Source: Gizmodo | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:01 am

OpenSAF Poised for Strong Growth in 2009

Foundation announces 2009 Officers, updated Roadmap and Developer Days 2009. DANVILLE, Calif., March 25 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The OpenSAF Foundation, a consortium of leading communications and computing companies supporting the OpenSAF project, today announced a successful conclusion to its inaugural year with a significant increase in developers, member companies and downloads of its software.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:01 am

Verizon Business Delivers Full Complement of Professional Services for Virtualization

Addition to IT Consulting Portfolio Helps Customers Avoid Complexity, Leverage Investments BASKING RIDGE, N.J., March 25 /PRNewswire/ -- Verizon Business is helping customers achieve the full benefits of virtualization - high performance, flexibility, cost control and energy savings --through an expanded suite of consulting and management services that covers every aspect of virtualization, a fast-growing approach to optimizing computing resources.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:01 am

Hands-on: T-Mobile webConnect USB laptop stick

T-Mobile’s long awaited USB dongle is available starting today and we’ve had the pleasure of tinkering with the webConnect USB laptop stick for the day. T-Mobile hooked up with Huawei for their first foray into the mobile arena with a slim and stylish device. Considering how young and fertile T-Mobile’s 3G network, I was surprised by the speeds this little dongle could muster up. I’m currently in Redwood City, CA, and my parent’s house is a bit of a dead zone, but I managed to get 337kbps up and 841kbps down. We’ll see how she does when I get back to NYC where I’m sure the 3G network is a bit more robust. Sadly, it only works with Windows, but T-Mobile promises Mac OS X support this summer.

You can also send SMS messages and connect to Wi-Fi networks or HotSpots.

The built-in connection manager tells you how much data you’ve already used and how much you have left.

The webConnct USB laptop Stick is available starting today and retails for $50 with a 2-year contract after rebate or $100 with a 1-year contract. Or you’ll have to throw down $250 for one without a contract. Service will cost $60/month for 5GB and anything over that will cost you $0.20 per MB.

Features

Source: CrunchGear | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

T-Mobile gets into the game of laptop connections (AP)

AP - T-Mobile USA is opening up its new cellular broadband network to laptops for the first time, with Wednesday's launch of a USB "dongle" that lets portable computers get wireless Internet access.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

T-Mobile continues to expand its 3G network

T-Mobile subscribers have been waiting patiently for the big magenta to roll out their 3G network and it finally happened last year. But, let’s be honest, it wasn’t as spectacular as we thought it would be. The only worthwhile device on the network is the G1 and that’s not everyone’s cup of tea. T-Mo plans to keep expanding its HDSPA network to more than 100 U.S. cities, but without proper devices to utilize that high-speed network it’s sort of a “who cares” fact. Nevertheless this is what T-Mobile has to say about their 3G expansion.

· T-Mobile has made tremendous progress towards the broad availability of its high-speed (3G) network and 3G-capable products and services. Currently our 3G network is available to more than 100M people in more 130 U.S. cities.

· In 2009, T-Mobile will strengthen and grow its 3G (HSDPA) network in existing markets and expand to more than 100 additional U.S. cities - doubling the numbering of people we can reach with wireless broadband service.

Source: CrunchGear | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

March 25, 1916: Ishi Dies, a World Ends

1916: Ishi, the last survivor of the Yahi tribe of American Indians, dies of tuberculosis in San Francisco. His story lives on.

The California Gold Rush of 1849 to 1850 attracted 90,000 new settlers to California in a single year. That influx created major problems for the region's native people, who'd previously had to contend with Spanish soldiers and missionaries, Mexican ranchers and, lately, Americano settlers from the East.

In Butte County, where the Yahi lived alongside the Yana, mining silt poisoned the salmon streams, and deer and other wild game fled as the new settlers' livestock competed for grazing resources. Indians starved. Epidemics of the white man's diseases took a further toll, and the indigenous population collapsed.

By 1861, the Southern Yana had disappeared and the Northern and Central Yana had been reduced from 2,000 people to fewer than 50. The Yahi started to raid cattle to stave off starvation and extinction. White settlers reacted with a vengeance, and the Three Knolls Massacre in 1865 left only 30 members of the Yahi alive.

Ishi and the other survivors escaped, but cattlemen used dogs to find them and killed about half of the Yahi. The others fled farther into the hills, and hid themselves for more than 40 years.

Following their traditional lifestyle as much as resources permitted, they gathered acorns, ground them into flour and cooked the mush. They turned the skins of deer, wildcats and rabbits into clothing and blankets.

It was tough. Soon there were only five Yahi. Then two. When Ishi's mother died in 1911, he was alone.

Butchers found Ishi in their corral at Oroville on Aug. 29, 1911. They took the undernourished and terrified man to the Oroville Jail.

Two University of California professors, Alfred L. Kroeber and T.T. Waterman, read about him and arranged for him to live at the university's new museum of anthropology in San Francisco.

Ishi was theoretically free to return to his homelands, but it's doubtful he could have survived alone, the sole survivor of a culture detested and persecuted by most of the people who would have been his neighbors. Instead, he opted to stay with the friendly anthropologists, their colleagues and their families.

Ishi worked as an assistant at the museum, explaining his language — which had been presumed extinct — to Kroeber and Waterman. He identified objects in the museum collection (baskets, arrowheads, spears, needles, etc.) and demonstrated how they were made and how they were used.

The anthropologists also recorded Ishi singing traditional songs. But he never told them his real name. Ishi means "man" in the Yahi language.

Ishi eventually succumbed to tuberculosis at age 54. The museum staff respected, perhaps even loved, Ishi, and they did their best to give him a traditional Yahi funeral. They cremated him along with bow and arrows, acorn meal, shell-bead money, tobacco, jewelry and obsidian flakes.

Kroeber's wife, Theodora, later wrote two popular books about the Yahi survivor, Ishi in Two Worlds and Ishi: The Last of His Tribe. The Kroebers' daughter, Ursula Kroeber Le Guin, is a popular science fiction author, whose anthropologically informed novels often deal with dissimilar cultures coming into uneasy contact.

Besides Kroeber and Waterman's writings, and Theodora Kroeber's books, Ishi's story was also told in the 1992 TV movie The Last of His Tribe. But there's still controversy.

UC Berkeley anthropologist Steven Shackley published research in 1996 questioning whether the last of the Yahi was indeed a full-blooded Yahi, or even a Yana. Shackley wrote that the arrowheads Ishi produced show that he learned the skill from a Nomlaki or Wintu person. And given the devastation of that Ishi's people endured, it's quite likely that intermarriage had become a necessity for survival.

Source: National Park Service, others

Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Found Photoshop Contest: The Future of Birth Control

For six years, Wired magazine's Found page has shown our best guess at what lies over the horizon, from touchscreen windshields to organ farming. Now, we're inviting readers to help create Found pages: What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20 or 100 years?

Each month, we'll propose a scenario, and present some initial ideas and concepts. Then it's up you: Sketch out your vision, and upload your ideas (below). We'll use the best suggestions as inspiration for a future Found page, giving kudos to contributors. We'll add our favorite submission to this story. This week's assignment: Imagine the future of birth control. NuvaRings and implantable contraceptives are the norm now. What sort of baby-blocking techniques will we use when we have better technology (and have overclocked our bodies)?

We’d love to see your take. (We know the possibilities are endless here, but please—don’t get too NSFW. Our moms read this site!) You can write your ideas, but we're keen on getting visual entries. Some CC-licensed photos from Flickr may fire your imagination, and give you some fodder for remixing your own predictions on the brave new world of safer sex:

Use the Reddit widget below to submit your best idea on the future of chewing gum, and vote for your favorite. The image must be your own — submitting it gives us permission to use it on Wired.com and in Wired magazine. Please submit relatively large images (ideal size is 800 to 1,200 pixels, or larger on the longest side). Include a description of your idea and how you made it.

Candy pills
Rows of pills
Stork killer
Pamphlet
Condom aisle
Condom box
Condom wrappers
Diaphragm
NuvaRing

We don't host the images, so upload it somewhere else and submit a link to it. If you're using Flickr, Picasa or another photo-sharing site to host your image, provide a link to the image, not to the photo page where it's displayed. If your photo doesn't show up, it's because the URL you have entered is incorrect. Make sure it ends with the image file name (xxxxxxx.jpg). Check this page over the next few weeks to vote on new submissions, and look for an update announcing our favorite.

Check this page over the next few weeks to vote on new submissions, and look for an update announcing our favorite.

Vote on Found ideas submitted by other readers.

Show entries that are: hot | new | top-rated. Submit your found idea.

Submit your Found image.

(No more than one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.)

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Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Test Drive: Feeling the Heat, Toyota Boosts the Prius

LAGUNA BEACH, California — The 2010 Toyota Prius is the best Prius yet, a car that's roomier, more powerful and more fuel efficient than ever before. It remains the gold standard for hybrids. But then, it has to for one simple reason: The Honda Insight.

Toyota has dominated the hybrid market since bringing the Prius to America in 2000, and for the first time it faces a legitimate threat from a car that is cheaper to buy, more fun to drive and almost — but not quite — as easy on gas. Toyota tells us it doesn't consider the Insight a competitor to the mighty Prius, but pretty much everyone else does.

"Now there's serious competition," says Mike Omotoso of JD Power and Associates. "Add the fact that the new Insight is cheaper than the existing or the new Prius, and [Toyota's] only remaining advantage is best overall fuel economy."

The Prius is synonymous with hybrid technology and Toyota holds about 75 percent of the market — there are more than 1 million on the road worldwide. But it now faces new competition from the Insight — which is expected to cost about 20 grand when it goes on sale next month. Toyota also faces a challenge from Ford, which is aiming its all-new Fusion Hybrid squarely at the Camry Hybrid. Toyota can't afford to get complacent.

Toyota will retain the fuel efficiency crown with the Prius, which the company says is good for 50 mpg around town and 49 on the highway. (The Prius does better in city traffic because it's electricity more often.) That's up from 48/45 for the current Prius. We've all heard about Prius owners getting 60 mpg or more, but we're talking about the official EPA figures on the window sticker here. We easily hit the high 40s with the pedal mashed to the floor and managed 76 mph creeping along in EV mode.

Those figures eclipse the Insight, which is estimated at 40 mpg in the city. But the Insight and Fusion use clever interactive dashboards to make maximizing efficiency a game. Toyota's bland bar graph makes saving gas about as much fun as a physics lecture. That's a problem, because industry watchers and academics say it won't be long before we're all using green gauges to make us better drivers. Toyota risks turning the Prius into an appliance by ignoring driver interactivity.

"In this class, you can’t go wrong making the car more engaging," says George Petersen, president of the auto industry analysis firm AutoPacific. "Toyota needs to stay away from letting the Prius become a utility car."

What the Prius lacks in interactivity, it makes up for in engineering smarts. The car contains so much new technology Toyota filed more than 1,000 patents worldwide to cover it all.

For starters, the battery pack, the two electric motor-generators, transaxle and electronic control module are smaller and lighter, increasing efficiency. The engine grew from 1.5 liters to 1.8, giving the Prius more oomph and, Toyota says, saving fuel because the added torque means the engine doesn't work so hard. Look under the hood and you won't find a single drive belt — the power steering, air conditioner and water pump are electric. That minimizes drag on the engine and increases fuel efficiency.

Toyota's Hybrid Synergy Drive gets a few refinements. The battery pack is smaller and more efficient, with 28 individual 9.6-volt nickel metal-hydride cells producing a total of 201.6 volts. The motors integrate with the planetary gear set to form a continuously variable transmission. The first motor acts as a generator, producing 42 kW; the second is a drive motor putting out 60 kW. Coupled with the engine, the package delivers 134 horsepower. The Prius finally has some zip.

The car offers three driving modes. "EV" lets you tool around on battery power alone for a mile or so provided you don’t go any faster than 25 mph. Switch to "ECO" and you maximize fuel economy, while "Power" optimizes acceleration. Keep in mind we're still talking about a hybrid that's no quicker than your average econobox. You aren't going to win any drag races in the Prius.

All the gadgetry is packed into a redesigned body. The best thing Toyota's stylists did was move the peak of the roof back four inches and rake the windshield back a little more. It gives the car a sportier, more handsome look. An underbody tray and other tweaks cut the car's drag coefficient to 0.25, making it slicker than previous models and, according to Toyota, one of the most aerodynamic cars on the market. We love the rooftop solar panel. It runs a fan that keeps the interior cool while you run into Whole Foods, reducing the load on the A/C.

The interior boasts a sweeping design that arcs over the steering wheel and flows through the center console, creating a vaguely futuristic look. The new car is roomier and features some unexpected luxury options like active cruise control. There's a lane departure system to warn you when you’re weaving. If you can’t parallel park worth a damn, the optional automatic parking system lifted from the Lexus LS will do the job for you. Just keep your foot on the brake.

Still, this is a Prius, so it retains quirky features like the funky shift lever with the dash-mounted "park" button and the centrally located dashboard display way up by the windshield. The power-split display — the screen showing how the engine, battery and electric motors are interacting — is still there, but now it sits in the instrument panel. A new display echoes the steering wheel button you're pressing. Press lightly and an image of the button layout "floats" in front of the speedometer with the button you're pressing glowing in orange. It's gimmicky, but still pretty cool.

Trouble is, for all the cool tech and luxury appointments, the Prius is boring to drive. Videogames have sharper steering. The brakes, while stronger than a Russian weightlifter, feel odd and you’re never quite sure how hard to apply the pedal. And while the car may look sporty, the suspension is softer than a down pillow. That said, the ride is comfortable.

Of course, no one buys a Prius because it's sporty. Fuel efficiency is the name of the game for this car, and on that score, the Prius delivers. But at what price?

Toyota hasn't said exactly what the Prius will cost when it goes on sale at the end of May, but it will be in the same ballpark as the current model — which has a list price of $22,000 but usually goes for a few grand more. That means the Insight will be a few thousand dollars cheaper than the Insight. Choose a Prius over an Insight and it'll be a decade before you make up the difference in gas savings, even if prices go crazy again.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Artifacts From the Future: Child Safety Device

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Click on the thumbnails below for some closer looks at this implantable toddler monitoring chip from 2019.

We'll continue to create a new Artifacts From the Future in each upcoming issue of Wired magazine, but we'd like to see your prognostications, too. What do you think our world will look like in 10, 20, or 100 years? Each month, we'll propose a scenario and ask for your help. Sketch out your vision, then return here to upload your ideas, see other submissions, and vote for your favorites. Check out this month's challenge.

The concept for this Found came from contributing editor Joshua Davis. Contributing Wired magazine designer Walter Baumann, contributor Steven Leckart, deputy photo editor Anna Goldman Alexander, senior editor Chris Baker, and production director Jeff Lysgaard helped create the image. Kudos go to readers Jgombarcik, Jym McMurdo, Brittany Boone and Adam Norris, who took part in this Found Photoshop contest.

Photo: Daniel Salo; Girl: Jupiter Images; Syringe Courtesy SFSPCA.org

: :

The kit includes a hypo for easy implantation.

: :

The product is made by Garmin and crossbranded with the Amber Alert.

: :

"Get your child back fast" is just one part of the LoJack for Toddlers sales pitch. It may sound farfetched, but the LoJack company actually offers a GPS safety bracelet for people who are likely to wander off.

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More of the sales pitch for LoJack for Toddlers.

: :

In case you were wondering, here's what's inside the kit — and, yes, they have a version for teens!

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Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Monitor the Electrons in Real Time

Problem  The grid is like the adage about a butterfly flapping its wings; an outage in Michigan can cause blackouts in Florida. While utilities are investing in software to spot problems on their own chunks of the grid, they are reluctant to share that information with one another.

Solution  Trust a third party. Oak Ridge National Laboratory persuaded 30 utilities to share some of their most precious real-time data in exchange for a grid visualization tool that helps everyone. The lab signs a nondisclosure agreement with each utility, then feeds the raw information into a monitoring system called Verde (Visualizing Energy Resources Dynamically on Earth) that tracks grid assets nationwide, as shown in the illustration above. Users can see where inclement weather is developing that might threaten transmission lines—if a thunderstorm is brewing in Kansas, a utility can temporarily reroute its power. Verde also receives a constant flow of real-time data regarding the health of wires, letting operators know if a blackout is sweeping southern Alabama or transmission lines seem congested in South Dakota. Ultimately, a system like Verde will make the grid more efficient. High-voltage lines frequently carry as little as 60 percent of their capacities, since utilities fear sudden power surges. If operators don't have to worry about unexpected crises, they'll be able to transmit more electricity to their customers.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 25 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

OCZ’s new gaming mice should be called Lennie and George

OCZ, more well-known for its RAM and hard drives, has been making a push into the peripheral sector lately, and these mice are the latest product of that. They’re called the Behemoth and the Eclipse; I’ll let you guess which is which.

The Eclipse goes up to 2400 DPI, and the Behemoth up to 3200 — I’m not sure if we really need these insane DPI levels, but there they are. They look fairly comfortable and they’ve got onboard memory to remember settings, so you won’t have to worry about a configuration utility. I trust OCZ for hardware, but I’m still in a wait-and-see mode with their gaming gear.

Source: CrunchGear | 25 Mar 2009 | 3:38 am

Confidence Levels Increase Among Democrats and Independents, Decrease Among Republicans After Viewing Obama's Press Conference

FLEMINGTON, N.J., March 24 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Results of a national study among 1,375 Americans revealed that while confidence levels increased among Democrats and Independents regarding President Obama's approach to the nation's critical issues, confidence levels decreased among Republicans.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 25 Mar 2009 | 3:37 am

Pentax announces limited edition K2000, K20D

I guess sales of the white K2000 did well enough that Pentax Japan announced a new limited edition olive Km (It’s K2000 in the US and Km everywhere else). It will be a limited run of 1000 units and ships in late October. No word on price.

Pentax also announced a limited edition K20D with an all titanium color finish on the body and battery grip. This, too, will ship in late October with a 1000 unit run.

Doubtful that these will make it stateside, though.

Source: CrunchGear | 25 Mar 2009 | 3:27 am

MySpace Toolbar Launches To The General Public

MySpace has just launched its official toolbar, giving users immediate access to their MySpace activity notifications regardless of what site they’re currently browsing on the web. MySpace has been testing the browser plugin since last year (we originally wrote about it in December), but it was only available to a limited number of users. Beginning today, it will be available internationally to all users, and the site will begin to publicize it.

The toolbar is available on Windows for Firefox and IE users, as well as on Mac for Firefox (there’s no Safari support yet). You can grab it on this page, which also includes a nifty interactive demo of the toolbar so you can get a feel for it before installing the plugin.

Using the toolbar, MySpace members can update and keep track of their status updates, messages, comments, and other alerts. The toolbar also includes links to a variety of MySpace’s services, along with its Google-powered search engine. I don’t think I’ve installed a browser toolbar since around 2002, but there’s no question that many of MySpace’s devoted users will love to get their friend requests and messages in real time.

There have been a handful of unofficial MySpace toolbars released in the past, but they are occasionally broken when MySpace rolls out site updates and had to use scraping to detect status changes. But while they may not offer the same functionality and stability as the official plugin, some of them do offer one nifty feature that the official toolbar doesn’t have: the ability to hit a button to ‘Simplify’ a MySpace user’s profile, removing the irritating flare that some users seem to love so much.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 25 Mar 2009 | 3:25 am

Trailer Park Boys: Big Plans, Little Brains

Richard Metzger is Boing Boing's current guest blogger.

Okay, I'll admit that I came to the immense pleasures of Canada's greatest export, "Trailer Park Boys" a little late in the party. By the time I downloaded a 17GB torrent file of "the complete Trailer Park Boys" it was indeed just that, complete, with a bow on top. Two feature films and seven TV series, a total of 56 episodes of some of the funniest television I have ever seen. My wife and I positively gorged ourselves on these shows. We'd often watch six a night, one after the other like it was comedy crack. Finally after three weeks or so, the well ran dry. No more "Trailer Park Boys"!! We were majorly bummed out. We went through withdrawal symptoms. We were sad. It was bad, real, real bad.

But then --hooray-- they did a new Christmas special!! Hearing THAT was the best present I could have gotten, believe me! And the Christmas show ended with the set-up to a new feature film that will appear in 2009, "Countdown To Liquor Day." In my household, this was off-the-scale good news.

Here is a selection of short --but exemplary-- clips from "Trailer Park Boys." If like me, you somehow tragically managed to live your life without being acquainted with the distinctly UN-subtle comedic charms of Canada's favorite bad boys, Julian, Ricky, Bubbles (and let's not forget Mister Lahey, the greatest screen lush since WC Fields) and you find that these clips tickle your funny bone, rejoice, you have hours and hours of the most side-splitting humor still to discover. And if you are already a TPB fan --and you know who you are-- post in the forums and encourage other Boing Boing readers to check out this masterpiece of mirth and mayhem. Who knows, maybe even Coop will get around to watching the DVD I gave him?

Ricky and Bubbles fight

"The Water Bong is So Smooth!"

"Reveen!!" (this is the real Reveen)

White rapper "J-Roc" "You know what I mean?"

"Shithawks!"

Ricky gets caught stealing cable


Source: Boing Boing | 25 Mar 2009 | 3:22 am

Wolfenstein 3D officially on the iPhone, and Doom is on the way

So in addition to the other projects they’ve got going on for the iPhone, id Software (specifically John Carmack) has been working on real ports of Doom and Wolfenstein 3D for the iPhone. Obviously you’ve got more impressive games available, but who can resist taking up a couple megs of space with one of the original first person shooters?

In an extremely long description of how he went about making and tweaking the game, Carmack reveals his undying love for his old-school work and also reveals that he’s working on Doom. Is this the killer app for the iPhone — finally?

You can download it straight up, or get it from the App Store. Don’t worry, I’ll let you know when Doom drops.

[via Tom's Hardware]

Source: CrunchGear | 25 Mar 2009 | 3:15 am

Google changes claim to speed things up, but site owners may not agree.

Section: Web, Websites, Google

Google has announced changes to its search results that it says will get users to what they are searching for as quickly as possible.  In looking at those changes, it appears what they are really designed to do is keep you on the search results page as long as possible, and perhaps even prevent you from going to any of them at all.

For example, a long search query such as “major league baseball batting record” will bring up results with three lines of info rather than the normal one or two.  It’s very likely those three lines will provide the info you’re looking for:

Major League Individual All-Time Hitting Records. (Through 2006) ...
Most Consecutive Games Batted Safely—56, Joe DiMaggio, New York A.L., 1941. ...
Major League Franchise Origins • Baseball • Major League All-Time Pitching Records ...

As convenient as this may be for users, who will be able to find information more quickly, for site owners it could be a nightmare.  Most rely on Google for traffic, which in turn results in revenues, either via Google Adsense or other advertising tools.  If someone can get the info they are looking for from the search results, they don’t need to visit the site, meaning lower traffic and in turn, revenues.

One has to wonder if Google might be shooting itself in the foot here.  Its Adsense program has been tremendously popular and creating search results that keep the user away from the sites in the program and on the search results page is not going to benefit the site owners who use it or the advertisers who rely on it.

What do you think about this change? Will it hurt downstream traffic or is Google on the right track?

Read [NewYorkTimes]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 25 Mar 2009 | 2:17 am

.CA Registrar Trying To Preempt Conficker

clover kicker writes "The CBC reports that the group managing Canada's .ca internet domain is working to foil an internet worm set to attack starting April Fool's Day. 'This is the first virus that's really focused on domain names as part of propagating the virus itself,' said Byron Holland, CEO of the Canadian Internet Registration Authority, a non-profit organization that represents those who hold a .ca domain. CIRA's strategy includes pre-emptively registering and isolating previously unregistered .ca domain names that Conficker C is expected to try and generate, said a news release issued by the group. That would make those names unavailable for anyone to register in order to set up a website to host the worm's 'command and control' file. A list of the names has been predicted by security experts based on the worm's code. In addition, CIRA is investigating and monitoring activity at names on the list that have already been registered and will 'take appropriate action if suspicious activity is detected.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 25 Mar 2009 | 2:13 am

Are kidnapped children tax-deductible?

Smith sez, "This blog breaks down the tax code for writing off currently-kidnapped children as deductions. Though one has to sympathize with parents who are actually in this situation (which is very rarely, I assume), I can't help but feel ashamed that our IRS has contemplated this issue to such depths."

Can I still write off a child as a deduction if they've been kidnapped?

According to the IRS website, the answer is "yes," if two conditions are met:

1. The child must be presumed by law enforcement to have been kidnapped by someone who is not a member of your family or a member of the child's family, and

2. The child had, for the taxable year in which the kidnapping occurred, the same principal place of abode as the taxpayer for more than one-half of the portion of such year before the date of kidnapping.

Tax Advice from the Prestigious Internet (Thanks, Smith!)


Source: Boing Boing | 25 Mar 2009 | 2:10 am

Ted Chiang's Hugo nominated story Exhalation free download

John sez, "Ted Chiang's short story "Exhalation" --which is currently a finalist for the Hugo Award and the British Science Fiction Association Award--is now available to read online in a variety of formats, via our Downloads page. Originally appearing in Jonathan Strahan's Eclipse Two, 'Exhalation' is an evocative story of an all-metal world, its argon-breathing inhabitants, and a scientist who performs the ultimate self-examination. The story is also available as a podcast from StarShipSofa".

Ted Chiang’s “Exhalation” now available for download. (Thanks, John!)


Source: Boing Boing | 25 Mar 2009 | 2:09 am

"This Wi-Fi is perfect for my double-braided low-oxygen cleanroom-built gold-plated USB network adapter"

Taken, I'm told, somewhere in St. Louis. Oh my Missouri home, you show me far too much.

(Thanks, Espoo2 and Felipe!)

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 25 Mar 2009 | 2:07 am

Nominees announced for Prometheus Award for best "pro-freedom" sf novel; Little Brother's a finalist!

The Libertarian Futurist Society has released its slate of nominees for this year's Prometheus Awards, the award for the best "pro-freedom" science fiction of the year. I'm proud to say that my novel Little Brother made the cut, as did five other standout books, including a couple personal favorites: Half a Crown by Jo Walton and Saturn's Children by Charlie Stross.

* Matter, by Iain Banks (Orbit Books) - Part of Banks' series of far-future space operas about the Culture, a utopia which reflects Banks' interest in anarchism through its avoidance of the use of force except when necessary for protection and defense. The novel focuses on an agent in Special Circumstances, the Culture's special forces unit, who returns to her home planet, a "shellworld" with multiple layers of habitation, after her father has been killed in a coup.

* Little Brother, by Cory Doctorow (TOR Books) - A cautionary tale about a high-school student and his friends who are rounded up in the hysteria following a terrorist attack, the novel focuses on how people find the courage to respond to oppression.

* The January Dancer, by Michael Flynn (TOR Books) -The classic space opera, set in an interstellar civilization created by a wide-ranging human diaspora, revolves around how discovery of a an alien relic sends agents of a multisystem federation on a quest that exposes them to political and economic institutions of many different cultures and requires them to deal with threats to freedom, from piracy to political corruption.

* Saturn's Children, by Charles Stross (Ace Books) -A robot's adventures after all the humans in a society have died raises complex issues of ethics, duty, family and struggle in this Heinlenesque novel.

* Opening Atlantis, by Harry Turtledove (Penguin/Roc Books) - Set in a world where medieval Europeans discover an island continent in the Atlantic Ocean, this first novel in a new atternate-history series explores the politics of colonization and the struggle for self-determination while offering parallels and contrasts with development of the Americas.

* Half a Crown, by Jo Walton (TOR Books) -The sequel to Walton's Prometheus Award-winning Ha'penny concludes her alternative-history trilogy, set two decades after Britain reached accommodation with Hitler's Germany in the 1940s, with a chilling portrait of people all too willing to trade freedom for security.

2009 PROMETHEUS AWARDS FINALISTS ANNOUNCED


Source: Boing Boing | 25 Mar 2009 | 1:43 am

HIV patients dying of TB

Tuberculosis is increasingly becoming an illness linked to HIV, the World Health Organization reported Tuesday in Brazil. One out of every four TB deaths in the world is now related to human immunodeficiency virus, WHO officials said. Data from 2007 shows there were an estimated 1.37 million new cases of TB among HIV-infected people and 456,000 deaths.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 25 Mar 2009 | 1:38 am

Real Money Trading game design, my notes from today's Game Developers' Conference

One of the most interesting -- if sometimes creepy -- talks that I sat in on today at the Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco was "Applied Real Money Trade Design," with Eric Bethke of GoPets (a kid-oriented virtual world with a active market for buying and selling virtual goods) and Andy Schneider of Live Gamer (which runs the marketplace in GoPets). I took a bunch of notes -- this is thought-provoking and odd stuff that crosses the boundaries of fairness, economics, play and work.

Balancing methods: How can you screw up?

* You can't get this right a priori

   * You need to iterate

* Free to play isn't a business model, it's a name for thousands of business models

* Things that are defensive in nature can be charged for, and the time-rich skilled players won't resent lamers having more health or a shorter corpse-run, because they'll still kill 'em

   * But give the lamers big weapons and it amounts to an "I win" item -- instead, sell things like awesome looking weapons <

* Rental is awesome -- an item that's too powerful disappears from the game when the rental period expires

* Limited edition items -- they're scarce, you unbalance the game for 2-3% of the players

   * If it's really bad, you can buy them back

  * But it's a bad habit to get your users into

* Every couple months, come up with a whole new roster of items that are 10% more powerful than all the previous items; the inflation washes away all your past sins and your players are happy to spend all their time grinding those new items

Source: Boing Boing | 25 Mar 2009 | 1:25 am

No! Never Surrender To Your Users, Facebook.

“A camel is a horse designed by committee.” (source)

The camel/horse quote (no disparagement to camels meant, of course) perfectly captures the problem when too many people have input into a product. Seth Godin talks about how the Walkman would never have been built if Sony had asked its customers what they wanted (see Purple Cow). A few days ago Robert Scoble talked about how a Porsche would be a Volvo if they let their buyers decide on features: “if you asked a group of Porsche owners what they wanted they’d tell you things like “smoother ride, more trunk space, more leg room, etc.” He’d then say “well, they just designed a Volvo.””

The bottom line is, when you listen to your users, you get vanilla. feature creep. boring. It takes a dictator to create the iPhone and change the course of an entire industry. Imagine if Steve Jobs let other people add features to that device.

So I’m surprised that Facebook, which has stared down its users so many times in the past, is folding on the most recent redesign flareup and reverting back to some old features. Just because, oh, a million people demanded it.

Facebook has always pushed the envelope with users, and those users always hate it (the original News Feed was hated, now people are up in arms to keep it from changing). In an interview last year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked with me about how users are willing to accept change over time, and that Facebook would continue to push things along. Suddenly, though, they surrender because a few users have a belly ache over a redesign.

If they wanted to make these changes anyway, they shouldn’t have titled their blog post “Responding to Your Feedback.” They should have just continued to ignore the ranting, and announced further changes. Showing that you’re listening to feedback just invites more of it.

Someday, if they’re not careful, someone is going to do to Facebook what Facebook did to MySpace, who in turn did it to Friendster. Making users happy is a suckers game. Pushing the envelope is what makes you a winner.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 25 Mar 2009 | 1:18 am

Storytron goes public -- a game-engine built for real storytelling

The long-awaited game Storytron, from legendary game-designer Chris Crawford, is now visible to the public. Storytron is a system for creating games in which real stories take place -- and it's designed to allow you to create your own stories as well. The launch-game, Balance of Power is "a geopolitical strategy storyworld."

You begin on September 12th, 2001. You are the President of the United States and your job is to advance American interests, as expressed in a list of policy goals. These policy goals can be found by clicking on the Things button. Each of these is a policy of some sort, with its "owner" (the country that would actually do it) listed first. The USA's own policy actions are at the top of the list. If you select any of these policy goals, you will see a lot of text explaining exactly what it entails. The desirability of that policy goal to the USA is also displayed next to the bold text Undesirable_Desirable. You want to make certain that the policy goals that are desirable are eventually executed, and the ones that are undesirable are never executed. For now you can just skim through this list, but in order to do well in BoP2K, you'll need to familiarize yourself with each of these, even those that don't appear to affect you. Why? Because you will need to make deals with other countries involving some of those policy-treaties.

Your first task is to select which policy goal you want to pursue first. You'll see the incomplete sentence: "I" followed by a menu entitled "Do What?" listing two choices: "set goal" and "set goal to prevent." The first means "I want to set a goal for something I want to achieve." The second means "I want to set a goal to prevent something from happening." Select the first menu item ("set goal") and a list of twelve policies desirable to the USA is presented. This being September 12th, 2001, you want to get your hands on Osama bin Laden. Select that option and click on the little period button that appears. (It means: "period—end of sentence—that's what I want to say.")

Balance of Power: 21st Century (via Beyond the Beyond)


Source: Boing Boing | 25 Mar 2009 | 1:09 am

Jane McGonigal's Game Developers' Conference talk on Making Your Own Reality

Alice Taylor from the Wonderfland is celebrating Ada Lovelace day with a great post about ARG and gaming pioneer Jane McGonigal, including video and slides from Jane's talk yesterday at the Game Developers' Conference in San Francisco, which is absolutely the talk of the event.

Find more videos like this on Top Secret Dance Off

My Ada Lovelace day post: Jane McGonigal

Source: Boing Boing | 25 Mar 2009 | 1:06 am

App Store Development Part 2: Provisioning and Ad Hoc

FROM APPLETELL - After finishing my first app for the App Store, it was time to get some beta testers. The Ad Hoc distribution process is certainly not as easy as it could be, but I think once you figure it out, it’s easy to crank out apps for beta testers. MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 25 Mar 2009 | 12:42 am

Facebook Responds to Redesign Furor, Um, Feedback–Sort Of! [BoomTown]

Facebook cried uncle this afternoon–but just a teeny tiny little bit–by announcing in a company blog that it had made tweaks to its recent redesign, in response to massive user unhappiness over the changes.

We’re talking very tweaky, though, and not back-to-the-future stuff. As in: The new look is here to stay.

That’s true in the Highlights section, for example, which Facebook said will again look more like the old News Feed.

And the social networking site also said it would give users more control via better filtering tools of the stream of information that Facebook has focused on making more prominent–and which some say makes the service looks too much like a morbidly obese version of the hot microblogging site Twitter.

It also said it was “working on a few design changes to help” users find what they want, another complaint about the new look.

But, as Product Director Chris Cox noted in a section of a called “Old Vs. New”:

“Since Facebook started in 2004, we’ve been through several redesigns. Each was built with the intention of making it easier to share and understand what’s going on with the people you care about. Redesigns are generally hard to manage, in part because change is always hard and in part because we may miss improvements that any individual user may like to see.”

Translation: We’re not going back to Kansas, Dorothy, so get used to the new Yellow Brick Road motif.

Here is the whole blog from Cox, after the jump:

(more…)

Source: All Things Digital | 25 Mar 2009 | 12:36 am

Facebook Relents: Users Get More Control With Redesign Tweaks

Facebook has just posted a lengthy letter to its users on its official blog detailing some of the changes we’ll soon be seeing on the site’s recently-redesigned homepage.

Included among the new features are live updating to the homepage stream, which will make the homepage truly real-time (previously it would show up-to-the-minute results, but only when you refreshed the page). The feed will also begin to include photos tagged from your friends to the feed - something that I’m very surprised wasn’t included when the new homepage debuted (photos are often the first thing I check when I log into the site). Users will also have more control over what items from third party applications will appear into the stream (apparently users have been complaining that these have had too strong a presence in the current version).

In a move that may be meant to appease some of the many users calling for the ‘Old Facebook’, the blog post also notes that the home page’s Highlights section will attempt to “mirror more closely the content that the earlier News Feed provided”. In my experience the current version of Highlights has been pretty underwhelming, but I don’t think that’s because it’s presenting news I’m uninterested in. Rather, I find the Highlights section to be too small to display many meaningful stories, and I feel like I’ve trained myself to look at the center of the page, so I often forget to look at Highlights entirely.

These changes (especially the new Highlights) are clearly at least partially in response to very vocal base of users who hate the redesign, but Facebook isn’t going to be reverting back to the old News Feed any time soon. And really, it shouldn’t. As Robert Scoble pointed out, customer requests can easily lead the businesses they’re complaining to astray.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 25 Mar 2009 | 12:28 am

Netflix does it again.  Hooks up with Facebook Connect

Section: Video, Video Providers, Web, Web 2.0, Websites, Online Music/Video

Netflix just doesn’t sit still, does it?  The latest news from Netflix is you are now able to share your movie ratings on Facebook using Facebook Connect.  The whole procedure is simply going to a specific site and logging into Facebook Connect.  If you don’t want your account hooked into Facebook, you can always opt out later.

Facebook Connect has taken off with plenty of sites and this is a very natural fit.  Netflix has had social networking features on its site, but this should work much better.  Plenty of folks love to share their opinions on movies.  Also, I’m sure people would love to know their friends’ opinions on videos if they are looking to try out new things.

Netflix has already put its Watch Instantly feature on many set top boxes.  They’ve also added The New York Times and Rotten Tomatoes as partners—the sites allow you to add movies to your queue from their movie review pages.

Read [Netflix Blog]
Connect [Netflix.com/FacebookConnect]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 25 Mar 2009 | 12:03 am

FDA may regulate e-cigarettes

Hello, horseshit: The FDA, reports the Merc, wants to outlaw (or at least regulate) e-cigarettes, a healthier alternative to tobacco smoking that deliveries vaporized nicotine without carcinogens.

The product's aficionados say that because it contains no tobacco, it can be used in bars, nightclubs, restaurants and other public places where states and localities have banned tobacco use. But anti-smoking groups say that's exactly the problem. They fear that it will reintroduce a "smoking culture" into places where people no longer are used to seeing wisps of smoke and cigarettes hanging from people's mouths. "I understand why people use the nicotine replacement aids," said Serena Chen, regional tobacco policy director of the American Lung Association in California. "But I don't understand why people want to pretend that they're smoking." Chen believes that many ex-smokers will conclude that the e-cigarette is harmless and be lured back into the smoking trap. "If you had a serial killer who liked to stab people, would you give him a rubber knife?" Chen asked. "This just boggles the mind."

Yes, because then he wouldn't be able to kill anyone. Metaphors are hard, like rocks.


Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 25 Mar 2009 | 12:01 am

National Ignition Facility: The most powerful laser on this planet

Tim writes:

Reading a BBC article yesterday about the resurrection of cold fusion, I ran into a mention of the National Ignition Facility — which, I discovered, is the most powerful laser system on earth. 12,700 tons of rebar! 500 trillion watts of photonic destruction. But best of all, an absolutely superior website, at least by the standards of most federal internet presence. The layman's overviews are clear without being dumbed-down, and the in-depth stuff has enough sciency fodder to keep we nerds fat and happy for hours. My point is: kudos to them. And lucky us.

BTW, the NIF has begun its firing tests, and is expected to reach full operability this year. Awsoma power!

We're going to need a bigger Jiffy-Pop.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:55 pm

CT scans show the insides of gadgets

Not just gadgets, but also toy cars and Chicken McNuggets, a project from art-professor-turned-med-student Satre Stuelke, profiled over at the Times.


Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:43 pm

Merino wool makes a black T-shirt cost $75

This is what it takes to sell a plain black t-shirt for $75. From the pitch for the "Empire Merino Tee" from Outlier:

The Outlier crew is back with another future classic. This time they took on the tee shirt. Outlier sourced an ultrafine grade of merino from the Southern Alps of New Zealand, and had it cut and sew in midtown Manhattan, just blocks from the Empire State building. This superior quality merino cools you in the summer, keeps you warm in the winter and looks great all year round. It's so soft and well tailored you'd think you are wearing nothing at all. In other words a tee-shirt fit for an emperor.

Outlier named it the Empire Merino Tee after their friends from the forthcoming Empire film, a movie showcasing New York City's fastest and most skilled street riders. Like Empire, Outlier is bringing New York's quality and style to the world of cycling.

I was going to really take them to the mat on this one, but I did some looking around and it appears that really high-end merino wool t-shirts really do go for at least $50. The cheapest one I could find (from Smartwool) is still $35—and that's on sale.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:41 pm

Feds Charge 'Analyzer' Hacker With Stealing $10 Million

Ehud Tenenbaum, an Israeli hacker already legendary for penetrating Pentagon systems a decade ago, allegedly stole $10 million from U.S. banks last year by cracking financial institutions and payment processors, court documents reveal. Law enforcement arrested him after spying on his online chats by performing a massive wiretap at one of Europe's largest hosting companies.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:39 pm

OnLive: Is this little box the future of game hardware? (Probably not.)

Loyd Case explains how OnLive, a gaming service that offloads the rendering to a server farm and streams the results to your home over the internet, will work:

When you fire up a game using the browser built into the client software, the game will actually launch on the server. It's possible you'll see a "game loading" progress bar, but the goal is to have games load nearly instantaneously. As you play, the server compresses the outgoing, rendered video stream in real time, while accepting game input packets from the client.

According to Perlman, the latency of playing a game is at least as good, and usually better than, playing on a LAN, and should be as good as playing on a local PC. Multiple server sites will exist, with the goal of having no gamer be more than 1,000 miles from a physical server.

For some games, sure. Streaming a 720p feed on a 5Mbit connection sounds fine—we can do that now. (Although video is pre-compressed then streamed, not compressed in realtime.) But even if they can consistently provide round-trip packets in 80 milliseconds, as Dean Takahashi reports, it's difficult to imagine that sending back all the user interface data like mouse or controller position will really work so quickly that it will be playable for the fastest, most twitch-oriented games.

Color me hopeful but unconcerned about the future of local console or PC gaming hardware...for now. (If the subscription for OnLive isn't too onerous, however, I could see using this to play WoW on a netbook and other gaming that lies between casual and attention-intensive gaming.)

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:31 pm

Crowdsourcing JavaScript Testing

snitch writes "John Resig, creator of the jQuery JavaScript library, has released Test Swarm, a platform for distributed continuous integration testing for client-side JavaScript. Frustrated with traditional JavaScript testing environments that don't scale, John's new project, which is currently in private alpha, aims to provide a system for outsourcing browser-related testing to large groups of people or communities."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:31 pm

Mitsubishi LaserVue TV Back in Production, Still Too Expensive

Earlier today, Mitsubishi assured TV lovers everywhere that production of its flagship television, the innovative LaserVue laser TV, is back on. A previously terse announcement noted it was being temporarily shut down due to an undetermined production problem.

According to Mitsubishi, the delay stemmed from an undisclosed problem with the manufacturing equipment used to make the TVs. No further details were specified. Mitsubishi has been overwhelmingly secretive about this TV and its components from the moment it was announced, so their public reticence isn't surprising. 

Unfortunately, the lack of transparency has been unhelpful and has caused others to fill in the blanks, to the detriment of the TV.

For example, when the sudden production stop of the flagship TV was announced six weeks ago, it caused a run on negative speculation. Many reasonably believed that the economy was far too crippled to support a $7,000 TV, even one whose picture quality was immediately viewed as top-tier upon its ‘08 holiday season release. It didn't help matters that around the same time, the highly-regarded Pioneer plasma Kuro televisions were killed in the face of cheaper competition from LCDs that were almost as good.

Others said that even with its obvious quality advantage (with twice as much color range as other TVs and a third of their power consumption), the LaserVue's throwback (and slightly fatter) rear-projection design couldn't compete in a culture of thinness.

Despite these reasons, it was thought that Mitsubishi could manage the recession problem and sell a few TVs based on the quality, as long as it brought the price down a couple thousand bucks.

Unfortunately, that still hasn't happened. It's not a surprise that as of today, it occupies the sales rank of #76,640 in Amazon.com.

We're glad the Mitsu Laser plants are back to work and would love it if more people got to experience the vivid reds and crazy image details it offers. But it's not going to happen if they don't bring the number down. People who can afford premium goods will pay for the quality, but the value proposition here is just too skewed towards the company. No one wants to feel like they've been fleeced.

See also:

• Product Reviews: Mitsubishi LaserVue HDTV
• Laser TV Wins Early Color Showdown Against Pioneer Kuro in Early Tests

 

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:16 pm

Research from Finjan details SEO techniques for rogue antivirus software

Section: Computers, Security

Finjan, a well known web security firm, has released data regarding rogueware from its Malicious Code Research Center.  According to the report, the firm was able to gather data about a rogueware affiliate network, where members make an astounding $10,800 per day.  In order to get traffic, the criminals use SEO techniques.  The sites employ top keywords and misspelled searches in order to get visitors to compromised websites. Therefore, many of these sites appear as the top of a search engine’s results pages.

During the research, Finjan found that these methods have proven very effective and that almost half a million Google searches landed users on the pages of the rogueware server.  Through these sites, 1.8 million users were redirected to download the rogue anti-virus program over a 16 day period.  For each redirection, the members of the affiliate received 9.6 cents which equaled out to $10,800 per day.

To review the full details about the findings from the Malicious Code Research Center, you can go to the Finjan website and view their CyberCrime Intelligence Report.

Read: [Finjan]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:08 pm

Palringo IM released for Android

Uh oh, Meebo - it looks like you might finally have some decent competition in the Android IM client space. Palringo, makers of the iPhone IM client of the same name, has released the first beta of their Android port.

Like the iPhone application, Palringo for Android supports MSN, AIM, ICQ, Yahoo!, Jabber, Gtalk, Gadu-Gadu and Facebook chat. It’ll also allow you to send picture messages to any contact, or share your location - a feature which seems a bit extraneous, considering that countless other services with the same purpose (including one built into the Android platform out of the box) are putting a ton of effort into coaxing people into sharing their location without any significant success.

Palringo for Android lacks one killer feature in its current beta state that made its iPhone counterpart stand out: voice messaging. On the iPhone port, you can record messages and send them to any one on your contact list. If they’re on Palringo, it’s played within the app - if not, it’s sent over as a link. It’s a godsend when your fingers are aching from blasting away on that itty-bitty keyboard all day. Fortunately, this isn’t too big of a deal right now, as the only Android phone on the shelves right now has a nice, finger-friendly physical keyboard. But when the touchscreen-only HTC Magic drops in April, many a fingertip around the world will be cryin’ for voice messaging.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Mar 2009 | 11:04 pm

Report: Apple Loses Lead in Computer Reliability

Apple's computers are slipping in reliability compared to 2008, a report suggests.

Computer support hotline RescueCom on Tuesday issued its computer reliability report, announcing that Asus and Lenovo tied for the No. 1 spot while Apple dropped to No. 2.

To measure computer reliability, RescueCom looks at the number of consumer service calls made to its hotline (1-800-RESCUE-PC) regarding a tech manufacturer's products while taking into account the company's market share. The fewer the calls made about each vendor, the better — and this quarter Asus and Lenovo nabbed the top spot.

It's worth noting, however, that this is just RescueCom's quarterly report; the service also conducts a yearly report. Apple secured the top spot overall for 2008. We'll just have to wait and see if Apple regains the lead over the rest of the year.

RESCUECOM Releases First of Quarterly Computer Reliability Reports [PR Newswire via Gizmodo]

Photo: Jase n tonic/Flickr

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Mar 2009 | 10:55 pm

New Lossless MP3 Format Explained

CNETNate writes "Thomson, the company that licenses the MP3 patent, has released a new lossless MP3 format called mp3HD. It utilises both lossless and lossy audio contained inside a single .mp3 file, and the files will play on all existing MP3 players. The idea is simple: lossless files on your desktop that can be transferred without conversion to iPods and MP3 players. The issue, it transpires, is that although the full lossless/lossy hybrid MP3 file is transferred to players, only the lossy element can be played back. A command line encoder can be found on Thomson's Web site."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Mar 2009 | 10:50 pm

Whiskey Media Quietly Growing, Innovating With Former CNET Team

Former CNET cofounder and CEO Shelby Bonnie founded Whiskey Media in 2007 as a platform to build media and entertainment content sites. The company, located in stunningly beautiful Sausalito, California (north of San Francisco) has no outside shareholders pestering them for a quick exit - the five cofounders, all former CNETers (Shelby Bonnie, Mike Tatum, Ethan Lance, Dave Snider and Andy McCurdy) have funded the company to date with less than $1.5 million. I recently had lunch with Bonnie to talk about how Whiskey Media is doing. It has quietly grown in the last year and a half, and the team is preparing to unveil a number of new sites this year.

We first covered the company in October 2007 with the launch of Political Base. It was, and is, notable because it’s built as a “structured wiki” - freely editable by anyone, but the data isn’t just one big unstructured blob like you see on Wikipedia and other wiki sites. Each section of a page is a separate silo, making it much easier to slice and dice data, and cross link around the site. Political Base was the primary inspiration for how we structured our own CrunchBase database of people, startups and venture funds.

PoliticalBase is a PHP application and separate from Whiskey Media’s newer sites, ComicVine (comics), GiantBomb (games) and AnimeVice (anime). Those three new sites are entertainment and media focused, and written in Python using the Django web framework. More sites are coming this year on that platform.

ComicVine originally launched in late 2006 as a PHP application, but was ported to the new platform last April and now sees over 10 million monthly pageviews. The newer sites, GiantBomb and AnimeVice, have 10 million and 800,000 monthly page views each. Most users are male, in the 13-30 demographic.

Not bad for a startup with a handful of employees that’s burned through very little capital. And like Wikipedia, the readers create most of the content - they’ve added a million pieces of content to the sites to date, says Bonnie.

The sites don’t look anything like Wikipedia, having a rich content experience more like Wetpaint, an unstructured wiki site that lets users create new wikis on any topic. Third parties can also access the content on various Whiskey Media sites via an open API.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Mar 2009 | 10:26 pm

Strip-Search Case Tests Limits of 4th Amendment

langelgjm writes "The US Supreme Court has agreed to review a case involving the strip-searching of a 13 year-old girl who was accused of possessing prescription-strength ibuprofen on school grounds, in violation of the school's zero-tolerance drug policy. The case has gained national attention because of the defining role it will play in determining which, if any, parts of the Constitution apply on school grounds. In Morse v. Frederick, the Supreme Court has already upheld the right of school administrators to restrict students' free speech at school-sponsored events that take place off school property. The school described the strip-search as 'not excessively intrusive in light of [the student's] age and sex and the nature of her suspected infraction.' The Supreme Court's last decision about searches on school property dealt only with searching a student's purse. Incidentally, the girl was found not to be in possession of any drugs, illegal or otherwise."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Mar 2009 | 10:08 pm

Virtualsex.com Awarded to Smut Firm in Domain Flap

Two smut companies are wrestling over the virtualsex.com domain. The World Intellectual Property Organization resolved the dispute, declaring the winner the operator of a website offering products "trading on the descriptiveness of the term."

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Mar 2009 | 9:50 pm

Trusera’s Health 2.0 Portal Nearly Out Of Money

Trusera, a ‘Health 2.0′ site founded by former Amazon exec Keith Schorsch, is facing tough times. The startup is nearly out of money, and Schorsch says that unless it can raise more funding by the end of April, it will have to shut down on April 30.

Trusera launched ten months ago, offering users a community where they can share their stories about how they’ve dealt with health conditions. Instead of simply segmenting users into different groups according to the disease they are dealing with, Trusera also takes other information into account, including a user’s hobbies, location, and age. Using this data it tries to match users up with each other, so that their experiences and tips can be shared with the people who stand to gain the most from them. The other benefit of this matching system is that users can elect to receive Email updates whenever a new match submits a story or tip, which means that users don’t have to worry about constantly searching the site for new information.

Trusera is well designed, with a friendly interface that lends a sense of community that makes the site seem like more than just a reference guide. It also has a few innovative features in the works, like a writing assistant that offers users tips as they write about their experiences (Schorsch assures me that it is nowhere near as annoying as Microsoft’s infamous Clippy).

But while it has grown a dedicated user base, it is still fairly small (which isn’t too surprising given that it has been around less than a year). The site faces off with a plethora of competitors in this space, which include everything from similar online portals to more basic forums. Many sites also revolve around individual diseases, which can further segment these communities.

While Trusera may be forced to close at the end of next month, Schorsch says that the company will continue to maintain the website content and platform on private servers, which they can reactivate down the line should they come across new funding.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Mar 2009 | 9:26 pm

Chimps Have a Built-In GPS

destinyland writes "European researchers have discovered that chimpanzees have a built-in mental GPS, keeping 'a geometric mental map of their home range, moving from point to point in nearly straight lines.' Using GPS, two primatologists followed 15 chimpanzees for 217 days, and determined that the apes were 'using a mental map built around geometric coordinates.' They're not just identifying landmarks in their surroundings, and in fact, even when swinging through trees, the chimps planned out their route several trees in advance. Here's the paper in the journal Animal Behavior."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Mar 2009 | 9:22 pm

Test Ride: Even in New York, the Aptera Stops Traffic

Even hardened cabbies yield the right of way so they can get a look at the three-wheeled EV from California.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Mar 2009 | 9:20 pm

Whooping cough spreading in Japan

Whooping cough is on the rise in Japan, with 775 cases reported already this year, health officials said. The National Institute of Infectious Diseases said cases are up 30 percent from the same period last year, the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper reported Tuesday. Health officials say more cases are expected into early summer.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Mar 2009 | 9:09 pm

Rocket test construction contract awarded

U.S. space agency officials signed a construction contract Tuesday with the Roy Anderson Corp.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Mar 2009 | 8:53 pm

China Blocks YouTube, Google Tries to Reinstate Access

Google doesn’t know why China is blocking access to every video on YouTube, but says it’s trying to end the blockage as soon as possible.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Mar 2009 | 8:51 pm

Apple Sued for Marketing iPhone as Book Reader

A Switzerland-based communication firm on Monday filed a lawsuit against Apple, alleging that the corporation is committing patent infringement, unfair trade practices, monopolization and tortious interference by promoting the iPhone as a touchscreen book reader.

In its 7-page complaint [pdf], Monec Holding Ltd, a business that develops and markets data transmission tools for mobile electronics, cites a patent it filed seven years ago titled "Electronic device, preferably an electronic book." The patent describes a lightweight electronic device with a touchscreen LCD display for reading e-books. The firm claims Apple is violating the patent by distributing reader applications through the App Store — thereby endorsing the iPhone as an eBook reader.

The iPhone has been a tremendous success for Apple, but it's induced plenty of legal headaches for the corporation as well. In the past year, several dissatisfied customers have filed lawsuits alleging Apple falsely advertised the iPhone 3G's network speeds.

Apple sued for promoting iPhone as eBook reader [AppleInsider]

See Also:

• Amazon Brings Kindle to iPhone
• Hands On with Classics: The Future of iPhone E-Readers?
• Free Software Turns the iPhone Into an E-Book Reader

Photo: mattrobs/Flickr

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Mar 2009 | 8:50 pm

New type of DNA design is created

A U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Mar 2009 | 8:36 pm

New family of nano materials is created

U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Mar 2009 | 8:22 pm

Venice Seaport To Become Self-Sufficient From Energy

The port authority said that Venice's seaport plans to become self-sufficient in its energy needs by building a power plant fueled by algae, which would be the first facility of its kind in Italy.Venice's port authority said that the plant will be operative in two years and produce 40 megawatts
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Mar 2009 | 8:04 pm

Top General: Missile Defense Is Dead. Long Live Missile Defense

Ballistic missile defense as we know it is all but dead, one of the country's top military just declared. But already, there are new anti-missile priorities taking shape.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Mar 2009 | 8:00 pm

Astronaut Scott Parazynski Leaves NASA

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Mar 2009 | 7:59 pm

Ice Storms Devastating To Pecan Orchards

Study shows economic impact of storm damage, recovery effortsIce storms and other severe weather can have devastating impacts on agricultural crops, including perennial tree crops. Major ice storms occur at least once a decade, with truly catastrophic "icing events" recorded once or twice a century within a broad belt extending from eastern Texas through New England. Ice storms can result in overwhelming losses to orchards and expensive cleanup for producers.Because the long limbs of pecan trees act as levers and increase the likelihood of breakage, pecan orchards and groves are particularly susceptible to damage from tornadoes, hurricanes, and ice storms. Ice damage is typically more severe in pecan orchards than other orchard crops.Oklahoma has 85,740 acres of pecans on 2,879 farms. Ice storms struck Oklahoma four times from 2000 through 2007. The crippling ice storm in December 2000, which hit the southeast quarter of Oklahoma, extended into parts of Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas. An estimated 25,000 to 30,000 acres of pecans were damaged in Oklahoma during this storm alone.Michael W. Smith from the Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture at Oklahoma State University, and Charles T. Rohla of the Samuel Roberts Noble Foundation published a research report in the latest issue of HortTechnology that provides pecan producers, government agencies, and insurance companies with important information concerning orchard management and economics following destructive ice storms.Cleanup of pecan orchards following ice damage presents enormous challenges for producers. Typical damage, cleanup, and recovery from four ice storms that hit the region from 2000 to 2007 were reported in the study. Trees less than 15 feet tall typically had the least damage; trees 15 to 30 feet tall incurred as much or more damage than larger trees and cleanup costs were greater.The silver lining: pecan trees are resilient. Most trees can survive and eventually return to productivity following loss of most of their crown. But cleanup costs to ice-damaged pecan orchards are high, ranging from $207 to $419 per acre based on the dollar value in 2008. According to the researchers, these costs were consistent among orchards where the owner supervised the labor and had the resources to obtain equipment necessary to prune and remove debris from the orchard. The cleanup costs paid to "custom operators" for renovating orchards following ice storms were significantly more expensive, ranging from $500 to $800 per acre in 2008 for orchards with similar damage levels.Explaining the outcomes of the research study, Smith stated; "Following damaging weather events, producers seek information concerning effective cleanup procedures, subsequent management, recovery duration, and economic impact. State and Federal agencies and insurance companies seek guidance concerning economic impact and how to assist producers. Our objective was to provide information for producers and others regarding the impact of an ice storm on pecans."---Image Caption: This is the aftermath of an ice storm in a pecan grove near Eufaula, Okla. Credit: Photo by O.B.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Mar 2009 | 7:48 pm

Sprint Looks to Lease Network to Gadget Makers

Think your favorite gadgets--GPS, media player, camera--and now reimagine them with wireless cellular connectivity. You can then browse for restaurants on your GPS navigator or upload pictures directly from the camera to Flickr anytime, anywhere.

Telecom services provider Sprint is hoping to make that possible by offering excess capacity on its cellular network available to gadget makers, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

"Sprint understands that we are getting to a point where almost every digital device would want to be connected to a fast ubiquitous network," says Michael Gartenberg, vice president of strategy for Los Angeles based analytics firm Interpret. "Wi-Fi isn't everywhere and consumers want the assurance of ubiquitous connectivity that wide area networks can offer."

Sprint has already taken the first step towards this model through its partnership with Amazon. Amazon kicked off the first version of its e-book reader Kindle with Sprint's wireless connectivity to help users download e-books over the air. In its latest version, Kindle allows users basic web surfing using Sprint's network without paying any additional data access charges.

This kind of unobtrusive wireless capability is something other gadget makers are likely to jump at. Sprint is already in talks with Garmin, SanDisk and Eastman Kodak, says WSJ.

"More and more we are going to see this become attractive to all sorts of vendors, especially if they can integrate it at a low cost," says Gartenberg.

Photo: Amazon Kindle (ES/Flickr)

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Mar 2009 | 7:20 pm

Alaska's Mount Redoubt Still Trembling

After multiple eruptions, Mount Redoubt is showing signs of further instability.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Mar 2009 | 7:07 pm

Video: Asus Crams Eee PC Into a Keyboard

Asus's kooky idea of a netbook stuffed into a keyboard had us scratching our heads a few weeks ago. And now a video demonstrating the gadget has us even more skeptical of whether it's a good idea. I suppose it'd be OK if you can afford a good chiropractor to re-adjust your neck every few weeks.

What's next? A cellphone stuffed into a pistol? Try holding that up to your ear.

Asus's Eee PC Keyboard contains a 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB RAM and either an 8GB or 16GB solid state drive for storage. It's shipping May for $400 or $600.

[Via UMPC Portal]

Updated 2:30 p.m. PDT: Wired.com's Dylan Tweney says he had some hands-on time with the Eee PC Keyboard. He explained it's not meant to be a standalone PC. The small display shows applets design for the PC, and you'd use it as a companion for a TV. The keyboard would sit on your lap or a coffee table, and the small screen could bring up weather, channels, etc. and control what appears on the big screen.

Updated 12 p.m. PDT: Added link to previous post along with specification details.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Mar 2009 | 6:44 pm

Peek Pronto adds push email and unlimited messaging

Peek Pronto is the follow-up to last year's best new single-purpose gadget. Just $80 without a contract (with a $20 monthly data plan) the new edition has push email on up to 5 accounts, unlimited text messaging, MS Exchange compatibility, a PDF and DOC file viewer, and more font options. The latest version of the operating system, Peek claims, is 50 percent faster than the original.

These upgrades directly address each and every flaw in the original Peek.

Peek Pronto is exclusively at Amazon until March 31., at GetPeek from April 1., and at Radioshack from April 8.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 24 Mar 2009 | 6:42 pm

Cold Fusion 'Evidence' Unveiled

Researchers say they have the first clear evidence that cold fusion devices can work.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Mar 2009 | 5:27 pm

iPhone Tweaked (Not Hacked) to Work With External Keyboard

A major new feature in Apple's upcoming iPhone 3.0 operating system is the ability for applications to communicate with special third-party accessories. But engineers of Perceptive Development have already figured out how to do that with the current OS, getting an infrared keyboard to work with the iPhone. And here's the kicker: They didn't have to Jailbreak the iPhone. They used the iPhone 2.0 SDK.

PerceptDev engineers modified the iPhone's microcontroller firmware used for the audio port modem, expanding it to detect an infrared signal and read from a USB host controller. (Read PerceptDev's post for the nitty gritty, technical details.) With some tweaking they got the iPhone to communicate with an infrared keyboard using less than $20 worth of electronics.

Hooking up a keyboard through the headphone port? Who woulda thunk? Check out the video above.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Mar 2009 | 5:12 pm

Dog Tail-Chasing Linked to High Cholesterol

When a dog compulsively chases its tail, could diet be the hidden cause?
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Mar 2009 | 4:48 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Space Cooking

Astronaut Sandra Magnus comes up with some creative recipes in space.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Mar 2009 | 4:35 pm

Comedian Wins Space Station Name Contest

The name "Colbert" beats out NASA's suggestions for a new space station room.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Mar 2009 | 3:27 pm

Smart-Braking Cars Save Fuel

Drivers willing to give up the gas pedal and brakes could save 25 percent on fuel.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Mar 2009 | 3:27 pm

What, if anything, can be done to stop ‘sexting’?

There’s a rather sad story out of Cincinnati where a high school girl hanged herself because a nude photo she sent to her boyfriend via cellphone ended up spreading around the school, if not the town itself. It’s called “sexting,” and it’s apparently a big deal on high school campuses. And because of this legitimate tragedy—why on Earth would kids tease this girl to the point where she decided to hang herself?—people are now wondering what, if anything, should be done to stop the phenomenon.

There’s a few approaches here. One is the hands-off approach: let kids run around and do whatever they want, and let them learn from their mistakes. That hardly seems effective, and could well be dangerous, as it was in Cincinnati.

Then there’s the educational approach: you can’t stop kids from being kids—sending photos back and forth—by force, so instead try to instill some common sense into these kids’ heads. Instead of banning cellphones or keeping teenage boys and girls on different continents (as if that will keep them apart!), schools and parents should teach their students/children that, you know, you may think you love this guy, and you may, in fact, love him, but there’s other ways to show that love than sending a blurry photo of yourself to him with a cellphone.

Maybe you should sit teenage boys down and tell them, “Look, stop pressuring these girls to send you photos of themselves. You guys are already together, right? So why risk the embarrassment?” (I personally think these guys are just asking for the photos so they can show their friends in the cafeteria at lunchtime, high-fives all around. Typical teenage guy nonsense.) Make cellphone etiquette, or however you want to classify it, a part of health class in junior high, where bad habits are first introduced and learned.

Or, you could whip out the ban hammer, and pass laws outlawing “sexting” altogether. We all know that’ll just encourage kids to “sext” even more: now, not only is it “naughty” or whatever, but it’s also illegal; thrills, ahoy, right? (That’s how teens think: you give me a rule, and I’ll break it, just because.)

I’m interested in hearing what you guys have to say about this. “Sexting” is obviously not a “harmless” thing, but parents and schools need to tread carefully with how they treat their children, who are both rebellious by default, and can run circles around their elders when it comes to technology.

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Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Mar 2009 | 2:53 pm

Giza Pyramids Align Toward City of Sun God

The odd arrangement of Egypt's Giza pyramids was no accident.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Mar 2009 | 2:35 pm

Five Useful Things You Can Do With a Netbook

Netbooks may be too underpowered and too puny for getting much useful work done, but they come in handy as photo assistants, research tools and a few other things.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 Mar 2009 | 2:19 pm

Astronaut Experiments With Cooking in Space

Astronaut Sandy Magnus developed a collection of key orbital kitchen tips.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 24 Mar 2009 | 2:15 pm

iPhone Makes Up 50 Percent of Smartphone Web Traffic In U.S., Android Already 5 Percent

The iPhone now accounts for 50 percent of mobile Web traffic from smartphones in the U.S., according to an AdMob Mobile Metrics report released this morning. Over the past six months, the iPhone has taken share from Blackberry and Windows Mobile. In August 2008, the iPhone made up only 10 percent of mobile Web traffic from smartphones. During the same time, Blackberry's share has gone from 32 percent to 21 percent (with the Curve and the Pearl coming in stronger than the Storm), while Windows Mobile has taken an even bigger hit, declining from 30 percent to 13 percent. Palm is also down to 7 percent from 19 percent six months ago. The only other smartphone operating system that is showing gains in mobile Web usage is Android, which has captured a strong 5 percent share just three months after launch. And that is up from 3 percent in January. The gains shown by the iPhone and Android show what is possible when phones are built with fully capable browsers and support a rich array of Web apps. On a worldwide basis, smartphones running on the Symbian OS (mostly from Nokia) still dominate mobile Web traffic with a 43 percent share. But that is down from 64 percent in August. The iPhone has gone from 4 percent to 33 percent of mobile Web traffic on a worldwide basis. All the other mobile operating systems are down as well.

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Mar 2009 | 1:32 pm