Question: You have a stack of old, vintage moneybags, and a yen to make something out of them. What do you do? If you’re Etsy seller Rikkianne (aka. chakrapennywhistle), you do nothing. Conceptually, at least.
These wallets have gone from holding big stacks of cash to smaller stacks of cash, and are fashioned from old banking moneybags. Because the worn cotton sacks are all different, the wallets are too, although they have some features in common: double card pockets and a billfold at the back. The wallets are $35 each, so you should still have some cash left to put in them when you’ve bought one. Out of stock right now on Etsy, they should be back on sale next week.
Product page [Chakra Penny Whistle via Uncrate]
Here’s a funding story you don’t see often, recession or no: A startup buying back its shares from its venture capitalist, at a premium.
But that’s the transaction that video chat firm Paltalk and Softbank have completed. Paltalk, which sold off 20% of its equity to Softbank for $6 million in 2004, has bought the shares back. No one has spelled out a purchase price, but I’m told the deal will be considered a “single” for Softbank — it gets its capital back, plus a return — which in this economy ought to be a homerun.
This is different than the “baby buybacks” we’re seeing as the economy sputters, in which founders reclaim all or part of their companies at distressed prices after their investors give up — think eBay (EBAY) and StumbleUpon (and perhaps Skype), or more recently, ManiaTV.
Paltalk can afford to buy its shares back because it’s an Internet video company that actually makes money, which it does via a “freemium” model: Most users can hope on the service for free, but about 5 percent pay for some extra features, like virtual conference rooms. People familiar with the company tell me it should be on track to throw off $4 milllion in cash this year off of revenues of $20 million. It also has extra cash on hand these days as a result of a settlement it extracted from Microsoft (MSFT) in a patent lawsuit in March.
Here at the Lab, its certainly no secret that we like DIY solutions to gadget puzzles. Which is why we’re so pleased about the Nasty Clamp. The flash stand was originally a home-made project, but the maker, Matthew G. Monroe, was so inundated with requests from other photographers that he decided to go ahead and turn it into a business. The result is the Nasty Clamp, a rather useful little device for clamping flash-guns to almost anything.
You can see the DIY origins right away. The clamp is essentially a combination of a standard hardware store spring clamp along with a few sections of Loc-Line hosing, a modular tube system which also looks a lot like the legs of the Joby Gorillapod. The clamp can hold either a strobe (it’ll even support the rather large Nikon SB900, loaded with batteries) or a small camera, thanks to its standard tripod-mount machine screw.
Why would you want this? Because you can use it to put a light pretty much anywhere. A lighting stand is cheap, light and easy but it isn’t always convenient, and you aren’t always on flat ground. The irony here is that, at $50, the clamps cost so much that you might be tempted to go the DIY route and make your own.
Product page [Nasty Clamps via DIY Photography]
Japan’s (and probably the world’s) most renowned gaming magazine, the Famitsu [JP], has given Square Enix’s RPG Dragon Quest IX a perfect score in the latest issue. All four editors who tested the game gave 10 points out of 10, resulting in a 40/40 score.
The magazine says the music and the multiplayer mode are outstanding, and said the game can trigger deep emotions in the player. Dragon Quest is a household name in Japan, with the ninth installment having shipped 3 million units since its release in Nippon just last Saturday.
Other games that received a perfect score from Famitsu include Metal Gear Solid 4 back in June last year, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time for the N64 and Vagrant Story for the PS. In total, there are only 10 games with a 40/40 score now.
Here is a video from the day Dragon Quest IX launched in Japan:
Ok, we’re going to start things off with a softball. I can’t imagine even Twitter cares that we’re posting this pitch deck from Through Eyes Productions that outlines the idea for a reality television show called Final Tweet. This looks different than still-in-planning television show that was leaked in late May. And frankly, it looks like a big loser. I hope and assume Twitter turned this down, and fast.
The pitch: four teams of “young entrepreneurs” battle with non-profit organizations to win a cash prize of $100,000. They’ll travel across the U.S. and live off “limited cash.”
“In this choose your own adventure type journey the players rely partially on the influence and knowledge of their twitter followers and supporters, the strength of their teamwork, and their ambition to advance them from spot to spot….. and bringing them one step closer to that final tweet…Teams will unite, squabble and laugh, looking forward to what Twitter Headquarters has up their sleeves. Twitter followers at home will live and play their journey as the teams document themselves by tweeting updates.”
The full pitch is below.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Wow, that’s quite a reaction to our post earlier this evening saying that we will publish some of the confidential Twitter documents we’ve been forwarded. Nearly 200 comments in a little over an hour, mostly saying we shouldn’t publish. Hundreds of Tweets, and it has become a trending topic. There’s even a poll asking people if we should post the documents or not.
Let’s put aside the highly sensitive documents that we aren’t going to publish, but which will likely end up on the Internet anyway. We’re not going to post that information whether we have the legal right to or not. No discussion is needed.
But we are going to publish some of the other information that is relevant to Twitter’s business, particularly product notes and financial projections. Many users say this is “stolen” information and therefore shouldn’t be published. We disagree.
We publish confidential information almost every day on TechCrunch. This is stuff that is also “stolen,” usually leaked by an employee or someone else close to the company, and the company is very much opposed to its publication. In the past we’ve received comments that this is unethical. And it certainly was unethical, or at least illegal or tortious, for the person who gave us the information and violated confidentiality and/or nondisclosure agreements. But on our end, it’s simply news.
If you disagree with that, ok. But then you also have to disagree with the entire history of the news industry. “News is what somebody somewhere wants to suppress; all the rest is advertising,” is something Lord Northcliffe, a newspaper magnate, supposedly said. I agree wholeheartedly.
That doesn’t mean we are entitled to do anything we like in order to get to that information. But if it lands in our inbox, we consider it fair game. And if we have reason to believe it will be widely published regardless of what we do, the decision isn’t a hard one. We throw out the information that is sensitive or could hurt an individual, and publish what we think is newsworthy.
In the end, this is no different than, as an example, this 2006 post where we posted confidential Yahoo documents showing their valuation of Facebook in a proposed acquisition.
Nor is it any different than the WSJ publishing this internal Yahoo memo, which was also “stolen” in 2006.
It’s not our fault that Google has a ridiculously easy way to get access to accounts via their password recovery question. It’s not our fault that Twitter stored all of these documents and sensitive information in the cloud and had easy-to-guess passwords and recovery questions. We’ve been sitting in the office for eight hours now debating what the right thing to do is in this situation. We’ve spoken with our lawyers. We’ve spoken with Twitter. And we’ve heard what our readers have to say. All of that factors in to our decision on what to post or not to post.
We are always in the delicate position of balancing what’s right for the community with publishing insider news that helped build this site into what it is today. We don’t sit around and republish press releases, we break big stories.
I feel bad for Twitter and I wish this had never happened. But it did happen and the documents are out there and they are going to be published somewhere on the Internet. Hopefully the embarrassing and sensitive stuff about individual employees will never see the light of day. And hopefully this situation will encourage Google and Google users to consider more robust data security policies in the future.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Today at Boing Boing Gadgets, we had a special theme day on makeup. Stop by to read about:
* three battery-operated mascaras;
* why permanent makeup is scary;
* how to look hot in high-definition;
* a zit zapping gadget called the Zeno;
* crazy transformer makeup kits;
* a visual history of cosmetics gadgetry;
* a video gallery of humanimals;
and movie makeup tips.
We also wrote about other cool stuff like a laser-cut wooden keyboard, new digicams from Samsung, ceramic knives inspired by cavemen, an ironing board that turns into a mirror, and a Pac-Man stapler. 
AFP - Zvi Schreiber's new software links users across the globe, but in order to meet the Palestinian engineers who helped create it he must drive to a petrol station in the middle of the desert.
 GadgetCrave.com | What Microsoft Azure Means To SMBs bMighty.com Azure isn't an infrastructure competitor for Amazon and Google, but rather a Platform as a Service (PaaS) alternative to Force.com. Now that Microsoft has announced the availability of its cloud based operating system (free for now, ... Microsoft announces Azure pricing, details On-Demand Pricing For Windows Azure Microsoft's cloud platform Windows Azure coming in November |
In April, DJ Steve Porter remixed the most excellent advertising infomercial–featuring television pitchman Vince Shlomi (pictured here) for the Slap Chop, an entertaining slasher of all foods–into a rap music video.
It has now garnered 3.8 million views on YouTube, as well as now officially becoming an infomercial itself.
Here’s the online viral video, along with another Porter did a month later for the legendary Sham Wow.
Slap Chop Rap:
Jam Wow:
By Craig Hockenberry, Blogger, Furbo.org
As we approach the first anniversary of selling things on the iTunes App Store, I’d like to take the opportunity to look at where we’ve been and where we’d like to go. A lot of good things have happened since last July 11th, but there’s still much room for improvement.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Brian Handwerk, Contributing Writer, National Geographic News
For all its might, the World Wide Web is still limited to, well, our world. But that’s quickly changing with the advent of an “interplanetary internet” that planners say will revolutionize space communication. The Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) system, which entered another phase of testing this week, will allow astronauts to Google from the moon or tweet their observations from space.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Mini-Microsoft, Blogger, Mini-Microsoft
I’ve got to say: in my opinion, Microsoft has turned The Corner. You know The Corner. The one that gets us off of pothole ridden Vista Avenue (one street over from Lincoln in Blue Velvet). The Corner that requires Microsoft to shed some of the fat it has layered on recently just to make the turn without flipping.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Sharon Waxman, Founder & CEO, TheWrap.com
If the world seems to turn faster with each passing month, then don’t be surprised that the weekend box office has now shrunk to a single day: Friday. The rise of social networking, studio executives say, is driving a near-instantaneous word of mouth effect that is doing much to hyper-charge Hollywood’s multi-million-dollar marketing efforts…or to defeat them a lot faster than usual.
By Harry McCracken, Blogger, Technologizer
In theory, software version numbers should be about as scintillating as as serial numbers, house numbers, channel numbers, or Vehicle Identification Numbers. You don’t much more mundane than the practice of keeping track of a software package’s major and minor editions by assigning decimal numbers to them. Except…version numbers long ago stopped being version numbers.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
By Zachary M. Seward, Assistant Editor, Nieman Journalism Lab
The New York Times reported: “For the most part, the traditional news outlets lead and the blogs follow, typically by 2.5 hours, according to a new computer analysis of news articles and commentary on the Web during the last three months of the 2008 presidential campaign.” By that measure, I’m past due in responding, but here’s why the Times has it wrong.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
 ABC News | A Book That Puts the Moon Within Reach Washington Post "It has a stark beauty all its own. It's like much of the high desert of the United States. It's different, but it's very pretty That's how Neil Armstrong, the first person to set foot on the moon, described what he saw. July 20 (next Monday) marks the ... NASA Hints It's Found Missing Moon-Landing Videotapes Check written by Neil Armstrong being auctioned NASA release unseen moon landing footage |
2. Spot valuable salvage- Not only knowing where to get it, but knowing it when you see it. Finding it isn't too hard- curbs, alleys, and the classic dumpster dive. Deciding whether to keep it is the real trick: can it be broken down? Are there useful things inside (gears, motors, electronics, hardware, salvageable wood, springs, etc.)? Is trying to salvage parts of it a wise thing to do (upholstered items left outside are a great way to get bedbugs into your home)?18 Essential Skills for a Maker (via Make)3. Spot eminently hackable, cheap Chinese crap- The glut of crap from China occasionally brings some real gems with it. Woot.com recently sold some rotating LED-based "police lights" for $3, which connect to USB and can be turned on and off by pressing a key on the keyboard...
7. Know which glue to use, when- Elmer's white, spray mount, Uhu glue sticks, JB Weld, cyanoacrylate, and two-part epoxy all have their uses.
8. Know which tape to use, when- Duct, masking, Scotch, foam-two-sided, and (occasionally) electrical tape all have their uses...
14. Create fairly neat holes of arbitrary size and shape in sheet metal, plastic, and wood- Nibblers, step-bits, tin-snips, chisels, awls, drill bits, and the appropriate Dremel bit all play crucuial roles here...
Here’s a dilemma: The guy (”Hacker Croll”) who claims to have accessed hundreds of confidential corporate and personal documents of Twitter and Twitter employees, is releasing those documents publicly and sent them to us earlier today. The zip file contained 310 documents, ranging from executive meeting notes, partner agreements and financial projections to the meal preferences, calendars and phone logs of various Twitter employees.
We’ve spent most of the evening reading these documents. The vast majority of them are somewhat embarrassing to various individuals, but not otherwise interesting. An example - there are a number of documents showing the names of people who interviewed at Twitter for various senior level positions so publishing their names would obviously be distressing for them. Most of these people remain in their current jobs. Some documents show floorplans and security passcodes to get into the Twitter offices. We’re not going to post any of those documents.
But we are going to release some of the documents showing financial projections, product plans and notes from executive strategy meetings. We’re also going to post the original pitch document for the Twitter TV show that hit the news in May, mostly because it’s awesome.
There is clearly an ethical line here that we don’t want to cross, and the vast majority of these documents aren’t going to be published, at least by us. But a few of the documents have so much news value that we think it’s appropriate to publish them.
More posts coming soon.
Update: Our Reaction To Your Reactions To the Twitter Confidential Documents Post
Update 2: Final Tweet: The Twitter Reality TV Show Pitch
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
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Jeffrey A Carver sez, "The prologue to my SF novel Sunborn (Tor Books), narrated to an animated video sequence drawn from a slew of NASA images from Hubble, Chandra, etc. In the case of this particular prologue, the astronomical images actually do reflect the story of one Deeaab, explorer from across the brane-boundary. I think it's pretty cool, which is not entirely bragging, as the real video wizardry was done by a fellow named Adam Guzewicz. Created for a local arts festival, I decided to see if it might be an interesting way to introduce a book to new readers."
Video Narration
of Sunborn
(Thanks, Jeffrey!)
Tapecraft
(via Evil Mad Scientists)
Source: Boing Boing | 15 Jul 2009 | 5:02 am
Goose gets a bionic leg in world-first operation (via Medgadget)
Here is the world's first bionic Goose. The two-week old gosling was found with a broken leg, but vets did not have the heart to put it down.Instead, they decided to operate on the young creature, named Betty, to give her a bionic leg.
She was fitted with steel pins, nuts and bolts to build a leg brace which soon got her back up and waddling around.
The orphan, found at Watermead, Buckinghamshire, has already learned to walk again at nearby Tiggywinkles Wildlife Hospital.
(Image: JEFF MOORE)
Source: Boing Boing | 15 Jul 2009 | 5:00 am
Off-the-Wall Tallies of Jackson's Sales
(Thanks, Barry!)
Source: Boing Boing | 15 Jul 2009 | 4:56 am
StarWars.com | The Empire Muggs Back: Art for a Mighty Good Cause
(Thanks, Bonnie!)
Source: Boing Boing | 15 Jul 2009 | 4:54 am
“Your characterization of this as bullshit is perfect. You could also go with laughable, libelous, and absolutely untrue,” Twitter co-founder Biz Stone wrote to us in an email this evening. I had asked if the news was “BS” and if Stone cared to comment about it on the record. Obviously, he did.
And obviously, he’s pissed off. And he should be if there’s no truth to this whatsoever. Valleywag has since updated the post with a quote from Twitter denying the allegations.
Here’s the core of what Valleywag wrote:
Whoever is seeding the restaurant gossip is being fairly specific. A source tells us that a loose-lipped Twitter staffer recently dished at a lunch that the company has allowed a federal agency to set up a tap to monitor a “firehose” of its data, including private details on users, presumably including private “direct messages,” IP addresses and account information. The Feds — the NSA would seem the most logical agency —then analyze the data to mine for information they deem of interest.
It is worth noting that Twitter did apparently talk to the U.S. government during the Iranian protests because the service was scheduled to have downtime that would have stopped the flow of communications. While Twitter did not deny talking with the government at that time, it was quick to note that it plays no role in its decision-making for the company. As Twitter is a fast growing communication platform being used around the world, obviously, that’s important.
[photo: Thewolfweb]
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Perhaps it’s the die-hard QWERTY keyboard purist in me, but I don’t see how these tiny touchscreen phones are viable options these days. Look at the size of the screen on the Samsung Highlight compared to that of the iPhone and G1. (I am not comparing this device to the iPhone or G1 in any way, shape or form other than the size of the screen.) It’s so freaking tiny. Regardless, we welcome the Highlight to the T-Mobile lineup today.
The 3G device packs a 3-megapixel camera (3x digital zoom, video), stereo Bluetooth, aGPS and a plethora of widgets in a teeny, tiny package with a 1.61- x 2.64-inch capacitive touchscreen. (Sidenote: I’ve been hammering Samsung for years about these wimpy resistive touchscreens that they seem to be in love with. They suck. Just sayin’.)
AP - Intel Corp.'s second-quarter results bolster the company's position that the computer business is on the mend after its roughest patch in years.
 MiamiHerald.com | Microsoft Customers Face License Hurdle to Online Apps PC World Microsoft promoted more of its Web-based software offerings at its Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans this week, but some analysts say the company's enterprise licensing terms provide little incentive for large customers to move away from its ... Microsoft Office 2010: A Necessary Slap At Google Microsoft's empire strikes back in war against Google Microsoft Previews Office 2010--Including Free Web Version |
Perhaps it’s the die-hard QWERTY keyboard purist in me, but I don’t see how these tiny touchscreen phones are viable options these days. Look at the size of the screen on the Samsung Highlight compared to that of the iPhone and G1. (I am not comparing this device to the iPhone or G1 in any way, shape or form other than the size of the screen.) It’s so freaking tiny. Regardless, we welcome the Highlight to the T-Mobile lineup today.
The 3G device packs a 3-megapixel camera (3x digital zoom, video), stereo Bluetooth, aGPS and a plethora of widgets in a teeny, tiny package with a 1.61- x 2.64-inch capacitive touchscreen. (Sidenote: I’ve been hammering Samsung for years about these wimpy resistive touchscreens that they seem to be in love with. They suck. Just sayin’.)
To be quite honest, the hardware – aside from the touchscreen – is really stunning. Samsung is really getting into funky textures and colors on their devices these days. The Highlight feels “good in the hand”, is relatively thin (slightly thicker than the iPhone) and fits into pant pockets easily. It’s a good-looking device.
Sporting Samsung’s TouchWiz UI, the Highlight offers a handful of live widgets, like weather and Facebook that update automatically on the home screen. Having seen TouchWiz 2.0, I wish the Highlight had that instead of 1.0. But this is an entry-level touchscreen devices aimed at tweens and the masses, so whatever.
As far as Samsung camera phones go, the Highlight isn’t anything special, but I do like the voice notes that can be recorded (up to one minute) and attached to images.
What else can I tell you about this device? Thanks to TeleNav you’ll never get lost! And that’s about it. Due out this month for $150 in “fire” and “ice”.
One more thing: I hate the fact that both the SIM card and microSD card slot are located underneath the battery, Samsung. BOO!
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
 Ars Technica | TV Networks Join Comcast Web Test Wall Street Journal More than a dozen TV networks -- including broadcaster CBS Corp. -- agreed to join Comcast Corp.'s nationwide test of an online-video subscription offering, as companies seek additional revenue streams amid the advertising slump. ... CBS Joins HBO, Cinemax In Comcast's 'TV Everywhere' Comcast's 'TV Everywhere' Gets CBS, AMC, and Others Comcast VOD service signs first major broadcast partner |
Google Voice, previously called Grand Central, is rolling out the first mobile apps for the service this evening. The main function of the apps is to make it easier to use your Google Voice phone number by automatically routing outbound calls through Google and to the recipient. We first mentioned they were coming last month when we broke the news that Google would start letting users port their phone numbers over to the Voice product sometime this year.
Google Voice users get a phone number that should be the only number you give out to people. You route calls to mobile, home and other phones based on who’s calling and when. But there’s always been a nagging problem with the service - when you call out from your phones, people don’t see your Google Voice number on caller ID. They just see whatever phone number you are calling from. That means your friends have to store another phone number for you, or they don’t know who’s calling.
Google had the same issue with text messaging, but fixed that problem earlier this year by playing middle-man to those messages. Now they are doing something similar with voice calls via mobile apps. The applications make outbound calls to Google Voice, and those calls are then routed to the recipient, who sees the Google Voice number as the caller.
Two apps are being released tomorrow morning, for Blackberry and Android phones. The Android app is the most complete and takes over the native dialer, address book and call log. Users won’t be bothered with accidentally dialing numbers through the device phone number. The Blackberry app is less integrated, accessing only the native address book, and uses its own dialer. Users can’t simply go into the call log and return missed calls. They need to go back to the address book and select Google Voice to make the call. Still, it solves a big problem.
The apps also allow users to access the core features of Google Voice. Listen to/read voicemails and text messages (all voicemails are automatically transcribed as well), access call history, send SMS messages and place international calls at low rates.
Google Voice cofounder Craig Walker gave me a demo this afternoon of both apps, and told me that an iPhone version is in the works, too.
The apps can be downloaded at m.google.com/voice starting tomorrow (Wednesday).
Crunch Network: MobileCrunch Mobile Gadgets and Applications, Delivered Daily.
Last year, I wrote about the increasing propensity for governments, including the U.S. and Great Britain, to search the contents of people's laptops at customs. What we know is still based on anecdote, as no country has clarified the rules about what their customs officers are and are not allowed to do, and what rights people have.
Companies and individuals have dealt with this problem in several ways, from keeping sensitive data off laptops traveling internationally, to storing the data -- encrypted, of course -- on websites and then downloading it at the destination. I have never liked either solution. I do a lot of work on the road, and need to carry all sorts of data with me all the time. It's a lot of data, and downloading it can take a long time. Also, I like to work on long international flights.
There's another solution, one that works with whole-disk encryption products like PGP Disk (I'm on PGP's advisory board), TrueCrypt, and BitLocker: Encrypt the data to a key you don't know.
It sounds crazy, but stay with me. Caveat: Don't try this at home if you're not very familiar with whatever encryption product you're using. Failure results in a bricked computer. Don't blame me.
Step One: Before you board your plane, add another key to your whole-disk encryption (it'll probably mean adding another "user") -- and make random. By "random," I mean really random: Pound the keyboard for a while, like a monkey trying to write Shakespeare. Don't make it memorable. Don't even try to memorize it.
Technically, this key doesn't directly encrypt your hard drive. Instead, it encrypts the key that is used to encrypt your hard drive -- that's how the software allows multiple keys.
So now there are two different users named with two different keys: the one you normally use, and some random one you just invented.
Step Two: Send that new random key to someone you trust. Make sure the trusted recipient has it, and make sure it works. You won't be able to recover your hard drive without it.
Step Three: Burn, shred, delete or otherwise destroy all copies of that new random key. Forget it. If it was sufficiently random and non-memorable, this should be easy.
Step Four: Board your plane normally and use your computer for the whole flight.
Step Five: Before you land, delete the key you normally use.
At this point, you will not be able to boot your computer. The only key remaining is the one you forgot in Step Three. There's no need to lie to the customs official; you can even show him a copy of this article if he doesn't believe you.
Step Six: When you're safely through customs, get that random key back from your confidant, boot your computer and re-add the key you normally use to access your hard drive.
And that's it.
This is by no means a magic get-through-customs-easily card. Your computer might be impounded, and you might be taken to court and compelled to reveal who has the random key.
But the purpose of this protocol isn't to prevent all that; it's just to deny any possible access to your computer to customs. You might be delayed. You might have your computer seized. (This will cost you any work you did on the flight, but -- honestly -- at that point that's the least of your troubles.) You might be turned back or sent home. But when you're back home, you have access to your corporate management, your personal attorneys, your wits after a good night's sleep, and all the rights you normally have in whatever country you're now in.
This procedure not only protects you against the warrantless search of your data at the border, it also allows you to deny a customs official your data without having to lie or pretend -- which itself is often a crime.
Now the big question: Who should you send that random key to?
Certainly it should be someone you trust, but -- more importantly -- it should be someone with whom you have a privileged relationship. Depending on the laws in your country, this could be your spouse, your attorney, your business partner or your priest. In a larger company, the IT department could institutionalize this as a policy, with the help desk acting as the key holder.
You could also send it to yourself, but be careful. You don't want to e-mail it to your webmail account, because then you'd be lying when you tell the customs official that there is no possible way you can decrypt the drive.
You could put the key on a USB drive and send it to your destination, but there are potential failure modes. It could fail to get there in time to be waiting for your arrival, or it might not get there at all. You could airmail the drive with the key on it to yourself a couple of times, in a couple of different ways, and also fax the key to yourself ... but that's more work than I want to do when I'm traveling.
If you only care about the return trip, you can set it up before you return. Or you can set up an elaborate one-time pad system, with identical lists of keys with you and at home: Destroy each key on the list you have with you as you use it.
Remember that you'll need to have full-disk encryption, using a product such as PGP Disk, TrueCrypt or BitLocker, already installed and enabled to make this work.
I don't think we'll ever get to the point where our computer data is safe when crossing an international border. Even if countries like the U.S. and Britain clarify their rules and institute privacy protections, there will always be other countries that will exercise greater latitude with their authority. And sometimes protecting your data means protecting your data from yourself.
---
Bruce Schneier is chief security technology officer of BT. His new book is Schneier on Security.
The next time a hurricane slams the US, look for Robin Murphy and her army of machines. Murphy heads the Center for Robot-Assisted Search and Rescue, where she commands an arsenal of unmanned craft that specialize in emergency response.
Her team has been on call since 9/11; the hero bots' first mission was to comb through the rubble at the World Trade Center. "With the smoke and purple sky from the portable lights, it was like the opening sequence of The Terminator," Murphy recalls. Since then, the remotely controlled scouts have been deployed to mud slides, caved-in mines, and collapsed buildings around the world.
This summer, Murphy is prepping her unit for storm season at Texas A&M's Disaster City, a 52-acre gauntlet of wreckage used for preparedness training. She is also testing Survivor Buddy, a Microsoft-backed project designed to soothe trapped victims by supplying water and a live A/V feed to loved ones. "It's a presence right there with you," Murphy says. And it absolutely will not stop ... until you are comforted.
Sea-RAI zips across water to inspect damaged bridges and ferry aerial bots for launch.
Inuktun Extreme eats through difficult terrain to deliver two-way audio to survivors.
iSensys hovers over collapsed structures to scout for damage and blocked routes.
Caterpillar wriggles through rubble with a camera on its head to find live victims.
Xobni, a startup that looks to make your inbox a little less chaotic, is well known for walking away from an acquisition offer from Microsoft last year, not long after being publically complimented by Bill Gates. Since then the service has continued to grow, with over 2 million downloads in the last year and an avid user base. But until now, there’s been one big piece of the puzzle missing: a source of revenue. Tonight, Xobni is finally turning the cash-flow spigot to “On” with the release of a new upgrade to Xobni called Xobni Plus, which introduces a number of enhanced search features sure to be welcomed by Xobni faithful.
Xobni Plus has a heavy emphasis on improving search, which is one of the key components the service has always been based around. Users will now be able to craft more advanced search queries, using either a GUI-based ‘query builder’ or Xobni’s own markup language, which lets you manually specify attributes like “attachment=yes” or “from=Jason” (Gmail offers similar search features, and they are very handy once you’ve gotten a hang of them). Other improvements include Xobni’s autosuggest feature, which can use linked Facebook and LinkedIn accounts to pair Email address with full names, as well as the ability to search within your Xobni ‘feeds’ in the sidebar.
Xobni may be calling this a ‘Plus’ version, but pretty much anyone who uses the service with any frequency is probably going to want to upgrade (I’d be surprised if the company puts much effort into adding new features to the free version after this). Xobni is expecting fairly broad uptake by its users, so it’s pricing the upgrade at a modest one-time fee of $29.95. However, the company also has more task-specific “Pro” features in the works that will likely appeal to different segments of their userbase, and it sounds like these will be more expensive (a mobile-only premium product is also in the works, with plans to release it later this summer).
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I really screwed up by not learning to read and write the language of my people. But that’s what the Internet is for!
Anyway, the rumored NX-series digital SLR-like camera, the NX-10, from Samsung will supposedly be coming in November, but I’m more interested in the Sci-Fi camera that this guy in Korea is talking about. Sounds bonkers.
I went to the exhibition today (July 14).
I heard from Samsung Imaging representative today that NX-10 will be available to customers on November. NX-10 displayed on July 7 is pre-production model and is not completed one.
It has VGA level EVF. The rear display quality is really good and it seems to have more than 920K pixels (should be AMOLED?).
There was a 24x zoom high-end camera (Model : WB5000) in the exhibition.Also, he mentioned new compact camera, and it will be a camera could only exist in your imagination. He said it is a camera might be seen in SF movies. It is totally different from existing compact digital cameras. He said it has 2 parts while normal compact cameras usually have only 1, but he didn’t say no more what it is. (Obviously, it is classified.)
NX and new digital camera will be announced around August.
Also, Samsung is working on successor of GX-20.
[Cook] and his lawyer Orly Taitz have filed a lawsuit so the Major does not have to go to war and fight in Afghanistan because that would be, ”in violation of international law by engaging in military actions outside the United States under this President’s command.”
Birthers insist that a giant conspiracy has taken place. The birth certificate showing that Obama was born in Honolulu in August 1961 is fake, they say. Birthers are also certain that some kind of time travel treachery has been undertaken by shadow pinko government agents, who warped themselves back to 1961 to insert notices in the Honolulu Advertiser and the Honolulu Star Bulletin saying that "Mr. and Mrs. Barack H. Obama" gave birth to a son on August 4, 1961.
Birther Soldier Refusing to Deploy
Source: Boing Boing | 15 Jul 2009 | 2:52 am
Lowry and his colleagues studied another set of mice, who were subjected to a stress-response test. They dropped each mouse into water for five minutes and timed how long it would take the animal to switch from active swimming to passive floating. Control mice swam for an average of two and a half minutes, while the M. vaccae–injected animals paddled for four. Researchers already know that antidepressants increase active swimming and decrease immobility. The bacteria “had the exact same effect as antidepressant drugs,” Lowry explains.Maybe this explains some people's craving for eating dirt? From a CDC article titled "Eating Dirt":The results so far suggest that simply inhaling M. vaccae—you get a dose just by taking a walk in the wild or rooting around in the garden—could help elicit a jolly state of mind. “You can also ingest mycobacteria either through water sources or through eating plants—lettuce that you pick from the garden, or carrots,” Lowry says.
Among children, too, it seems eating dirt might have immunologic consequences. Maternal immunoglobulins are secreted in breast milk shortly before birth and for 1 year or more afterwards. Children often begin eating dirt a year or two after birth. As maternal immunity wanes, eating dirt might “vaccinate” children who are losing their maternal IgA, which could stimulate production of nascent immunoglobulins, especially IgA. Eating dirt might also help populate intestinal flora.
Discover magazine asks: "Is Dirt the New Prozac?" (Via Seth's Blog)
Source: Boing Boing | 15 Jul 2009 | 2:04 am
It’s not exactly the full Android experience, but if you’re wondering what it might be like to run the mobile OS on a computer about the size and speed of… well, the one you’re reading this on, then these guys have something for you. A disc image, to be specific. With an x86-compatible version of Android on it, if you really must know.
Released just a few days ago, Live Android is for those of you who want to experience the look-and-feel free of its G1 or myTouch trappings. They say only a few video and network card drivers are working right now (give them a break, it’s version 0.2), so if it doesn’t show itself or won’t connect to the interwebs, drop them a line.
Screenshots and stuff are at the project site, but it looks pretty much like you’d expect. Hey, it’s less than 100MB, why not give it a shot yourself?
[via Download Squad and Engadget]
 GadgetCrave.com | Enough with Windows 7 -- Look Ahead to Windows 8 PC World Windows 7 is finally released to manufacturing. You can catch my formal review at the InfoWorld Test Center, but suffice it to say I'm not sad to see it go. After two public releases and nearly a dozen leaked builds, I'm sick of installing and testing ... Windows Marketplace for Mobile open to all 6.x users Verizon Drafts Developers Into Mobile Software War on Apple Mobile companies chasing Apple's App Store |
 Telegraph.co.uk | Can Google Learn from Microsoft's Mistakes? PC World Google's indication (hardly an announcement) that they're getting into the OS business comes as no surprise. It's already got Android. It's got Web-based apps that are now (finally) out of beta. It's got the right vision, IMHO, for mobility. ... Ballmer shrugs at Google's Chrome OS Ballmer mocks Google's Chrome OS Microsoft CEO laughs off Google OS challenge |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
I’m not overly fussy about how long it takes my computer to boot. Some people are. Some people also trainspot. Whatever. Anyway, there’s been a lot of hooplah about making Linux boot faster and faster. (Aside: this is one of the benefits of an open system like Linux: you can twiddle the plumbing to do exactly this sort of thing!) I’ve heard people boast about booting from a cold start to a full desktop environment in under 20 seconds. Now it seems that some folks have gotten that down to one second!
Granted, this was accomplished using Linux specifically tailored for particular embedded hardware, so it’s not something you’ll be able to do on your home PC or laptop (yet!). MontaVista Linux booted on Freescale Semiconductor MPC5121e hardware, which presented a specific controlled environment, so the Linux kernel could be tweaked to load only the drives necessary for the platform. Also, as sensational as this story is, it doesn’t make clear whether the one second boot loaded an entirely usable interface, or just for the kernel fully loaded into memory so that additional user space stuff could then kick off.
Regardless, fast boots from a cold start are really, really important for embedded systems. While I don’t mind waiting for a desktop or laptop to finish its boot sequence, I hate waiting for my handheld computing devices to come to life. I expect instant-on functionality from handheld computing devices, dammit!
Hat tip Internet News.
We poked some fun at Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer earlier today for his poor track record with regards to predictions for competitors. But really, Ballmer is just as good as any big company CEO at getting his troops and audiences fired up about something. I’ve spoken with a few employees who’ve described his rabble-rousing as nothing short of mesmerizing. And he was apparently in top form again today at the Microsoft conference currently happening in New Orleans.
But there may be a method to the madness. We’ve all seen “Developers, developers, developers” by now. That was Ballmer at his finest, repeating a single word 14 times in a row before he ran out of breath. Yes, 14 times. But this new Ballmer in the post-Gates era of Microsoft has scaled back a bit. Now he seems to only emphasize things in sets of threes. Ashlee Vance cracked the new code in an aside in his Bits Blog post today.
Just read some of the key blurbs from his speech today:
“We are going to keep the same old Microsoft approach –- long-term, tenacious and partner-centric. Long-term, long-term, long-term.”
“We don’t go home. We just keep coming and coming and coming. Tenacious, tenacious, tenacious.”
“Man, oh, man, have we taken a lot of abuse. But, man, we have a little mojo. We will just keep going and going and going.”
Ballmer’s “Rule of Three” is the new Steve Jobs “Boom!”
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Sometimes, you have to move files between platforms. And whether you’re a Mac user or a PC user, that day will come when you have to set up a drive so you can store files from both, which isn’t as hard as one might think. In fact, it’s quite easy. Here’s a basic little how-to that anybody can follow to make a drive both Mac- and PC-accessible.
To make a long story short, you basically just put in the drive, use Disk Utility in OS X or just right click on it in Windows to format it, and choose FAT32 as the file system. Power users know it works for both Mac and PC, but it’s the kind of simple trick that new users wouldn’t ever think of.
Now, the little how-to doesn’t specifically talk about this, but that particular set of instructions will work with any drive, regardless of if it’s a physical hard drive or a thumb drive. There is one other thing to be aware of, though; FAT32 doesn’t like files bigger than 4GB, so you won’t be moving anything too large.
Section: Video, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray, Video Providers, Web, Downloads, Websites, Online Music/Video
The ‘net is currently all abuzz with speculation as to who might be the proud new papa to internet movie rental giant, Netflix. We’re hearing Amazon being tossed about left and right as a suitor and a couple of people are even throwing Microsoft’s name into the ring. There are obviously some pluses and minuses to either of those deals, should they occur.
Regardless, Amazon had to be happy with the fact that people are thinking they may be the winner, considering their stock prices took a nice jump yesterday after the rumor started going around about them possibly buying Netflix. However, in this case, all that glitters isn’t exactly gold in regards to this potential buy-out.
If Amazon were to buy Netflix, more than likely, it would be costly—I don’t mean for Amazon, I mean for the consumer. While a deal would bring a bigger selection due to Amazon’s vast library of over 40,000 movies in their on demand catalog, that selection would probably come with a not-so-nifty higher price tag. Right now, Netflix tends to offer older movies and those more obscure titles. Amazon, on the other hand, streams many new releases as soon as they are released. I don’t really see Amazon offering its selection for the less than $10 Netflix charges; expect to shell out more for that monthly subscription.
Another thing to consider is while initially there would probably be a boom when it comes to getting your physical discs even more quickly since Amazon seems to have warehouses everywhere, what might eventually occur is that physical discs would eventually simply disappear altogether. That is not good for those folks who actually enjoy getting actual DVDs to pop in a player, and not just stream them.
With all that Amazon already has on its plate, they could end up acquiring Netflix without doing all the cool things they could with it. Netflix could get lost in the Kindle/mass marketplace shuffle.
Then we have uber-giant Microsoft. Are they also a contender in the battle to buy Netflix as some rumors suggest? And if they did purchase Netflix, what then? Well, let’s look at the fact that we already have a very nice partnership between Netflix and XBox Live, which lets users watch TV shows and movies on the 360. And according to sources close to Microsoft, this partnership is “en fuego” (which very loosely translated means “on fire”).
And it is apparently so on fire, that the president of Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices division (which includes the XBox division) has been in pow-wows with the CEO and co-founder of Netflix to try to see what else they can do to “expand their current partnership.” Hmm. Obviously, an acquisition would be a much bigger move.
The deal would definitely give a more strongly defined video strategy that many seem to think Microsoft lacks and Microsoft has been trying to build better ties in the entertainment arena for a while now.
Many experts feel that the current business model of Netflix, regardless of who they are acquired by, is doomed. They argue that streaming is the wave of the future. Perhaps going with Microsoft would give them a leg up if this is the case.
Because of this fact, even though I can see Amazon being the one to purchase Netflix, I actually think they would have a better shot at a really strong, innovative, successful future if Microsoft did step up to the auction block and buy them. I can see it now….Microflix. It’s got a certain ring.
Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Most people who aren’t familiar with Twitter are eager to list the reasons why they don’t use this social-networking service. It’s for narcissists. It’s for teenagers. It’s for people who have nothing better to do. It’s a forum for oversharing. While all of these things may be true in some cases, I find Twitter’s 140-character messaging network to be an incredibly useful tool in my everyday life.
I use Twitter as my personalized news feed by following people who “tweet” (write updates) about things that interest me. In one glance I can read White House correspondent Mark Knoller’s tweets about President Obama’s activities, a recipe tweeted by Martha Stewart and WSJ.com tweets with links to news stories.
But Twitter works best with a little help from its friends, namely those programs that are designed to make it more customized and useful with minimal work on the user’s behalf. Here’s a rundown of just some of these helpers. I’m focusing only on ones that run on your computer, either in Web browsers or as stand-alone programs. There is also a plethora of Twitter applications that work on mobile devices like the iPhone and BlackBerry, too many to go into here. A few Twitter programs let you lurk and read tweets without a Twitter account, but in most cases these programs require a Twitter user name and password so they can better organize tweets of the people whom you follow.
To get a Twitter account in the first place, you will need to sign up with a user name and password at Twitter.com and start following people—or subscribing to read someone’s updates. These may be friends or people you simply find interesting, like journalists whose work you read (my Twitter user name is kabster728). You can see whom one person follows, and then opt also to follow those same people and the people those people follow and so on. Though it’s possible to lock your account so it’s private, very few people do so because Twitter encourages open communication throughout the Web.
That said, you can always choose to block someone from following you or stop following someone’s Twitter feed. You can comment on a tweet by sending the person who wrote it an “at reply,” named because the reply starts with the “@” sign followed by the user name of the person to whom you are replying. You can also send direct messages to another Twitter user as long as he or she is following you.
TweetDeck and Seesmic are two programs that do a good job of filtering others’ tweets and aiding the process of writing tweets. Both use Adobe Air, a tool that lets the program work in the background while continuously refreshing its content. This increases productivity because the programs can be set to display pop-up notifications whenever certain tweets appear.
TweetDeck (a free download at TweetDeck.com) organizes tweets into columns that you designate, such as a column of all tweets that mention your name, your company’s name or the word “Wimbledon.” It eases the process of writing tweets by building in ways to shorten Web links, post photos or translate a tweet into one of 35 languages. TweetDeck also integrates with Facebook so that one TweetDeck column displays your Facebook friends’ latest status updates.
The most recent version of TweetDeck enables synchronization of accounts with an email and password. This means that you can download TweetDeck on several computers, log into your account and see the same columns and settings on all platforms. The new version also includes fun extras like search within each column and the option to show how many followers a user has by displaying that number below his or her tweets.
Seesmic (a free download at seesmic.com) is another all-purpose Twitter program. It works much like TweetDeck, but has a few differences. Seesmic also integrates with Facebook, but does so in a more robust way, showing when Facebook friends share photos or Web links and letting you comment on or “like” someone’s status; TweetDeck only shows Facebook status updates.
Seesmic lets you drag photos into a small window for sharing via Twitter. But its overall look isn’t as visually appealing as TweetDeck’s and it lacks some of TweetDeck’s extra features.
Twhirl (twhirl.org) also runs on Adobe Air, working in the background as you use your computer for other activities. Like the aforementioned programs, it also enables easier tweeting with built-in tools for photo uploading and URL shrinking. Unlike TweetDeck and Seesmic, which focus on Twitter and Facebook, Twhirl enables logging into four types of accounts: Twitter, FriendFeed, Laconi.ca and Identica. But Twhirl shows only one category at a time, like a screen of replies, rather than showing all of these categories at a glance like TweetDeck and Seesmic.
Some Twitter programs run in browsers, not as stand-alone programs. This saves you from downloading a program on multiple computers because you can simply log into your account on any computer using its Web browser. But these programs won’t use the helpful pop-up notifications of Adobe Air; instead, you will need to look in your browser to see new information—like opening Twitter.com.
One such browser-based program is HootSuite (HootSuite.com), which uses an owl as its mascot. HootSuite’s unique features include its ability to set tweets to send at a later time or date, giving your followers the illusion that you are tweeting when you’re actually not, and a built-in statistic-tracker to measure how many people opened a link you posted using its ow.ly URL shortener. Like Twhirl, HootSuite shows only certain categories at a time rather than one overall glance at many categories of tweets.
Twitter.com is getting better, though it’s still weak compared with these other programs. I’ve used add-ons in my Firefox browser to enhance Twitter, and one called Power Twitter is like steroids for Twitter.com, adding photo uploading and link shortening right into the Web site. It also makes friends’ tweets richer by displaying details about any Web links that they share.
If you’re just curious about Twitter and want to see what people are talking about without signing up, try sites that are open to everyone. Twitterfall.com, for example, displays tweets about trending Twitter topics and custom search results in a waterfall-like visual with new tweets spilling over the top every half second. TwitterVision.com cleverly displays tweets around the world on a global map as they are posted, showing where the tweets are from, geographically.
Twitter isn’t limited to Twitter.com, and I wouldn’t likely use it as much were it not for programs like the ones I’ve mentioned and others. So give them a try and find out what makes Twitter useful for you.
Edited by Walter S. Mossberg.
Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com
If you haven’t been watching Mean Mag’s Cinemash series then you’re doing it wrong. Cheech and Chong + Tron = Amazing. Kind of NSFW and don’t watch with the kids.
Thanks for reminding me about this, KLash!
Check out the uncut version here, which I think has a way cooler intro than the Mean Mag intro.
It seems (if you can believe it) that some Apple-associated factories in China are subject to less-than-ideal standards. Discrimination, environmental unfriendliness, and even a dash of underage workers. Well, I may just go return my MacBook right now!
Of course, this is only being reported because everyone likes to desecrate the Apple temple once in a while, but Apple is no guiltier than most other tech companies in their use of factories lacking adequate oversight. Any other strategy would mean those sexy computers would be even more expensive, if you can imagine it. But it’s nice to have a reminder now and again that our idols aren’t quite as blameless as we’d like them to be.
Section: Apple, Communications, Cellular Providers
App stores are starting to resemble opinions—everyone has one. There is one store that is leaps and bounds beyond the competition, the Apple App Store, which just turned one year old and even moved its 1.5 billionth app recently. Randall Bennett brought in Stuart Miles from Pocket-Lint and myself to talk about Apple’s App Store as well as Verizon’s brand new store on “TechVi.”
Watch more episodes: [TechVi]
Read: [Pocket-Lint]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Ensemble Studio’s Halo Wars has been out for about five months now, and in what has become the normal practice for RTS games, it’s time for some downloadable content. It’s not a full blown expansion, but rather a series of maps of various difficulties and sizes.
We liked the initial game, and having played it quite a bit myself, I can honestly say the gameplay is engaging. This is surprising to me, since I’m a fan of the keyboard and mouse school of RTS. The new content pack (available for 800 points, roughly $10) will contain four new maps, and a new achievements worth 100 points each. Here’s the specifics from the press release:
New Melees & Playgrounds Await Fans in the “Historic Battle” Game Add-on Pack for “Halo Wars”
UNSC or Covenant legs, mobilize your troops and report for duty at your next assignment in “Halo Wars,” the best selling real-time strategy game on any current generation console. Microsoft and Robot Entertainment expand the field of engagement with four new multiplayer Skirmish maps that highlight key turning points in the UNSC/Covenant war. Take on ruthless A.I. or live opponents in these brand new battlefields with the “Historic Battle” Game Add-on Pack, available on July 21 for 800 MS Points in all Xbox LIVE enabled regions.
“Historic Battle” expands the universe for “Halo Wars” fans with four new multiplayer maps with varied terrains for players to find their competitive edge by using unique features of each map. The four new maps include:
· Barrens (1v1 Map): Difficult terrain channels units into killing zones. The side that controls the Forerunner artifacts will have the advantage.
· Blood River (1v1 Map): Secure base locations on nearby cliffs overlook this naturally red-tinged river. The soldiers that fought over its two narrow crossings gave the river its name, which has since taken on a greater meaning.
· Glacial Ravine (3v3 Map): A snow-topped mountain range forms a natural barrier that cuts this region in half. Control of the two energy walls at the narrow central pass often determines the outcome of the battle, though clever use of the Sentinel Factories may play a role as well.
· Memorial Basin (2v2 Map): The high ground in the middle offers good cover for infantry, while the generally open terrain transforms organized battle plans into bloodbaths.
“Historic Battle” also adds four new Achievements worth a total of 100 points:
· Tour Coming Through: Hot drop 50 squads to your Covenant Leader in a single game on Memorial Basin (30 points)
· Never Leave a Man Behind: Finish a game with 5000 net resources contributed to your teammates on Barrens (15 points)
· Drain Cleaner: Kill 20 enemy squads with a continuous Covenant Leader Power on Memorial Basin (30 points)
· Killjoy: Disrupt 5 active Leader Powers in a single game on Blood River (25 points)
Forget being the most popular camera phone on Flickr. The iPhone is now the 2nd most popular overall camera for Flickr users. In fact, it's the only phone listed in the top 5.
Yesterday, 5,489 users uploaded some 43,750 images that were shot via iPhone. For comparison, 6,287 users toting Canon's 10.1 megapixel EOS Digital Rebel XTi (the #1 camera), snapped 109,306 images during the same time period.
Impressive, however, it's worth noting the numbers appear to be inflated. We're on the third incarnation of the iPhone &mdash with improved optics, of course &mdash and yet Flickr seemingly lumps ALL iPhone images together.
Fair? Or should each model iPhone be counted separately, just as each and every Canon, Kodak and Casio model?
[via hey it's noah]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Back in May, Twitter was hacked by someone who got into the accounts of several Twitter employees and then gained access to high-profile accounts such as those of Britney Spears and Ashton Kutcher. The breach was the work of someone going by the name Hacker Croll, who posted the compromised screen shots on a French message board. Now more screenshots attributed to the same hacker have popped up on another French site (rough translation here).
According to the post, Hacker Croll was able to compromise the Twitter accounts of founder Evan Williams, his wife, and several employees. Using password recovery techniques, Hacker Croll claims he gained access to various Paypal, Amazon, Apple , AT&T, MobileMe and Gmail accounts. I emailed Evan Williams asking about the breach. He confirms:
Yes, we did suffer an attack a few weeks ago and are familiar with this list of stuff. This is unrelated to the hack of twitter where someone gained access to user’s accounts. This had nothing to do with the security of twitter.com, and there were no user accounts compromised here.
Some notes:
- He did not actually gain access to my @ev Twitter account (or any Twitter accounts) nor any administrative functions of the site.
- There is also no evidence that he gained access to my email. There was one administrative employee who’s email was compromised, as was my wife’s Gmail account, which is where he got access to some of my credit cards and other information.
- He also successfully targeted a couple other employees personal accounts (Amazon, AT&T, Paypal…)In general, most of the sensitive information was personal rather than company-related. Obviously, this was highly distressing to myself, my wife, and other Twitter employees who were attacked. It was a good lesson for us that we are being targeted because we work for Twitter. We have taken extra steps to increase our security, but we know we can never be entirely comfortable with what we share via email.
Above and below are purported screenshots of Williams’ accounts on Twitter, Gmail, and GoDaddy. He claims he was able to access Twitter’s domain name account on GoDaddy and could have redirected the traffic to another IP address (I’m sure that would have worked for about three minutes). The Gmail access, if true, would have been more troubling. Once the hacker got into @ev’s Gmail account, password recovery for other accounts was easy. He claims to have gained access to some internal documents, including projections for reaching 25 million users in 2009, 100 million in 2010, 350 million in 2010, and an outlandish goal to eventually become the first Internet service to reach one billion users. So maybe some corporate information was compromised.
Here is a list of some of the other things he claims to have found out, along with screenshots below, the last being a plan for Twitter’s new office space, including a sleeping room, a playing room, greenhouse, a meditation room, bicycle room, gym,washer/dryer, wifi, lockers, wine cellar, and an aquarium. Twitter moved into its new digs in July (the accounts were compromised in May, which is when all of this information dates from):
Who knows if any of this is true (there are no actual screenshots of the corporate documents), but it is enough to make any executive wary of living too much in public.
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Blizzard’s World Of Warcraft appears to be down indefinitely in China, which is one of WoW’s largest user bases. Blizzard recently changed the company that was operating WoW for them in China from The9 to NetEase. WoW was supposed to be up and running by the end of June. Apparently the transition hasn’t gone so well because WoW isn’t up in China and it appears that there is no update as to when the game will be available.
One report suggests that the Chinese government is looking into the partnership between NetEase and Blizzard as possible illegal joint venture and has suspended WoW until the investigation is over.
Blizzard and The9 launched WoW in China in 2005 and saw a massive response to the role-playing game. In less than one month, the game surpassed 1.5 million paying players thanks to China’s growing gaming community. It’s not clear what the holdup is or if it is permanent. Perhaps somebody at NetEase didn’t pass a big enough brown paper bag to an official at the right department.
Photo credit/Flickr/Juanpol.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
TwitterSoldier69: What a day! Glad it’s almost lunch! Need to reload machine gun later! Mondays, blah!
The iKey AK-39 may just be the most intimidating keyboard ever. Well, maybe not but it does look pretty cool for a keyboard. It features green LED backlighting and can even be configured in night-vision mode.
It’s built for drops, spills, and harsh elements, too, as it’s rugged enough to meet MIL-461 military standards.
According to the product description:
“The AK-39’s small-footprint design features essential components for military and public safety applications, including an integrated Force Sensing ResistorTM (FSR) pointing device with left- and right-click functionality, and adjustable green LED backlighting that is also available in a night vision (NVIS) compatible configuration. Designed with gloved users in mind, the AK-39’s snap-on faceplate eliminates accidental key strokes and can be easily removed to clean the pad.”
If you’re thinking of buying one, prepare to pay. There’s no pricing info except for an “Add to Quote” button on the company’s site. Any time a company representative has to call you to sell you a keyboard, it’s not going to be cheap.
iKey AK-39 [ikey.com via Engadget]
 Canada.com | Seeking Fame in Apple's Sea of Apps Wall Street Journal Apple Inc.'s App Store has spawned a cottage industry of software developers trying to profit from games and other applications that people can download onto their iPhones. But with more than 65000 free and paid applications in ... Apple's App Store Hits 1.5 Billion Downloads Apple's iphone has yet to meet its Microsoft The Apple Core |
Section: Computers, Security, Features, Originals
When a large scale cyberattack began hitting the United States and South Korea over the July 4th weekend, the accusations and speculation regarding who was to blame began flying. South Korea insisted North Korea must be to blame. The U.S. wondered if it was the work of Russia or maybe China. Researchers claimed to have found the master control server in the U.K. So who is really to blame for the attack, which is still not over?
Well the specific individuals are still unknown, but the actual server responsible for controlling the botnet that carried out the attacks was found right here in the U.S. Miami to be exact, in the data center of a Latin American broadcasting company.
Authorities say the command and control server controlled over 160,000 infected computers, called zombies, in 74 countries. The computers were most likely infected via a malware infested website they unwittingly visited. The botnet sent new instructions to the zombies every three minutes. In this case the zombies were instructed to flood specific government and business websites with useless queries, causing slow downs and in many cases crashes.
This is called a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack. By tying up a site’s bandwidth it denies use of the site to legit visitors. The results are similar to what happened when Michael Jackson died and people flooded news and social networking sites. Those sites became slow to load and some actually went down all together. The difference is that happened because of a legitimate spike in traffic.
Why would someone want to carry out a DDoS attack? It’s a purely malicious act. Sites that are victimized by a DDoS attack are not hacked or compromised in any way, and no data is stolen. They are just made unusable. The exception to this is a severe attack known as a PDoS (Permanent Denial of Service) attack. In this type of attack security flaws in the remote management of the victims hardware are exploited and allow the attacker to send corrupted software to them, rendering them permanently damaged or “bricked.”
The attack against the U.S. and South Korea affected and in some cases took down every major government website as well as major business sites such as the New York Stock Exchange and Bank of America. That our government can’t protect its own sites against cyberattacks is pretty embarrassing and a little scary. President Obama may well be the most tech savvy president in history but he’s got a lot of work to do if we are going to be able to fend off the growing problem of cyberattacks and cyberwarfare.
Full Story » | Written by Sue Walsh for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
There’s a lot of live video streaming competition out there right now, but Justin.tv remains the biggest (though Ustream says that’s up for debate). And it’s looking to hold that lead with a redesign launching today, along with some new features.
The new site has an overall cleaner and simplified look. And simplification is the key to another big change: The addition of big front page broadcaster. When you first load up the site you will see front and center a large video player with the phrase “Live broadcasting in one click.” If you click on the big red button below it, you’ll load up your camera options screen, where you pick a camera to record from. From there you can log-in or create an account to start broadcasting.
Previously, you had to log-in or set up an account first and could then start recording on a different page. This new way makes it much more obvious how to get recording right away.
Another change is the addition of a Meebo IM chat bar to each page on the site. Previously, chat only existed in channel chat rooms, but now the Meebo bar will allow you to continually chat no matter where you are on the site. Justin.tv says it’s the first live video site to use the Meebo bar, and has already seen 10% of its chat messages coming through as IMs, rather than in the chat areas on channels. That’s about 600,000 IMs out of 6 millon messages a day, we’re told. Expect that number to go up now that it’s sitewide.
As I said, Justin.tv remains the top live streaming site, but its competitors have all been making moves recently to try and spur usage. One big move was Mogulus recently rebranding to Livestream. Traffic to all of these sites across the board seems to be slipping. But when Ustream launched a redesign a year ago, it helped kick start growth.
Justin.tv just launched its Camtweet, live video on Twitter service, last week at our Real-Time Stream CrunchUp. This new simplified Justin.tv main experience, seems like an extension of the idea of simplicity, which I like. Justin.tv also launched a DVR feature last month.
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Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 The Tech Herald | Firefox 3.5 Vulnerability Rated 'Highly Critical' InformationWeek Exploit code for a vulnerability in Firefox was posted online on Monday. Mozilla says it is working on a fix. By Thomas Claburn US-CERT on Tuesday warned about vulnerability in the new Firefox 3.5 browser that could allow a remote attacker to execute ... Mozilla Foundation tackles Firefox bug Mozilla working on fix for "critical" JavaScript vulnerability Firefox 3.5 Vulnerable to Critical Javascript Attack |
Using bodypaint, makeup, teeth and other prosthetics, people are succeeding at some pretty mind-blowing transformations. Not to knock furries, but there's a big difference between putting on a fuzzy suit and adding prosthetics and silicone to alter the bone structure of your face. These folks, namely Russian Model Alex Kovas, really go the extra mile:
(Not the best artistry, especially compared to Kovas, but bonus points for doing everything himself quickly and opting for the Rolling Stones as a soundtrack.)
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
An average woman supposedly spend 30 minutes every day applying makeup, which smudges, flakes, fades and runs if exposed to water and other elements. So, in that sense, I get why we've created permanent makeup. Then again... no I don't!
Known as cosmetic tattooing, intradermal cosmetics is a frightening trend. I don't just mean sitting there while someone injects ink into your eyebrows, either. I mean the business itself.
If someone is going to be tattooing your face, you'd think you'd want them to be using the best gear possible, right? I've found some makeup-tat rigs, like the Giant Sun Permanent Makeup Machine, available for as little as $120 (batteries, needles, gloves and more included!). The Silver Tomi gun and kit (pic above) usually retails for $555.
Usually, I'm not one to advocate using the most expensive gear possible. But if you're going to get forever lipliner, I'll head go out on a limp and recommend you and your loved ones check out the gear at the disposal of your prospective technician. Before that even, ask to see a book of his/her work. Also, try asking them how many Eyebrow Practice Skin Sheets they went through before beginning to work on actual, living human beings. If their reply is "What's an eyebrow practice skin sheet?" ...move along!
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Audio, Web, Websites, Online Music/Video
According to Peter Bale, executive producer of MSN, Microsoft has plans to launch a music streaming service by the end of July, one that would be similar to Spotify. The music streaming industry is a popular and profitable one, as there are many different services such as Pandora, Last.fm, Spotify, and Hypem. Since Microsoft’s music streaming service is rumored to be similar to Spotify’s, let’s see what makes Spotify unique.
Basically, users are able to stream and listen to music but are required to listen to one minute of advertising every 30 minutes of music streaming. However, users can opt to pay 9.99 Euros a month in order to listen to advertising free music. For any music streaming service to survive, smart advertising is key, so expect Microsoft to implement ads as well. However, expect there to be a paid option as well. Microsoft’s music stream service is said to allow users to listen to music as well as download and purchase any they like. An interesting concept with Microsoft’s music streaming could be whether it ties in with the Xbox 360. Would users be able to stream and listen to music straight from their Xbox 360 setup? That is a certainly a possibility. Let’s not rule out ways in which Microsoft could relate the Zune to the music stream.
Again, the expected unveiling date of such a website is by the end of July.
Via [The Telegraph]
Full Story » | Written by Natesh Sood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The mid-90s band Make-Up didn't actually wear makeup, at least not overt KISS-style facepaint. They did, however, wear matching suits from time to time. Either way, I'm a fan. Think punk meets soul.
My favorite song: "Born on the Floor" from my favorite album I Want Some. To sample the goods, check out the Make-Up on Pandora
Tidbit: Apart from playing on a slew of other albums with several other seminal D.C. bands (like Nation of Ulysses), Make-Up lead singer Ian Svenonius is also the host of Vice Magazine's "Soft Focus."
Here he is chatting up Andrew W.K. at the Guggenheim in NY (yes, really):
Movie makeup and special effects wizardy is very much a study and exercise in materials science. Since the dawn of film, artists have been been toying with synthetic appliances, pigments, and all kinds of organic matter. Through the years, new materials, digital tools and rendering software, like ZBrush, have boosted efficiency and creativity.
Rick Baker, the legendary makeup artist behind films like An American Werewolf in London, Thriller, and those Eddie-Murphy-fat-guy films, isn't a purist when it comes to adopting new technologies. He's stated very clearly that he embraces the use of CGI because it can accomplish what's literally impossible &mdash even for him.
And yet, for the upcoming film The Wolfman, starring Benicio Del Toro (pic above), the guru of gore decided to go old school. As an homage to makeup artist Jack Pierce, who created the effects in the original film from 1941, the Academy Award-winning special effects master decided to ditch silicone and other newfangled materials for the stuff of yesteryear &mdash foam rubber, acrylic teeth and yak hair. Yes, yak hair, which Pierce used along with kelp to transform Lon Chaney into the o.g. wolfman.
So how does Baker's wolf compare?
Not sure. The film was originally due in April, got bumped to November. Color me curious to see the transformation and F/X, but concerned about everything else.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
AP - "So tired today," Annemarie Dooling tweeted early Tuesday. "really really tired. ugh."
If Intel’s latest earnings are truly an indication of how the tech industry is holding up in the econalypse, then the tech industry isn’t doing too badly (though, obviously, it has seen better days). After market close Tuesday, the chip behemoth posted second-quarter results far in excess of expectations.
Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected Intel (INTC) to report revenue of $7.3 billion and a profit of eight cents per share. Instead the company reported revenue of $8 billion and non-GAAP profits of 18 cents (PDF). And it predicted third-quarter revenue above Wall Street’s expectations.
In a statement, CEO Paul Otellini said the results “reflect improving conditions in the PC market segment with our strongest first- to second-quarter growth since 1988 and a clear expectation for a seasonally stronger second half.”
Now admittedly, Intel did post earnings of 28 cents a share in the same period last year. So its fortunes clearly declined in the months that followed. That said, the company appears to be on the rebound after hitting the bottom Otellini declared back in April.
“Basically, very strong numbers for the quarter and guidance is in line with seasonal trends,” Collins Stewart analyst Ashok Kumar told Reuters.” It’s an extremely strong number given the macro economic backdrop. Despite those headwinds, the company delivered significant upside to both guidance as well as as expectations. The big unknown is whether it’s anything more than inventory replenishment.”
Intel shares are on the upswing on the news.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Telegraph.co.uk | Report: Bing adding little to Microsoft ad dollars so far CNET News Bing may be catching on as a new search engine, but it has yet to generate growth in ad dollars for Microsoft, according to a report released Tuesday. Microsoft's share of search engine ad spending for the second quarter stayed flat at ... Bing will be a bust Bing Could Bring $400M In Revenue Microsoft's Bing Aims to Dethrone Yahoo, Not Google |
On the road? Want to check your website’s traffic? Better yet, answer live chat requests from your online customers? Now you can. SmartMax, a company that provides online live chat and monitoring support for businesses, recently introduced an app for the iPhone that will allow you to do just that: iMaximo SightMax Live Chat. We tested the app this week, and were extremely impressed with its capabilities. It plugs into SmartMax’s existing server product, the SightMax Installable Live Chat and Monitoring product. SightMax (the server software) provides online businesses with the ability to monitor the traffic of their website, and to embed a Live Chat box within the site. Users click on the chat box to speak with a live customer service representative.
Live chat support software has been around for awhile, and is becoming increasingly prevalent as a way to cut service costs while reaching more customers more quickly. iMaximo (the iPhone app) is a fantastic addition to an already useful business product. Now, you can log in and answer live chat requests while you’re on the go. Simply open the app and you get a view of all of the traffic (identified by IP address and location) on your site, as well as any open conversations that your customer service representatives are having with customers. You can view those conversations, or start your own with customers on your site who are waiting for a rep to become available. Furthermore, you can open a direct chat with one ofyour customer service representatives that is currently logged into SightMax.
Clearly, you wouldn’t actually replace your customer service rep’s keyboard and mice with an iPhone. The productivity decrease alone wouldn’t be worth it. However, if you have traveling salespeople or are yourself away on business, this is a great way to keep your tabs on site traffic without having to plug in that clunky laptop and find a WiFi connection. In our tests, we found that the app worked perfectly over 3G, though EDGE was a bit too slow for sustained customer engagement. The UI was extremely intuitive, and as long as you’re OK with the iPhone keyboard (I still think its better than a physical blackberry keyboard), you should find it an effective app for chatting with customers about their issues.
That said, the use cases for this are likely to be small, and the app will primarily sell to reps of SMB’s whose salespeople put on many different hats or to mid-level managers who need to keep appraised of their customer service team’s performance while out of the office. Nonetheless, if you are a small-town realtor who wants to engage with more of your customers, or a small online chocolate shop wanting to provide excellent customer service, this app may be a good addition to your online engagement portfolio.
Another great feature are the sound notifications built into the app. If a salesperson sends you a direct instant message or a new customer logs in, you are notified via a bell sound. Though this is useful, I found one major feature to be missing: push notification. If I was a traveling salesperson, I would want my fellow customer service representatives to be able to ping me with a question or to be notified of any open chat request from a customer that is not likely to be filled by my existing reps. We are told that functionality may not be available until the end of the summer, or later, and I don’t know if iMaximo could be complete without it.
The iPhone app comes at $40 per operator, and the cost of the server-side software is $300 for one operator or $1000 for ten operators. SightMax also has installable software that provides live chat support for mid and large-sized businesses. Additionally, you can outsource the hosting to SmartMax via its SightMax OnDemand SaaS product. An iPhone app that talks to the SaaS product is coming soon. At $20 per month for one operator, small companies can use SightMax’s SaaS offering without the hassles of setting up and maintaining their own server. Even if you don’t have any need for it, it is incredible the utility that the iPhone can provide to enterprise users, and iMaximo is another example of a company actualizing that potential.
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Now you can go to Sephora and buy makeup specifically engineered so you'd look good in hi-def.
Product page [Cargo Cosmetics]
Although many previously thought that the distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks last week originated in North Korea, the latest reports indicate that the source was actually the United Kingdom.
This is according to a study done by a Vietnamese computer security company, Bach Khoa Internetwork Security (BKIS). In a statement posted on the company’s website, senior security director, Nguyen Minh Duc, said that they managed to gain control of two of the eight servers involved in the attacks, and by doing so, were able to pinpoint the master server. That server has an IP address in the 195.90.118.x range, which is registered to Global Digital Broadcast in the U.K.
“Having located the attacking source in U.K., we believed that it is completely possible to find out the hacker,” Nguyen wrote.
The attacks affected tens of thousands of computers and lasted a week. The U.S. Department of Transportation and Treasury was affected, as well as the U.S. Federal Trade Commission. In South Korea, the president’s home page, and the South Korean national assembly, as well as the US Forces Korea were hit.
Infected computers were used to send floods of requests to the attacked computers. The virus on the infected computers allowed the hackers to use them anonymously. One of eight servers were randomly selected every three minutes to connect and receive orders. It was through two of these eight servers that BKIS was able to discover the master server, although the company that owns that company was not able to be immediately contacted.
Most of the infected computers were in South Korea, followed by the United States, although there were also infected PCs in China, Japan, Canada, Australia, the Philippines, New Zealand, the U.K. and Vietnam.
Read: [Computerworld]
Full Story » | Written by Jodie Andrefski for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
While this will never happen to you ever, if you own an HTC running WinMo 6 or 6.1 you could get hacked if you accept Bluetooth connections from an untrusted source. Also if you accept Bluetooth connections from an untrusted source you deserve to be hacked.
The exploit uses the Bluetooth OBEX FTP service to crack into your filesystem and traverse directories, allowing your copy of BubbleBreaker fall into the wrong hands.
You can prevent this by buying a real smartphone and throwing your WinMo phone into the toilet.
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Samsung really must hate all these regulation groups. First, BluetoothSIG spills the beans on the Armani 2. Just hours later, the Wi-Fi Alliance has slipped out some details of a previously unannounced Samsung SGH-T939. We wouldn’t have much to go off of with just the model number — fortunately for us, they went ahead and included the product name; behold, it’s the Behold 2.
It’s only been around 8 months since the original Behold hit the shelves, so we’d imagine that the followup is still a few months away. But that shouldn’t keep us from being interested in knowing all the details, should it?
Take this User Agent Profile unearthed by CellPhoneSignal, for example. User Agent Profiles tell web servers details about your setup, such as what browser you’re running. What’s that, under “BrowserName”? Yep - “Android Browser”.
One oddity to note, however, is that all Android handsets released thus far identify themselves “Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 0.5; en-us) AppleWebKit/522+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Safari/419.3″, not just “Android Browser”. Of course, this is also the first time we’ve seen something like this from a Samsung-made Android phone — ol’ Sammy might just be mixing things up a bit, or just using a placeholder. We’ll have to wait and see.
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PC sales worldwide are expected to fall 4 percent this year as businesses cut back on IT spending and consumers, as they move towards more mobile devices, buy fewer desktops says research firm iSuppli. And not since the dot-com bust of 2001 are PC sales expected to be so slow, says the firm.
“An annual decline in unit shipments is highly unusual in the PC market,” says Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst, for iSuppli. “Even in weak years, PC unit shipments typically rise by single-digit percentages.”
PC sales are expected to fall to 287.3 million units this year from 299.2 million in 2008. iSuppli had earlier forecast a 0.7 percent growth for the year. In 2001, PC sales had fallen 5.1 percent worldwide.
Poor sales of desktop computers is taking its toll on the overall industry. Desktop sales are expected to fall 18.1 percent this year to 124.4 million from 151.9 million in 2008. Entry-level servers, which iSuppli includes in its definition of PCs, also are expected to suffer a decline, says the firm.
And in news that should surprise no one, notebook sales are expected to grow 11.7 percent to 155.9 million units. Notebook sales will exceed those of desktops on an annual basis for the first time ever in 2009, says iSuppli.
“Mobility is winning out in the PC market,” says Wilkins.
Photo: (Jacob Whittaker/Flickr)
In what appears to be a last-minute effort to play catch-up, Microsoft and Verizon have put out a call for developers to code for their mobile platforms.
Verizon is planning a July 28 conference in San Jose, California, to attract software developers to its mobile platform. And Microsoft announced that on July 27, the company will start accepting mobile application submissions in advance of its launch of Windows Mobile 6.5 in the fall.
The companies appear to be responding to Apple, which announced this morning that its iPhone App Store, now only one year old, has surpassed 1.5 billion downloads and is serving 65,000 applications.
“The App Store is like nothing the industry has ever seen before in both scale and quality,” Apple CEO Steve Jobs said in a press release. “With 1.5 billion apps downloaded, it is going to be very hard for others to catch up.”
Though press releases are inherently boastful, Jobs is correct that Apple is well ahead of its competitors in the mobile software space. The company launched its application store in July 2008 with the release of the iPhone 3G. The App Store’s consumer friendly interface, which makes purchasing and downloading applications as easy as downloading songs in the iTunes Store, is benefiting software developers, some of whom have become rich thanks to explosive sales of their apps.
Other tech giants, including Research In Motion, Google and Palm, followed with announcements of their own mobile-application stores, but their launches were underwhelming compared to Apple’s. For example, Palm’s application store had only 30 apps after its first week; Apple’s App Store opened with 500 applications ready for download.
“The OS wars have finally begun,” said Michael Gartenberg, technology strategist and vice president of Interpret, in a June interview with Wired.com when Apple launched its new iPhone 3GS handset.
Verizon is the latest to join the application-store fray, which is an uncharacteristic move for the telecom giant. Historically, the company has not given developers control over pricing of their apps. But now, Verizon promises to provide a lucrative and simple process for its developers, Verizon vice president Ryan Hughes told GigaOM. However, the company has not disclosed details of its revenue-sharing program.
How will Verizon compete with Apple? The company is adopting a “platform agnostic” philosophy, hoping to aggregate mobile apps from four developer communities: Windows Mobile, Palm, Android and RIM’s BlackBerry. This way, developers can code for whichever platform they wish. And they can decide whether to share their software with Verizon, which would provide APIs and tools to make the software compatible with Verizon phones.
The idea, then, is for developers to maximize profit from a single application by selling it to not only BlackBerry customers, but Verizon subscribers as well, for example.
Though Apple is ahead of its competitors in numbers, it does not mean the company is going to stomp rivals into nonexistence, Gartenberg said. Rather, many companies can compete and still co-exist in the new smartphone OS space.
“At the end of the day, for Palm to succeed does not mean that Apple has to do badly, and likewise for Apple to succeed doesn’t mean that Palm is going to go out of business. There’s going to be a lot of room in the market for several players here,” Gartenberg said. “What’s hopefully going to drive a lot of this stuff forward is who gets the developers, who gets the exclusive apps and who gets the additional functionality beyond the out-of-the-box experience.”
See Also:
Photo: B.K. Dewey/Flickr
New York designer Matthias Kaeding has an interesting new idea for kitchen knife designs &mdash why not take it back a few years and resurrect designs from the Stone Age? His Neolithic knives, made with high quality ceramic, actually work really well for cutting, mincing, chopping, and slicing. Cavemen were really good at making durable utensils &mdash apparently, a lot of the prehistoric tools kept in museums today are still perfectly functional.
Matthias Kaeding's web site [via Dezeen]
Multifunction is great when it can be pulled off without compromising style. This ironing board designed by Aissa Logerot flips back into a full-length mirror.
Aissa Logerot's web site [via MoCo Loco]
Man, these leakers are cutting it close. The T559 Comeback is purportedly launching tomorrow, but it took up until yesterday for the information to really start pouring out - not that we’re complaining. Yesterday morning gave us product shots, but now we’ve got some specs to roll with.
PhoneArena managed to dig up the goods in a document that details the phone in a way only a phone geek could enjoy.
Here’s what we’re looking at:
As we mentioned yesterday, we wouldn’t expect this thing to set you back very much when it launches on T-Mobile, which ought to be sometime real soon. Anybody else think that keyboard looks incredibly uncomfortable to use? Just looking at that big ol’ beast of a D-pad on the right side makes our thumb sore.
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Each set comes with "creme makeup, brush, sponge, puff, powder and detailed instructions."
$50 for all four characters: The Demon, The Starchild, The Catman, The Spaceman.
Still, I'm not sure these are quite as awesome as the 1978 "KISS Your Face" kit from Remco.
When it comes to “luxury” brand handsets, the original Samsung Armani is one of the less ridiculous choices you could make. It is, in every sense, the exact opposite of the Dior phone. It has actual features that people might want, isn’t mindblowingly ugly, and doesn’t cost 5-friggin’-thousand dollars. We’re not sure how well the original Armani sold, but it seems to have done well enough to warrant a sequel.
Yesterday night, SamsungHub noticed 800mhz handset labeled GT-B7620 hit the BluetoothSIG Product Directory - interesting, but no mention of ol’ Giorgio. By the time it wound up on BluetoothSIG’s official twitter account, however, the label had been attached:
New Phone product from Samsung B7620 Giorgio Armani 2 http://tinyurl.com/lb5u7n #BluetoothEPL
Here’s everything we know so far:
Not too shabby on the spec front, though Windows Mobile 6.1 seems like a strange pick. 6.1 is already on its last leg - by the time this handset launches, we’d imagine that it’ll be on its deathbed with 6.5 now leading the WinMo household.
[Via BGR]
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Despite the early fanfare and limited inventory at launch, Sprint doesn't seem to be hitting it out of the park with the new Palm Pre. Earlier this month we reported on some channel checks by JNK Securities analyst Mike Ehrlich, who called 50 Sprint stores and found out that sales were lackluster. Yesterday, he issued a new report based on channel checks from last Thursday and Friday, Week 5 after the Pre's launch. Of the stores willing to discuss sales volumes, here is the breakdown of demand on a per-store basis:
Mitsubishi is teaming up with the manufacturers of the Vudu Box for a month long promotion that gives consumers free movies for buying a new Mitsubishi HDTV. The promotion includes the $150 valued Vudo Box, a downloadable movie player and $50 of credits to use to download movies from the box. The offer starts on July 16 and will run through August 10.
Vudu has deals with all major movie studios as well as independent movie distributors. All of the movies available on the Vudu Box are in high definition and the current catalog contains more than 2,000 titles. Besides movies, users can access television shows and video games through the download service. You don’t need to pay a monthly fee to use Vudu and new movies are released on the same day that the DVD version becomes available. You will need an Ethernet or wireless connection available for the service to operate.
Mitsubishi hopes this offer will make them stand out from other HDTV manufacturers that throw in a Blu-ray player or DVD package.
Read: [Twice]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
I never went through a pimply teenager phase, but over a decade later I still get the occasional zit in random places. Enter the Zeno Mini, a pocketable gadget that claims to get rid of blemishes with a 90% success rate. It has a small sensor pad at the tip that heats up to 118 degrees, and after two and a half minutes of treatment it claims to reduce pimples and eventually make them disappear. Cool concept! For $89, it's not a bad deal for people who might otherwise be inclined to pop the zit or apply super-dehydrating zit cream.
But most importantly, does it work?
The short answer: I think it does. I used the Zeno Mini on two new zits that appeared on my face a couple of weeks ago, one on my forehead and the other on my right cheek. As soon as I noticed the two grease bumps peeking out, I Zeno-ed the life out of them. The next day, instead of blossoming into big red puss-filled messes, they stayed small and, by day three, disappeared completely. Now I can't say for sure that it was the Zeno that did it because every zit is born different and lives a unique lifespan. But in early June, I had a zit under my left nostril that hurt like hell and looked really ugly. I made the mistake of popping it, and now I have a permanent red blotch on my face where it used to be. I'm pretty sure that wouldn't have happened had I had the Zeno then. So, yeah. I'm going to keep this thing in my back pocket for emergency zit zappage.
Just months ago, Boost unveiled their mega-cheap “UNLTD By Boost” package. By picking one of three plans on their tiered system, you could get just the features you wanted. $50 bucks got you Unlimited Talk, $60 bucks scored you Unlimited Talk & Text, and for $70 you’d walk away with the whole shebang: Talk, Text, and Data. It was already a pretty sweet deal.
Well, they’ve kicked it up another notch by simplifying the whole thing. The $60 and $70 dollar plans are now dead, gobbled up by the $50 dollar plan. For just a single green picture of Ulysses S. Grant, you get unlimited everything on a network powered by Sprint. As long as you can dig up a phone you like, that’s one hell of a deal. In contrast, an iPhone owner on AT&T could spend twice that for Unlimited Text/Data, with all of 400 minutes packed in.
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Verizon has been blabbing all over the place about the fact that a Storm 2 is on the way, so they don’t really need to shroud the whole thing in secrecy at this point.
That’s right, folks. No top secret codenames in the inventory system, no shipping crates sealed shut with a declaration of all the ways they’ll eat your face if it’s opened too early; just an entry in the computer reading “DUM: STORM 2 MOCK UP”. While we’re hoping this means a Storm 2 launch is impending, a commenter at PhoneArena points out that Verizon sometimes sends the phones far ahead of launch. Jerks.
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Wired.com is building a kegerator at our San Francisco office, and we need your help to pimp it out, Wired style. We’re going to pit our machine, which we affectionately call Beer Robot, against two store-bought models we have in house for review.
While we think Beer Robot will give the others a run for their money, it has several things working against it at this point, not the least of which is that it ain’t pretty. In order to keep our project under $200, we picked up a homely almond-colored fridge for free on the side of the road via Craigslist, and you know what they say about beggars…
So we’re looking for an expert fridge painter, or any kind of painter, or someone with paint, to give Beer Robot a fighting chance. In return, you will receive high-fives, a mention on Wired.com and, of course, free beer.
We’re also on the lookout for ways to further geekify Beer Robot with gadgets, remote controls, webcams, Twitter or whatever. We are open to any hacks or mods you can dream up.
If you love cold beer and Wired, and you have ideas for Beer Robot, let us know via email: betsy_mason@wired.com, comments below, or @beerrobot on Twitter.
Follow us on Twitter: @betsymason, @gadgetlab, @wiredscience, @wired
Section: Computers, Software / Applications
By now most, if not all of us, know that Windows 7 will be released on October 22. Like Vista, it’s being released in far too many SKUs for the average consumer to make sense of, each at varying prices. While those of us in the US, Canada, and Japan are already able to pre-order whichever version of 7 we want, those in the rest of the world have been unable to as of yet.
Tomorrow, July 15, that changes as Windows 7 goes up for pre-order in the UK. Like the other pre-orders already available, the UK Windows 7 pre-orders will be offered at a reduced price at first, though it will possibly disappear before the actual release like they did in the US. Customers in the UK will be able to pre-order Windows 7 for the reduced price of around “£49.99 for Home Premium and £99.99 for Professional,” neither of which are all that cheap given how much Americans had to pay for the pre-orders. The pre-orders will be available from a number of retailers, including Amazon.co.uk, Argos, Comet, Currys, Dixons, Ebuyer.com, John Lewis Partnership, Littlewoods, Micro Anvika, PC World, Play.com, Staples and Tesco.
It is worth noting that Windows 7 in the UK, and the rest of Europe will be sans Internet Explorer. This seemingly simple omission means that all European customers, whether upgrading from XP or Vista, or performing a fresh install will need to do a clean install. So, to keep that straight, the prices are more expensive than the American pre-orders, and require you to wipe your computer clean just because it can’t ship with IE. That seems a bit unfair, but at least there’s no dealing with IE. Windows 7 would still be worth the upgrade, but make sure you get the pre-order before Microsoft really gouges you on the price.
Full Story » | Written by Shawn Ingram for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
It seems a lot longer than a year ago that Apple first opened the door of the iTunes App Store, but a year it is, and a lot has happened since real third party applications came to the iPhone and iPod Touch.
In that time, the App Store has shifted one and a half billion applications and the store shelves are groaning under the weight of over 65,000 applications authored by, according to Apple’s press release, over 100,000 developers. This is a rather odd discrepancy, and must mean that a lot of devs have signed up and not yet released anything.
The first billion downloads took nine months. Half that again have been downloaded in the last three months. It looks like the pace is hotting up, and the boost to sales from the opening weekend of the iPhone 3GS, which sold a million units in a couple of days, can’t have hurt.
And of course, the name “app” itself has become synonymous with the iPhone. It’s a neat contraction of the word application which not only mirrors the smaller, more focused programs found on Apple’s handheld, but also echoes Apple’s name itself. Coincidence?
Apple’s App Store Downloads Top 1.5 Billion in First Year [Apple]
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This means you'll start seeing Friend Connect gadgets in languages such as French, German, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Hindi and Portuguese. Site owners simply set the language of their site and Friend Connect will automatically render the gadgets in that language.
FROM APPLETELL - Yesterday, my favorite rumor broke again; it seems Apple is using their acquisition of PA Semi to design chips for the iPhone and this long rumored Apple Tablet.
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Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Netbooks, Software / Applications
Your cheap little Linux netbook just got a boost in credibility, or will get a boost when Microsoft drops the web app version of Office 2010 next year. To date, Linux netbooks or anything else running the OS had to rely on non-Microsoft programs to read, edit and save in the familiar .doc, .ppt and .xls file formats. What is MS thinking?
While doing their best to keep the stranglehold on the productivity software market, Linux struggles to get a foothold in the market without a painless solution for business documents that doesn’t require how-to instructions on the net. Linux without business documents surely has stunted its growth into the corporate market. By offering their web apps for free, Microsoft is reluctantly offering an olive branch to Linux users. In Microsoft’s video, the company states that browser Internet Explorer won’t be required to use the web app, they even name Firefox and Safari as being compatible. Microsoft doesn’t mention Google’s Chrome (although both Safari and Chrome are built using the same components).
Not mentioning Google Chrome is noteworthy if for no other reason than just last week Google announced plans for an OS for netbooks. Now Microsoft is gunning for a niche where Google has had some success: web apps. The two tech heavyweights continue to battle and posture in a war that is certain to get nastier. Presumably, Google Chrome users will be able to access the Microsoft Office web apps as well.
Microsoft’s late entry to web apps looks to make up for lost time, preserving the user experience on the web. The scaled down versions of Word, Excel, and others look to have duplicated the look and feel while opening the door to augmenting, not competing with their desktop companions. For many users, the web apps will be all that is needed.
Can the inclusion of Linux in Microsoft’s world of business documents give the little netbooks a new lease on life? Does MS Office web apps give more value to the netbooks segment as a whole clearing them for use at work? Either way, Linux just gained some street cred.
Source: [Gadgetell]
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Time for another home-made camera mount. This one has a rather grander ambition that the humble home-brew Steadicam, though: it flies.
The flying camera was made by NYC photographer Anthony Jacobs. It consists of a quadrocopter (think four helicopters pulling on one platform), a gyroscopic balance, an HD video cam and one steel-nerved pilot — Jacobs himself. The video above shows footage from the camera as it swoops up over the newly-opened High Line, the Manhattan public park built on top of a disused elevated railway line. If you’re anything like me, you’ll probably gasp as the point-of-view switches to that of the aircraft and the camera swoops up into the sky.
The platform - one of two working models used by Jacobs - is built on a German-made Mikrokopter, although Jacobs is keeping the fine details under wraps: his hobby has turned into a business and the design is one of his trade secrets. In an interview with the Photo District News he did reveal that he has so far spent $15,000 on the project. This is much more than the typical homemade kite-cam a beginner might use for aerial photography, but a lot cheaper than paying for a full sized chopper, fuel and a pilot.
This is where the business angle comes in, as Jacobs’ shoots cost relatively little. According to PDN, he’s soon to start shooting NFL games, although hopefully his ‘copter won’t get knocked out of the sky by a long pass. But amusingly, most of his gigs come from real estate sellers who want dramatic, sweeping fly-bys of properties but don’t want to pay for a real helicopter.
While Jacobs’ main use now is commercial, a look at his site, Perspective Aerials, shows other uses for a flying camera. A short film showing stalled construction site in the Williamsburg district of Brooklyn illustrates that it’s not just about the vertiginous angles. “It’s not about how high you can go,” says the tagline “it’s about where you can go.” The movie shows fly-bys inside and above these ugly sites, locations which are “totally out of view from the ground.”
If you don’t have the money to build a high-tech, gyroscopically-stabilized platform, there are options. One is the kite-cam mentioned above and featured long ago in the excellent Make Magazine. Another is to visit DIY Drones, a site started by Wired Magazine Editor Chris Anderson, which is both resource and community for makers of unmanned aerial vehicles. To give you a taste of hat can be done, the site will sell you the ArduPilot, an autopilot based on the Arduino platform, for just $25.
Risky? Yes. Expensive? Maybe. Fun? Hell yes.
Aerial Photography, No Pilot Required [PDN]
Project page [Perspective Aerials]
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The $30 Ecoblaster is a rechargeable Air Horn. It is also something I need, and I need right now. But first, let me explain why.
One of the banes of living in a city which attracts as many tourists into such a compact center as sunny Barcelona, Spain, is that the place is often crawling with clueless wanderers who stray not only into the path of pedestrians but also regularly back out in front of cyclists as they stare into their cameras’ LCD screens. Worse, the constant looking up at the beautiful architecture means they never look down and to see the bike-lane markings.
This has led me to develop the anti-social but satisfying sport of guiri-scaring (guiri means foreigner). First, speed toward the sap who has wandered into your path and, at the last minute, hit the bell. The goal is to get them to leap, terrified, out of your way. Bonus points for catching the English, as they always shout out “Sorry!” even though it’s all my fault.
I tried it with a Groucho Marx-style honk-honking horn, but nobody associated the sound with oncoming two-wheeled doom. A bell is a little wussy, though, and this is why the EcoBlast may save me this summer.
The air-horn puts out a teeth-rattling 115dB of honk, and is good for 70 blasts before a recharge is needed. The package includes a pump but any bike-pump or gas-station air-machine will do the trick (careful filling the plastic bottle with this last one, though: I have managed to burst race-bike tires by over-filling due to faulty pressure gauges).
Right now I have no way of knowing how long it will last (the two comments on the product page tell us that “it sucks” and that “my dad […] said that he loves it”), but it’s going to look awesome on my handlebars and scare me some pedestrians real good.
Product page [Things You Never Knew Existed via Oh Gizmo!]
FROM APPLETELL - Seven weeks after WWDC, rumors have surfaced once again of a plausible touch-screen device from Apple HQ, this time with a little more information.
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Nokia’s latest 3720 Classic cellphone can be dropped into a pint of beer, taken into a shower and stored inside a pile of sawdust. But that’s nothing compared to the Sonim XP3 Quest 2.0, a mobile phone that can withstand being flung across the room or used as a hammer — and can be heard perfectly over the noise of a jackhammer.
The devices are part of an emerging category of rugged phones aimed at people who are rough on their gadgets — or who just want to project a tougher image. Major handset makers including Nokia and Samsung, as well as specialized handset makers such as Sonim, are counting on these near-unbreakable phones to reach a section of consumers–plumbers, construction workers and truck drivers, not to mention mountain bikers and snowboarders–who may find the iPhone a bit too dainty to use.
“Finally users have a phone they can hammer a nail with or use while wearing a glove ,” says Bob Plaschke, chief executive officer of Sonim.”Not everyone wants to walk into a store to get the latest touchscreen or a cameraphone. Some people just want a device that is built to last.”
At least 1 percent to 1.5 percent of the billion or so cellphones worldwide ends up in the hands of blue collar workers, estimates Sonim. That means millions of phones for users that don’t care about popular cellphone design trends such as thinness, touchscreen or video camera.
Instead, says Ben Wood, director of research at CCS Insight, these users want a device that can be tossed around without much care.
“They are people who find that their phones keep getting smashed up,” says Wood, “and while they don’t want something that is bulletproof, armor proof and military grade, they would like a phone that is close enough.”
Rugged phones are not for the faint of heart. Most are built to withstand drops on concrete, work in extreme temperatures, sport scratch resistant displays and be spill-proof and dust-proof. But the tradeoff is that the phones are more expensive than their peers and they are usually not available on contract with most major U.S. carriers.
The devices are not entirely a new idea. Rugged laptops such as those from Panasonic and Dell are a staple among road warriors, especially in construction and the military. The early rugged phones were created for industrial strength users such as the UPS deliverymen or Walmart store managers who wanted a sturdy phone to use at work. But these phones were bulky devices that didn’t particularly score high on looks or style, says Wood. That’s changing as rugged phone makers target consumers, he says.
“Aside from the blue collar workers, there’s also the category of weekend warriors who may want these phones to project an uber-macho image,” says Wood. That means bikers, skiers and hikers could opt for rugged devices instead of carrying phones that are more flimsy. Sonim has already partnered with Land Rover in the U.K. to market its phones.
While rugged phones may not have a 5-megapixel camera like the Motorola Zine (on T-Mobile), they have enough features to keep an average consumer happy. Last year, Sony introduced the weather-resistant C702 Cybershot phone that included a 3.2 megapixel camera. The Nokia 3720 Classic includes a 2-megapixel camera, video and audio recording and a music player. Sonim’s phone comes with GPS tracking and turn-by-turn navigation application and a built-in LED torch.
“Our phone battery can offer at least 15 hours of talk time,” says Sonim’s Plaschke. “Every feature we offer is designed with ruggedization in mind.” It’s not just all talk. Sonim backs up its claims with a three-year warranty on all handsets that it calls an “unconditional guarantee.”
The rugged phones, though, carry a stiff price. Sonim’s XP3 Quest will sell through Best Buy unlocked for $500, while Nokia’s 3720 Classic is available for €125 ($175). Industry executives such as Plaschke hope as rugged phones get popular they will be picked up by U.S. telecom carriers.
“Right now this is a market of a few hundred thousand phones,” says Wood. “But when you have big players such as Nokia and Samsung put some effort, you know there is a real market opportunity here.”
Photo: Nokia 3720 Classic/Nokia
If you have any doubts as to the amazing effect a Steadicam can have on your home-movies, stop reading now and take a look at the video above. Without a Steadicam, this would be a rather dull walk-through video of somebody following kids around the house. With the Steadicam, it is a dreamy, sweeping and quite hypnotic single tracking shot. The music helps, too, of course.
The surprise is that this doesn’t use a Steadicam at all, but a home made gimbal mount which mimics the high-priced original. The DIY project hinges (literally) on this gimbal, made from a skate bearing, three sections of PVC tubing and some nuts and bolts. This is exactly the kind of inventive problem solving we love here at the Lab.
Once done, it’s a simple matter of threading a bar through the middle, weighting the bottom and mounting the camera on top. The author of this great hack neglects to mention the price, but if you’re the right kind of nerd, an have little problem hacking apart the plumbing, you probably have most of the ingredients already.
Project page [YB2Normal via Beschizza]
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