Demy E-Recipe Book, Like a Kindle for the Kitchen

The Demy turns out to be a rather neat little cook’s helper. Think of it as a touchscreen, color Kindle for the kitchen, an e-recipe book. At first glance, it seems a little pointless, but a look at the specs shows that some thought has gone into the design, specifically the way it will be used by the cook.

The Demy is, of course, slightly ruggedized for the kitchen — splash resistant and wipe clean. It also has a rather smart implementation of iPhone=style auro-rotate. The wedge=shaped reader sits almost flat but if you spin it and sit it upright on the fat end of the wedge, the screen flips 180º. It’s a nice way to save counter-space.

As the Demy is designed for the kitchen, it has a few useful extras. There’s a timer, accessible like everything else by the row of icons along the bottom, and also a conversion function so you can change old fashioned pounds into shiny, new-fangled kilos.

The Demy takes another aspect of the iPod, too. You manage your recipes on your computer and then sync them via USB. Instead of an iTunes-like application, though, it works with the Key Ingredient website, which until now I hadn’t heard of. The site lets you add your owen recipes and browse plenty of others.

In all, the Demy looks like a smart addition to the kitchen, with one problem. It’s $300, rather a lot when you could pick up a netbook for the same price.

Product page [Demy]

Dipping into the Windows 7 mailbag - CNET News

New Zealand Herald

Dipping into the Windows 7 mailbag CNET News by Ina Fried I've gotten a lot of questions from readers, mostly centered on key issues such as what Windows 7 has to offer, whether it will work with their existing software, and if they should buy a PC now or wait for Microsoft to offer Windows 7, ... Microsoft urged to give Vista Ultimate users free Windows 7 upgrades Reuters Microsoft to offer more goodies in free Hyper-V Server update Computerworld ZDNet - Ars Technica - ChannelWeb - InformationWeek all 684 news articles

Apple and AT&T playing favorites with the App Store? - CNET News

Telegraph.co.uk

Apple and AT&T playing favorites with the App Store? CNET News by Erica Ogg Just under a year since first announced, the SlingPlayer Mobile application is finally available for the iPhone. But compared with the capabilities of the same application available on other smartphone platforms, the iPhone version of ... AT&T: SlingPlayer for iPhone Would 'Create Congestion' for 3G Wired News AT&T pins neutered SlingPlayer on iPhone not being a phone Apple Insider Los Angeles Times - ChannelWeb - CNET News - CNET News all 500 news articles

Prototype Display Combines Touchscreen, Morphing Buttons

BlackBerry and iPhone users might argue endlessly about which keyboard better, but a new prototype display could bridge their divide: It combines touchscreen technology with physical buttons that appear or disappear depending on the application.

Two doctoral students at the Carnegie Mellon University have developed a screen with three functions: pop-up, physical buttons and keypads can appear and disappear; the screen can accept touch input from the user; and it can render graphics.

“It is rare to be able to do all three in a single display,” says Chris Harrison, a Ph.D. researcher at the Human Computer Interaction lab at CMU. Harrison, along with Scott Hudson, published a paper last month explaining how the displays would work.

“It is tough to create a physically deformable surface that can still do graphics pretty well,” he says.

It is an “thought-provoking” project that plays into the emerging field of dynamic tactile displays, says Johnny Lee, a researcher at Microsoft’s Applied Sciences Group, who read Harrison’s paper early on but otherwise not connected with the research. “It’s a really, really interesting and stimulating idea,” he says.

“As humans we are very tactile individuals,” says Lee. “Touch is our primary sense as we navigate the world but touchscreens don’t allow us to use it.”

Despite the popularity of touchscreens, physical buttons are still preferred by many users. Physical buttons offer a low-attention way of interacting with display. And they are especially useful in situations where users don’t want to completely concentrate on a task on the screen. For instance, in cars, drivers have to take their eyes off the road to change the volume on a radio with a touchscreen.  Physical buttons, especially if they could change dynamically depending on task, would offer tactile feedback so the driver could keep her eyes on the road, says Harrison.

Harrison’s research is sure to find interest among companies that are trying to bring more tactile feedback to touchscreens. Research In Motion attempted to bring the physical feel of clicking on a keypad to its BlackBerry Storm touchscreen. The move fell short of many users’ expectations. But it has left the door open to other attempts that can more successfully mimic the sensation of hitting a real button on a multi-touch display.

The latest prototype display uses rear projection for the visual display and infrared lighting and a camera setup behind the display for the multitouch input.

In its simplest form, the prototype involves creating an air chamber by layering several specially-cut pieces of clear acrylic. A thin sheet of translucent latex is draped on top of this to act as a deformable projection surface.  The air chamber is then negatively or positively pressurized to create small pop-up buttons that mimic the feel of real physical ones.

“The tiny conduits of air actuate the display to create the different button options for users,” says Harrison.

Though the early prototype allowed it to work only in large installations, the researchers have been able to miniaturize it for screens as small as mobile phones. But they still face some major limitations.

“Using pneumatic pumps to do the actuation is a little bit power consuming,” says Lee. “That limits the environments it can be used in.” The latex material also used in the displays can be damaged or punctured, especially with repeated use, says Lee.  But those roadblocks can be overcome with use of different materials and pressure mechanisms, he says.

“As a proof of concept the idea is very interesting ,” says Lee.

Photo: Prototype ATM display shows different pop up buttons it can offer/Chris Harrison

Exclusive: BlogHer Nabs $7 million in New Funding [BoomTown]

BlogHer, which bills itself as “the community for women who blog,” has gotten $7 million more in a Series C funding, which will bring the total investment in the site to about $15.5 million.

The new round includes a return by two existing investors, Venrock and the Peacock Equity, a fund run by GE (GE) and its NBC Universal unit. Azure Capital is joining as a new investor.

In an interview with BoomTown, BlogHer CEO Lisa Stone said the site’s recent fast growth was the impetus for the new round, in order to improve tools offered to its 2,500 vetted bloggers, as well as investing in better research and advertising technology.

“This is a true grassroots effort that is shows that growing influence women in social media,” said Stone. “We want to focus on taking advantage of that growth and momentum with this new funding.”

According to the start-up–which was founded in 2005 by Stone, Elisa Camahort Page and Jory Des Jardins too and now has 30 employees, located mostly in Silicon Valley–the BlogHer Network reaches more than 14 million unique visitors a month.

Besides the site, BlogHer also runs a popular conference, and is also hoping to expand its suite of social networking tools, as well as its publishing and advertising network.

“We have been trying to create a place for women to participate in social media with civil respect and also to engage readers,” said Stone.

While it is not yet profitable, Stone added, BlogHer is ahead of its internal financial projections and “I hope next year I can raise a glass of champagne to meeting that goal.”

AT&T: We Crippled SlingPlayer TV App [MediaMemo]

Mystery solved, sort of: AT&T (T) is taking the blame for crippling the SlingPlayer iPhone app.

The program, created by Echostar’s (SATS) Sling group, is designed to let users watch TV shows, beamed from their own sets, on the  iPhone. It goes on sale for $29.99 today via Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes store — but without the ability to work over AT&T’s 3G network.

That’s our decision, says AT&T. Their rationale: The iPhone’s too powerful, and our network isn’t powerful enough.

That’s the gist of their argument, which both makes sense and confuses. AT&T says the Sling app could consume lots of network capacity, which is straightforward enough. But you can already use Sling apps for other handsets, like the BlackBerry, on AT&T.

The difference, AT&T says, is that the iPhone really isn’t a phone at all, but a PC that happens to make phone calls. “We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs”.

No argument there, either. But again, given that you can use the SlingPlayer over AT&T’s spectrum using different devices, it seems as if AT&T is really making a different argument: Just because you can watch TV on other devices doesn’t mean you will. But if we give people the chance to watch TV on iPhone, they’ll flock to it — and our network can’t handle that.

See for yourself. Here’s AT&T’s full statement, via Engadget:

“Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network. The application does not run on our 3G wireless network. Applications like this, which redirect a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service. We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs.

That said, we don’t restrict users from going to a Web site that lets them view videos. But what our terms and conditions prohibit is the transferring, or slinging, of a TV signal to their personal computer or smartphone.

The Slingbox application for the iPhone runs on WiFi. That’s good news for AT&T’s iPhone 3G customers, who get free WiFi access at our 20,000 owned and operated hot spots in the U.S., including Starbucks, McDonalds, Barnes & Noble, hotels, and airports. AT&T is the industry leader in WiFi.”

Space Junk Threatens Atlantis' Hubble Repair Mission - ABC News

USA Today

Space Junk Threatens Atlantis' Hubble Repair Mission ABC News By RYAN OWENS, JEN PEREIRA, JOSH GAYNOR and IMAEYEN IBANGA "Something the size of a pea could put a hole in the spacecraft," former astronaut Jeffrey Hoffman told "Good Morning America. Atlantis Crew Grabbing Hubble Space Telescope FOXNews Hubble-Bound Astronauts Inspect Shuttle for Damage Space.com CNN International - CNET News - Spaceflight Now - Los Angeles Times all 5,543 news articles

$1.45 billion record fine: EU slaps Intel hard in antitrust case

The 9-year-long antitrust battle between Intel and the European Union (the European Commission, to be exact) ended today and there is a clear loser: Intel. The company faces a $1.45 billion fine for abusing its No. 1 position in the market for computer chips. This is the highest fine the European Commission has ever imposed on a company.

Apart from the financial punishment, Intel was ordered to stop illegal rebates and other dubious practices to fence out other chip makers on the European market. A spokeswoman of the Commission summarized the verdict as follows: “Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years.”

According to the Commission, Intel abused its dominance between 2002 and 2007, for example by:

• giving discounts to Europe’s leading home electronics retailer Media Saturn Holding under the condition it sells Intel-powered PCs only
• paying a “leading manufacturer of computers” for postponing the market entry of products equipped with AMD chips
• giving rebates to companies such as NEC, Lenovo or HP provided they use Intel chips

This is a very bitter pill to swallow for Intel as around a third of total sales (worth $37.6 billion last year) is generated in Europe. It’s estimated that Intel controls about 80% of the worldwide market for computer chips with AMD being a distant second.

The verdict is final and Intel was ordered to pay the fine within three months after it’s officially notified of the decision.

Microsoft Zune HD tweet rumor was fake - SlashGear

SlashGear

Microsoft Zune HD tweet rumor was fake SlashGear It now looks like June will not see a new Microsoft Zune HD launch, as the company admits it accidentally linked to a fake Twitter account. Microsoft Disowns Zune Phone Teaser Tweets TechNewsWorld Updated: Microsoft Shoots Down New Zune Rumors PC Magazine Brighthand - Neoseeker - Slippery Brick - Yahoo! Tech all 83 news articles

Intel Fined Over €1 Billion For Violation Of European Antitrust Laws (Updated With Intel Statement)

The European Commission today announced that it has fined Intel a record €1.06 billion ($1.45 billion) for abusing its dominance in the market for computer chips to exclude its biggest (and frankly, the only serious) rival AMD by paying computer manufacturers Acer, Dell, HP, Lenovo, and NEC as well as retailers to postpone, cancel or downright avoid using or selling the latter’s products.

That’s one hell of a fine, considering the previous record for similar abuses in the EU was ‘only’ €497 million (Microsoft, back in 2004).

The European Commission has ordered Intel to stop the exclusion practices immediately, and said it would closely and actively monitor Intel’s compliance with its decision. E.U. regulators first began investigating Intel in 2001, after AMD filed a complaint in Brussels the year before.

The commission estimates the world market in the specific chip set in question (x86 CPUs) to be worth about €22 billion a year, with Europe accounting for approximately 30% of that (€6.6 billion). Intel currently maintains a share of about 80 percent of the European market.

Intel has not commented yet, but the general expectation is that the company will appeal both the fine and orders to change its business practices to the European Court of First Instance.

Update: Paul Otellini, Intel Corporation president and CEO just issued the following statement:

“Intel takes strong exception to this decision. We believe the decision is wrong and ignores the reality of a highly competitive microprocessor marketplace – characterized by constant innovation, improved product performance and lower prices. There has been absolutely zero harm to consumers. Intel will appeal.”

“We do not believe our practices violated European law. The natural result of a competitive market with only two major suppliers is that when one company wins sales, the other does not. The Directorate General for Competition of the Commission ignored or refused to obtain significant evidence that contradicts the assertions in this decision. We believe this evidence shows that when companies perform well the market rewards them, when they don’t perform the market acts accordingly.”

“Intel never sells products below cost. We have however, consistently invested in innovation, in manufacturing and in developing leadership technology. The result is that we can discount our products to compete in a highly competitive marketplace, passing along to consumers everywhere the efficiencies of being the world’s leading volume manufacturer of microprocessors.”

“Despite our strongly held views, as we go through the appeals process we plan to work with the Commission to ensure we’re in compliance with their decision. Finally, there should be no doubt whatsoever that Intel will continue to invest in the products and technologies that provide Europe and the rest of the world the industry’s best performing processors at lower prices.”

(Image via BusinessWeek)

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Google reshoots Japan views after privacy complaints - Reuters

MiamiHerald.com

Google reshoots Japan views after privacy complaints Reuters TOKYO (Reuters) - Internet search engine Google said it would reshoot all Japanese pictures for its online photo map service, Street View, using lower camera angles after complaints about invasion of privacy. Greece takes a dim view of Street View TG Daily Greece puts brakes on Street View BBC News ITProPortal - United Press International - Techtree.com - Neoseeker all 379 news articles

Linux certifications: Hot or not? (InfoWorld)

Cheap, Home Made Wi-Fi Tether

At around $800, Nikon’s remote WT-4a should really be called the WT-F. The Wireless Transmitter sends images from camera to computer over Wi-Fi, useful for tethered shooting. It also lets you remote control your camera using Nikon’s (terrible) Camera Control 2 software.

But, like we said, it’s $800. Pete Tsai took a look and though “I can do that.” The other way to hook up a Nikon camera to a computer is via USB, so why not Wireless USB (WUSB)? He bought an off-the-shelf adapter and, with minimal tweaking, got full remote access. The price? $40.

The home brew solution actually runs quicker than the Nikon version, although it needed one small mod to make it useful. Pete’s adapter plugs into a 5v AC adapter, tying the user to a wall-wart. He fashioned a quick AA battery pack to fix this and is currently working on building the whole lot into a camera hand grip.

The $50 Wireless Tethering Solution [Petetek via Flickr]

Photo: PeteTsai/Flickr

TEDTalks Go Global Online in 40 Languages (Including Urdu!) [BoomTown]

Some of the best delivery of video on the Web right now is via the TED Web site–the Internet part of the well-known conferences where big thinkers express bigger thoughts, mostly focusing on technology, entertainment and design.

The organizers have long put up those analog talks online, which are called TEDTalks, but now are trying to make them even more accessible globally, starting today.

According to TED Media Executive Producer June Cohen, “every TED talk will have subtitles, an interactive, time-coded transcript, and the capacity to be translated by volunteers worldwide. We’ll launch with 300 translations in 40 languages (including lesser-knowns like Tamil, Telugu, Urdu, etc).”

Yipes! We were planning to translate All Things Digital in Pig Latin–for example: Ittertway isway away ecretsay otplay otay estroyday ethay umanhay aceray iavay Ashtonway Utcherkay–but nixed the effort due to costs.

In all seriousness, this “Open Translation” project by TED is of the kind that has become common across the Web, as volunteers help sites go global, an important thing given too many are still English-only.

Facebook, for example, has used this method to get its sites up quickly internationally.

Thus, a Wade Davis TEDTalk on endangered cultures is now in 22 languages, for example, while Barry Schwartz’s speech on the loss of wisdom is in seven, including Hungarian.

According to Cohen, every talk now has English subtitles, that time-coded transcript, translated headlines, the ability to browse for talks by language and language-specific URLs.

Here is an example of a page (click on it to make it larger):

Here’s the interesting explanation of the project, financially backed by Nokia (NOK), from the TED Web site:

A year in the making, the TED Open Translation Project brings TEDTalks beyond the English-speaking world by offering subtitles, time-coded transcripts and the ability for any talk to be translated by volunteers worldwide. The project launched with 300 translations in 40 languages, and 200 volunteer translators.

Generously supported by a visionary sponsorship from Nokia, the TED Open Translation Project is one of the most comprehensive attempts by a major media platform to subtitle and index online video content. It’s also a groundbreaking effort in the public, professional use of volunteer translation.

Subtitles and transcripts

Every talk on TED.com will now have English subtitles, which can be toggled on or off by the user. The number of additional languages varies from talk to talk, based on the number of volunteers who elected to translate it.

Along with subtitles, every talk on TED.com now features a time-coded, interactive transcript, which allows users to select any phrase and have the video play from that point. The transcripts are fully indexable by search engines, exposing previously inaccessible content within the talks themselves. For example, searching on Google for “green roof” will ultimately help you find the moment in architect William McDonough’s talk when he discusses Ford’s River Rouge plant, and also the moment in Majora Carter’s talk when she speaks of her green roof project in the South Bronx. Transcripts will index in all available languages.

The interplay between the video, subtitles and transcript create what we call a Rosetta Stone effect. You can watch, for example, an English talk, with Korean subtitles and an Urdu transcript. Click on an Urdu phrase in the transcript, and the speaker will say it to you in English, with Korean subtitles running right-to-left below. It’s captivating.

The translations

Rather than simply translate a few talks into a handful of major languages, TED and technology partner, dotSUB developed a set of tools that allow participants around the world to translate their favorite talks into their own language. This approach is scalable, and–importantly–allows speakers of less-dominant languages an equal opportunity to spread ideas within their communities.

To seed the site, a handful of talks were professionally translated into 20 languages. But all translations going forward will be provided by volunteers. At launch, volunteer translators had already contributed more than 200 published translations (with 450 more in development). These volunteers range from well-organized groups working together in their own language, to lone translators working individually and matched by TED with others.

At launch, the Open Translation Project included 300 translations, in 40 languages, including Arabic, Basque, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hausa, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Kannada, Kirghiz, Korean, Macedonian, Norwegian, Persian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Tamil, Telugu, Thai, Turkish, Urdu and Vietnamese. Our translators hail from cities from Beijing to Buenos Aires; Tehran to Tel Aviv; Espoo, Finland, to Barranquilla, Colombia.

Source: Gizmodo | 13 May 2009 | 9:45 am

Ning Gets A Star Studded Boost From The Collective

Over the last few months celebrities have become something of a currency on the social web as services vie to attract big-name stars (and gather the resulting media coverage and new users in the process). Twitter has garnered the most attention for its roster, which includes celebrities like Ashton Kutcher and Oprah. Facebook too has been making strides in this area, especially since releasing its redesigned ‘Pages’ that allow celebrities and brands to broadcast their updates to fans.

Another contender in the celebrity hunt is social network platform Ning, which is already home to a number of social networks dedicated to celebrities, politicians, and musicians. Today, the company has announced that it has forged a partnership with The Collective, a management company whose clients include Enrique Iglesias, to create custom networks for a number of The Collective’s biggest clients.

Along with Enrique, Collective clients including comedian Eddie Izzard, and actors John Leguizamo and Taylor Momsen will be deploying their own social networks on the platform. And some clients, including The All American Rejects, Staind, and the Plain White T’s have already launched their own Ning networks as their homepages.

I spoke with The Collective partner Aaron Ray, who says that while the company’s artists will continue to maintain presences on other networks where appropriate, Ning has offered a greater degree of access to support personnel than other social networks have - clearly the site is going out of its way to foster its relationship with celebrities. But Ning SVP of business operations Jason Rosenthal says that the company is only interested in working with celebrities that will use their Ning networks to truly connect with fans, not just as vanilla corporate celeb properties.

Rosenthal also says that while many celebrities maintain presences across multiple sites, they tend to use Ning as their central hub, with their other profiles serving as satellite ’spokes’ linking back to their social networks. This isn’t surprising given the increased level of control a celebrity has over their Ning network, than say, a Facebook page. But celebrities won’t be dropping the other services any time soon - a Ning network may offer a richer experience, but casual fans are more likely to subscribe to a celebrity’s Twitter feed or Facebook page than they are to join an entirely new social network.

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Source: TechCrunch | 13 May 2009 | 9:37 am

Apple Mac OS X Update Has Nearly 70 Security Fixes - InformationWeek

Product Reviews

Apple Mac OS X Update Has Nearly 70 Security Fixes InformationWeek Version 10.5.7 addresses several issues with Apple's iCal and Mail applications, as well as its Parental Controls control panel. Digging into Apple's OS X 10.5.7 update Macworld Apple unleashes 10.5.7 update via Software Update Ars Technica Soft Sailor - ZDNet Blogs - Computerworld - SYS-CON Media (press release) all 124 news articles

Source: Google News - Sci/Tech | 13 May 2009 | 9:13 am

Online car hysterics drive Shanghainese round the bend (Reuters)

Reuters - A popular Chinese online video showing a woman going hysterical after her male companion refuses to buy her a car is stirring debate about Shanghai's females, who are renowned for their demanding ways.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 May 2009 | 9:05 am

AVEVA Strengthens the Integrated Engineering and Design Approach of AVEVA Plant With Two New Products

FRANKFURT, Germany, May 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Launching at ACHEMA 2009 will be a range of new and upgraded AVEVA product solutions aimed at tighter technology integration and increased productivity throughout the entire project lifecycle. AVEVA's Integrated Engineering and Design approach integrates all plant engineering and AVEVA PDMS 3D design data within a single AVEVA model database.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 May 2009 | 9:00 am

Hands On With The Sony Series-X Walkman

Hey remember that time Sony invented the portable music player but then refused to embrace the MP3 format only to end up getting burned bad by Apple when the MP3 enabled iPod came out?

Sony certainly remembers.

After years of trial and error with various substandard on-the-go media players Sony is finally flexing its competitive muscle with the Series-X; an OLED flaunting, Slacker sporting, web browsing, noise canceling device proudly flying under the banner of “Walkman.”

Sony dropped an early build of the X by today. Here are our impressions after fiddling with it for the last 12 hours. Keep in mind; this isn’t a full test, just basically our initial reactions after playing with hardware that’s not 100 percent fully baked yet.

The Hardware

Typical Sony (i.e. freaking nice). It looks like a Danger Mouse-style mashup between a Microsoft Zune and an iPod Touch. Flanking the sides are controls for volume and noise canceling. Noise canceling is actually handled by the included earbuds — you can just switch the feature on and off from the body of the device.

The 3-inch touchscreen is by far the X’s best feature. Brilliant, colorful, and OLED based, it’s also super-duper sensitive. I’m talking iPhone levels of sensitivity. I hate, hate, hate comparing every touch screen based electronic we handle to an iPhone or iPod, but they represent the gold standard for touch based input. And the X-series can hang with any Cupertino device in terms of touch sensitivity.

The UI

The menus are set up logically in a grid. Icons let you access Slacker, the FM radio, YouTube, still images, the video player, music, noise canceling options, podcasts, the Web browser, plus the X’s internal settings. If you want to select something, merely touch it, the icon illuminates and a small bubble pops up above it and indicates the application you’re selecting. Input ambiguity? There really is none. Provided you’re not typing a URL. (We’ll get to that later.)

Music Player

You can sort by song, artist, genre, release year, via playlist, or file folder. You can also link individual tracks on Yahoo One Search or YouTube for videos. I immediately brought up Ice Ice Baby on the device, linked it to YouTube, and within seconds, was watching Robert Van Winkler prance about in a black and silver sequined power suit.

Slacker!

Most ubiquitous of all the features on the phone is the inclusion of the Slacker software. For those of you unfamiliar with the service, it’s a lot like Last FM or Pandora. You get a 30 day free trial before you have to register. You manage your stations from a PC first and then mix and listen to them via the Slacker software.

Podcasts

We were able to get onto podcast.com and eventually download both the Gadget Lab podcast and the Wired Playlist audio podacst. It took a little bit of poking around (podcast.com has a terrible search function) but we were able to do it within a few minutes.

FM Radio

I’m not sure why this is necessary since there’s a Web browser in place. Want to listen to NPR? Go to npr.com.

Web Browser

Meh. Not so hot. The browser frequently re-sizes web pages in odd ways and doesn’t display graphics effectively. What’s more irksome is entering URLs. Typing text into the URL bar is painstaking, typo prone, and tedious.

File Supprt

MP3, WMA, AAC/L-PCM + Video,  AVC(H.264/AVC), MPEG-4, WMV DRM

What We Think

I like the damn thing. While it’s not as polished as an iPod, it’s certainly more smartly assembled than the oafish Zune. What’s better, it has a few features the iPod Touch doesn’t: Slacker service, physical buttons, integrated noise canceling. What’s worse though is a Web browser that’s fairly crappy, inputting text is ambiguous and the battery doesn’t seem to last more than five hours of continuous use. And hey, this is a nicely appointed, well-featured device. I’m just surprised there isn’t a phone built into it somewhere.

The X-series Walkman is available for pre-sale now and will start shipping in the middle of June.

Hit the jump for all the Sony press release spewage.

Photos by Jon Snyder/ Wired.com

Sony X-series Walkman®
A slim noise-canceling video MP3 player

Product Bullets:
•    OLED Video experience with a high quality 3” wide display (WQVGA)
•    Incredible sound quality with digital clear audio technologies, S-Master™ digital amplifier and digital noise canceling with airplane, train, bus and office mode
•    New content experience: Podcast download, YouTube™ streaming, Yahoo!® search, Music Meta Link, Slacker® Personal Radio
•    Multi Audio/Video Codec support: Music - MP3/WMA/AAC/L-PCM and Video - AVC(H.264/AVC)/MPEG-4/WMV DRM
•    Hybrid Operation system allows you touch panel & buttons operation
•    13.5 mm Noise Canceling EX Headphones included MDR-NC020
•    FM Tuner
Key Features:
•    Quality of Sound: Digital clear audio technologies, S-Master™ digital amplifier, digital noise canceling function with Noise Canceling EX headphones (MDR-NC20)
•    Discover Music: Slacker® radio offers free personalized music that uploads to your Walkman® player when the player is connected to a wireless LAN and when you are in a WiFi zone (Slacker registration is required after 30 days).
•    OLED Display: OLED technology has a response time suitable for movie playback. A wide viewing angle of nearly 180 degrees gives consistent tone and stable contrast, as well as, a wide range of color reproduction and a high contrast ratio.
•    Hybrid Operation: The benefit of both “touch panel” and “button” operation makes the X series easy to use while using its different features.
•    Internet Connectivity:
o    Podcast download, register podcast on browser and link to podcast web site
o    “Related Links” function relates web content with music content playing on your Walkman® X series
o    Connect directly to “YouTube™” and “Yahoo!®”
o    Internet Browser
o    Wireless LAN (Wi-Fi) connectivity to Home Wireless LAN and to public Wireless LAN. Supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup
•    Drag and Drop Functionality: Easily load your music, pictures, and video onto this player by dragging and dropping them into the video MP3 player on your computer.
•    Multiple High-quality Video Formats: This player supports multiple high-quality video formats as well as a variety of audio codecs, giving you more freedom to download the kind of music and video that you want.
•    Long Battery Life: Equipped with a long-lasting battery that enables you to listen to up to 33 hours of music and watch up to 9 hours of video without needing to recharge.
Audio
•    Antenna System: FM: Headphone Cord Antenna
•    Audio Power Output: 5 + 5mW
•    Equalizer: 5 Band: Heavy/Pop/Jazz/Unique/Custom1/Custom2
•    Format(s) Supported: Audio: MP3/WMA/AAC/L-PCM, Video: AVC(H.264/AVC)/MPEG-4/WMV DRM
•    Frequency Range: 87.5 to 108.0 MHz
•    Frequency Response: 20 - 20,000Hz
•    Tuner: Yes - FM
Audio Features
•    Sound Mode : 5 Band equalizer (Heavy/Pop/Jazz/Unique/Custom 1/Custom 2) and Clear Bass
•    Surround Effect : DSEE (on/off)
Capability
•    MP3 Player : Yes
•    Radio : Yes
Convenience Features
•    Multiple Language Display : English/French/German/Spanish/Italian/Russian/Japanese/Simplified Chinese/Traditional Chinese/Korean/Portuguese
•    Search Features : All Songs/Album/Artist/Genre/Release Year/Playlists/Folder
Display
•    Screen Size : 3.0” WIDE OLED Display (WQVGA)
General
•    Music Storage Capacity (Approx) : 16GB or 32GB
•    Recommended Use : Music/Video/Photo/FM/Podcast/Internet Browser/YouTube
Hardware
•    Display : 3-inch, OLED color display, WQVGA (432 x 240 Pixels), 262,144 colors
•    Headphone Type : MDR-NC020
•    System Requirements : Computer: IBM PC/AT or compatible computer preinstalled with the following Windows operating systems: - Windows® XP Home Edition (Service Pack 2 or later) - Windows® XP Professional (Service Pack 2 or later) - Windows Vista® Home Basic (Service Pack 1 or later) - Windows Vista® Home Premium (Service Pack 1 or later) - Windows Vista® Business (Service Pack 1 or later) - Windows Vista® Ultimate (Service Pack 1 or later) Excluding OS Versions not supported by Microsoft. Excluding Windows® XP Professional x64 Edition. Excluding 64-bit OS versions for use with PC application software “Media Manager for Walkman”.
Inputs and Outputs
•    Headphone Jack : Yes
•    Headphone Output(s) : 1 (stereo mini jack)
Memory
•    Memory Size : 16GB or 32GB
•    User Memory Capacity (Approx.) : Flash
Power
•    Battery Charging (Approx) : USB-based charging Approx. 3 Hrs(full charge), Approx. 1.5 Hrs(approx. 80%)
•    Power Type : Built-in Rechargeable Li-ion Battery USB power (from a computer via the supplied USB cable)
System Requirements
•    Internet Connection : Yes (wi-fi)
Video
•    Playback : Mode: Normal/Repeat/Shuffle/Shuffle&Repeat/Repeat 1 Song
Video Features
•    JPEG Playback : Yes
Weights and Measurements
•    Dimensions (Approx.) : W 2 1/8 x H 3 7/8 x D 13/32 inches
•    Weight (Approx.) : 3.5 oz
Supplied Accessories
•    CD-ROM (”Window’s Media Player 11″, “Media Manager for Walkman”, “Content Transer”,” Operation Guide”)
•    Earbud headphones (S,M,L)
•    Quick Start Guide
•    USB Cable
•    Attachment
•    Audio input cable
•    Plug adapter for in-flight use (single/dual)

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 13 May 2009 | 8:59 am

Minor Damage Found On Space Shuttle

The BBC is reporting on minor damage to the space shuttle Atlantis revealed by a 10-hour inspection in orbit. On the shuttle's right side, near where the wing joins the body, inspection revealed a 21" (53cm) line of chips in the tiles that make up the vehicle's heat shield. "...more analysis by engineers would determine whether a 'focused inspection' was needed in that specific area. If so, astronauts would use sensors to determine the exact depth of the damage to the heat shield tiles. NASA has placed the space shuttle Endeavour on stand-by to rescue the crew of Atlantis if they are endangered." The crew couldn't shelter on the ISS in case of trouble, because their orbit is higher and on a different inclination.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 13 May 2009 | 8:53 am

OSEO Selects Misys Summit FT to Support its Treasury Business

LONDON, May 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- - Misys Summit FT Solution to be Deployed Throughout Front-to-Back Office as French State Agency Looks to Maximise its Support to France's SMEs Misys (LSE: MSY.L), the global application software and services company, today announced that OSEO, the French state-backed company that provides financial support to small and medium sized businesses, has selected Misys to

Source: Gizmodo | 13 May 2009 | 8:41 am

Panasonic gets serious with OLED development

OLED TVs sure offer phenomenal picture quality, but even now, 2 years after Sony launched its XEL-1, we still wait for large-screen versions. Samsung showcased a 40-inch OLED display last year (pictured). Now Panasonic might be onto something bigger. The company is planning to develop the world’s first OEL panel that’s sized at “40 inches or larger” by fiscal 2010.

Panasonic will team up with major chemical company Sumitomo Chemical to produce the OLED displays in a new LCD TV plant Panasonic will open in summer next year. The companies said by 2015, their 40-inch OLED TVs should boast a power consumption of 40W, a third of current LCD TVs and just 10% of what existing plasma TVs of that size use.

The TVs are also expected to be just 3mm thick and 20 times brighter than plasma displays that are on the market today. We can’t wait (for affordable OEL panels).

Via Nikkei [registration required, paid subscription]

Source: CrunchGear | 13 May 2009 | 8:20 am

VanceInfo Reports Solid Results for the First Quarter 2009

BEIJING, May 13 /PRNewswire-Asia/ -- VanceInfo Technologies Inc. (NYSE: VIT) (''VanceInfo'' or the ''Company''), an IT service provider and one of the leading offshore software development companies in China, today reported its unaudited financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2009. First Quarter 2009 Financial and Operating Highlights -- Net revenues in the first quarter of 2009 increased to $30.1 million, up 46.8 % from $20.5 million in the first quarter of 2008. -- Operating income in the first quarter of 2009 was $4.3 million, up 65.7% from the first quarter of 2008.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 May 2009 | 8:20 am

Blah Girls Jumps From The Web To TV, As Kutcher Does The Opposite

Ashton Kutcher got his start on the small screen. His roles in That 70s Show and development of the MTV show Punk’d (which is being kind of reborn with Ustream) allowed him to become a movie star. But these days he seems more interested in using the web to further his career. His recent race with CNN to be the first user with a million Twitter followers was just one facet of what he’s doing online. He also has his own web-based show Blah Girls. But now he’s sending that the opposite way: Back to television.

Katalyst Media, the production company Kutcher runs with Jason Goldman, has signed a deal with CBS Television Distribution (CTD) to distribute Blah Girls on television. Specifically, the show will run as one-minute interstitials between segments on the entertainment magazine show, The Insider. While the show has run on the web since its launch during TechCrunch50 last June, a television distribution deal has always been a part of the broader goal for the content. And CBS has a larger development deal with Katalyst Media, so this is simply an extension of that.

Still, it’s a bit odd that Kutcher is taking the show to television after going on and on about how his race to a million followers showed that individuals could trump huge media conglomerates. And he beat CNN, but he still apparently needs CBS. Why? Because there’s money there of course, and it’s still tough to monetize an online video venture.

But Blah Girls will continue on the web as well, and I’m sure the CBS gig will get it some good exposure. Find a Mother’s Day episode of Blah Girls below.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 13 May 2009 | 8:14 am

Orange to sell Nokia music package in Britain (Reuters)

Reuters - Top mobile phone maker Nokia said on Wednesday France Telecom's Orange would sell its top model 5800 and exclusive music-package deal in Britain.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 May 2009 | 8:00 am

PBS Affiliate Selects Autonomy to Enhance Video Archive

CAMBRIDGE, England and SAN FRANCISCO, California, May 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Autonomy Corporation plc (LSE: AU.), a global leader in infrastructure software for the enterprise, today announced that WHRO, a regional media company and PBS affiliate that promotes education, culture and citizenship to the citizens of Hampton Roads, Virginia, has selected Autonomy's Intelligent Data Operating Layer (IDOL) and Rich Media Management solutions to manage and retrieve its massive volume of video archives.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 May 2009 | 8:00 am

Frost & Sullivan: Distribution Channel Essential for the Growth of the European Security Market

LONDON, May 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The economic downturn will reduce security spending across Europe.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 May 2009 | 8:00 am

UK may cap spectrum ownership for mobile telcos (Reuters)

Reuters - Britain unveiled plans to cap ownership of the digital radio spectrum among mobile phone companies, aiming to settle a long-running dispute and fulfill the government's target of providing universal broadband.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 May 2009 | 7:45 am

Creanord Introduces Traffic-Meter(TM) Enabled Ethernet Access Devices With Unique per Second Network Flow Visibility

Ethernet Expo Europe, LONDON, May 13 /PRNewswire/ -- Creanord Ltd., a premier solutions enabler assisting Carriers and service providers in Ensuring Quality of Experience(TM) and Strengthening customer loyalty announced the availability of enhanced Traffic-Meter - a first solution for monitoring microburst and microloss events with range of Ethernet Access devices driven by Creanord EchoAgent(TM). Traditional bandwidth monitoring falls short in Carrier Ethernet because legacy network elements provide traffic counters only for physical interfaces.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 May 2009 | 7:30 am

Motech (6244.tw) Announces 2009 Q1 Quarterly Results

TAIPEI, Taiwan, May 13 /PRNewswire-Asia-FirstCall/ -- Motech Industries Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 May 2009 | 7:08 am

The New York Real Times [Voices]

Twitterification continues. Not only are other social networking sites, such as Facebook, scrambling to pour their members’ energy into the realtime stream, but more traditional publishers are also adopting the Twitter model to firehose their content. Build your arks, my friends: The stream is going mainstream.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 13 May 2009 | 7:05 am

Three new Get a Mac ads respond to MS (Macworld.com)

Macworld.com - I was watching the season finale of Fringe (Did you see it? It was very cool indeed) when out of nowhere a new Get a Mac ad plays. I rushed to Apple’s Web site only to find that Apple has released three new Get a Mac ads tonight starting the iconic Mac and PC pair played by Justin Long and John Hodgman respectively.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 May 2009 | 7:05 am

Print Books Are Target of Pirates on the Web [Voices]

Ursula K. Le Guin, the science fiction writer, was perusing the Web site Scribd last month when she came across digital copies of some books that seemed quite familiar to her. No wonder. She wrote them, including a free-for-the-taking copy of one of her most enduring novels, “The Left Hand of Darkness.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 13 May 2009 | 7:04 am

Microsoft’s next Apple price attack: Zune Pass vs iTunes [Voices]

If you were buying 30,000 songs, would you rather pay $30,000 or $15 per month? Microsoft is trying to advertise the Zune Pass by underlining the advantage in price.

Microsoft’s Laptop Hunter ads (one, two, three, and four) must be doing quite well, because what Microsoft started off as a price attack on Macs seems to have transcended over to the online music store business.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 13 May 2009 | 7:03 am

Hulu, a Victim of Its Own Success? [Voices]

Hulu, the online TV service launched two years ago by Fox and NBC, has enjoyed incredible success with viewers — too much, it may turn out.

Two weeks ago, comScore’s report that Hulu had pulled into the top three streaming video sites was quickly followed by news that Disney — the corporate parent of ABC and ESPN—was taking a stake in the venture.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 13 May 2009 | 7:02 am

IBM-SAP combo not in the cards [Voices]

At a table in Las Vegas, a town fueled by big bets, IBM software chief Steve Mills outlined one he doesn’t want to make: Buying application provider SAP.

“We’re not changing our strategy,” said Mills, who guides Big Blue’s software strategy for CEO Sam Palmisano. “We have consistently shied away from going deep into the applications space,” he said last week at a series of business meetings.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 13 May 2009 | 7:01 am

iLike Launches Custom iPhone Apps, Syndication Platform To Help Artists Connect With Fans

iLike, the popular music discovery site with a huge presence on social networks, is launching a set of new syndication services for musicians. Beginning tonight, iLike now offers extensive integration with Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and YouTube, allowing artists to distribute content to each of their online presences from a single control panel. In addition to these, the company is also launching a new self-serve platform for building customized iPhone applications for artists, allowing them to establish themselves on the App Store with a minimum amount of effort and resources.

While most readers probably associate iLike with music playlists and streaming, the service is also home to 300,000 artists who use its services to help manage and distrbute their content. Before today’s annoucement, the service offered more limited syndication options, allowing them send data through the iLike Facebook application, its iGoogle widget, and an iTunes plugin. But the new options go much further.

One of the most significant changes is the release of a new ‘Music’ tab for an artist’s Facebook pages, which will allow them to incorporate their music, videos, and concert information (previously artists would have to rely on the iLike Facebook application). The service has also expanded its support for Twitter, allowing artists to import their Tweets from elsewhere and distribute them to their social network profiles, or to syndicate them directly from the iLike dashboard.

Other additions abound: artists can now sync their videos between YouTube and iLike, so they won’t have to post them in multiple places. They can create their own ‘dot-com’ websites, which they can manage from the iLike dashboard. They can syndicate their content directly to their Ticketmaster profile pages. And iLike’s concert app and event pages on MySpace have also gotten a boost, allowing fans to purchase tickets directly without having to go elsewhere and including more social features (like being able to see who else is going to a certain concert).

Finally, in what is easily the biggest departure for the company, iLike is also rolling out a platform that will allow artists to create their own iPhone applications, which can include dynamically updated photos, music, blog posts, and other content (you can see a demo of the app below). iLike is charging artists a one-time fee of $99, and will also participate in a rev-share deal for those that want to charge for their applications (the current plan is for a 50/50 split). Artists that give their application away for free will only have to pay the initial fee. The iPhone is quickly becoming a very popular and powerful way to connect with fans, and there’s no doubt even smaller bands are eager to appear in the App Store. But iLike won’t be alone in trying to tackle this market - other companies like Mobile Roadie and Kyte are offering similar platforms for building custom iPhone apps.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 13 May 2009 | 7:00 am

CorpFreeSpeech, Gateway to the Truth about Public Companies

New Social Networking Site runs Annual General Meetings for Corporations 24-7 MONTREAL, May 13 /PRNewswire/ -- The Social Networking craze has hit the financial world with the launch of CorpFreeSpeech.com (www.corpfreespeech.com).
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 May 2009 | 7:00 am

Slain Lawyer's YouTube Video Plunges Guatemala into Crisis, Protests Form on Facebook

The crisis in Guatemala sparked by an assassinated attorney's final words -- captured on YouTube -- continues to expand online and in the streets.

Above, a protest poster distributed on Twitter in posts marked with the hashtag #escandalogt (short for "Guatemalan Scandal," for those who don't read Spanish).

The poster reads: I WILL NOT BE AFRAID TO GO OUT INTO THE STREETS, DEFEND MY LIBERTY, UPHOLD THE LAW, DEMAND JUSTICE, I WILL NOT BE AFRAID TO LIVE IN MY HOMELAND AND CHANGE ITS FUTURE.... GUATEMALA, I WILL NOT ABANDON YOU.

Inset above, a photo taken on Sunday: a worker guards the body of Rodrigo Rosenberg just after he was shot by gunmen in Guatemala City.

In the posthumously-released video, Rosenberg said he feared he would be assasinated, and that if he were, those responsible would be operating at the orders of Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom.

Prensa Libre reports that Facebook is now being used by Guatemalans calling for Colom's impeachment and trial. Organizers are spreading word on Twitter and various social networking sites to gather for a second day of protests, tomorrow, Wednesday May 13. Snip from article, with my rough translation from Spanish:

En el portal de Facebook se puede leer el enunciado de un usuario: "Hoy solo fue una pequeña muestra. Mañana con más fuerza y mientras más personas lleguemos mejor aún!!!! Manifestemos Todos!!! Mañana somos más!!!, se lee en otro.

On Facebook one can read the declaration of a user who says, 'Today's demonstrations were only a small example, tomorrow with more strength and even more people we will achieve more still! Everyone, Protest! And, 'Tomorrow, there will be more of us,' says another user.

Here is one of many Facebook groups calling for Colom's resignation and trial.

The Wall Street Journal has a report up here. Colom was interviewed on CNN en Español today, and a transcript is here. Here's an AP item from today, here's a NYT item.

I'm hearing anecdotal reports on Twitter and elsewhere that account holders at Banrural, the Guatemalan bank at the heart of this scandal, are withdrawing all their cash from the institution and causing a growing liquidation panic that threatens to further destabilize the already teetering country.

Previously
- Guatemala: Protests for Assassinated Lawyer Streamed Live from Laptops in the Streets
- In YouTube Video Shot Before His Death, Attorney Blames President for His Assasination

Source: Boing Boing | 13 May 2009 | 6:39 am

Apple reacts to Laptop Hunters using elimination

Okay so a PC is slow or has a small screen or has viruses causing you headaches. Apple’s response to the Laptop Hunters is just a little smarter than Microsoft’s ads. Or not at all. What’s more interesting is this other ad about customer care. Go check them out.

Source: Gizmodo | 13 May 2009 | 5:55 am

Accor: Increasing Responsiveness at Every Level

PARIS, May 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Faced with an unprecedented recession, which caused business to decline more quickly in the first quarter and offers few prospects for an improvement in the second, Accor is focused more than ever on the battle for revenue in the Hotels business and on stepping up its marketing initiatives in Prepaid Services and has decided to take a certain number of additional measures to reduce costs and scale back capital expenditure. Enhancing responsiveness also requires lean, agile governance structures. Accor shareholders are therefore asked at today's Annual Meeting to approve a reduction in the number of Board members from 17 to 12.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 13 May 2009 | 5:44 am

Have Sockets Run Their Course?

ChelleChelle writes "This article examines the limitations of the sockets API. The Internet and the networking world in general have changed in very significant ways since the sockets API was first developed in 1982, but the API has had the effect of narrowing the ways in which developers think about and write networked applications. This article discusses the history as well as the future of the sockets API, focusing on how 'high bandwidth, low latency, and multihoming are driving the development of new alternatives.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 13 May 2009 | 5:40 am

Cellcom Israel Schedules First Quarter 2009 Results Release for May 26, 2009

NETANYA, Israel, May 13 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Cellcom Israel Ltd. (NYSE: CEL) (TASE: CEL) (hereinafter: the "Company"), announced today that it will be releasing its financial results for the first quarter ended March 31, 2009 on Tuesday, May 26, 2009. The Company will be hosting a conference call later that day, at 10:00am

Source: Gizmodo | 13 May 2009 | 5:00 am

MySpace Wants To Avoid This Whole Holocaust Denial Thing

Lots of heat is being put on Facebook over Holocaust denial, ranging from blogs to CNN to pissed off moms who still can’t post pictures of their breasts on their Facebook pages. Facebook is standing firm in their defense of the deniers.

Meanwhile, MySpace is just hoping no one looks their way. In an email to MySpace forum moderators today, MySpace asked moderators to “keep an eye out for anti-semitism and derogatory comments.” Based on the text of the email, some of which has been redacted, it looks like moderators are expected to remove this content promptly and even perhaps ban offending users.

MySpace’s motivation to deal with the problem may be fairly sad (just to avoid bad press), but at least they’re doing the right thing by getting this hate speech off the site. MySpace’s terms of use are similar to Facebook’s - specifically hate speech is banned.

Here’s the email:

Holocaust Denial

This is a hot topic right now. Keep an eye out for anti-semitism and derogatory comments.

If you ban a user for this, please leave the ban info here.

[redacted]

Please include links of deleted posts as well.

Thanks guys.

We’ve reached out to MySpace for comment on their official policy on Holocaust denial.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 13 May 2009 | 4:58 am

IBM launches new real-time data analysis software

Source: Gizmodo | 13 May 2009 | 4:15 am

Twitter Decides We’re Not Smart Enough For @Replies, Changes Them Again

Twitter is officially getting dumbed down.

For the second time in less than two months, Twitter has changed its @reply system, this time by removing an option that has existed for many months in an effort to appease confused newcomers.

The basic premise behind the @reply system is that it allows you to create a semi-public conversation with another Twitter user. To prevent you from having to listen in to conversations you might not care about, the default setting has long been to only show these @replies if you were following both people in the conversation. And that’s the choice most people stuck with.

But there was an option to receive all @reply messages from any users you were following. This led to an increase in noise, but it also exposed you to new Twitter users and conversations that you might have otherwise missed out on. I’ve had it turned on for over a year. But apparently that option has confused too many people, so Twitter is killing it.

From the Twitter blog:

We’ve updated the Notices section of Settings to better reflect how folks are using Twitter regarding replies. Based on usage patterns and feedback, we’ve learned most people want to see when someone they follow replies to another person they follow—it’s a good way to stay in the loop. However, receiving one-sided fragments via replies sent to folks you don’t follow in your timeline is undesirable. Today’s update removes this undesirable and confusing option.

Confused? That’s understandable and exactly why we made the update.

Gee, thanks Twitter. I didn’t realize that an option I manually activated was undesirable. Any other things I shouldn’t like that you’d like to make me aware of?

If there was anything undesirable about the old system, it was that Twitter did a poor job of explaining it, not that the functionality itself was unwanted. And given that the option was not the default and was buried under a settings menu, why would it matter anyway? If too many people are getting confused, why not simply make it more hidden (perhaps under an ‘advanced’ tab)?

In the months since Twitter has grown in mainstream appeal, and especially since it made its debut on Oprah, some of Twitter’s early adopters have expressed fear over a change in the service. With a growing number of celebrities and media presences (not to mention spammers), they worry that the service will lose its tight-knit feel. Before tonight I never paid much attention to this train of thought - after all, on Twitter, I can just follow the people I care about and ignore those I don’t. But it’s clear that Twitter is concerned with appealing to a more mainstream audience, and if that takes making a very simple service even more simple, then by golly, that’s what they’re going to do.

Update 1: Many Twitter users are up in arms about the change, voicing their complaints under the channel #fixreplies, which is currently the top trending term on Twitter.

Update 2: Twitter CEO Evan Williams just tweeted about the change: “Reading people’s thoughts on the replies issue. We’re considering alternatives. Thanks for your feedback.”

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

Source: TechCrunch | 13 May 2009 | 4:13 am

Art Bell: Radio's Master of the Unexplained Explains Himself

Nearly 20 years ago, Art Bell created the wildly popular radio program Coast to Coast AM, a wee-hour forum for weird science. We asked him why the show entertains, even encourages, the crazies.

Wired: You were hosting a political talk show before you jumped to the supernatural. What inspired the switch?

Bell: I was crushingly bored talking about politics 30 hours a week. So one day I said, "The hell with it," and I brought on John Lear, a very outspoken ufologist. The audience just went nuts! The phones lit up.

Wired: How did your bosses react?

Bell: They had heart attacks. But when the ratings came in, we were overwhelmingly number one. I was lucky because the show was on at night. There's a different breed of person awake at those hours. And the world is a quieter place, with less to distract us from esoteric thought. I think—no, I'm sure—Coast to Coast wouldn't work with a daytime audience.

Wired: Why are people so drawn to the paranormal?

Bell: The same reason we're drawn to God. The greatest question of all is whether our experience on this planet is "it" or whether there is something else. Things in the supernatural realm give support, strangely perhaps, to the things we take on faith. Like ghosts, for example—they underscore the possibility of an afterlife.

Wired: Do you believe in ghosts?

Bell: I've never seen one, so I'm skeptical. But I do believe in the paranormal, that there are things our brains just can't understand.

Wired: As you're listening to callers, how often do you think, "No f-ing way"?

Bell: Oh, all the time. But if you're into a really great tale, then it doesn't actually matter if it's true or not.

Wired: The funny thing about radio is that you never have to show any evidence.

Bell: That's right. That's why radio is "the theater of the mind."

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 May 2009 | 4:00 am

Match the MacGuffin With the Movie

Alfred Hitchcock called it the MacGuffin—the thing in a movie that everyone's chasing, the proverbial Holy Grail (or the actual one). In The Maltese Falcon, it's the Maltese Falcon. In Raiders of the Lost Ark, it's the lost ark. You get the idea.

a. 1964 Chevy Malibu	b. Oscillation overthruster	c. Iron box	d. Briefcase
e. Six perfect emeralds	f. 400 cases of Coors Light	g. Letters of Transit	h. Most Fabulous Object in the World

1 Ronin

2 Casablanca

3 Kiss Me Deadly

4 Smokey and the Bandit

5 Repo Man

6 Time Bandits

7 The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai

8 Into the Night

Roll over the ??? to reveal the MacGuffins.

Movie 1 ???	Movie 2 ???	Movie 3 ???	Movie 4 ???
Movie 5 ???	Movie 6 ???	Movie 7 ???	Movie 8 ???

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 May 2009 | 4:00 am

Exotic 'Star Trek' Locales Are All Over the California Map

Space looks a lot like Southern California in J.J. Abrams' new sci-fi film.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 May 2009 | 4:00 am

May 13, 1884: Electrical Engineers Meet Up, Light Up

The American Institute of Electrical Engineers, forerunner of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, is founded in New York City.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 May 2009 | 4:00 am

The Unlikely Events of a Water Landing: New Photos From Flight 1549

<< previous image | next image >>

On Jan. 15, 2009, a few Canadian geese with bad timing became snarge, a steely pilot became a hero, and the world became fascinated with images of a jet splashing into the Hudson River and then floating calmly as passengers crowded its wings.

But until now, few people have seen the equally surprising pictures of the second half of this story: when a salvage team used the biggest floating crane on the East Coast to pluck the ill-fated Airbus A320 from the frigid water.

Photographer Stephen Mallon was at a happy hour with his wife on the evening US Air Flight 1549 made the news. As people in the bar chatted about what was going on, he realized that he knew exactly who the authorities would turn to for help. Mallon specializes in documenting industrial subjects, and had been photographing the work of maritime contractor Weeks Marine, a company that had been hired to dump derelict subway cars into the ocean to create artificial reefs.

On a hunch, Mallon put down his drink to call Jason Marchioni, manager of Weeks' Heavy Lift Division. The next morning, the photographer confirmed that Weeks had been tapped for the salvage job, and the company offered to hire him to record the operation. By the afternoon the ecstatic photographer was aboard a tugboat headed to the scene.

"I was basically drooling at this point," says Mallon. "I had already pretty much packed, just in case the call came in. So I jumped in my car, grabbed my camera gear and got out to their yard in Bayonne and got on a tugboat. And we just headed out."

- - -

Read on for a profile of the only photographer with exclusive access to this massive salvage operation and to see just what it takes to pull a commercial airliner out of the Hudson.

Mallon: "It was incredible standing on the pier looking down, and every once in a while saying to myself and the people next to me: 'There's a plane in the water right there!'"

Editor's note: Some of these images have been altered by Stephen Mallon to remove the US Airways logo at the company's request.

Photos: Stephen Mallon

<< previous image | next image >>

While the TV cameras were cordoned off behind a jogging trail that separates nearby Riverview Terrace from the Hudson, Mallon was in the middle of the action, actually shooting from the barges and tugs that were taking part in the salvage.

"They had all the media back on the road … because there was still a little bit of concern that the plane might explode," Mallon says.

When he first arrived, Mallon found the aircraft halfway submerged, a visual non sequitur that had the helpless look of "a beached whale." At the time, Weeks Marine's seven-man dive crew was making a painstaking survey of the aircraft's exterior, protected by heated wetsuits as they slogged in the icy water.

With visibility as low as a foot and half, the divers had to rely on touch alone, checking for damage that might cause the aircraft to break apart under stress. After 12 hours of assessment, the salvage crew was ready to engage their burliest member: a giant floating crane affectionately dubbed "the Big Bitch."

Photos: Stephen Mallon

<< previous image | next image >>

Mounted on a barge that measures 300 feet long and 90 feet wide, the Big Bitch — more formally known as "Weeks 533" — swings a 248-foot long boom that can lift up to 500 tons, making it the largest rotating crane in the eastern United States.

It boasts two 100-foot long steel pipes that run through the barge and can be plunged into the seafloor, allowing operators to self-anchor the crane, which can operate in less than seven feet of water.

Though the Airbus would be relatively light compared to the massive transformers and other industrial equipment that the crane usually handles, the trick was to lift the plane out without snapping it in two.

By around 10 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 17, the dive crew had secured the body of the aircraft with two straps, one under each wing. They rigged the plane's tail with a separate cable, so operators could angle the aircraft's nose downward after it broke the surface, draining water through the open doors.

Mallon was shooting from the barge directly in front of the crane while the lift was in progress.

"I was sitting on top of the crane a few minutes earlier," he says, "I just grabbed my camera and ran down there."

Jason Marchioni, who directed the salvage operation at the ground level and had worked with Mallon in the past, gave him broad access to the scene.

"Stephen is the best photographer in the world," he says, "He doesn't get involved with me when I'm on the job. He knows when we can talk and when we don't have time to talk. He does his own thing."

After the crash, Marchioni won the salvage contract by arguing to the National Transportation Safety Board that his team had the know-how to pull the plane out in one piece, which the NTSB deemed critical to its investigation.

Besides combustible jet fuel, one of Marchioni's major concerns was to keep tight control of the airplane's attitude as it left the water. "Once you start lifting that plane out of the water, not only do you have the weight of the plane, you also have the weight of the water," he said. "That plane that weighed 80 tons is now filled with 400 tons of water so that plane weighs almost 500 tons."

Photos: Stephen Mallon

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By midnight, the crew had successfully loaded the plane onto a waiting barge to be transported to a Weeks facility in New Jersey (pictured above).

After having spent so much effort trying to keep their cargo intact, Weeks' next job was to cut off the plane's wings with plasma torches and haul the pieces to a warehouse for analysis by the NTSB.

Mallon: "My dad gave me his [Canon AE-1] camera to take a photo of him and my mom when I was about 3. It was the coolest thing ever."

Mallon: "I was originally hoping to follow the footsteps of Maverick in Top Gun, but after a medical condition made it unlikely that I could become a fighter pilot, I started focusing on my other interest of photography."

Photos: Stephen Mallon

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Mallon was back with the Weeks Marine crew a week after the initial salvage for the lifting of the A320's second engine.

"The water was 60-to-65 feet deep where the engine was located," says Marchioni. "One diver just went down and placed lifting slings around the engine."

The engine weighs about 13,000 pounds, and was hauled out of the mud by another of Weeks' floating cranes.

Mallon: "These were the kind of pictures I was taking before I went to photo school. I was going out to airports and the rail yards and construction sites and photographing them before I was thinking about ever making any money with pictures."

Mallon: "I'm just basically a kid in a giant sandbox running around at these places."

Photos: Stephen Mallon

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A few weeks after the salvage, Mallon rode along with the dismembered fuselage as it wound its way through New Jersey byways.

He captured the surreal juxtapositions of the jetliner pulling past a gas station and scraping tree branches on a suburban street.

"This woman came out on her porch," Mallon says, "And I remember her turning to the left and going ‘Oh, shit!'"

Mallon: "I was taking color darkroom printing classes when I was 17 and shot my first assignment for the local newspaper when I was 18 years old."

Photos: Stephen Mallon

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As it turned out, the nonplussed New Jersey woman wasn't the only one to be caught by surprise. Mallon would soon find out that his historic photos might never be seen publicly again.

Although Mallon had been shooting in full view of the investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board, when his photos hit the web, the agency became uncomfortable. They ordered him to remove the gallery he had posted on his personal site.

The bureaucrats relented after about two weeks, allowing Mallon to repost the pictures, minus any shots of the interior of the plane. Shortly after that, a lawyer for US Airways and its insurer A.I.G. told Mallon to remove the photos once again, arguing that the airline and insurer were Mallon's ultimate clients.

Mallon described the reasoning as "US Airways hired AIG who hired the lawyer who hired [lead contractor] Soper and Son who hired Weeks Marine who hired me."

However, the two sides ultimately compromised: Mallon agreed to erase any obvious US Airways logos from his photos, and AIG and US Airways permitted the photos back into the world — to Mallon's great relief.

You can check out Mallon's photos in his upcoming exhibit opening Sept. 18 at The Front Room Gallery in Brooklyn.

Photos: Stephen Mallon

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 May 2009 | 4:00 am

General Aviation Sounds Mayday as Fat Cats Ditch Their Jets

Nothing symbolizes corporate excess in this economy like a private jet, and scores of companies are ditching them to bolster their images and hold the bottom line. It's a trend that could hurt the aviation industry, undermining one of the last manufacturing sectors the U.S. still dominates.

Corporate giants ranging from Bank of America to Time Warner are grounding planes amid a faltering economy and pressure from critics who say jets are a luxury they cannot afford and taxpayers should not subsidize. Shareholders and pundits aren't the only ones telling CEOs to fly commercial with the rest of us. A judge recently told Ritz Camera, which is closing more than 400 stores, to get rid of the jet it started leasing a few months before filing for Chapter 11.

The trend has the general aviation industry in a nosedive. Shipments are down 7.1 percent and 12 percent of the manufacturing workforce has been laid off. Unemployment in Wichita, Kansas, the Detroit of general aviation, has climbed from 3.9 percent to 6.7 percent in the past year. The aviation industry and those who watch it call the backlash against corporate jets misguided and fear it will have grave repercussions.

"Corporate aviation has become a whipping boy," says Charles Mayer, vice president of marketing at Hawker Beechcraft, the nation's largest privately held aviation company. "But it's crucial to the U.S. economy on several different levels."

It's hard to look at a company that's asking Washington for help and argue it needs a plane. And no one denies the bone-headed decision by the CEOs of the Big Three automakers to fly to last fall's bailout hearings aboard private jets did nothing to help the aviation industry's case.

"It's what sparked the shift in public opinion," said Ed Bolen, president and CEO of the National Business Aviation Association.

But there are legitimate arguments for big companies owning planes. Only 10 percent of the nation's 5,000 general-use airports have scheduled airline service, and most of those flights serve just 70 domestic markets. It doesn't help that airlines cut service to nearly 100 cities in the past year.

"Lots of people think executives use corporate jets to avoid flying commercial, but it's much more about a lack of commercial availability," Bolen said. "You try flying commercial out of Salinas, Kansas see how far you get."

Others argue that flying commercial isn't the best use of time for a CEO. A flight that can take all day when you consider the time it takes to get to the airport, deal with security, sit on the tarmac and make your connection can requires just a few hours in a private plane. That's one reason Starbucks is keeping one of its three jets even after laying off 1,800 people.

"We're keeping one plane to provide safe, secure and efficient transportation of key Starbucks employees as well as accomplish travel that would not otherwise be possible using scheduled services," the company told Wired.com in a statement. "We believe this is an appropriate approach with regard to the current economic situation."

None of that flies with Chuck Collins, a researcher with the Institute for Policy Studies. The group has led the charge against corporate jets, arguing they are a bane to society.

"The case against private jets is undeniable: They pollute more, fail to pay their fair share of the air traffic system and leave us vulnerable to security risks," Collins said. "They undermine the social cohesion of our country at our expense."

Collins wrote a 30-page study called "High Flyers: How Private Jet Travel Is Straining the System, Warming the Planet, and Costing You Money" that argues corporations shouldn't have planes. He says they harm the environment, clog our strained air traffic control system and cost shareholders and taxpayers billions.

But general aviation, a class that includes the planes many CEOs have at their disposal, is a big part of the economy. It provides 1.2 million jobs and generates $150 billion annually. It's one of the few areas where the United States maintains a positive trade balance, and American manufacturers hold more than 70 percent of the market. That's compared to 53 percent for personal computers and 25 percent for the auto industry. Almost half of the planes built here last year were exported, and last year's backlog of planes that have been ordered but not yet manufactured or delivered stood at $80 billion.

Business jets are typically powered by two engines and seat as many as 10 people. The Cessna Citation, built in Wichita, is the world’s best-selling model. Other popular planes include the LearJet 45XR, General Dynamics Gulfstream V and the Hawker 4000.

Perhaps we should say they were popular. AIG, CitiGroup, Time-Warner, Bank of America and Alcatel-Lucent are among the scores of firms getting rid of their planes. It's done more than force their executives to experience the joy of flying commercial. It's shaken the manufacturing industry.

Thanks to layoffs at Cessna, General Dynamics and Hawker Beechcraft, over 12,000 general aviation manufacturing jobs have been lost in recent months, but it's not just the plane makers that are hurting. Pilots, mechanics, dealers and others who make their living serving those planes are also feeling the heat. Jay Mesinger, who runs a corporate jet brokerage business in Colorado, says his sales plunged 50 percent in 2008 and he expects further drops this year. With orders for new planes being deferred and the market flooded with used aircraft, firms that supply the manufacturers with everything from seats to avionics are downsizing, too.

Nordam, a Wichita-based firm that manufactures aircraft interiors and composites, has laid off 411 people in the past eight months. That's 22 percent of its workforce. Other suppliers, including Rockwell Collins and Teledyne Continental Motors, have cut production and staffing.

Others fear the drop in sales could stifle innovation. Mayer, the Hawker Beechcraft VP, says a decline in aviation would force an industry he says is responsible for such innovations as anti-lock brakes and modern navigation systems to invest less in research and development. He said corporate jets showcase some of the best technology the U.S. has to offer, such as composite materials. He compares the industry's current position to that of the Detroit automakers 30 years ago, and fears it will slip if the backlash continues.

"We dominate, but we are starting to see some serious competition on the horizon," he says. "A healthy (general aviation) industry creates jobs and drives innovation. It represents the future, not the past."

Collins concedes aviation manufacturing centers like Wichita would be hurt by a shift away from corporate jets, but says it's a necessary transition toward more sustainable transportation.

"I'd rather take the money we're using to subsidize corporate jets and use them to build a real high-speed rail system in this country," Collins says. Nor does he believe corporate planes are an essential part of doing business. "We had a thriving business sector 10 years ago, and not everyone had private jets."

Kimberly DuBord, an analyst with Briefing.com, says the people arguing about whether or not CEOs should be flying in corporate jets overlook more fundamental problems facing corporate aviation.

"This is much bigger than a handful of Fortune 500 companies grounding their fleets," she says. "Ultimately, it's the issues facing the global economy that will decide the fate of this industry.

"It’s a significant part of our manufacturing base," she said. "My gut is that if it took a big hit, the impact would be profound."

Source: Wired Top Stories | 13 May 2009 | 4:00 am

No Settlement in Minnesota RIAA Case

The Recording Industry Association of America is headed for a retrial of the Jammie Thomas case, after it failed to reach an out-of-court settlement in the nation's first and only file sharing case to have gone before a jury. Thomas refused to the RIAA's undisclosed financial demands. A federal jury had dinged Thomas $222,000 for infringing 24 songs, but the judge declared a mistrial.

Source: Gizmodo | 13 May 2009 | 3:55 am

McDonalds Free Wi-Fi Users Soak Up Seating

bfire writes "McDonalds has earmarked potential changes to seating plans in some restaurants to prevent free Wi-Fi users from monopolizing seating, particularly in peak periods. The availability of Wi-Fi means people are now spending 35 minutes in McDonalds — rather than the average ten minutes that patrons used to spend eating there. But it appears not everyone is happy with the increased 'stickiness' of customers, with some licensees in Australia reporting that Wi-Fi users aren't turning over seats fast enough. The restaurant chain is considering options including space demarcation to deal with the problem."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 13 May 2009 | 3:20 am

Interesting bug with the Das Keyboard

We reviewed the Das Keyboard during our keyboard roundup back in the day, and I don’t think I ran into this problem. Blogger Barney has found an interesting bug: when keys are pressed in rapid succession on his Das Keyboard, the letters always show up on the screen as if he’d pressed the leftmost keys first, then the ones on the right. He even made a special little tool to test and show this, as any truly scientifically-minded and gadget-oriented person would.

My immediate suspicion is that it has to do with the speed at which the USB connection is polled: if you press two keys down within the time it takes it to pull information from the whole keyboard, it’ll order those keys left-to-right instead of in the order you pressed them. The Das is supposed to have enough key rollover that inversion shouldn’t be a problem, but who knows?

If that’s the case, it’d be easy enough to fix. I don’t have the Das Keyboard any more, any DK owners out there want to weigh in? I found it to be a pretty good keyboard and didn’t encounter this issue, but hopefully if we cause a ruckus, the Das Keyboard guys will fix it.

[via Reddit, where they're picking it apart as I type this]

Source: CrunchGear | 13 May 2009 | 3:02 am

Google Takes Steps Towards A More Structured Web

Earlier today Google announced that it was going to begin limited support of RDFa, a framework that allows web developers to incorporate structured metadata into their sites. To most people, this probably doesn’t sound particularly exciting, but it’s an important step that may indicate that the search giant is going to embrace structured data on the web - something that it has long shied away from.

I’m not going to get into the specifics of the RDFa standard (if you’d like a more thorough explaination you can find one here and here). But the benefits of using such semantic tagging can be seen in a few basic examples. If I was to write a post that mentioned “The President” without naming him, Google probably wouldn’t realize that I was talking about President Obama - it might think I was referring to another US president, or perhaps the leader of a company. But using RDFa I could tag the words “The President” with “Barack Obama”. That tag would be visible to machines spidering the page for indexing (resulting in smarter search results), but wouldn’t be shown to users reading the post. In effect, it’s a way to tell search engines about your content without exposing your visitors to extraneous text.

RDFa tags will also allow search engines to identify structural data on a web page and present it in search results (Google is using it to generate its rich snippets). And browsers could potentially read the data and use it to present maps or other elements outside of the web page.

Mark Birbeck, who first proposed the standard and will be speaking at a conference on the semantic web this June, says that this is a big step for Google. He explains that Google has always tried to use its algorithms to derive context from the content on webpages. This usually works pretty well, but as we’ve noted before, there are some things that algorithms just can’t identify properly (at least, not yet).

Now, it may be some time before we start seeing any real benefits from Google’s implementation of RDFa. For starters the search engine is only using it in a limited fashion, and it isn’t clear how long it will take for Google to begin incorporating it in other ways. But the standard is already spreading without Google’s help - Yahoo supports RDFa, and many sites including the UK government are implementing it too. Of course, with its dominant market share Google’s stamp of approval is huge for RDFa’s acceptance, and we’ll probably begin to see more services follow suit (Drupal 7, for one, will include it by default).

That said, not everyone is happy with the way Google is using the standard. There are complaints that Google is using a hobbled implementation of RDFa, ignoring some of the established conventions that many webpages have already used to tag their data. Birbeck acknowledges that Google could have implemented RDFa better, but says that “the only reason they can even raise the question of whether Google used the right vocabulary is because they are using RDFa now.. And that is huge.”

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Source: TechCrunch | 13 May 2009 | 2:29 am

Real-Time Search-Off

Today saw the launch of two new real-time search engines, from OneRiot and Tweetmeme. While the two are slightly different in ways that I went into earlier, all that really matters are the results you get. So I put those two to the test along with Twitter Search, Google Search, FriendFeed and the recently launched Scoopler. To see which would give the best results based on a current event.

One bit of news I was interested in was the space shuttle, because it received some damage today while venturing into space. I decided to do a pretty generic search for “Space Shuttle,” since that is likely what most people would enter of all the possible combinations of words. Here are the results:

1. Google: The top result was from a Google News story about the shuttle damage. That’s good, that’s what I was looking for. The rest was historical information I didn’t want or need. Sure, I could have used a Google News search, which would have no doubt returned more relevant results (but maybe not that relevant), but most people still use just regular old Google.com, so that’s what I did.

2. Twitter Search: The first result is pretty telling: “Just watched the space shuttle go overhead — so cool” That’s nice, but gives me absolutely nothing in terms of what I’m looking for. The second and fourth results were good and gave me links for more info — now you see why Twitter wants to (and should) get into the business of crawling links for its search results.

3. FriendFeed: The top two results are good, but the rest are just general information about the launch. This is an interesting set of results because unlike Twitter Search results, FriendFeed filters everything through my friends by default. That’s good for certain searches, but maybe not so good for big, meaningful searches when you’re frantically looking for information.

4. Scoopler: With its mixture of live tweets coming in and popular content, Scoopler gives me some pretty solid results for what I’m looking for. And it’s presented in a way that’s pretty easy to follow. I like this one, a lot.

5. OneRiot: The top two results in the “Realtime” view are good, but the others aren’t what I’m looking for. The Pulse view isn’t much better. The relevant results come from Twitter or OneRiot itself. There’s nothing from Digg in terms of what I’m looking for. (OneRiot scans Twitter and Digg.)

6. Tweetmeme: Tweetmeme’s search defaults to the “Best Match” area which gives you a solid result for the number one and three items. When sorted by “Age,” the results are all over the place.

Second test: For a second test (not pictured), I did a query for “Miss California” — another hot topic on the web right now. Being as this one is a little less time-sensitive, the results were better across the board. OneRiot showed quite a few Digg results this time around, and even Google had some relevevant links beyond its Google News top area hits. Scoopler had some good popular results, but its Live area was dominated by tweets mostly making jokes to friends about the beauty queen. Tweetmeme’s “Highest Tweets” area really shined here.

Conclusion: It’s hard to declare one single winner because results vary based on how fresh the topic being queried is. Scoopler seems to work very nicely for breaking news as it mixes in an auto-refreshing Twitter search stream (as I keep going back to, it’s dominated by tweets) with popular items. Tweetmeme seems to work very well for slightly older items that have been retweeted a lot. OneRiot is nice in that it crawls the individual pages to get better content, but for breaking news, I’m not sure that it actually works better than a quick topical scan of a bunch of items. And FriendFeed’s search is great if you want to see what your friends are saying about something, but trickier if you go outside your social circle.

It seems pretty clear why Google is interested in adding a real-time layer to its search capabilites, while Twitter wants to crawl pages with its engine — the combo is pretty killer.

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Source: TechCrunch | 13 May 2009 | 2:28 am

French "three-strikes" copyright law passes -- but may be dead anyway

You may have heard about the French Assembly passing Sarkozy's mad "three-strikes" bill, which will allow big media companies to force ISPs to disconnect you by accusing you of copyright infringement (without even having to produce proof). Jeremie Zimmermann, a leading French activist opposed to the bill, has a good analysis of the problems it will face, even having passed:

* HADOPI is legally dead because it opposes to fundamental principles of French and European law, including the respect of a fair trial, principle of proportionality and separation of powers. European Parliament has also for the 4th time recalled its opposition to the French text by voting again amendment 138/464, thus voiding the French HADOPI. The law is also not respecting requirements of French constitution regarding a due process, equality in front of the law, and legality of the law, which the Constitutional Court will now have to judge.

* HADOPI is technically dead because it entirely relies on identifying users through their IP address that can be altered or high-jacked in many ways 5. As a consequence, innocents will inevitably be sanctioned. Circumvention techniques are also already largely available.

* HADOPI is dead in the media because government's propaganda didn't stand for long under close scrutiny from citizens over the net6 and to the aware consideration of a few critical elected representatives.7. A fantastic movement opposing the text allowed public debate to interfere in every possible part of the French web about the real stakes of the funding of creation in the digital age. Today, 60% of the French reject this text according to an IFOP poll8 (33% only agree to the scheme) and a wide opposition includes independent movie theaters, hundreds of independent labels, science-fiction authors and performing artists.

* Finally, HADOPI is dead politically, right in the middle of an "Hadopigate " revealing unhealthy collusion between Minister of culture and big media close to the president Sarkozy, everybody within the majority already understood that this text is a ball and chain they will have to drag along for a long time.

Solemn burial for HADOPI in French National Assembly

Previously:

• EU kills "3-strikes" Internet rule, affirms Internet is a ...
• French film-makers and science fiction writers protest new anti ...
• French government nukes crazy Internet law in open revolt against ...
• For sale: One French Internet, slightly sarkoed - Boing Boing
• U2's manager wants the power to cut off your Internet connection ...
• Entertainment industry's greedy lobbying is their undoing - Boing ...

Source: Boing Boing | 13 May 2009 | 2:01 am

Google Sky Map: portable astronomy on your G1

The newest Android app from the Google team is looking pretty awesome, and if it works like it says it does, then I’m going to be having some fun times this weekend out in the country. Google Sky Map is basically a reality augmentation app that lets you use your Android phone as a sort of virtual lens for checking out constellations, planets, and other stuff out there. It’s made so that you actually point the phone at where you’re looking; it uses GPS and accelerometer data to figure all that stuff out.

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Source: MobileCrunch | 13 May 2009 | 1:50 am

Google Sky Map: portable astronomy on your G1

The newest Android app from the Google team is looking pretty awesome, and if it works like it says it does, then I’m going to be having some fun times this weekend out in the country. Google Sky Map is basically a reality augmentation app that lets you use your Android phone as a sort of virtual lens for checking out constellations, planets, and other stuff out there. It’s made so that you actually point the phone at where you’re looking; it uses GPS and accelerometer data to figure all that stuff out.

Of course, you can also search for visible stars and stellar objects — Sirius, Castor, Pollux, all that. This will make astronomy a lot easier for me; I’ve downloaded stuff like the World Wide Telescope, but actually being out there in a field with Orion floating there above me, that’s where I want to be able to say “hey, what’s that one called?”

You can download it now from the Marketplace. It’s free.

Update: It’s downloaded, and I have to echo the sentiments of one of the in-Marketplace reviewers: “Force close at startup…way to go Google.” Apparently it’s got some issues with Cupcake as well. If I tell it to wait instead of force-closing, I can access the menus and set my location manually but there are no stars. Does this have something to do with the fact that it’s day here? No. That would be ridiculous. Anybody get it to work yet?

Update 2: Just got mine to work, I think it just has some issues. I made a video but then found out Google already did one:

Source: CrunchGear | 13 May 2009 | 1:49 am

Girl Who Named Pluto, At 11, Dies At 90

notthepainter notes the passing of the woman who, as an 11-year-old girl, named Pluto. "Frozen and lonely, Planet X circled the far reaches of the solar system awaiting discovery and a name. It got one thanks to an 11-year-old British girl named Venetia Burney, an enthusiast of the planets and classical myth. On March 14, 1930, the day newspapers reported that the long-suspected 'trans-Neptunian body' had been photographed for the first time, she proposed to her well-connected grandfather that it be named Pluto, after the Roman god of the underworld. Venetia Phair, as she became by marriage, died April 30 in her home in Banstead, in the county of Surrey, England. She was 90. ... More vexing to Mrs. Phair was the persistent notion that she had taken the name from the Disney character. 'It has now been satisfactorily proven that the dog was named after the planet, rather than the other way around,' she told the BBC. 'So, one is vindicated.' " Venetia's great-uncle Henry, who was a housemaster at Eton, had successfully proposed that the two dwarf moons of Mars be named Phobos and Deimos.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 13 May 2009 | 1:40 am

Chop foppishly with a fabulous designer axe

If your vanity gets the best of you when you’re chopping wood, maybe you ought to think about investing in more… modern hardware. These designer axes are super expensive, but no one will ever question your chopping ability or fashion sense.

You can get them over at Best Made Co., which makes them to order in a whole bunch of different styles. I also like the look of that box.

[via Apartment Therapy, where their readers have pronounced it not hot. Really now.]

Source: CrunchGear | 13 May 2009 | 1:30 am

NASA: Shuttle 'dings' appear 'minor'

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 May 2009 | 1:09 am

Pogoplug is prepared for its afterlife (should it come)

Section: Computers, Networking, Gadgets / Other, Household

Today on its blog, Pogoplug answered the burning question: “What happens if Pogoplug goes out of business?”  The group over at Pogoplug has taken the impressive and humbling step of thinking about what will happen to their customers if Pogoplug should ever go belly up.  You don’t come across such forward thinking very often.  So, what exactly does Pogoplug have planned for its afterlife?  The company has set up an escrow account that contains Pogoplug’s back-end services’ source code.  Should Pogoplug cease to exist, SourceForge will publish the source code for Pogoplug’s community to use in maintaining the servers.

This sounds like a great plan for those in the Pogoplug community who can actually use the code to do something worthwhile.  However, the Pogoplug was designed to be simple enough for anyone to use - one of the designers actually had his Mom in mind when making the product.  These “simple users” are going to have to rely on others to take up the source code and keep Pogoplug servers active.

Now, if you haven’t heard of Pogoplug yet, it is a small-sized home server box available for $99 (not including tax or shipping) that lets you access your files over the internet.  You simply plug it into an electrical outlet, connect it to the internet via ethernet, connect your USB hard drive to it and share away.

Read [Pogoplug Blog]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 13 May 2009 | 1:08 am

Video: A pink Cessnazuki and a very rusty 4-legged mech

This British junkyard engineers (by the name of Transmutant) are the local version of what’s found all over the world: smart but slightly crazy guys who take a totally random idea and just go with it. This is where girlfriend-attacking nerf tanks and enormous beetlebots come from.

These fellows in particular have mated a small plane to a Suzuki to make a sort of pink…Cessnazuki, and there’s also a dilapidated but partially working 4-legged walker bot that looks like a bit of a rough ride.

I like to think there are scrapyards like this hidden all over with treasures just waiting to be discovered. Don’t Panic has certainly found one of them, but I happen to know there are a couple lurking in Seattle, too. Maybe not quite as awesome, but they’re there.

[via Don't Panic]

Source: CrunchGear | 13 May 2009 | 1:00 am

Kanye West Is Mad As Hell At Twitter — And He’s Not Going To Take This Anymore!

Celebrities love Twitter, right? Just look around, Ashton Kutcher, Jimmy Fallon, P Diddy — they won’t shut up on it or about it. But not every celebrity loves it. Take hip hop artist Kanye West, for example. Apparently mad about people pretending to be him on Twitter, he went on a Peter Finch-style rant today on his blog about the service.

He specifically calls out the “heads of Twitter” a few times. Let’s see if @ev @biz and @jack are listening. Hopefully, he doesn’t have the caps keylock on for nothing. Here’s what he had to say:

(This spaz comes courtesy of losers making fake Kanye West Twitter accounts) I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER… WHY WOULD I USE TWITTER??? I ONLY BLOG 5 PERCENT OF WHAT I’M UP TO IN THE FIRST PLACE. I’M ACTUALLY SLOW DELIVERING CONTENT BECAUSE I’M TOO BUSY ACTUALLY BUSY BEING CREATIVE MOST OF THE TIME AND IF I’M NOT AND I’M JUST LAYING ON A BEACH I WOULDN’T TELL THE WORLD. EVERYTHING THAT TWITTER OFFERS I NEED LESS OF. THE PEOPLE AT TWITTER KNOW I DON’T HAVE A FUCKING TWITTER SO FOR THEM TO ALLOW SOMEONE TO POSE AS ME AND ACCUMULATE OVER A MILLION NAMES IS IRRESPONSIBLE AND DECEITFUL TO THERE FAITHFUL USERS. REPEAT… THE HEADS OF TWITTER KNEW I DIDN’T HAVE A TWITTER AND THEY HAVE TO KNOW WHICH ACCOUNTS HAVE HIGH ACTIVITY ON THEM. IT’S A FUCKING FARCE AND IT MAKES ME QUESTION WHAT OTHER SO CALLED CELEBRITY TWITTERS ARE ACTUALLY REAL OR FAKE. HEY TWITTER, TAKE THE SO CALLED KANYE WEST TWITTER DOWN NOW …. WHY? … BECAUSE MY CAPS LOCK KEY IS LOUD!!!!!!!!!

[thanks Auston]

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Source: TechCrunch | 13 May 2009 | 12:59 am

Tiny flies aimed at fire ants in Texas

Four species of tiny flies that lay eggs in fire ants have been imported into Texas in an effort to reduce the numbers of the stinging invaders. The phorid flies effectively turn fire ants into zombies, the Fort Worth (Texas) Star-Telegram reported Tuesday.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 13 May 2009 | 12:41 am

Review: HP Pavilion dv2 ultrathin notebook

When HP and AMD pitched the idea of a laptop with price and capabilities between those of netbooks and regular notebooks, I was intrigued. Although many have been seduced by the netbook’s siren song, I’ve always been put off by their micro keyboards and tiny, low-res screens. Yet do I really need to lug my MacBook Pro everywhere I go when I’m just planning on editing a couple posts and checking my email?

The dv2 is HP’s answer to this dilemma. Almost as small as a netbook, and almost as powerful as a regular laptop, they said it would be the best of both worlds. Of course, the risk was that it would have the worst of both worlds instead. That turns out not to be the case, and the dv2 is a smart little machine — but it’s still far from perfect.

The dv2 really is in a class of its own — though I mean that literally, not in a sense of excellence. It occupies the price gap between netbooks and regular notebooks, and comparisons to either are going to be kind of misguided. So keep that in mind when you find yourself comparing one or the other to the dv2 in your head.

Form

HP has gone to great lengths to get the form factor right, and they’ve done pretty well. It really is very thin (less than an inch), with a knife-like profile marred somewhat by the chubby battery case at the back. It’s got junk in the trunk, essentially. Not that there’s anything wrong with that &mdsah; but it does disturb the otherwise flat form of the thing. It opens and closes with a magnet, although it’s not weighted enough on the bottom part that you can open it with one hand.

It’s also very nice-looking. The piano black with chrome accenting is fetching and classy, and the little designs on the handrest area are understated. Unfortunately, a lot of the look is lost after you’ve used it for a few hours, since this thing attracts fingerprints and smudges like no other. You’ll have them on the bezel, you’ll have them on the exterior, you’ll have them on the handrest, and you’ll have them on the chrome trackpad. Dust, too, collects in the cracks and is very visible on the shiny surface.

The keyboard is difficult to judge. It seems big enough, although it’s off-center, which irks me. Still, the keys are a good size (if a bit close together) and they’re all there. Most of the compression seems to have occurred on the left side, where your esc, tilde, and tab keys have shrunk significantly. Other than that, it’s as good a keyboard as I’ve seen on any small-form-factor laptop.

The 12.1″ 16:10 ratio display is excellent. Its 1280×800 resolution means you can watch most 720p content full-sized, and I find it to be very sharp, although it has a very limited vertical viewing angle for getting color right. It’s also covered in a reflective coating like every other laptop these days, for god knows what reason. I’m typing this on the dv2 now, and I can read the reflections of the signs across the street from me. Earth to laptop manufacturers: let us choose. At least the display is bright enough that it works fine in all but the worst lighting situations (that is to say, all but the one I’m in right now in this cafe).

Function

The insides of the dv2 are much better than your average netbook, though not quite as fast as the mid-range laptop platforms that start at $1200 or so. The processor is the brand new AMD Neo, which is making its debut with the dv2, and although it’s clocked the same as your average Atom (1.6GHz), it’s not quite as micro-sized and limited — not to mention it’s 64-bit. AMD has a history of doing more with less hertz anyway. It’s also got up to 4GB of RAM; the one I have has 2GB, but 4GB is actually going to be the standard in the US. Lastly it’s got a 250GB hard drive, which stands out quite a bit when compared with netbooks, which generally come with a fraction of that.

It comes with Vista, which is good and bad. What’s good is that it actually runs quite well, something I wouldn’t expect from any netbooks out there (and some regular laptops). The bad news is that it’s Vista, and if you want to take advantage of the HP Mediasmart capabilities, you’re going to have to keep it that way.

Because it has a discrete video card, it’s no stranger to some light gaming, as long as you adjust your expectations. HP and AMD invited me to try out a real game, so I installed World in Conflict. Unfortunately, even with a reduced resolution and settings on medium, I could hardly get a playable framerate. Better to stick with last generation stuff for now; WoW and games from a year back probably will run a lot better. 4GB of RAM vs my 2GB would help, but I doubt it would double the framerate.

The incredibly sexy Blu-ray player that comes with the dv2 is excellent, and since the screen actually supports 720p, the dv2 suddenly becomes a very nice little portable media machine. It’s questionable whether the battery will hold out for the length of a whole movie, though; I give it a little over two hours under medium-to-heavy load, and three on light load. Playback was fine but I did get stutters here and there; again, my model had less RAM than yours probably would, so keep that in mind.

Not all gravy

So far, so good. There are some little issues here and there but no deal-breakers. Unless you really need a nice trackpad. Because the dv2 doesn’t have one. I mean, it has a trackpad, but it’s pretty bad. First of all, the material it’s made of seems to require extra effort to drag your finger along. Of course, once it’s all covered in grease and smudges, as it will be since it’s shiny chrome, you’ll be able to glide a little easier (kind of gross to think about). The pad is super-wide for some reason but not particularly big, so you’ll be doing a lot of multiple strokes to get things done. The size is strange, because there’s clearly more room available on the handrest area.

It’s got an unpredictable little scroll area on the right side that’s difficult to use without looking, which kind of defeats the point. The buttons below the pad take a considerable amount of force to push, and I found myself avoiding them altogether. Most infuriating was the “drag lock” which apparently is impossible to disable. I like to tap instead of using a button, and this trackpad is definitely not good for that. Sometimes it’s super-sensitive, sometimes I’ll tap several times to no effect. Of course, all these problems are solved by simply using a mouse (my Bluetrack Mini worked perfectly), but part of the draw of larger and better laptops is the improved trackpads. Whether this is a driver problem or what is immaterial: it’s there and it’s annoying.

Lastly, while Vista may run fine once it’s gotten its great bulk up and running, it took fully four minutes for a cold boot to drop below 15% CPU usage. I’d rather have 7 running on this thing, so honestly I’d just drop RC1 right in as soon as I got one of these.

Bottom Line
I think that HP has a good thing here, and although other companies are planning on releasing similar styles of mid-size/ultrathin notebooks in the future, the dv2 is actually here and leading the charge. It’s not a paragon, however, what with its problematic trackpad and questionable 3D performance. Those problems aside, though, it’s got a great form factor, lots of storage space, the keyboard is solid, the screen is great, and honestly starting at $750 I think that this is a great deal. It’s an excellent second laptop for when you need to be a little more portable, and because it’s got plenty of hard drive space it works as a little media laptop as well as a barebones browser-and-email machine.

If that sounds like something you’d like, you can get one here.

Source: CrunchGear | 13 May 2009 | 12:30 am

Using Twitter for the Job Search [Voices]

While Twitter can be about the mundane details of people’s lives, for the most part, it’s about people connecting with others who have similar interests. Since I tend to follow people who are also interested in marketing and social media, it is a great way to share information on topics relevant to us.

It has also allowed me to make more meaningful connections.

With traditional networking, someone I know introduces me to someone they think I should talk to. I then email or call that person and set up a time to get together for coffee. We meet, and talk about their work, what I’m looking for, any opportunities they know of, other people they think I should talk to and any advice they have for me. I get home and send them a thank you note, and usually connect with them on LinkedIn. And, that’s it. We go our separate ways. They go back into their life, and may remember me, but within a couple of months, I have most likely slipped into the depths of their memory.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 13 May 2009 | 12:23 am

Dell bans e-waste export to developing countries (AP)

AP - PC maker Dell Inc. on Tuesday formally banned the export of broken computers, monitors and parts to developing countries amid complaints that lax enforcement of environmental and worker-safety regulations have allowed an informal and often hazardous electronic-waste recycling industry to emerge.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 13 May 2009 | 12:06 am

Alpha-680 Android netbook seen in the wild

Finally, a glimpse of the upcoming Android based Alpha-680. As one of the first Android-based machines to hit the market, it’s generating quite a bit of buzz. I certainly hope it lives up to the hype that’s coming out about it.

First the good news: We know it’s sporting an ARM11 CPU at 533MHz, a 7″ LCD, 128MB of RAM, and a 1GB SSD hard drive. It’s expected to be released in Q3 of this year, at $250.

The bad news is, there’s some word of incompatibility with some Android applications. Hopefully this can all be worked out before the actual release.

Source: CrunchGear | 13 May 2009 | 12:00 am

Man Arrested For Taking Photo of Open ATM

net_shaman writes in with word of a Seattle man who was arrested for taking a photo of an ATM being serviced. "Today I was shopping at the downtown Seattle REI. I was about to buy a Thule hitch mount bike rack. They were out of the piece that locks the bike rack into the hitch. So I was in the customer service line to special order one. It was a long line and while I was waiting, I saw two of guys (employees of Loomis, as I later learned) refilling the ATM. I walked over and took a picture with my iPhone of them and more interestingly of the open ATM. I took the picture because I'm fascinated by the insides of things that we don't normally get to see. ... That was when Officer GE Abed (#6270) spun me around and put handcuffs on me."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 11:38 pm

Guatemala: Protests for Assassinated Lawyer Streamed Live from Laptops in the Streets

Protests are taking place today in Guatemala City to demand justice for an attorney who was assassinated on Sunday, and who claimed in a posthumously released YouTube video taped before his death that if he were to die, it would be at the orders of Guatemalan president Álvaro Colom.

Quick background: The slain attorney, Rodrigo Rosenberg, represented a man who refused to take an assigment by Guatemala's president to serve on the board of a bank widely known as a money laundering hub and a shelter for narcotrafficking spoils. This whistleblower client of Rosenberg, Khalil Musa, was assassinated in March. On Sunday, after reportedly refusing to participate in the corruption and the coverup, Rosenberg himself was assassinated.

Protesters are at the presidential palace today. Libertópolis is streaming the action on Ustream.tv, as I type, though the stream is going on and off as armed military police swarm in.

Twitter users are marking conversations about today's protests, and about the case in general, with the hashtag #escandalogt. To take this sort of public action in Guatemala is not something one does lightly, and the young people at the center of these protests are placing their lives at risk.

I'm seeing some Guatemalan Twitterers spreading word that "chicken bus" drivers will gather tomorrow in the capital for another round of protests. Why? These same transportistas have long been the target of ever-escalating assasinations and extortion from narco gangs. The same corruption Rosenberg and Musa attempted to expose fuels this cycle of violence.

I don't have factual confirmation, but Guatemalan BB readers and Twitterers are saying that coverage of this story on the Guatemalan television networks is actively censored by the state (and that the recently declared "swine flu emergency" in a country with only 3 confirmed H1N1 cases was little more than a thinly disguised attempt by the state to exert more control). Claims of censorship there have historic precedent, and it makes the existence of these online "citizen TV" transmissions all the more significant. (via deztyped and many others)

Previously: Guatemala - In YouTube Video Shot Before His Death, Attorney Blames President for His Assasination

Update, 3pm PT, May 12: CNN now has an item on the story.

Update, 330pm PT, May 12: Photos from the protest are here. And here is audio from the protest. And here is a website demanding the president be impeached and brought to trial.

Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 11:34 pm

Use LEDs to create a Pac-Man Roomba

"He promises better cleaning time."

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 11:30 pm

Review: A few days w/the Mind Lamp [verdict: trippy!]

As I write, I'm staring at an LED vase that's pink, wait, red. No, violet. Def pale blue. Errr...yellow. Constructed from blown glass, the Mind Lamp is more than an attractive, color-changing accessory. It's a challenge. Known informally as "consciousness-related" tech, the lamp comes stocked with what's known as a quantum measurement device, or REG. Find out what that is, and my attempts to influence the color of the lamp with nothing but... my mind.

An REG or random event generator is what Mind Lamp manufacturer Psyleron calls an "electronic coin flipper." In the case of the lamp, a microprocessor scans the algorithms looping constantly from the REG to find any statistical patterns which then help create color changes up to a dozen times per second. Some quantum mechanics researchers argue the unpredictability of REG's are hogwash, that there are in fact predictable statistical distributions and patterns underlying why you would see red after trying to see red. The folks at Psyleron and Princeton's Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research* believe probabilistic physical events are not entirely independent of the consciousness that observes the results. And they're collecting data to try to prove it's possible for the human mind to alter them without any electromagnetic fields or anything physical getting in the way. In fact, the lab says they use magnetic shielding and digital processing to guarantee the REG's output is not compromised by known physical effects. (it's ok to be skeptical.)

Using some of the research from PEAR, Psyleron started to experiment with hardware circa 2005. Inside the Mind Lamp is a miniaturized version of the REG-1, a $245+ kit that lets you export and analyze REG data. Although Psyleron is amassing plenty of data on the Mind Lamp, the invention itself is less about seeing or collecting 0's and 1's from a user-perspective. The impetus for the lamp was to strip away all the "cognitive hang-ups" that typical REGs (like the REG-1) bring to the table. The lamp, they thought, is an REG you would not only use, but enjoy having on display in your home. So they arrived at an attractive vase that's geared towards party games like Tug of War and Sea Change, in which a group of people work together to concentrate on one color. Of course, you don't need to be in a group setting to enjoy partying with the lamp.

As one rep from the lab told me: "It's a sneaky process that may teach you something about yourself." Anything pertaining to personal growth is best done alone in my book.

So I go for it solo. I plug it in. The LED powers on blue in a matter of seconds. I sit, I stare, I point my finger and scream "Red!" (with my mind). Nada. I come back later and try again, this time "Green!" Nothing. Fine, I tell the lamp, I will study the basics** like a good Jedi...

Note: "grounded," "meditative," "harmony," "connected," "deep breath," "body relaxed, mind awake."

I then learn the lamp cannot typically be made to change from blue to red (ah ha). Instead, it tends to cycle around the color wheel to get from one color to your "desired" shade. So I try again, more relaxed, and I set my goal a little more realistic: orange to red. I wait. I stare. I breath. I wait some more. My eyes lose focus. It changes a little. I think. I get excited. Did I make it change? DUDE! I lose focus. I try again, but nothing concrete.

I decide to test out "background" mode, meaning you let the lamp run and change without directly trying to influence it. I am very good at this mode. I think I notice that when I'm working scattered, jumping between multiple windows or tabs, the lamp changes color more rapidly. Whereas when I'm focused on the task at hand, as I am right now, the lamp tends to remain one color for more extended periods of time. I look over at the lamp and it's already changing color. Stop screwing with my mind, lamp! *fist in air*

At one point my lamp turns back to white. Holy moly, did I break it? It's still glowing, but not changing color. Wait, am I Neo? I read that if it's white, you're either in complete control of the lamp (nirvana!) or the REG is generating "strongly imbalanced" data (more likely, in my case. Bummer).

I begin to wonder how any of my underlying or resulting psychology might be affecting my experience. Is my initial skepticism still holding me back? Am I trying too hard? When I don't pay enough attention, why does the lamp seem to "know"? Is it weird that I feel I'm actually communicating with the lamp?

I don't know. But feeling compelled to ask these questions is a testament to how fun, cool and different this $150 lamp really is.

Mind Lamp: 60-Minute Time Lapse from Psyleron on Vimeo.

*Note: there is some mindblowing research going on via PEAR. The Global Consciousness Project is attempting to see whether it's possible to objectively measure "interconnected consciousness" or Teilhard's noosphere, an all-encompassing biosphere of human thought. Some argue the Internet itself is the biosphere. As the Web grows more ubiquitous, I'm convinced that is.

**Psyleron is working on a full-on training manual that's tentatively scheduled for release later this year.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 11:19 pm

Shields Up!: How to spot and avoid scareware

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

This week’s column is all about the scourge of scareware.  Most of us have seen it at one time or another as we surf the web.  A pop up will suddenly appear with dire warnings that your system is infected or critical errors were found in your registry.  Clicking on it brings up a site for a program that claims it can fix everything-for a fee.  The price ranges from $29.95 to $50.  Once you pay and download the program, sure enough it does a scan, finds the problems and fixes them all.  What a relief, right?  Not really.  You never had any infections or errors at all.  The only thing that got cleaned out was your wallet.  A scammer just succeeded in scaring some cash from you.

That’s right.  The whole concept of scareware is actually pretty simple.  Just trick someone into thinking they have critical issues with their computer and need your program to fix it.  It’s big business for cybercriminals.

In the beginning…

Let’s look at the origins of scareware.  At first they were just pranks.  The first piece of scareware, called “NightMare” hit the scene in 1991.  It was made for the Amiga computer and once installed would pop up at a random time, filling the user’s screen with the image of a skull and playing a sound file of horrified shrieking.  It was generally harmless.  Other types of harmless scareware included a tiny program which would generate a pop up asking “Erase hard drive?” with two buttons: “OK” and “OK.”

Fortunately no matter which okay button was clicked the program simply went away, leaving data intact.

Pop ups and SEO

Scammers began using the scareware concept with the pop ups I talked about earlier.  Microsoft has successfully sued several of these scareware makers, winning $1 million from Secure Computer, which made a piece of scareware called Spyware Cleaner.  In December, the FTC obtained restraining orders against Innovative Marketing, Inc. and ByteHosting Internet Services, the vendors behind WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner, ErrorSafe and XP Antivirus, all of which are fake security programs.  The FTC says they estimate over 1 million people fell for the scam and bought the fake software.

This doesn’t mean we’re winning the battle however.  According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, there are nearly 10,000 scareware packages in circulation.  While the pop ups and banners may have lost their effectiveness, scammers have found a new way to distribute their wares.  Massive scareware affiliate networks use black hat SEO techniques so that their sites show up first on search results.

They often compromise legit sites as well, making them redirect to their scareware pages, and since these pages often look quite slick and professional, many users are tricked into trusting them.  Another distribution method involves posting scareware ads on legit sites like Monster.com where a user might unwittingly click on them.  Scareware vendors have also been buying up domain names related to hot topics such as Conficker and swine flu in hopes people searching for information and news will be led to their fake sites.  Affiliate members get around 10 cents for each redirection and are estimated to rake in over $10,000 a day, making scareware big business.

Fake search engines

The newest development in the distribution of malicious software (including scareware) is the discovery of fake search engines.  Cybergangs are now creating their own search engines.  These specialized engines show up in Google searches for popular topics like swine flu.  When clicked on, the user is shown a half dozen search results that look like they are related to the keywords being searched, but clicking on any of them sends the user to a malicious site.  Depending on the keywords it seems the site is either a fake porn site that downloads malware or a scareware site.  Cybergangs are continuing to get more and more sophisticated in their attacks.

How to protect yourself

So how can you protect yourself?  Here are some rules to follow:

• Never ever click on a popup, banner, or any other kind of ad that claims your system is infected, your anti-virus software needs to be updated, or your registry is corrupted.
• If you find yourself redirected to a scareware site, don’t click anything.  Hit Ctrl-Alt-Del, go to Task Manager, and use End Task to shut down your browser.  It’s much safer that way.  Once you’ve been redirected to a malicious site, clicking on anything, even the X in the corner, could trigger a download.
• Legit anti-virus programs are updated via the software’s control panel, not popups.
• If you find yourself infected, Microsoft’s Malicious Software Removal Tool can clean things up.  Most of the major anti-virus sites also offer removal tools as well.  Although if you have a legit and up to date anti-virus program installed it will probably detect and block the scareware from being installed in the first place, and you do have a legit and update anti-virus installed, right?

That’s all for this week.  Feel free to leave your questions, comments, and horror stories below.  Keep those shields up and stay safe!

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 May 2009 | 11:14 pm

Funding For Automotive Fuel Cells Cut

rgarbacz writes "The US will stop funding research on automotive fuel cells and redirect the work towards stationary plants, because of slow progress on the research. Developing those cells and coming up with a way to transport the hydrogen is a big challenge, Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in releasing energy-related details of the administration's budget for the year beginning Oct. 1. Dr. Chu said the government preferred to focus on projects that would bear fruit more quickly. The industry and the National Hydrogen Association criticized the decision and declared their intention to fight for funding. Dr. Chu also announced that funding for a coal gasification pilot project, cut by the Bush administration, will be reinstated. The Obama administration will also drop spending for research on the exploration of oil and gas deposits because the industry itself has ample resources for that, Dr. Chu said."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 10:47 pm

Otellini: Sparc Uncertainty an Opportunity for Itanium (PC World)

PC World - Oracle's decision to acquire Sun Microsystems has created a larger market opportunity for Intel to put its Itanium chips into more enterprise servers, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said on Tuesday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 May 2009 | 10:40 pm

Plants vs. Zombies

After reading Tom's description of PopCap's Plants Vs. Zombies on Offworld, I downloaded it and played it with my six-year-old daughter over the weekend and last night.

The game is a classic "tower defense" game. Brain-eating Zombies on the street are shuffling towards your house. The only way to defend your family against the rotting cannibalistic invaders is by sowing seeds of different species of fast-growing plants designed to stop or slow them down.

At this point, everyone else in the house is sick of Jane and I talking about how much fun Plants Vs. Zombies is and what we'll need to do keep the zombies from overtaking us when we play again (as soon as she gets back from Kindergarten class today).

Plants vs. Zombies


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

National Geo: "Extreme" animal embryos

Seen above are parasitic wasp embryos, which apparently inspired the "alien birth" in Alien. From National Geographic's photo gallery of "'Extreme' Animal Embryos Revealed'":

In a biological attack unique in the animal world, the unassuming embryos (injected by their mother into a caterpillar) use a virus in their DNA to paralyze their host. They bite their way out of the caterpillar and begin spinning cocoons.

As a final insult to the injured host, the caterpillar--apparently brain-addled by the virus--builds a silky blanket over its attackers and defends them against predators until the wasps emerge, fully formed, and take to the skies.

"IN THE WOMB: 'Extreme' Animal Embryos Revealed"

Previously:

• Cuttlefish embryos can spot prey - Boing Boing
• Photos of chicken forming in egg - Boing Boing
• Reality of "three-parent embryo" news - Boing Boing

Source: Boing Boing | 12 May 2009 | 10:02 pm

AT&T: SlingPlayer for iPhone Would ‘Create Congestion’ for 3G

An iPhone version of SlingPlayer, a popular TV streaming service, will be appearing in the App Store on Wednesday morning, according to a Sling spokesman. A previous rumor that Apple would reject the application appears to have been true, as Sling crippled the app at Apple’s request in order to gain approval.

When Sling originally submitted its SlingPlayer app, the software had the ability to stream video over the iPhone’s 3G, EDGE and Wi-Fi connections. However, Apple required Sling to modify the app to work with Wi-Fi only, according to Sling.

“We took this approach at Apple’s request,” Sling spokesman Jay Tannenbaum told Wired.com. “Our goal was to offer them most features and the best user experiences, and we think the Wi-Fi only app is fantastic. But we believe, we originally submitted it on 3G and it really delivers on our ‘Any time, any place’ promise. We’ll continue to work with Apple and its partners to come up with something that’s going to work [for everyone].”

In the previous rumor report about SlingPlayer for iPhone, an anonymous tipster said Apple was denying SlingPlayer to appease to AT&T because the application would overload AT&T’s 3G network. Wired.com predicted correctly that rather than reject the app, Apple would ask Sling to make the SlingPlayer app Wi-Fi only.

AT&T told Wired.com that a 3G-capable SlingPlayer for iPhone would violate AT&T’s terms of service. An AT&T spokesman explained that a 3G-capable SlingPlayer could potentially strain AT&T’s 3g network.

“Slingbox, which would use large amounts of wireless network capacity, could create congestion and potentially prevent other customers from using the network,” an AT&T spokesman said. “The application does not run on our 3G wireless network. Applications like this, which redirects a TV signal to a personal computer, are specifically prohibited under our terms of service.  We consider smartphones like the iPhone to be personal computers in that they have the same hardware and software attributes as PCs.”

AT&T’s terms of service states the following:

downloading movies using P2P file sharing services, redirecting television signals for viewing on Personal Computers, web broadcasting, and/or for the operation of servers, telemetry devices and/or Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition devices is prohibited.

“That said, we don’t restrict users from going to a web site that lets them view videos,” the spokesman added. “But what our terms and conditions prohibit is the transferring, or slinging, of a TV signal to their personal computer or smartphone.”

Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

The SlingPlayer mobile app will enable iPhone users to stream video from a Slingbox device hooked up to a TV. Apple’s requirement to make the app Wi-Fi only raises a brow, as other AT&T handsets, such as the BlackBerry Bold, support a 3G-capable SlingPlayer app.

The SlingPlayer app will be available for $30 in the App Store between midnight and 6 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to Sling.

Updated 4:10 p.m. PDT with a statement from AT&T.

Product Page [Sling]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 12 May 2009 | 10:01 pm

AT&T: SlingPlayer for iPhone Would 'Create Congestion' for 3G

SlingPlayer, a popular TV streaming service, is making its way in the App Store only after crippling the app for Apple. AT&T said the SlingPlayer iPhone app would strain its 3G network.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 10:00 pm

AT&T: SlingPlayer for iPhone Would 'Create Congestion' for 3G

SlingPlayer, a popular TV streaming service, is making its way in the App Store only after crippling the app for Apple. AT&T said the SlingPlayer iPhone app would strain its 3G network.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 10:00 pm

Copyright Infringement of Books

Maximum Prophet recommends a NY Times piece on the growing phenomenon of unauthorized digital versions of copyrighted books showing up online. The problem has been growing exponentially, fed in part by the popularity of reading devices such as the Kindle and the iPhone. The article features the odd photographic juxtaposition of Cory Doctorow and Ursula K. Le Guin, who take opposite views on electronic editions, authorized or not. Ms. Le Guin: "I thought, who do these people think they are? Why do they think they can violate my copyright and get away with it?" Mr. Doctorow: "I really feel like my problem isn't piracy. It's obscurity." "Doctorow, a novelist whose young adult novel 'Little Brother' spent seven weeks on the New York Times children's chapter books best-seller list last year, offers free electronic versions of his books on the same day they are published in hardcover. He believes free versions, even unauthorized ones, entice new readers."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 9:58 pm

Power on Selft Test: Jezigns

"They're called 'Bubble Clouds'...pretty sick."

I concur.

[available from Jezign]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 9:55 pm

SlingPlayer Mobile app to be available soon in App Store

Section: Apple, Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Computers, Software / Applications

With your iPhone, doing many tasks on-the-go is quite possible, however, catching up on TV shows you saved with your Slingbox player or DVR is not so possible.  Today, Apple has finally approved the SlingPlayer Mobile app which can stream your TV shows from your device at home, for $30. 

Now, while all this sounds good, there are a few drawbacks.  The major drawback being the fact that the app will only work when connected to a Wi-Fi network.  AT&T imposed this restriction to Apple and on the SlingPlayer app probably because they do not want people eating up the 3G service with large streams.  If the app only works when connected via Wi-Fi, then AT&T doesn’t have to worry about their 3G servers getting overloaded.  In addition, $30 is a tad unreasonable, especially considering you can’t use the app all the time.  The same type of app has been available for BlackBerry phones since December as a beta app, and since March as a 1.0 release. 

For iPhone owners who have a Slingbox, $30 bucks lying around, and usually in range of a Wi-Fi connection, you will probably be happy with the opportunity to use this app.  For the rest of us, it is probably an app we would like to have, but not worth it at this point due to inefficiency/price.  Expect it to drop in the App store within the next day or so.

Via [BGR]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 May 2009 | 9:54 pm

Google digging deeper to improve search results (AP)

AP - Google Inc. is about to add more features to its already dominant Internet search engine — and some of the changes could give Web surfers less reason to click through to other sites. That scenario might upset the creators of the material highlighted in Google's results.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 12 May 2009 | 9:42 pm

Photo: NASA Snack Mobile

Countdown to a flavor liftoff.

Photo: Smailtronic

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 9:30 pm

Some Caraco-brand digoxin tablets recalled

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 May 2009 | 9:26 pm

New nanocrystals don't 'blink'

U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 May 2009 | 9:26 pm

NASA to televise Soyuz launch and docking

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 May 2009 | 9:13 pm

Social Networking Behavioral Agreements At Work?

r0nc0 writes "My company (a Fortune 15 company) has recently required everyone that accesses the company portal to accept or decline an 'agreement' that governs the use of social networking. It basically states that any discussion of the company or any of the work that you do, whether at the office or at home, must be governed by their rules of social networking. Naturally these rules are that you never say anything bad or negative about the company, nor do you say anything bad or negative about anything. It's presented like a EULA, but if you decline more than 3 times your manager is notified. Naturally I declined it each time until my manager complained to me about all the email he was getting about me not accepting the agreement, so I went ahead and accepted, knowing that anybody who cares would just post anonymously anyway. This is the first time I've run into a forced agreement about social networking, and the agreement is so broad that it can't possibly be enforced. I've tried pointing out that agreements like that only drive people away and aren't necessary anyway, but I might as well talk to a brick wall. Has anyone else out there run into social networking behavioral agreements like this?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 9:06 pm

Anti-aging effects studied in yeast

University of Southern California scientists say they have discovered glucose to glycerol conversion in long-lived yeast provides anti-aging effects. Researchers said they discovered yeast cells maintained on a glycerol diet live twice as long as normal -- as long as yeast cells on a severe caloric-restriction diet -- and are more resistant to cell damage. The scientists said their study is the first to propose that dietary substitution can replace dietary restriction in a living species. If you add glycerol, or restrict caloric intake, you obtain the same effect, said senior author Valter Longo.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 May 2009 | 9:04 pm

Is Microsoft About To Multi-Touch A Nerve With Apple?

Zune fans (all 12 of you), I have some bad news. There will be no new Zune announcement in June, apparently that was just a mix up on Microsoft's part linking to the wrong Twitter account. More importantly, it also means there will be no ZunePhone announcement of any kind. But there are still potentially some new details on that front today thanks to ZDNet's Mary-Jo Foley. Foley claims that a "trustworthy source" has given her the hardware specs for Windows Mobile 7 Chassis 1, believed the project Microsoft is calling "Pink." While it may not be exactly a "ZunePhone" per se, Pink is thought to be a project to build a more iPhone-like mobile device that uses the Zune software mixed with Windows Mobile -- though it would likely be built by a third party. Like Google with Android, it's thought that Microsoft would create an outline of specs it would like to see from hardware vendors, and that's what this list Foley has is. And it's very interesting for a few reasons. None bigger than the word, "multi-touch."

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 8:59 pm

NASA to celebrate 20 years of discovery

The U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 May 2009 | 8:50 pm

Stackable, reconfigurable LED block lamp

The TwistTogether lamp is comprised of four LED blocks that can be rearranged in a myriad of ways. Dwell called it the "Legos of the lighting world." Nuff said.

[$104 via Design Public]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 8:45 pm

Cells supporting neurons also kill neurons

Canadian researchers say they've discovered cells that support neuron survival also play a role in the death of neurons located in the eye. Researchers from the University of Montreal and McGill University said their findings might lead to improved therapies for some neurological disorders, including glaucoma and retinal artery occlusion. The scientists said in many neurodegenerative diseases, a main factor that kills neurons is excessive levels of the neurotransmitter glutamate.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 12 May 2009 | 8:42 pm

Rumor: Next-Gen iPhone Will Be a Snoozer Upgrade

The most elaborate rumor to date about Apple’s next iPhone is somewhat of an anticlimax, as it suggests the upgrade will be a minor one with few physical changes.

A commenter at Chinese Apple fan blog WeiPhone claims to have tested a prototype of the next-generation iPhone and describes it as a “repeat” in physical design. The tipster says the major changes are internal: a faster 600MHz processor (up from 400MHz in the current iPhone), 256MB RAM (up from 128MB), and a larger storage capacity of up to 32GB (up from a maximum of 16GB).

The commenter also repeated previous rumors about iPhone hardware: a digital compass and a 3.2-megapixel camera with auto-focus capability. Otherwise, Apple’s next iPhone will have the same 3.5-inch, 480×320-pixel touchscreen — so overall the handset will look the same, the tipster claimed.

The commenter also provided a screenshot (right) purporting to reveal the handset’s capacity (32GB), model number (MB717LL) and firmware version (3.0). AppleInsider notes model numbers for the iPhone 3G only range to MB705LL.

Nothing official is known about what Apple has in store for the next iPhone. However, analysts, journalists and enthusiasts agree an upgrade to the popular handset is imminently approaching — most likely by summer, as the current and previous iPhones were launched July 2008 and June 2007, respectively.

Analysts and developers told Wired.com that they believe the next iPhone’s improvements will have a strong focus on gaming. A faster processor and more RAM, as the Chinese tipster suggests, would certainly contribute to that.

Chinese rumor claims 2009 iPhone will be modest upgrade [AppleInsider]

See Also:

• Easter Eggs Give Clues to Next-Gen iPhone
• Apple’s Next iPhone Will Rule at Gaming
• iPhone 3.0 Event Revives Tablet Rumors
• Rumor: Apple Developing Two New iPhones for Verizon

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 12 May 2009 | 8:33 pm

Don't Panic visits Transmutant machine builders

James from Don't Panic writes:

We went to visit Transmutant last weekend - thought you might be interested. They're a ragtag bunch of punk engineers and Royal Aerospace runaways.

They weld together scrap to create new and wonderful machines. One of their latest, which they talk us through, is a Cessna training plane combined with a Jeep, and painted baby pink. Taken them 1000 hours so far, but it looks great.

Oh, and they made an operational 4-legged unsupported walker, capable of carrying a passenger.

That's because they rule.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 8:22 pm

Ultra-Dense Deuterium Produced

Omomyid was among several readers writing in about the production of microscopic amounts of ultra-dense deuterium by scientists at the University of Gothenberg, in Sweden. A cubic centimeter of the stuff would weigh 287 lbs. (130 kg). UDD is 100,000 times more dense than water, and a million times more dense than deuterium ice, which is a common fuel in laser-ignited fusion projects. The researchers say that, if (big if) the material can be produced in large quantities, it would vastly improve the chances of starting a fusion reaction, as the atoms are much closer together. Such a D-D fusion reaction would be cleaner than one involving highly radioactive tritium. Many outlets have picked up the same press release that Science Daily printed pretty much verbatim (as is their wont); there doesn't seem to be much else about this on the Web. Here's the home page of one of the researchers. The press release gives no hint as to how the UDD was produced. Reader wisebabo asks: "I can easily imagine a material being compressed by some heavy duty diamond anvil to reach this density, the question is: what happens when you let the pressure off? Will it expand (explosively one would presume) back to its original volume?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 12 May 2009 | 8:16 pm

His & Hers flashy, LED wedding gear

As if setting your first dance to an Aerosmith ballad wasn't magical enough. Nothing says "white wedding" more than 300 white LEDS. Unless you program your dress to literally say "white wedding" or whatever.

Why tell your in-laws you're made of money, when you can show them?

Of course, some grooms may prefer to go with something a bit more subtle.

[via enlighted]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 8:08 pm

A Consumer iPhone App That Boldly Goes Beyond The $9.99 Threshold

Though you may not ever see them, there are apps in the App Store that sell for over $9.99. Mostly they're for doctors or stupid gimmicks, but they exist. Now the first one relevant on a larger scale to consumers is about to become available with the SlingPlayer Mobile app launching tonight for $29.99 in the App Store. How this app sells will be really interesting. While other consumer electronic companies have made apps, most have given them away for free like DirectTV and the Remote app from Apple. But SlingPlayer will be a bit different from those since it's streaming content from a piece of hardware you own to your iPhone -- so it's basically an extension of that device to use on the road. Of course, there's also a big caveat: It will only work over WiFi.

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 7:50 pm

Microsoft links to wrong Twitter account, account owner makes fake announcement

Late last night, someone going by “officethemovie” on Twitter indirectly announced a Zune phone, suggesting a release date of June 2009. By this morning, a ton of blogs had ran with it. It seemed legit enough at first glance - even Microsoft’s own Office 2010: The Movie site linked to it.

Still, something seemed a bit off to us. I mean, sure - HTC might use Twitter for product announcements, but Microsoft? It just didn’t seem right.

And it wasn’t. Turns out the Office 2010: The Movie page was linking to a dead Twitter account. The official Twitter account is Office2010Movie, whereas Microsoft’s site linked to officethemovie. Someone with quick fingers and a dastardly plan snatched up the account, rounded up a bunch of followers, and announced something that didn’t exist. The officethemovie Twitter stream now gives credit to Haklab for the heist, claiming that it was an effort to get Apple to pay attention to their anti-iPhone-Piracy movement.

Be wary of what you read on the Internet, folks - even if all signs point to legitimacy.

[Via Neowin]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 7:43 pm

Facebook is stubborn on position with Holocaust-denial groups amid some uproar

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

Yesterday after becoming rather popular on the ‘net for hosting several Holocaust-denial groups, Facebook went and shut two of them down.  And left at least three of them going strong.  Gee…some more random picking and choosing on Facebook’s part?  “You two groups are hateful…you others…nah…not so much.”  Ummm…right.

In response to what has been going on, Facebook spokesperson Barry Schnitt says “Denying the holocaust is not a violation of our terms.”  I don’t know about other writers discussing this, but that wasn’t my reasoning for saying this is a violation of Facebook Terms of Service.  Yes, I get that people have a right to have their heads up their butts and think the Holocaust never happened.  I also get they have the right to think whatever they want.  But according to Facebook Terms of Service, they do not have the right to make hateful statements on that site.  And it is being done.  What?  In the name of discussing ideas?  Puh-lease.

They seem to be kind of hoping the groups will kind of self-destruct all on their own, so they don’t need to be taken down. 

“We are monitoring these groups and if the discussion among members degrades to the point of promoting hate or violence, despite whatever disclaimer the group description provides, we will take them down. This has happened in the past, especially when controversial groups are publicized.” 

OK.  I’ll just watch little Johnny play with those matches in that building full of gasoline-soaked rags, I won’t take the matches from him, or pull him out of the building.  Nope…I will just wait for him to start the fire and then hope to be able to put it out.  Good thinking, Facebook.  You haven’t seen enough sparks flying around those rooms yet.

Again, hate is a violation.  The words and discussions going on in those rooms are not an intellectual debate of whether or not the Holocaust happened or not.  They are not primarily a gathering place for deciding whether it was 6 million or 11 million people who died; whether the vast majority was Jewish or persecuted for other religious, sexual or political orientations.  I will always be an advocate for discussion of ideas.  Whether they agree with my own or not.  I will not be an advocate of hate and prejudice.  And that is what I see here, and Facebook allowing; regardless of that they are saying.  And yes…it does break their Terms.

Some people are saying that this probably isn’t the only hate group on Facebook, and why all the hoopla surrounding this one?  Why not support removal of all the others?  You’re right.  None should be allowed.  If Facebook is going to be putting that clause into their Terms of Service, then they should back that up.  This one did get coverage when Brian Cuban publicized it by going after Facebook.  Do you know of another?  Then make a stand, make it known.  Don’t turn the other way and become part of the problem. 

Facebook, you need to stop making it seem as though we are saying denial is a violation.  We aren’t.  Denial is just a cover for the hate that is spewing, and you are allowing.  And it is wrong.

via: cnet

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 May 2009 | 7:36 pm

Amazing Jobs portrait built from Apple marketing slogans

Here's to the level-headed ones. The sociable. The orthodox. The builders of consensus.

Illustration: Dylan Roscover via Cult of Mac.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 7:01 pm

Chrome's Well Spaced Capsule Suits Your Stuff

All bags are not created equal. Take a look at Chrome's newest backpack, the Soyuz. This haul-anything, go-anywhere bag is stitched from from red and black ballistic nylon and is capable of both lugging laptops and attracting illicit stares from jealous bike messengers.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 6:50 pm

Chrome's Well Spaced Capsule Suits Your Stuff

All bags are not created equal. Take a look at Chrome's newest backpack, the Soyuz. This haul-anything, go-anywhere bag is stitched from from red and black ballistic nylon and is capable of both lugging laptops and attracting illicit stares from jealous bike messengers.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 6:50 pm

BMW Decides Too Much Is Just Enough

One-hundred and ninety-three horsepower in a motorcycle sounds good to us.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 12 May 2009 | 6:48 pm

3 questions for Shuji Nakamura, inventor of the blue LED

Red LEDs had been around since the 1920s, but sixty years later folks were still trying to figure out how to get the green and the blue necessary to complete the spectrum. Enter Shuji Nakamura, who was researching gallium nitride at a chemical manufacturing company in Tokyo. Shuji Nakamura discovered green and blue LEDs in 1993. Later, after joining UCSB's Materials Department, Nakamura sued Nichia for paying him a discovery bonus: of $200. He won the appeal and ultimately took home about $8 million -- the largest such bonus paid by a Japanese company to date. I was able to catch Nakamura for a few minutes on the phone while on business in Hong Kong. I only got to ask him a few things before he had to run off, but here's a short excerpt from our interview:

Q: What got you interested in LEDs?
A: I joined Nichia Corporation in 1979, at the age of 24. For 10 years, we just did red LEDs, but the biggest problem in the field was that there was no blue or green. To make anything, you need the three primary colors. Red was easier to make because gallium arsenide was readily available, but nobody had figured out how to make blue. There were two materials being researched at the time for blue. Everyone thought zinc selenide was better, and only maybe 6 out of 1000 researchers were looking at gallium nitride. It has lots of crystal defects, and many thought it would be too difficult at the time.

Q: How long did it take you to make the discovery?
A: I started researching gallium nitride in 1989, and discovered a way to make it work and marketable by 1993.

Q: Tell me about what suing your old company was like.
A: I quit Nichia in 2000 and moved to Santa Barbara to become a professor. I was supposed to sign an NDA, but I didn't. Once I got to the US, Nichia tried to sue me for infringing trade secrets. So in 2001, I filed a counter suit. The Japanese legal system is a mess. It's baffling once you know the truth about this stuff.

You can read more about him in the book Brilliant!: Shuji Nakamura And the Revolution in Lighting Technology.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 6:46 pm

Pixel Qi Promises Cheap, Readable, Low-Power Displays

Mary Lou Jepsen is a tech necromancer who battled the odds to conjure up a product that most experts said couldn’t be built: a $100 laptop (give or take a few twenties). Now she’s back, with plans for low-cost, low-power, super-readable, LCD-based screens that will go into everything from e-book readers to netbooks and computers.

“We are creating e-paper with color and video capability, but on high volume, standard, mass production lines, so they will be available easily,” says Jepsen, founder of Pixel Qi (pronounced Pixel Chee), a San Bruno, California-based startup. The company plans to have samples of its display out within the next two months, “and we are pulling all-nighters now to get the product ready.”

Jepsen was the chief technical officer and first employee of the One Laptop per Child’s XO computer, and she was charged with making the cheap computer technically feasible. A low-power LCD was the cornerstone of that effort. Now, Jepsen wants to take her OLPC experience — and her 48 display-related patents — to market with a for-profit company.

Pixel Qi’s displays called 3Qi will operate in three settings: a full-color, bright, conventional LCD mode; a very low-power, sunlight-readable, reflective e-paper mode; and a low-power, basic color transflective mode. The screens are initially expected to be available in 10.5-inch and 7.5-inch screen sizes.

If successful, the 3Qi displays could effectively bridge the high-speed, full-color benefits of traditional LCDs and the low-power, reader-friendly qualities of electronic ink displays. The market for electronic ink is currently led by Cambridge, Massachusetts-based E Ink, whose extremely low power, sunlight-readable electrophoretic displays are used in the majority of e-book readers today, including the successful Amazon.com Kindle and Kindle 2. However, despite the readability of E Ink’s screens, the displays take a second or two to refresh, making them unsuitable for video or animation. Also, they are currently only available in monochrome.

“Effectively what [Pixel Qi is] doing is creating a hybrid display that combines the best of E Ink and regular LCDs,” says Robert Barry, director of business development for Team Research, a company that makes an e-book reader called the Astak Mentor. Team Research has partnered with Pixel Qi to include the latter’s display into a new e-book reader codenamed ‘Spectrum.’

There’s just one problem: Although Jepsen has said that the first 3Qi displays will be available later this year, no one has seen a working prototype of a Pixel Qi display yet. That means Jepsen will have to first prove Pixel Qi’s claims even as she steers the company through one of the most difficult economic environments for a startup.

Since Amazon introduced the Kindle in November 2007, the e-books reader market has taken off in a big way. This year alone, Amazon introduced two new e-book readers, the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX. Other companies such as Sony, Samsung, Fujitsu and Foxit are also fighting for a share of this fast-growing market. To succeed in the e-book market, Pixel Qi will have to break E Ink’s near monopoly on the market.

Jepsen is counting on a two-pronged strategy to break that stranglehold. First, Pixel Qi plans to use existing LCD production lines to manufacture the displays at a high volume and extremely low cost. Second, the company is betting its displays will be much more more versatile than E Ink’s (for instance, they can display color and video) and can be used to power netbooks and tablet PCs. Potentially, a 3Qi display could make a netbook or tablet do double duty as an e-book reader.

“When people design a new computer chip there’s a good reason they still use silicon as a material though there are other options,” says Jepsen. “They can try something new but it will take a lot longer to bring it to market. I think it’s the same with displays.”

That’s why Pixel Qi’s displays are based on LCD technology, says Jepsen. “The LCD manufacturing industry is a $100 billion a year business and is cost-optimized in a way that is very hard for E Ink to scale to,” she says. “The problem has been that no small entity got access to the big LCD production lines. But we have cracked the door open on the LCD factories just like the smaller guys did with the silicon fabs.”

To pull off her plans with Pixel Q, Jepsen is counting heavily on her previous experience as the founding chief technology officer and the first employee of the One Laptop Per Child project. The project aimed to bring $100 laptops to children in developing countries. Jepsen helped create the OLPC laptop’s display technology and its ultra-low-power management system. As OLPC laptops went into large scale production, Jepsen resigned from the project to start Pixel Qi in late 2007.

“She’s very smart and very energetic,” says Jennifer Cosgrove, director at research firm Display Search. “She has relationships with display manufacturers in Taiwan from the OLPC project and she has worked hard to persuade many of them to be part of her new idea.”

But Pixel Qi has been a greater challenge than Jepsen may have realized. The company completed its first round (Series A) funding two months ago. It hasn’t disclosed its investors or how much it has raised, though Jepsen says getting investors for Pixel Qi has been the biggest challenge of her career. The LCD and display industry has become “incredibly risk averse,” says Jepsen, and convincing companies to bet on her idea has been “ridiculously hard.”

“It was harder for me to get money for this venture than for art school,” Jepsen says. “I can’t say we didn’t think of shutting down. There were an awful lot of moments we thought we wouldn’t make it.”

What’s holding Pixel Qi together is the promise of the screens that Jepsen and her team say they will deliver. For now, though, Jepsen won’t talk much about what she says is the “secret sauce” of her new display screens.

“We have really, really focused on the details of the different layers that go to create the OLPC screens and how we can put them together differently to create a new kind of display,” she says. “What I have done is massively improve on the OLPC display design.”

Despite the lack of extensive information or prototype, Pixel Qi’s partners are keeping the faith. Team Research’s Barry says that Pixel Qi’s technology checks out. Early versions of his company’s Spectrum are expected to be ready around October and he plans to show them at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2010. But even Barry hasn’t seen a prototype 3Qi display yet. In other words, even though Pixel Qi has yet to deliver the first sample of its display, Team Research is already scheduling a future product release around it.

The reason, says Barry, is that Pixel Qi will offer color displays, something its rivals including E Ink are still struggling to bring to market. “The race in the e-book reader market is now for a color display,” says Barry. “Everyone’s looking for a technology that will allow long battery life with color.”

Though E Ink is currently working on a color display it is unlikely to have it available till mid-2010, says Display Search’s Cosgrove. “E Ink has shown some demos of color displays but they are not close to high volume production,” she says. “E Ink displays also can’t do video very well because the response time for display is pretty slow.” Cosgrove pegs response time for E Ink displays at about 200 milliseconds and says she expects Pixel Qi’s displays to show average response time between 5 ms and 30 ms. As the e-book readers market matures, companies are likely to seek a second display supply source and Pixel Qi could emerge as a viable alternative to E Ink.

Jepsen is also counting on sheer innovation to help drive sales. Netbook manufacturers are hungry for new ideas to help them stand out in an increasingly crowded and price-sensitive market.

“We are the only sort of new display screen that the market has seen in a long time,” says Jepsen. “There’s not been much innovation in this business.”

Photo: Mockup of an OLPC Tablet/The OLPC Foundation

See also:
E-book Reader Round up
Amazon Kindle 2 Review
Amazon Set to ReKindle its E-Book Reader

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 12 May 2009 | 6:42 pm

Pixel Qi Promises Cheap, Readable, Low-Power Displays

Mary Lou Jepsen helped make the One Laptop per Child project possible, and now she's on a quest to reinvent display technology.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 6:42 pm

Four Robots

Update: As requested:

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 6:32 pm

Speed limiting tech device getting a trial run in London this summer

Section: Gadgets / Other, GPS/Navigation, Transportation

This week, Transport for London confirmed that it will be testing speed limiting technology to make the roads safer for all drivers.  Starting this summer, a six month trial will begin of Intelligent Speed Adaptation technology.  The way that Intelligent Speed Adaptation works is that it will combine both GPS technology with digital speed maps provided by the Transport for London to control speeds.

The Intelligent Speed Adaptation will use the information collected to determine when to limit a driver’s acceleration to ensure that he stays within the legal speed limit.  The driver will have the opportunity to disable the limiting feature and will instead receive a verbal warning if he exceeds the speed limit.  An override switch will be available as well to disable the device completely.

The Intelligent Speed Adaptation trial will involve a bus, taxi and vehicles used by traffic managers and highway inspectors.  If the trial is successful, the Intelligent Speed Adaptation could be available commercially as early as next year.

Read: [ZDNet Asia]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 May 2009 | 5:28 pm

Rumor: iPhone 3 specs leaked

We’d love it if there was some glaring omission in this screenshot that flagged the whole thing as fake, but we’re not seeing it if it’s there. Some lucky tipster on a chinese forum claims to have obtained a production model of the next iPhone and has already rattled out all the specs, backing up his claims with the screenshot to the right.

According to AppleInsider, the purported specs are as follows:

• CPU bumped up 50%, up to 600mhz
• System ram doubled, up to 256mb
• 3.2 megapixel camera (That’s all?) with autofocus
• Magnetometer
• 32GB of storage space
• Nearly identical externally

Can we debunk it on the spot? Nope. Does that verify its authenticity? Absolutely not. Nothing here is too absurd (most of it, such as the magnetometer and 32GB storage bump, has been rumored for some time), but none of the proof provided would be at all difficult to forge. How about a shot of the prototype hardware? We expect that this is just the first of many rumored spec leaks that will trickle out leading up to WWDC next month.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 5:24 pm

Rumor: Sprint to get social network crazy with the Samsung M550 Exclaim!

Ex•claim (verb): To cry out suddenly or vehemently, as from surprise or emotion: god, I love social networking!. Ok, maybe that’s a bit much, but if Sprint has its way with this rumored Samsung M550 Exclaim device, that’s exactly what all the kids will be shouting.

Based on these supposed leaked images found in a Sprint Gurus forum, the Exclaim (so exciting!) is to feature a dual-slider (a la Ocean) with a QWERTY keyboard in landscape and a numeric keypad in portrait “mode” and will be available in either jubilation blue or ecstatic pink (ok, so those names are made up, but blue and pink are pictured in the forum).

Rumor has it that the Exclaim is one in the same to a previously leaked Samsung Lucello (see below) that is said to have a 2.6″ QVGA display, 3G (EV-DO Rev. 0), Bluetooth, and a 2MP cam.

It’s also speculated that this excited handset will include “tight” integration with uber popular social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace (and Twitter, if they really want to get all the kids riled up). The socialite phone will apparently hit the red carpet on June 7, 2009.

[via MobileBurn]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 5:07 pm

Follow MobileCrunch on Twitter!

We want you to follow us. Well, not in real life. That would be a bit creepy - plus, it’d be boring as all hell for you. You’d be sitting behind us as we sat in front of a monitor all day. You could count the number of protein bars we eat in a day. That’d be fun, right?

At long last, @MobileCrunch has been fired up and is ready to be your e-BFF. All our headlines will pass through those halls, alongside the occasional Twitter-exclusive contest. So go ahead, give us a follow.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 4:57 pm

ViewSonic moves from monitors to mobiles

So, lets say you’re one of the top display makers in the world. Congratulations! Except you’ve grown bored of making all these monitors - you want to mix it up a little. What do you make? Toaster ovens? Nah. Hello Kitty kitchenware? Hell no. You make cell phones. The jump is oh-so obvious, isn’t it?

Well, not really - but James Chu, CEO of ViewSonic, thinks it is, saying “With 20 years of display experience this is a natural extension of our product expertise,” but we’re not really seeing the connection here.

But who knows? Perhaps they’ve got something amazing up there sleeves, and will blow our minds by actually releasing it rather than dabbling for a few months and subsequently releasing nothing at all? Either way, do us all a favor, ViewSonic: Android. We don’t need more platform segmentation.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 4:47 pm

Offspring of Unfaithful Birds Get Head Start

The chicks of interloping male birds gain advantage by hatching first.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 May 2009 | 4:29 pm

Samsung reveals their sorcery

Weeks back, Samsung released the first Samsung Omnia HD/i8910 video quality sample with a bit of an illusion involved, challenging users to guess what was going on. Some claimed greenscreening, others swore the spotted hidden cameras. We just figured it was sorcery and went on with out day.

Actually, we assumed it was a false mirror a la Duck Soup, and we were right. If you want to see the whole thing revealed and shot from multiple angles, the vid up above will do you in.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 4:18 pm

Color-Shifting Cuttlefish Inspire TV Screens

Scientists mimic the way cuttlefish change colors to create a hi-tech TV screen.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 May 2009 | 4:09 pm

Review: Nokia XPressMusic 5800

When I first saw the Nokia XPressMusic 5800 I was disappointed. We saw it last October, at a time when everyone and their dog was releasing a touchscreen phone to “beat” the iPhone. The version I saw initially was quite wonky with a touchscreen interface essentially bolted onto Symbian resulting in weird behavior.

But I’m sorry that I doubted Nokia. The 5800 is one of the nicest little touchscreen phones I’ve used in a long while and, aside from a few quirks, it’s one of the better implementations of touchscreen on the Symbian platform I’ve seen in a while.

The tiny 5800 is four inches long and two inches wide. It has three buttons on its face - dial, hang-up, and menu. There is a lock button on the side along with volume and camera control. You won’t notice it at first but there is also a stylus hiding in the bottom right corner of the phone.

A full-sized audio jack and mini USB port are on the top along with the power button. It has a 3.2-megapixel camera built-in with autofocus.

Nokia 5800 XpressMusic Demo

The G.S.M. version is quad-band with 802.11b/g WiFi. It has a MicroSD slot and, oddly enough, a slot for a SIM card on the left side.

The main screen is a “friends” display. There you can add four of your friends along with a single “feed” which can be from almost any site including - shudder - Twitter. This feed is updated automatically. The menu is your standard Symbian far with a set of large icons. Most of the scrolling menus are designed for easy tapping although you will definitely need a stylus. There are methods for “thumb typing” input, but there was rarely the chance to use them during the average session. When faced with a tiny onscreen keyboard, the mind automatically defaults to expected behavior.

The device includes GPS, VGA video capture, and lasts for about 5 hours of talk time.

Because this is an XPressMusic device, the 5800 shines at music playback. A small button at the top of the phone - right next to the XPressMusic logo, brings up a quick menu for music, photos, web, movies, and sharing. The phone, in media mode, takes advantage of the phone’s large screen with large, easy-to-top buttons.

Once you get past these functions, this phone is a solid Symbian smartphone with Nokia’s standard messaging features built-in. You can send emails and add contacts using Nokia’s own services. Most Symbian apps work flawlessly with the 5800.

We only had a few issues with the 5800. At points the response time was quite slow and it’s difficult to tell when you’ve shut down an application in order to free up some memory. When the phone is acting up it gets hard to press some buttons and once you press them a few times you suddenly enter a flurry of menus and screen changes thanks to the OS thinking you meant to press something else.

Bottom Line
Otherwise, the form-factor, media playback experience, and even the photo quality were one par if not better than most other touchscreen phones. The phone costs about $400 at Nokia flagship stores.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 12 May 2009 | 3:57 pm

Tape Designed to Bomb, Storm-Proof Homes

A tape developed by the U.S. Army promises to shield buildings from bombs and storms.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 May 2009 | 3:39 pm

Watch the Watchmen with your Facebook friends

Section: Video, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray

Before the release of J.J. Abram’s massive success in “Star Trek,” “Watchmen” was the geek movie event of the year.  The amount of attention it got from geeks across the country couldn’t go ignored by Warner Bros., which decided to add a bit of extra functionality to the Blu-Ray release of Watchmen.

The Blu-ray Director’s cut of the movie will allow you to connect to use BD-Live to watch the movie along with any number of Facebook friends.  It will use Warner Home Video’s live community screening to link the movie between all those watching so you can comment on the movie as you watch it with your friends. 

Of course there is a bit of an obvious catch: everyone has to own a copy of the Blu-ray Director’s cut, and a Blu-ray player capable of BD-Live that is connected to a broadband connection.  Seems like a lot of trouble where it’d just be easier for that one person who has a PS3 or Blu-Ray player to buy the movie, and then invite their friends over to watch it together.

The BD-Live and Facebook connection sounds like it could be an interesting gimmick, but nothing more.  It seems like a way to get people to invest in Blu-ray for a feature they may never be able to use.  Warner Bros. has a better way of doing that with “Watchmen,” though.  The only way to obtain a physical copy of the Director’s cut is to get the Blu-ray version.  Granted, the Theatrical cut and Director’s cut only have a difference of 28 minutes, for some fans of the material it will be hard to not get the Director’s cut.  Those same people might not have Blu-ray yet, and may not be able to afford a PS3 or other Blu-ray player.  The only other options are to get the Director’s cut through Amazon On Demand or iTunes.

Read [PC Mag]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 May 2009 | 3:13 pm

Jesus Phone Can't Have Jesus App, Apple Preaches

Apple has rejected an iPhone app which let anyone plaster their face on a picture of Jesus. Apparently is contains "objectionable material" — your face? — though the only thing we think is objectionable about it is the name: "Me So Holy."

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 12 May 2009 | 1:58 pm

Mercury Takes Algae Road to Ocean Fish

Mercury emissions reach ocean fish with a helping hand from circulating algae.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 12 May 2009 | 1:39 pm

Microsoft could be launching phone and buying major tech company

Section: Business News, Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile

Two bits of seemingly disjointed info coming out of Redmond may or may not have anything to do with each other.  The first: Microsoft is issuing bonds; the second is a tweet telling us to hold off buying Pre/iPhone just yet.  These two bits of info seem disconnected right?

Analysts believe Microsoft will buy back stock with the funds raised by the bond sale.  This the first time in the company’s history that Microsoft has issued bonds.  Microsoft is trading on its cash-rich position and good credit standing.

The other news is a tweet from an Office2010 Twitter account telling us that something big is coming down the line.  It boggles the mind a bit to think that that Windows Mobile could put together a competitive offering that would stand with the iPhone or even the Pre. 

Regardless, we are told to hold off on the purchase.  Analysts believe this tweet to refer to big HTC models running Windows Mobile 6.5 that were shown off in Barcelona earlier this year.

My take:  MS is readying a buy of Palm.  The crew in Redmond need something to stand against the iPhone and the Pre is the best shot at it.  HTC has made a couple of runs at it but continues to come up short.  Nokia is moving into the states with zest and brings along some Symbian love.  MS needs a winner on the WinMo platform or adopt its platform to something else.  I believe webOS is that something else.  Simple, easy to integrate and available (within the next month, right Palm?).

So that’s my guess.  What is yours?  Let us know in the comments.

Source: [Wall Street Journal]

 

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 12 May 2009 | 1:08 pm

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

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