
I’m also not sure what to make of the fact that the Times–and everyone else in the news business–is still struggling with online economics 13 years later. Should the industry get credit for grappling with a problem that’s much harder than it looks? Or should our collective big brains have resolved this one by now?
Thanks to Harvard’s excellent Nieman Journalism Lab for digging up the transcript of the forum, which also featured tech pundit Esther Dyson; Walter Issacson, who was at the time a top executive at Time Warner’s (TWX) Time Inc.; and Frank Daniels III, publisher of the now-defunct Nando.net. You can read the entire thing (warning: very, very long) below.
It’s worth noting that the source of the rumour is Korea, because Korean firm LG last year signed a $500m agreement with Apple last year to supply it with unspecified types of displays until 2013.
Normally such small rumors would be filed for later use, but with the recent announcement of the 3.0 iPhone OS and the summer fast approaching (The next iPhone – if Apple follows the pattern of recent years – should be announced at the end of June), we’ve been wondering just what Apple might add to the next iteration of the hardware.
Last year, it was obvious. The iPhone lacked both a 3G radio and GPS. Those were added, along with a slimmer body. This year, there is no clear upgrade path. Perhaps a better camera with a few more pixels (but please, not too many) and maybe video capability. Otherwise, what is there to add?
An OLED screen would make sense. It uses less power, looks better and runs brighter, so this rumor has a ring of the truth about it. Otherwise, we expect little more than some re-styling, a faster processor and more memory. Think about it. The iPhone and the iPod Touch are more of a computing platform than phones or iPods. Apple only offers major redesigns of its computers every few years, with incremental, internal upgrades in between. We’d say the iPhone will go the same way.
Apple iPhone to get OLED screen, claims mole [Reg Hardware]
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Normally I’m very skeptical of extra complications, especially in kitchen gadgets. But this cruet set comes from OXO Good Grips, whose kit fills my kitchen based solely on its good design and the fact that it usually better than anything else I can buy (wait for my forthcoming review of the OXO peeler).
The skinny: These salt and pepper mills both use ceramic grinders. While metal is fine for pepper, salt is usually ground with plastic so that it doesn’t rust. You can imaging how long the milling section lasts in this rock vs. plastic fight.
The see-through acrylic cases mean you know when things are running out and the cylinders are flat on both top and bottom so you can use both hands to do the refilling. Better still, the natural resting position is upside down — the mill sits at the top, keeping excess grindings off the table.
They are both adjustable from fine to course grinds and have the trademark rubber grips (hence the name of the range). At $20 each, they might not be the cheapest grinders you can buy but, if they are anything like the rest of the Good Grips gadgets, they might be the last. Available soon.
Product page [OXO via Uncrate]
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Spiralfrog, the free music service that also doubled as an awesome money-burning machine, seems to have finally given up the ghost. CNET reports that the site, overwhelmed by debt, shut down last night.
[UPDATE: A source familiar with the situation tells me that the company is indeed dead and that any remaining assets are being handed over to creditors.]
Music industry sources had told me that SpiralFrog, which offered free, ad-supported downloads–with several strings attached–was shopping itself in recent months.
When I asked CEO Joe Mohen about that on March 2, he insisted that his company was merely seeking “to have a strategic relationship with certain large companies to augment our sales team.” If he calls back, I’ll tell you what he has to say today.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see other music sites go dark, too. Several of SpiralFrog’s competitors have been looking for money or buyers as well.
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A company profile that was just 
The lawyers never seem to get the fact that some things just aren’t that interesting until they try to force people not to talk about them. And that’s certainly the case with London headquartered Barclays bank, which has fought the UK newspaper The Guardian all week over the publication of internal Barclays Bank documents alleged to detail huge tax avoidance schemes by the company that total more than $16 billion.
So IE 8 is out, and a fair amount of people have tried it at this point. In general, the buzz is good, but there have been a couple of things that haven’t been necessarily ideal. The biggest items that aren’t meeting up with people’s expectations are the accelerators and 
The arrest report says that the couple were arguing over drugs, and during the fight at their home, Gellert screamed in his wife's face, threw things, grabbed her neck and strangled her, and knocked her to the ground.
