Source: Gizmodo | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:57 am

Wheel Mouse (groan)

$14 at Brando.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:52 am

Facebook Hooks Up With Adobe For Richer Social Applications In Flash

Not to be outdone by MySpace announcing a deeper partnership with Microsoft yesterday, bringing Silverlight technology to its development platform and mobile application, Facebook and Adobe are today announcing a partnership and the release of fresh Flash client libraries to make it easier for developers to plug into the Facebook Platform inside their social applications built with Flash.

Flash has been supported since the launch of Facebook Platform in 2007 through tags, embedding Flash in Feed stories, and multiple client libraries, which have helped developers make Facebook API calls directly from ActionScript (see example on the Red Bull website). But Facebook felt the exisiting ActionScript client libraries were not up to par, so it teamed up with Adobe to tweak the open source version to support all Facebook APIs and add some features to better support authentication for both Facebook Platform and Facebook Connect.

After the PHP, JavaScript and iPhone client library, the all new ActionScript 3.0 Client Library for Facebook Platform is now the fourth officially supported client library for the Facebook Platform. The code can be downloaded here.

Facebook and Adobe Systems will share more about the new partnership on April 2 at a San Francisco event.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:37 am

FremantleMedia’s Tony Cohen Speaks! [BoomTown]

While in London recently, BoomTown got the chance to do an onstage interview with Tony Cohen of FremantleMedia, the under-the-radar media company that is one of the most successful international producers of mostly televised entertainment.

You might have heard of one of their brands: The “Idol” juggernaut and all its spin-offs, including “American Idol.” Yes, the man we can finally all blame for Ryan Seacrest!

But its FremantleMedia Enterprises division is also hard at work at pushing its programming off-screen in areas like merchandising, the Internet, interactive television and wireless, as well as doing more traditional licensing deals.

Fremantle is actually part of the RTL Group, one of the biggest media companies in Europe, which is 90 percent owned by German media giant Bertelsmann.

I was curious to know that Cohen thought would happen to the TV industry in the next five years and when and if the Internet can produce a successful creative video business.

Happily, unlike a lot of other jumpy entertainment moguls, he is not even slightly afraid of the Internet and he had a lot to say, most of which centered on the continuing power of content.

Here’s a short video interview I did with Cohen:

Source: All Things Digital | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:24 am

Google Ventures Opens For Business, Investment Scope Covers Just About Anything.

The long awaited Google venture capital fund, Google Ventures, is now open for business. The Fund is led by managing partners Bill Maris and Rich Miner.

The fund’s FAQ says they’ll invest in just about any type of startup (”consumer Internet, software, hardware, clean-tech, bio-tech, health care and others”) and they’re willing to invest just about any amount you might need (”from seed funding to tens of millions of dollars, depending on the stage of the opportunity and the company’s need for capital”). It’s not exactly what you’d call a tight investment focus, but hey, it’s not like they need to worry about keeping limited partners happy so they can raise the next fund.

They’re also happy to invest along side other venture firms and strategic partners. No other commercial arrangement, such as a partnership, is required (so no, you don’t have to build your service on App Engine).

This is, Google says, their primary engine for venture-style investments going forward.

The FAQs also say the fund will be actively involved with investments (”We believe that our active involvement will help to create value, so we look to work with management teams to maximize the impact of our investment and their technology or innovation”). That may be somewhat over-ambitious, depending on how many investments they actually make. There are only two partners after all.

Is this a good investor for your startup? The cache of having Google behind you is great for marketing. But if you think you have the next new Google-killer search idea, you may want to bake it a while before showing the technology to these guys.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:14 am

SQUARE ENIX First to Deploy Strong Authentication for Online Game User Authentication in Japan

OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. and ZURICH, Switzerland, March 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VASCO Data Security International, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:05 am

Bank of Thailand Standardizes on Autonomy's Records Management Solution

CAMBRIDGE, England and SAN FRANCISCO, March 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:00 am

TSMC Qualifies New 0.18-Micron Embedded Flash Family

Ideal for power sensitive, automotive and analog applications HSIN-CHU, Taiwan, R.O.C., March 31 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, Ltd.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:00 am

New Oriental to Report Third Fiscal Quarter Financial Results on April 21, 2009

BEIJING, March 31 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- New Oriental Education and Technology Group Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 31 Mar 2009 | 8:00 am

Malthus: vampire slayer

Vampires can't be real or they'd be everywhere -- Laura McLay's ground-breaking research into vampire population dynamics demonstrate a dismal Mathusian character in vamp-growth that put the lie to the sucker:

This argument becomes even more overwhelming if you model a vampire population as a branching process or birth-death process and assume that each vampire in the population has probability Pj of producing j offspring (with j=0,1,2,… ). The vampire population would either explode or die out, depending on the expected number of offspring per vampire. But if you take into account the fact that vampires live many, many generations (they’re virtually immortal) and may create thousands of offspring, the population explodes (if you assume that each vampire creates at least one vampire, on average, before it dies). With those numbers, vampires would not be living under the radar–they would be everywhere!

on vampires and stochastic processes (via Futurismic)

(Image: Vampires are real, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from Eyelash_divided's Flickr stream)

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Guantanamo Bay is one of the world's controversial prisons. This may be its final chapter. With unprecedented access, National Geographic has the story you haven't heard. Both sides, told from the inside, before its doors close forever. Click to learn more and go Inside Guantanamo >> natgeotv.com/guantanamo

Source: Gizmodo | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:30 am

Integration Point Adds Entry Visibility to Real Time Global Trade Management & Compliance Platform

CHARLOTTE, N.C., March 31 /PRNewswire/ -- Integration Point(R), a trade compliance software provider, announced today a solution to assist importers with automating the error-prone, time-consuming and ongoing manual process of validating entries on a regular basis.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:06 am

When Famed Twitter Friend Proves Faux [Voices]

“I spoke to a lovely reporter today,” wrote cwalken on his (or her) Twitter account this week. “I don’t know if she was really who she said she was but that’s fine. I secretly used an ironic tone.”

Sounds about right. But does anybody know who anybody really is anymore?

The popular cwalken Twitter feed, stocked with oddball observations that seem as if they could’ve popped out of the mouth of actor Christopher Walken, is read by more than 90,000 users. It is not, reportedly, written by Walken–though his picture is parked atop the page. (Late yesterday afternoon, the page appeared with a notice that the account has been “suspended due to strange activity.”)

Things have gotten a little confusing for fans. Thanks to the democratizing powers of the Web and the rapid rise in popularity of Twitter, the very famous and the only slightly famous are finding themselves with virtual doppelgangers.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:05 am

Copyright And Libel Questions Hit The Twitterverse [Voices]

A few weeks back, someone pointed me to a Twitter message where one Twitter user was (jokingly) accusing another of copyright infringement for repeating a message. While the situation was amusing, you knew it was only a matter of time until the question became more serious. Mark Cuban put up a blog post this weekend asking about the copyrightability of Twitter messages. His question revolves around whether or not it’s copyright infringement for someone like ESPN to repeat what he wrote in a Twitter message, which he would have preferred they didn’t quote.

I’m certainly no copyright lawyer–so perhaps some could chime in in the comments–but it seems like there would be two issues here. The first is whether or not the content is covered by copyright–and, for most messages the answer would probably be yes (there would need to be some sort of creative element to the messages to make that happen, so a simple “hi” or “thanks” or whatever might not cut it). But, the more important question then would be whether or not ESPN could quote the Twitter message. And, there, the answer is almost certainly, yes, they could, just as they could quote something you wrote in a blog post.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:04 am

Who Would You Rather Trust - the BBC or a Blogger? [Voices]

Professional journalists in the age of the internet look as doomed as blacksmiths in the age of the combustion engine. Local newspapers are disappearing. National newspapers and commercial TV stations are seeing the Web take their advertisers.

Even the gloomiest forecasters expect there will still be a few reporters around in 2025, but as with blacksmiths, we will be curiosities.

There is no point arguing against the inevitable and many optimists believe that the destruction of the old order should be welcomed. In Here Comes Everybody, Clay Shirky celebrates the switch to a democratic world where publishing costs next to nothing and anyone with access to a computer can write for an audience which in theory extends to everyone with a computer on the planet.

He quotes the example of Alisara Chirapongse, a marvellous Thai student who blogged mainly about fashion. Her readership was tiny, until the 2006 Thai military coup. Chirapongse ignored a news blackout and described life in Bangkok. She posted photos of mutinous troops on her website and organised a campaign against the army’s attempts at censorship. When the crisis was over, international admirers left and she went back to sharing thoughts with her friends.

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:03 am

WV Cyberbullying Bill Could Target Protected Speech [Voices]

If you’re in West Virginia, you may want to watch what you say in the comments thread to this article. A bill introduced last week would expand the definition of harassment under the state’s Computer Crime and Abuse Act, making it a misdemeanor punishable by a $500 fine or up to six months in jail to post false statements about another person in an online forum.

The legislation was originally sponsored by state senator Mike Green (D-Raleigh) last Monday, though without the “false statements” provision, which was added when the bill was reported out of the Judiciary Committee on Friday. As currently written, the bill would make it a crime to create a “webpage or posting on a newsgroup” containing “untrue statements about another person which are false and designed to entice or encourage other people to ridicule or perpetuate the untruth about that person.”

Read the rest of this post

Source: All Things Digital | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:02 am

Daily Crunch: Fun Assassin Edition

Dell launches colorful Inspiron line
Brando’s Transformed Mirror IQ Blocks: Just what you think they are
USB cigarette: Thanko strikes again
Mega Man II for iPhone: it sucks
CrunchGear presents Slow-mo Reel 2: Electric Boogaloo

Source: CrunchGear | 31 Mar 2009 | 7:00 am

Bank pushing 120% APR loans

The Dynamics of Cats blogger has noticed something fishy at a "large west coast bank, relatively well known including for some recent financial games with the Feds" -- tellers are pushing "direct deposit advances" that let you access deposited checks in real time for the low-low APR of 120%:

This time, the nice lady at the counter asked me if I needed immediate access to the deposit? Huh? Said I. Looking at the payeee - "I think the check will clear..."

Oh, it is not that, said she, it is just that some people need immediate access to their deposits, like same day, or tomorrow, and if you did we can expedite it.

Oh, that's nice, thought I, and said "no thanks, got enough balance to cover any outstanding transactions thanks, but been there..." so, I wandered off, and suddenly though - well was prompted by my better half to think - "expedited? at what price?"

So, I checked online - there is nothing about expedited access to deposits, rather a guarantee that deposits before 4pm are available same day... or next day. Unless: several reasons, none of which apply to me, nor, I sincerely hope, the payee.

But, there is "direct deposit advance". Interesting:

"The Finance Charge is a one-time transaction charge and is not dependent upon the length of time the advance is outstanding. The Finance Charge is $2.00 for every $20 that is advanced, which equates to an Annual Percentage Rate (APR) of 120%."

120% APR


Source: Boing Boing | 31 Mar 2009 | 6:57 am

DRM should be disclosed on game-boxes

Ars Technica has a report from the FTC's hearings on DRM, where Hal Halpin from the Entertainment Consumers Association proposed that game manufacturers should be required to disclose what kind of DRM they're using prior to purchase ("WARNING: World of Warcraft contains spyware called Warden to stop you from cheating -- it checks files and registry settings here and here, hides itself from the process manager, etc") and to stick to a set of standard EULA terms that everyday people can understand.

That's why DRM information needs to be front and center. "Disclosure is of paramount importance. People need to know what it is they're buying! We were joking before about information on food [Editors note: we referred to the proposed labels on gaming as "nutritional information" in a previous discussion] but some DRM is so invasive that you're buying a product and you need to know what's inside it, what impact it's going to have and how it may or may not be limiting the rights you believe you have, because there's now way to return it. That's the basis on which the FTC and your readers agree: disclosure, first and foremost."

This is important issue, and I asked Halpin if there are any other goods you can buy, not knowing what the product may do to other goods (your computer) when you use it, and that you can't return. "Not that I can think of. Anything else, if it's defective you can return it." That doesn't work at most retailers, where the employees won't take returns simply because of invasive DRM, if they even know what that term means.

"One of our primary goals, core to our mission, is education," Halpin tells Ars, and he strongly believes that if the FTC and the ECA is able to get this information onto game boxes, along with easy-to-understand, standardized licensing agreements, he can get the necessary information into the hands of consumers so that they can make better buying decisions and know their rights.

Hal Halpin to game devs: disclose DRM and standardize EULAs


Source: Boing Boing | 31 Mar 2009 | 6:54 am

Hackerspaces around the world

Wired's Dylan Tweney has a great piece up on the world's burgeoning crop of Hacker Spaces -- clubhouses where members pitch in to share the rent in exchange for a role in governing a collectively managed collection of hacking kit: workbenches, tools, and components. I've visited hacker lofts in Vienna, San Diego, Los Angeles and elsewhere, and they always have a fantastic vibe, that palpable buzz you get from gathering a lot of smart, passionate, creative people inside each others' spheres of attention and set them to work, a cross-pollinated vigor.

At the center of this community are hacker spaces like Noisebridge, where like-minded geeks gather to work on personal projects, learn from each other and hang out in a nerd-friendly atmosphere. Like artist collectives in the '60s and '70s, hacker spaces are springing up all over.

There are now 96 known active hacker spaces worldwide, with 29 in the United States, according to Hackerspaces.org. Another 27 U.S. spaces are in the planning or building stage.

Located in rented studios, lofts or semi-commercial spaces, hacker spaces tend to be loosely organized, governed by consensus, and infused with an almost utopian spirit of cooperation and sharing.

"It's almost a Fight Club for nerds," says Nick Bilton of his hacker space, NYC Resistor in Brooklyn, New York. Bilton is an editor in The New York Times R&D lab and a board member of NYC Resistor. Bilton says NYC Resistor has attracted "a pretty wide variety of people, but definitely all geeks. Not Dungeons & Dragons–type geeks, but more professional, working-type geeks."

For many members, the spaces have become a major focus of their evening and weekend social lives.

DIY Freaks Flock to 'Hacker Spaces' Worldwide


Source: Boing Boing | 31 Mar 2009 | 6:44 am

Star Wars considered as an episode of Dallas

Bonnie sez, "After watching this fan-made Dallas-style intro of Star Wars, I'm beginning to wonder if J.R. and Darth Vader were one in the same."

Star Wars / Dallas opening (Thanks, Bonnie)


Source: Boing Boing | 31 Mar 2009 | 6:37 am

Game Companies Face Hard Economic Choices

Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that the proliferation of free or low-cost games on the Web and for phones limits how high the major game publishers can set prices, so makers are sometimes unable to charge enough to cover the cost of producing titles. The cost of making a game for the previous generation of machines was about $10 million, not including marketing. The cost of a game for the latest consoles is over twice that — $25 million is typical, and it can be much more. Reggie Fils-Aime, chief marketing officer for Nintendo of America, says publishers of games for its Wii console need to sell one million units of a game to turn a profit, but the majority of games, analysts said, sell no more than 150,000 copies. Developers would like to raise prices to cover development costs, but Mike McGarvey, former chief executive of Eidos and now an executive with OnLive, says that consumers have been looking at console games and saying, 'This is too expensive and there are too many choices.' Since makers cannot charge enough or sell enough games to cover the cost of producing most titles, video game makers have to hope for a blockbuster. 'The model as it exists is dying,' says McGarvey." As we discussed recently, OnLive is trying to change that by moving a big portion of the hardware requirements to the cloud. Of course, many doubt that such a task can be accomplished in a way that doesn't severely degrade gameplay, but it now appears that Sony is working on something similar as well.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 31 Mar 2009 | 6:32 am

Dramatic readings of message-board posts about atheism from Christian fundamentalist message boards

If Atheists Ruled the World -- four minutes of dramatic readings from choice selections in various fundamentalist Christian online forums (see here for more).

If Atheists Ruled the World

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Guantanamo Bay is one of the world's controversial prisons. This may be its final chapter. With unprecedented access, National Geographic has the story you haven't heard. Both sides, told from the inside, before its doors close forever. Click to learn more and go Inside Guantanamo >> natgeotv.com/guantanamo

Source: Gizmodo | 31 Mar 2009 | 5:45 am

PRS Demands License Fee To Play Music To Horses

An anonymous reader writes "A woman in Bushton, Wilts, has been told by the Performing Rights Society (PRS for Music) that she needs to pay an annual fee in order to play classical music from the radio to the horses in her stable, something that she has been doing for the past 20 years. The PRS claims that it's not about the horses — rather, it's about her staff of over two people, which puts Mrs. Greenway in the same category as shops, bars and cafes. 'The staff are not bothered whether they have the radio on or not, in fact they don't particularly like my music and turn if off when I'm not around,' said Mrs. Greenway, 62. 'Especially on windy days I try to play it — it gives [the horses] a nice quiet atmosphere, you can only exercise one horse at a time so it helps the others to stay calm. We are right next to the RAF Lyneham air base so it dulls the noise from the aircraft as well.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:57 am

The Pirate Bay thinks sharing links on Facebook is a good idea

Section: Web, Downloads, Web 2.0, Websites

Let’s face it, everyone loves Facebook, even if the new layout is bothering 1.7 million users or so.  But I don’t like how other websites give the option to post whatever you do there on your Facebook profile for all your friends to see.  So usually, I don’t even bother with these special site features, and even though The Pirate Bay made it possible to display torrents you like on Facebook, I highly doubt I will take advantage of that either. 

For any torrent you visit on The Pirate Bay, you have the ability to let it display the link on your profile page and then your friends can download it if they wish, as long as they have a compatible client, obviously.  The good people use torrenting for totally legal file sharing purposes, yet I’m sure a lot of people do not.  With this recession, who wants to pay additional money for music, videos, software, etc?  Do you want your friends knowing what you are downloading?  Even if that is the case you are probably better off Instant Messaging or emailing the link. 

Now, Facebook’s Terms and Conditions strictly prohibit the use of spreading copyright material through Facebook, so it will be interesting to see how they approach Pirate Bay’s new feature.  If you are downloading copyrighted material and then sharing about it in your public profile, that may not bode well for you.  The other feature that goes along with this that Pirate Bay also announced is that you can share links via Facebook messaging system.  That might actually be useful as it is more of a private way of sharing. 

In all seriousness, if you are thinking about downloading some questionable material, think twice before sharing that link with all of Facebook to see.

Read [Neowin]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:48 am

Mark Ryden's first toy, photographed by Brian McCarty

Seen here is a Brian McCarty's splendid photograph of Mark Ryden's first ever toy, titled YHWH, on its way this summer from Long Gone John's Necessaries Toy Foundation. The figure stands 16" tall and keeps a constant vigil with its acrylic eyes. Brian's photo will grace the back cover of the forthcoming eleventh issue of Hi-Fructose magazine. Click the image to see it larger.



Source: Boing Boing | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:18 am

Study: Enforcement spurs rise in Web sex arrests (AP)

AP - More people have been arrested in recent years for sexually soliciting youths online, but the sharp increase comes from better enforcement, and the Internet remains a relatively safe social environment, researchers said in a new study.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:14 am

Microsoft unveils partners for applications store (Reuters)

Reuters - Microsoft Corp has signed up multiple software partners for its upcoming cellphone software marketplace, including Web music service Pandora, game publisher Electronic Arts Inc and social site Facebook.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:08 am

Threat Level's 10 Favorite Paranoid Films

: Video: Courtesy American Zoetrope

Ever have that sneaking feeling that something's not right in the world and that someone somehow somewhere is cheating and deceiving you? Such paranoid suspicions that something sinister was afoot in the world drove The Matrix's Neo (Keanu Reeves) to endless, nocturnal internet searches and in the end, to the red pill.

Neo's quest is hardly novel, however. The big screen has long been home to characters who suspect — rightly or wrongly — that all is not as it seems to be, that friends may not be, that dark forces are in control, that cabals are conspiring.

To mark the 10th anniversary of The Matrix, Threat Level and our fellow Wired.com staffers compiled a video list of our 10 favorite movie takes on paranoia. Disagree? Submit your own and vote on others using our paranoia widget. And surely, you can trust the votes will not be rigged. Wired.com is your friend, you can trust us.

Left: The Conversation (1974)
Harry Caul (Gene Hackman) is a freelance surveillance artist, hired to catch cheating spouses with hidden bugs, roving mics and long-range lenses. Caul, an obssessively private man, begins to worry that his latest targets might end up murdered by the Director. In Francis Ford Coppola's slow-burn, Watergate-era thriller, spying poisons the spy, who soon finds himself living at the other end of the telephoto lens. —Ryan Singel

: Video: Courtesy Harvest Filmworks

Darren Aronofsky's debut feature, which owes a deep debt to David Lynch's Eraserhead. is practically the textbook definition of paranoia: Coder Maximillian Cohen is obsessed with crunching enough numbers with his home-built supercomputer to uncover the secret of the universe. But he's tormented by crippling headaches, evil Wall Street traders who want his 216-digit number to corner the market, and Hasidic cult members who are intent on bringing on the Apocalypse. By the end of the intentionally rough-edged black-and-white film, viewers will likely be sharing Cohen's headache and his confusion about whether the money-grubbers or the temple-goers are more evil. —Dylan Tweney, Ryan Singel: Video: Courtesy Polygram Filmed Entertainment

What do you get for Nicholas Van Orten (Michael Douglas), a man who has everything, but appreciates nothing and no one? His brother Conrad (Sean Penn) settles on Consumer Recreation Services, a shadowy firm that manufactures a new reality around Van Orten, tailor-made to drive him crazy, kill him or save his life. In this Russian nesting doll of a film, there's no rest for the paraniod as each new reality is as illusory as the last. —Eliot Van Buskirk

: Video: Courtesy Hawk Films

"I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids." Thus spake rogue Air Force general Jack D. Ripper (Sterling Hayden).

Reeling from a severe case of Red Fever, Ripper single-handedly starts a nuclear war in Stanley Kubrick's classic black, Cold War comedy, subtitled "How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb." Sadly, the madness of nuclear weapons triumphed over Hayden's all-too-convincing embrace of right-wing paranoia, Terry Southern's screenwriting and Peter Sellers's turn as both the president and his mad Nazi science adviser Dr. Strangelove. If this movie couldn't banish the bomb, nothing ever will. —Ryan Singel

: Video: Courtesy American Playhouse Theatrical Films

Carol White (Julianne Moore) is a seemingly happy-enough housewife and stepmother in 1990s Northern California, until she begins to have unexplainable seizures. Suspecting that chemicals in water, car exhaust and beauty cream are killing her, every moment in White's suburban life turns becomes just another room in a postmodern horror-movie fun house. In the end, director Todd Haynes refuses to answer whether White's "environmental illness" is real or imagined, but leaves no ambiguity when it comes to ills of modern society. —Ryan Singel

: Video: Courtesy The Ladd Company

This futuristic film noir with a pretzel plot follows moody detective Deckard (Harrison Ford) as he hunts down a renegade pack of Nexus-6 Replicants — bloodthirsty cyborgs so realistic, they're almost indiscernible from flesh-and-bone humans. Ridley Scott's 1982 sci-fi masterpiece, based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novella Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, was far ahead of its time visually and technically. The film was also one of the first mainstream releases to spill the existential beans by challenging audiences to question the true nature of humanity. —Michael Calore

: Video: Courtesy Warner Independent Pictures

There's no better way to amp up the paranoia factor than by ingesting huge quantities of drugs, and that's exactly what the inhabitants of A Scanner Darkly's Southern California wasteland do for the duration. Never mind that at least one of them is a narc who's spying on his drug-dealing friends, who may also be spying on him, which doesn't really matter because his brain is so toasted, he's actually spying on himself.

Richard Linklater's film floats atop an otherworldly cloud of psychological distortion: The eerie computer animation, the comically stoned ramblings of the "D-heads" and the identity-concealing "scramble suits" the narcs wear to avoid blowing their cover all add to the confusion. Toss in some extras, like the 3-D cameras the cops use for their 24/7 surveillance, one druggy's frequent hallucinations of giant insects and an evil multinational corporation pulling everyone's puppet strings, and you're in for a pretty strange trip. From the mind of Philip K. Dick, who wrote the novel of the same name. —Michael Calore

: Video: Courtesy Embassy International Pictures

In Terry Gilliam's classic dystopia, the government plasters the grimy walls with exhortations like "Don't suspect a friend. Report him." Terrorists strike everywhere, the Ministry of Information Retrieval does its work with pliers, and storm troopers are at the disposal of a bumbling bureaucracy. Bumbling bureaucrat Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce) finds himself battling for love and justice and sanity after rogue electrician and wanted 'terrorist' Harry Tuttle ziplines into his life. What happens to an honest man in a world where the government is paranoid, inept and yet, all-powerful? —Ryan Singel

: Video: Courtesy Dino De Laurentiis Company

In Sydney Pollack's cool thriller, Robert Redford plays a curious CIA geek who returns to the office after sneaking out to the deli only to find his co-workers murdered. Dark powers are after him for asking the wrong questions. Every one on the street looks like an assassin, every street looks like a trap, and he can't trust anyone. Well, except for Faye Dunaway, who comes to his aid after he kidnaps her. Redford fighting the man with Faye Dunaway at his side. What could be better? —Ryan Singel, Pam Statz

: Video: Courtesy Mystery Clock Cinema

The Matrix owes a cultural debt to this late 1990s sci-fi noir pic, which unfolds in a city of perpetual darkness. The hero is an amnesiac — and possible murderer — struggling to uncover the mystery of his own past. He's pursued by walking corpses with telekinetic powers, who rearrange the lives and identities of city denizens for their own amusement. —Kevin Poulsen

Don't like our choices? Vote on your own favorite paranoia-inducing flicks at This Day in Tech's article on the 10th anniversary of The Matrix.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Pirates Board Apple's iPhone App Store

Piracy is increasingly rampant in the iPhone's application store, where 24 percent of all paid apps have been illegally cracked for free distribution.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

March 31, 1999: The Matrix Hooks Us

1999: Larry and Andy Wachowski release The Matrix, the first mind-bending installment in what will become an influential sci-fi film trilogy. Cyberpunks quickly forget that technocultural flops like Lawnmower Man and Virtuosity ever existed.

The movie took cyberfiction staples like those found in William Gibson's Sprawl trilogy — including his classic 1984 novel, Neuromancer, from which the inter-networked concept of "the matrix" is taken — and mashed them together with anime, wire-fu, postmodernism, metaphysics, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Jean Baudrillard's Simulacra and Simulations, and a torrent of other texts and contexts.

The resulting movie was a mind-bending success: The Matrix grossed $460 million in box-office receipts worldwide and became the first DVD to move more than 3 million units in the United States alone.

Along the way, it also nabbed technical Oscars for its editing and its pioneering visual effects, which exploded the use of the "bullet time" technique and upped the ante for every action film to follow. It beat out a crazily anticipated Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, which was hamstrung by the lamentable Jar Jar Binks, to win the effects statuette.

Filmed mostly in Sydney, Australia, and anchored by a hacker named Neo (Keanu Reeves in a breakthrough role) and his battle-worn leader Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), The Matrix follows a group of intrepid rebels as they rage against their machine overlords, which farm energy from a humanity trapped in an immersive hyper-reality.

Featuring kinetic action sequences soundtracked to the industrial thump of acclaimed artists like Meat Beat Manifesto, Ministry and others, the Wachowski brothers' film attracted ecstatic praise from cinema auteurs like Darren Aronofsky, M. Night Shyamalan and Joss Whedon. The film also utterly captivated writer Gibson, who explained in the book The Art of the Matrix that "Neo is my favorite-ever science fiction hero, absolutely."

Because the film reflected myriad influences on its own ubiquitous mirror shades, it was often criticized for its derivativeness and even accused of plagiarism. Famed comics writer Grant Morrison asserted, "The Wachowskis nicked The Invisibles, and everyone in the know is well aware of this fact, but of course they're unlikely to come out and say it." Other film critics, entranced by the film's metaphysical explorations, were nevertheless put off by its reliance on visceral action, especially in the third act.

But, like postmodernism itself, the film is a gripping amalgam of its artistic and philosophical predecessors. Overtly remixing everything from Rene Descartes to the groundbreaking anime Ghost in the Shell, The Matrix is a blinding summation of all of its influences, rather than a copycat of any one, or 100, of them. Because of this, its stature has only grown in the decade since it exploded across the screen.

Visual signifiers and sequences from The Matrix quickly infiltrated every corner of popular culture. From TV shows like The Simpsons and Family Guy to similarly postmodernist films such as Scary Movie and Shrek, directors aped Neo or his bullet-time ballet.

The Matrix franchise quickly ballooned from one mind-blowing film to three, spawning comics, novels, console and online games, as well as the stunning animated shorts of The Animatrix. By the time it was all over, the Wachowski brothers — who had only directed one feature film prior to The Matrix — were firmly ensconced as pop-culture visionaries.

Source: Various

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Source: Wired Top Stories | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Pinch and Spread: The Battle Over Multitouch Tech Is On

The Pre, Palm's ridiculously slick new mobile phone, stole the show at CES this year. Good looks helped, but mainly it was the Pre's iPhone-like touchscreen technology that wowed the industry crowd. Sure, the Pre has a built-in keyboard, but all anyone wanted to do was drag their fingers along the screen and make magic happen: pop windows open, scroll through sites, fling the contact list to the bottom of the display. The gestures were intuitive, fun, and basically copies of Apple's.

Two weeks later, Apple COO Tim Cook expressed his irritation (without directly naming Palm) to analysts on a conference call: "We will not stand for having our IP ripped off, and we'll use whatever weapons we have at our disposal. I don't know that I can be clearer than that."

Them there are fighting words. Suddenly, Apple and other tech companies are preparing to slug it out over gestures that humans have been making since we developed opposable digits. Patents and patent applications by Apple, Nokia, Hewlett-Packard, and others describe moves in language you might hear at a thumb-wrestling match: the pinch, the de-pinch, the flick, the perpendicular-moving breach (aka the check mark). Gesture-based computing is about to go mainstream, and the battle to define how we navigate the digital world has begun. It's going to be ugly—and potentially fatal to the movement.

Since the birth of the PC, companies sought a way to ditch the keyboard, a Moore's-law-ignoring, design-constraining anachronism tethered to increasingly powerful machines. But early attempts at touch were buggy and clumsy (forcing users to, say, learn Palm's Graffiti handwriting language or cope with input-challenged tablet PCs). So we stuck with keyboards and mice, control-X'ing, control-S'ing, and double-clicking away. Then came the Wii and the iPhone, and suddenly the gesture era was upon us.

Now that sensors are getting cheaper, touch and movement control are everywhere. Everyone has a killer gesture. The just-debuted Touch Pro2 mobile by HTC, for example, turns on its speaker when you flip the phone over and lay it down. Nokia is devising ways to trip functions simply by waving your hand in front of the screen. Although only 5 percent of phones have touchscreens today, that should increase to nearly 30 percent by 2013, according to research firm StrategyAnalytics.

In the PC market, where the search for growth is desperate, gesture-based computing is seen as a savior. HP considers it an entrée to the third world, where many languages don't map well to a standard keyboard. The company's India team recently finished a seven-city tour in which engineers, hoping to learn what to incorporate into devices, did nothing but watch how locals touch and gesture to one another. And Microsoft is making multitouch a vital part of Windows 7. Its researchers learned that when people deal with devices tactilely, they tend to anthropomorphize them—and that means more time spent on Microsoft products. "In a usability test, we noticed that folks were lingering," says Ian LeGrow, Microsoft's top Windows user-interface manager. "They wanted to keep interacting with the PCs after the tests were done."

But studies show that consumers are also just as likely to abandon a device if the gestures aren't intuitive, which has everyone in a bind. One of the strengths of the keyboard is that it's familiar. People who switch from PC to Mac don't have to relearn how to type. With multitouch, the need for standards is even greater. At least with keyboards, the buttons are there; the new touch devices lack visual clues, and trying to manipulate them can feel hopeless. "People have to get it right out of the box," says Nokia researcher Roope Takala. "Otherwise, they'll give up after two or three tries."

In the end, Palm and Apple will come to some agreement (in court or out) on how to share multitouch. But the language has to be universal for it to be adopted. Otherwise, consumers are going to give all these devices one gesture: a single raised finger.

Senior writer Daniel Roth (daniel_roth@wired.com) wrote about the need for transparency on Wall Street in issue 17.03.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Pirates Board Apple's iPhone App Store

Piracy is increasingly rampant in the iPhone's application store, where 24 percent of all paid apps have been illegally cracked for free distribution.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

MadWorld Lets Wii Players Explore the Dark Side

Going virtual bowling with Grandma is all well and good, but not all Wii gamers want to play nice. Despite the Nintendo console's squeaky-clean rep, developers are churning out some seriously gritty offerings for the 17-plus set. Recent titles like House of the Dead: Overkill and Onechanbara: Bikini Zombie Slayers, which let players lay waste to the undead with impunity, are junior-high cotillion compared with the gore-iffic new MadWorld. The entire game is rendered à la Sin City—all black-and-white line art, except for the copious sprays of blood and sickening comic book-style sound effects (SPLAAAAAT! RIIIP!). Players are contestants on a futuristic game show in which they rack up points by maiming, decapitating, and bisecting other contestants.

MadWorld is the first title from PlatinumGames, a studio created by four hotshot Japanese developers who just left publishing house Capcom. They say they chose the Wii platform because its innovative motion controls add realism to the ultraviolence: Flicking the Wiimote lets you throw devastating punches, swing a chain saw, or perforate a rival on a spiked wall. Want a tutorial? See the sidebar for three ways to quench your bloodthirst.

Deadly objects.
Know what gets people's attention? Cramming a tire over their head and then impaling them on a street sign. MadWorld has lots of objects lying around to amp up your killing spree.

Man darts.
Bodies make the best projectiles. Once you've beaten down a rival, you can toss them at things like giant dart boards, dumpsters with razor-sharp lids, or conveniently placed spinning saw blades.

Iron Maiden 2.0.
Contraptions like this spiky hydraulic press make short work of opponents. Grab a baseball bat and knock your foes under it for a juicy demise worthy of Ahnuld in The Terminator.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Review: 'Tokyo Beat Down' Lifts Mediocre Beat'em-Up With Hilarious Story

With subpar graphics and gameplay ripped from the '90s, this Nintendo DS game isn't going to win any artistic or technical awards. But irreverent storytelling makes it a worthwhile amusement.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 31 Mar 2009 | 4:00 am

Anonymous Blogger Outed By Politician

Snoskred writes with the story of a blogger who chose to remain pseudonymous, who has been outed by an Alaskan politician in his legislative newsletter. Alaska Rep. Mike Doogan had been writing bizarre emails to people who emailed him, and the Alaskan blogger "Mudflats" was one of those who called him on it. (Mudflats first began getting noticed after blogging about Sarah Palin from a local point of view.) Doogan seems to have developed a particular itch to learn who Mudflats is, and he finally found out, though he got her last name wrong, and named her in his official newsletter. The Huffington Post is one of the many outlets writing about the affair. The blogger happens to be Democrat — as is Doogan — but that is immaterial to the question of the right to anonymity in political speech. Does an American have the right to post political opinion online anonymously? May a government official breach that anonymity absent a compelling state interest?

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:46 am

M.Stanley to complete $6 bln property fund-sources

HONG KONG/NEW YORK, March 31 (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley is close to raising $6 billion for a new global property fund, falling short of its earlier target of $10 billion, sources with direct knowledge...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:40 am

M.Stanley to complete $6 bln property fund-sources

HONG KONG/NEW YORK, March 31 (Reuters) - Morgan Stanley is close to raising $6 billion for a new global property fund, falling short of its earlier target of $10 billion, sources with direct knowledge...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:40 am

Update on Canon’s rumored new video device

More info! Keep in mind this update is merely an update to the rumor. It’s not a confirmation or anything like that. The anonymous source, bless him, has added some tidbits to the earlier announcement, which was slightly cryptic. For instance, “120Hz” is clarified to 120 full frames, but the camera will supposedly be limited to 60. Why? No one knows.

The sensor is supposed to be a brand new one with far less of a rolling shutter, or “jelly-motion” effect. 1080p at 30fps is supposed to become the standard with the new Canon DSLR lineup, as well, although the T1i’s useless 20fps video doesn’t bode well. Basically these changes would address many (but not all) of the issues around shooting Canon video. I’d love to see a high-performance HD video camera from Canon, but we’ll stay skeptical for now.

Source: CrunchGear | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:05 am

China Coal Group says to invest $15 bln in Xinjiang

SHANGHAI, March 31 (Reuters) - China National Coal Group Corp said it plans to invest more than 100 billion yuan ($14.6 billion) in China's far northwestern Xinjiang region over the next five years.
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 3:02 am

Tinker Gives Twitter Its Long Awaited Events Firehose

Over a year ago Fred Wilson wrote about the need for a Twitter events firehose - a place where users could input a handful of keywords collectively referred to as an ‘event’, which could be used to monitor current news as it happens in near real-time. Tomorrow morning, he’ll get his wish when Glam Media launches a new service called Tinker to the public.

As its popularity has skyrocketed, Twitter has quickly become an indispensable tool for nearly any event, ranging from breaking news stories like the Mumbai terrorist attacks to the broadcast of the most recent episode of Dancing With The Stars. Major earthquakes are often reported by hundreds of Twitter users a matter of seconds after they’ve occurred.

Most people rely on Twitter Search and hashtags to keep tabs on these events, but these aren’t particularly efficient or user friendly. There have been a number of sites that have offered one-off Twitter pages for events, like the Presidential election and The Oscars. These are great, but there still hasn’t been an easy way to create similar pages for smaller events or breaking news stories. Tinker solves this problem, allowing users to build these pages in seconds. And it’s very well done, with a polished intuitive interface that may well make the site the de facto standard for Twitter events.

At a high level, each Tinker event can be described as a persistent search for multiple keywords on Twitter. Each Event is associated with one or more terms, which Tinker then searches for across all Tweets and presents in a single stream. For example, a Tinker Event for March Madness might present tweets that included the terms ‘NCAA’, ‘Basketball’, and ‘Final Four’.

At launch Tinker is going to allow normal users to create their own ‘Events’, but they’ll only be able to search for one key word, hashtag, or phrase at a time (they can also choose terms that they’d like to exclude). Trusted partners, such as those that are running an event, will be able to access a more robust interface, where they can include multiple queries in a stream (normal users will eventually be able to use the same functionality). And while these queries are currently limited to Twitter and FriendFeed for now, it wouldn’t be surprising if we saw Tinker open up to monitoring other services in the future.

The homepage is very well done, but Tinker’s real power will likely lie in its ability to go viral with widgets. After creating an Event, users can share the event’s feed using an embeddable widget, which they can place on their webpage or blog. These widgets allow users to both view the feed of an event and to submit their own messages, which can then be sent to Twitter and eventually sites like Facebook and FriendFeed. From an advertising perspective the widgets are also appealing, as they allow brands to pick out ‘trusted’ streams (for example, one with tweets only pertaining to the Oscars) that they’d like their ads to appear next to. Tinker will also post feeds created by trusted partners on its homepage, allowing the most established events to get more traction.

Some Twitter veterans might argue that Tinker isn’t really necessary to monitor an event - after all, hashtags originated for largely the same purpose. But hashtags come with their own issues (namely, you have to figure out exactly which hashtag everyone is using), and for Twitter novices hashtags can be a pretty difficult concept to grasp. On Tinker, they don’t have to deal with any of those issues - they simply sign on and click on the topic that they’d like to read about.

Aside from its text streams, Tinker has a number of very cool tools that can be used to monitor events. My favorite is Historical Trends, an interactive graph that plots out how ‘hot’ a given event is over time relative to any other event in the system. Users can watch how the ‘Lost’ event skyrockets to the top of the Twitter conversation on Wednesday nights, only to drop sharply the next day. Or they can watch as the SXSW event slowly faded from prominence to obscurity over the last week. It’s an impressive visualization, and one that could easily be used to map other keywords, like the name of a startup over time.

Tinker will be launching tomorrow morning to the public, and we’ll be sure to let you know as soon as it does.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:59 am

Tinker Gives Twitter Its Long Awaited Events Firehose

Over a year ago Fred Wilson wrote about the need for a Twitter events firehose - a place where users could input a handful of keywords collectively referred to as an 'event', which could be used to...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:59 am

Lala Gets A Fresh Coat Of Paint, Still Rocks

Tonight music-streaming service Lala will be rolling out a number of improvements to its homepage and integrated music player. While the site has had a clean feel since its relaunch last October, it has also been a bit spartan - users had to navigate to various links to find their playlists and songs, and while it looked good it wasn’t as functional as it could have been.

The redesign builds on the site’s persistent music player, which sits at the top of the browser window no matter where on Lala’s site they go. Users can now view a pulldown-menu with a list of songs, and there’s a similar pull down menu for playlists.

Another new addition is the ‘Mix’ button, which allows users to generate a list of similar songs to the one they’re current playing (it is similar to the Genius feature found on iTunes). The feature is great for exploring new songs, allowing users to get exposure to a variety of music they haven’t heard while still retaining control over what they’d like to hear next (radio services like Pandora, while great for discovery, can still be frustrating because they only allow users to skip a limited number of songs).

All in all, it’s a more usable interface, and it also looks much slicker. Other additions to the site include a revamped user profile page and improvements to artist homepages. These are all great, but we’re still itching for the day we’ll get to use Lala’s upcoming iPhone app.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:55 am

U.S. military vows to track 800 satellites by October 1

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado (Reuters) - Spurred by last month's collision of two satellites high above the Earth, the U.S. military plans to begin tracking all 800 maneuverable spacecraft...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:52 am

Recession-Era Celebrations - The Unemployment Olympics Will Take Over Tompkins Square Park (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) Tompkins Square Park will host the first annual Unemployment Olympics on Tuesday March 31, 2009. What better place to hold such an event since the labour riots of the 19th century were...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:40 am

SNAPSHOT - Financial Crisis - 0235 GMT

- Obama tries to sway skeptical Democrats in the US House of Representatives to back an expensive budget plan for 2010 by arguing it was needed to reverse economy's downward spiral
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:37 am

Superhero Musicals - Can "Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark" Conquer Broadway?

(TrendHunter.com) Director Julie Taymor is collaborating with Bono and Edge of U2 to bring Spiderman to Broadway. The musical plans to depict the story of how the superhero came into being is currently...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:20 am

ParaScale, a Cloud Storage Company Opens For Business

ParaScale, a Cupertino, Calif.-based storage software company that debuted in June 2008 today announced the availability of its ParaScale Cloud Storage (PCS) software that allows companies to turn commodity...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:15 am

Yuri's Night "global space parties" happen from April 4-12.

( Image above: Aaron Muszalski, shot by Scott Beale, at Yuri's night 2007.) The annual celebration of space travel known as the "Yuri's Night World Space Parties" happens this year on Saturday April 4,...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:15 am

Yuri's Night "global space parties" happen from April 4-12.

( Image above: Aaron Muszalski, shot by Scott Beale, at Yuri's night 2007.)

The annual celebration of space travel known as the "Yuri's Night World Space Parties" happens this year on Saturday April 4, 2009.

The events, which take place in cities around the world each April, celebrate humanity's achievements in space. The parties mark the anniversary of cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin's orbital spaceflight, which was the human race's first foray into space (on April 12, 1961) and the first space Shuttle flight (on April 12, 1981). More than 150 events will take place this year on planet Earth.

I co-hosted one of the parties in Dallas, Texas, once, as the pic at left documents. Drunken cosmomauts (no, they were not drinking cosmopolitans) branded me with the head of Yuri Gagarin.

More about the Washington, DC edition of this event, from Yuri's Night global organizer Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides, the lovely and brilliant space diva who will be hosting that particular location's festivities:

The party this year at Goddard features live music from regional music stars Middle Distance Runner. Listen to multi-layered, indie-pop sounds through exploded views of galaxies and NASA exhibits. Dance next to the rocket garden to beats infused by DJ Scientific. A series of activities are guaranteed to entertain including NASA heavy hitters guiding you though space in the Science on a Sphere theater. Galactic attire is encouraged, silver, antennae, glow in the dark, sci-fi. Participants must be at least 21 years old and bring a valid ID. Beer, wine, and refreshments will be available for purchase and water, soda and chips provided.

Food Network will also feature a 2.5 ft high Hubble Space Telescope cake made for the occasion on their TV show 'Ace of Cakes' about Baltimore's own Charm City Cakes bakery and 500 lucky guests will get to sample Charm City's finest as we celebrate Goddard Space Flight Center's 50th Anniversary.

More info on events in all of the participating cities (I believe admission is $10 or less at each) is right here.


Source: Boing Boing | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:15 am

Status.net Could Point to the Future of Business Intelligence

Few companies have captured the world's attention online in recent years as much as Twitter has. Rapid, structured, public communication between groups of people is not only a personal paradigm changer...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:09 am

Chinese cyberspy ring discovered

Section: Computers, Security

Canadian researchers at the University of Toronto’s Munk Centre for International Studies in conjunction with the SecDev Group and the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory have discovered a huge cyberspy network based in China and say it has infiltrated more than 1,000 computer networks in over 100 countries.  Dubbed GhostNet by the researchers, the cyberspying malware is able to completely control any computer it infects.  It can search and download files, turn webcams and microphones on and off, and more.

The suspicion that such a network existed and that China was behind it began when the Dalai Lama’s office sent a foreign diplomat an email inviting him to meet with the spiritual leader.  Before the staff could follow up their invitation with a phone call, the diplomat received a warning from the Chinese government warning him not to accept the invite.  While China is denying any and all knowledge of such a network and claiming cybercrime is strictly forbidden by their government, they aren’t saying how they found out about the diplomat’s invitation or why they warned him to stay away.

It’s not known if the network is at all linked to the Conficker worm, which has infected nearly 15 million computers and is expected to unleash a new variant of itself on April 1.  However researchers have discovered that the worm also originated from China.  In any case, this is a very good reminder to do regular data backups and make sure your anti-virus and firewall software is up to date and functioning properly.

Read [CNet]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:05 am

Angels Flock Together and Offer Less

Research out today shows that the number of angel investors and angel-backed deals stayed more or less the same from 2007 to 2008, but that the amount those investors are putting into deals has dropped...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:00 am

Dog Newspaper Promos - Cesar's The West Highland Herald Shares Headlines for Hounds (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) A new national newspaper is making a city-by-city roll out. The West Highland Herald in partnership with Cesar Brand dog food will be printed and passed out at high traffic locations...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 2:00 am

Intel rolls out Xeon in crowded servers arena

SANTA CLARA, California (Reuters) - Intel has unveiled its newest and most powerful family of microprocessors, the Xeon, announcing more than 70 customers for a more energy-efficient chip...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:59 am

DEALTALK-Chrysler, Fiat tie-up faces tough road to reality

MILAN/DETROIT, March 30 (Reuters) - Fiat SpA and Chrysler have a framework for an alliance and a U.S. government blessing and now must race to tie up crucial agreements with debt holders and unions to...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:56 am

Huge German Donation Marks Wikipedia's Evolution

Raul654 writes "In December, we discussed the German Federal Archive's agreement, at the urging of Wikimedia Deutschland, to donate 100,000 pictures to Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. At the time that was the largest picture donation ever to Wikipedia, and thought to be largest in the history of the free culture movement. Now Wikimedia Deutschland has reached a similar agreement with the Saxon State and University Library, which will donate 250,000 pictures to Wikipedia under CCA-ShareAlike. On a not-unrelated note: Microsoft has announced that it will discontinue its Encarta encyclopedia."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:52 am

UPDATE 2-Disney to launch ad-supported channels on YouTube

* ESPN player to be integrated into YouTube (Adds comments from YouTube and analyst, share price)
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:45 am

Virtual Castle Tours - Hearst Castle Implements Budget-Friendly Option for Travelers (GALLERY)

(TrendHunter.com) If you havent been to Hearst Castle in San Simeon, CA, the museum has just launched a newly-designed website tour with interactive 360-degree views inside and outside the grounds of...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:40 am

ABC: FBI & Prosecutors "Closing In" on AIG's Cassano

I have no idea what "closing in" means when you know someone's name and where they live and what they did, but ABC News has a story out saying that the Feds are closing in on AIG Financial...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:30 am

Indonesia's Adaro says 2008 net profit up ten-fold

JAKARTA, March 31 (Reuters) - Indonesia's second-largest coal producer, PT Adaro Energy Tbk , on Tuesday reported a ten-fold increase in net profit in 2008 to 887.2 billion rupiah ($77 million), beating...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:24 am

eTelecare Global Solutions to Terminate Its American Depositary Share Program

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., March 30 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- href="http://www.etelecare.com/">eTelecare Global Solutions (PSE: ETEL), a leading provider of complex business...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 31 Mar 2009 | 1:19 am

Jonathan Miller, Who’s Taking Over MySpace, Doesn’t Have A MySpace Profile

As far as we can tell, the guy who’s going to be taking over MySpace along with the rest of News Corp.’s digital assets doesn’t actually use the site itself. We cannot locate a MySpace profile for Jonathan Miller, who will shortly become the CEO of Digital Media for News Corp.

We’re big believers in company executives eating their own dog food, and more often than not they do. But MySpace is a different story - every once in a while they announce new executives who don’t have a MySpace page at all. It’s always fixed promptly, but it’s a bit of an embarrassment.

News Corp., MySpace and Miller all either refused to comment or haven’t responded to our inquiries.

My guess is the MySpace team will be creating one for Miller shortly, assuming he doesn’t in fact have one. He could have an anonymous profile, but from what we’ve heard he doesn’t. We love Miller and think he’s an awesome choice for the huge job he’s about to take on. And now’s the time for him to start using MySpace.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:53 am

Disney/ABC, ESPN sign YouTube video deal (AP)

AP - The Walt Disney Co. said Monday it has agreed to provide short-form videos from its ABC and ESPN television properties to run on Google Inc.'s YouTube under an ad-revenue sharing arrangement.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:46 am

High-res display now available for Dell Mini 10 or is it?

HP’s 2140 was supposed to start shipping with a HD display sometime last month and quick check on the site reveals that it’s still not available. Some of the personal reviews state that the low-res displays caused them to return the netbook. It makes me wonder if there’s some manufacturing issue over in China with these high-res displays. I bring this up because it appears that Dell is now offering the Mini 10 with a 1366×768 resolution screen for an extra $35, but will it actually ship on 4/15 like it says it will?

Dell via Giz

Source: CrunchGear | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:30 am

Netflix jacks up prices if you like Blu-ray

Section: Video, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray, Web

Sometimes it doesn’t pay to like the latest and greatest.  Netflix, the name in the online DVD rental world, has just increased its prices if you prefer Blu-ray discs.  Myself, I have the 3 DVD at-a-time plan.  Normally it costs $16.99.  Netflix increased the cost of the plan by $1 recently because of the cost of Blu-ray discs.

This time, the charge will go up another $3 and the total Blu-ray preference charge will be $4.  Thankfully, Netflix e-mailed its users and explained that the new fee won’t be in place until the next billing cycle.  Users can opt for just plain ol’ DVDs and avoid the extra charge.

I quite enjoy watching movies on Blu-ray.  The increased quality is really something to see.  Even though it’s only $3 per month, that increase is quite a sting.  If you’re like me and you want your Netflix bill to stay the same, you can change your plan to 2 DVDs with Blu-ray for the same price as 3 DVDs without Blu-ray.  Take a look at the graphic below for more details on pricing. 

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:08 am

If bit.ly Is Worth $8 Million, TinyURL Is Worth At Least $46 Million

In a world where everything is being jammed into 140 characters or less, shorter is better. That goes double (or is it half?) for lengthy URLs. So-called URL shortening services are increasingly becoming indispensable to anyone who uses Twitter. It is the only practical way to share links on the service.

Today, one of these URL shortening services, bit.ly, raised $2 million, sparking the question: How much are these things actually worth? Nobody really knows.

But here is some fun math. Assuming bit.ly sold 20 percent of its shares to its new investors (the O’Reilly Alpha Tech Fund, Mitch Kapor, and Howard Lindzon), that would imply an $8 million pre-money valuation ($10 million post-money). Its market share of shortened links, as calculated by Tweetmeme, is only 13 percent. The biggest URL shortner out there is actually TinyURL, which commands a 75 percent share. So by that metric, if bit.ly is worth $8 million, TinyURL should be worth at least $46 million (8/13 X 75 = 46.15). Yes, I am making up these numbers, just like the investors do.

But wait. Bit.ly seems to be shooting up like a rocket, while TinyURL may have plateaued. Why is bit.ly growing so much faster? One big reason is because it creates even shorter URLs than TinyURL does by about five characters (http://bit.ly/ versus http://tinyurl.com/). Don’t laugh. Every character counts. Bit.ly also offers better analytics and tracking tools on the backend.

Don’t get too caught up in the site traffic growth figures either, though. Traffic to http://bit.ly/ and http://tinyurl.com/ cannot be trusted as reliable proxies for usage because heavy users don’t go to the corresponding websites. They use desktop clients or browser based tools instead which incorporate one service or the other. For instance, TweetDeck (a popular Twitter client) uses bit.ly as its default shortener. The bit.ly service itself is a spin-off from Betaworks, which is also an investor in Tweetdeck (and in Twitter). See how it works?

How any URL shortener is supposed to make money is still unclear. The links themselves act as pass-throughs to the original sites. TinyURL has slapped some Google ads on its site and bit.ly doesn’t even bother. The data each service is collecting might be valuable and could be packaged in various ways to brand marketers or other corporate buyers . . . perhaps. Or more likely, these things become features of other services.

Already Digg is working on its own URL-shortening toolbar wrapped into its service, and Stumbleupon is working on su.pr, which is even shorter than bit.ly!

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

Source: TechCrunch | 31 Mar 2009 | 12:07 am

Locating the Real MySQL

An anonymous reader writes "In a blog post, Patrick Galbraith, an ex-core engineer on the MySQL Server team, raises the question: "What is the official branch of MySQL?" With Monty Widenius having left Sun and forked off MySQL for MariaDB, and Brian Aker running the Drizzle fork inside of Sun, where is the official MySQL tree? Sun may own the trademark, but it looks like there is doubt as to whether they are still the maintainers of the actual codebase after their $1B acquisition of the code a year ago. Smugmug's Don MacAskhill, who is the keynote at the upcoming MySQL Conference, has commented that he is now using the Percona version of MySQL, and is no longer relying on Sun's."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 30 Mar 2009 | 11:58 pm

Archos Promises Android-Packed Media Tablet/Phone

In a public release to investors over the weekend, Archos revealed company plans to release an Android-powered internet tablet by the start of Q3 2009.

In light of a difficult year financially, the French-based company intends to 'integrate telephony' in the device in order to jump into the fray of the communications/media single-player gadget market. 

According to the release, Archos intends to improve its new lineup of media players in four ways: Increased availability of mobile TV (through WiFi and 3G networks), better mobile web services, direct media content through the Archos Media Club download service, and by adding a phone 'communication' feature.

Presumably, all aspects will be improved with the use of the Android OS. Having reviewed the latest version of the Archos players, I think a flexible OS and sleeker browser UI are obvious places in need of improvement. But the continuing focus on content from the Archos Media Club is disappointing, since I found the current version to be mainly composed of overpriced crapware.

The addition of a phone is the latest move for a company looking to quickly diversify its product line.

Back at CES, Archos announced it was getting into the netbook arena with a mostly unimpressive (and basically re-packaged) laptop hardware. Then, a couple of months ago, an Archos executive said the company was looking into integrating vibrant OLED screens into their players if it improved the experience.

At the time, we noted that while the latest Archos players are already excellent video and music media players, browsing the net was a slow, crippling experience in comparison to the iPhone.

Adding phone functionality to an Archos tablet seems like a no-brainer, since the company has likely lost business to companies offering all-in-one media experiences.

Last year, Archos posted a loss of $24 million (on a gross margin of $13.7 million), or about half the amount it made in 2007. This was despite a line-up of products that were mostly of high quality, though they did tend to skew toward the expensive.

There is currently no word on exactly how much the Android internet tablet/phone will cost or whether it will follow the aesthetic design of the most recent players. But the release does mention the price may go all the way up to 500 Euros or more than $650.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 30 Mar 2009 | 11:31 pm

Pirates Board Apple's iPhone App Store

The iPhone's App Store is becoming an increasingly juicy target for pirates, who have illegally cracked 20 percent of paid applications for free distribution.

Apple's App Store offers about 25,000 paid apps, and iPhone analytics company Medialets estimates at least 5,000 have been pirated. The company also said it has tracked dozens of apps with as high as a 100-to-1 pirated-to-paid ratio.

"It's a real problem that developers, Apple and the community need to address," said Eric Litman, CEO of Medialets, a market research company that tracks app statistics and usage for developers.

Just how much piracy affects App Store sales is unclear and remains up for debate — since Apple, tight-lipped as usual, has not disclosed any numbers. Apple didn't respond to several requests for comment.

Software piracy is rampant on the internet, with illegal, free downloads of expensive software just a Google search away.

The Business Software Alliance commissioned a study in 2008 that suggests the economic impact of software piracy is tens of billions of dollars. In the United States, if the amount of software piracy were reduced 10 percent over four years, the end result would be $41 billion in economic growth, according to the study.

So it was inevitable that the App Store would fall victim to piracy, too.

Pirated iPhone applications appear in a number of places. There is, for example, a 5.4 gigabyte Torrent file called the X-Mas iBrain Pack, which contains 808 cracked iPhone applications.

There are also websites hosting dozens of pirated iPhone apps, such as Appulo.us, which currently offers about 3,200 cracked apps. Another site, The Monkeys Ball, recently relaunched with 81 cracked apps. The Monkeys Ball promotes the cracked apps as "trial" downloads, encouraging users to buy the apps after they've tried them.

"We want people to think of these as trial apps since Apple doesn't allow trials of apps before purchase," said "Omar," one of the creators of the site, who refused to disclose his real name to Wired.com. "It's Apple's fault for not putting up a trials system."

Kai Yu, president of BeeJive, said he installed analytics software in his IM application BeeJive, and his company discovered 60 percent of activity comes from users who own pirated copies. BeeJive costs $16.

"We think that current piracy of content from the App Store is much more widespread than most people realize," Yu said.

Since Apple has not installed security in the App Store to combat piracy, BeeJive has had to enforce its own measures to disable cracked versions of its software. In fact, when users try to log in to pirated versions of BeeJive, they are instead pointed to a video clip of Office Space about theft.

However, not all app developers say piracy is a problem.

Brian Greenstone, owner of Pangea Software, said he actively tracked piracy of his iPhone game Enigmo, and piracy made a very insignificant impact on sales. During the first week of Enigmo's launch, only 5 percent of downloaded copies were pirated versions. After that week, piracy dropped to nearly 0 percent, according to Greenstone.

"Like any piracy scheme, it's just a matter of time until hackers find their way around," Greenstone said. "There are things we can do as developers, but since the piracy rate is so low, my thought is 'Who cares? It's not even worth the trouble.'"

Steve Demeter, developer of the popular iPhone puzzle game Trism, said he also saw little impact from piracy, even though his app was one of the first in the App Store to be pirated.

"When I first saw it on Pirate Bay I couldn't decide whether to freak out or to say, 'Whoa, cool!" he told Wired.com.

Demeter said his App Store sales decreased for about two weeks. However, he said eventually everything "evened out" and that he is not very concerned about piracy. (Demeter did, in fact, announce earning $250,000 in profit in just two months with Trism sales.)

Yu said he believes Apple is aware of App Store piracy and is working toward a permanent solution.

"This will hopefully be a temporary state, mostly due to the 'newness' of the App Store," Yu said. "It is like the Wild West."

Updated 5:25 p.m.: Medialets' provided estimate for the total number of cracked apps was 5,000 — not 6,000.   

Photo: GreggFuller/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 30 Mar 2009 | 11:14 pm

IBM Tries To Patent Offshoring

Ian Lamont writes "IBM has filed a patent application that covers offshoring employees. Application 20090083107, dated March 26, 2009, is a 'method and system for strategic global resource sourcing.' Figure 2 gives a pretty good idea of what's involved — it shows boxes labelled 'Engineer,' 'HR,' and 'Programmer' with crossing arrows pointing to cylinders labelled 'India,' 'China,' and 'Hungary.' The article speculates that IBM may apply the methodology to its own staff — it reportedly plans to lay off thousands of employees and has even started a program to have IBM workers transfer to other countries at local wages."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 30 Mar 2009 | 11:04 pm

Microsoft to Shut Down Encarta Web Sites (PC World)

PC World - Microsoft is shutting down its Encarta encyclopedia Web sites and will also discontinue its Student and Premium Encarta software products.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Mar 2009 | 10:50 pm

AirCoaster iPhone App Turns The Stock Market Into A Scary Ride

The stock market has been a wild ride the past 12 months. If you don’t feel sick already, you can actually turn the ups and downs of the stock market into a virtual roller coaster. Ziconic, the developers of AirCoaster 3D, a high speed 3D roller coaster app for the iPhone, has turned the Dow Jones and Apple stock charts into roller coaster tracks that users can download and ride.

The steep decline of the Dow Jones index makes for an exhilarating ride . But Apple’s more volatile stock makes for an even more thrilling up-and-down roller coaster track.

The app lets you visually experience every twist, turn, and corkscrew, within a 360-degree panoramic background. (Once you choose a ride, though, you can only control the view, not the actual ride). You can choose to ride an auto-generated track that changes with each ride. The AirCoaster 3D, which costs $0.99, lets you design your own tracks as well with sound effects and themes via an interactive multi-touch track editor. And you can download tracks created by others. (In fact, the Dow Jones and Apple tracks don’t come with the app, you have to download them from the community tracks tab). Stock charts make for excellent virtual roller coaster tracks. But which stock chart would be the most fun to ride?

One rule of thumb: the fun of the roller coaster ride is the inverse of the fun of owning the stock.

Here’s a video showing the Dow Jones ride on an iPhone:

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

Source: TechCrunch | 30 Mar 2009 | 10:42 pm

Verizon-branded MiFi 2200 leaks out

It’s definitely not the first time we’ve seen the Novatel MiFi, or even the second - but they can keep cranking these things out in all sorts of different flavors and we wouldn’t mind a bit. A few weeks back, we found out that Sprint would be getting a MiFi of their own sometime in the next 3 months, and this latest leak indicates that Verizon will be getting one as well. No date is mentioned - but with CTIA 09 but a night or two away, we’d wager that an announcement is looming.

Here’s the concept, if you’ve missed our past blabbers on it: It’s essentially a battery-operated, 3G-powered WiFi router. Push a button, bam - it’s now a WiFi hotspot, fueled by the 3G network of whatever carrier’s SIM you’ve got inside. No dealing with cables or flaky tethering apps. It’s a blogger’s dream toy. Both times we messed with the MiFi were in environments that are generally absolutely horrible for such evaluations (the GSM model on an overloaded network, and the CDMA model in the basement of a hotel) - yet it performed spectacularly each time.

A few things are still unclear (EVDO Rev.A? Did Verizon lower the carrier-adjustable 5 person cap?). We just landed in Vegas - if our assumptions are correct and a VZW-branded MiFi is lurking around Sin City, we’ll have a hands-on up as soon as possible.

[Via PhoneArena]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 30 Mar 2009 | 10:28 pm

MingleStick, an electronic business card for serial schmoozers

Of course no one would actually use the MingleStick in real life. I've got a similar application for the iPhone but I've never once thought to use it when I meet someone else with an iPhone. But for conventions, which seems to be the main market that its gunning for, I could see the goofy little point-and-click radio fob actually being fun.

Of course, web site copy like this is ill portent: "FAQ's: Does the MingleStick work with all computers?

Coming soon...."

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 30 Mar 2009 | 10:24 pm

Possible ban on HDTVs coming soon in California?

Section: Video, HDTV, Gadgets / Other, Green, Household

California is the first state that is attempting to pass legislation that would ban the sale of television sets that don’t meet their new efficiency standards.  The proposal of the California Energy Commission is attempting to gain approval over the summer and go into effect as early as January 2011.

The way that the law would work is that there would be a cap placed on how much power a television set uses while in active mode, in lieu of the regulation that now places on a set’s power consumption in standby mode. The standards would go into effect with a two tier system.  The first tier scheduled for January 2011 would have each 0.156 square inches of screen area cap off at 80 watts.  The second tier scheduled for January 2013 would not permit more than 25 watts for each 0.12 square inch.

TV companies, especially plasma set manufacturers, which the law seems to target, have not been pleased by the proposal and feel that Energy Star policies that they have currently been following are more than sufficient.  However, the California Energy Commission thinks that the second tier would bring down energy usage as much as 49 percent and save residents an average of $18 to $30 annually per TV set. 

Read: [Wired]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Mar 2009 | 10:17 pm

Interview With Google's V8 Author Lars Bak

Dr Pete writes "Financial Times has an interesting piece about Lars Bak and Kasper Lund the authors of the V8 virtual machine in Google's Chrome browser. 'Chrome attracted more than 10 million users in its first 100 days. Although that's an impressive number, it still only translates into about 1 per cent of browser usage online. It will be a while before it can compete with Firefox, Internet Explorer and others. In December last year, Google announced that Chrome was now out of its development, or Beta, phase and is ready to be shipped as a pre-installed browser on some PCs. This could rapidly increase the number of users. Moreover, the European Commission's antitrust battle with Microsoft over, among other things, how its own browser, Internet Explorer, is integrated into its Windows operating system may give competitors such as Google a chance to claim ground.'" Interestingly enough Google Chrome is currently fighting it out with Safari as the #3 web browser on Slashdot.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 30 Mar 2009 | 10:17 pm

Former Teen Stock Swindler Hit With New Hacking Charges

An unreformed Philadelphia man is charged with hacking into an online currency exchange with a Trojan horse scheme similar to the one he used in 2003 to unload thousands of worthless stock derivatives. The teenaged Van T. Dinh landed a 13-month prison term the first time around.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 30 Mar 2009 | 10:00 pm

Ecuador tops in protecting rain forest

Ecuador has protected the largest percentage of its share of the Amazon rain forest and Peru the least, a study indicates. The O Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper reported Sunday that Ecuador has 79.7 percent of its rain forest region protected, compared with just 34.9 percent for Peru. Brazil,
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 9:50 pm

Trekker Re-Creates Classic 'Star Trek' Scenes With Lego Bricks

With an eye for detail, a passion for plastic bricks and an overworked Flickr account, Frank Elchesen pays tribute to the '60s sci-fi series that launched a fanboy franchise.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 30 Mar 2009 | 9:35 pm

Teenage Engineer OP-1 synth & controller (sound test)

Teenage Engineering is building a relatively small portable synthesizer and controller, the OP-1. Here is their display test using a high-density OLED (I think). (Thanks, Tom!)

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 30 Mar 2009 | 9:30 pm

Monoprice Saves: Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapters now available

Praise be to he who provides Chinese copies of simple cables: the Monoprice Mini DisplayPort adapters, as used on the new MacBooks, are now available for around $13: Mini DisplayPort to DVI (Compared to $30 for Apple's); Mini DisplayPort to VGA ($18); and the long-awaited Mini DisplayPort to HDMI, which Apple does not even make.

Relatedly, have you seen the bad reviews for the Mini DisplayPort to Dual-Link DVI Adapter on Apple's site? Sounds like those might be lemons. (I like Mini DisplayPort, too; I just hate paying out the nose for cables and adapters.)

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 30 Mar 2009 | 9:11 pm

Researchers Tweak Roomba to Respond to Emotions

Researchers at the University of Calgary tricked out an iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner to react to signals such as muscle tension and eye movement in a bid to test limited brain-computer interaction between humans and robots.

"As far as we know we are amongst the very first to pursue bioelectric signal interfaces in human-robot interaction, where we program a robot to react to the user’s emotional state rather than just direct control," says Paul Saulnier, a graduate student at the University. Saulnier presented his findings at the Human Robot Interaction conference in San Diego earlier this month.

Saulnier's team used NIA, a gaming peripheral from OCZ that reads bioelectrical signals from gamers and translates it into on-screen actions. For instance, gamers who wear the NIA (neural impulse actuator) headband can use some basic thoughts and eye movements to control a video game.

The team mapped NIA to the Roomba and used indicators such as muscle tension to control robot speed. The more tense a muscle, the greater the indication of stress, which in turn acts a signal for the Roomba to back off. (Read the complete paper)

The idea is to prove that mapping the emotional state of a user to the emotional state of a robot is possible with existing technology, say the researchers.

"People have often asked me about the potential real-world applications of this," says Saulnier. "The example I like to use is an emotion-sensing robot could that could be used to monitor the health of an elderly relative and react if something is detected of concern."

While it may be an interesting idea, there are technical challenges currently, says Saulnier. But it is something the team hopes to investigate next.

Photo: Paul Saulnier/University of Calgary

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 30 Mar 2009 | 9:01 pm

Scientists identify gene tied to lupus

U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 8:12 pm

Skype coming to iPhone/iPod touch tomorrow, BlackBerry in May

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, VoIP

Skype has been quite busy in the past few months.  The company released a new Windows version of the software in February with a lot of improvements.  It partnered with to bring the service to Android, Nokia, and Windows Mobile platforms.  There was even the announcement that the company would release its audio codec for free to anyone who wants to use it.

Now Skype brings forth two big announcements.  Skype will be coming to iPhones and iPod touches tomorrow and to RIM BlackBerries in May.  So, no matter what major smartphone you have, or plan on buying, you’ll be able to access Skype with it.  However, you might not be able to access it everywhere.  At least on the iPhone, Skype calls will be limited to over Wi-Fi.  The limitation is actually what allows the iPod touch to use the application, assuming you have a microphone and a second-generation touch.  The limitation actually extends to every voice app on the iPhone, so it’s not just AT&T and Apple keeping Skype down, they keep everyone else down as well.

There have been third party Skype apps for mobile devices before any of these announcements from Skype, though none of them actually had the full Skype feature set.  Having all the aspects of Skype on a smartphone is quite nice for heavy Skype users.  It could theoretically allow for free calling to anyone else as long as they are on Skype and near a Skype device.  Just the thought of it makes it obvious why some mobile carriers might be scared off by the prospect of Skype being available on their phones.  However, VoIP services still need to use data, which cell providers are notorious for gouging the price on anyway, so it doesn’t make sense that they would fear this.  If anything, it just means that people could be using the data networks more often, since open access points can sometimes be hard to come by, if the networks would allow for such a thing.

Read [NY Times]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Mar 2009 | 8:07 pm

FDA OKs drug for advanced kidney failure

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 7:59 pm

Drug treats brain tumors by cutting edema

U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 7:38 pm

Nokia confidently releases 5800 XpressMusic software update

It’s not all that often you see a company issue a press release for a firmware update (that is, except for our lovely iFriends in Cupertino - Apple invites the internet over for milk and cookies every time they think about releasing an update), but after all the bad press the 5800 got at launch, Nokia’s probably tryin’ its best to get the handset back in a positive light.

No matter the reason, the free 5800 XpressMusic update is here, and sounds looks like music to our eyes. According to the Finnish mobile juggernaut, the update offers improved performance and new “functionalities” including:

• Faster user interface and faster download times
• New camcorder features: second camera support for still image capture in addition to video calls, burst mode that allows people to take multiple pictures one after another without needing to repress the picture taking button
• Mobile Dictionary: built-in dictionary functionality with voice playback of words utilizing text-to-speech technology, support for 38 languages
• Application Update: with Application Update people can check for available updates for applications and update them directly in the device. Applications can also be kept up-to-date by setting the checking to automatic.

Get it while it’s hot.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 30 Mar 2009 | 7:26 pm

I feel like I'm missing something about the Moleskine MSK format

Moleskine is pushing a new "MSK" format for designing your own custom pages on your computer to be printed and attached to one of their famous notebooks. But I'm confused. While I understand the utility of custom pages, especially some of the pre-formated variants that let you print out a list of Plaxo or Vcard contacts or iCal events, I don't understand how you physically attach them to your notebook. I suppose you can just fold them and slot them in, but that's not very elegant—and certainly not as swish as the idea I had first imagined, in which Moleskine sold a new notebook with a little clip or binder that made it easy to couple custom pages to blank.

It's enough to make me want to simply print out the blank pages, fold them in quarters, and sew them roughly inside two flaps of cardboard.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 30 Mar 2009 | 7:25 pm

Web ad revenue grew in 4Q but slower than in past (AP)

AP - U.S. Internet advertising revenue climbed in the fourth quarter in spite of the poor economy, but the growth rate was sluggish compared to previous years, according to an analysis released Monday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 30 Mar 2009 | 7:17 pm

Blankets with arms reviewed (Verdict: Get the Slanket, if you must)

Jason Chen answers the fundamental question of work-at-home writers everywhere: Which horrible blanket/jacket hybrid—the Snuggie, Slanket, Freedom Blanket, Blankoat, or reversed houserobe—is truly the best?

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 30 Mar 2009 | 7:06 pm

Greenpeace: Forests Could Drop Carbon Market Prices

The environmental group Greenpeace said on Monday that carbon market prices could drop by a staggering 75 percent if credits for safeguarding forests are added to markets for industrial emissions, Reuters reported.A flood of forest carbon credits could also slow the fight against global warming and divert billions of dollars from investments in clean technology, according to the report issued on the sidelines of U.N.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 6:40 pm

Comverse offers carriers visual voicemail solution for BlackBerry devices

Earlier last month, we caught wind of a possible visual voicemail service for AT&T BlackBerry users. Now, on the eve of CTIA Wireless 2009, Comverse has announced its own BlackBerry visual voicemail solution for carriers.

The Comverse Visual Voicemail solution delivers all messages to a BlackBerry’s inbox, complete with each voicemail’s date, time and length, as well as each caller’s phone number and identity if available. Listening to messages and returning phone calls are as simple as clicking on the message.

Visual voicemail is actually just one component of the company’s Comverse Voice HUB solution:

The Voice HUB, Comverse’s advanced single platform for all voice services, provides a “Whole Voice” experience — a spectrum of revenue opportunities for every call. It enables quick and cost-effective launch of innovative mass-market voice-related services.

Comverse will demo its visual voicemail service at CTIA in Vegas starting tomorrow. Now all we need is a major carrier (or three) to jump on the bandwagon.

In the meantime, you can keep using YouMail’s free vv service. See ya on voicemail…

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 30 Mar 2009 | 6:39 pm

NASA starts Arctic research mission

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 6:34 pm

Netflix increases price of Blu-Ray rentals

Netflix just sent out an email saying that it will increase its monthly charge for unlimited Blu-Ray access from $1 to $4 a month. Pow! (If you rent more than one movie at once, the rates scale ) Text of the email below:

You are receiving this email because you added unlimited Blu-ray access to your account for $1 a month. The number of Blu-ray titles has increased significantly and will continue to do so. As we buy more, you are able to choose from a rapidly expanding selection of Blu-ray titles. And as you've probably heard, Blu-ray discs are substantially more expensive than standard definition DVDs.

As a result, the monthly charge for Blu-ray access is increasing for
most plans and will now vary by plan. The charge for monthly Blu-ray
access on your 3 DVDs at-a-time (Unlimited) plan will increase from $1
a month to $4 a month. The price of your 3 DVDs at-a-time (Unlimited)
plan is not changing and remains at $16.99 a month.

The new charge for Blu-ray access will be automatically added to your
next billing statement on or after April 27, 2009 and will be
referenced in your Membership Terms and Details.

If you wish to continue unlimited Blu-ray access for $4 a month, you
don't need to do anything. If not, you can remove Blu-ray access
anytime by visiting Your Account.

If you have questions about this change or need any assistance, please
call us anytime at 1-888-923-0898.

-The Netflix Team

Why are Blu-Ray discs so expensive, again? It seems stupid for the Blu people to advertise piracy so openly.

Update: Engadget has a chart, useful to those who rent more than one movie at a time.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 30 Mar 2009 | 6:31 pm

Scientists use lasers to kill cancer cells

U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 6:17 pm

Touch tablet: Palm to beat Apple to it?

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Computers, Mobile Computers, Netbooks

Every time Apple has an event, rumors of a tablet netbook pop up.  The idea of a larger iPhone with a bigger screen and connectivity has been drawing techies like moths to a flame, yet Apple stays on the sidelines.  Now, an interesting discussion about Palm’s new WebOS on a netbook is laying out the case for the company to spin its wares to netbooks.  I’ll take it one step further, it could make a touch-based netbook and beat Apple to the punch.

At CES this year at the Pre introduction, Palm was careful about saying they expect the WebOS to migrate to other devices.  Editor-in-chief of LAPTOP Mark Spoonauer wrote a post why a Palm-Dell marriage might make lots of sense.

“This week the hot rumor is that a Dell-Palm marriage could be on the horizon, and I do think the idea has merit. Although the eagerly anticipated Pre device would certainly give street cred to any potential suitor, it’s the WebOS itself and its potential beyond smart phones that makes Palm an especially tempting target.“

Spoonauer goes on to list five reason why WebOS would shake up the netbook world: most attractive Linux build, ever; touch friendly, integrated with the cloud, ARM processor friendly, and it supports Flash.

Building on Spoonauer, I’d add that Palm has already done the leg-work in the netbook world with their attempt know as the Foleo.  The company delved into pseudo-netbook territory before so building again would not only make sense, it might help a bunch of the bruised egos with the implosion of Foleo.  Having a laptop form factor, the Foleo was nothing more than a Treo assistant that connected through the phone.

I believe Palm is not just looking to pull even with anyone; clearly, they see the value in creating a category.  The touch enabled Eee PC or HP laptops have left me wanting.  Their OS touch controls are little more than sideshow effects.  Not until an OS built touch-specific will touch make much sense on a netbook.  Palm could pull this together and make a compelling offering, something their Pre has done as well.

Can Palm build this fast enough? 

Source: [LAPTOP]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Mar 2009 | 6:02 pm

Patient's own stem cells may help angina

A U.S. study has shown the first evidence that stem cells taken from a patient suffering severe angina and placed into that patient's heart may lessen pain. The data came from a six-month, Phase II study led by Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 6:02 pm

Cosmonaut Grumbles Over No-Sharing Policy

A cosmonaut says rules about keeping space station food and facilities separate hurts morale.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 5:52 pm

AT&T's New Lineup Includes Samsung Phone With OLED Display

AT&T rolled out a half-dozen new phones Monday including the first phone on contract with a major telecom carrier to sport a super-bright, ultra-thin active matrix OLED display.

The phone from handset maker Samsung is called Impression and features an active-matrix organic light emitting diode (AMOLED) screen that displays vibrant colors and consumes less power than widely used LCD displays today.

"The nation's first commercially available AMOLED screen results in one of the brightest and clearest displays in the U.S.," said AT&T in a statement. "It is paired with a keyboard underneath an amazingly slim, metallic blue, quick messaging phone that's all touch screen on the outside, all buttons on the inside" Samsung rival Nokia has an OLED phone available in the U.S. but it is unsubsidized and not available on contract with the major telecom carriers.

OLED-based displays are fast emerging as the alternative to LCD screens. OLEDs offer extremely bright displays that can make colors pop out. They draw less power, which means phones can run longer on a single battery charge. OLED-based displays also do not need a backlight so the screens can be thinner than an LCD panel leading to overall slimmer phones. The Samsung Impression is likely to be just the first of the OLED-based phones to hit the U.S. market.

The Impression has an 3-megapixel camera, a 3.2-inch screen and a full browser, says AT&T. It will be available starting April 7 for $200 with an AT&T contract. Here's a complete list of the phone's features.

AT&T's new lineup also includes phones from other handset makers such as Nokia and LG. AT&T said it plans to offer the Nokia E71x, billed as one of the thinnest smartphones in the market. The Symbian operating system based E71x is about 10 millimeters thick, runs Wi-Fi, GPS, and will be available for $100 with a contract.

Among the other phones will be the Samsung Propel, a Windows Mobile based full QWERTY keyboard slider phone for $150 with a contract; the LG Xenon, a 3G capable phone focused on music and text messaging; and the LG Neon, a low cost touchscreen phone targeted at teens.

Gadget Lab will be at the CTIA wireless conference in Las Vegas later this week. And we will bring you pictures of the phones from the show floor.

Photo: Samsung Impression/AT&T

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 30 Mar 2009 | 5:49 pm

Skype for iPhone is out in Japan: First screenshots and impressions

The Japanese App Store already offers Skype for the iPhone (v1.0.0.63) and we have some screenshots. Japanese bloggers say the contact list takes some time to load after logging in. Group chat is possible. In chat mode, users have three options: “Bookmark”, “Leave Chat” and “Close Chat”.

The Skype app is free and requires Wifi access to work. Here are some screenshots (more over at our Japanese friends at Netafull):

Via Netafull [JAP]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 30 Mar 2009 | 5:19 pm

Evolution Of Ancient Microbes Revealed In Caves

Jenn Macalady's geomicrobiology group is discovering the rules that enable microbes living in dark, oxygen-free environments to adapt and evolveRecently, caving expert Simone Cerioni guided Jenn Macalady of Pennsylvania State University and her team of scientists up a dark, steep slope in the Frasassi cave system in central Italy. While climbing up a particularly difficult section, Cerioni turned around to check on the scientists scrambling below him and noticed that their facial expressions--spotlighted by the narrow beams of their headlamps--seemed to ask him, "How do we get up this part?" Cerioni responded in his best Jedi English, "Use the force ..."Taking Cerioni's advice, the scientists found their footing and climbed higher. Nevertheless, in other, gnarlier sections of the cave, Cerioni's encouragement of "the force" did not suffice, and the expedition advanced only with the help of hardware, such as ropes, harnesses and ascending gear.Why were Macalady and the other members of her research team negotiating such treacherous subterranean terrain? Because, like many scientists who study the Earth's history, they dream of traveling back in time. But rather than wanting to travel back to the popular age of dinosaurs, they want to travel back to the Precambrian--a pivotal period that spanned from about 4.5 to 0.54 billion years ago.The Precambrian fascinates Macalady. "The evolutionary success of single-celled microbes during the Precambrian brought the Earth to life and set the stage for the evolution of multi-cellular organisms that thrive today," she says, adding that during the Precambrian, microorganisms evolved the ability to produce oxygen from water through photosynthesis, a development that eventually led to the irreversible oxygenation of the Earth's surface.But because microorganisms leave poor fossil records, Macalady doesn't use the fossil record to study the Earth's oxygen revolution and the evolution of microbes. Instead, she studies these phenomena by analyzing modern microbial examples from Earth's anoxic (oxygen-free), dark regions. However, these organisms are rare and difficult to access, found only underwater or in deep, dark underground environments (or combinations of the two) where stagnant water or unusual chemical conditions prevent oxygen from penetrating.Caving worldwideSo how does Macalady manage to access such remote dangerous environments? By collaborating with expert cavers and cave divers who guide her and her colleagues to locations that would otherwise be beyond their reach. And sometimes, the cavers and cave divers collect samples of microbial communities on her behalf.So far, with funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and NASA, Macalady has managed research collaborations between scientists and caving experts in dark, anoxic environments in Italy, Mexico, Florida and the Bahamas.To maximize the productivity of such collaborations, Macalady and her fellow researchers continually hone their own caving skills. They also train their caving guides to find and sample the types of environments that offer the most research potential and how to make critically important field observations.Mysterious cave microbesWhy is Macalady so dedicated to exploring deep, dark, dangerous caves? Because so little is currently known about the microbes that live in dark, anoxic environments. "Every expedition offers the possibility of discovering previously unknown life forms and important clues to the history of life," she says.That day in the Frasassi caves, Macalady and her research team profiled the geochemistry of a remote, anoxic lake that was reached only after four hours of travel within the cave system.  Once there, doctoral student Dan Jones and Italian cave explorer Sandro Mariani donned dry suits, entered the 55-degree Fahrenheit lake water, and lowered a geochemical probe into the lake's deep anoxic layer, which is located about eight meters below the lake surface. This is standard operating procedure: sometimes, Macalady's research team will even collect microbe samples in other microbial environments from depths of dozens of meters.Once back in the lab, Macalady's research team conducted laboratory analyses of the gene sequences contained in the microbe samples. These analyses were designed to reveal important information about the evolutionary relationships between sampled microbes and other known microbe species, and information about microbial activities.Slow-growing slimeFor example, through these analyses, Macalady's post-doc, Sharmishtha Dattagupta, identified a new animal-microbe relationship (or symbiosis) in the Frasassi cave system that is based on chemical energy. Such symbiosis, which is common around hydrothermal vents on the sea floor that spew hot water, had not previously been known to occur outside of the oceans.In addition, Italian cave divers discovered a slow-growing, anaerobic slime in the Frasassi cave waters; this slime contains large populations of cells that produce energy through novel methods that Macalady's research team is currently struggling to understand. Macalady's team, which includes doctoral students Jones, Kat Dawson, Heidi Albrecht and Rebecca McCauley, is currently continuing to conduct research in the Frasassi caves as well as in other Italian caves. This work involves collaborations with a team of Italian colleagues that includes geologists Alessandro Montanari, Sandro Galdenzi and Maurizio Mainiero, and cave explorers Mariani, Cerioni and others.In her latest effort, Macalady is researching collapsed, flooded caves in the Bahamas, a collaboration with expert cave diver Kenneth Broad from the University of Miami, funded by National Geographic. Although the sinkholes hold fresh, oxygen-rich water near the surface, they quickly become salty and anoxic with depth. Therefore, Macalady suspects that these sinkholes, along with similar ones in Florida, may provide additional clues to the Earth's earliest environments. And that is just the kind of time travel that keeps her exploring the Earth's depths.Lily Whiteman, National Science Foundation---Image 1: Penn State University doctoral student Dan Jones (standing) and postdoctoral researcher Sharmishtha Dattagupta collect microbial biofilms in the Frasassi cave system in central Italy, on May 28, 2008. Credit: Ieva PerkonsImage 2: Penn State University professor and geomicrobiologist Jennifer Macalady collects microbial samples in the Frasassi cave system on June 5, 2008. Credit: Jenn Macalady, Pennsylvania State University
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 30 Mar 2009 | 4:36 pm

Shell Tools Offer New Take on Human Evolution

Some hunter-gatherer groups likely used shells, not stones, as tools.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 4:13 pm

Sugar Sync now available for the BlackBerry

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Computers, Software / Applications, Web

BlackBerry users have just been given a nice option when it comes to accessing their personal (or business) files while on the go.  SharpCast has recently announced the release of a SugarSync application for the BlackBerry.

SugarSync allows you to easily sync, store, access and even edit files between a PC and/or Mac, the cloud and now your mobile phone.  Key features of the BlackBerry application include remote file access and editing, on-demand synchronization and shared folders.  Additionally, you can browse, view and even directly upload photos taken with your BlackBerry.

As of now, the BlackBerry client is still listed as beta, however it is available for anyone to download, and can be found here.  Current SugarSync users will be able to begin using it immediately, and new users can get a 45-day trial to test out the service.

This release comes in addition to the client they currently offer for for the Apple iPhone and also Windows Mobile.  Personally I have been using SugarSync for about 6 months now and would not hesitate to offer a recommendation, it has been a solid service in my experience.

Read [SugarSync]  Via [jkOnTheRun]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 30 Mar 2009 | 4:02 pm

Pets Wait Out ND Flood in Shelters

Hundreds of animals are being kept safe from the flood in a fairgrounds pavilion.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 3:48 pm

Stressed Female Mushroom Corals Become Male

In times of stress, female mushroom corals become male to expend less energy.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 3:28 pm

Sugar-Coated Nanoparticles Find Hidden Tumors

Could silicon nanoparticles replace traditional chemotherapy?
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 2:40 pm

'Pathological' Black Hole Sheds Light on Dynamics

A quirky black hole offers insight into processes behind the mysterious phenomena.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 2:30 pm

Mount Redoubt Volcano Finally Calms Down

After spraying a layer of ash on Anchorage, Alaska's Mount Redoubt simmers down.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 30 Mar 2009 | 2:20 pm

Motorola announces Evoke QA4, evokes memories of the iPhone

Today, like everyone else, Motorola announced a brand new handset to showcase at CTIA this week. The Evoke QA4 features a 2.8-inch touch-screen, slide-out 12-key pad and a touch-screen QWERTY. The handset is enhanced with widgets for RSS feeds, MySpace or YouTube. Also equipped with a full HTML browser and accelerometer, the Evoke evokes memories of all the other touch-screen handsets to come out in the last two years.

This one doesn’t do much for me and probably won’t do much for you either. The CDMA handset which is set to launch in May with Cricket (WTF?!) has a 2-megapixel camera, stereo Bluetooth, aGPS and 256MB of internal memory (only supports up to 8GB via microUSB).

No word on price or carrier but it will launch sometime in Q2.

QA4

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 30 Mar 2009 | 1:29 pm

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