Source: Gizmodo | 12 May 2009 | 12:18 pm

`Excitebots,' `NASCAR Kart Racing' go for a spin

Source: Gizmodo | 12 May 2009 | 12:11 pm

D-Link Adds CAPTCHA Security System To Many Of Its Routers

By Andrew Liszewski The effectiveness of the CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart) security system is still being debated. It’s far from bulletproof,...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 May 2009 | 12:10 pm

SGI Lives On, In Name At Least

Hugh Pickens writes "In a surprise corporate move, after Rackable Systems received bankruptcy court approval on April 30 to close its purchase of SGI, the company announced on Monday that the deal had closed and that the combined company would be called SGI — short for Silicon Graphics International instead of the original Silicon Graphics Inc. The revival of the SGI brand will certainly please people in Silicon Valley with a historical bent, as SGI has been one of the area's true icons. However, some consider this a curious turn of events, considering that Rackable has come to represent the new guard in the server market, while SGI has struggled for years. Executives hope the name change will help it expand its business overseas, where SGI is a better-known brand. The new SGI will also continue to develop and support the high-performance computing systems that Silicon Graphics was known for, says Rackable's president and CEO. 'There should be no disruption to Silicon Graphics customers.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 12:10 pm

New York City’s Emergency Text Alerts In the Spotlight [Voices]

A warning would have been welcome when an Air Force jet flew unannounced over the New York Harbor weeks ago and sent frightened workers in lower Manhattan into a tizzy. (When it turned out the flyover was for an expensive photo op, the White House official who approved it resigned from his post over the scandal.)

On Monday it seemed it might happen again – but with advance warning from a little-known city service. Downtown New Yorkers received two messages via email and text from Notify NYC, an emergency public communication system of New York City, alerting them that a military plane had requested to fly a plane over the Hudson River around 10:30 a.m.

When the Federal Aviation Agency denied the request (ostensibly because the notice was too short, but maybe because April 27’s memory was too fresh), Notify NYC sent another message to keep subscribers in the loop.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 12:01 pm

QOTD [Digital Daily]

QOTD [Digital Daily]

Sony hasn’t taken open technology very seriously in the past. Its CONNECT music download service was a failure. It was based on OpenMG, a proprietary digital rights management (DRM) technology. At the time, we thought we would make more money that way than with open technology, because we could manage the customers and their downloads. This approach, however, created a problem: customers couldn’t download music from any Web sites except those that contracted with Sony. If we had gone with open technology from the start, I think we probably would have beaten Apple Inc. of the U.S. … Apple’s iTunes Store uses its own proprietary DRM called FairPlay. I think this gives Sony a chance to provide something that Apple can’t. And we have to move ahead and grab that opportunity before Apple begins to provide support for other hardware and blocks us out.

— Sony CEO Howard Stringersays hindsight is 20/20

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 12:00 pm

Virtual Home Makeovers - Design Your Own Apartment at Comcast Town (VIDEO)

(TrendHunter.com) If your real-life home could use a makeover, head over to Comcast Town to design a virtual apartment that could net you a grand prize thats worth up to $30,000. The Comcast Town Design...
Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 12 May 2009 | 11:59 am

Prize-winning Movie Plot threat

Bruce Schneier's announced the winner of his annual "movie-plot threat" contest, the competition to come up with ridiculous security threats of the sort that are used to justify banning photos in public places or liquids on airplanes:

Though recent shooting sprees in churches, nursing homes, and at family outings appear unrelated, a terrifying link has been discovered. All perpetrators had small children who were abducted by terrorists, and perpetrators received a video of their children with hooded terrorists warning that their children would be beheaded if they do not engage in the suicidal rampage. The terror threat level has been raised to red as profiling, known associations, and criminal history are now useless in detecting who will be the next terrorist sniper or airline hijacker. Anyone who loves their children may be a potential terrorist.

Fourth Movie-Plot Threat Contest Winner


Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 11:57 am

Cigar box Fender amp

Someone did a lovely job on this Fender amp built into a cigar box.

Cigar Box Amp Powered by Fender (via Dinosaurs and Robots)

Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 11:54 am

Tube-map cross-stitch

This cross-stitch Tube-map is surprisingly successful and sounds simple to do.

Geek + maps + craftiness = (via Wonderland)

Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 11:52 am

TokyoFlash is giving away watches

TokyoFlash is giving away a watch to three winners of their TokyoFlash landmark contest. The rules are pretty simple: simply create an image of a famous horological landmarks redesigned with TokyoFlash faces i.e. Big Ben with the Rogue face built-in.

Get creative and submit your own ideas for a new landmark clock to clocks@tokyoflash.com for the chance to win the watch of your choice from Tokyoflash!

You can send an image, description, news story or combination, but please keep it to less than 500 words. You can use your own way of telling the time or use the display from any of our watches.

How To Enter:

1. Email your enty of a famous landmark that has a Tokyoflash way of reading the time to clocks@tokyoflash.com
2. Closing date is 26th May 2009 when three winners will be chosen to win a watch from Tokyoflash.
3. Winners will be able to select a watch of their choice.
4. You may submit as many entries as you wish.

Source: CrunchGear | 12 May 2009 | 11:47 am

Stuff it would be great to have designed

In this interview with designer Jack Schulze (which also contains this great aphorism: "No one cares about what you think, unless you do what you think. No one cares what you do, unless you think about what you do. No one ever really cares what you say."), a magnificent list of stuff he wishes he'd designed:

There are products I wish I'd designed because I like them and then people would think I'd done them and like me more. This list is massive. Off the top of my head: I wish I'd directed and conceived the perfume commercial where a guy on a helicopter kisses a woman at the top of the Eiffel Tower, and a Channel commercial with Little Red Riding Hood shooshing the wolf. I'd like to have been the first to take the photomontages Hockney produced in the 60s. I wish I'd written The Filth by Grant Morrison. I wish I'd conceived and made Super Mario Galaxy. I love the table-top skirmish game called Necromunda in the Warhammer universe, although I only played it once, because the social negotiation of the rules that always happens around the game, are embedded back into the rules. I think Formula 1 television coverage is visually completely remarkable. I have no idea what is going on, but it's so good I can watch it just for the optics. It's like injecting Photoshop filters straight into your eyeballs.

Six Questions from Kicker: Jack Schulze (via Beyond the Beyond)


Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 11:46 am

Dish Network Sees 21 Percent Profit Increase In Q1

Dish Network Corp surprised investors on Monday by releasing first-quarter results that were not as bad as originally feared.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 11:44 am

Users asked to design their own MMO levels make up really easy games

City of Heroes, a multiplayer superhero game, decided to allow its users to design their own levels. While some users created some fun and imaginative levels, the majority produced incredibly easy treasure-hauls, the sort of quest we used to call "Monty Haul dungeons" in the D&D era.

There's something weird and paternalistic about the relationship between gamers and game-designers. It goes like this: "I will deny you reward until you complete some arbitrary tasks of my devising, because I know that this will make you happier than simply giving you the rewards right away" (what's more, the designer is generally right about this).

This authority and arbitrariness is simpler to navigate when you're playing D&D with some friends around a table -- the GM is a pal of yours in whom you've put your trust for a few hours, and if she doesn't deliver the promised fun, she can be ousted and replaced. The GM doesn't even have to stick to the rules: if she thinks that the game's fun will go up if she ignores the outcome of a dice-roll behind her screen, she can make up an epic save or fail.

But it's different when the "GM" is a bunch of rules programmed into a computer by an engineer working at a multinational. In that universe, if the rules are bent for the sake of fun, it's cheating. And the social contract that comfortably defines the relationship between friends stretches and tears when it's applied to the relationship between customers and corporations.

When City of Heroes released its user-created mission generator, it was mere hours before highly exploitative missions existed. Players quickly found the way to min-max the system, and started making quests that gave huge rewards for little effort. These are by far the most popular missions. Actually, from what I can tell, they are nearly the only missions that get used. Aside from a few "developer's favorite" quests, it's very hard to find the "fun but not exploitative" missions, because they get rated poorly by users and disappear into the miasma of mediocrity.

This was not what the designers hoped for. Somehow they had convinced themselves that the number of exploiters would be relatively low -- certainly not the vast majority of the users. But they were wrong, and now they're stuck between a rock and a hard place. They feel they must counteract these abusive quests, "for the sake of balance". But how? Well the first step is to ban people who make cheaty content. But what's cheaty? Do they explicitly list every possible exploit condition? What if they miss one? Nah, then the problem would start all over again. Instead, how about if they just issue blanket threats that they'll ban missions that seem "exploitative", without actually explaining what is and isn't "exploitative"? They went with the latter.

User Generated Quests and the Ruby Slippers


Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 11:42 am

Non-News From Microsoft: More Layoffs - if the Economy Tanks Again [MediaMemo]

File this one under “hard to say it’s news”: Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says the company would consider more layoffs — if the economy falls off another cliff.

From the WSJ:

Microsoft Corp. may re-evaluate its plans for job cuts, its chief executive said Tuesday, suggesting more reductions could be in store if the U.S. economic downturn worsens.

“In case the situation gets dramatically worse in the U.S., we will have to rework” our plan, Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said at a news conference without elaborating.

Here’s one reason why Ballmer didn’t feel the need to elaborate: He said the exact same thing last week.

Here’s the quote, from a companywide memo distributed when Microsoft (MSFT) announced its second phase of mass layoffs:

As we move forward, we will continue to closely monitor the impact of the economic downturn on the company and if necessary, take further actions on our cost structure including additional job eliminations.”

To reiterate: Ballmer, whose company has remained dour about the economy even as investors and other forecasters (like Rupert Murdoch) have shown more optimism, refuses to say he’s done firing people for the year. But he’s not saying he will fire more people. My hunch: If you ask him next week, he’ll say the same thing.

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 11:30 am

Electronic Police States defined, ranked

A report from "CryptoHippie" (don't know anything about this person/group) has created an index to surveillance states, ranked from worst to best. What's especially notable about this report is its concise, intelligent definition of "Electronic Police States:"

The two crucial facts about the information gathered under an electronic police state are these:

1. It is criminal evidence, ready for use in a trial.

2. It is gathered universally and silently, and only later organized for use in prosecutions.

In an Electronic Police State, every surveillance camera recording, every email you send, every Internet site you surf, every post you make, every check you write, every credit card swipe, every cell phone ping... are all criminal evidence, and they are held in searchable databases, for a long, long time. Whoever holds this evidence can make you look very, very bad whenever they care enough to do so. You can be prosecuted whenever they feel like it - the evidence is already in their database.

Perhaps you trust that your ruler will only use his evidence archives to hurt bad people. Will you also trust his successor? Do you also trust all of his subordinates, every government worker and every policeman?

The worst offenders are China, North Korea, Belarus and Russia, followed by the UK, the US, and Singapore.

The Electronic Police State


Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 11:30 am

Urban Platforms: Low Profile Bike Pedals Come with High Profile Price-Tag

White Industries’ Urban Platform is a rather neat-looking pedal, styled for classical pedals but also looking very modern-industrial. The aluminum pedals have a 17-4 stainless steel spindle inside and something called “bronze acorn nuts”. I didn’t ask.

The Urban Pedal is made to be used with toe-clips, and this is one of the reasons it looks so cool — if you only ever use one side of a pedal, why bother even making the other side? I’ve been riding with clips for a few weeks and the biggest trouble I had to begin with was getting into them quickly when starting off from the lights. The Urbans have a big kick-plate which should make flipping the pedal into position a breeze. I got round it by learning to track stand (even sitting down!) which is more work, but also a chick-magnet.

The price? $235. That’s pretty steep, considering your bike probably came with pedals anyway. Available in black and silver.

Product page [White Industries via Trackosaurus via Prolly]

Photo: Kyle Kelley/Flickr

See Also:

• 5 Inexplicable Fixie Fashions
• The Great Gadget Lab Fixie Project: Help Us Build a Better Bike
• Fixed-Gear Bikes an Urban Fixture

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 12 May 2009 | 11:29 am

Make your own “pager scanner”

Those little scamps over at Adafruit are always up to something. This time they built a “pager scanner” which is basically a system that grabs all of the pages transmitted on pager networks and displays them. Sadly, the pager network isn’t as juicy as it used to be and now only doles out sports scores and emergency broadcasts.

What’s that you say? What if, during my day-to-day, activities, these haX0rs try to steal my pages? Well, remember, if you’re still using a pager you’re either a doctor or a drug dealer stuck in 1992 so you either don’t care if someone sees your pages or you deserve to be snooped upon.

One concern: the video is pretty darn obtuse so unless you know what “bit banging” is, I’d avoid giving this a try. Still, they give you the full breadboard diagram and a bit of background so you can try this trick yourself.

Source: CrunchGear | 12 May 2009 | 11:28 am

SBMV: Sony says Blurays will look better but I don’t see much of a difference

Super Bit Mapping for Video (SBMV) is the new secret sauce Sony thinks will enhance the Bluray experience, allowing for superior color gradation quality. The company announced the first Bluray disc for the Japanese market today [JP] that makes use of the new technology.

Sony chose the anime title “EVANGELION：1.11 YOU ARE (NOT) ALONE” for the SBMV debut and also shows the screenshots you see above in their press release. The problem is I hardly see a difference, but maybe that’s just me (the top row shows two screengrabs using SBMV, while SBMV is not used for the two on the bottom).

The disc goes on sale in Japan on May 27 for $60 (you need to own a SBMV compatible Sony Bluray player that accepts Japanese discs).

Japanese tech news site AV Watch has more screenshots. The site is Japanese but you can compare the screenshots made with SBMV on the right hand side with screenshots made without using SBMV on the left.

Source: CrunchGear | 12 May 2009 | 11:27 am

Whaling Peace Talks Reach Stalemate

Peace agreements over whaling have stalled between pro and anti-whaling nations.The countries have been debating for nearly a year in an attempt to come to an agreement before this year’s International Whaling Commission (IWC) meeting.According to BCC News, who has seen the report,
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 May 2009 | 11:25 am

Mountain-Dew-scented Xbox controller soap

These XBox controller soaps from Etsy seller Digitalsoap are scented with essence of Mountain Dew for a caffeinated clean. There's also a line of Playstation, NES and Wii controller soaps, as well as phone and iPod soap.

Realistic Xbox replica soap (via Red Ferret)

Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 11:22 am

Support Grows For Google’s Android

With 8 million Android phones to be sold in 2009, a 10-fold increase from a year ago, Google’s Android operating system is making waves in the mobile industry, research firm Strategy Analytics said on Monday.According to Reuters, the handset market has decreased significantly due to the widespread
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 11:20 am

NAND memory goes Flash, bang, wallop - TG Daily

AFP

NAND memory goes Flash, bang, wallop TG Daily By Mike Magee Taipei, Taiwan - The price of NAND flash memory is stabilizing after manufacturers slowed down supply of chips. But even after that action, sales of branded Flash fell by 2.4 percent in the first quarter of this year to $2.137 billion, ... Samsung Elec: 2009 Very Tough Year For Chip Industry Wall Street Journal Samsung Ships First 30nm-Based 32GB moviNAND Product Softpedia Inquirer.net - AFP - TechShout! all 53 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 12 May 2009 | 11:19 am

Emo vs. 19th century Romanticism: "Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone!"

Andrew sez,

I've interviewed Australian writer and youth radio host Craig Schuftan, who has just released a new book called 'Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone!' It's an exciting, discursive analysis, which at its heart compares emo, pop and rock n' roll to the philosophies of the Romantic movement of the nineteenth century.

The two part interview is almost as wide-ranging and certainly as interesting as the book (if I do say so myself). He's a culture sponge and we discuss (among many other things) Nietzsche's philosophy, Weezer's lyrics, ludditism, the create font of melancholy, and whether the anti-depressant generation will have trouble expressing themselves artistically.

My Chimerical Romanticism: Part One (Thanks, Andrew!)


Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 11:16 am

Creative text expanding

Source: Gizmodo | 12 May 2009 | 11:12 am

ViBook: Add Six Monitors to Your Computer via USB

The ViBook is a little box which lets you hook up an extra display via USB. The $130 dongle hooks into a USB port on one side and a DVI port on the other, and — judging from the video of the ViBook in action — it is pretty capable. If you’re kicking an old school, you can also hook up to a VGA-capable monitor with an adapter.

The ViBook works on both Mac and PC once the drivers have been installed, and from then on all you do is hook up the monitor and it will spring into life, acting as if you had a second video card (although not quite as capable). PC users come out on top, though, as they can use up to six of these on one machine (Macs only support four). In fact, PC users win when it comes to multi-monitor setups in general — they have a big selection of utilities for customising the layouts. The Mac has almost none (mine can’t even remember where to put my windows when I hook a monitor up to my MacBoook).

The ViBook is  no exception and comes bundled with a couple of Windows utilities to customize the taskbars and the like. Brett Terpstra of the Unofficial Apple Weblog checked one out and posted a video of it in action. Dragging movies between screens looks smooth. At least I think it does — my connection is flaky today and I am getting — rather ironically — very stuttery video.

The ViBook, additional displays via USB [TUAW]
Product page [ViBook]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 12 May 2009 | 11:04 am

Evernote now available for the BlackBerry

Section: Computers, Software / Applications

The cross platform note-taking application that is designed to help you remember everything, otherwise known as Evernote is now available for the BlackBerry.  Of course, that does come with a slight catch, it is not available for all models.  At this time Evernote for BlackBerry requires a phone running OS 4.6 or higher, which will limit you to the Bold, Curve 8900 series and the Storm.  Additionally, the information from Evernote Blog mentioned that they were adding support for more BlackBerry models, however did not specify when we could expect to see it available.

For those unfamiliar, Evernote allows you to save text notes, images, voice memos and more and have it synced with your account in the cloud, thus making it available on any Internet connected computer. Additionally, they also have a desktop app available for the Mac and PC as well as the iPhone and Windows Mobile devices.  You can sign up for an account for free, of course they also have a paid account for heavy users.

I use Evernote on a daily basis using Windows, my Mac and iPhone and at this point would hate to see it ever go away.  The only thing I am hoping to see is a dedicated app on Android.

Read [Evernote Blog]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 May 2009 | 11:01 am

EC Shooting for Antitrust Trifecta — Microsoft, Intel, Google? [Digital Daily]

Christine Varney, head of the Justice Department’s antitrust division, famously referred to Microsoft’s (MSFT) monopoly as “so last century.” In her mind, it’s Google (GOOG) we need to watch out for. “[Microsoft is] not the problem,” she said. “I think we’re going to continue to see a problem, potentially, with Google.”

And apparently European Commissioner for Competition Neelie Kroes agrees (though on Microsoft her opinion clearly diverge from Varney’s quite a bit.) Sources tell The Financial Times that Kroes has been increasingly looking askance at Google and its efforts to rule the information economy. “Kroes has taken to pondering the anti-trust implications of Google’s dominance of the internet in a ‘thinking-out-loud’ kind of way,” the FT reports. “According to our source, the European anti-trust chief - who looks set to deliver a double-whammy to the old Wintel partnership with stinging fines this week and over the summer - has raised the question, unprompted, in at least one meeting with tech industry representatives.”

Now, as the FT notes, Kroes’s interest in Google is no indication that the EC is planning a review of the company and its business practices. Right now the agency has its hands full with Microsoft and Intel. It does, however, suggest that Google best keep its informal “don’t be evil” motto top of mind at home and abroad. Especially now that Microsoft is using Google’s dominant position in the search market as a defense in its own EC antitrust case.

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 11:00 am

Square Enix Shuts Down Fan-Made Chrono Trigger Sequel

KIllagouge writes "Just days before the release of Chrono Trigger: Crimson Echoes, SquareEnix sent a Cease & Desist letter to Chrono Compendium to stop everything to do with Crimson Echoes. People might remember when they did this with Chrono Resurrection. Seems to be the growing trend; instead of listening to their fans, which would net them even more money, game developers continue to lock down old gaming IP. A copy of the C&D letter is available online." The fan project had been in development since 2004 and was 98% complete.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 10:35 am

Microsoft: ‘It Costs $30,000 to Fill an iPod’

Apple equals quality, Microsoft equals cheap. This is the apparent message from the recent flurry of MS ads, all of which focus on price. This time it’s iTunes, and the fact that — if you own an iPod Classic and only buy music from iTunes and don’t ever put any podcasts or movies on there — filling an iPod costs $30,000. Buying a monthly Zune Pass, however, only costs $15 per month. Until the DRM gets switched off and you’re left with nothing, we guess.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t have thirty grand laying around for music.

That is correct, Microsoft Ad Man. That’s because you have only sold two or three Zunes. This is terrible, and makes the Zune look way worse than the capable (but brown) music player it is. And Pete Mortensen over at the Cult of Mac makes a great point: “I had a music collection long before the iPod existed.”

Latest Zune Commercial Claims It Costs $30,000 to Fill An iPod [Cult of Mac]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 12 May 2009 | 10:24 am

Security Alert: Twitter Porn Names Scam

Source: Gizmodo | 12 May 2009 | 10:20 am

‘High Performance’ Comes to Notebook Cooler Market

Leave it long enough and every product category devolves into a range of gizmos, all aimed at different customers. Take the air freshener — once simply a bunch of lavender, now we have plug-ins which pump oil-stained air into your lungs 24/7, bulb-top burners and expensive atomizers.

Now, at last, this kind of attention has come to the notebook cooler market. The Cryo S from NZXT (if you know how to pronounce that name, tell me in the comments) is a “High Performance” notebook cooler. We know this from both the name and from the design, which somehow manages to look like both the kind of trashy car-stereo add-on on which a seventeen year-old boy-racer might spend his allowance, as well as mimicking every single crappy product from RadioShack.

The $50 cooler is a tea-tray with holes, a meshy platform onto which have been bolted a couple of fans (adjustable speed fans, of course — it is “high performance”). You’ll also find a pair of USB ports into which you might consider plugging a USB lap-warmer to keep your junk from cooling too far. And lest you worry about the huge power drain such a device might cause from your laptop’s own USB ports, you can plug this into the wall via an AC adapter.

The only thing missing is a row of glowing red blinkenlights, a feature which would catapult this lap-saver into the “high performance” stratosphere, via the 1980s.

Product page [NZXT. Thanks, Matt!]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 12 May 2009 | 9:59 am

Facebook’s Privacy Chief (and California Attorney General Candidate) Chris Kelly Speaks! [BoomTown]

BoomTown tried to get Chris Kelly (pictured here) to give up more during an onstage interview I did with Facebook’s chief privacy officer last night at the third “Tech Policy Summit,” and was only moderately successful in the endeavor.

He talked about the recent Terms of Service debacle as a snafu that got sensationalized by the media, the Beacon advertising controversy as a snafu that got sensationalized by the media and the Free-the-Scoble-5,000 data-sharing debate as a snafu that got sensationalized by the media.

But Kelly also managed to say that the media was sensational for keeping Facebook–the dominant social networking site in the whole wide world–honest, as it grows into a behemoth grasping a scary amount of personal information of its 200 million users in its claws

Oh, he is a smoothie alright, as a lawyer and now also as as wanna-be politician.

Kelly–who is still working at the start-up, where his job it is to make sure consumer data, privacy, the children and CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s reputation are all safe and sound–is also now running for the job of California’s Attorney General.

(Here is his Facebook page about the effort.)

Born in Silicon Valley, with a troika of diplomas from fancy schools (undergraduate from Georgetown in 1991, a master’s from Yale in 1992 and a law degree from Harvard in 1997), Kelly worked as a lawyer and also as a policy advisor for President Bill Clinton’s White House Domestic Policy Council and Department of Education, before coming to Facebook four years ago.

For a closer look-see at the candidate for the Golden State’s top cop, here’s a video interview I did with him after the onstage chat in San Mateo, Calif.:

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 9:52 am

Apple Freezes Snow Leopard APIs

DJRumpy writes in to alert us that Apple's new OS, Snow Leopard, is apparently nearing completion. "Apple this past weekend distributed a new beta of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard that altered the programming methods used to optimize code for multi-core Macs, telling developers they were the last programming-oriented changes planned ahead of the software's release. ...`Apple is said to have informed recipients of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard build 10A354 that it has simplified the`... APIs for working with Grand Central, a new architecture that makes it easier for developers to take advantage of Macs with multiple processing cores. This technology works by breaking complex tasks into smaller blocks, which are then`... dispatched efficiently to a Mac's available cores for faster processing."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 9:25 am

Frugal Father's Day Finds

:::Thrifty Father's Day Gifts Sure to Make Dad Glad::: FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., May 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Let's face it - finding the perfect Father's Day gift can be a challenge.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 9:07 am

Another Ad Network? Yes, and This One’s For iPhone Apps: Medialets Raises $4 Million [MediaMemo]

Apple iPhone and iPod Touch users have downloaded 1 billion apps for their devices in 9 months. Someone other than Steve Jobs and co. ought to be able to make money from that, right?

That’s more or less the logic behind Medialets, a startup that serves up ads on Apple’s (AAPL) mobile applications, and to a lesser degree, programs designed for Google’s (GOOG) Android mobile platform. The New York-based company, founded last June, is announcing a $4 million Series A round led by Foundry Group. DFJ Gotham and angel investor Bobby Yazdani also participated.

Medialets also provides free analytics services for mobile applications. But its revenue comes from its mobile ad platform which specializes in serving up iPhone and Android app users.

Given that mobile ads in general are in their infancy, this is a nascent market at best. Medialets CEO Eric Litman figures that the market for mobile display ads tops out at perhaps $300 million, and that ads for iPhone and Android apps can’t be more than $100 million.

But he figures that number will shoot up rapidly, of course, and perhaps hit $400 million within four years. He’s also betting that the majority of apps, and the majority of apps downloaded, will be free, advertising-supported ones.

In order for that to happen, both apps and the ads that run on them will have to move past the novelty stage. This Medialets-produced ad for Dockers, shown here running on SGN’s iBowl game, is sort of interesting. But it seems more like a proof of concept than anything else.

Still, it’s a start:

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 9:00 am

Facebook Remains Stubbornly Proud Of Position On Holocaust Denial

Facebook is apparently done talking about Holocaust denial for now. A couple of groups that got more out of hand than the rest were taken down, but the company’s policy of permitting the groups on the site remains. “Denying the holocaust is not a violation of our terms,” says Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt in a comment to our post yesterday. Meanwhile, Facebook’s ban on pictures showing nipples from breast feeding women remains. The pictures are pornography and a violation of Facebook’s terms of service. Interestingly, Schnitt is the spokesperson that handles both issues, and seems quite comfortable with the respective policies.

While we don’t have much officially being said, we do have some Facebook employees speaking their mind directly, and most are pro-Holocaust deniers. Product Manager Ezra Callahan describes the posts by Brian Cuban and myself as “incomprehensible reasoning.” Ezra is not a Facebook spokesperson, but Randi Zuckerberg, who is a Facebook Spokesperson, says of Ezra’s note “Really well-written, articulate, and insightful note by Facebook employee Ezra Callahan on being a Jewish employee and supporting Facebook’s policy to not remove groups that deny the Holocaust.” That sounds like a stamp of approval to me.

Ezra’s arguments in a nutshell:

- Facebook is a “company run by a prominent Jew” and can’t “possibly show preferential treatment to one offended group over others”
- The Holocaust is just one of many human tragedies: “There are quite a few other especially-horrifying events in humanity’s recent past that likely merit the same level of consideration”
- Providing a forum for Holocaust deniers lets people see how “stupid” they are

Here’s where I’m going to take a ninety degree turn. I’m not going to address these issues head on. Brian Cuban is doing that already, and provides logical counterpoints to these arguments.

But I actually think even engaging in this debate is dangerous. The Holocaust is in its own special category of fucked up human behavior. Not because of the millions of Jews that were killed in the actual Holocaust - sadly that’s just how we roll as a race. No, the problem is that Holocaust deniers make their arguments for one simple purpose - they want to finish what was started and wipe Jews off the planet. We all know this is the elephant in the room, it’s just that the lawyers who write terms of service don’t really know how to deal with that. Nipples are bad, even if clearly not posted for sexual reasons. Holocaust denial is ok, even if clearly posted in order to spread hatred of Jews. That’s not something lawyers can tackle.

I don’t make that statement lightly, nor do I expect everyone to agree. But in the last few days I’ve read a lot (a whole lot) of Holocaust denial literature on the Internet, and it is extremely scary stuff. The whole point of it is to suggest that Jews are engaged in a massive conspiracy to fool the world. These are the same types of conspiracy theories that led to the Holocaust in the first place.

When you engage with Holocaust deniers to talk about where the lines are drawn you’ve already lost. Ezra and the rest of Facebook is playing the game on their terms.

Holocaust denial is a seed. A seed that will grow into a fully bloomed second Holocaust if ever allowed to germinate. And Facebook is providing the fertile ground and watering needed to do just that.

That’s why a dozen or so countries, all of which otherwise support free speech, have enacted laws against Holocaust denial. People love to hate, even smart people with significantly more than a “shred of common sense” as Ezra puts it. So many smart people think there is a Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. They can’t help but believe it. And giving those people a place on Facebook to share and expand those ideas is just too dangerous a thing to do. They know they can spread hatred of Jews if they stick mostly to just denying the Holocaust. And if a few members get out of hand every once in a while, they can just say that the group exists only to talk about whether the Holocaust happened or not, and certainly not to spread hate. See the images on my post from yesterday to see how these messages go.

Sure, we can’t shut down the dark places on the Internet where people are free to hate Jews and post pictures of breast feeding mothers. But Facebook can take a stand and say it won’t happen in their back yard. Holocaust denial is hate speech, and it cannot be given a place to take root.

This isn’t a slippery slope, Facebook. It’s evil. Pure evil. Don’t plant a flag on the wrong side of the line. Stand firm against racial and religious hatred, even if you don’t have to. You’ll look back in fifty years and be proud that you did. Because no matter what your terms of service say, this isn’t porn. It’s the Holocaust. And it happened.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 9:00 am

Active Control to distribute 3D-P mine productivity and cost reduction technology

- OEM agreement adds powerful tool to ActiveMine(TM) system and opens up surface mining market for ACT - 3D-P gains access to underground market as agreement provides both companies with unique competitive advantages TSX-V: ACT SCOTTSDALE, ARIZONA and TORONTO, May 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ - 3D-P and Active Control Technology (TSX-V:ACT) today announced an agreement in which ACT will distribute 3D-P's Intelligent Endpoint(TM) product line to the mining industry.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 9:00 am

Allot Communications Reports $9.4 Million in Revenues for First Quarter of 2009

HOD HASHARON, Israel, May 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Key highlights: - First quarter revenues totaled $9.4 million, representing a 13% increase over first quarter of 2008 - First quarter non-GAAP net loss declined to $0.8 million, or $0.04 per basic and diluted share, from $1.1 million, or $0.05 per basic and diluted share, in the fourth quarter of 2008, and from $1.9 million, or $0.09 per basic and diluted share, in the first quarter of 2008 - As of March 31, 2009, cash, cash equivalents, deposits and investments in marketable securities totaled $54.1 million - Large projects contributed significant revenues during the quarter - Announced partnership with HP to address mobile market Allot Communications Ltd.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 9:00 am

Coming In June: ZuneHD … Or A Zune-Specific Phone?

So now Microsoft is happily seeding buzz through Twitter account @officethemovie, which is tied to the marketing website for ‘Office 2010: The Movie’. The account was created recently and starting sending out tweets about 14 hours ago at the time of this writing. One of the first messages revealed a bit about the type of social networking integration the next version of Office is going to boast: “Office 2010 will include Twitter, Facebook, and other social networks integrated right into Word. That’s just a hint of what’s to come!”

Right after that one, there was another cryptic one about Zune, of which I’m not entirely sure what it has to do with Office exactly. It read: “June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers”, and was followed by another one that asked some people who expressed interest on Twitter that it concerns a ‘new product launch’ and that they should ‘hold off from buying an iPhone or Palm Pre’.

Neowin is considering this to be either a hint for a new (HD) version of Microsoft’s media player (which CrunchGear confirmed was coming this year) to be announced next month at E3 Expo, or the introduction of the much-rumored Zune Phone, a touch-screen multimedia cellphone Microsoft was reportedly working on together with Verizon.

Fact is no one knows for sure what’s coming, but Microsoft has in the past made it abundantly clear that it wasn’t planning on entering the mobile device manufacturing market with a proprietary device, and that it wasn’t building a Zune-specific phone. That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s actually never going to happen, but I wouldn’t put any money on something like that being introduced next month.

More likely, devices equipped with the latest versions of Windows Mobile will be extended with software that tightly integrates with Zune services (a project code-named ‘Pink’) although Microsoft could also plan the announcement of a major distribution partnership with carrier Verizon, despite rumors that the latter is also in talks with Apple for an iPhone contract when the current deal with AT&T expires.

Or both. Or something else. Or maybe MS says June will be important for Zune just because it has a nice ring to it and they simply really don’t want you to buy a Pre or iPhone.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 8:59 am

Medialets’ Big Bet On The iPhone Pays Off With A $4 Million Round

When Medialets was founded in June of last year, CEO Eric Litman and his team decided to take a risk. They bet big that Apple’s iPhone platform would explode. It did — and it’s taken Medialets along with it. Today, the mobile analytics and advertising company announces its series A round of funding.

It was barely a month between the founding of the company and the launch of the App Store on July 11 of last year. But Medialets was there from day one. And thanks to that early start, the company’s offerings can now be found installed on nearly half of the iPhones and iPod touches out there in circulation. And their clients include many of the top downloaded apps. But the company clearly hopes the iPhone is just the beginning.

With its new $4 million round led by Foundry Group, and participated in by DFJ Gotham and early Google investor Bobby Yazdani, the company is thinking expansion. It already has been on the Android platform as well since last September. But while that platform has thus far failed to ignite a new market the way the iPhone has, indications seem to point to 2009 being a good year for the platform with many more Android devices coming. The team has already secured over 1,000 developer partnerships between the iPhone and Android platforms.

More importantly, Medialets is also looking to support BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, Symbian and Palm Pre in 2009. That would obviously put them on basically every major mobile platform.

Medialets has a really nice looking offering it terms of its advertising platform (screenshot below), and Medialytics, its analytics offering, has proved me with some solid mobile data over the past few months (all anonymous of course). One nice thing about Medialytics, is that it can work whether a user is online or offline — something which is often the case with the WiFi-only iPod touch.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 8:31 am

IBM Announces Beta Availability of Lotus Notes 8.5.1 Software with iPhone Support

DUSSELDORF, Germany, May 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced the beta release of Lotus Notes and Domino 8.5.1 collaboration software, including plans to support Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync in version 8.5.1 of Lotus Notes Traveler.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 8:01 am

Mobile Markets in Mozambique and Angola Set for Five Year Boom Finds Frost & Sullivan

CAPE TOWN, South Africa, May 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Revenues in the Angolan mobile communications market are set to triple by 2015.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 8:00 am

Time To Reinvent Media For The Internet [Voices]

There’s a strange feeling in the media business, almost eerie. People talk about it in hushed he’s-got-cancer tones. There’s a sense within newsrooms that the industry is changing forever. Some say it’s dying. The question turns to who is to blame. Inevitably, the finger gets pointed at Google.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 7:05 am

Ten Twitter Mythconceptions [Voices]

Poor Twitter! It may be the hottest service on the Web, but it’s also profoundly misunderstood. Lots of people cheerfully admit they don’t get it. Others emphatically believe things about it that aren’t true.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 7:04 am

Apple Rejects Another iPhone App: Religious Photo Parodies ‘Objectionable’ [Voices]

Apple (AAPL) continues to serve as nanny and tastemaker for its iPhone app store. It’s rejected yet another app from the app store: A religious photo parody app called “Me So Holy.” Apple insists the app is “objectionable.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 7:03 am

The New York Times Envisions Version 2.0 Of The Newspaper [Voices]

The New York Times Co.’s research and development group has some of the best views in their midtown skyscraper — 24 floors above the newsrooms, higher even than the executives’ suites. Developers in the core R&D group — with titles like “lead creative technologist” and, my favorite, “futurist-in-residence” — are charged by the brass 14 floors below them with anticipating how news will next be consumed.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 12 May 2009 | 7:02 am

Telnic Helps Brands Maximize .tel Benefits at INTA

NEW YORK, May 12 /PRNewswire/ -- Telnic Limited (http://www.telnic.org), the registry operator for the new communications-focused .tel top level domain (TLD) nominated for the 2009 World Technology Awards and the InfoCommerce Group Models of Excellence 2009, today announced that it will be present at the International Trademark Association (http://www.INTA.org) Annual Conference in Seattle later this month to showcase .tel services and related technologies. Telnic will be on Stand 828, showing trademark owners and managers how they can: - Present all the ways their customers in all countries can contact them from any device - Quickly publish new contact points and links to further information in times of business growth or crisis - Use the .tel domain as an innovative communications platform for live news updates and social media press releases, which can jump straight into people's address books - Publish links to other content, such as software downloads or vouchers for mobile devices Telnic's free, open source software for the BlackBerry, iPhone and Microsoft Outlook which integrate .tel information directly into the address book and enables simple management of .tel domains from native applications, will also be showcased on the stand. "A .tel domain can be set up to work for your business in just five minutes presenting a rich set of contact points that customers can use to contact you from any device connected to the internet," explains Justin Hayward, Communications Director at Telnic Limited.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 7:00 am

Linkbee.com Adds Twitter Photo Sharing

SAN FRANCISCO, May 12 /PRNewswire/ -- With Twitter.com becoming popular around the globe, Linkbee.com has been a pioneer in allowing users to monetize their Twitter accounts.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 7:00 am

VASCO Data Security and MoadBus are Partnering to Deliver Digital Signature for Mobile Banking and Mobile Cash Solutions

OAKBROOK TERRACE, Ill. and ZURICH, May 12 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- VASCO Data Security International, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 12 May 2009 | 7:00 am

Recently on Offworld

Recently on Offworld we saw the addition of a new guest blogger, with Mike Nowak bringing us Rome's Il Creatore and his lo-fi Commodore 64, SIDStation, talk-box, and vocoder pixel pop, and saw The Wire's Clay "sheeeit" Davis re-emerge as Doc, the coach of Punch-Out!! revival star Little Mac (above).

We also saw the fruits of Klei Entertainment's labor in bringing the full weight of traditional animation to their beat-em-up Shank, moved on the last chance to pick up another gloriously cartoon-y game, The Behemoth's Alien Hominid, and found and fancied another fantastic Grim Fandango custom vinyl toy.

Finally, we saw grandfather of home videogame Ralph Baer take on the retro-futurist version of his original creation in style, a low-bit mountain climbing game design loosely based on an Akira Kurosawa short, and the creators of the masochistic arcade game PainStation return with the MoshPit Amp, a music peripheral that cranks its tubes to 11 the harder you headbang until the echo effect builds to the point that the pyrotechnics flair and the amp moshes itself.

And our 'one shot's for the day: the gorgeously ultra-vivid early days of similarly moshable metal game Brutal Legend, and the founder of Harvard College reimagined as Halo's Master Chief.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 6:57 am

Replacing New Hampshire's Old Man of the Mountain

Holdstrong writes "New Hampshire's iconic natural rock formation, the Old Man of the Mountain, fell from its mountain-side perch back in 2003. Award-winning architect Francis D. Treves is proposing a monument to replace it. His idea would feature a replica of the Old Man made out of 250 suspended glass panels and would allow visitors to enter the structure in order to gain views of the valley below. The design has received harsh criticism from the public, in part, Mr. Treves believes, due to the fact that quality images and accurate information about his design have been hard to come by. Replacing a beloved natural monument with a man-made one is sure to bring out emotions. Will a clearer understanding of the design help sway public opinion?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 6:39 am

Brightcove Brings Its Ad-Supported Videos To Vudu Set-Top Boxes

Streaming video platform Brightcove has added another partner to its already-impressive group of associates. Vudu, purveyors of fine set-top boxes, have struck up a deal to stream Brightcove-associated content. Brightcove has, at last count, about twenty-one trillion API partners, and delivers video for big names like AOL and the NY Times. Those aren’t available on the Vudu box yet, though; it’s just launching now and the first (and only) video service to hit is Sony’s MyPlay, through which you’ll be able to watch Sony Music videos to your heart’s content. Joy of joys!

Of course, it’s just a matter of the right people to sign on the right dotted lines to get other Brightcove-supported sites and services onto the Vudu. Ad-supported content is being tentatively embraced by big media, which is almost certainly a good thing, and this is one of the first real forays into pushing it onto a set-top box. A year ago, I would have considered the idea of Sony letting me stream their content onto my TV for free a ridiculous notion, but here we are. Pleasant surprises are mighty rare in this sector.

The battle for the top of the TV set (or in the closet nearby for wifi-enabled ones like the Vudu) is getting pretty heated, and major deals like this tip the balance of power significantly. Plus, it ends up being good for the consumer as they pack more and more into a box you already paid for.

We’ve just got our one screenshot for now, but tomorrow we’ll try to put up some video so you can see how she handles.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 5:03 am

Gamers Unravel the Secret Life of Protein

As soon as Zoran Popović saw the hair, he knew he was looking at David Baker. It was unmistakable: Baker's face is surrounded by an umbra of curls that organize themselves into unpredictable spirals—not unlike the complex protein molecules he studies. They hadn't met before; Popović is an expert in graphics, a computer scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, and Baker is a biochemistry professor with a laboratory a few blocks away. But David Salesin, another computer scientist and a friend of Baker's, had arranged for the three of them to meet for lunch in a restaurant near campus, because Baker needed help with a tricky problem—and it was exactly the kind of problem Popović was good at solving.

Baker was the Most Valuable Player in the protein chemistry world's biennial World Series, a competition to see who can predict the shape a protein will fold into, knowing nothing more than the sequence of its constituent parts. It's called the Community-Wide Experiment on the Critical Assessment of Techniques for Protein Structure Prediction, or CASP.

With the help of a formidable weapon called Rosetta@home, Baker's team had dominated CASP since 1998. Like SETI @home, the screensaver that taps spare home computer cycles to sort through radio signals from space, Rosetta farms out computation to volunteered PCs. The 86,000 computers around the world that run it would give Baker the rough equivalent of a 77-teraflop supercomputer for the November 2006 iteration of CASP a few weeks later. But Rosetta@home was getting stumped by puzzles that Baker thought humans, with their superior spatial reasoning, would solve easily.

Baker suggested that users should have some way to tell the screensaver to try a different approach. Popović shook his head. "No one's going to care about that," he said. "If you really want people to get engaged, you should put people at the center."

Salesin thought so, too—in fact, he thought protein folding would make a terrific computer game. That's why he'd set up this lunch. Baker, thinking about the intense focus he'd seen on the face of his preteen son when playing videogames, agreed.

The game they came up with, Foldit, doesn't have orcs or quests or gravity hammers. It simply serves up a multicolored knot of spirals and clumps—a 3-D render of a protein. Players use the cursor to grab, bend, pull, and wiggle the chain of amino acids anywhere along its length, folding the protein into its optimum shape. The only rules are based on physics—opposite charges attract, atomic bonds have limited angles of rotation, and the parts of the molecule that stick to water tend to point outward. The closer your model's properties adhere to those rules, the more points you get.

More than 100,000 people have downloaded Foldit since last summer, turning the game into massively multiplayer competition—global online molecular speed origami. And when they came up with potentially accurate CASP protein structures, Baker entered those into the competition.

Whoever cracks the hidden secrets of protein folding will push us that much closer to new antibiotics, cancer treatments, and biofuels. Instead of relying solely on computer cycles to accelerate his research, Baker has harnessed neurons and the human urge to play. And if his army of gamers yields a few savants? So much the better, Baker says. "We're looking for prodigies."

Hydrogen, the most common molecule in the universe, is just two atoms—each with one proton and one electron.

Proteins, the chemical structures that underpin everything from muscles to mothers' milk, are at the other end of the complexity scale: Built on long, kinky backbones of molecules called amino acids, proteins can comprise more than 10,000 atoms apiece.

The key to how any protein works is its three-dimensional shape, determined by all the ways its atoms interact. Trying to push two atoms closer when they want to repel is like holding magnets together when they're oriented the wrong way. You can force them, but nature prefers configurations that follow the path of least resistance. In a simple molecule, that path is pretty clear: Water—H₂O—is hydrogen-oxygen-hydrogen balanced perfectly in a V-shape at a 104.4-degree angle. This push and pull is inevitable. Physics is destiny.

But the bigger the molecule, the more complex these negotiations become. And proteins are colossal. Of course, there is another way to figure all this out: Shining x-rays through a crystallized lump of protein can help reveal the exact position of its folded-up atoms. But that takes time—just 50,000 protein structures have been cracked since the late 1950s, while the sequences of millions of protein-coding genes have been discovered in the past 10 years alone. To make headway in figuring out what all these proteins do, scientists need a faster approach.

So why not just do the math? Calculate the energy of all the different ways a given protein can be folded and find the most efficient. Bang: You're done.

But no. Scientists can only estimate the total energy for a molecule as big as a protein, and that's not accurate enough to predict its structure. Even worse, there are more ways to fold a protein than there are atoms in the universe. It's like a combination lock with 1,000 dials. Yet proteins fold themselves into shape in a fraction of a second. No one knows how. Early last year, CASP's organizers hit up laboratories around the world to find proteins whose structures were about to be solved. From these they compiled a list of more than 120 puzzles, which they started posting on the CASP server in May.

Popović designed an interface for Foldit that renders any protein as a cartoon assemblage of spirals, zigzags, squiggles, and geometric loops. Every part of the protein is movable—push two sheets together and shimmering connectors (representing hydrogen bonds) glue them tight. Try to fit a loop into a hole that's too small and red stars flash at the collision sites. A "wiggle" shakes an entire chunk of the structure to try to get pieces to settle, like dry pasta finding a more compact formation in a jar. Add a chat window and a score tally and you've got yourself a game.

The same day Foldit came out, May 8, 2008, an article on the game appeared in The Economist. The ensuing surge of players swamped the server. Working on test proteins for which Baker already knew the structures, folders quickly started to make friends via the in-game chat channel. They shared insights and half-finished puzzles; teams emerged, and collective efforts proved far more successful than any solo folder. A member of the leading team named Jason Kuznicki (game handle: Diderot) set up a wiki that Popović adopted as Foldit's official manual. "We even built a mini-Facebook for them," he says.

The friendly atmosphere drew about 100 new players a day, and the fierce competition among teams—Freedom Folders, Richard Dawkins Foundation, Folders for Obama—pushed everyone to keep improving. In early June, Baker's team released five CASP proteins to the Foldit community and crossed their fingers.

Close to midnight on July 28 of last year, Laurent de Jerphanion (screen name: Dejerpha) stared in disbelief at the multicolored tangle floating on his computer display. The 43-year-old Paris-based marketing manager had been working on puzzle T0461 for several long evenings. There didn't seem to be any improvement left to be made. He was cruising to victory.

Then he looked at the scoreboard. He had been overtaken by a 13-year-old American named Cheese. The kid (real name: Aristides Poehlman) had just accomplished an astonishing 20-point jump in a single move—only an hour before the deadline. But de Jerphanion didn't get to be one of the best Foldit players in the world without grit. "À nous deux maintenant," he muttered. Bring it on.

On the other side of the world, around 7 pm in Virginia, the Poehlman household was in an uproar. Cheese's parents were folding, too, on computers upstairs. Upon her son's great leap forward, Athena, his mother, typed "Wow! Way to go!" into the Foldit global chat window. More encouragement rolled in from the rest of his team—Another Hour, Another Point—scattered worldwide. But within minutes, de Jerphanion had made more progress on the puzzle and pulled ahead by a point. It was anyone's game.

Poehlman's version of the protein looked good. Too good, he thought. No way was he going to make another 20-point jump. That had come from a drastic rebuild of a deeply buried amino acid loop—a risky move. He forced himself to focus on smaller tweaks. He marked two spots on the backbone and clicked an onscreen button to execute a wiggle followed by a sidechain shake. The section of amino acids shivered like a wet dog, but his score didn't budge.

Meanwhile, in Paris, de Jerphanion rotated his version of the protein and peered at its innards. One solid improvement would make him unbeatable. He grabbed a loop and nudged it into a gap but pushed too hard. The protein exploded into a Christmas tree of alarms and warning lights, amino acids colliding. He undid the move.

Poehlman, too, was trying to squeeze out another point. He spun the protein around and eyed a loop dangling from the end of the largest helix. In pull mode, he guided it along the protein's flank and did another wiggle. The program updated his score. Poehlman banged out a message to his team: "I just pulled ahead by 1 pt."

With just a minute to go, Poehlman's parents came downstairs to find their son pacing back and forth in front of his computer, biting his nails with a mouth full of braces. He knew that de Jerphanion could snipe him at any moment.

Then the clock ran out. Poehlman danced and hooted while his three-dimensional protein structure uploaded to Baker's server.

At 9:40 am an announcement came over the microphone. "Is anyone from the Baker group here?" Three hundred scientists looked around the ballroom. Outside, a cold December wind blustered under a slate-gray sky, but the Hotel Setar Palace, near Cagliari, Sardinia, was warm—and tense. As it did every two years, the CASP community had gathered for the results.

The overall scores had just been posted on the Web, and the whole room was beating up the hotel Wi-Fi to get a look. To determine the tally for each puzzle, CASP judges used a formula that compared the guesses against experimentally measured data. In the no-holds-barred series, in which competitors can use human brains, computers, and anything else to solve the puzzles, Baker's team got the highest score in the hardest category, where the puzzles don't look like any known proteins. Everyone pretty much expected that. But the question remained: Had Foldit players contributed any of the winning puzzles?

Two of Baker's PhD students, James Thompson and Robert Vernon, groggy from a sleepless night and months of relentless CASP work, finally arrived with the answer. After a brief wrestle with a laptop, they loaded their results. Of the 15 Foldit solutions that Baker submitted to CASP, seven had finished in the money—all of them folded by Poehlman and his teammates. One of their solutions even took first place. A band of gamer nonscientists had beaten the best biochemists.

Arguably, though, the real Foldit victory had come a few months earlier. The creators of the game invited the top players to Seattle, seeking their help in making the app better. Popović contacted Poehlman's parents. The kid was shocked. "Aristides didn't believe us until we showed him the email," his mother says. "The silent stare he gave us was priceless." Poehlman and his dad, Louis, flew into Seattle late; they played Foldit for hours in their hotel before going to bed—just like at home.

At UW's computer lab, Popović and his grad students filmed the Poehlmans playing Foldit and interviewed them about their techniques. Louis was exacting in his analysis of how he approached each puzzle, supplying sophisticated justifications for his moves. But when they turned to Cheese and asked him how he knew the way to tweak the proteins—for example, by orienting hydrophobic sidechains toward the protein core—he shrugged and said, "It just looks right."

And that is exactly what Baker was looking for. "When I said early on that I hoped Foldit would help me find protein-folding prodigies, it was hopeful speculation," he says. "It's fantastic to see it come true."

The next CASP is two years away, and Baker doesn't want to lose Foldit's momentum. He and Popović have given the players a challenge: Design a new protein. Baker's lab is developing targets for cancer, AIDS, and Alzheimer's, and the folders' task is to build a small protein drug with the right shape and binding properties. This isn't just an intellectual exercise. Baker says he will synthesize the most promising structures and test them in his lab. These proteins could actually have therapeutic value in the real world, outside the game. And if they do, the Foldit players will share the credit. It might be the first time that a computer game's high score is a Nobel Prize.

John Bohannon (gonzo@aaas.org) is a correspondent for Science based in Vienna, Austria.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

Crippleware! AT&T Hobbles Perfectly Good Smartphone

Remember the Nokia E71? It was one awesome smartphone. Now that a U.S. carrier (AT&T) has decided to offer up the device they've lowered the price but sacrificed some of our fave features.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

EZ Reader Sports Crystal-Clear Text, File-Format Fluency, MP3 Playback

Transferring large files is seamless on the EZ Reader. It's fluent in gazillions of file formats and languages and has MP3 playback, but it's a tad on the sluggish side.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

Gear Gallery: Dead-Simple Storage, Clear-Capturing Camcorders, Bass-Heavy Headphones

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The Replica comes with bare-bones software and strikes a good balance between peace of mind and individual-user control.

After the hard drive is plugged in, the Replica starts mirroring your computer's content. The startup process is short, taking only a couple of minutes, though the actual backup is a time-gobbling endeavor. (It took us about four hours to transfer 130 GB of data). A blue light on the top of the Replica's case blinks continuously while data is being transferred. It's also stealthy for a hard drive, emitting only a quiet whir when working at full speed.

WIRED Windows interface means you don't have to learn a new menu convention to browse your old files. Dumping the data of only one (or all) of your multiple PCs takes less than five mouse clicks. You can set up a password in the toolbar.

TIRED Dock and multi-PC backup capability only provided with 500-GB version. Full hard-drive recovery requires booting from a CD. Windows-only means it fails to bridge the gap in inter-OSial households.

$200, seagate.com

Read our full Seagate Replica 500GB review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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Panasonic's new HDC-TM300 shoots in "Full HD," marketing speak for 1080p — aka 1080 x 1920 resolution with progressive-scan video. Translation? Stunning Blu-ray-level video that should more than lives up to the most critical expectations of prosumers and video enthusiasts.

The highlight of this shooter is the high-def footage. Not only does the phenomenal zoom reel in distant objects, but thanks to the triple sensors and quality lens, it nails far-off details perfectly. The architectural features of distant buildings we shot in downtown San Francisco showed up like we were standing on the window ledge -- not in a park three blocks away.

WIREDReproduces colors like a Crayola factory. Closeups pop with sharp, clear details. Nice performance in low light. Einstein-smart automatic shooting features are like having your own DP built into the camera. 32-GB onboard memory is expandable via SDHC slot. Great zoom tackles action better than Jason Statham.

TIRED Fast pans in bright daylight turns up more artifacts than a Mayan ruin. May require second mortgage.

$1,300, Panasonic.com

Read our full Panasonic HDC-TM300 HD Camcorder review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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In the aftermath (heh heh) of the bass-heavy Beats by Dre Studio headphones, Monster decided to pack the Doctor's finicky sound quality specs into two tiny earbuds. Naturally, audiophiles (including myself) were skeptical. Sure the Beats suffered from shoddy construction and fell apart after a few months of ownership, but they also provided some of the best bass we've ever heard in a set of cans.

Sure enough, the bass response from these things is rich and full. The lowest frequencies rumble with a force akin to the thud of a decent subwoofer. Keep in mind these are not miniaturized 12-inch Kickers designed to blow your eardrums out. But for a device that is essentially a tiny speaker with no auxiliary power, they're superb — especially when compared to the white earcruds doled out by Apple with every iDevice.

WIRED Excellent all-around frequency definition and particularly impressive bass response. Monster’s durable, ingenious anti-tangle cable means jumbled cords are a distant unpleasant memory.

TIRED The bright red cable is slightly ostentatious. Peak bass only hits at earwax shattering volumes.

$150, beatsbydre.com

Read our full Monster Beats By Dre Tour High-Resolution In-Ear Headphones review.

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The UE-11 Pros are packed with four, count 'em, four drivers: There's a double dose of bass, one for the midrange and one chiming the highs. If you're looking for the most precise, separated sound possible, then this is the earphone for you. Throughout the play list I heard clarity and detail in the music I'd never heard before. This rang especially true with classical tunes — it literally feels like sitting in a symphony hall and having every instrument speak directly to you. To get that kind of superior fidelity you'll certainly have to pay the piper. But you'll really love the music while Rome — or your bank account — burns.

WIRED Most clear, separated and detailed sound.

TIRED Try convincing your spouse you need a $1,150 set of headphones.

$1,150, ultimateears.com

Read our full UE-11 Pro review.

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The slate-gray, high-impact polymer body houses three LEDs capable of blasting out a peak 270 lumens for 15 minutes, or a more useful and long-lasting 90 lumens for 60 minutes. Both settings have an emergency low-power 25-lumen mode (equivalent in brightness to most common household D-cell flashlights) for an additional 60 minutes.

WIRED High-power pro flashlight pumps out awesome illumination and recharges ridiculously fast. Flashlight will outlive you. Seriously brilliant, blinding — a boon for flashlight junkies.

TIRED Pricy front-end investment. Comes with a 12-volt car charger.

$170, 511tactical.com

Read our full 5.11 Tactical Light review.

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In our tests, we threw all things digital at this 68-pound slab. And while it does not perform as superbly as its higher-price brethren from Sony, Samsung and Sharp, it still shows off a completely acceptable high-def image and above-average sound.

So where has Westinghouse cut corners? Oh, let's see. How about the borderline embarrassing 1000:1 contrast ratio? In a well-lit room, the screen looks more washed out than a warehouse full of Maytags. And even though the set offers the 120-Hz spec, fast motion still looks a bit blurred.

WIRED High resolution and decent sound at incredible rock-bottom price. Convenience features integrated into menu. Quality remote not found in higher-priced TVs.

TIRED Displays some pixelated speckled noise in darker and mid-hue images. Analog-station reproduction is downright blurry. No worries though — analog TV has flatlined.

$700, Westinghouse.com

Read our full Westinghouse TX-42F450S review.

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It's not quite a netbook, not quite an ultralight PC. Whatever it is, Samsung's NC20 is a dazzling feat of engineering: an extremely usable 12-inch laptop with epic battery life, impressive specs and a downright mystifyingly affordable price tag.

But the NC20 doesn't make depressing tradeoffs to achieve those scores. Battery life is three hours, 40 minutes (22 percent longer than the S10) and weight is just 3.3 pounds, comparable to the Asus Eee PC 1000H. All that and you get a 12.1-inch LCD, too, instead of the usual 10.2-inch netbook display.

WIRED Everything a netbook should be: Offers the best performance available from a computer this portable and inexpensive. Very usable keyboard. Good quality audio. Includes three USB ports, 1.3-megapixel webcam, and SD card slot.

TIRED LCD could be a touch brighter and quality sharper. Chassis design is a bit boring.

$550, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung NC 20 review.

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Pure Digital's Flip has proven that it's possible to build a super-small flash memory camcorder and offer it up for fewer than two hundred bucks. But there are tradeoffs with going small and cheap, like optics and battery life. Canon takes a completely different tack with its newest solid-state cam, the Vixia HF S10, which delivers some fantastically brilliant moving pictures, but at a stiff cost.

Out in the field, auto focus and auto exposure were both very impressive in a wide range of situations, from the intense brightness of the beach to shady and contrasty venues. Every camera suffers indoors, thanks to low light, and everyone complains about it, but the S10 did a credible job with low-light shots and it's clearly better than previous cams of this ilk.

WIRED Improved audio quality. Big, bright lens. Speedy processor. Lots of creative control options. More intuitive menus than previous generation Canon camcorders.

TIRED Loose lens cover noisier than cutlery caught in a garbage disposal. Still images come off looking a bit overexposed.

$1,300, canon.com

Read our full Canon Vixia HF S10 review.

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Dry your eyes, plasma junkies. The untimely demise of Pioneer's Kuro line doesn't mean you'll have to forgo those deliciously deep blacks and theater-perfect colors for long. In fact, even as the last of the Pioneer Kuro Elites make its way into a few lucky U.S. homes, a new lineup of HDTV sets are already poised to seize the plasma king's vacant throne.

Key to this plasma's visual appeal is its integrated THX mode. In addition to blessing various audio components, the home-theater ninjas at THX began bestowing plasma and LCD certification a few years back. Each set is subjected to approximately 400 individual tests, ranging from evaluations in signal processing to luminosity. Basically, the idea behind G10's THX mode is to recreate the precise color gamut filmmakers use during the in-studio post-production process.

WIRED Mind-boggling blacks with tons of detail. THX mode is a godsend for movie buffs. Integrated SD card slots transform your plasma into a giant digital photo frame. Amazing color saturation.

TIRED THX mode is bit dim for brightly lit rooms. Ethernet connectivity is nice for VieraCast, but Wi-Fi would've been better. Three HDMI ports (two in the back, one on the side) don't cut it. More power-hungry than LCD TVs. Where's the PiP?

$1,300, panasonic.com

Read our full Panasonic TC-P42G10 Viera G10 Series Plasma review.

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The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.

But the PogoPlug isn't without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We're still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.

WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.

TIRED No wireless mode ... yet. Poor security — it's a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.

$100, pogoplug.com

Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.

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NatureMill's Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).

Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn't, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn't seem to affect compost production. NatureMill's Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.

WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin' Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it's available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).

TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that's hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D'Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn't fun.

$400, naturemill.com

Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.

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You can get away with a lot if you're beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P'9522 phone. In some ways, it's a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it's dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.

Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone's scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P'9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.

WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.

TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you're likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?

$800, porschedesign.com

Read our full Porsche Design P'9522 Phone review.

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Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we've ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.

Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.

WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.

TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don't want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.

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As the successor to Logitech's G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.

In the end, the G19's main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It's freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you'll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.

WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.

TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.

$200, Logitech.com

Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.

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Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend's house? The Mini 10 is your machine.

But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we've seen. Dell's decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.

WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook's video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.

TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can't deliver HD video without fits and starts.

$470 (as tested), dell.com

Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.

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The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan's engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.

Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don't posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don't fret. The Z's abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.

WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You'll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.

TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don't fool anyone.

$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com

Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.

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Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you're relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.

Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don't really do anything, and you can't customize the dictionary to alter Jill's interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.

WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.

TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it's a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.

$600, plustek.com

Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.

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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.com

Apple's newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it's completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don't have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What's worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you're totally hosed — you'll have to endure the 'buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you're prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we'll admit, it's another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of "actuator lugs" just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don't return it.

WIRED So cozy they're like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn't without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it's huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird's streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can't put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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I shouldn't love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac's hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo's favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he's trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It's actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love 'em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won't have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it's clear that Amazon's biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren't compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more "immersive" sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you're listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting's "Fragile," a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck's "Cold Brains") the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device "dynamically locates and restores audio detail" and creates a more natural sound. We're not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won't work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir's not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone's 100 MB of storage (and it's an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn't a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it's pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn't close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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From the outside, the 1000HE doesn't look much different from other netbooks. But it's the machine's heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It's not lying. This is the fastest netbook we've tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it's one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn't super pricey, but then it's not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it's water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500's body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn't. It's got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn't blare "nerd," "Swatch-wearing poser" or "too lazy to take off my gym watch." Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say "solar" and "atomic" in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that's much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It's the touch-based kitchen computer that won't put you out of house and home. Don't go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top's sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would've been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we've seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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Kodak’s Theatre HD's raison d'être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it's not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you've downloaded Kodak's EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player's USB ports and you're ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

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Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm's mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel's torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won't run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It's cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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It's no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you'll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won't pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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The pocket rocket we've been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It's also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a '40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it's not size that matters to us, it's the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq's gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it's remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours' use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin' hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can't project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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Are you the schlemiel who's always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you're the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you're looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it's dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM's revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn't as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we've seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don't perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

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This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I've ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone's address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone's calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States ... yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull's eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP's first multitouch convertible tablet, it's got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.

TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

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Nero's LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain't no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that's where you're gonna get pissed. The remote can't launch the software, so you'll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can't put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it's a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn't, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

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Source: Wired: Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

Musical Mystery Tour: Messages Embedded in Your Favorite Album

Ever since the mid-'60s, when thousands of bored and/or hopped-up Beatles fans wore out their needles playing Revolver backward, music fans have searched recordings for hidden messages. Often, the findings reflect nothing more than enhanced imaginations: If you really hear Robert Plant pledging his devotion to Satan on "Stairway to Heaven," you may need to cut down on the hot-knifing. But plenty of real missives are embedded in your favorite albums and videos. Can you dig 'em?

1967   The 3-D lenticular album art on the Rolling Stones' Their Satanic Majesties Request contains tucked-away images of the Beatles.

1970   Vinyl pressings of Led Zeppelin III are discreetly inscribed with quotes from British occultist and "sex magick" hedonist Aleister Crowley.

1971   The liner notes on Violet Sedan Chair's album Seven Suns list a missing 11th song, and the penultimate track is rumored to produce hallucinatory effects when played on multiple turntables.

1984   On Purple Rain's "Darling Nikki," Prince closes with gibberish that, when played backward, sounds like "Hello, how are you? I'm fine, 'cause I know that the Lord is coming soon."

1991   Nirvana buries an unlisted song, "Endless, Nameless," 13 minutes after the finale of Nevermind; hidden tracks soon become a staple of '90s alt-rock.

2000   A booklet concealed under the CD tray of Radiohead's Kid A contains images of gun-toting teddy bears, fanged monsters, and a demonic-looking Tony Blair.

2000   What appears to be an airport sign (J33-3) on the cover of U2's All That You Can't Leave Behind is a biblical reference to Jeremiah 33:3.

2005   Beck pays homage to Mad magazine's Al Jaffee by sneaking his name onto a TV screen in the "Girl" video.

2006   Tupac Shakur fans claim to hear the message "Yes, you'll see me, I'll be back" back-masked on the posthumous release Pac's Life.

2008   Coldplay includes two "hidden" tracks on Viva la Vida—but then reveals the names of the songs online, ruining the surprise.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

Gear Gallery: Dead-Simple Storage, Clear-Capturing Camcorders, Bass-Heavy Headphones

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The Replica comes with bare-bones software and strikes a good balance between peace of mind and individual-user control.

After the hard drive is plugged in, the Replica starts mirroring your computer's content. The startup process is short, taking only a couple of minutes, though the actual backup is a time-gobbling endeavor. (It took us about four hours to transfer 130 GB of data). A blue light on the top of the Replica's case blinks continuously while data is being transferred. It's also stealthy for a hard drive, emitting only a quiet whir when working at full speed.

WIRED Windows interface means you don't have to learn a new menu convention to browse your old files. Dumping the data of only one (or all) of your multiple PCs takes less than five mouse clicks. You can set up a password in the toolbar.

TIRED Dock and multi-PC backup capability only provided with 500-GB version. Full hard-drive recovery requires booting from a CD. Windows-only means it fails to bridge the gap in inter-OSial households.

$200, seagate.com

Read our full Seagate Replica 500GB review.

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Panasonic's new HDC-TM300 shoots in "Full HD," marketing speak for 1080p — aka 1080 x 1920 resolution with progressive-scan video. Translation? Stunning Blu-ray-level video that should more than lives up to the most critical expectations of prosumers and video enthusiasts.

The highlight of this shooter is the high-def footage. Not only does the phenomenal zoom reel in distant objects, but thanks to the triple sensors and quality lens, it nails far-off details perfectly. The architectural features of distant buildings we shot in downtown San Francisco showed up like we were standing on the window ledge -- not in a park three blocks away.

WIREDReproduces colors like a Crayola factory. Closeups pop with sharp, clear details. Nice performance in low light. Einstein-smart automatic shooting features are like having your own DP built into the camera. 32-GB onboard memory is expandable via SDHC slot. Great zoom tackles action better than Jason Statham.

TIRED Fast pans in bright daylight turns up more artifacts than a Mayan ruin. May require second mortgage.

$1,300, Panasonic.com

Read our full Panasonic HDC-TM300 HD Camcorder review.

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In the aftermath (heh heh) of the bass-heavy Beats by Dre Studio headphones, Monster decided to pack the Doctor's finicky sound quality specs into two tiny earbuds. Naturally, audiophiles (including myself) were skeptical. Sure the Beats suffered from shoddy construction and fell apart after a few months of ownership, but they also provided some of the best bass we've ever heard in a set of cans.

Sure enough, the bass response from these things is rich and full. The lowest frequencies rumble with a force akin to the thud of a decent subwoofer. Keep in mind these are not miniaturized 12-inch Kickers designed to blow your eardrums out. But for a device that is essentially a tiny speaker with no auxiliary power, they're superb — especially when compared to the white earcruds doled out by Apple with every iDevice.

WIRED Excellent all-around frequency definition and particularly impressive bass response. Monster’s durable, ingenious anti-tangle cable means jumbled cords are a distant unpleasant memory.

TIRED The bright red cable is slightly ostentatious. Peak bass only hits at earwax shattering volumes.

$150, beatsbydre.com

Read our full Monster Beats By Dre Tour High-Resolution In-Ear Headphones review.

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The UE-11 Pros are packed with four, count 'em, four drivers: There's a double dose of bass, one for the midrange and one chiming the highs. If you're looking for the most precise, separated sound possible, then this is the earphone for you. Throughout the play list I heard clarity and detail in the music I'd never heard before. This rang especially true with classical tunes — it literally feels like sitting in a symphony hall and having every instrument speak directly to you. To get that kind of superior fidelity you'll certainly have to pay the piper. But you'll really love the music while Rome — or your bank account — burns.

WIRED Most clear, separated and detailed sound.

TIRED Try convincing your spouse you need a $1,150 set of headphones.

$1,150, ultimateears.com

Read our full UE-11 Pro review.

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The slate-gray, high-impact polymer body houses three LEDs capable of blasting out a peak 270 lumens for 15 minutes, or a more useful and long-lasting 90 lumens for 60 minutes. Both settings have an emergency low-power 25-lumen mode (equivalent in brightness to most common household D-cell flashlights) for an additional 60 minutes.

WIRED High-power pro flashlight pumps out awesome illumination and recharges ridiculously fast. Flashlight will outlive you. Seriously brilliant, blinding — a boon for flashlight junkies.

TIRED Pricy front-end investment. Comes with a 12-volt car charger.

$170, 511tactical.com

Read our full 5.11 Tactical Light review.

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In our tests, we threw all things digital at this 68-pound slab. And while it does not perform as superbly as its higher-price brethren from Sony, Samsung and Sharp, it still shows off a completely acceptable high-def image and above-average sound.

So where has Westinghouse cut corners? Oh, let's see. How about the borderline embarrassing 1000:1 contrast ratio? In a well-lit room, the screen looks more washed out than a warehouse full of Maytags. And even though the set offers the 120-Hz spec, fast motion still looks a bit blurred.

WIRED High resolution and decent sound at incredible rock-bottom price. Convenience features integrated into menu. Quality remote not found in higher-priced TVs.

TIRED Displays some pixelated speckled noise in darker and mid-hue images. Analog-station reproduction is downright blurry. No worries though — analog TV has flatlined.

$700, Westinghouse.com

Read our full Westinghouse TX-42F450S review.

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It's not quite a netbook, not quite an ultralight PC. Whatever it is, Samsung's NC20 is a dazzling feat of engineering: an extremely usable 12-inch laptop with epic battery life, impressive specs and a downright mystifyingly affordable price tag.

But the NC20 doesn't make depressing tradeoffs to achieve those scores. Battery life is three hours, 40 minutes (22 percent longer than the S10) and weight is just 3.3 pounds, comparable to the Asus Eee PC 1000H. All that and you get a 12.1-inch LCD, too, instead of the usual 10.2-inch netbook display.

WIRED Everything a netbook should be: Offers the best performance available from a computer this portable and inexpensive. Very usable keyboard. Good quality audio. Includes three USB ports, 1.3-megapixel webcam, and SD card slot.

TIRED LCD could be a touch brighter and quality sharper. Chassis design is a bit boring.

$550, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung NC 20 review.

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Pure Digital's Flip has proven that it's possible to build a super-small flash memory camcorder and offer it up for fewer than two hundred bucks. But there are tradeoffs with going small and cheap, like optics and battery life. Canon takes a completely different tack with its newest solid-state cam, the Vixia HF S10, which delivers some fantastically brilliant moving pictures, but at a stiff cost.

Out in the field, auto focus and auto exposure were both very impressive in a wide range of situations, from the intense brightness of the beach to shady and contrasty venues. Every camera suffers indoors, thanks to low light, and everyone complains about it, but the S10 did a credible job with low-light shots and it's clearly better than previous cams of this ilk.

WIRED Improved audio quality. Big, bright lens. Speedy processor. Lots of creative control options. More intuitive menus than previous generation Canon camcorders.

TIRED Loose lens cover noisier than cutlery caught in a garbage disposal. Still images come off looking a bit overexposed.

$1,300, canon.com

Read our full Canon Vixia HF S10 review.

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Dry your eyes, plasma junkies. The untimely demise of Pioneer's Kuro line doesn't mean you'll have to forgo those deliciously deep blacks and theater-perfect colors for long. In fact, even as the last of the Pioneer Kuro Elites make its way into a few lucky U.S. homes, a new lineup of HDTV sets are already poised to seize the plasma king's vacant throne.

Key to this plasma's visual appeal is its integrated THX mode. In addition to blessing various audio components, the home-theater ninjas at THX began bestowing plasma and LCD certification a few years back. Each set is subjected to approximately 400 individual tests, ranging from evaluations in signal processing to luminosity. Basically, the idea behind G10's THX mode is to recreate the precise color gamut filmmakers use during the in-studio post-production process.

WIRED Mind-boggling blacks with tons of detail. THX mode is a godsend for movie buffs. Integrated SD card slots transform your plasma into a giant digital photo frame. Amazing color saturation.

TIRED THX mode is bit dim for brightly lit rooms. Ethernet connectivity is nice for VieraCast, but Wi-Fi would've been better. Three HDMI ports (two in the back, one on the side) don't cut it. More power-hungry than LCD TVs. Where's the PiP?

$1,300, panasonic.com

Read our full Panasonic TC-P42G10 Viera G10 Series Plasma review.

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The PogoPlug is a device, which looks like a supersized AC adapter, plugs into almost any external hard drive (even a USB stick) and then pumps that content onto the web, giving you access anywhere in the world you can get an internet signal — including your iPhone.

But the PogoPlug isn't without the occasional snafu and annoyances. Only image files are available for preview. PDF, Word documents or even HTML files have to be downloaded before viewing. Worse yet, when we unhooked the device, it caused our PC to crash twice in a row. We're still not entirely sure if this was due to a glitch in the PogoPlug or in Windows.

WIRED Easy to use. Simple setup. Great utility: I must be able to access my collection of LOLcat photos from anywhere. The iPhone app is solid software.

TIRED No wireless mode ... yet. Poor security — it's a wise idea to keep those tax returns or bank documents off the PogoPlug. Computer crashes are deeply flummoxing. The iPhone is currently the only mobile device that supports remote access.

$100, pogoplug.com

Read our full Cloud Engines PogoPlug review.

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NatureMill's Pro edition is an indoor composter we can pretty much dig. Using minimal electricity, a small motor turns a heavy-duty mixing bar, heats the mixing chamber (no sunlight needed) and powers an air pump that works with a carbon air filter to help reduce smell (each filter lasts four to five years).

Just add starter dirt, drop in some sawdust pellets to combat odors and dump your food scraps in. NatureMill recommends that you cut organic material into 4-inch bits before plopping it in. We didn't, but aside from the motor making some gnarly noises, it didn't seem to affect compost production. NatureMill's Pro version also features some automatic activation. We were able to leave ours sitting for weeks without pushing the button even once; it mixed and heated itself just fine.

WIRED Stainless steel mixing bar made short work of uncut banana peels. Relatively small and exceptionally lightweight = easy to stash and transport. Foot pedal eliminates lid touching. Mighty Morphin' Power Saver: only draws 5 kwh a month (roughly 50 cents on an average electric bill). Not as much of an eyesore as it could be and it's available in a range of colors (including, you guess it, green).

TIRED Little to no stench — until top opens (that's hard to remedy, and burger/fish/salad remnants smell worse than a dead wildebeest doused in Eau D'Bile). Polypropylene housing is light, but may not last forever. Disposable carbon filters reduce smell, but also cut down on the green factor. Regular maintenance (scraping the mix chamber walls) isn't fun.

$400, naturemill.com

Read our full Nature Mill Indoor Composter — Pro Edition review.

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You can get away with a lot if you're beautiful. Such is the case with the new Porsche Design P'9522 phone. In some ways, it's a wonderful and capable cellphone, but in most others, it's dumber than the gorgeous block of aluminum it was machined from.

Someone forgot to include e-mail — an absence that had us trying to mar the Porsche phone's scratchproof screen with claws of rage. Unfortunately, that screen is tough, so the P'9522 will be lauded and drooled over — despite our many gripes with it.

WIRED Gorgeous. Touchscreen interface is easy to understand, if limited and frustrating. Preloaded ringtones include the roaring engines of the 911 GT3 and Turbo. Its 5-megapixel camera has autofocus and captures clean, vivid images. LED flash doubles as a flashlight. Unlocking the phone with its fingerprint scanner is very MI5.

TIRED Fingerprint scanner is also very POS: Who thought it would be a good idea to use fingerprints to access a device you're likely holding in one hand while juggling multiple other tasks? Preloaded ringtones include bad German techno. Touchscreen is deeply frustrating. Seriously — no e-mail?

$800, porschedesign.com

Read our full Porsche Design P'9522 Phone review.

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Weighing just 140 grams, the handset offers some of the best optics we've ever found crammed into a cell phone: sharp, noiseless pics (3,264 × 2,448 pixels) and decent image stabilizer punctuate video capture that puts full-figured handicams from 2008 to shame. You can even shoot VGA at 30 fps or QVGA at a whopping 120 fps (yes, 120!), including slow motion footage in 1/4 and 1/8 speeds.

Amazing, sure, but not a picture perfect phone. The i8510 functions almost exactly like a standard point-and-shoot, except for the zoom button, which is placed inexplicably, and awkwardly at the bottom of the device.

WIRED Beaucoup codecs, including — wait for it — DivX! 2.8-inch screen excellent for playback. Intuitive photo/video editing suite. Equally intuitive navigation. Automatic lens cover. MicroSD slot good for 16 GB (enough for aspiring Scorseses to go epic). All the usual smartphone suspects: 3G, Wi-Fi, USB, Bluetooth, accelerometer, GPS. Decent earbuds with ample cord. 3.5mm audio jack. Most excellent: TV-out capability.

TIRED Side-mounted headphone jack makes phone harder to pocket. Optical control pad is a tad sensitive (between us and you — we don't want to hurt its feelings). Most bogus: Metal shell retains enough scratches to fill a DJ Shadow album. A little on the clunky side. Most bogus: Flash needs to be brighter.

$500, samsung.com

Read our full Samsung i8510 INNOV8 review.

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As the successor to Logitech's G11 and G15, this huge hunk of plastic comes with gaming hardwired in its DNA. Like its relatives, it has a blocky aesthetic that harkens to the days of the Model M. There are, however, a handful of very modern flourishes that make this latest G-board a distinctly modern marvel.

In the end, the G19's main drawback is the same one that has plagued fancy keyboards since the days of yore: It's freaking huge. That swiveling LCD? It actually requires a tiny onboard Linux computer to run, which in turn requires its own power source. Should you choose to make use of the two self-powered USB ports, you'll potentially have more wires shooting out of this thing than your computer.

WIRED More customizable than a box of Legos. Two self-powered USB ports. Dedicated D-pad and menu keys let you control LCD directly from the keyboard. Convenient cable management lanes carved into bottom of unit lessens clutter … slightly. Choose-your-own-color adventure with adjustable backlighting. Keys are pleasantly clicky and responsive.

TIRED Limited desktop space? This is not your keyboard. Price tag to match gargantuan footprint. Requires power brick to run. After its novelty wears off, built-in LCD becomes more of a distraction than a useful tool.

$200, Logitech.com

Read our full Logitech G19 Keyboard review.

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Want to catch the last episode of Battlestar Galactica while hanging out in the local java joint? Going to download a season of The Simpsons for viewing on the plane? Giving an impromptu screening of your vacation photos at a friend's house? The Mini 10 is your machine.

But there are infuriating shortcomings to the Mini 10. The trackpad is one of the worst we've seen. Dell's decision to integrate the buttons underneath the pad itself makes using it both unpredictable and challenging. When you click on a button, the cursor may hit the target, wiggle off a centimeter or two, or teleport off into a remote corner of your screen. While it got easier to use after a week of practice, our advice is to invest in a cheap travel mouse.

WIRED Bright, responsive screen. Integrated 1.3-megapixel webcam. Not gunked up with crapware. HDMI-out port shows charming, if unwarranted, optimism about the netbook's video capabilities. Light weight: Just 2.6 pounds.

TIRED Infuriating trackpad with integrated buttons hidden underneath. Excessively glossy screen produces distracting glare. Windows XP is starting to look pretty tired. What, no solid-state option? Despite the HDMI port, the netbook can't deliver HD video without fits and starts.

$470 (as tested), dell.com

Read our full Dell Mini 10 Netbook review.

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The new 370Z upgrades come in the form of a sexy body with a hood, hatch and doors of lightweight aluminum and a chassis significantly stiffer to reduce performance-robbing flex. To make up for the beefier chassis, Nissan's engineers pared more than 225 pounds from the rest of the car — even the audio system lost 3.5 pounds — and the result is a car that weighs 88 pounds less than the previous 350Z.

Every model gets the same 332-horsepower V6, an engine that makes this Z the quickest yet with a zero-to-60 time of 4.6 seconds. That kind of performance, however, is contingent on your skills as a driver. If you don't posses Lewis Hamilton levels of talent don't fret. The Z's abundant power and excellent handling will let you think you do.

WIRED Insanely easy to drive, insanely quickly. You'll run out of nerve before you run out of grip. Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a gramophone.

TIRED Rev-matching transmission makes heel-toe shifting more obsolete than a vinyl record. Tympani-like tire roar, piccolo-like exhaust note. Hummer-sized blind spots make lane changes a gun-it-and-go-for-it leap of faith. Fake brushed-aluminum interior bits don't fool anyone.

$33,970 (as tested), nissanusa.com

Read our full Nissan 2009 370Z review.

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Using the BookReader is simple: Just plunk a novel on the platen, punch a button and you're relaxing to the dulcet sounds of Jill, a computerized voice with a voracious appetite for literature. All the menus read themselves off when you mouse over them, and they have keyboard shortcuts, which is useful if you have reduced vision. Jill is pretty good at recognizing words. We tried out several books, including one heavy with medical jargon, and she held her own with just a few exceptions.

Useful as it is, we could not help noticing that the BookReader seems to be slightly undercooked. A few of the buttons don't really do anything, and you can't customize the dictionary to alter Jill's interpretation of commonly used, but horribly flubbed words, acronyms or numbers. The unit seems to be terribly overpriced as well. Plustek wants $600 for the BookReader, despite the fact that the OpticBook only costs $250 — and has its own text-to-speech function.

WIRED Reads books to you at the push of a button. Platen glass goes right to the edge to accommodate books without strain. Turns text into MP3s for portability. Includes several accessibility features to help the visually impaired.

TIRED The included software lacks polish and seems rushed. Squat, ugly looks make it seem at home in a cubicle farm. The reader voice may not screw up often, but when it does, it's a doozy. High price nears gouging territory.

$600, plustek.com

Read our full Plustek BookReader V100 review.

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: Photo: Dylan Tweeny/Wired.com

Apple's newest Shuffle (almost 50 percent smaller than previous Shuffles) could easily be mistaken for a stick of Trident, features no buttons, and pimps voice-identification technology. But even given its apparent readily consumable stature, there are a few features on the Shuffle that are a bit tough to swallow.

The biggest gripe on the 4-GB Shuffle we tested is definitely the control set. First off, it's completely counterintuitive; Apple says you can easily use it without looking. We still don't have the hang of it after a few days of testing. What's worse, if you have a decent set of earbuds (say, a pair of Shures or Ultimate Ears) you're totally hosed — you'll have to endure the 'buds that come with the Shuffle or pick up specially made third-party headphones. Our recommendation? Pick up a new Shuffle only if you're prepared to deal with proprietary headphones and ambiguous controls.

WIRED Thumb-drive size. Can double as a tie clip. Battery life lasts for 12 freaking hours. Short USB sync cord is sexy. Yes, we'll admit, it's another beautifully designed piece of hardware from Apple. Battery bonked out after 11 constant hours of blasting Thunderstruck on loop.

TIRED Proprietary headphones required. Control set awkward to use, hard to get used to. So small, it nearly gets lost in the packaging it comes in.

$80, apple.com

Read our full Apple iPod Shuffle 3rd Gen review.

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Rather than foam, gel or compressed-air cushioning, the soles on Newtons have a series of "actuator lugs" just below the ball of the foot. The lugs are designed to help encourage you to land on your forefoot, to protect that part of the foot, and (best yet) to propel you forward. When you land, the lugs push into hollow chambers in the midsole. This cushions your landing, and helps make it comfy to land midsole or forefoot rather than on the heel as you might be accustomed. As your foot moves forward, these lugs then essentially lever out, and as you lift your foot, they return the energy by pushing up and out in the same direction as your stride. Newton claims this makes them more efficient than traditional foam or gel soles that simply absorb energy but don't return it.

WIRED So cozy they're like a Snuggie for your feet. Actuator lugs get you off your heels better than a La-Z-Boy. Lightweight at 10.2 ounces. Designed for all stride types. Stomps cold weather like global warming, and keeps out the drizzle for shizzle.

TIRED Not waterproof. Worse on single-track trails than a skateboard. $175??? OMG, for that much money I could just pay somebody to run for me.

$175, newtonrunning.com

Read our full Newton All Weather Trainer review.

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The Firebird features a hybrid design — using 2.5-inch hard drives (two 320-GB models) and dual graphics cards originally designed for laptops — but powers it all with a desktop CPU and desktop-sized DIMMs. As with a laptop, wireless is built in, but the power supply is not: To save on wattage, HP breaks out the (enormous) power adapter instead of integrating it into the box.

As cool as the Firebird is on the whole, it isn't without some foibles. The inclusion of an ExpressCard slot is on the baffling-to-useless side, and the external power supply (it's huge) is more annoying to deal with than it sounds. But our biggest gripe is that the Firebird's streamlined shell means it includes no front-mounted ports at all, not even a single USB slot for your thumb drive. Seriously HP, even the Mac Pro finds room for that.

WIRED Amazingly quiet and conscientious in its power consumption. Outstanding design; belongs on top of the desk, not beneath it. Solid all-around performance at a fair price.

TIRED No front USB port. Curvy design means you can't put anything on top of the case. Functionally locked down, with no real upgrade path.

$2,100 (as tested), hp.com

Read our full HP Firebird 803 review.

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I shouldn't love this truck. I should hate it. I purposely do not own a car, and this all-black behemoth represents everything I hate about SUV culture: conspicuous consumption, insensitivity to our rapidly shrinking world and crowded cities, middle finger raised at global warming.

You could slap a cold fusion generator under Big Poppa Cadillac's hood and the first two issues would still apply, but I was kind of wrong about that last one. Have you ever seen Godzilla vs. Megalon? Where Godzilla fights on behalf of the people of Japan against a giant rhinoceros/cockroach? Sure, Tokyo's favorite monster still smashes a bunch of buildings and steps on some people, but he's trying to be good. Same goes for this Hybrid Chromedaddy.

WIRED Decent pickup for a motorized bomb shelter. Combined ABS and regenerative braking system do a terrific job of hauling the beast down from speed. Trick motorized step makes it easy for shorties to climb into your rolling condo.

TIRED Thing has a car phone. No, not Bluetooth, but an actual phone built into infotainment system. (It's actually just Onstar, but there was no other option for hands-free calling.) What is this, 1989? Cadillac — God love 'em — uses the fact that this is a hybrid as an excuse to bling up the truck even more: Hybrid badges are plastered on every hard surface, on the sides of the door, even the windshield. —Joe Brown

$74,085 (as tested), Cadillac.com

Read our full Cadillac Escalade Hybrid review.

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The Kindle 2 is zippier, with pages turning 20 percent faster (yes, you can tell the difference). It has more memory (2 gigabytes, enough for storing more than 1,500 books onboard). And it flaunts a more powerful built-in battery: Amazon claims that the Kindle lasts four to five days with the wireless on (we got 4.5 days in our first test) and up to two weeks with it off. After a week of limited wireless, my meter is around 50 percent. Amazon also says that after 500 charges, it will hold 80 percent of its original juice. That means that most users won't have to replace the battery (a $60 procedure) for about a decade or so.

Looking over the horizon, it's clear that Amazon's biggest competitor in selling digital books will be Google, whose recent agreement with publishers and authors will make it the virtually exclusive seller for millions of books in copyright but not in print. But right now at least, the Google and Amazon formats aren't compatible: I was unsuccessful in getting a PDF of a public-domain book downloaded from Google to appear in readable form on my Kindle.

WIRED The best e-reading system on the market. Welcome improvements to aesthetics, more functional industrial design, better graphics and longer battery life. Sleeker than the original: One-third of an inch thick and 10 ounces.

TIRED Quite expensive. Book content shackled with DRM. Interface is improved, sure, but it could be even better.

$360, amazon.com

Read our full Amazon.com Kindle 2 review.

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The iWOW adapter from SRS Labs promises to coax more "immersive" sound from your iPod, and it actually delivers — provided you're listening to the right kind of music. Setup is easy: Snap on the slick little 1-inch extension, plug in some spendy headphones, press a button, and you do indeed get a fuller sound with more depth — especially if you enjoy songs like Sting's "Fragile," a track hand-picked by SRS to highlight the effect.

But when iWOW was applied to songs that were heavy on low-end thump or had multilayered sound (Exhibit A: Beck's "Cold Brains") the iWOW performed more like iMeh. At top volume, bass beats splintered, while at lower volumes tracks sounded muddled and crowded. SRS claims the device "dynamically locates and restores audio detail" and creates a more natural sound. We're not buying it — most of the audio we threw at the iWOW was punctuated with a subtle hiss and fuzzy bass.

WIRED Relatively small adapter. Snaps easily onto your iPod and lends some oomph to certain tunes.

TIRED The effect is nearly lost when using ear buds, the device won't work with older generation iPods, and music that already has a fair share of bass sounds muffled.

$70, srslabs.com

Read our full SRS Labs iWOW Adapter for iPod review.

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Leaps ahead of other cam phones, the Memoir's not limited to the 8 megapixels it captures. In shooting mode, the touchscreen has shutterbug controls — zoom, brightness, timer and flash — that float around the image. And just hitting the shutter will take you into camera mode. The Memoir includes a 1-GB microSD to augment the phone's 100 MB of storage (and it's an easy-access slot, rather than hidden under the battery).

But for all its convenience, the Memoir simply isn't a competitor for even the lowliest of dedicated cameras. First off, it's pokey: slow to focus, slow to snap and very touchy when it comes to movement. And though it touts a 16x digital zoom, it has no optical-zooming option.

WIRED Cool touchscreen and accelerometer helps you shoot or view pictures. Compact, pocket-friendly shape, even for hipsters in painted-on jeans.

TIRED Vampiric light sensitivity makes for washed-out shots. Slow to focus, shoot and recover. E-mail functions are even slower. The screen is hard to see in sunlight. Lens cover doesn't close all the time, so the lens can get dusty.

$300 (with 2-year contract), t-mobile.com

Read our full Samsung Memoir.

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From the outside, the 1000HE doesn't look much different from other netbooks. But it's the machine's heart — the brand new 1.66-GHz Atom N280 processor — that makes it faster, stronger, smarter than its opponents.

Intel claims the silicon slab boosts computing power across the board, especially HD video playback — something that has been woefully horrid in past machines using Atom processors. It's not lying. This is the fastest netbook we've tested (by about 7 percent) in our benchmarks. And HD video playback was noticeably smoother and devoid of chop.

WIRED The first netbook to feature the new Atom N280 chip. MMC and SD media reader slots. Attractive, pearly finish. Decent 1.3-megapixel webcam.

TIRED At 3.1 pounds, it's one of the heaviest puppies in the netbook litter. Lame keyboard.

$400 as tested, asus.com

Read our full Asus Eee PC 1000HE review.

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The R50 is remarkably easy to set up and use. As you program each component into the remote using the setup wizard, you test a few controls to make sure it has the right code. The remote instantly recognized all our components, and it took us about 10 minutes to get the AV rig up and running. As part of the setup, you name each component, which then appears as an icon on the screen: in my case, a Sony HDTV, Yamaha amp/receiver, Squeezebox, Oppo DVD player and Soundmatters speaker.

WIRED Cool, reddish backlight perfect for nighttime navigation. No computer or web connection needed for operation. No charging cradle required.

TIRED No user manual means gizmo novices might get lost in setup. $150 price point isn't super pricey, but then it's not the cheapest universal remote out there.

$150, universalremote.com

Read our full Universal Remote Digital R50 review.

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Like other watches in the 25-year-old G-Shock line, the MTG-1500 is forged with Mr. T levels of toughness: It can easily survive being banged clumsily against tabletops or whacked against a surfboard in a wipeout. And it's water-resistant to 200 meters. But unlike most other G-Shock watches, which are primarily plastic, the MTG-1500's body and band are stainless steel, with a few tasteful black plastic accents.

We half expected to find the MTG-1500 lacking in minor features. Surprisingly, it didn't. It's got a stopwatch mode, dual time-zone support, five different alarms and a countdown timer. Free abundant sunlight or bright artificial light recharges the battery as you wear the watch. Once fully charged, the battery should be able to power the watch for 6 months without additional light.

WIRED Handsome, two-toned steel-and-black styling doesn't blare "nerd," "Swatch-wearing poser" or "too lazy to take off my gym watch." Self-syncs with superaccurate official time stations. Gives you an excuse to say "solar" and "atomic" in the same sentence.

TIRED Digital display too small and can be obscured by watch hands. LED provides uneven illumination in the dark. $500 can buy a timepiece that's much fancier, albeit not atomic.

$500, casio.com

Read our full Casio G-Shock MTG-1500 review.

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The skinny on this countertop unit is pretty straightforward: It's the touch-based kitchen computer that won't put you out of house and home. Don't go rushing out to cash in that 401(k), though — despite a recession-friendly price, the Eee Top still feels a little light in the loafers.

The glossy white, semi-opaque keyboard and mouse look stylish out of the box, but after extended handling their light, plastic-y build became annoying. The slim chassis sat solid on our countertop, while the bright, 15.6-inch screen and the integrated speaker bar make up the majority of the Top's sleek profile. Rounding out the device are six USB ports, memory card reader, 1.3-MP web cam and integrated Wi-Fi. We were pretty bummed at the lack of an optical drive, though.

WIRED An all-in-one for the Top Ramen set. Quick, responsive touch interface. Compact design has integrated storage for both keyboard and stylus. Integrated 802.11n and gigabit ethernet ensure throughput thrashings. One-touch shutoff button for hiding porn er, convenience. Runs whisper-quiet.

TIRED Underpowered for heavy web video. A wired keyboard and mouse — on an all-in-one?!? Heats up after extended poke/prod sessions. Anemic 160-GB hard drive. Even a cheapy, noisy optical drive would've been nice. No battery means no mobile computing.

$600 (as tested), asus.com

Read our full Asus ET1602 Eee Top review.

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This camera is about the size and shape of a pack of chewing gum, and weighs just 0.68 ounces. It records videos at 352 x 288 pixels, encoding them in the 3-GP format used by many cellphones (the videos can be played on your computer using most media-player software, including QuickTime and RealPlayer).

But the MovieStick is oozing with design flaws. The pinhole-sized lens is located on the long side of the device, rather than the short end, limiting your ability to go truly undercover. Add to that a confusing series of lights that supposedly indicate when the cam is charging, turned on or recording, and you end up with more than one inadvertent video of the floor.

WIRED The smallest video camera we've seen yet. Simple to set up and use. Makes you look like a double agent.

TIRED Location of camera lens makes it hard to go covert. No internal storage or memory card included. Recorded video is shakier and blurrier than outtakes from The Blair Witch Project.

$120, swannsecurity.com

Read our full Swann Micro-VideoCam Recorder review.

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Kodak’s Theatre HD's raison d'être is straightforward: to shuttle the contents of your PC directly to your television using ethernet or Wi-Fi. Pictures, videos, podcasts, music or any other digital content that may be living on your hard drive (as long as it's not squelched by some DRM straightjacket) can be whisked away by this tiny little box to your television with little to no fuss.

What really sets the Theatre HD Player apart from the rest of the field is how immaculately it performs its tasks. Once you've downloaded Kodak's EasyShare display software, everything is pretty much taken care of. Have a hard drive filled with extra content? No problem. Simply hook it up to one of the player's USB ports and you're ready to go.

WIRED Intuitive UI coupled with a handy RF remote makes setup and playback of multimedia a Zen-like experience. Wealth of connectivity options: component, HDMI, optical or RCA audio, dual USB ports. Transforms crappy YouTube video into semi-watchable content.

TIRED Requires Kodak EasyShare software to get the streaming party started. No Mac compatibility (for now). Pricey, especially for a device without a hard drive. Needs more internet content.

$300, Kodak

Read our full Kodak Theatre HD Player review.

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Skidding in at 53 pounds (on the lighter side for this category), Ohm's mountain bike-inspired geometry and its nine-level power-assist and regeneration system make it a smart, nimble and efficient two-wheeler.

On pavement and trail the BionX power plant, mounted on the rear hub, employs a unique sensor technology that is constantly adjusting the level of assistance it gives you based on the terrain. Encountering some mushy road? More power is delivered to the gears. Gliding down paved asphalt? The juice is dialed back. And if your thighs are flushed with lactic acid on a sheer hill, a flick of the trusty thumb throttle cracks the whip and the motor totally takes over, no pedaling required. But for all this innovation and comfort, you will, however, have to part with a spouse-enraging $3,450. Is it worth it? Well, it is a ton of fun.

WIRED Excellent Shimano parts mix with disc brakes and RockShox suspension fork. Lockable battery compartment hides space for mobile phone, wallet, media player and your other little stuff. Regeneration mode gives extra on-bike battery life. Comfortable suspension seat post. Four- to six-hour charge time.

TIRED Throttle position needs to be improved for optimal bike handling. Price steeper than any hill the bike can handle.

$3450, Ohm Cycles

Read our full Ohm Cycles XS700 review.

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For about $300 more than the average netbook, the UC7807u offers a scintillating array of grownup specs. Intel 2.0-GHz Core 2 Duo CPU? Check. 250-GB hard drive? Yep. 3 GB of memory, a glossy 13.3-inch display, a slot-loading optical drive and ports galore (three USB and an HDMI)? You betcha! Best of all, with its fetching brushed aluminum chassis, no one will mistake this for a budget notebook.

Unfortunately, the UC7807u also has all the telltale signs of some obvious corner cutting. Forget about gaming. Due to Intel's torpid integrated GMA 4500MHD graphics card, even moderately intensive titles won't run properly. But our main beef with the UC7807u is the feeble 6-cell battery which clocked in at a disappointing 3 hours, 25 minutes — a full hour shorter than most other notebooks in this category.

WIRED Recession-worthy price. Built like a tank. Slick, touch-sensitive volume and multimedia controls.

TIRED Tips the scales for a notebook in this category. Battery drains faster than an ATM at a strip club. Epic fail on the tiny circular touchpad. It's cramped and serves no discernable purpose. Onboard speakers spit out tinny, distorted sound. HDMI, but no Blu-ray?

$800 as tested, Gateway

Read our full Gateway UC7807u review.

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It's no wonder this watch ran away with my heart; for the competitive runner or multisport athlete seeking a personal best in 2009, the Polar RS800CX is the required training device. Because of incredibly robust desktop software, tracking of obscure performance metrics, and a wide variety of add-on sensors, the RS800CX can help you measure, analyze and improve nearly every aspect of your training program.

WIRED Offers better heart-rate monitoring than your average hospital. Incredibly customizable from in-watch display, to software interface, to training programs. GPS and barometric altimeter combined with location tracking mean you'll never wonder where you wandered. Extensible pods make watch more sport-versatile than Lance Armstrong.

TIRED Even beer goggles won't pretty up this ugly watch face. May need to hire a coach anyway — just to teach you how to use the PC-only desktop software.

$500, Polar

Read our full Polar RS800CX MULTI review.

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The pocket rocket we've been packing in our pants recently (full name: Optoma DLP EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector) is one of the first mini projectors to hit the market. It's also one of the best, even though a number of flaws spill from the tiny device.

Styled like a '40s-era Zippo, the piano-black portable feels more natural in the hand than a lot of cellphones. But it's not size that matters to us, it's the video components! The projector is comprised of a combo-rig LED lamp and a DLP chip (courtesy of Texas Instruments) that sets the resolution at 480 x 320 pixels with a range output of 9 lumens. Yes, we know this is low compared to full-bodied projectors like Benq's gargantuan MP512 ST 2500-lumen projector but for something this small, it's remarkable.

WIRED Perfect projector for parties. Rectangular lens creates wide image that keeps the image from stretching. Fine picture quality, 8-96 inches. Startup time > 4 seconds. Dead-sexy hardware.

TIRED Lithium-ion batteries die after 2 hours' use; how are we supposed to watch our Battlestar marathon? Battery recharge time 4 frakkin' hours. Suck-tastic speaker. Unless you have a video-out adapter, you can't project Office docs from your PC. Projector gets hot enough to fry bacon after running 30 minutes.

$400, Optoma

Read our full Optoma EP-PK-101 Pico Pocket Projector review.

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Are you the schlemiel who's always dropping his cellphone or camera at parties? Or maybe you're the schlemazel who always gets the drink spilled on him? Either way, if you're looking for a camera to fit a clumsy or accident-prone lifestyle, the shockproof, waterproof, and cold-resistant Stylus 1050 SW can take the beating from fumbles, faceplants or full-speed crashes, and still keep clicking.

About the size and shape as a pack of smokes, the 1050 is equipped with an accelerometer letting you tinker with settings by tapping on the top and the sides. This lets you do useful stuff like turn the flash on and off with a gloved mitt or preview pictures with one hand while you fend off a tiger shark with the other.

WIRED Shockproof to 5 feet and waterproof 10 means you can bang it on the edge of the pool as you fall in with no harm done. Tap feature lets you change settings without futzing with buttons, and the camera can handle alpine frigidity with aplomb. Comes with a microSD adapter for greater media versatility.

TIRED Lens cover slides more easily than Ricky Henderson. The battery is easily inserted backwards, making you think it's dead or the camera is malfunctioning. Weak zoom and poor macro ability; this camera could use a bifocal upgrade.

$300, Olympus

Read our full Olympus Stylus 1050 SW review.

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Touted as the thinnest and lightest BlackBerry yet, the Curve 8900 has some much-needed upgrades over its predecessor, but also some disappointments.

Wi-Fi is hot and easy to set up, the camera got a bump to 3.2 megapixels, the 16 GB MicroSD storage can hold up to 20 hours of video, and the high-res screen is fantastic in any light. On the other hand, callers were hard to hear, documents were difficult to create, and RIM's revamped proprietary browser is good for surfing the Internet but isn't as smart about automatically resizing webpages as the browsers on competing smartphones.

WIRED Slick, sexy design mashes the best of the Bold and Curve 8830. Brilliant, high-resolution screen is one of the best we've seen on a RIM device. Full HTML-rendering on websites. 3.2-megapixel camera is even better when paired with video-recording capabilities; 3.5mm headphone jack means no clumsy adapters. Near 5-hour battery life is most impressive.

TIRED 3G is MIA. Despite the powerful 512-Mhz processor, the software still lags. New website and software don't perform as well as they should. Phone quality was mixed and loud speakers fail to compensate for somewhat distorted music playback.

$200 with a two year contract, RIM

Read our full RIM BlackBerry Curve 8900 review.

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This handset (which arrives in some of the most gorgeous packaging I've ever seen a consumer electronic encased in) is almost laughably banal in its actual construction. A silver slider with wide-spaced keys, it posses a passing resemblance to the Nokia 5200, albeit with a larger (2.2-inch) screen. But, once you switch it on and start using it, things begin to get interesting.

The operating system orbits around Facebook synchronization. Basically you take the phone online, pair it with your Facebook account, and all of your various Facebook applications become active on the mobile. Your Facebook address book syncs up with the phone's address book. Events from your Facebook calendar become part of the phone's calendar. Take a picture with the 3.2-megapixel camera, and you can automatically upload those shots to a Facebook album.

WIRED Brightly hued, easy to use, easy-to-sync OS pairs perfectly with your Facebook account. Skype integration is thoughtful. Thoughtfully spaced keys make texting, entering URLs rather pleasant. Camera takes photos that are sharp enough to be a profile picture. Extremely cheap for an unlocked device.

TIRED Humdrum hardware punctuates novel OS. Not offered in the United States ... yet. Battery life is clinically depressing when surfing the web, using Skype.

$112 (estimated), Three

Read our full INQ1 Facebook Phone review.

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HP has been tinkering with touch tech for a couple of years. But they have yet to nail the bull's eye with a machine that mixes mature hardware with a haptic interface that feels like more than just a half-assed effort. So, we were cautiously optimistic with the TouchSmart tx2z. The good news? As HP's first multitouch convertible tablet, it's got a lot of potential.

Converting from notebook to tablet proved painless, thanks to a solid hinge and the included pen. After swinging the 1280 x 800 screen around (and folding it back), we found two goodies. First, using the pen automatically disables the touchscreen (to prevent palm-related havoc), and second, HP included an active digitizer for handwritten input. This made reckless activities like e-mailing while strolling around the block surprisingly easy. Even jotting down quick notes using a finger (instead of the pen) gave us minimal hassle.

WIRED Fully baked as both a touch and tablet device. Travels well with its compact and stylish chassis. Includes quick keys for rotating screen orientation. Mini media remote and pen conveniently hide away in chassis. Altec Lansing speakers strike decent balance between volume and clarity. Extra goodies aplenty: biometric security, webcam, dual headphone jacks, 802.11n compatibility and 5-in-1 card reader.

TIRED Bloated OS hinders performance of otherwise decent specs. Occasionally laggy switches between notebook and tablet mode. No multitouch love for the trackpad. Terrible viewing angles and weak visibility in direct sunlight. Fan sounds like a leaf-blower at a My Bloody Valentine show.

$1550 (as tested), HP

Read our full HP TouchSmart tx2z review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

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Nero's LiquidTV TiVo PC looks like a TiVo and acts like a TiVo, but, brother, it ain't no TiVo.

Actually, the package makes your PC act like a TiVo by adding a USB TV tuner and the same TiVo software that drives the set-tops. You also get a for-reals TiVo remote and an IR receiver so you can command content from the couch.

Ironically, that's where you're gonna get pissed. The remote can't launch the software, so you'll have to physically walk over and mouse it open. The remote can be programmed to turn your TV on and off, but it can't put your PC in standby mode or wake it up again. If you do that manually, the IR receiver fails to wake up with the rest of the system.

WIRED Includes a one-year TiVo subscription, and after that it's a cheaper-than-set-top $99 per year. The software can auto-convert recordings to iPod or Sony PSP format. Integrates with any TiVo boxes you already have. Extra storage is just an external hard drive away.

TIRED The remote lacks necessary PC controls. Not measurably better than Windows Media Center — which, incidentally, is free. The tuner supports ClearQAM, but the software doesn't, so forget digital channels unless you hook up the antenna.

$125, Tivo

Read our full Nero LiquidTV TiVo PC review.

Check Wired.com's latest Product Reviews, updated daily.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

May 12, 1967: Pink Floyd Astounds With 'Sound in the Round'

Drug-impaired concertgoers marvel at a Pink Floyd audio innovation that changes the way live concerts are staged.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

Star Trek Warfare Not 23rd Century Cutting Edge

Twenty-third century warfare isn't all it's cracked up to be. You'd think that weapons and tactics would have progressed in 200 years. But the new Star Trek movie shows that the United Federation of Planets has a lot to learn about warfare.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

Crippleware! AT&T Hobbles Perfectly Good Smartphone

Remember the Nokia E71? It was one awesome smartphone. Now that a U.S. carrier (AT&T) has decided to offer up the device they've lowered the price but sacrificed some of our fave features.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

EZ Reader Sports Crystal-Clear Text, File-Format Fluency, MP3 Playback

Transferring large files is seamless on the EZ Reader. It's fluent in gazillions of file formats and languages and has MP3 playback, but it's a tad on the sluggish side.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 4:00 am

The Electronic Police State

gerddie writes "Cryptohippie has published what may be called a first attempt to describe the 'electronic police state' (PDF). Based on information available from different organizations such as Electronic Privacy Information Center, Reporters Without Borders, and Freedom House, countries were rated on 17 criteria with regard to how close they are already to an electronic police state. The rankings are for 2008. Not too surprisingly, one finds China, North Korea, Belarus, and Russia at the top of the list. But the next slots are occupied by the UK (England and Wales), the US, Singapore, Israel, France, and Germany." This is a good start, but it would be good to see details of their methodology. They do provide the raw data (in XLS format), but no indication of the weightings they apply to the elements of "electronic police state" behavior they are scoring.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 3:54 am

Research suggests coffee may be beneficial

Drinking coffee may be good for your health, U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 May 2009 | 2:56 am

Google News Gets An Update. Still Sucks.

I’m sorry, but for as good as Google is at organizing the world’s data, Google News absolutely sucks. Now, to be fair, I’m going to focus on Google News from a tech news perspective, because that’s what I follow. Maybe it’s better in other areas, but I doubt it’s much better. I bring this up because a new update to the service today promised “More ways to see the story.” Okay, that’s true, as long as you don’t mind seeing stories that range from partially unrelated to entirely unrelated.

Now, when you click on the “all XXXX news articles” link below each story cluster in Google News, you are taken to a page with a range of content. This includes not only major publication headlines, but blog headlines, picture thumbnails, a timeline of articles on the topic, and even quotes about the topic. The problem, as you can see in my screenshots below, is that Google cannot seem to cluster stories together correctly.

If it sees a story is about say, a religious app being banned on the iPhone, it will cluster that with a story about iPhone ad data — even though the two are not the same story at all. Yet when you click to go to the new area, it indicates that they are the same story, as you can do things like “Search the story.” On any given day there are probably a dozen different stories about the iPhone (at least), and I guess it’d be fine (but silly) if Google wants to cluster them all together. But it doesn’t even do that. There are several clusters containing iPhone items. It seems to be just random which ones go where.

The problem is that Google uses an algorithm to do this clustering. As the vastly superior news aggregator Techmeme, learned quite a while ago, there needs to be some human curation involved. While an algorithm may not be able to see the difference in iPhone stories (or Microsoft stories, or anything else in my example below for that matter), a human could.

Further, the biggest problem with Google News when it comes to tech news is that many of the items that appear are laughably old. It’s fine if you want to say it’s for the masses to get a better overview of what’s going on, but at least indicate that these topics aren’t breaking items just because some site decided to write about it again a day or two days or a week after someone else published the story first.

The timeline view kind of indicates the age of a story, but if you see it’s far from its peak, then don’t make it a top item on Google News. Almost all of the top items right now are far from their peaks.

I could go on. Many of the headlines Google News chooses to use are complete nonsense and give readers absolutely no idea what a story is about. And the excerpts below the titles are often a gibberish mixture of author names, cities the story is based in and random links that don’t appear as links in the excerpts — giving you excepts like, “By Austin Modine Get more from this author Facebook has once again.” Brilliant.

[photo: flickr/ang (3girls)]

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

Source: TechCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 2:52 am

G1v2 spoilers: it’s a Moto! Wait, no, it’s not

Remember that picture of the G1v2 we saw last week? We were puzzled at the bottom row buttons, and a commenter at BGR figured out the riddle. It turns out those are Motorola-style buttons (see them here and here?), not HTC. I thought the keyboard looked HTC-ish, but hey, we all make mistakes right? In any case, the phone pictured appears to be a Motorola phone running Android, although nothing can be said for sure just from one picture.

It should also be said that the recently pictured Samsung “Bigfoot” looks a hell of a lot more like the phone labelled G1v2 on that leaked roadmap.

So to sum up, the G1v2 we thought was a G1v2 wasn’t a G1v2 but a G1v2-like Moto, and the G1v2 labeled G1v2 we originally saw is still the G1v2. With a G1v2 on top.

[via Engadget]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 2:51 am

Mapping Hidden Twitter Data For Epidemiology

jamie found this visualization of air travel, which might be usable in some sort of proxy for the spread of flu virus (to choose a random application). Jer Thorp, an artist and educator from Vancouver, Canada (and a former geneticist), searched Twitter for the phrase "Just landed in" and obtained lat/lon coordinates for both the indicated airport and the Twitter user's home location, as recorded in their Twitter profile. He then produced videos of multi-hour stretches of air travel that had been latent in the Twitter information stream.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 2:08 am

Facebook Payment Platform To Enter Testing Soon. Only 7 Months Late.

One of my longstanding gripes with Facebook Platform has been its lack of a unified payment platform that would offer developers a way to tie a Facebook-branded payment system into their apps. Back in March 2008, the company announced that one was coming in the “next 180 days”. That milestone came and went, and since then the company has been quiet about its current progress (we’re typically told things like “It’s not coming out any time soon”).

But now it sounds like payments are finally starting to make some headway, reports Eric Eldon of VentureBeat, who writes that Facebook is set to begin testing a payment system with developers “in a few weeks”. We’ve independently confirmed that Facebook is indeed planning to test a payment platform, and that it will be a limited to a very small number of developers.

The need for a payment platform may not be immediately obvious - after all, there are already quite a few ways for developers to accept payments through third party services like PayPal, and some companies are making quite a bit of money in the process. But for the end-user it is night and day. Users would only have to fill in their credit card information one time, and would also trust the platform more than they would a third party. The lowered barrier to entry would likely result in an increase in the number of transactions across many applications, as developers shifted their revenue models away from advertising (which has generally done poorly on Facebook) and into virtual goods and premium services. Facebook could potentially extend the platform to allow payments on other sites, too, though I suspect they’ll make sure its working on their home court before they take it elsewhere.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 1:56 am

Times Wire Gives You NYT In Real-Time. But The News May Be Old.

One of the biggest knocks against traditional media isn’t necessarily that it’s not online — most of it is now — but rather that it’s slow when it comes to delivering news. By the time an old media site gets a story approved, written and edited, a dozen blogs probably have already covered the same news. That’s not always the case of course, and for those stories, Times Wire, a new service by The New York Times, will be very useful.

Times Wire allows you to see New York Times articles, blog posts and stories by some wire services as they are placed on the web. It automatically updates every minute, placing the latest articles at the top of a stream of content in reverse chronological order. As an overview of the entire NYT site, it’s actually quite interesting. Looking at it right now, I’ve seen five new stories pop up in the past five minutes. But for the individual sections, such as technology, it’s pretty limited.

The reason goes back to content. If I only focus on the technology feed in Times Wire, there have only been 5 new stories in the past 2 hours, so it’s not like you really need a live look at that feed. Further, while some are certainly interesting reads, none are particularly new, again negating the need for a live feed.

Business and Technology is actually one of the sections that has its own tab right now, as the NYT clearly knows that tech lovers will probably be more interested in this than the average reader — at least right now. For all other sections, you can use the “Your News” area to filter the various sections of the site into your wire feed. There are also photos featured on the right hand side of the site, that you can click on to go to the story they pertain to.

And there is a RSS feed for the Times Wire, which is a nice touch — though the speed at which RSS travels to various readers will again likely negate any real-time bonus you would get if you kept the main Times Wire page open.

Times Wire is the first NYT product built using the Times Newswire API, which the organization developed to give other sites access not only to its content, but to some of the interesting data it collects as well.

Beginning tomorrow, Times Wire will be available on the homepage of the New York Times. For now, you can find it in action here. Overall, it definitely seems like a step in the right direction for the organization, as real-time is a hot trend right now. And it’s useful as a live overview of the entire site. But for people only interested in certain topics, it’s probably fine to stick with RSS because the real-time river isn’t flowing fast enough to necessitate keeping the page open.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 1:47 am

Use Twitter? 5 bookmarklets you need if you tweet

Section: Web, Web 2.0, Websites, Features, Originals

Sure you use Twitter.  You even know what all those goofy acronyms mean like RT.  But you can get more from Twitter with these incredibly useful bookmarklets.  The best part?  You don’t have to install any software and you can use them from any browser.

1. Twitlet

Want to tweet quickly, but don’t want to bother downloading an app to post to Twitter?  Grab Twitlet.  You click the bookmarklet and it asks you what are you doing.  Then it posts to Twitter for you.  It’s simple, easy and quick.  If Twitlet doesn’t work for you, check your username and password.  Twitlet doesn’t check if you typed in your info correctly, so a typo causes non-functionality.  [Twitlet]

2. Shorten with bit.ly

Everyone has their favorite short URL service as this point and it’s very important when you only have a 140 character limit.  I’m picking bit.ly because they have a very quick and easy bookmarklet and integrates with Twitter easily.  Old way: Open another tab, cut and paste a url into a shortened URL site, then place that in your tweet.  New way: click the bookmarklet, and you’ve got a shortened URL that you can tweet from the site.  One downside, though; you can’t do customized URLs via the bookmarklet.  [bit.ly]

3. Follow Cost

I’ve had the chance to play with this for some time.  Here’s the concept: If you want to follow your friends on Twitter, you should know how often they tweet.  Sometimes your friends’ tweets can get buried by your one friend who tweets every two seconds.  You can avoid following then unfollowing them by checking out their Follow Cost.   

Follow Cost tells you the average updates per day as well as the an average for the last 100 updates.  It saves you plenty of time.  Maybe you wouldn’t have followed that guy who tweeted his entire trip to the DMV in 400 tweets if you used Follow Cost.  [Follow Cost]

4. Instapaper

So your friends are suggesting links on their tweets, but you don’t have the time to read everything.  That’s no problem.  Grab the Instapaper “Read Later” bookmarklet.  Get a free account with Instapaper, pull that bookmarklet up into your toolbar and when you want to read a story later, click the bookmarklet.  The site even can reformat the page to show you only text so you can easily read on your mobile device.  [Instapaper]

5. TweetPkr

This bookmarklet lets you get a quick look at Twitter.  It opens a quick sidebar on top of whatever page you are on.  The sidebar is just an overlay that doesn’t navigate you away from the page your are visiting.  You can’t sort things (like look at your replies only), but you can put in updates right from the interface.  Hit your Escape key, and it goes away.  [TweetPkr]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 May 2009 | 1:00 am

DOJ Nixes Lax Policy, Hardens Antitrust Enforcement

eldavojohn writes "A policy from the Bush era seen as a hurdle to the government prosecuting companies under antitrust laws has been withdrawn by Obama's Department of Justice. From the article: 'The DOJ's Antitrust Division has withdrawn a September report that "raised too many hurdles to government antitrust enforcement and favored extreme caution" toward antitrust enforcement action, the DOJ said. The change in policy could mean that the department looks harder at the actions of technology vendors such as Google, Oracle and IBM, as detractors have raised antitrust concerns about all three in recent months.' You may recall that Google has come under some antitrust scrutiny recently and the pressure may have just gotten a little more intense."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 12:26 am

Apple: You Can’t Play Jesus on iPhone

Apple has rejected an iPhone app that would enable users to fashion their mugs into portraits resembling Jesus Christ.

The app, called Me So Holy, involves using the iPhone’s camera to snap a mug shot of someone, which can then be scaled and cropped to replace Jesus’ face. Apple rejected the app, saying it “contains objectionable material,” according to Me So Holy developer Benjamin Kahle.

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users,” the iPhone SDK agreement states.

Apple may be tightening its restrictions on its iPhone App Store after it approved an iPhone app called Baby Shaker, a game whose objective was to shake a baby to death. Amid parental outrage, Apple subsequently removed the app, saying its approval was a mistake.

Though tremendously successful, Apple’s iPhone App Store has been the victim of heavy scrutiny. Other than being criticized for approving questionable apps such as Baby Shaker, some developers have slammed Apple for being unclear about its App Store approval process. For example, FreedomVoice Systems in March told Wired.com that Apple hadn’t said a word about its iPhone voice app Newber for six months, potentially costing the company $600,000 in wasted investments.

In defense of Me So Holy, Kahle questioned what was objectionable about his app, since it did not contain any violence or offensive content.

“We feel that Apple is being too sensitive to its perceived user group and are disappointed that this otherwise creative, freethinking company would reject such a positive and fun application,” Kahle wrote in his blog. “The message to developers is that they should think inside the box, rather than outside it.”

Nonetheless, the App Store continues to lure developers with dreams of striking it rich. One of the largest success stories to date involves Ethan Nicholas, an independent developer whose iPhone game iShoot earned him $600,000 in a single month.

Me So Holy Product Page [via Business Insider]

See Also:

• Android Welcomes App Store’s Rejects With Arms Wide Open
• Trent Reznor Has a Few Choice Words For Apple
• Apple’s Delays Could Cost iPhone Developer $600K
• Apple Rejects Obama Trampoline iPhone Game
• Apple Removes Baby-Killing iPhone App Amid Outrage
• Rejected: ‘Pull My Finger’ iPhone App
• Apple Rejects Twitter App Update for Alleged Bad Language

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 12 May 2009 | 12:07 am

Teen Pleads Guilty to Scientology Web Attacks

An "Anonymous" member pleads guilty to his role in a DDoS attack of Scientology's website last year. It was the first prosecution against a member of the online griefers.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 May 2009 | 11:42 pm

Microsoft to raise $3.75B in first debt offering (AP)

AP - Microsoft Corp. priced a $3.75 billion debt offering on Monday, a first for the world's largest software maker.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 May 2009 | 11:37 pm

3,800 Vulnerabilities Detected In FAA's Web Apps

ausekilis sends us to DarkReading for the news that auditors have identified thousands of vulnerabilities in the FAA's Web-based air traffic control applications — 763 of them high-risk. Here is the report on the Department of Transportation site (PDF). "And the FAA's Air Traffic Organization, which heads up ATC operations, received more than 800 security incident alerts in fiscal 2008, but still had not fixed 17 percent of the flaws that caused them, 'including critical incidents in which hackers may have taken over control of ATO computers,' the report says. ... While the number of serious flaws in the FAA's apps appears to be staggering, Jeremiah Grossman, CTO of WhiteHat Security, says the rate is actually in line with the average number of bugs his security firm finds in most Web applications. ... Auditors were able to hack their way through the Web apps to get to data on the Web application and ATC servers, including the FAA's Traffic Flow Management Infrastructure system, Juneau Aviation Weather System, and the Albuquerque Air Traffic Control Tower. They also were able to gain entry into an ATC system that monitors power, according to the report. Another vulnerability in the FAA's Traffic Flow Management Infrastructure leaves related applications open to malware injection."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 11 May 2009 | 11:36 pm

Minnesota Court: Release Source Code of Breath-Testing Machines

The Minnesota Supreme Court orders the disclosure of the computer code operating the state's drunken-driving breath-testing machines. Still, even if flaws in the code are found, it is unlikely that thousands of DUI convictions will be overturned.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 May 2009 | 11:14 pm

Expect Windows 7 to be officially available by the holiday season

Section: Computers, Desktops, Laptops, Software / Applications

As soon as the Windows 7 RC 1 was made available just about a week ago, many people took this opportunity to jump on it and see how it compared to Microsoft’s last OS, Vista.  If you have been following tech in recent months, then you probably have noticed Microsoft taking a very active anti-Mac campaign, in efforts to deter potential customers from purchasing a more expensive Mac setup. 

At the TechEd conference, Microsoft delivered a statement indicating Windows 7 would be ready to roll by the holiday season.  Up until now, it was scheduled to be released in 2010, yet other companies, such as Acer, have hinted at an October release, as they were planning to have their new systems run Windows 7.  There are a few times in the year when computers and laptops are bought rapidly.  One being the back-to-school craze, and the other being the holiday season rush.  Since Windows 7 will be running on machines by the holidays, it will be much to late for the back-to-school computer shopping.  However, Microsoft should expect many PCs sold running Windows 7 as long as it is available between Black Friday and Christmas. 

Now, there could be a couple of reasons why Microsoft has decided to get Windows 7 out and running as soon as possible.  Obviously, Vista has been nothing what Microsoft wanted it to be, and so businesses and households are hesitant to use Vista.  As a result, people have stuck with XP, or even switched completely to Mac.  If Windows 7 can help save Microsoft’s authority in terms of OS, then they will want to have it rolling sooner rather than later. 

Read [Microsoft] Via [Electronista]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 11 May 2009 | 11:13 pm

Kindle DX Leads to Buyer’s Remorse for Some Kindle 2 Users

Real gadget heads know the pitfalls of being an early adopter: The products can be expensive, sometimes buggy and easily rendered obsolete as a result of an upgrade. Now some Amazon Kindle 2 buyers are finding this out for themselves as they try to return their newly acquired Kindle 2 in favor of the larger sized Kindle DX.

“If I was aware that there would be an upgraded product announced less than two months and after I received my Kindle–and that would be better for my needs — I would have postponed the purchase of the product,” says Rachel Swartz, who bought her Kindle 2 e-book reader two weeks after it was released in February. Swartz is now battling with Amazon to exchange her Kindle 2 for the Kindle DX.

Amazon introduced the broadsheet Kindle DX reader last week.  The new product comes less than three months after the company launched Kindle 2, an improved version of the original Kindle reader. The Kindle DX has a screen that measures 9.7 inches diagonally — two-and-a-half times the size of the current-gen Kindle 2 — and is targeted at readers who want to use the device to access magazines, newspapers and textbooks.

But, as Swartz found out, Amazon does not offer an upgrade path for Kindle 2 users who now covet the latest release. “They have been basically stonewalling all my attempts for the last few days to find a way to exchange the Kindle 2,” she says. “This is not right. It’s not the way early adopters should be punished.”

There is one loophole in the system. Kindle 2 buyers can use the company’s standard electronics returns policy to send their devices back. Amazon allows for a 30-day return on electronics purchases, says a Amazon spokesman in an emailed statement.

Ryan Meeks, who bought his Kindle 2 within the last 30 days, is one of those lucky users who can get an exchange. Meeks has sent his Kindle 2 back — no questions asked — and has instead placed a pre-order for the Kindle DX.

“I have glasses and a bigger screen was a major factor for me,” says Meeks. “I also liked the fact that the Kindle DX changes from landscape to portrait mode when the device is rotated.”

Meeks doesn’t mind paying the additional dollars for the Kindle DX, which costs $480 compared to the $360 for the Kindle 2.  And he’s understanding of Amazon’s reluctance to offer an upgrade path for Kindle 2 users. “Ultimately they are two different products though many people don’t really understand the difference,” he says. “Beyond the bigger screen, Amazon hasn’t done a good job of explaining how the two products are different.”

Still, says Meeks, the company should try to offer a way out for unhappy Kindle 2 users. “If I were Amazon, I would do well to make sure early adopters are happy,” he says. “The early buyers are the influential users.”

Meeks suggests Amazon take a leaf out of Apple MobileMe’s playbook. “I was an early user of MobileMe and it had a lot of problems,” he says. “But ultimately Apple gave us a lot of extras and I am glad I use MobileMe now. That may be something there for Amazon to learn from.”

Amazon isn’t shipping the Kindle DX yet.  The product is expected to be available this summer.

See also:
Kindle 2’s Fuzzy Fonts Have Users Seeing Red
Wired Review of Amazon Kindle 2
Kindle Readers Ignite Protest Over E-Book Prices

Photos: Bryan Derballa/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 May 2009 | 11:11 pm

Appletell’s high-end earphone shootout

FROM APPLETELL - You have an iPod or iPhone, a case, a screen protector, and piles of music. So now what? Be selfish and splurge on some high end headphones. You’ll be surprised by what your ears have been missing out on.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 11 May 2009 | 11:06 pm

Visualization: Jer Thorp's "Just Landed"

Jer Thorp slurped up mentions of "Just landed in" or "Just arrived in" from Twitter, mapped the coordinates, and made an animated map in Processing that shows people popping around the world. The test render above shows the data pulled over the course of 4 hours. If that's actually all the returned queries from the entirety of Twitter, I'm surprised there aren't more. [via Waxy]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 May 2009 | 11:02 pm

Tourette's syndrome brain changes found

German medical scientists say they used a new imaging technology to discover changes in Tourette's syndrome patients' brain structure. The researchers, led by Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 May 2009 | 11:00 pm

Tech firms could see fallout from antitrust shift (AP)

AP - If the Obama administration is serious about more aggressively responding to antitrust complaints, some of technology's biggest companies could have to rethink their business strategies or expansion plans.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 May 2009 | 10:23 pm

Guitar + Voice Box rendition of Beach Boys' "God Only Knows"

Video Link. YouTuber electricpony made this awesome video using a Stratocaster + Guyatone Micro Octaver + SRB808 Overdrive + EHX Voice Box (Shure SM57 Mic) + Epiphone Valve Junior. Here's more about the voice box gizmo, from Electro Harmonix -- who we've covered previously in a Boing Boing video episode. (thanks, Scott Matthews!)

Related:
* BB Video: Inside Electro-Harmonix, guitar pedal engineers and vintage vacuum tubes

* "Golden Throat" talk box from the golden age

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 May 2009 | 10:18 pm

Open-Source Software Gains As Moneymaker (Investor's Business Daily)

Investor's Business Daily - Free open-source software is not so free anymore as more companies -- including longtime makers of conventional software -- strive to make money on the technology.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 11 May 2009 | 10:16 pm

Gadgetell Review: Palm Treo Pro from Sprint

Section: Communications, Smartphones, Reviews

What It Is

Now available from Sprint is Palm’s latest keyboard style Blackberry wannabe complete with small screen and a full key thumbpad.  Sprint offers this phone on a 2 year contract basis for $199.99 including $250 instant savings and a $100 mail-in rebate.

What It Isn’t

This is the Pro not the Pre. If you’re looking for a full touchscreen ala iPhone or Storm, you’ve got the wrong phone.

Who It’s For

Cellphone users who are email-centric and have tiny fingers or long fingernails.

Geek Stuff

This Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g enabled speakerphone comes with a dual core MSM7201 400MHz processor, 320x320 65k 16bit touch screen display, microSD card slot, 1500mAh li-on battery, Windows Mobile 6.1 and a check-the-box 2mp 8x digital zoom camera.

Performance

This is one very pocketable tiny phone. But that compactness comes at a cost: a Lilliputian screen and keyboard.  Overall screen size is 1¾  x 1¾ but depending on the application, top and bottom menu bars encroach into the viewing area further reducing usable screen real estate.  An included self-storing stylus is handy for application selection on the touch screen as the diminutive screen size is not very compatible with large fingertips.

The high resolution, high brightness and contrast LCD screen tries to overcome its tiny size by producing a very punchy screen display.  This approach is successful as long as you are indoors.  In outdoor daylight it was difficult to read, and, as with virtually all LCD displays, the toughest test of all - direct sunlight – just killed it.

The speakerphone volume on this tiny little package was remarkable.  Used to turning the volume to max and even then having a bit of a struggle with some phones, the Treo Pro was too loud.  A first, I actually had to turn the volume down.  Battery life was outstanding.  With normal phone, texting, and email use I was able to go several days between charges.

Email setup was simple easily synced with Outlook along with my calendar and all of my contacts.  One note of caution: the phone uses the new micro USB connector and the keying for this connector is not readily discernible.  Make sure you have the plug correctly aligned and do not force it as you can easily damage the receptacle.

Recommendation

Despite my operational complaints due to it being so small, I really liked this phone because it was so small. It just slips so easily in your pocket and there you are with your email, the internet, a nav system and a TV set (Sprint TV) and, oh yes, a phone, mixed in with your loose change. Kudos to Sprint for their basic Sprint TV and Sprint Navigation services included with the phone. They are useful, entertaining and addictive and were hard to give up when I had to return the review phone.

Company Page: [Sprint]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 11 May 2009 | 10:16 pm

This picture of an ATM put a vegan anarchist in jail

Enjoy this picture of the inside of an ATM—Shane Becker was arrested at a Seattle REI for snapping it, after the two bank agents who were filling it freaked out and called the cops. Becker is the sort of guy who would have the banner of his site be a picture of him in a bandana like a sort of hard bikin', REI-shoppin' anarchist, but we can at least agree that getting arrested for taking a picture in a store is bullshit.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 May 2009 | 10:10 pm

Scientists find source of carbon lava

U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 11 May 2009 | 9:58 pm

Netbooks for Business? Talk to the Guys In IT First

Puny, lightweight netbooks are making their way into plenty of homes, but they must leap over a few hurdles before they become widely used in offices. First step: Convince the IT guys that the netbooks can handle the business and security needs of your company.

ZDNet polled a few Asian corporations who said they were experimenting with netbooks for their employees, and they raised a number of issues.

YCH Group, a logistics and supply company, said netbooks are suited to executive employees who are often on the road. However, the firm said it made major investments over three years to optimize business software to run well on the low-powered netbooks. Companies who haven’t done similar planning and investing will have a difficult time adopting netbooks due to performance and logistical issues, the company said.

Also, Hong Kong Jockey Club said it is only considering netbooks as an additional option for “non-business critical notebooks,” because netbooks are still aimed at consumers. Manufacturers must aim netbooks directly at business users with corresponding enterprise support and maintenance programs, the company said. Most netbooks ship with Windows XP Home, which lacks security features found in XP Pro or Vista, notes Liliputing’s Brad Linder.

At January’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, many manufacturers, including HP, Sony and MSI were showcasing netbooks marketed for business use. The common hardware upgrade targeted at enterprise users was the addition of a 3G modem, which enables users to access the internet anywhere they can get a cellphone signal. Other than that, the business-oriented netbooks gained a more professional appearance than their consumer-oriented predecessors. ZDNet’s report suggests that, in order for netbooks to make it in the business world, manufacturers must address less visible areas as well — software and IT.

Netbooks making some enterprise headway in Asia [ZDNet via Liliputing]

See Also:

• Netbooks: An Accountant’s Best Friend?
• Tiny Notes Net Big Gains: The Netbook Revolution
• The Netbook Effect: How Cheap Little Laptops Hit the Big Time
• Cheap, Easy-to-Mod NetBooks Are a Hacker’s Paradise
• HP Says Its Netbook Is Business Class
• Puny, Trendy Netbooks Are Growing Up to Suit Business Users

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 May 2009 | 9:56 pm

Show Magazine now has an iPhone App, we have had five codes to give you

One look at the Top 25 Paid App list in the App Store reveals two things about iPhone users – we’re bunch of gaming nerds and pervs. Not that there’s anything wrong with either. The numbers speak for themselves, though. Viva Vision’s The Sexy Ladies of SHOW app is currently ranked #16 and it makes sense considering the content that’s available for only $0.99 cents.

So who wants a free download code? The first five folks to e-mail contest at crunchgear dot com will be privy to exclusive T&A shots of the ladies of SHOW Magazine. Update: We’re out of codes.

The Sexy Ladies of SHOW [iTunes]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 11 May 2009 | 9:35 pm

Wall Street Journal to launch micropayment model

Section: Web, Web 2.0, Websites

The Wall Street Journal, in a bid to survive the growing shift of newspaper readership from print to online, has announced it will implement a new micropayment subscription model on its website.

Robert Thomson, editor-in-chief of Dow Jones and managing editor of the Journal, told The Financial Times that “a sophisticated micropayments service” will launch this autumn. The system would charge small fees to occasional users who may not be willing to pay more than $100 a year for a subscription to WSJ.com, Thomson said.

The WSJ is not the first paper to try and maximize its online profits.  In February, Newsday announced it will soon start charging for access to its online content.  With print newspapers struggling to survive amid sinking ad revenue and dropping readership, expect more and more of them to start experimenting with online revenue ideas.  These days more and more people go online for their news and it makes sense for the papers to do what they can to profit from it.

I think this model could really work well for them.  Many people who aren’t willing to pay the steep cost of an online subscription to the paper would probably have no problem paying a small fee to access an article that interests them.  This could be especially popular with students and others who do a lot of research.  The only question is just what the fees will be.

What are your thoughts?  Would you be okay with a micropayment model for your local/favorite paper?  Why or why not?

Read [Cnet]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 11 May 2009 | 9:05 pm

Superheadz Digital Harinezumi camera is retrograde in all the best ways

I tread a fine line with it comes to faux retro camera hipsterism: I think buying old film cameras, while a perfectly fair choice for some, forgoes most of the convenience, opportunity for learning, and dare I say magic of the digital camera. On the other hand, my white is on my computer and iPhone adding washed out filters and faux vignettes all the time. I'll give up fidelity and authenticity, but never ease of use.

So what to do about the "Digital Harinezumi" by Superheadz? The Japanese analog cameramaker has made a tiny digital (its first), complete with an LCD screen—that it won't let you use when snapping a picture, forcing you instead to frame the shot with a plastic viewfinder like the one found on old 110 "spy" cameras. (The Harinezumi looks quite a bit like those very cameras, one of which I owned after seeing Bill Cosby use one in Leonard: Part VI.)

The washed out look from leaky plastic cameras is still there. There's a physical spring-loaded switch that mimics a film camera's controls. It even shoots video that harkens to 8mm film—by leaving out the sound.

It's sort of what we've come to, the last option in a market oversaturated with inexpensive point-and-shoots capable of crystal-clear snapshots: when you can no longer go forward, you have to go back. But at least Superheadz remembered to keep it convenient, with a microSD card slot for transferring up to 4GB of your 2-megapixel images and VGA movies onto your computer and the internet.

I'm sold—except I don't know where to get one in North America. Sorry, John R. (who first made me aware of the Digital Harinezumi): I can't find it anywhere online. (Patrick Ng has one, but he's in Hong Kong. He liked it well enough to take the above picture, though, as well as shoot a movie with it that he has on his website.)

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 May 2009 | 8:51 pm

Surveillance Tech Watches for Anomalies

Intelligent cameras are replacing human eyes and watching for suspicious behavior.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 May 2009 | 8:09 pm

Music Video: DeGarmo & Key "666"

When I was a fundie pup, this sort of Christian pop music was strictly verboten. "Be in the world, not of it" was taken a little too literally. My parents saved me from the Floppies of the Beast.

Interestingly:

DeGarmo & Key were the first Christian group to have a music video appear on MTV. The original video for the song "Six, Six, Six" was one of a number of videos that MTV pulled from rotation due to violent content. The purge was a public reaction to the U.S. Senate hearings on sex and violence in music. MTV had ironically misinterpreted the song "Six, Six, Six" as an anti-Christian statement. According to industry news reports at the time, MTV exec Sandra Sparrow was unaware that DeGarmo & Key were a Christian band when she included the video in a list of videos to be excised. An embarrassed MTV allowed DeGarmo & Key to submit a re-edited version, which was placed back into rotation. Removed from the re-edited video was a short scene of a man representing the Antichrist being set on fire.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 May 2009 | 7:47 pm

Is Facebook violating their own TOS with Holocaust-denial groups?

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

It is illegal in thirteen countries.  The United States is not one of them.  Holocaust denial is actually against the law in thirteen countries, and is said to represent a form of hatred and hate speech in general, that is simply not tolerated.  But don’t worry all you haters, you are apparently just fine on Facebook.

While a big part of any social networking site is talking and building communities with like minded people, what happens when the line is crossed and those communities become offensive to others?  Of course at that point we have people jumping in and yelling “Free Speech! I have my rights!” but is that really what our Amendment rights were put there for?  To promote hate?  Also, freedom of speech aside, what about that simple fact that they are breaking Terms of Service of these social networking sites?  And it is being allowed to happen?

Attorney Brian Cuban is trying to do something about this.  This Dallas,Texas attorney is facing off with Facebook, confronting them on the issue that groups like this should not be allowed to continue, and are breaking Facebook’s own Terms of Service.  Terms that apparently Facebook picks and chooses when to enforce and when to turn the other way.

Take for instance the issue of if you are a breastfeeding mother.  Don’t even think of having a shot up on your page showing you nursing your baby.  That is so clearly against Facebook’s TOS, because this is apparently very offensive to some.  This is a rule that is enforced, and photos just like this have been removed from the site.

Now, on the other hand, a photo of children in a concentration camp is clearly not offensive, nor breaking Facebook’s guidelines for “pornography” since there are naked children, is by all means okay to be posted?  So very logical.  Women cannot post nursing photos since the idea of nursing offends some.  But these hate groups I’m sure offend no one.  Of course.  No random ridiculous picking and choosing going on there.  They sound a little like Apple.

Facebook’s response is that they want to “be a place where people can discuss all kinds of ideas, including controversial ones.”  Okay, except that the way this is being done is in direct violation of their own TOS, particularly section 3.

“Nigger faggot, Jew nosed cunt.”  There is a gem of of an idea being discussed as one person addressed another in the one Facebook Holocaust-denial room.  Or maybe this one, “Jews are snakes and they are liars, and they are the biggest disease this planet has ever endured.”  Most definitely no hate speech going on there that would violate Facebook TOS.  This is an intellectual debates of history going on….not a spewing of hate.  Right.  Oh for Pete’s sake, what in the world is Facebook thinking?  As many others have pointed out, in a private business, freedom of speech does not apply. 

Cuban elaborates this point by saying how in the past, Facebook has removed different groups based on different complaints.  But now, he says, they are “setting the subjective standard on what they remove and what they don’t.”  He goes on to say that “This isn’t a freedom-of-speech issue. Facebook is free to set the standard that they wish.”  And apparently they don’t wish to make a stand against this hatred and prejudice.  Violation or not.

Yes, here in the States, you have the right to protected speech.  And unfortunately people who feel the need to mis-use that freedom by spewing forth hatred and lies are protected as well.  However, web sites do not have to give them carte blanche to spread it.  Especially when it is in clear violation to Terms of Service that they say they mandate.  US representative Deborah Lauter of the International Network Against Cyberhate says that “Our position is that if you are going to be providing it, then you have to step up and put in the mechanism for policing it.”

Stop being such wussies, Facebook.  Breastfeeding a baby is offensive and this kind of crap isn’t?  Please.  I think you need to grow some and practice what you preach.

via: techcrunch

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 11 May 2009 | 7:20 pm

iPhone App Endorses Greener Tissues

You are what you wipe.  That’s the message behind Greenpeace’s iPhone app Tissue Guide, which launched Monday.

The app is a simple directory listing various brands of toilet paper, facial tissue, paper towel and napkins, rating each for its environmental friendliness. Based on those ratings, Tissue Guide breaks the brands into categories: products recommended, products that could do better and products that should be avoided.

Sounds pretty barebones, but it’s certainly worth checking out just to get an idea of which brands are greener than others. Plus, it gives you more than just a price tag to help you make a decision. Tissue Guide is free through the App Store.

Download Link [iTunes]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 May 2009 | 7:04 pm

Send us tips for BBG Asian celebration day

Did you know that May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month? You might have noticed the slew celebratory events popping up in most major cities--I know SF is having tons. We at BBG will be having Asian Day on Friday. We'll feature stories about Japanese gadgets, China's Steve Jobs, cell phone plans in the Philippines, and more. We're also open to tips, so send me your ideas by email to mango [at] tokyomango [dot] com with the subject line: "Asian day on BBG" by Wednesday night.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 11 May 2009 | 7:04 pm

Virgin Mobile shares spike with news of Q1 earnings

Virgin Mobile USA’s shares jumped 57 cents (20%) to $3.47 in midday trading on news of its better than expected (i.e. positive) first quarter earnings.

The wireless carrier reported $13.4 million (19 cents/share) in net income for Q1 2009, almost triple (2.85 times, to be more precise) that of 2008 Q1’s $4.7 million (7 cents/share) earnings. Overall revenue increased 2.2% to $337.3 million from $330 million.

In reaction to the numbers, VMUSA CEO Dan Schulman stated, “We are pleased with our first quarter results and the initial success of our new offers focused on high-quality customer additions.” This could be a nod to its August 2008 (when the deal was finalized) acquisition of the cult-sensation wireless carrier, Helio.

Guess the economic downturn isn’t affecting everyone. Now, how about some more intriguing handsets, VM?

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 11 May 2009 | 5:59 pm

New survey indicates a rise in mobile phone only households

Section: Communications, Mobile

According to results just released from the National Health Interview Survey, more than 20 percent of United States households have only wireless phones.  The survey was conducted between July and December 2008 and showed an increase of almost 3 percent since the first half of 2008.  Additionally, one out of every seven homes receives all or almost all of their phone calls through cell phones.

The stats were retrieved by a sampling of almost 13,000 households with each household having a minimum of one adult and one child.  The National Health Interview Survey started this bi-annual survey in 2003 as a trend began to emerge that showed that more and more consumers were turning to mobile only solutions and canceling their landlines.  Significantly more than one third of individuals between the age of 18 and 29 are wireless only users.

It is likely that this surge in wireless only households has occurred due to the economic downturn.  As more and more people try to look for ways to save money, canceling an unnecessary landline is likely to be one of them.

Read: [NHIS]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 11 May 2009 | 5:50 pm

The Motorola W7 Active Edition is good for you, because gestures burn calories or something

Gesture controls for phones (or any other gadgets) sound like a great idea on paper. “Wow,” you think, “I can shake my phone to change the song! That’s so convenient!”

So you get your phone, you load your songs, and you shake. Shake. New song! Shake. New song! A day or two goes by, and it hits you like a breakdancer’s foot to the face: you can shake your phone around and make everyone around you think you’ve got a twitch - or you could just press the “Next” button.

Speaking of gesture controlled phones, Motorola just announced one. The Motorola W7 Active Edition lets you shake, flip, and tilt your way to the realization of futility. They’ve given it a health twist, adding a pedometer and a “Personal Trainer” application, two more things likely to see use for 2-3 days. It’s like a mobile Wii Fit.

As for things that will see regular use, it’s also got 3G, FM Radio, and dual cameras. The W7 will hit the shelves in Asia and Latin America next month at an unknown price.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 11 May 2009 | 5:23 pm

SLIDE SHOW: Got Joy? Animals Do

Like people, animals engage in a variety of behaviors just for the fun of it.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 May 2009 | 4:29 pm

Space Shuttle Blasts Off for Hubble Mission

Shuttle Atlantis takes off for an ambitious mission to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 May 2009 | 4:29 pm

Intel likely to be fined by EU

Section: Computers, Hardware

For the most part recently it seems that Intel can do no wrong by many people.  It keeps churning out new processors like the i7 that greatly improve on everything else on the market.  There’s also all its other random side projects that could improve any number of technologies.  None of these things get passed the EU antitrust regulators, though, who are expected to fine Intel sometime this week.

According to the EU Intel has been paying computer manufacturers to not release computers using AMD chips.  Intel also reportedly set limits for manufacturers on what percentage of their computers could use AMD chips.  For example, all Lenovo and Dell laptops had to use Intel chips, while HP was allowed to use AMD chips in 5 percent of its laptops.  There’s also the issue of Intel paying off retailers to not stock machines that use AMD chips.

According to Intel it never did anything wrong regarding these issues.  However, if the EU does fine them, and does find that Intel did indeed pay off retailers and manufacturers it might possibly result in more AMD chips being used in computers.  Then again, this case is only in Europe, and will most likely not affect American Intel and AMD chip sales very much if at all.  Not to mention the fact that Intel’s chips are just better than AMD’s at the moment, which is why nobody really would have questioned never seeing AMD chips, at least not the average consumer.

Read [Reuters]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 11 May 2009 | 4:08 pm

Animals Just Like to Have Fun, Survey Finds

From seagulls that play catch to fish that exchange charges, animals seek pleasure.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 May 2009 | 3:29 pm

Center for Disease Control releases report on “wireless families:” One in five fams are cellphone only

The CDC’s report on wireless substitution - aka canceling your land line for a cellphone - is out and we discover that one in five U.S. households have cut the cable, an increase of 2.7 percent over six months ago. Another tidbit: one in every seven American homes (14.5%) took all their calls on cellphones despite having a landline.

The report polled 12,597 families for 23,726 adults total - there were 8,635 kids under the age of 18 - which makes it a fairly strong sample size. A few other tidbits:

* More than three in five adults living only with unrelated adult roommates (60.6%) were in households with only wireless telephones. This is the highest prevalence rate among the population subgroups examined.
* Nearly two in five adults renting their home (39.2%) had only wireless telephones. Adults renting their home were more likely than adults owning their home (9.9%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
* Men (20.0%) were more likely than women (17.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.
* Adults living in poverty (30.9%) and adults living near poverty (23.8%) were more likely than higher income adults (16.0%) to be living in households with only wireless telephones.

It’s interesting to note that these groups self-select along income and gender lines. I know plenty of folks - mostly my older neighbors - who had a land line “just in case” but switched during the New York blackout of 2003 because those “just in case” phones died.

I suspect these numbers will only rise in the next few years. An entire cohort of college kids are landing in their own apartments - college kids who probably haven’t used a land line for most of their lives. Also, why is the CDC tracking this? By figuring out how many kids have been using cellphones since they were in the womb we’ll know if all the brain cancer we’ll all get in about ten years was caused by our Motorola RAZRs and iPhones.

Do you still have a landline?

via Ars

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 11 May 2009 | 2:53 pm

Rumor: Palm “Real Reviewer” Pres shipping this week

A tipster has informed us that the Palm Pre "Real Reviewer" units are shipping out this week. To be more specific, we're told that reviewers should be getting them towards the end of the week or as early as Wednesday. In other words, expect to see a lot of Palm Pre 'sightings' this week. Have a good night, ya'll.

Source: MobileCrunch | 11 May 2009 | 2:47 pm

Channel your inner Zack Morris with the ‘Brick Style Mobile Phone Holder’

Miss the 80’s? Me neither. If you have a friend or loved one who does, though, perhaps you should buy them this Zack Morris-style cell phone holder. Yes, it’s a cell phone holder that looks like a gigantic old-school cell phone from the decade that time, common sense, and style forgot.

Source: MobileCrunch | 11 May 2009 | 2:40 pm

BlackBerry Onyx or Driftwood spotted

Praise jeebus! I knew this day was coming. Images of a purported T-Mobile 3G BlackBerry surfaced late last night, but it’s unclear whether it’s the rumored Onyx or Driftwood. If it is a T-Mobile device then it’s probably the Driftwood since it’s the only one that supposedly supports UMA. Contrary to what you see in the image, BGR says the Driftwood aka 9600 will have an optical trackpad and that it will drop some time in September.

CrackBerry via BGR

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 11 May 2009 | 2:36 pm

Hubble: From Joke to Cherished Eye in Space

The Hubble Space Telescope has captivated the world, but its start was nearly a fiasco.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 May 2009 | 2:20 pm

Samsung Magnet now on AT&T: A cheap one for the kids

Heads up, sports fans. Today’s the day when you can start your search for the Samsung Magnet at your local AT&T mall kiosk or att.com. Yes, the little guy is available right now. Whether or not you can actually find it, .

As you might guess, the Magnet doesn’t particularly do anything; it’s just sorta there, which isn’t bad in and of itself. (I’d rather have a simple phone than one that has whiz-bang-golly-gee features.) The keyboard looks sufficient, and there’s a Web browser that should help you keeps taps on The Big Game (whichever game that is to you) while you’re out and about. Lord knows I followed the Champions League two years ago on some phone’s piece of junk Web browser.

After all is said and done, the Magnet can be had for $20. Yeah, it’s a cheap one for the kids.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 11 May 2009 | 2:00 pm

Hideous 80s Throwback Phone Case is Curiously Seductive

It would be nice if this clunky, 1980s-style cellphone holder acted as a real add-on keyboard and display for a modern mobile, allowing you to go in for some retro charm and then, when bored of carrying this brick-sized box, slide out your iPhone and carry on as if nothing untoward had happened.

Sadly, it lacks any useful circuitry, and certainly won’t act as a functional dock for your phone. In fact, all it does is bark out one of five different phrases every time you get a call and if for some reason (like, you know, good taste) you decide to switch off this barrage of crap, it will instead flash to alert you.

At just £10 ($15) it’s probably worth it for the packaging alone, which looks to have been vomited out after a meal of hair-gel and fluorescent paint.

Product page [Go Frostfire via Red Ferret]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 11 May 2009 | 1:48 pm

AT&T buying Alltel territories from Verizon

I pity the poor rural cellphone owner. First Verizon snapped up Alltel and something called Rural Cellular and now AT&T grabbed those 1.5 million subscribers in a $2.35 billion deal.

The states included in this deal are Alabama, Colorado, Iowa, and the Dakotas, among others. AT&T is also selling some of its markets in Louisiana and Mississippi to Verizon.

Are you affected by this change? Tell us about your service and what AT&T told you when you got sold.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 11 May 2009 | 1:42 pm

Hands-On With the Gigapan Epic 100 Panorama Robot

We test the Gigapan Epic 100, a tripod-mounted mechanism that automates the process of creating massive panorama images with a digital SLR or similar camera.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 11 May 2009 | 1:12 pm

Coal Supply May Be Vastly Overestimated

The world's coal supply may be so low that an energy crisis looms, estimates show.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 May 2009 | 1:10 pm

Milky Way May Be Teeming With Black Holes

Rogue black holes may be scattered throughout the Milky Way, say astronomers.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 11 May 2009 | 1:05 pm