Microchips That Shook the World

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

ContentNext's Econ Affinity: Capitalizing on User Engagement

Pak General Wants Drones Grounded in Taliban Cease-Fire Deal

Mac Price Cuts? Apple Partners Say, 'Meh.' - ChannelWeb

TopNews United States

Mac Price Cuts? Apple Partners Say, 'Meh.' ChannelWeb - Damon Poeter By Damon Poeter, ChannelWeb Does Apple really intend to slash prices for its entry-level iMac desktop computers and MacBook laptops? Apple: The low-price leader? Macworld Apple may cut prices on some computers 1590 KLIV Silicon Valley News TopNews United States - Washington Post - Apple Insider - OS News all 87 news articles

GMail: Emoticon glory and quick(er) web search

Section: Web, Web 2.0, Google

Google has unveiled two new lab features for GMail.  The first is the ability to do a quick Google web search and get results without leaving the GMail window.  The results pop up in the lower right hand corner, similar to Google Chat windows.  If you hover over each item in the result, a clickable arrow shows up giving you the option of e-mailing or instant messaging the search result.  This could be handy when you’re e-mailing or chatting with someone and want them to check out something that you can’t quite remember the web address for.  No more messing around with pesky extra browser tabs or enduring the tedious copying and pasting of links.

The second lab feature new to GMail is on the lighter side.  For your emoting delight, Google has added another 1200 or so emoticons to its library.  I never knew there were so many variations on the smiley face.  On just a quick perusal of the new emoticons, I became a bit overwhelmed by all the blinking, twirling, and . . . sorry, I suddenly felt a bit dizzy just thinking about the dancing little faces.  While I’m sure there are many who will spend twenty minutes picking out just the right little picture, I will stick to the basic yellow-faced stationary icons.

If I could add only one of the new features, I would go with the new quick in—GMail search.  Not only does it somewhat streamline the link-sending process, but I also think most of us are satisfied with the old-school emoticon catalog.  But, if you find yourself feeling constrained by GMail’s original emoticons, then you should definitely check out the new library.

Read: [eWeek]

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

Web Zen: Architecture Zen

Controversial Web ‘Framing’ Makes a Comeback [Voices]

When Digg introduced a new toolbar in early April that added a thin strip – known as a ‘frame’ - to the top of pages submitted to Digg, a publisher outcry forced the social media aggregator to back down. It modified the new DiggBar so that only logged-in users would view submitted stories within a Digg frame and Web address, and also offered them the option to turn off the toolbar altogether.

But despite Digg’s move, the controversial practice of framing seems to be making a comeback on the Web. Danny Sullivan, editor of the Web site Searchengineland.com wrote in an article about Digg’s toolbar changes, that Facebook, Ask.com and StumbleUpon have all begun framing links recently.

Web usability expert Jakob Nielsen argues that “frames break the fundamental user model of the web page.” “All of a sudden, you cannot bookmark the current page and return to it (the bookmark points to another version of the frameset), URLs stop working, and printouts become difficult. Even worse, the predictability of user actions goes out the door: who knows what information will appear where when you click on a link?”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Boost Mobile Overwhelmed By Texters - InformationWeek

Wireless and Mobile News

Boost Mobile Overwhelmed By Texters InformationWeek - Marin Perez The influx of customers wanting the $50 unlimited plan is too much for Boost Mobile's infrastructure to handle, and many users are getting delayed text messages. Boost customers suffer text message delays CNET News mocoNews - Boost Mobile Overwhelmed By Popularity Of $50 Unlimited ... Washington Post FierceWireless - The Associated Press - Forbes - engadget all 108 news articles

Google Adds Experimental Search Box To Gmail - InformationWeek

TechShout!

Google Adds Experimental Search Box To Gmail InformationWeek - Thomas Claburn The new left-hand column search box offers a different user experience than the top-of-page search box. By Thomas Claburn Continuing the erosion of Web page identity, by which Web pages become iGoogle-style generic frameworks for plug-in application ... Never Leave Home: Gmail Labs Embeds Google Search ChannelWeb Web Searches In Gmail Now Feature 100% Less Leaving Washington Post InternetNews.com - VentureBeat - Maximum PC - Techtree.com all 49 news articles

Japanese company sells air-conditioned bed

Weird Tokyo-based startup Kuchofuku [JP] and major trading company Itochu have developed a mattress of a very special kind: Just in time for the summer, the proud owners can switch on a built-in “air conditioning system” in order to cool off their bodies.

The fan is located at the foot of the mattress. When it’s switched on, air is being pulled in from behind the sleeper’s head and transported to the feet, drawing off that nasty body heat.

It’s quite cheap, too. According to the makers, operating the mattress for eight hours results in about 13 cents in monthly electricity costs, which is way less than using an air conditioner that cools an entire room. The best part is that the mattress can be used in winter as well, as buyers get a heater with the mattress.

Running eight hours a day, the system will generate only about 13 yen in  — much cheaper than using an air conditioner to cool an entire bedroom. The mattress goes on sale in May in Japan in May and costs $300.

The Japan Trend Shop (a reliable English online store for stuff from Japan) is actually selling Kuchofuku beds already, like here. So if you live outside Japan and want to stop sweating, you now know who you can contact.

There is no bigger picture yet of this new mattress apart from the one above. The other pictures show an older model, but the mattresses basically look the same from the outside.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Roseville, Ohio, Residents to Benefit from Verizon Wireless Network Enhancements

Microsoft Shows Off The Power Of Facebook’s New APIs

Earlier this week Facebook made the landmark (and long-awaited) announcement that it was going to enable the “Open Stream“, granting developers far more access and flexibility to Facebook data than they had before. To commemorate the event, Facebook held a special Technology Tasting at its Palo Alto office, where it gave everyone an idea of exactly what developers could do with the new data.

We saw some impressive demos, including an example from Plaxo of how social sites could symbiotically exchange data with Facebook, followed by a walkthrough of the upcoming version of the new Seesmic Desktop. But out of all of them, by far the most visually impressive was a pair of applications put together by Microsoft. Yes, that Microsoft. In less than 72 hours, two small teams managed to put together a pair of applications built on the new Facebook APIs that really show off just how robust a Facebook application can be. The first app was built in Microsoft’s Silverlight platform, while the other is based on .NET.

I managed to get some footage of the demos during the event, but honestly it didn’t really do the apps justice (that’s what I get for trying to record with a video camera in each hand). So I got in touch with the team at Microsoft, which put together the high quality walkthrough video above. The video is narrated by Brian Goldfarb, Director of Microsoft’s Development Platform Group. Are the apps innovative? Not especially. But damn if they don’t look cool.

For those of you itching to try these out for yourselves, I’ve got bad news: you can’t. At least, not yet. But Microsoft will be releasing an SDK and the source code for both of the apps in the near future.

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

Reach Out And Ping Someone (Investor's Business Daily)

For Super-Tough Spider Silk, Just Add Titanium

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Pac-Man oven mitt lonely for Ms.

This $15 silicone glove debuted 3 months ago. How long must we/he wait for a Ms. Pac-Man mitt? ...Or go doubly old school with a mitt decked out in 80s Pakkuman bedsheets from Etsy. Really wish I'd kept all my old sheets.

[Top glove via Offworld]

Crocheted White Album vinyl: the perfect addition to a Beatlemaniac’s couch

We don’t cover pillows a lot here at CrunchGear, but this was too cool to pass up. I like the idea of knit, crocheted, and plush gadgets — I don’t know if that classifies as a fetish or anything, but I think they’re great. And this cute little crocheted record is no exception. That is all.

Actually, now that I look at it, that pillows tag is pretty well-populated. I can feel a niche site coming on…

Google’s Enterprise Strategy May Be Solid After All

Facebook Bolsters Security To Fight Phishing Attack - ChannelWeb

World News

Facebook Bolsters Security To Fight Phishing Attack ChannelWeb Facebook is bolstering its security infrastructure after being pummeled with two phishing attacks that lured victims to fraudulent Web sites to acquire login credentials from them. Phishers Target Facebook Again PC World Facebook Fights Phishing Attacks ABC News eWeek - CIO Today - RedOrbit - TG Daily all 117 news articles

Free Apps roundup for May 1st, 2009

FROM APPLETELL - Another relatively quiet week on the App Store. But don’t worry, there were still plenty of fun and useful apps to be had. Mostly demos, but there’s also a nice app to record audio with.
MORE »

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

Morningstar Acquires Andex Associates, Leading Provider of Financial Communications Materials in Canada; Completes Acquisition of Equity Research and Data Business of C.P.M.S. Computerized Portfolio Management Services

New Issue - BP AMI Leasing sells $930 mln in notes

Why the Palm Pre Is Important - Brighthand

TrustedReviews

Why the Palm Pre Is Important Brighthand - Ed Hardy I know some people are confused by all the excitement surrounding the upcoming Palm Pre. At first glance, this model is nothing special. Palm Eos Coming To Sprint? InformationWeek Rumored Palm Eos running webOS, headed to AT&T Mobile Burn NetworkWorld.com - TrustedReviews - San Francisco Chronicle - The Tech Herald all 90 news articles

PhotoFrame for iPhone - Macworld

ABC News

PhotoFrame for iPhone Macworld - Rob de la Cretaz You've got a well-stocked desk—paper, pencils, maybe even a few erasers. But something is missing… the kind of personal touch represented by a framed photo on your desk. Will the people pay for quality iPhone games? msnbc.com Papa John's Doesn't Know Its iPhone Apps From Its Elbow Mediapost.com Apple Insider - CNET News - PC World - Wired News all 245 news articles

FACTBOX-Key facts about U.S. April auto sales

Samsung’s new camcorders to shoot in glorious… 480i?

The new SMX-C10 and C14 camcorders from Samsung debuted the other day with some slightly vague specs. Are they high-def? Low-def? Just-right-def? Well, Samsung just forwarded us the deets, and I had to check whether they were talking about the newest camcorders or some they released in 2007.

Here are their shootin’ modes:

Normal mode: 720×480/60i
Web mode: 640×480/30p
Digital still photos: 800×600, but increased to 1600×1200 by interpolation.

Oh my god! This is a camcorder, right? Not a phone cam? I know this is the “standard definition” lineup, but really now. For their price range, I’d expect 720p, especially since the market is saturated with Flipsand Webbies and Zx1s that all shoot passable HD for under $200. Sure, the Samsung form factor is nice, but shooting at DVD resolution interlaced? 800×600 stills doubled up by interpolation? That’s so busted.

NASA's eNose Sniffs Out Brain Cancer

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Gameloft releases Siberian Strike game for iPhone (Macworld.com)

PETA On The Google Goats: Let Them Eat Grass (But They Need Perks)

Following up on our story about the hilariously absurd use of goats to mow the lawns around Google’s headquarters instead of lawnmowers, we were able to get a comment from PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. PETA is okay with letting the goats be goats (eating grass and looking cute), but they have some major concerns about how they’ll be treated in doing these tasks.

Says Amy Cook, an Assistant Manager of Marketing for PETA:

PETA has no problem with letting goats do what goats want to do (e.g., look cute and eat weeds), but we do have concerns about how the goats may be transported, whether they are provided with access to shelter during storms and shade as well as water during hot weather, where they are housed when they aren’t “working,” what kind of veterinary care they receive, and what becomes of old and/or excess goats. PETA has found over and over that whenever animals are used by a business to make money, corners are cut and animals often suffer as a result. And that really gets our goat, if you’ll pardon the pun.

You think Google, with its “don’t be evil” mantra, would be kind to the goats. But then again, they have been cutting food supplies to employees during tough times, so you have to wonder if the goats would be left without an ample supply of water as well. Also, veterinary care seems like one of those goat perks that might be on Google’s cost-cutting checklist.

But you never know. I’m going to reach out to Google for comment.

Update: And here’s the response from Niki Fenwick, a Google representative:

Google takes the wellness of our employees very seriously and we pride ourselves on having a responsive and adaptable culture. The lawn-mowing goats are not, of course, full-time Google employees - but we would certainly respond directly to any concerns about their treatment. I can confirm that during their time in Mountain View, like other Google employees, each goat is entitled to a free organic lunch.

Love me some organic salad, hope the goats do too.

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

Call Center International Pioneers the Operation of Contact Centers in Lebanon

Windows 7 Could Be Released as Early as August (NewsFactor)

Quote of the Day, Friday, May 1st, 2009

"Devices using the silver ooze should appear later this year." – NYTimes

Augmented Reality Cams Put Fish, Magic Into Your World

When ordinary reality is just too banal, wouldn’t it be nice if you could transform everything you see into something mysterious and wonderful?

Augmented reality does that, by overlaying computer-generated effects on the real world. It makes for some really magical effects, as techno-magician Marco Tempest demonstrates in the nifty magic trick here. It combines good old sleight-of-hand with some computer graphics wizardry that utilizes “open source software (OpenFrameworks, OpenCV, ARToolkit, MacCam)… a head mounted PS3 EYE toy camera… [and] a MacBookPro,” Tempest told us. He says it was done with 100% real-time processing, no effects added in post-production.

But magic isn’t the only thing you can use augmented reality for. How about making your environment into an aquarium filled with swimming turtles and fish?

That’s what Canon did with its prototype MR Aquarium, a research project that combines a head-mounted camera, VR goggles, and a computer. Put it on, and it shows you exactly what you’re looking at — except with the addition of swimming critters. (See video below.)

This would have been just the thing to have at the cocktail party I was at last night. Just imagine a sea of black suits with a few sharks and turtles swimming around over their heads. As it was, I needed more than a couple martinis to achieve the same effect non-technologically.

Hat tip: Engadget

Gadgetell visits TechVi to talk about Windows 7 and the Palm Eos

Section: Communications, Smartphones, Computers, Software / Applications

TechVi had me on their show as a guest along with Chris Spera from Gear Diary to talk about Microsoft Windows 7 and how its RC will be free for one year and what exactly is the deal with the Palm Eos.  The show is hosted by Randall Bennett and we had a great time discussing the latest news.

Check out more episodes [TechVi.com]
[Gear Diary]

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

Space Shuttle Layoffs Begin - eWeek

Space Daily

Space Shuttle Layoffs Begin eWeek - Roy Mark NASA begins the first steps of decommissioning the space shuttle fleet with 160 layoffs, despite concerns in Congress. More than 900 shuttle employees are expected to lose their jobs by September 2010. NASA Begins Job Cuts for Shuttle Retirement Space.com NASA jobs slashed as shuttle fleet is retired TG Daily abc13.com - Wall Street Journal - msnbc.com - Air Force Link all 461 news articles

HOWTO bake awesome pizzas by lining your oven with bricks - Boing Boing Gadgets

You're going to pre-heat to 500F. But how do you know when the stone is ready? You could give it maybe 30 minutes and hope for the best. Or, splurge a little. A $45 infrared digital thermometer is not only a fun toy, it's the perfect way to assess surface temp from a safe distance.

Open the oven and quickly shine the beam onto the stone every 15 minutes. Any more often than that will a) let more heat escape, and b) lower your spirits. Compared to when I pre-heated the pizza stone all by its lonesome, getting the stone up to 470F when surrounded by the brick house took 30 minutes longer. Makes sense, you've just added twice as much ceramic or terra cotta to the mix.

Discuss this on Boing Boing Gadgets


Source: Boing Boing | 1 May 2009 | 9:15 pm

John Muir's clockwork desk

I invented a desk in which the books I had to study were arranged in order at the beginning of each term. I also made a bed which set me on my feet every morning at the hour determined on, and in dark winter mornings just as the bed set me on the floor it lighted a lamp. Then, after the minutes allowed for dressing had elapsed, a click was heard and the first book to be studied was pushed up from a rack below the top of the desk, thrown open, and allowed to remain there the number of minutes required. Then the machinery closed the book and allowed it to drop back into its stall, then moved the rack forward and threw up the next in order, and so on, all the day being divided according to the times of recitation, and time required and allotted to each study.

Pig Flu: Et Tu, Pooh?

Click for larger size. (Thanks, Sebastian, Mark K., and Stefanie.)

After Tribulation, The “Sexiest” iPhone App Hits With A 12+ Rating

Last month, Sookie Solutions got the bad news that its iPhone app, Peekababe, was getting rejected from the App Store. The reason? Excessive sexual content. Well today, it’s here, sexy as ever.

Here’s the gist: The app features pictures of several women wearing clothes. You can swipe from side to side to get different women/clothes combinations. But if you touch the screen, those clothes magically dissolve leaving you with a bikini or lingerie-clad lady. You can then set these girls as your wallpaper.

Yes, it’s kind of silly in a juvenile way, but the real story is that Apple first rejected the app, then later accepted it. Perhaps this is another sign of easing restrictions on the App Store. After all, the app seems to do basically the exact same thing it did before. But it also appears to be yet another tale of the app approval process causing confusion. “It took us close to 1 month to get approved. The approval standards should be more specific and easier to understand. You will see that our app content is very similar to already approved apps’ content,” developer Alan Bigio tells us.

He goes on, “One thing that you may want to suggest is that Apple sets up a pre-approval process where developers send an idea, and Apple can accept it or reject it before developers waste time. In the long run this could even benefit Apple, because too often they have their employees wasting time with apps that get reject for very simple things.” That’s an interesting idea, certainly with developers getting increasingly annoyed by the uneven app approval process, it seems like something needs to be done.

So why did Apple approve the app this time? Well it may be because Sookie now includes a 12+ rating for it. “My rating was based on the guidelines that they have for the iTunes store. Better to be safe than sorry,” Bigio says. There is also a clear note saying that it does not contain any nude or pornographic pictures. 12+ is kind of funny though. Something tells me a lot of parents wouldn’t want their 12-year-old playing with this app.

There have been plenty of other “sexy” apps that have appeared the App Store over time, including iStrip, MagicPen, Wobble and Bikini Babes. But Peekababe seems to have the clearest images and is definitely one of the most blatantly sexual yet. And watch out, because in the next version, you’ll get a sexy cowgirl, a hot nurse, and “many more babes too!,” the app promises. Check out the video below to see it in action. The app is $0.99 in the App Store.

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Flu Models Predict Pandemic, But Flu Chips Ready

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

CrunchDeals: Logitech Harmony 510 remote for $50

Amazon’s got the Logitech Harmony 510 remote on sale for just under $50 for a limited time — not a bad deal since it goes for around $70 to $80 or so elsewhere. The universal remote industry in general might — just might — be experiencing slow sales now that people are saving up all their money for boring stuff like food and rent. Oh well. Our gain (as it pertains to remote controls).

The Harmony 510 can control up to five different devices and connects to your computer via USB, allowing it to be automatically programmed with software from Logitech’s website.

Logitech Harmony 510 Advanced Universal Remote Control [Amazon]

Clipstart lets you organize, upload your videos (Macworld.com)

Ex-Employee Sues Zynga For Discrimination, Wrongful Termination

Zynga’s social gaming network is going gangbusters right now, reportedly pushing nine figures in revenue. But the company’s legal woes continue. A former Zynga employee named Robert Fulop has filed suit against the popular social gaming company for violating the Fair Employment and Housing Act (FEHA), the California statute that prevents employee discrimination.

The suit alleges that Zynga has discriminated aginst Fulop on the basis of age and disability, namely those tied to his request to temporarily reduce his work load in the time leading up to and following a heart operation. Fulop is seeking a total of $50,000 in lost compensation and general damages, along with further damages whose amount will be determined at trial. I’ve summarized the suit below and embedded the full document. It’s important to note that the suit obviously paints Zynga in a poor light (the company wouldn’t comment) so keep in mind that it is only one side of the story.

The suit revolves around the termination of Fulop a few months after he began working full time at Zynga, and soon after he informed the company that he would need some time off to undergo a heart procedure. According to the document, Fulop is a long-time game designer with over 30 years in the industry whose career began at Atari in 1979. He was recruited to join Zynga as a contractor from early August 2008 through late September, when he was brought on with Zynga as a full time employee.

A month later he began suffering chest pains (he had a prior heart attack in 2005) and went to the hospital for testing. Fulop notified his team leader that he would need to work from home and part-time for the weeks leading up to and following the operation. Nine days later, Fulop was terminated from that game’s team. According to the document, whether or not he was terminated from the company entirely remained unclear for weeks (he underwent his heart procedure in the mean time). He was terminated from the company soon after the operation.

From the document:

“… As soon as Plantiff informed Zynga of his medical condition and his need for accommodation, he was immediately terminated. Plaintiff’s request for accommodations was summarily ignored without any discussion whatsoever.”
“As a pretext for the termination, Plaintiff was informed that he was being terminated because there was no work for him. This pretext is belied by the fact that Plaintiff was terminated approximately five weeks after he was hired as an employee and by the fact that immediately after Plaintiff was terminated, Zynga sought to hire another person for Plaintiff’s exact position”

This isn’t Zynga’s only legal trouble. In February, the creator of Mob Wars sued the company for copyright infringement (Zynga’s game, Mafia Wars, is very similar).

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

For The First Episode Of “This Week In Startups,” Jason Calacanis Interviews His Best Friend

Jason Calacanis, the CEO of Mahalo who is famous for his Twitter-follower envy (and is our partner in organizing the TechCrunch 50 conference), now is trying his hand at his own Web video talk show. It is called This Week In Startups and it is being streamed live on Ustream right now.

The format is an hour-long interview Charlie Rose style, compete with the black background. Except Calacanis couldn’t find a round table, so he’s using a rectangular one instead. His first guest is literally his best friend, Brian Alvey. Calacanis and Alvey built Weblogs together before selling it to AOL, and Alvey is now the CEO of Crowdfusion, a content management system. So if you are into CMS platforms, check it out. Alvey has created 21 of them.

Calacanis is always entertaining and Alvey is a smart guy. But, come on, Calacanis. You couldn’t find anyone else to be on your first show than your best friend? Oh well, the important thing is that he Calacanis actually launched the show. We definitely need a talk show that is focused solely on startups and how to build them. I like the format and think this could build a rabid following. The best part is that Calacanis is taking questions for his guest from Twitter.

The show, which is in progress, is embedded below. If you want to ask a question, send out a Tweet with the hashtag #twist:

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The Aporkalypse: Researchers Want Your Help

Maggie Koerth-Baker is a guest blogger on Boing Boing. A freelance science and health journalist, Maggie lives in Minneapolis, brain dumps on Twitter, and writes quite often for mental_floss magazine.

A Stanford team that's studying the public's knowledge of, and response to, H1N1 flu, has a survey and they're looking for willing participants to fill it out. Here's team member Marcel Salathé:

There is a possibility that the situation might develop into a pandemic if the virus continues to spread around the globe. The news media report excessively about this threat, and while health officials urge people to stay calm, there is an increased level of anxiety in the population.
Models have predicted that when a disease breaks out, changes in behavior in response to an outbreak, and in particular in response to information about an outbreak, can alter the progression of an epidemic. While this makes intuitive sense, there is no good data to test such a hypothesis. One of the major problems is that emotional reactions and behavioral response to an epidemic is generally assessed quite some time after the epidemic has fizzled out."

Short version: They're trying to figure out whether the info dump about H1N1 flu that you're getting from the media and the Web might really be enough to educate us all right out of a pandemic. I know that theory has come up in the comments threads on my previous flu postings. Let's help find out it if it works!

Take the survey here

EDIT: Marcel Salathé answers a couple of reader questions from the comments thread here. First, about when the results will come out and how you can see them:

There are a number of options. We will collect data while the epidemic runs its course - how long that's going to take is unpredictable, so I cannot really say more about the timeline - we just don't know yet. But we're constantly monitoring the data, and once we start finding interesting patterns we will certainly publish those quickly and make them open access. Feel free to publish my Stanford email address, and people who want to the results can send me an email."

Second, are Boing Boing readers completely screwing up the data by virtue of their savvyness? Salathé says it's a concern, but he doesn't think it will mess things up too badly, and he needs the volume of response more:

I am relatively confident that once we have a large enough sample we will get a good feeling for the average level of concern in the population. Yes, it might be that the ones responding to the survey are not the ones most panicky. On the other hand, one could also make the argument that people who are absolutely unruffled and calm might not be bothered to take the survey either. There can always be bias in any direction. In principle, any online survey has the potential for bias (by the fact alone that the survey is online) - but with a large enough sample one can avoid most of the problems regarding bias."

Boing Boing also isn't the only large-volume return place Salathé has published the survey link, so he's confident his results won't be all-BB, all the time. He does say that if you've got suggestions on more places to publish the survey link that are likely to be BB's polar opposite, you should contact him.

Can't see the video? Click here

Hands-on: T-Mobile Sidekick LX (2009)

Hands-on: T-Mobile Sidekick LX (2009)

Now that I’ve had a few hours to get acquainted with the new Sidekick LX, I figured some preliminary comments were in order. My overall impression of the Sidekick LX is still positive, but I’ve found a few things to nitpick about. So, without further ado, here we gooooo!

Screen: It’s absolutely brilliant and hands down the best screen available on a mobile handset today. The closest thing to it right now is the BlackBerry 8900 and to some extent the BlackBerry Bold.

Keyboard: The Sidekick has always had the best QWERTY keyboard on the market and the 3G LX doesn’t falter one bit. Keys are bit harder than previous models, but I’m knocking out e-mails, IMs and text messages faster than I ever could on my BlackBerry. OMG, I’ve missed that dedicated row of numbers across the top.

Trackball: It’s not as recessed and the well that it resides in is like a Cadillac. It feels good, but that virgin white trackball won’t stay clean for long.

Camera: Finally! The 3.2-megapixel AF camera takes sharp pictures, but you have to be under optimal lighting for it to really shine. Video is hardly anything to rave about, but what mobile phone can take decent video anyway? Uploading video to YouTube requires you to e-mail the file to your YT account and as long as you’re in a strong 3G area then it shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes. The same goes for uploading to MySpace, but that’s done within the MySpace app itself.

Video: I’m still messing around with video codecs and such so this part will have to wait until the review, but I haven’t been able to play avi or mp4 files.

IM: Once again the Sidekick reigns supreme when it comes to mobile IM clients. No other mobile device or platform rivals the Sidekick in this arena.

Social Networks: MySpace’s app on the Sidekick is still the best, but does anyone still use it? I haven’t spent enough time with Facebook to give an honest opinion, but it seems to work just as well as the MySpace app.

Twitter is a little weird, though. For example, it only shows 100 of my 640+ followers and the way in which it displays those 100 followers has changed twice since this morning. It was originally laid out into a grid of 18 icons per page and now it’s reverted to a list. Twits aren’t instantaneous like I thought, but you can set the refresh rate from 5, 15, 30 or 60 minutes.

GPS: I was wondering where MS would rear its ugly head on the Sidekick after buying out Danger last year and it’s with GPS. The integrated Live Search app offers a plethora of viewing options, like, Road, Aerial, or Road+Aerial modes with the option of traffic. It has the ability to pinpoint your location so that you can send exact coordinates, but it’s a little iffy when indoors and you have to constantly refresh it. I’d imagine the “Track-Me” function is Danger’s answer to this conundrum, which allows you to turn on and off active locating. It works great when you’re outside, though. The default search perimeters include Location, Business, Directions, Movies, and Gas Prices.

E-mail: MS Exchange support is coming until after the retail launch, but the 6MB storage max is going to piss some people off. Now I remember why I ditched the Sidekick for a BlackBerry years ago.

Apps: The Download Catalog is still joke after all these years and you’re screwed when it comes to worthwhile third party apps. Danger, MS and T-Mobile really need to open this platform up or they’ll be left in the dust.

Browser: Nothing new on this front. It’s better than most, but it could be a lot better.

Network: Lucky for me, I’m in NYC so T-Mobile’s 3G network is fairly decent. The Sidekick is much faster than my 8900 and that’s all that matters to me.

Odds and Ends: The new LX is a vast improvement over previous models, but this model should have been released as the original LX or even as the Sidekick 3 with a couple features stripped out. The parties responsible for this product need to pull their collective heads out of their ass because the Sidekick is a wonderful platform that’s slowly being left in the dust. This was an innovative device when it first launched, but hit a major wall with the Sidekick 3. But on the bright side, the Danger team is capable of pushing out OTAs on a regular basis that are worth a damn. *keeping my fingers crossed*

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CompX Reports First Quarter 2009 Results

Desert town to get “green” electricity through superconducting wires

Japan’s version of the MIT, the University of Tokyo, plans to test transmitting electricity over superconducting cables using a solar power system in a desert in Chile. The project team aims at researching which combination of solar cell infrastructure and superconducting wires (instead of copper wires) is best suited for extreme environments.

The experiment will take place in the Atacama Desert and it’s planned to generate 20,000kW of electricity. A village with 6,700 households, which is 1km away, is supposed to benefit from the project. The researchers aim at developing wires that don’t lose electricity even in transmissions of this size. 24-hour supply of electricity is guaranteed to the villagers by installing storage batteries.

On-site experiments are scheduled to start in three years.

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Swine Flu Ancestors Born on U.S. Factory Farms

/C O R R E C T I O N -- JARI Research Corporation/

Tellabs' Stockholders Re-elect Class II Directors

BB Video: "Manifestations," An Animated Love Story, by Giles Timms

(Download the MP4 here, or watch on YouTube.) Today's edition of Boing Boing Video is an animated short by Giles Timms -- "Manifestations" stars a cartoon critter named Mr. Chip who seeks anime love in a psychedelic, ever-morphing virtual world. The music is by Welsh composer Ceri Frost. Mr. Chip also stars in a mini Flash game which you can play here.

RSS feed for new episodes here, YouTube channel here, subscribe on iTunes here. Get Twitter updates every time there's a new ep by following @boingboingvideo, and here are blog post archives for Boing Boing Video. (Special thanks to Boing Boing's video hosting partner Episodic).

BBV: Where are you based, and what do you do?

Giles: At the moment I live in Santa Monica, LA and attend the Animation Workshop at UCLA's Department of Theater, Film and Television. So I'm a student in the MFA program, but I also work freelance, such as the recent Deathcab for Cutie "Grapevine Fires" video with Walter Robot Studios.

BBV: What is the story behind this lovely animation?

Giles: That it's important for us to find love in this world, whoever and wherever we may be. And that love can exist between the most unlikely of characters, such as the cartoon creature Mr. Chip and the Tadahiro Uesugi inspired girly girl. Love knows no boundaries.

BBV: I love the cute little boxy central character. Who is he, and what's his story?

Giles: The little green guy is Mr. Chip. He originally appeared as the central character in a mini puzzle flash game that I made. Mr. Chip is quite small and unassuming, but he has the heart of a lion and isn't afraid to go after what he seeks. And he can be very resourceful in a MacGyver sort of way. It was these qualities that led to his development as the main character in Manifestations.

(Interview continues after the jump)

BBV: What are some of the sources of visual or cultural inspiration that drive your work?

Giles: Visually I'm inspired by work that is textural, stylized and painterly. So for animators I like Yuriy Norshteyn, Igor Kovalyov and Koji Yamamura. I also reference a lot of comic book artists and illustrators, such as Rhode Montijo, Mike Mignola and Ashley Wood for similar stylistic inspiration.

Culturally, history and its motifs are important so that my work can seem grounded in something real even if quite surreal. I'm particularly inspired by history that shows us the indomitable human spirit rising above tragedy.

Recently I've met lots of people both in LA and at UCLA who have helped me find my voice as an artist and filmmaker but the four biggest influences have been Ceri Frost, Walter Robot, Celia Mercer and Howard Suber. Ceri is a Welsh composer who has been very generous with his music and support, both of which have helped me grow as an artist. I also had the good fortune to take a class from Bill, of Walter Robot Studios, at UCLA and work first hand with him and Chris on their 'Grapevine Fires' music video. Celia Mercer is the Area Head of the MFA program at UCLA and has been very supportive of my trials in animation and filmmaking. Also, Howard Suber, Professor Emeritus at UCLA, is an amazing guy whose lectures, anecdotes and insights inspire me as an artist (I like to think of him as the Yoda of UCLA).

And lastly, my girlfriend =)

BBV: What are you working on now?

Giles: Another animated short with music by Ceri Frost, for a song called 'Dead All Along' with dancing bones and skeletons. And trying to graduate in June!


Source: Boing Boing | 1 May 2009 | 8:22 pm

We just got the rugged, military spec Samsung SGH-A657 - what should we do to it?

Built to meet military specifications for dust, shock, vibration, and extreme temperatures, the Samsung SGH-A657 is one beast of a phone. Sure, it’s probably not going to win any beauty contests - but if a gun fight were to break out during the beauty contest, the A657 would probably be the last one standing and win by default. What it lacks in beauty it makes up for in the fact that it could probably beat you up.

When Samsung offered us a review unit, we only had one question for them: “Can we beat it up?” “Of course,” they said. So, we’ve come to you, dear readers, for ideas. See, we’re so used to treating these review units with respect that the meanest thing we can think of is to call it names when it’s out of the room. We want to find out just how rugged this thing is, and we want to capture it all on video.

Read the rest of this entry >>

How To: build the ultimate, cheap home pizza oven

For years, I've baked pizza on an unglazed, 15" terra cotta stone that cost around $30. It radiates heat more evenly, which seemed to do the trick (What do I know? I grew up on Boboli).

Then my pal Jon, a pro pizzaiolo, starting coming around. The pies he crafted with our stone are delicious: light homemade dough, fresh local ingredients (including sunny-side egg). When he reported not being especially pleased with the results, I figured he was being modest. Nope. I began to realize he's right. Every slice from an artisan-style pizza joint just tastes better. Why?

Cooking at 700F+ vs. the puny 500F pumped out by my standard oven/range is part of the secret. Turns out baking with a lone stone is too. The solution: $13.50 worth of ceramic firebricks plucked from a landscape supply yard. Details after the jump -- plus, the taste test that convinced me you don't have to shell out big bucks or construct a huge outdoor oven to boost the quality of a homemade pie.

To start, do you need to buy the priciest pizza stone available? "Note that more money does not necessarily buy a better stone," according to Cook's Illustrated. OK, that's your cue to be cheap. Drop $30 on a basic pizza stone and you're literally half way there. You just need the firebricks...

Where to buy:

I called a fireplace supplier near my home. 9 times out of 10, these shops don't sell firebricks (mine didn't), BUT, they are excellent resources for recommending who does. Five minutes later I was on my way to Broadmoor Landscape Supply. Tip: if you want to sound like a pro, refer to them as "refractory" bricks.

What to buy

Measure your oven and get the measurements of the bricks on the phone to make sure you get the right size and #. The types: straight, split, arch and tile. I purchased 8 "splits" which are 4.5" x 9" x 1.25", figuring the smaller the better for my oven (well, yes and no -- see below*). Each stone cost $1.50 (a 2.5"-thick straight is $1.95).

Firebricks also come in various colors/compositions. I chose gold merely because that's what was cheap and readily-available. Feel free to experiment with other ceramics. Just know that the ones that contain a higher percentage of alumina can withstand higher temps. Tips: you want unglazed bricks (glazed ones may contain lead); don't use standard construction bricks (they can't withstand high temp and won't conduct heat).

How to set up

Give your pizza a house: a roof over its head and walls. I placed 6 stones on the rack above and 2 on either side of the stone. My splits were too thin to balance on my rack, so I had to use strips of foil to hold them up (*should have listened to the LA Times and bought 6 splits and 2 straights).

Be patient, get a temp read

You're going to pre-heat to 500F. But how do you know when the stone is ready? You could give it maybe 30-60 minutes and hope for the best. Or, splurge a little. A $45 infrared digital thermometer is not only a fun toy, it's the perfect way to assess surface temp from a safe distance.

Open the oven and quickly shine the beam onto the stone every 15 minutes. Any more often than that will a) let more heat escape, and b) lower your spirits. Compared to when I pre-heated the pizza stone all by its lonesome, getting the stone up to 470F when surrounded by the brick house took 30 minutes longer. Makes sense, you've just added twice as much ceramic or terra cotta to the mix.

What to expect

We baked two pizzas for ~11 minutes each using premade dough, bottled sauce, prepackaged four-Italian blend cheese, freshly-sliced onion, and then topped with basil chiffonade. Not super DIY locavore-style, I know, but it's what we had. We didn't take the time to measure everything out with a scale, but eyeballing got us close enough in my book and this isn't molecular gastronomy. But I digress...

Each pizza was placed on the stone when the temp read between 465-470F (reason I'm hedging is that every time we took a final reading, grabbed the pizza stone, transferred the raw pie, and put it back in the oven, we lost some precious heat -- and stopping to take another reading would have made it worse).

Pizza #1: Doughy crust that had brown edges, but was slightly white on the entire bottom. Brown and bubbly cheese. The onions tasted lightly steamed. Sauce tasted reheated. Decent flavor and mouthfeel. Overall: fair - good.

Pizza #2: Crispier crust with browner edges, but neither dry nor burned. More evenly-browned cheese. Onions and sauce tasted practically cooked. Much fuller, richer flavor. Hotter first bite. Overall: good - wouldn't be bummed out to order in a reasonably-priced cafe.

Verdict: The additional stones clearly refract heat from all directions, not just the bottom, giving you a more concentrated bake.

Of course, if you have more space and want to go for something more complicated, a variety of ovens abound:
- Earth
- beehive
- igloo
- Peruvian
- barrel dome
- indoor brick
- trailer
- solar
- what I'd call "The Chapel"

All potentially cool as heck. Be prepared: the effort and skill it takes to construct a proper woodfired pizza/bread oven is astounding (3 dudes working for 3 days!). And don't bother with user-friendly, mini, tabletop remedies like the PizzaDome. Just plain laughable considering it's $130.

You can also try broiling your pizza, which includes setting your oven to "clean" so it gets up to 800F. Go for it. Just don't get too close. You might lose an eyebrow.

UTStarcom to Host Conference Call to Discuss First Quarter 2009 Financial Results on May 7, 2009

S1 Corporation to Present at the D.A. Davidson & Co. 11th Annual Financial Services Conference

Batman: Arkham Asylum delayed until the end of summer ‘09

I’m a sad clown now.

Eidos Interactive and Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment can today confirm that Batman: Arkham Asylum will be released at the end of summer 2009. This additional time will allow us to ensure Batman: Arkham Asylum is of the highest quality for gamers.

PC port of Resident Evil 5 works with Nvidia GeForce 3D

Oh, man, I cannot wait to punch a boulder in 3D. (Actually, I can wait, but that’s immaterial for the purpose of this post.) In addition to the earlier Street Fighter IV announcement, Capcom also let it be known that Resident Evil 5 will be released sometime this year. In and of itself, sorta blah. But!

Yes, there’s a “but.” The game will support Nvidia’s GeForce 3D technology, which, as you might guess, renders games in a sorta 3D deal.

GeForce 3D requires a GeForce 8, 9 or 200 Series GPU; Windows Vista; and a LCD monitor with 120MHz (or any CRT monitor). Of course, you’d need to wear those glasses, too. And, as Stephen Merchant related in the “Guide to the English” podcast, life is so much harder when you already wear glasses.

Not a fan, sorry.

How thermal-imaging cameras can spot flu fevers (AP)

AP - To screen passengers for swine flu and other contagious diseases, some airports use thermal imaging cameras to see whether travelers have fevers, without having to stick thermometers in their mouths. So how do the cameras work?

ITT Educational Services, Inc. to Make Investor Presentation

Who’s on Crack in Tech: 05.01.09

Section: Communications, Computers, Gadgets / Other, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack

Normally this space is where I express my nutty views on the tech community at large.  Not today.  Today, we’ll just point out the insanity going on right here at Gadgetell, which apparently moonlights as an asylum judging from these writers.

• Iyaz practices unsafe practices
• Sony dodges a bullet
• Jodie risks much for G’Tell
• Gadgetell lowers the bar?

Iyaz tries risky business

“Condoms?  Condoms are for sailors.”  That is what comes to mind when I heard about our editor, Iyaz, conducting a bizarre experiment involving a Windows machine and no anti-virus.  Why not swim with piranha?  Or stuff your pants with jerky and run though the savanna signing, “the circle of life” song?  Or perhaps staple $20 bills to your shirt and run through the rough and tumble parts of NYC?

Nothing good will come from this.  Can’t we get PETA to get involved to stop this kind of chipset abuse?  Think of the microprocessors that are watching!

A wasted opportunity on Twitter

I am not done with Iyaz yet.  Yesterday, he had the unique opportunity to interview Sony about their new super-bright giant TV via twitter.  This is the first interview I’d seen conducted via this medium but that’s not my beef.  It wasn’t the questions asked, actually some knowledgeable ones about the TV;s features and tech (I may have learned something, shhhh).  What gets my goat is the question not asked.

The Walkman brand is dead.  It needs to be wrapped in a Sony flag and sent to Davy Jones locker.  We let this Sony Euro guy who presumably has nothing to do with phones or personal audio devices who could have been an advocate in the company for us go with not so much as a, “Hey, you know the Walkman names make everything think of the 80s right?”  But no, Iyaz has to keep his nose clean of this fight.  Can’t ruffle the man’s feathers.  Pish posh, Iyaz.

Putting Jodie in harm’s way

We send journalists to war.  We embed them with troops in the desert.  We let Geraldo make maps in sand telling everyone where they are.  When is a line crossed when content becomes more powerful than a person’s safety?  That is the question posed to Gadgetell’s board of directors.  How far are you going to push Jodie?

From the footage shown in the first “You Tell Gadgetell”, Jodie is caught up in the underbelly of society: a LAN party.  I, and most of my colleagues, believed these “parties” were a thing of the past but have clearly reared their ugly heads. 

No longer the geeky fun spot of the 80s and 90s, these party goers, clearly from the wrong side of broadband access, give Jodie answers that boggle the mind.  One guy is so far gone, he claims a “computer” is his favorite gadget for having people talk to him from around the world.  Another tweaker mentions some mythical Zune product.

The episode closes with Jodie standing in the early morning sun, presumably just after the party starts to hit its stride.  What you don’t see is the SEAL team that extracted her from the party.  Like the professional she is, Jodie doesn’t show her fear of getting up close to these party goers caught up in their revelry; her voice doesn’t falter as she asks her mandated questions but you can sense something isn’t right.  The take-away from this is: keep Jodie away from LAN parties.  Send Jodie easy questions to ask the common man/woman, not ones that evoke answers like “Zune,” oh the shame.

“Best. Title. Ever.” - Adam Berger, Executive Editor, Dabbledoo media (of which Gadgetell is a wholly owned subsidiary)

I had so much respect for Gadgetell management.  For those that don’t know, this is one tight ship.  Gadgetell is like a fine oiled machine that has a very flat command structure and tight reigns on editing.  As an Associate Editor, the closest I come to actually publishing anything, is usually putting something up marked “ready” so an expert/authority can ensure our quality content.

You can imagine my displeasure when yesterday Gadgetell posted this piece titled: Paving the way for Verizon’s Prenis.  Gadgetell is above this kind of juvenile, dick and fart humor.  We don’t need to swing that low into the gutter to get a laugh, do we?  Are times so grim that to perk us up a phallic imaginary name is plastered all over this site I love?

For shame, Gadgetell.  For shame.  At the very least, kudos the new Crest tooth paste mint logo for Who’s on Crack.  Good bye classy-old pee-in-a-cup!  Huzzah!

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

Botswana Birds At Risks Due To Pesticides

Tweexchange Is The Ultimate Twitter Name Marketplace

Twitter handles are quickly becoming as desirable as domains and Tweexchange hopes to capitalize on this by providing a marketplace for Twitter members to exchange, buy or find Twitter usernames from other existing members. Tweexchange also lets you easily find what Twitter handles have been taken and recommends alternate usernames for your desired Twitter handle.

It’s actually a useful service when trying to find what Twitter names are available. The site also lists Twitter handles for sale, which could be a lucrative business if the handles listed for sale are actually desirable. Currently, the only handle listed that could be of value is “HowardJohnsons,” which is on sale for $750.00. If you do see a Twitter name available that you’d like to buy or negotiate, Tweexchange lets you send the owner a Tweet or email inquiry.

Selling “free” Twitter names is apparently ‘against Twitter rules’, but it’s unclear as to how and if Twitter is enforcing this rule.

“Twitter Squatting” is become a popular phenomenon. People are taking up brand names, company names and famous individuals’ names as user names in the hopes of cashing in big one day, like many who bought popular domain names have in the past. Most recently, CNN and James Cox, the original owner of CNNbrk (CNN’s breaking news Twitter account) created a deal for Cox to act as a consultant as the network “acquired” the Twitter name. The news that CNN didn’t own the actual CNN Twitter handle emerged during CNN’s competition with Ashton Kutcher to see who reached 1 million followers first. CNN didn’t disclose how much the network is paying Cox for the consulting gig.

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

We hear Thomas is going to work for NBC on some kind of site which may or may not be centered around the Valley as well. [Update below, Denton has confirmed Owen's NBC gig.]

We’ve just contacted Thomas who declined to comment at this time.

Update: Gabriel Synder, the editor of Gawker, has confirmed the news and had this to say:

While I’m sorry to see Owen leave, I’m still committed to keeping Valleywag going as Gawker’s tech column.

Snyder continued that while he couldn’t say who will be brought in to replace Thomas, there will be a new editor of Valleywag and the site will definitely not be shuttered.

“Owen’s been great through this entire transition and has set the template for how coverage of the tech beat can fit into Gawker,” Snyder went on to say.

Update 2: Here’s Gawker founder Nick Denton on the move:

Owen has a reputation as a fearsome gossip writer. What’s less known is his penchant for management. It sounds like this NBC job will give him the responsibility he’s been craving — and take him out of the Valleywag firing line! We’re replacing him internally. More on that later.

NBC may be building out a bunch of local sites, Denton says, which Thomas would be a part of.

Denton went on to say that Gawker’s Q1 revenue numbers have been strong, up 27% from the year ago period. Of Valleywag specifically, he would only say that it’s sold under Gawker.com, so it’s not separated out for things like ad sales anymore, apparently. Gawker is down from 15 to 9 sites now after it shed a bunch last year, but he says the majority of the revenue came from those 9 sites anyway. He adds that they’ve been growing, even during the downturn.

Update 4: Beet.TV’s Andy Plesser has the story on Thomas’ new gig. Apparently, he’ll be the managing editor of NBC Bay Area, a news site focused just on the Bay Area that is in beta right now. As Plesser notes, this will make Thomas an employee of GE (which owns NBC).

[Owen Thomas photograph by Benjamin Tice Smith]

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Source: TechCrunch | 1 May 2009 | 7:19 pm

Springs for hot, wet dipping

I went to Japan last November and planned to hit up the country's collection of ancient hot spring baths. I brought along this "Hidden Hot Springs" guide, but never used it. Total bummer.

That's why I'm vowing to hit up a stateside spring sooner than later*. Whether you need a relaxing soak, or you're looking for a potential "healing", here's how your hot water spots [via Cool Tools]:

- Soak.net
- The NGDC's Geothermal Map and Text Database

No gadgets allowed! Turn off your cell phone. Don't pull out a PMP. And definitely don't take pics of naked people (unless you ask for permission, which actually now that I think of it, is even weirder than just taking a pic in the first place).

[image by Spencer Tunick]

*Be sure to go soon. Hot springs have a tendency to dry up.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 1 May 2009 | 7:13 pm

We just got the rugged, military spec Samsung SGH-A657 - what should we do to it?

Built to meet military specifications for dust, shock, vibration, and extreme temperatures, the Samsung SGH-A657 is one beast of a phone. Sure, it’s probably not going to win any beauty contests - but if a gun fight were to break out during the beauty contest, the A657 would probably be the last one standing and win by default. What it lacks in beauty it makes up for in the fact that it could probably beat you up.

When Samsung offered us a review unit, we only had one question for them: “Can we beat it up?” “Of course,” they said. So, we’ve come to you, dear readers, for ideas. See, we’re so used to treating these review units with respect that the meanest thing we can think of is to call it names when it’s out of the room. We want to find out just how rugged this thing is, and we want to capture it all on video.

We’ll freeze it, we’ll throw it into a wall or two - but what else should we do? Drop a comment below with your ideas. If we use yours, we’ll drop your username in the video out of gratitude.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 1 May 2009 | 7:03 pm

SLIDE SHOW: The Week's Top Stories

There was more to the news this week than swine flu. See what you may have missed.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 May 2009 | 7:00 pm

5 tools firefighters use in extremely hot conditions

What do firefighters do to stave off heat? To find out, I visited a fire station in San Francisco to check out what kind of tech and gadgetry they use while on duty.

1. A Scott bottle: The most important piece of equipment, any firefighter will tell you, is the self-contained breathing apparatus, aka the Scott bottle. It gives them about 40 extra minutes of air in flaming, oxygen-deprived environments. These days, Scott bottles come with cool features like buddy indicator lights. drag rescue loops, power management systems, and back frames optimized for hose positioning.

2. A thermal imaging camera: Most engines use TICs to see fire remnants via IR even in dark, smoky, or otherwise opaque conditions. Most of the time the officer carries them in the truck, though head-mounted versions are available too. Before TICs, firefighters had to tear down entire building walls to make sure there weren't remnants of fire left in crevices.

3. A fire-retardant suit. The firefighters' suit isn't just sexy, it's made with flame-resistant cotton and polybenzimidazole fiber. You can see that the jacket, which was once as black as the pants, has faded to brown because of exposure to flames.

4. Water. Yes, firefighters do occasionally hose each other down when it gets too hot.

5. Common sense. The truck is equipped with water and Gatorade for hydration, and fans at the front of the truck keep the drivers cool and the air fresh--"in case someone farts." And of course, when entering a burning building, they stay low to keep out of the rising heat and pay attention to the color of the smoke--white is a go, black is probably a flashover.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 1 May 2009 | 6:38 pm

Dell Should Buy Acer, Bernstein Says [Voices]

There has been speculation for months now that Dell (DELL) at some point will make a big acquisition. Most of the thinking has been about diversification moves. But Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi proposes an idea that would boost Dell’s stake in the PC business: consider buying Acer.

In a research note today, Sacconaghi asserts that the PC sector is ripe for consolidation. He notes that the top 5 PC vendors accounted for 56 percent of industry units in 2008, and that the top 10 accounted for nearly 70 percent. Compare that, he suggests, with the x86 server market, where the top 5 players control more than 80 percent of the market, or the Unix server market, where the top 3 have more than 90 percent. It’s even lower than the high-def TV market, where the top 5 have 60 percent share, and the top 10 about 80 percent.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 1 May 2009 | 6:34 pm

Google Rents Goats To Replace Lawnmowers (I’m Not Kidding)

In what absolutely reads like an April Fools joke, Google has a post on its blog today explaining how it has rented a herd of goats to replace the lawnmowers that normally cut the grass in the fields around its headquarters. This is Google’s “low-carbon” approach to maintaining its property.

Google is renting the goats from a company called California Grazing. Apparently, every so often a herder will bring about 200 of them to the campus and they’ll roam around for a week eating the grass. Not only that, these goats will fertilize the land at the same time — yes, that way.

Google claims the goats will cost about the same as lawn mowers would. And a border collie named Jen will be brought onto Google’s payroll to help with the herding as well, apparently. No word on how the maintenance workers who previously had this job feel about losing work to goats.

We’ve contacted PETA about the news (the first person I talked to initially chuckled), and they’re going to get back to us with an official comment today.

Update: PETA has gotten back to us with its official stance on the Google Goats. Read all about it here.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 1 May 2009 | 6:15 pm

Sun uses game to tout JavaFX (InfoWorld)

InfoWorld - Sun Microsystems is making a game out of promoting its JavaFX rich media application technology.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 May 2009 | 6:10 pm

U.S. Continues to Lead on Innovation, Says LCD Pioneer

It is difficult to picture consumer electronics products without Liquid Crystal Displays or that one man was responsible nearly 46 years ago for the paper that would set the ball rolling for the use of LCDs.

George Heilmeier, a researcher at RCA Laboratories, along with Richard Williams published a report in 1963 suggesting the use of liquid crystal materials for display. That paper laid the groundwork towards the the use of LCDs in everything from watches to cameras and TVs.

“When we built several prototype displays we thought it would be great for shower doors,” laughs Heilmeier during an interview with Wired.com. “But it is amazing to see how far LCDs have come as a technology so many years after we first talked about them.”

On May 2, Heilmeier will be inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame, a non-profit organization that was founded in 1973 by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and the National Council of Intellectual Property Law Associations.

Every year the National Inventors Hall of Fame inducts a group of distinguished American inventors. So far 390 individuals have been honored including Thomas Edison and more recently Segway’s Dean Kamen and Steve Wozniak (not Steve Jobs since Wozniak holds the patent.) “We have two primary rules: The inventor has to have a US patent and their invention has to change the world,” says Jeffrey Dollinger, president of Invent Now, a division of the organization. This year the group received about 100 nominations and it will honor 15  individuals including former Intel CEO Andy Grove. (See complete list here.)

Heilmeier has been at the intersection of some of the biggest technological breakthroughs in the U.S.  Following his work on LCDs, he became the director of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), where he managed projects including stealth aircrafts and artificial intelligence.

“The U.S.  is still the world’s leader in fundamental research,” he says. “Though some people may not agree with me, I make the argument that US is spending a great deal on basic research. What we need is more big ideas, not just a demand for more money on research.”

Heilmeier’s comments are in sharp contrast to the perception among many U.S. technology leaders that lack of funding has led to a decline in fundamental research in the country.

Last year, iconic research institution Bell Labs decided to discontinue basic science research. Increasingly companies under shareholder pressure to show greater profit are cutting back on research budgets, Judy Estrin, former CTO of Cisco told Wired.com. America is facing an innovation crisis as the federal government has cut back on spending, other experts have said.

Heilmeier isn’t buying that. “I think academia has essentially overstated the case that we are beginning to lag,” he says. The bottom line for those people is they always want more money.”

During his reign as director of DARPA, Heilmeier says he often met with researchers seeking additional funding and was surprised to find that often they were reluctant to outline their ideas before the grants were awarded.

“People felt entitled for research dollars from DARPA and NSF but they told me they didn’t have the time to write proposals and reports,” he says. “I think academia spends too much time lobbying.”

What America lacks, he says, is the increasingly the ability to take basic research and find a way to commercialize it successfully. Take the LCD technology that RCA Labs helped pioneer. Seven years after his first big paper on the subject, Heilmeier left RCA to never return. Meanwhile Japanese companies built on Heilmeier’s work and went on to become among the biggest LCD manufacturers.

LCDs are now a part of his past, says Heilmeier. Now he spends time reading about breakthroughs in areas such as cognitive processing and cybersecurity. “One of the most exciting things in the future will be in cognitive processing where computers can learn, reason and teach,” he says. “And we are very much in the preliminary phases of that research now. That’s where the most exciting things will emerge in the next five to seven years.”

Photo: George Heilmeier at RCA Labs

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 May 2009 | 6:08 pm

Electric Car Makes Le Mans Racing Greener

A Swiss outfit hopes to shake up endurance racing with a 296-horsepower EV with stump-pulling torque.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 May 2009 | 6:00 pm

Search From Your Twitter Page. So What?

Twitter finally adds search to user homepages, but so what? Twitter is about the message, not the medium, so attempts to gin up interest in the site — and measure by numbers of users and page views — completely misses the point.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 May 2009 | 6:00 pm

Free Comic Book Day Recruits Wolverine, Green Lantern

Indie comic shops across America will hand out freebies Saturday, and Hugh Jackman gets behind the annual event.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 1 May 2009 | 5:58 pm

Debate Continues Over US Power Grid Policies

A key lawmaker stated on Thursday that the U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 May 2009 | 5:55 pm

Palm Eos might be heading for Sprint as well

If you’re taking the original Palm Eos story with a grain of salt, you’re going to want to find another, slightly smaller grain for this one.

Now, we’d previously heard that the Eos was going to AT&T - and with the Pre being exclusive to Sprint and AT&T’s new-found love for exclusivity, most of us just assumed AT&T had this one locked down. Following the barrage of Eos details that hit the Internet yesterday, Phonenews poked around with their sources at Sprint and, sure enough, they found at least one person claiming a CDMA version of the Eos was Sprint-bound. Specs are supposedly “nearly identical”, though the Sprint variant will rock a EVDO Rev. A radio.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 1 May 2009 | 5:46 pm

Minnesota forces ISPs to block gambling websites

Section: Web, Web Browsers, Websites

In an unexpected move, Minnesota government officials have provided ISPs with a seven page list of gambling websites that they must use to block customer access.  The list was made public this week and a sampling of sites listed include 21 Magic Casino, Casino Fantasy, Crazy Poker, Joker Club and Vegas Slot.  Numerous internet service providers received a copy of the list, including Verizon, Sprint, Comcast and AT&T.

The notices come from Minnesota’s Department of Public Safety and remind the ISPs that gambling is illegal in the state.  It also threatens legal action by stating that “upon notice by a law enforcement agency that you do not allow your systems to be used for the transmission of gambling information.”  The main concern is that this action violates the First Amendment and a similar action several years ago from Pennsylvania was overruled after being found in violation of the First Amendment.  Furthermore, this action would not prevent a person from accessing international gambling sites through non-US IP addresses.

Currently, the ISPs contacted have yet to give an official comment on the matter or their plans for complying with the request. 

Read: [Associated Press]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 1 May 2009 | 5:25 pm

U.S. Swine Flu Cases Pass 100, Vaccine Pending

Authorities pledge to produce enough H1N1 swine flu vaccine for everyone.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 May 2009 | 5:20 pm

The world's hottest spot?

136°F. That's the record for the highest recorded temperature on Earth,
a measurement taken in 1922 in El Azizia, Libya. Just a relative stone's throw from the ocean, too.

But what if they were wrong?

Fántoli (1954,1958) examined the record and researched the exposure, the instrument shelter, and the instruments themselves. A discussion in English of Fántoli's 1954 work appears in Gentilli, 1955. Fántoli generally concluded that the probable extreme maximum should have been only 132.8°F (56°C). Lamb (1958) noted that the extreme occurred following two days of hot, southerly winds and that latent heat may have been added to the air mass due to rain south of location.

If I were Death Valley, I'd take the debate to Twitter.

[image via GlobalWarmingIsBS]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 1 May 2009 | 5:15 pm

Rumor: Samsung Alias 2 and its whacky classroom theme launching on May 11th?

Good news and bad news, folks. Good news: If you’re anxiously awaiting the debut of the Samsung Alias 2, you may only have another couple of weeks to wait. Bad news: As far as anyone can tell, it’s still sporting that absolutely horrid elementary schoolroom theme.

Engadget got a tip that not only tells tale of a May 11th release date, but also confirms that the fancy-pants dynamically changing buttons are none other than e-ink. All that sounds reasonable, right? Get this: the tipster also claims it’s going to drop at a pricepoint of $79 bucks. Yikes. That’s the price the current Alias goes for in-store. E-ink and phone R&D doesnt come cheap, so that price sounds a little low. But if VZW can pull it off, who are we to tell them they’re crazy?

[Image via PhoneArena]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 1 May 2009 | 5:08 pm

NSF Releases New Extensive Climate Change Report

In a new report from the National Science Foundation, researchers outline signs of global warming discovered “from the icy expanses of the polar regions of Earth to its equatorial ecosystems.”The 114-page report titled “Solving the Puzzle: Researching the Impacts of Climate Change Around the World,” addresses key research findings from the Earth elements of sky, sea, ice, land, life and people.“Climate is a fundamental factor in ecosystem health,” researchers wrote.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 May 2009 | 4:25 pm

Android finally seeing some legal action?

Section: Communications, Smartphones, Mobile, Computers

It seems that every time some sort of tech company has a great idea, or a fairly successful product, someone comes out and says that they thought of it first.  It’s happened with some success for the one issuing the complaint in some instances, specifically in video games when Immersion sued the three major hardware manufacturers for their use of vibration in controllers.  Here we have another case of someone making a claim that actually might result in something.

The complaint was filed by Erich Specht, who owns the names Android Data Corporation and the Android’s Dungeon Incorporated.  He uses the names as an ISP and software developer.  He’s suing Google, Open Handset Alliance, and just about every other company remotely linked to this Open Handset Alliance for the use of the Android name.  To make the claim more viable, Sprecht has owned a trademark for the name Android since October of 2002.  Google applied for a trademark for the name Android in 2007 when the Open Handset Alliance emerged.

What happened to Google’s request?  It was denied, because it might cause confusion with Sprecht’s trademark.  Yeah, doesn’t look good for Google.  Sprecht is looking for the companies involved to stop using the Android name, and damages.  It wouldn’t be all that surprising if he at least gets those damages.  What should prove interesting is whether the Open Handset Alliance gets to continue the name or not.  With the OS being out there for less than a year is arguable, but the name is already fairly well known to the enthusiasts at least.  It might be difficult to change the name if forced to.  Or perhaps not, there are some people who know the G1 as “the Google phone,” and get confused when the name Android is mentioned.

Read [TG Daily]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 1 May 2009 | 4:25 pm

Facebook Boosts Security After Dual Phishing Attacks (NewsFactor)

NewsFactor - Facebook has brought in some soldiers to fight the war against malware and phishing scams on the social-networking site. After two different malware attacks this week, Facebook announced it would begin using San Francisco-based MarkMonitor's antifraud services as an additional layer of protection against attacks.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 May 2009 | 4:18 pm

Apple not paying iPhone developers, reports of lawsuits brewing

From TC:

Developers are claiming that there are massive delays in payments for as early as last fall and are not being paid the amount of money that the developers are in fact due from sales. One developer, who hasn't been paid since November 2008, forwarded us an email chain between Apple's App Store finance team and himself. An Apple employee, who was responding to the developers complaints, wrote that the developer's continued emails about the late payments was "bordering on harassment..."

iPhone App Developers Threaten To Sue Apple Over Late Payments [Techcrunch via Cult of Mac]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 1 May 2009 | 4:14 pm

Microsoft's Windows 7 test implies holiday launch (AP)

AP - Microsoft Corp. has released a near-final version of the Windows 7 operating system that adds a few new features, including a way to run Windows XP applications.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 May 2009 | 4:09 pm

Mercury Flyby Reveals Active Inner Planet

The solar system's smallest planet is far more active than previously thought.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 May 2009 | 4:00 pm

Fish May Feel, React To Pain Much Like Humans

Fish don't make noises or contort their faces to show that it hurts when hooks are pulled from their mouths, but a Purdue University researcher believes they feel that pain all the same.Joseph Garner, an assistant professor of animal sciences, helped develop a test that found goldfish do feel pain, and their reactions to it are much like that of humans.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 May 2009 | 3:59 pm

120 designs for latest Dell

Dell now offers fully 120 designs for its Laptop Art Studio series of 15" and 17" laptops. An awful lot of them are random grunged up twiddly montages. Surely they're using some sort of print-on-demand technology--meaning that it's time to simply let people upload their own...

Click the photo for a giant JPG!

Dell recommends Windows Vista® Home Premium.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 1 May 2009 | 3:46 pm

Why It Took More Than Four Months, and Millions of Dollars, to Get “Lost” on Hulu [MediaMemo]

What does it take to add a third player to a joint venture between two media conglomerates? More than four months of negotiations. Tens of millions of dollars help too.

That’s what finally allowed Disney (DIS) to join up with GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox in Hulu, the fast-growing Web video site.

The deal, which was finally announced yesterday, has its roots in a November 2007 meeting between Hulu CEO Jason Kilar and Disney’s executive team where Kilar demoed a private beta of the service on Disney CEO Bob Iger’s computer. But the two sides didn’t really start talking in earnest until mid-December of last year.

Since then, people who were involved in the negotiations tell me, the discussions were a long slog, complicated by the fact that there were essentially five parties in the talks. But at no point did the deal ever look to be in jeopardy, I’m told–even though everyone from Google (GOOG) to Comcast (CMCSA) was trying to convince Iger not to go forward.

In the end, Disney essentially agreed to the same terms that NBC and Fox first used when put the site together two years ago. The main components:

• A two-year guarantee of exclusive third-party access to ABC’s online TV inventory, as well as a smattering of Disney cable shows.
• Marketing money, to be spent buying market-rate air time promoting Hulu on Disney TV properties. NBC and Fox handed over $50 million each, doled out over two years, when they formed Hulu; I’m told Disney has committed to a similar amount.
• A cash investment in Hulu itself. I’m told that NBC and Fox kicked in a total of about $30 million to get Hulu off the ground, prior to getting Providence Equity Partners to pony up $100 million for a 10 percent stake. Given that NBC and Fox took on substantial risk when they contributed their stakes, it’s likely that Disney ended up paying a larger sum.

At least as important as Disney’s contribution, though, is NBC and Fox’s decision to re-up their exclusivity arrangements for another two years. Some executives at NBC and Fox I’ve talked to have downplayed this part of the deal, arguing that their companies would have kept working with Hulu even without renewing their exclusives, which were expiring.

But the reality is that if NBC and Fox had not renewed, it would have been a signal that the networks were no longer committed to their joint venture, a question that’s been whispered more and more often in recent months. There are also some practical effects when it comes to dealing with the cable guys (see below).

The deal still needs regulatory approval, and you may hear the likes of Google and Comcast murmuring loudly that a partnership between three of the four broadcast networks violates antitrust statues. But assuming it does go through, here are some of the ripple effects:

CBS: The broadcaster is on a lonely road, which is not where entertainment companies like to find themselves. It may well be that the Web strategy CBS has been pursuing–don’t put too much of your stuff online, but syndicate the stuff you do put out there as widely as possible–is the right way to go. But if CBS CEO Les Moonves ever changes his mind, he will have a hard time climbing aboard the good ship Hulu.

For the record, Kilar is enthusiastic about bringing on CBS: “We’d love to see CBS jump into Hulu,” he says. We’d love to see Time Warner (TWX) jump in to Hulu, too.”

But executives at his partner networks–the same guys who forced him to cut off Web upstart Boxee, remember–says that the door is shut for CBS, at least in terms of the equity deal ABC just got.

If CBS (CBS) does want to make a deal with a big Web distributor, it may well end up doing something with Google’s YouTube, which already distributes snippets of CBS shows on its site. You won’t hear CBS bragging about this out loud, but I’m told partnership has worked out very well for the network to date.

The cable guys: Note that there’s very little of Disney’s premium cable stuff on Hulu–just a smattering of SoapNet and a few shows from the Disney Channel, but nothing your kids care about. And there’s zilch from ESPN.

That’s because Iger doesn’t want to freak out cable operators that pay Disney billions a year for cable programming. So that stuff will stay offline. (Meanwhile, it may get increasingly hard to find some of the NBC/Fox cable programming on Hulu, for the same reason. Good luck watching the most recent episode of FX’s “Rescue Me,” for instance).

But the Disney move, along with NBC and Fox’s commitment to re-up their exclusivity arrangement, just complicated efforts by the likes of Comcast and Time Warner to push an “authentication” arrangement. That’s where cable subscribers–but only cable subscribers–get access to a wealth of TV on the Web.

Without the exclusivity clause, the cable guys could demand that the networks hand over their best stuff directly to them for their online efforts. Now, at least for the next two years, they’ll have work through Hulu, on Hulu’s terms.

It may be that the cable guys are so far away from making their authentication plans a reality–I’m told Comcast’s test will launch this summer with just a few thousand subscribers and will add something like 50,000 subscribers a month after that–that this might not mean much. It’s possible that by the time the cable guys are ready to really talk shop with their programmers, the two-year deals will be long expired.

Bonus: We get to see new Hulu ads, starring actors from ABC shows. I’m hoping for one featuring Jorge Garcia, who plays Hurley on “Lost.” For now, here’s the newest one in the current campaign, featuring Dennis Leary from “Rescue Me.”

Source: All Things Digital | 1 May 2009 | 3:45 pm

Chip Sales: Bottoms Up? [Digital Daily]

No big surprises here. The souring economy and related uncertainty in consumer and enterprise technology markets continue to drag the chip sector into the mud. While world-wide sales of semiconductors in March rose 3.3 percent from February, they were down nearly 30 percent from last year, the Semiconductor Industry Association said in a report today.

Another ugly SIA metric in a parade of them, though optimists will say that slight uptick in March is a sign that the industry has finally found a bottom from which to scramble upward. “The modest sequential rebound in worldwide sales in March suggests that demand has stabilized somewhat, albeit at substantially lower levels than last year,” SIA President George Scalise said in the report. “While all major product sectors showed month-on-month growth, there continues to be limited visibility in end markets. There are some bright spots such as ‘smart phones’ and ‘netbook’ PCs, but there are no clear signs of early firming of demand in other major end markets such as automotive, corporate information technology, and consumer electronics.”

So, perhaps we’re not on our way to the depths plumbed back in 2001-2002. And perhaps we are. The SIA doesn’t quite seem to know.

Source: All Things Digital | 1 May 2009 | 3:37 pm

Disney's Hulu Investment Could Be a Milestone for TV (NewsFactor)

NewsFactor - Disney's decision to take a 30 percent stake in online video aggregator Hulu could be a significant milestone in the evolution of television. That's because Disney is adding its premium content to an already robust lineup from other Hulu stakeholders, including NBC Universal, News Corp., Sony Pictures, MTV Networks, Paramount and more than 100 others.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 1 May 2009 | 3:35 pm

Baking cakes with a Blockbuster drop box

A Blockbuster drop box isn't just a relic of a bygone era. In Liberia, it's used to bake "fabulous" cakes:

The front, where the slit had been closed, faces the wall and the back door is to access the oven; inside are several fridge trays, on which they lay the pans. The door is then locked with a simple bolt and sealed all around with wet cloths.

[via AfriGadget]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 1 May 2009 | 3:30 pm

Ozone Recovery Could Thaw Antarctica

The ozone hole may explain why Antarctica's ice is more resilient than the Arctic's, for now.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 May 2009 | 3:26 pm

RIM rumor: VZW-bound BlackBerry Niagara, Apex to debut next week

Two bits of BlackBerry news/rumor for you to digest. One, it looks like RIM will officially unveil the niagara at its Wireless Enterprise Symposium next week in beautiful Orlando. The niagara, you’ll recall, is supposedly the greatest BlackBerry in the history of the world: a 3G world phone that’ll be available on Verizon Wireless. (Expect it to be available within the month, now that’s it May and all.)

Two, RIM may also debut a VZW flip phone called the Apex. When you think Apex, think Pearl Flip, the reasonably okay phone that’s on T-Mobile.

Again, from what I’ve read, the BlackBerry niagara is pretty much the best BlackBerry ever, and it’ll give VZW users another reason to skip the Storm. Solid network + solid, “real” BlackBerry should = win.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 1 May 2009 | 3:20 pm

NuBarro reinvents the wheelbarrow, again

The NuBarro's polypropylene roller wheel never needs pumping, never goes flat and can hold up to 750 lbs, allegedly. Just don't tell James Dyson, whose Ballbarrow debuted in 1974 and eventually evolved into a vaccuum.

[via Toolmonger]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 1 May 2009 | 3:13 pm

This is Your Windows on Drugs [Voices]

Microsoft (MSFT) on Thursday took another step towards the launch of its most important product in years, Windows 7, with the release of a near-final version of the operating system. There are a number of new features in the latest version of Windows 7, but the most eye-catching is–-drum roll, please–-wacky wallpaper!

That’s right, the “release candidate” version of Windows 7 that Microsoft made available Thursday has some of the most visually arresting background images ever to ship with a piece of software. They make all the pretty pictures of bamboo, flowers and fish that ship with Apple’s (AAPL) Macintosh computers look hopelessly stuffy by comparison. Windows 7 wallpaper images, including some fairly conventional ones, have been posted on the Web; here’s one collection on Flickr.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 1 May 2009 | 3:11 pm

NASA: Climate Adds Fuel To Asian Wildfire Emissions

Image 1: Haze from fires is thick over the Indonesian island of Borneo. Scores of wildfires (red dots) were detected by the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on the Terra satellite on August 19, 2002 during a moderate El Nino year. The region’s wildfires first grabbed public attention in 1997-98 when emissions from deforestation fires that blazed out of control reached 40 percent of the total global carbon emissions for the period. Credit: NASAImage 2: Out-of-control fires burning on the eastern shore of Sumatra (image center) shrouded parts of Malaysia in smoke in this August 2005 image. This image, captured by the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) on NASA’s Aura satellite, shows smoke density -- with the thickest areas shown in red. Winds in this region often blow from the west, spreading smoke from burning peat swamp forest in coastal Sumatra toward the east. Credit: NASAImage 3: This view shows how fires mostly occurred during drought years, with very few fires in 2000 when the dry season was short due to La Nina conditions while an extended dry season during the moderate 2006 El Nino led to widespread fires. The southern Borneo region is boxed and the dry season length (indicated in number of months in blue and white) and number of fire detections (in reds and yellows) for this study region are shown in separate insets. Credit: NASA
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 May 2009 | 2:51 pm

Can you run Windows without anti-virus or anti-spyware? Gadgetell experiments

Section: Computers, Security, Software / Applications, Features, Originals

Today, I will be starting an experiment that will last all of May, 2009.  We all know that Windows is the most popular OS out there.  Due to its popularity, it is a frequent target for hackers.  However, is anti-virus or anti-spyware necessary if you know what you’re doing? 

Here’s the experiment: two machines, both running Windows XP that will be using Windows Updater (so the OS will be patched).  Neither will have anti-virus or anti-spyware software running.  With one machine I will only go to designated “safe” download sites and well known websites.  With the other, I will act like an idiot. 

I will provide weekly updates on Fridays and eventually at the end of the month will find out how screwed up each machine is using scanning tools.  Are you ready for the experiment?  More details to come.

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 1 May 2009 | 2:42 pm

Mysterious Disappearance Of Everett Ruess Solved After 75 Years

University of Colorado, National Geographic report on forensic, DNA evidence regarding Southwest folk heroThe mysterious disappearance of Everett Ruess, a 20-year-old artist, writer and footloose explorer who wandered the Southwest in the early 1930s on a burro and who has become a folk hero to many, has been solved with the help of University of Colorado at Boulder researchers and the National Geographic Society.The short, compelling life of Ruess, who went missing in 1934 after leaving the town of Escalante, Utah, has been the subject of much speculation. His story has spawned two documentary films, as well as plays, books, magazine and newspaper articles and a T-shirt line, and his name now graces an annual art festival in Escalante.Ruess is well known for his artwork -- including watercolors and woodcuts of Southwest landscapes -- as well as extensive, romantic journaling of his travels. He was photographed by famous American documentary photojournalist Dorothea Lange, exchanged photos with Ansel Adams, and even merited a chapter in John Krakauer's book "Into the Wild," about another young wanderer, Chris McCandless.An investigative article in the April/May issue of National Geographic Adventure by David Roberts, who had been probing the Ruess disappearance for years, indicates a Navajo man, Aneth Nez, told his granddaughter, Daisy Johnson, in 1971 that he witnessed the murder of a young white man near Bluff, Utah, in the 1930s by Ute Indians. Nez told her he buried the body in a crevasse on nearby Comb Ridge.Roberts reported that in May 2008, Denny Belson, grandson of Nez and sister of Johnson, located the burial site and contacted the FBI in Monticello, Utah. FBI investigators then visited the site and took photographs. The enterprising Belson used a Google search using the keywords "missing persons," "1930s," and "Arizona/Utah," and came across stories about the disappearance and speculation about Ruess, said Roberts.Roberts contacted Ron Maldano, the supervisory archaeologist at the Cultural Resource Compliance Section of the Navajo Nation based in Chimney Rock, Ariz. Maldano conducted a detailed examination of the burial site and determined the remains were likely Caucasian. Roberts put him in touch with two nieces and two nephews of Ruess for mitochondrial DNA samples, which proved inconclusive.Roberts then contacted CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Dennis Van Gerven, who traveled to the site with doctoral student Paul Sandberg with the support of the National Geographic Society, excavated the remains, and returned with them to CU-Boulder with the permission of the Ruess family.An analysis of teeth and bones by Van Gerven and Sandberg were used to determine the sex, age and stature of the person. Wisdom tooth eruption, pelvic structure, bone growth markers and femur length indicated it was a male roughly 20 years old and about 5 feet 8 inches tall -- a virtual match for Ruess, said Van Gerven.The CU-Boulder researchers began a painstaking reconstruction of the fragile facial bones, stabilizing them on a ball of clay. Sandberg used Adobe Photoshop to superimpose photos he took of the remade face onto a frontal portrait of a smiling Ruess and a profile portrait of him, both taken in the 1930s by Lange."The next step was to match two points on the photos of the bones to their respective positions on the portraits," Sandberg said. "If the other anatomical points did not match, we could exclude Ruess. But all the points fell into place. The jaw fit, the curve of the nasal bones fit, the rim of the eye orbit fit and the bridge of the nose fit."The most compelling piece of evidence was the teeth, he said. "Once a single tooth was scaled into position, the size and shape of the other teeth, as well as the morphology of the face above the teeth, matched the portrait. The correspondence was striking," Sandberg said."We spent a lot of time making certain that the skeletal images superimposed on the Lange photos remained anatomically exact and were in no way altered by the technique," said Van Gerven."But we wound up with a constellation of evidence that was a remarkable match to Ruess," he said. "We had a male about 20 years old, 5 feet 8 inches tall with facial bones that precisely matched the photographs. We concluded it was very, very unlikely that this was not Everett Ruess. But we also knew the final arbiter in this case would be genetic testing."Van Gerven contacted CU-Boulder molecular, cellular and developmental biology Professor Kenneth Krauter, an expert in DNA analysis. Krauter brought in CU-Boulder research assistant Helen Marshall, who had extensive experience working with DNA. Marshall took two small femur fragments and prepared them by grinding and liquefying them, subsequently extracting, purifying and amplifying DNA samples.The team members used techniques developed as a byproduct of the Human Genome Project that permitted them to assess the passing of DNA markers from one generation to the next. "We used the most stringent protocols and standards available," said Marshall. "The results were totally blind in the sense that the computer doesn't have an opinion in terms of the DNA marker matches."High-tech "gene chips," or microarrays, made by Affymetrix Corp., a global company headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., provided Krauter and Marshall with 600,000 separate DNA markers from the femur DNA. These were compared with roughly the same number of DNA markers extracted from saliva samples taken from the two nieces and two nephews of Ruess. As an added precaution, the team also compared the markers with the DNA of 50 people around the world.CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Matthew McQueen of CU-Boulder's Institute for Behavioral Genetics, consulting with experts at Oxford University in England, statistically analyzed the data. The results showed the nieces and nephews of Ruess -- all siblings -- shared about 50 percent of the genetic markers with each other, and all four shared about 25 percent of the DNA markers from the femur bone samples. The results from the DNA comparisons from the 50 random people from around the world showed a less than 1 percent match, said Krauter."It was almost exactly what geneticists would expect when comparing DNA between nieces and nephews and an uncle or an aunt," said Krauter. "This is entirely consistent with the hypothesis that the bones are those of Everett Ruess, and make it virtually impossible that the bones are from an unrelated individual."The combination of the forensic analysis and the genetic analysis makes it an open and shut case," Krauter said. "I believe it would hold up in any court in the country."The wandering spirit of Ruess, whom author Wallace Stegner once compared to a young John Muir, appears to have finally come to rest. The family of Ruess plans to have the remains cremated and scattered over the Pacific Ocean. Case closed. ---Image Caption: CU-Boulder anthropology Professor Dennis Van Gerven, center, and Navajo Nation archaeologist Ron Maldano, right, at the Utah site where the remains of Everett Ruess were discovered in 2008. Credit: Photo courtesy Paul Sandberg, University of Colorado
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 May 2009 | 2:42 pm

Why Female Birds Seek Extra Mates

When female birds mate with males other than their social partners and have broods of mixed paternity, the offspring sired by these "extra-pair" fathers may often get a head start in life, according to a new report published online on April 30th in Current Biology, a Cell Press publication.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 May 2009 | 2:16 pm

Scientists Pinpoint The Mechanisms Of Self-Control In The Brain

When you're on a diet, deciding to skip your favorite calorie-laden foods and eat something healthier takes a whole lot of self-control--an ability that seems to come easier to some of us than others.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 1 May 2009 | 2:00 pm

BLOG: 1918 Flu Linked to H1N1 Swine Flu

The H1N1 swine flu may share an evolutionary tie with the deadly 1918 strain.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 May 2009 | 1:46 pm

Comet Dust Collected by NASA Predates Sun

An excursion to collect comet dust yields a surprise: the dust is older than the sun.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 May 2009 | 1:46 pm

QOTD: PC Old Letter [Digital Daily]

QOTD: PC Old Letter [Digital Daily]

“1984 LaserJet Classic
Price: $3,495
Weight: 70 lbs.
Maximum resolution: 300 dots per inch
Speed: 8 pages per minute

2009 LaserJet P1006
Price: $99
Weight: 10 lbs.
Maximum resolution: 1,200 dots per inch
Speed: 17 pages per minute”

– Evolving specs for Hewlett-Packard’s LaserJet desktop printer, which turned 25 this week.

Source: All Things Digital | 1 May 2009 | 1:41 pm

Eyes-On With Joe McNally’s ‘Hot Shoe Diaries’

Book reviews aren’t something we do a lot of here on Gadget Lab, but we have to call out the quite excellent “Hot Shoe Diaries” by Joe McNally, a bible for anyone thinking about using small strobes in their photography.

If books on photography technique usually leave you disappointed, you’re in for a treat. McNally’s book offers big fat doses of both anecdote (this guy has lived about five lives already) and solid instruction. There’s no wooly theoretical musing — you get hard advice and plenty of explanation mixed in with lots of example shots (and not just the good shots, either — you’ll find the ones that went wrong as useful teaching aids).

The book comes in four sections. The first covers the gear and what Joe does on his way to a shoot. Then we get a whole section on what is possible with just one light, then two, then lots of lights. You can’t get much more straightforward.

The only possible criticism is that McNally goes pretty heavy on the Nikon side of things, especially Nikon’s CLS (Creative Lighting System), its proprietary wireless control system. If you want to know the things about this kit that reven the engineers don’t know, you’ll find it here. That said, a strobe is a strobe, and all the principles apply, even if you can’t have the camera take care of everything for you.

But hey, don’t take my word for it. The publisher, Peachpit Press, has made a generous chunk of the book available in pdf form for your sampling pleasure. If you are even slightly interested in flash photography, buy this book. It really is that good. $40 or less.

Product page [Peachpit]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 May 2009 | 1:29 pm

Washington Post’s Slide Makes The New York Times Look Better [MediaMemo]

For the last year or so, the Washington Post Co. (WPO) has reported steadily declining results for its newspaper business–just like every other newspaper publisher in the country. But in previous quarters, it was at least able to argue that its slide wasn’t as bad as the one the New York Times (NYT) was going through.

It can’t say that anymore.

The Post says revenue at its flagship paper was down 22 percent in the last quarter and that print ad revenue was down 33 percent. That’s worse than the declines of 13 percent and 21 percent it posted in the previous quarter. And it’s lousier than the poor results the Times posted last month, when it reported that overall ad revenue had dropped 27 percent.

The same holds for the Post’s online business: Even in the good old days, it wasn’t growing fast enough to counter the decline at the print business. But now, online is declining, too.

Web revenue was down eight percent, because the classifieds business has been decimated. Online display ads, at least, were up a meager three percent. But last quarter, display ads were up 10 percent and the overall business was still growing five percent.

As usual, the real difference between the Post and the Times isn’t their performance but their corporate structure: The Times is pure-play media business that’s now choking on debt, while the Post is an education company (Kaplan) that happens to own a newspaper, which makes all of these grim results much easier to bear.

Here’s a survey of the rest of the Post’s business lines. Click on the image to enlarge.

Source: All Things Digital | 1 May 2009 | 1:13 pm

Tote-Table: Junk Notebook Stand Protects Your Junk

Can you actually use a laptop on your lap? If the amount of alternatives is anything to go by, the answer is a deafening “no”. The latest in the line of junk designed to protect the family jewels is the Tote Table, which has the added honor of actually appearing in the Sky Mall catalog.

The tote table is a fold-up table with four telescopic legs and an extra flip-out surface for a mouse (or cup of coffee for the adventurous). These skinny legs extend up to 30 inches and completely obviate the non-slip surface of the table itself by providing a wobbly, shaky platform for your notebook computer.

Worse, there is a document holder, essentially a strip of wire with a clip on the end on which to hang papers for copy typing. Yes, copy typing at the airport. C’mon. This would obviously be better used holding a bag of potato chips in a ready-to-eat position.

For fun, lets take a look at the actual Sky Mall rendition of the product shot. It’s a clear candidate for Photoshop Disasters:

Fantastic! And only $60.

Product page [Sky Mall via Book of Joe]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 May 2009 | 12:57 pm

Mummified Puppy Found in Egyptian Tomb

A tiny body found at the feet of an Egyptian mummy was probably his beloved pet.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 1 May 2009 | 12:46 pm

Will the Next iPhone Edit Video? Probably Not

The iPhone is set to be turned into a pocket-sized movie studio, according to “people familiar with the matter”. The next generation will be a “one-stop studio for recording, editing, viewing and sharing your own videos”, according to Business Week’s Peter Burrows.

Infuriating inflation of anonymous sources aside, does Business Week’s claim hold up? First, you’d need a camera that could shoot video. Apple has already said that the 3.0 software will not add video capability to the iPhone, but it didn’t say that a new iPhone wouldn’t shoot movies. Also, jailbroken iPhones already shoot video, albeit sucking the battery dry while doing it. So, Burrows’ claim is plausible.

Second, you’d need some horsepower to edit video. The iPhone does surprisingly well with stills, allowing many third-party applications to throw around some pretty sophisticated effects. But those are on single frames. Video requires a lot more power, unless the editing is straight cut-and-paste editing. Burrows says his source, who is “familiar with Apple’s plans for the next iPhone” claims that there will be an iMovie application, which sounds like more of a real app than a simple clip-chopping program. Plausibility? Three out of five.

Lastly, let’s take a look at the history, and the Way of the iPhone. Ever since the original iPod, Apple has realized that a pocket device is good for one thing and a computer good for another. This was one of the reasons for the iPod’s success — do all the work in the easy to use, big-screen iTunes and just do the listening on the go. Fast forward to today. ITunes still does everything. The iPhone can capture images, but they are stored in the Photos app which is for viewing only. We’d make the same call for video, if (or when) it comes. This “iMovie” is probably just “Movie” and acts as a browser and player for your clips.

We’d flag this as a non-story, although Business Week seems to be on a roll with the Apple Rumors lately.

Making Movies: The Next Big Thing in iPhones? [Business Week]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 May 2009 | 12:35 pm

But That “People Familiar With the Matter” Stuff Ain’t Gonna Fly Here [Digital Daily]

Business journalists who had their careers curtailed by the souring economy might consider stopping by the Securities and Exchange Commission on their next trip to the unemployment office. The agency may have a good use for their talents, according to Chairman Mary Schapiro, who finds the sadly diminished ranks of the business press worrisome. “I think financial journalists have in many cases been the sources of some really important enforcement cases and really important discovery of practices and products that regulators should be profoundly concerned about,” she said in remarks to the Reuters Global Financial Regulation Summit this week. “Investigative journalism actually would be a pretty interesting skill set for us to have. We’ve talked about financial analysis, we’ve talked about forensic accounting being skill sets that we really need–understanding of complex trading, strategies and systems, but it’s one of the things the SEC has to do. It has to really broaden its horizons and bring in people who think about things a little differently than it has historically.”

Source: All Things Digital | 1 May 2009 | 11:55 am

World’s Fastest Camera: Shutter Speed Half a Billionth of a Second

The Steam camera not only shoots images just 440 trillionths of a second in length, it can rack up an astonishing six million of them in a single second.

How does it work this magic? Lasers, of course, the answer to all scientific problems. The Steam (Serial Time-Encoded Amplified iMaging) doesn’t have a physical shutter, instead relying on a pulse of light to freeze time, much like a standard camera flash will freeze a bullet hitting a balloon.

The laser pulse contains a very wide range of light colors, sent in a known 2D pattern — think of the pixels on an LCD screen, only smaller, and made of lasers. When these hit the subject, only some parts are reflected back, just like a normal flash. Only in this case, the reflected pulse cannot be seen. Instead, the pulse which bounces back actually has a new makeup of colors, missing those which were absorbed. This pulse is piped through a special optic-fiber in which the differing speeds of light colors is amplified, some slowing down until they are separated enough to be detected by normal photo-diodes.

These are then assigned positions on the image, depending on where they were when they left. The result? Soon we’ll be able to take pictures of the interactions between neurons and the actual interiors of cells.

Fastest Camera Ever Built Uses Lasers [Wired Science]

Debut for world’s fastest camera [BBC via The Twitter]

Photo: Kevin1027/Flickr

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 1 May 2009 | 11:36 am

Windows 7 to be released October 23, according to Acer

Section: Computers, Software / Applications

We recently saw the RC (Release Candidate) of Windows 7 made available to MSDN and TechNet subscribers and are also expecting it to be publicly available on May 5, now it appears that we have a release date for the final release.  Of course, I do say “appears” and remain pretty skeptical of that date because the news, or should I say rumor, is not coming from Microsoft, but instead Acer.

It seems that Bobby Watkins who Acer’s UK MD recently told Pocket-lint that;

“23rd October is the date the Windows 7 will be available.”

Just where that date came from remains a mystery, however he also confirmed that Acer would be shipping a new all-on-one PC, the Z5600 beginning on October 23 and that it would have Windows 7 “pre-loaded.”

Not that I fully believe this release date is accurate, however assuming for a second that it is—this could be an interesting release.  This would mean that Windows 7, an operating system that seems to be building some traction is going to be available for the holiday shopping season. If nothing else, I would say that we are getting close, in other words you may want to hold off on grabbing a new PC just yet and see how things look in a month or two.

Read [Pocket-Lint]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 1 May 2009 | 11:18 am

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