Source: Gizmodo | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:30 pm

Today at Boing Boing Gadgets

There's amazing time-lapse video of a giant LEGO light bulb being constructed. Lisa warns against letting social networking ruin your social skills. We announced the winners of our Gadget Fiction competition. Guest reviewer David Wertheimer tested Klipsch's Image X5S headphones. We gaped at Frank Buchwald's beautiful hand-made light fittings. A dancing humanoid robot has an iPhone 3GS instead of a head. Rob reviewed the Loop Pointer, a very odd controller indeed; and Steven reviewed Nokia's N97. Find out why it's no good.


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:27 pm

Snapdragon and Tegra-based everything incoming

Based on orders and production numbers reported by Digitimes, it looks like the holidays are going to be… portable. Snapdragon and Tegra units are expected from a bunch of major OEMs, though it’s far from established that you can make a decent device out of them above a PMP or phone. 8.9-inch “smartbooks” powered by Tegra? Come on. The market doesn’t need this much fragmentation.

I really have no idea whether the sub-netbook species can carve out a spot in the laptop taxonomy. Netbooks have certainly proven themselves, but they’re still small potatoes compared to regular laptop sales, and I’m guessing smartbooks will be small potatoes compared with netbook sales. All well, more choice is usually good, but people are having trouble parsing the different price points and capabilities that are out there already.

Source: CrunchGear | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:20 pm

Ads Retroactively Added To Wipeout HD, Soon Others

An anonymous reader writes "American users of Wipeout HD might have noticed that there's an advertisement showing up all of the sudden during loading, both during online and offline play. This, according to a poster on the well-known gaming forum NeoGAF, is being done covertly. The writer suspects that the display software was installed during update 2.01, and the ad-content is now being snuck in. Gamasutra has a story on the company responsible for the software to deliver these ads, Double Fusion, which said it plans to launch in-game advertising in 'another handful' of PS3 games by the end of the year. So, what's next? Can we look forward to fighting the Kool-Aid Man and zombified Mars bars in Uncharted, or is there anything that can be done to hinder companies from adding advertisements retroactively, without the customer's prior knowledge?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:04 pm

Toshiba to Launch World's First 64GB SDXC Card

TOKYO and IRVINE, Calif., Aug. 3 /PRNewswire/ -- Toshiba Corporation, a leading innovator in NAND flash memory technologies and solutions, and Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:00 pm

DefCon participants fooled by fake ATM

DefCon hacker conference participants were in for a nasty surprise this year. A fake ATM kiosk set up in the Riviera Hotel Casino in Vegas was discovered during the conference. What is not known is if it was set up by one of the hackers in order to trick their associates, or if it was sent up by someone with a more evil purpose.

Given how tight casino security typically is, you have to find it terribly amusing that they have no idea how long the fake ATM was sitting there, how much information was captured by it, or who put it there. The ATM was placed in such a way as to be invisible to the security cameras placed throughout the casino, yet also directly in front of the security office.

Security authorities have seized the device, which was set up to capture card data.

Source: CrunchGear | 3 Aug 2009 | 7:31 pm

New Firefox patches authentication security holes - CNET News

guardian.co.uk

New Firefox patches authentication security holes CNET News "We strongly recommend that all Firefox users upgrade to this latest release," Mozilla said in a blog posting about the security issue. The first vulnerability could let an attacker run arbitrary code on a person's computer by ... Browser Market Share Claims Are DubiousPC World Mozilla Tops 1 Billion, Still Looks Up At Internet ExplorerChannelWeb One Billion Downloads Later Firefox Earns Corporate BlessingeWeek DailyTech -V3.co.uk -New York Times all 234 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 3 Aug 2009 | 7:07 pm

Cool July weather documented

A meteorologist in State College, Pa., has documented the un-summer like weather of July in the Northeast and Midwest. Jesse Ferrell, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.com, found more than 1,100 daily record low temperatures were broken in July nationwide when he checked the National Climatic Data Center records.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 7:03 pm

Kensington outs the Charging Dock with Mini Battery Pack for the whole iPod family

Isn’t this the perfect solution for anyone with an iPhone or iPod Touch (or any iPod for that matter)? I think so. Kensington’s combo charging dock and mini battery pack for the entire iPod family is up for pre-order now. The dock is compatible with the “iPhone 3G, iPhone, iPod touch, iPod nano (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th gen), iPod classic, iPod mini, iPod (1st, 2nd, 4th, 5th gen).” The mini battery pack charges simultaneously as your iPod when docked and will add up to 30 hours of music, six hours of video and three hours of talk time. Not bad for $70. The combo is expected to ship on October 23.

Kensington via iLounge

Source: CrunchGear | 3 Aug 2009 | 7:00 pm

Windows 7 and the beast: the user experience extreme makeover

FROM APPLETELL - The Windows User Experience articles over on MSDN have been updated, and they contain some interesting articles that might point to the future of the Windows user experience. 
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:53 pm

INQ Plans Sexier, More Twitter-Friendly Phones

Smart  phone, schmart phone. INQ is betting that what really matters to people is a phone’s social media features: Namely, integration with Twitter, Facebook, and other online services that we actually use to stay in toouch with our friends.

They might be right.

INQ’s “Facebook phone,” the INQ1, impressed us by its clever integration with Facebook as well as Skype, Windows Live Messenger and Last.FM. But the phone’s physical presence was gormless and bland, like it had been plucked off the shelf of some Chinese OEM’s Shanghai showroom, which it probably had.

Now INQ is planning a second generation of phones, and it looks like the company got the message that industrial design matters. The upstart handset maker’s two new phones, the candybar INQ Mini and the QWERTY-sporting, BlackBerry-like INQ Chat, sport attractive, sleek hardware that you wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen with. Black plastic is offset by keys with striking red lettering, the edges are attractively rounded, and the phones both look and feel good in the hand. INQ execs tell us that they’ve even given thought to the weight distribution inside the handsets, so that they are well-balanced in your hand when you’re texting and even “swivel” comfortably around their nav buttons when you whip them out of your pocket.

The new phones also add built-in support for Twitter, so you can both read and post tweets quickly and easily. The company strove to provide the complete Twitter experience, translated onto the tiny screen, even going so far as to display the service’s “fail whale” when Twitter goes offline.

Both are expected to become available in Q4. U.S. users are, for now, out of luck, as no American carrier has agreed to offer these phones yet.

See below for two more photos of these phones, provided by INQ.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:41 pm

Gadget Fiction: The Winners!

Your response to our Gadget Fiction contest was amazing: there are so many good stories that it's gutting to have only three prizes to give out.

A few interesting trends cropped up throughout the entries.

• You like bad sex and bad coffee.
• You are ambivalent about your relationship with consumer electronics.
• You have read William Gibson a lot.

Winners after the jump.

1. The Norm Cloud, by Al Jones

The idea of celebrity endorsements hadn't occurred, but the A.I. had grown fond of Cheers over the years and began to speak in a pronounced Chicago accent with a distinct knowledge of the rigor of accounting bisected by house work. The Norm Cloud in other words had produced a type of desire that made it perfect for calculating the angles of construction while maintaining a rouse of socialability that made it the world's preferred drinking buddy.

Excess and typos almost kill it, but something about this old-school cyberpunk concept haze won me over by the end.

2. The New Machine, by Brian Easton

"It is a metal man," someone exclaimed. Almost on cue the coppery being stepped out from behind Daniel Martin. It was obvious, a metal man stood before them, tall and spindly with a broad chest that narrowed into a waist that seemed impossibly thin. Again the crowd buzzed with conjecture and speculation. "It could replace the negro!"

3. Brush with Greatness, by Sean J. Jordan

A woman behind her tapped her on her shoulder and said, "I think your phone's going off." Carolyn reached into her pocket and pulled out her phone. The screen was lit up. "R U in line for Eqlzr?" it said. Apparently her phone could do something besides make calls. She hit the "next" button. "Buy me one, pay u back," it said. The phone number associated with the message, she realized now, belonged to her teenage son.

Special mention must also go to "Imaginary Software," by Startling Moniker. If I weren't in a formal fiction-reading mood, this purple cow would have won by a space mile. Rather than endure any attempts to describe it, just go and check it out.

Other excellent entries miss out on swag only because of capricious and arbitrary reasons meaningful only to me. Hippocratic Oaf's Joy, DW_Funk's "Love is best expressed in analogue," and Martin Rusis' Meta-Switch are among those that make me feel bad for having so few prizes. I want to run another competition just so Timely Handclaps has an excuse to revise Orange Juicer. Bram Gieben's Search Engine reminded me of work.

Mr. Andrews's Month with the Terio TX-i9 Sonic Toothbrush and JD_Paradise's Seventh Sin story about a clever huckster bring the lulz, and I honor the spirit of Alexander Honkala's "The Nigerian Prince," winner of the inaugural Atlanta Nights Award for Nice Try.

Prize winners, please email : rob at boing boing net.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:37 pm

Restoring A Natural Root Signal Helps To Fight A Major Corn Pest

A longstanding and fruitful collaboration between researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and the University of Neuchâtel in Switzerland, together with contributions from colleagues in Munich and the US, has produced another first: the successful manipulation of a crop plant to emit a signal that attracts beneficial organisms.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:35 pm

Google Gets Into The Advertising Trash Talk Game - ChannelWeb

PC World

Google Gets Into The Advertising Trash Talk Game ChannelWeb Microsoft has spent much of the past year taking shots at competitors through advertisements, and company executives have been crowing about the positive impact this is having on Microsoft's brand perception. Perhaps that's why Google is now getting ... Google Billboard Ads Take Aim At Microsoft OfficeWall Street Journal Billboards Or Not, Google Apps Are A Tough SellPC World Google using billboards to lure IT into Google Apps embraceArs Technica Computerworld -InformationWeek -CNET News all 405 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:30 pm

Finding Family Is Big Business: Ancestry.com Files For $75 Million IPO

After going a year with nary a venture-backed IPO in sight, here’s more proof that things are finally beginning to perk up: Ancestry.com, a genealogy service that allows user to map out and search for their family history, has filed for a $75 million IPO. You can see the full SEC filing here.

Ancestry.com offers some basic functionality for free, but to tap into the site’s vast library of historical records, which includes billions of documents and photographs, users have to sign up for a premium subscription. The company claims nearly 1 million subscribers, with an average revenue of $16.50 per subscriber. With monthly churn of 4.1% and a acquisition cost of $67.30, the company can make its money back in four months for each subscriber. In the last six months, Ancestry has made $107 million, with profits of $8 million and a run rate of $200 million.

Back in October 2007 Spectrum Equity Investors led a $300 million buyout of Ancestry.com’s parent company, The Generations Network (which now calls itself Ancestry.com Inc). But it wasn’t a complete buyout, with employees and possibly some outside investors retaining equity in the company.

Ancestry has been on the web for over twelve years, but its roots extend back to 1984, when the company published family history books. The company now employs more than 600 people.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:30 pm

Review: Razer Mamba wired/wireless gaming mouse

Back at CES, I got to check out the Mamba in its near-final form. I was impressed, and couldn’t wait to get my hands on it to review. Now, after living with it for a good while, and after some serious initial problems, I can say it’s everything they wanted it to be, though I still think Razer’s true megamouse will be the Mamba’s successor.

Watch and read for optimum review experience.

Great Expectations
I considered the Razer Death Adder to be the best mouse on the market when I reviewed it, as far as wired-only mice, it still is. Razer has never been satisfied with the responsiveness of wireless mice, leading to a long line of wired mice when everyone else was going wireless, but recently they’ve developed the wireless technology to have actual 1000Hz communication between mouse and hub. This led to the development of the Mamba, which is very Death Adder-esque in its design but is obviously set apart by the fact that it’s wireless.

Just as a note of explanation, the Mamba uses a modified USB cable which either connects directly to the mouse (making it wired and charging it while you use it) or to the charge station (making the mouse wireless; you charge it by setting it on the station). Great, right?

A Mouse In Conflict
The honeymoon period passed quickly as I found that there were usability issues in both wired and wireless mode. First, the connector is awful. It’s difficult to get into (or out of) the mouse despite having little rails, and you’ll end up clicking every button on the thing while you grapple with it. Obviously it can’t use the same sort of system that worked so incredibly well with Microsoft’s X8, since the Mamba needs to send a data signal as well as charge, but this USB thing is really a pain in the ass. Plugging it into the station isn’t as hard, but still kind of strange-feeling, and it occasionally had trouble keeping its connection with the charge points.

Now, in contrast to these issues, the mouse itself is a masterpiece. It feels great in the hand, perhaps better than the Death Adder. It has a narrower “waist,” which may or may not be to your liking, but the overall shape is very hand-friendly. There are two new buttons on the left side of the left mouse button which look like they’ll get in your way, but they never did for me. They’re useful for setting sensitivity if you don’t use the on-the-fly (why wouldn’t you?) but cut and paste or quick save and quick load would be just as good. The scroll wheel feel exactly the same as the Death Adder, which is a good thing; if anything, it feels more grippy.

The buttons are in the same convenient places, with the addition of two more that take a bite out of the left button. I thought that would bug me but it doesn’t. They’re quite difficult to hit on accident, or even on purpose really. Best to set them to something you don’t use often.

The look of the mouse is more understated than Razer’s previous devices. The glow is limited to the sides of the scroll wheel, and a little triple-led display tells you the sensitivity you’re at with a glance. No longer will the pulsating Razer logo keep you awake at night, or the blindingly bright scroll wheel distract you while you watch Naruto reruns. The charge station is a bit too glowy around the base, though like all the other lights you can disable it. The whole mouse is covered in the velvety, grippy finish that has worked so well for so long, and now it’s also present where your thumb and pinky/ring finger hold the mouse. That’s a good thing.

I’d also like to acknowledge that Razer has a flair for presentation, as you can see here. The review packaging for this mouse included an entire briefcase. How decadent!

Bad news, good news, bad news, good news

The bad news is that when I got this thing, it was crippled by a tendency to jitter when you clicked, moving it a few pixels in a random direction. It was bad enough that where this paragraph is now, there was a long rant ending in me saying not to get the mouse. The good news is they recognized this problem after launch and a few weeks later issued a firmware update. Yay!

But there’s more bad news. I bricked two mice attempting to install the new firmware, though Razer tells me they haven’t heard of anyone else having that problem. In any case, it’s all mooted by the final good news: Mambas are now shipping with the updated firmware, so you won’t have to worry about it. But I thought it was important that I note this stuff, not only to explain why this review took so long to publish, but to mention that it wasn’t good times from start to finish.

Now that the firmware is updated, there is very little click jitter, if any. The mouse also tended to sort of bounce the cursor back a few pixels when you stopped moving the mouse — an issue which has also been resolved. So allowing for the somewhat different grip I have to use on this thing compared to the Death Adder, I’d say its tracking and ergonomics are on par with my favorite mouse. Whether it’s better or worse in the end will be a personal preference thing.

The software to configure works great, though it takes ages to sync with the mouse’s onboard memory.

Revised opinion

My original final word was basically “don’t buy.” But the firmware update has really fixed all my issues with the mouse and it now works like a charm. So the only problem left is the price. Sucker costs $130. You can get it for a little less than that if you look around, but I didn’t see it below $110. If you’re going to put out that kind of money, you better be sure you want it, because you can get most of the good parts of this mouse in a $40 Death Adder.

If you really want or really need the wireless, though, I’d say this is the best wireless mouse you can get, with the possible exception of the Logitech MX Revolution, but that’s a tough call.

Source: CrunchGear | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:30 pm

Entropy Problems For Linux In the Cloud

CalTrumpet writes "Our research group recently spoke at Black Hat USA on the topic of cloud computing security. One of the interesting outcomes of our research was the discovery that the combination of virtualization technologies and public system images results in a problem for random number generation on guest operating systems. This is especially true for Linux, since its PRNG uses only a small set of entropy-gathering events, and virtual Linux images often generate SSH host keys within seconds of their initial boot. The slides are available; the PRNG vulnerability material begins at slide 63."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:29 pm

World Forum: Cut CO2 80% by 2020, not 2050

Greenhouse gases must be cut 80 percent by 2020, not by 2050 as U.N.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:17 pm

Structure of Antibiotic Ramoplanin Shows Promising Mechanism

With the "last resort" antibiotic Vancomycin now plagued by the first signs of bacterial resistance, a scientific collaboration centered at Duke University has identified how a candidate successor antibiotic known as Ramoplanin A2 can kill pathogenic bacteria by interrupting how they form their cell membranes.During a 12-year quest, the research team had to learn how to crystallize Ramoplanin's molecular structure at the crucial time and place that it interacts with the bacterium's membrane.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:07 pm

Pre Philosophy: What Is Palm Thinking With These Ads?

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half. -John Wanamaker Advertising and branding are very complicated and very unpredictable fields, and success can be measured according to any number of metrics. Modernista, the ad agency behind the soft-talking-lady ads that only occasionally seem to be talking about phones, seems to be measuring success based on attention. Of course, the attention is almost entirely negative, but that doesn't faze them. In an article in Ad Age, Executive Creative Director at Modernista, Gary Koepke, discusses the oft-maligned "Ms. Hope" spots.

The Pre is probably being talked about more than other phones right now because of the marketing and advertising, and that's a good thing. Could the ads work harder to show exactly how the phone works? Yes, but we knew it would be polarizing people to have a woman not shout at them and tell an interesting story.

"Polarizing" is industry-standard code for "universally mocked," in case you're confused.

Source: TechCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:00 pm

The Unofficial Thomas Pynchon Guide to Los Angeles

Little known fact: Thomas Pynchon, the paranoid poet of the information age, is L.A.'s greatest writer. His latest effort, Inherent Vice, is an homage to when he lived there in the '60s and early '70s. Help us map the new novel against Pynchon's life in L.A. by contributing your own annotations.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:00 pm

Inside Alaska's Answer to Area 51

Deep in the forest northeast of Anchorage is a military facility that its military scientists insist does nothing having military applications. What's going on up there, then?

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:00 pm

Strange New Air Force Facility Energizes Ionosphere, Fans Conspiracy Flames

Todd Pedersen had to hustle—the sky was scheduled to start glowing soon, and he didn't want to miss it. It was just before sunset, a cold February evening in deep-woods Alaska, and the broad-shouldered US Air Force physicist was scrambling across the snow in his orange down parka and fur-lined bomber hat. Grabbing cables and electronics, he rushed to assemble a jury-rigged telescope atop a crude wooden platform.

The rig wasn't much, just a pair of high-sensitivity cameras packed into a dorm-room refrigerator and pointed at a curved mirror reflecting a panoramic view of the sky. Pedersen had hoped to monitor the camera feed from a relatively warm bunkhouse nearby. But powdery snow two feet deep made it difficult to string cables back to the building.

As darkness closed in, Pedersen tried to get the second imager working—with no luck—and the first one began snapping pictures. A few minutes before seven, throbbing arcs of green and red light began to form on his monitor, eventually coalescing into an egg shape. Other shards of light shimmered, gathered into a jagged ring, and spun around the oval center. "This is really good stuff," Pedersen cooed. This wasn't just another aurora borealis triggered by solar winds; this one Pedersen made himself. He did it with the High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (Haarp): a $250 million facility with a 30-acre array of antennas capable of spewing 3.6 megawatts of energy into the mysterious plasma of the ionosphere.

Bringing Haarp to fruition was, well, complicated. A group of scientists had to cozy up to a US senator, cut deals with an oil company, and convince the Pentagon that the project might revolutionize war. Oh, and along the way they sparked enough conspiracy theories to make the place sound like an arctic Area 51.

But the shocking thing about Haarp isn't that it's a boondoggle (it's actually pretty worthwhile) or that it was spawned by a military-industrial-petrochemical-political complex (a hallowed government tradition). It's that, all too often, this is the way big science gets done in the US. Navigating the corridors of money and power is simply what scientists have to do.

In 1901, Guglielmo Marconi received a simple radio signal sent from across the Atlantic Ocean—dot-dot-dot, again and again, the letter S repeated in Morse code. Leading scientists of the day had said such a transmission was impossible: Earth's surface is curved, and radio waves travel in straight lines. The dots should have shot out into space. Instead, they traveled from Cornwall, England, to a 500-foot antenna Marconi hung from a kite in Newfoundland. A previously unknown, electromagnetically charged layer of the atmosphere was reflecting the signal back down to earth.

At any given moment, the sun is bombarding our planet with 170 billion megawatts of ultraviolet, x-ray, and other radiation. Those waves collide with atoms of air—nitrogen, oxygen, and so on—stripping away electrons like spring rain eroding a snowbank. The result: positively charged ions drifting free. At high altitudes, those ions are far enough apart that it can take hours for them to bind with a free electron. Called the ionosphere, these undulating bands of charged particles stretch from 50 to 500 miles above the earth—too high for weather balloons and, in large part, too low for satellites. Researchers who study it jokingly call it the ignorosphere.

For decades, researchers who wanted to bother with the ignorosphere did what Marconi had done—they built an emitter, pointed it straight up, and watched to see what would happen next. Those researchers learned that the ionosphere contains plasma, charged gas clouds that are more common in stars than on Earth. They saw that regions of the ionosphere expand and contract depending on their position over the planet, the tilt of Earth toward the sun, and the time of day. (At night, for instance, one of the ionosphere's layers disappears entirely.)

But by the 1980s, US atmospheric radio science had dead-ended. "We had become a very small field, and we wanted to try to revive it," says Konstant Papadopoulos, a plasma and space physicist at the University of Maryland. "We needed a modern facility."

Papadopoulos, now a white-haired, deeply tanned 70-year-old who goes by the name Dennis, had worked on and off with the government since he left his native Athens in the 1960s. He knew his way around the federal science-funding machine. Many of his fellow ionospherists had similar experience swaying the folks with fat wallets. So this loose band of radio scientists began a campaign of persuasion in support of a new research center. "We'll sell it," Papadopoulos remembers thinking. "We'll sell it in good faith, but we'll sell it."

One of the first ideas came mid-decade from Bernard Eastlund, a physicist working for oil-and-gas conglomerate Atlantic Richfield. Arco had the rights to trillions of cubic feet of natural gas under Alaska's North Slope. The problem had always been how to get that gas to the port at Valdez. Eastlund had a better idea: Use the gas onsite to fuel a giant ionospheric heater. Such a facility, he wrote in a series of patents, could fry Soviet missiles in midflight or maybe even nudge cyclones and other extreme weather toward enemies. That's right: weaponized hurricanes.

Arco's executives presented the idea to Simon Ramo, one of the godfathers of the US intercontinental ballistic missile program. Ramo passed it on to the under secretary of defense, who in turn gave it to the Pentagon's advanced research arm, Darpa, and the DOD's secretive science advisory board, code-named Jason. Tony Tether, director of Darpa's strategic technology office, gave Arco a contract to conduct a feasibility study. Arco brought on board none other than Dennis Papadopoulos as a consultant.

Papadopoulos wasn't very impressed. Eastlund's tricks wouldn't work even if the site were in the right place along Earth's magnetic field—which it wasn't. But the ad hoc coalition of radio scientists did like the idea of setting up a new heater in Alaska. In those upper latitudes, the ionosphere intersects with Earth's magnetic field and becomes scientifically interesting.

Luckily, the senior senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens, enjoyed a reputation for inserting projects into the federal budget to benefit his home state, most notoriously a $223 million bridge from the town of Ketchikan to, well, not much of anyplace. In 1988, the researchers sat down with Stevens and assured him that an ionospheric heater would be a bona fide scientific marvel and a guaranteed job creator, and it could be built for a mere $30 million. "He provided some congressional money, some pork money," Papadopoulos says. "It was much less than the bridge to nowhere." Just like that, the Pentagon had $10 million for ionospheric heater research.

Now the scientists had some startup cash, but they also needed hardware—and for that, they had to enlist the military. In a series of meetings in the winter of 1989-90, the field's leading lights, including Papadopoulos, pitched the Navy and the Air Force. Haarp, they asserted, could lead to "significant operational capabilities." They'd build a giant phased antenna array that would aim a finely tuned beam of high- frequency radio waves into the sky. The beam would excite electrons in the ionosphere, altering that spot's conductivity and inducing it to emit its own extremely low frequency waves, which could theoretically penetrate the earth's surface to reveal hidden bunkers or be used to contact deeply submerged submarines.

That last app caught the military's attention. Communicating with subs thousands of miles away, under thousands of feet of ocean, requires ultralow frequencies, and that requires whomping-big antennas. To do it, the Navy had built an array in the upper Midwest that transmits its signal through bedrock, but its construction required razing 84 miles' worth of hundred-foot-wide path through wilderness, including a national forest. It drove local environmentalists crazy. But who would protest an ephemeral antenna in the sky?

Of course, the scientists said, you'd need a brand-new, state-of-the-art ionospheric heater to see if any of this was even feasible. The Pentagon somewhat reluctantly went for it—and began using Stevens' earmarked cash to fund the appropriate studies.

In 1992, the Navy handed out a $21.6 million contract. The deal didn't go to an established engineering outfit or defense firm. It went, instead, to Arco, for which Papadopoulos was a consultant.

For more than a year, planning proceeded largely out of public view. Then, in 1993, an Anchorage teachers' union rep named Nick Begich—son of one of Alaska's most important political families—found a notice about Haarp in the Australian conspiracy magazine Nexus.

When Begich was 13, a Cessna carrying his father, a Congressional representative, disappeared. Neither the plane nor its passengers were ever recovered. Over the years, Begich became obsessed with uncovering mysteries. Between gigs as a gemologist, miner, school supervisor, and Chickaloon tribal administrator, he regularly lectured on government mind-control technology. So you can imagine his reaction when he began looking into Haarp: the weather-control patents, the Pentagon proposals for long-range spying, the oil company schemes. Senator Stevens had even suggested that the ionosphere could end our dependency on fossil fuels. "At any time over Fairbanks," Stevens said on the Senate floor, "there is more energy than there is in the entire United States." Begich had hit the conspiracy jackpot.

In 1995, he self-published a book, Angels Don't Play This HAARP. It sold 100,000 copies. He started giving speeches on Haarp's dangers everywhere, from UFO conventions to the European Parliament. Marvel Comics, Tom Clancy, and, of course, The X-Files made the facility an ominous feature of their narratives. A Russian military journal warned that blasting the ionosphere would trigger a cascade of electrons that could flip Earth's magnetic poles. "Simply speaking, the planet will 'capsize,'" it warned. The European Parliament held hearings about Haarp; so did the Alaska state legislature.

Begich told his audiences that Haarp was a high-powered weapon prototype. Forget spying underground with low-frequency waves—Haarp was so strong it could trigger earthquakes. And by dumping all those radio waves into the ionosphere, Haarp could turn a miles-wide portion of the upper atmosphere into a giant lens. "The result will be an absolutely catastrophic release of pure energy," he wrote. "The sky would literally appear to burn."

The military's response only amped up the conspiracists. When program managers swore that the facility would "never be used for military functions," Begich would trot out military reports touting satellite-blinding research plans or then-secretary of defense William Cohen's suggestion that "electromagnetic waves" could alter the climate and control earthquakes and volcanoes remotely.

Begich's agitating didn't delay the project too much. (Government research projects slip deadlines and bust budgets just fine on their own.) But by 1999, when Haarp's first 48-antenna array was finished, the project's cost was on its way to tripling the original feasibility study estimate, and the military was getting antsy. Sure, the initial experiments had been scientifically impressive, detecting ionization in the atmosphere caused by a gamma ray flare from a neutron star 23,000 light-years away and finding bunkers 300 feet below the earth's surface. But the Pentagon wanted to know when its overpriced conspiracy-magnet would produce that battle-ready technology they'd been promised.

The Haarp team was caught in an expectations trap. In theory, the Pentagon should spend a lot of money on basic research. That's how you come up with the Internet and stealth jets. But in practice, the generals and Congress want science that's useful now. Papadopoulos understood this instinctively: You have to sell it. Looking at the sleep cycles of fruit flies? Why, that might someday lead to indefatigable supertroops! Building nanometer-long hinges? You're developing artificial muscles that could let soldiers leap buildings! But it was tough to make that kind of case for Haarp. "It's like, I talk to my mom and she says, 'When are you gonna build something?'" says Craig Selcher, Haarp program manager for the Navy. "Mom," he answers, "I'm trying to unlock the secrets of the universe!"

So the ionospherists formed a panel to find a new purpose for Haarp. Tether, who funded the original Arco studies and had consulted on the project, was named chair.

Months later, the group had its rationale, and it was ambitious to say the least: post-nuclear space cleanup. By the late '90s, Cold War fears had been replaced by worries that a rogue state could get a nuke. If Pyongyang set off a bomb in orbit, it would fry crucial satellites. Theoretically, ultralow-frequency waves in the ionosphere would knock the particles out of their natural spin, sending them tumbling down into the lower atmosphere to be harmlessly reabsorbed. The Pentagon loved the idea. But it would need a lot of testing—which could only be done at Haarp. "You could actually see the lightbulb flick on," says Ed Kennedy, a former Haarp program manager. "This was something Haarp could actually help solve."

Of course, the facility would need 180 antennas and a lot more money. But as the panel was winding down in 2001, cash stopped being a problem. Tether became head of Darpa, taking charge of nearly $2 billion a year for research. He put together a deal for the Air Force, Navy, and his agency to fund Haarp's construction—with some congressional pork, of course. Again, Arco's construction subsidiary (by then renamed and sold to giant defense contractor BAE Systems) was selected to handle most of the hardware, a $35.4 million job that would balloon to $118.5 million. And Papadopoulos still had his separate military funding for ionospheric heating research. In a field as small as radio science, it's almost impossible to avoid such overlap. By 2007, Haarp was running at full strength. But it was still mysterious. Neither the public nor the press had been allowed inside since the array became fully operational.

The highway leading to Haarp dips and rises like a sine wave. Two hundred miles northeast of Anchorage, the Tok Cutoff bobs over the Gulkana and Gakona rivers, past trailer homes and rusting pickups. A black spruce forest stretches to a volcanic peak on the horizon. Even for Alaska, this is lonely land. At mile 11.3, there's a junction with an unmarked driveway. It ends at a gate topped with spikes. “Warning,” a sign announces, “US Air Force installation. It is unlawful to enter this area without permission of the installation commander.”

Tomorrow, for one day only, the military will grant the public access to Haarp for the first time since 2007. Today, I'm getting a sneak peek. I say my name into a call box. The gate draws to the left. Ahead, against the slate-gray sky, resting on a small hill surrounded by trees, is a windowless six-story building: Haarp's control and power center. Inside, five 3,600-horsepower diesel-electric generators, each powerful enough to drive a locomotive, produce the energy that Haarp channels into the heavens.

Every few hundred yards along the road, the forest is cleared and fenced off into 150-square-foot plots. Each contains instruments ranging from enigmatic to just plain odd. Four golden crosses are planted in one, to help a radio receiver measure ionospheric absorption. In another is a white telescope dome and a gray tangle of poles used to observe the ionosphere's properties. Above the barbed wire of a third clearing, I can see a wispy, twisted skeleton of wire and fiberglass.

But the most striking sight at Haarp is the facility's largest array: 180 silver poles rising from the ground, each a foot thick, 72 feet tall, and spaced precisely 80 feet apart. Every pole is topped with four arms like helicopter rotors; metal and Kevlar wires connect the poles to one another, to the earth, and to a wire mesh suspended 15 feet above the ground. The result is an aluminum cat's cradle, calibrated to the millimeter, that spreads out over 30 acres. Geometric patterns form and reform in every direction, Athenian in their symmetry. It looks like a bionic forest. A cemetery for a cyborg army. Or an infinite nave in a futuristic outdoor church. Even the scientists get rhapsodic when they describe the array. "You stare up at the stars and listen to the wind in the guy wires," Kennedy says. "It's as close to a religious experience as you're ever going to get."

The ultraprecise calibration allows the array to broadcast a beam as narrow as 5 degrees of sky or as broad as 60. All told, the facility can pump 3.6 megawatts through its phased-array radar into the sky, accelerating electrons and heating the ionosphere—all within a tightly controlled set of parameters. Marconi used the ionosphere, unwittingly, to reflect and carry radio signals; Haarp can stimulate the ionosphere to create anything from direct current to visible light, spanning 15 orders of magnitude on the electromagnetic spectrum. "The science used to be purely observational, with no knobs to turn," Navy researcher Selcher says. "Now you can apply the scientific method."

During a few weeks in October 2008, for example, the site hosted 31 investigators conducting 42 different sets of experiments—imaging ionospheric irregularities, examining the "ion outflow from high-frequency heating," creating artificial northern lights. Physics students flock to Haarp in the summer. Ionospheric papers are back in the scientific literature. Even the space-based nuclear clean-up experiments are teaching us lessons about the Van Allen radiation belts. Online, the tinfoil-hatted chatter about Haarp drones on—it's blamed for everything from Katrina to last year's earthquake in Sichuan, China. But after decades of pushing, radio scientists finally have the experimental facility of their dreams.

Yet Haarp's future is unclear. Defense budgets are shrinking, and the facility costs $10 million a year to operate. Haarp's patron at Darpa, Tony Tether, has left his job. The project's godfather, Ted Stevens, was defeated in the 2008 Senate election by the mayor of Anchorage: Mark Begich, Nick's little brother. "I'll have his ear," Nick promises.

So the radio scientists may have to look for funding again, which probably means a whole new set of rationales. You can imagine how the conspiracy crowd will react. And the scientists, in their eagerness, can end up feeding the paranoia. Papadopoulos, for example, says he wants to do another round of subterranean surveillance experiments. "Personally, I believe it can reach 1,000 kilometers. It can't reach Iran, if that's your question," he laughs. "But if I put Haarp on a ship, or on an oil platform, who knows?" Not that he has concrete plans for such tests in Alaska, let alone in the Persian Gulf—though he does mention a facility in Puerto Rico as a possibility.

But he has already said enough. Papadopoulos just wants to do science. But for suspicious minds, the implications are there: With just a bit more funding, a few more experiments, Haarp can still be a place haunted by sinister agencies with three-letter initials and spectral lights that appear in the sky and then vanish without a trace.

Contributing editor Noah Shachtman (wired.com/dangerroom) wrote about Net-centric warfare in issue 15.12.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:00 pm

Nintendo DSi users get to share pictures on Facebook (AFP)

AFP - Nintendo said Monday that it is updating DSi software to allow users to upload pictures from the camera-equipped handheld videogame devices to hot social-networking website Facebook.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Aug 2009 | 5:56 pm

Pre Philosophy: Why are Palm’s ads the way they are?

Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half. -John Wanamaker Advertising and branding are very complicated and very unpredictable fields, and success can be measured according to any number of metrics. Modernista, the ad agency behind the soft-talking-lady ads that only occasionally seem to be talking about phones, seem to be measuring success based on attention. Of course, the attention is almost entirely negative, but that doesn't faze them. In an article in Ad Age, Executive Creative Director at Modernista, Gary Koepke, discusses the oft-maligned "Ms. Hope" spots.

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 5:55 pm

Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life

I came across Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life when I took my kids to the California Science Center in Los Angeles a few weeks ago and found it in the gift store. It was written by philosopher Roger-Pol Droit, a researcher at the Centre de Recherche Scientifique and, as the title indicates, contains 101 mental and perceptual exercises you can perform on yourself.

In his introduction, Droit says the purpose of the experiments is to "provoke tiny moments of awareness," and to "shake a certainty we had taken for granted: our own identity, say, or the stability of the outside world, or even the meanings of words." Most of the experiments require about 20 minutes to complete, and often involve nothing more than merely thinking about something.

Some of the experiments you'll probably want to try when you are alone at home (like calling your name repeatedly for 20 minutes, or repeating some other word to drain it of its meaning), but others can be performed anywhere (like imagining that the world was "created from nothing, just an instant ago" and will vanish "like a light going out" in 20 minutes).

Some of the experiments you can't really plan in advance; they'll happen by accident, like when you wake up without knowing where you are -- a magical experience I love having, but Droit explains how to make the best use of this five-second-long "delicious lightness of a mystery without menace" the next time it happens: "What you do not know, for a tiny interval of time, is what the place is called, where it is, and you you are doing there. But you're certain that you are somewhere, and will find out very soon... try not to lose hold of this rare moment of perfect suspension between doubt and confidence, certitude and ignorance, anxiety and satisfaction."

One of the things I've learned from doing just a few of the exercises in this book is how hard it to stop being so busy and slow down enough to do the experiments. I don't want to stop sitting in front of my computer, playing games, reading a book, tending to chickens, tidying the house, or a million other things that tug at me, but a few minutes after getting started with one of Droit's exercises, I feel good about taking a break from those habitual behaviors.

Astonish Yourself: 101 Experiments in the Philosophy of Everyday Life


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Aug 2009 | 5:20 pm

AP Will Sell You a "License" To Words It Doesn't Own

James Grimmelmann performed an experiment using the AP's form to request a license to use more than four consecutive words from one of their articles. Except that he didn't paste in words from the (randomly chosen) article, but instead used 26 words written by Thomas Jefferson 196 years ago: If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea. The AP cheerfully charged him $12 to use Jefferson's 26 words. Both Boing Boing and TechDirt have picked up the story so far. Grimmelmann adds an update to his blog: the AP has rescinded his license to Jefferson's words and issued a refund for his $12. They did not exhibit the grace to admit that their software is brain-dead.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Aug 2009 | 5:13 pm

Long-lost video of John Philips' lunar-themed musical play produced by Andy Warhol (1975)

BB pal and periodic guestblogger Richard Metzger has an amazing blog post up about the off-Broadway musical Man on the Moon. The play was conceived by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas and his third wife, South African actress, Genevieve Waite, as a potential film or stage production originally entitled "Space."

The stage performance was produced by Andy Warhol. Long-lost video footage of the play is embedded above. More video over at Metzger's blog, too, amazing stuff.

The following text was written by Chris Campion and Jeffrey A. Greenberg from the liner notes of the CD release of Andy Warhol Presents Man on the Moon.

I'll post a snip here, but you have to read the whole thing to hear about the part Philips wrote for Elvis, and all the weird little factoids about Warhol's work, and allegations that George Lucas stole the idea for Star Wars from this offbeat project. Snip:

Space was born the day Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon. Like millions of other people, John watched the 1969 moon landing on TV. He was living, at the time, on the Malibu property rented by British film director Michael Sarne, who was under contract at Fox to direct the adaptation of Gore Vidal's novel, Myra Breckenridge, with Rex Harrison, Raquel Welch and Mae West. Sarne had commissioned John to write songs for the film.

The Apollo 11 moon landing became an obsession. John would watch a recording of the TV transmission made on an early video tape machine over and over. The idea of exploring this new frontier - and particularly Neil Armstrong's scripted aside as he stepped onto the lunar surface that it was, "One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind" - fired John's imagination, and he began to piece together ideas for a mythical space opera set to music. "He loved myths," says Genevieve, who was first introduced to John by Sarne that summer. "He liked Homer - The Iliad and The Odyssey."

(...) Genevieve bemoaned the fate of the show to her friend, Andy Warhol, who offered to find a backer, and did. Warhol also agreed to serve as a producer, and provided a director in the form of Paul Morrissey, who had made a series of avant-garde exploitation films under Warhol's aegis (Flesh, Trash, Heat, Chelsea Girls, etc.). John expressed his bemusement about Warhol's involvement in the song, "Oh Andy My Assistant": "Oh Andy, my assistant/your mind is so consistently blank/that I'm banking on you now/so please so don't try to comprehend/the reason why I have to send/ you up or else, I'm sure that we, shall have a terrible row/It's either you or I must save the race/ So bye-bye Andy and off you're goin' to Space."

LONG LOST FOOTAGE OF MUSICAL PLAY BY JOHN PHILLIPS, PRODUCED BY ANDY WARHOL (1975) (Dangerous Minds, photo courtesy Ken Regan / Camera S)

Music CD: Andy Warhol Presents "Man on the Moon" (Amazon.com)


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Aug 2009 | 5:10 pm

WATCH: Ancient Warrior Skeleton Unearthed

The remains of a 5,000-year-old Roman warrior was found virtually intact on a public beach.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 3 Aug 2009 | 5:00 pm

Study: Humans came from orangs, not chimps

Humans evolved from orangutans, not chimpanzees, a University of Pittsburgh anthropologist says, creating a furor in the chimp camp. Fossil evidence shows striking anatomical similarities between humans and orangs, including enamel molars, similar hairlines and shoulder blades, and even the ability to smile with lips closed, Jeffrey H.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:59 pm

Predatory snail wrecks California oysters

A predatory snail indigenous to the Atlantic Ocean is decimating native oysters living in Tomales Bay north of San Francisco, scientists said Monday. About half of the Olympia oysters in the coastal estuary fell to a predatory whelk snail, a California Sea Grant-funded study published in the July issue of the Oecologia journal said.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:58 pm

Tree-killing fungus threatens avocados

A tree-killing fungus near Florida's Everglades National Park could harm the area's $12.7 million avocado industry, agriculture officials said. "At this point, if your tree becomes infected, it will die,'' state Agriculture and Consumer Services spokesman Mark Fagan told The Miami Herald. Scientists recently discovered a case of laurel wilt disease, carried by the invasive redbay ambrosia beetle, in an avocado sample taken from a grove in Homestead, Fla., between Biscayne National Park and Everglades National Park. The fungus kills trees in the laurel family -- with the avocado the most commercially valuable plant -- by infecting the sapwood, which in turn restricts the flow of water and causes leaves to wilt, agriculture officials said.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:34 pm

FTC to Google CEO, Apple: Nice Try [Digital Daily]

Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s resignation from Apple’s board this morning was a nice gesture, but it’s not going to end the Federal Trade Commission’s investigation of the ties between the Google and Apple boards.

In a statement issued this afternoon, the FTC applauded the move, but said the two companies are foolish if they think it will simply abandon its inquiry as a result.

“We have been investigating the Google/Apple interlocking directorates issue for some time and commend them for recognizing that sharing directors raises competitive issues, as Google and Apple increasingly compete with each other,” said Bureau of Competition Director Richard Feinstein. “We will continue to investigate remaining interlocking directorates between the companies.”

In other words, Schmidt’s departure was a nice start, but the Commission still worries that Google (GOOG) director Arthur Levinson’s presence on Apple’s (AAPL) board–as well as that of Google advisers Bill Campbell and Al Gore–might lead to conflicts of interest or unfair business practices.

So who’ll be the next to leave: Levinson or Gore?

Source: All Things Digital | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:33 pm

@BBVBOX: recent guest-tweeted web video picks (boingboingvideo.com)

(Ed. Note: We recently gave the Boing Boing Video website a makeover that includes a new, guest-curated microblog: the "BBVBOX." Here, folks whose taste in web video we admire tweet the latest clips they find. I'll be posting periodic roundups here on the motherBoing.)

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More @BBVBOX: boingboingvideo.com


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:20 pm

IBM Takes Analytics Drive to China With New Center (PC World)

PC World - IBM announced on Tuesday a business analytics center in Beijing that will serve clients including the Chinese government.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:20 pm

Returning troops can assimilate virtually

The flow of information and support to returning U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:15 pm

Palm Pre Admaker Defends “Creepy” TV Commercial

Weird? Yes. Creepy? Yes. Successful? Of course!

The latest crop of Palm Pre ads may not be a favorite among some viewers but it does achieve its purpose of getting consumers to talk about the product, says Gary Koepke, co-founder and executive creative director at Modernista, the agency behind the Pre ads. So mission accomplished, says Koepke in an interview with Ad Age.

“The Pre is probably being talked about more than other phones right now because of the marketing and advertising, and that’s a good thing,” says Koepke.  “Could the ads work harder to show exactly how the phone works? Yes, but we knew it would be polarizing people to have a woman not shout at them and tell an interesting story.”

Palm’s recent TV commercials featuring a glowing actress, Tamara Hope, speaking in what is supposed to be a soothing voice about the product’s features. The idea is to find the middle ground between the Apple iPhone commercial that showcases the phone and its apps without having a real person in the ad and the ‘life on BlackBerry‘ ads, says Koepke. But the television spot has riled up bloggers for being “creepy.” The ad has also inspired a few YouTube parodies.

Palm has shown no signs that it wants to pull the plug on the ads so it is likely the company is happy with it. Now whether all this buzz has translated into Pre sales is something we won’t know until Palm and Sprint release their quarterly earnings next month.  So far, the two companies have not commented about the number of Pre phones sold since the device’s launch on June 6.

What do you think of the Pre ad? Let us know in the comments.

See Also:

• Nothing Unusual in Palm Pre Return Rates, Say Analysts
• Palm Pre Works With iTunes Again. For Now
• Palm Unveils Its Long-Awaited Smartphone, the Pre
• Palm Pre

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:09 pm

NJ man is first to be charged with Web name theft (AP)

AP - A northern New Jersey man is charged with stealing a prime piece of Internet real estate and reselling it to basketball player Mark Madsen in one of the nation's first prosecutions of a suspected domain name thief.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:04 pm

EPA offers tips to cut water bill

August is a peak water-use period, but the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says a few simple tricks could save up to $110 annually on water bills. Peak water use can be expensive, taxes local water systems, and threatens future water supply and quality, Peter S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:01 pm

Use Of A Restraining Device In The Subacute Phase

Restraining the use of some patients' unaffected upper limb during the subacute phase following stroke does not appear to generate greater improvements in motor impairment and capacity than standard rehabilitation alone, according to a pilot study published in the June issue of Physical Therapy, the scientific journal of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA).Research shows that patients who have arm paresis (partial loss of movement or impaired movement) after stroke initially use primarily the side unaffected by the stroke in order to be as independent as possible.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:00 pm

Intel Confirms Data Corruption Bug, Halts New SSDs

CWmike writes "Intel has confirmed that its new consumer-class X25-M and X18-M solid state-disk drives (SSDs) suffer from data corruption issues and said it has pulled back shipments to resellers. The X25-M (2.5-inch) and X18-M (1.8-inch) SSDs are based on a joint venture with Micron and used that company's 34-nanometer lithography technology. That process allows for a denser, higher capacity product that brings with it a lower price tag than Intel's previous offerings, which were based on 50-nanometer lithography technology. Intel says the data corruption problem occurs only if a user sets up a BIOS password on the 34-nanometer SSD, then disables or changes the password and reboots the computer. When that happens, the SSD becomes inoperable and the data on it is irretrievable. This is not the first time Intel's X25-M and X18-M SSDs have suffered from firmware bugs. The company's first generation of drives suffered from fragmentation issues resulting in performance degradation over time. Intel issued a firmware upgrade as a fix."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:00 pm

Two views from the 2009 Google Faculty Summit

Source: The Official Google Blog | 3 Aug 2009 | 4:00 pm

Fancy parking meters hacked

Xeni over on the front door:

A group of tinkerers and security researchers announced findings that prove it is possible to bypass the controls of "e-meter" parking meters -- which means it's possible to park for free where such meters are in use. The group announced their findings last week at the 2009 Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:57 pm

"Smart Parking Meters" not as smart as the hackers who pwn them

A group of tinkerers and security researchers announced findings that prove it is possible to bypass the controls of "e-meter" parking meters -- which means it's possible to park for free where such meters are in use. The group announced their findings last week at the 2009 Black Hat Briefings in Las Vegas. Snip:

Throughout the United States, cities are deploying "smart" electronic fare collection infrastructures. In 2003, San Francisco launched a $35 million pilot program to replace approximately 23,000 mechanical parking meters with electronic units that boasted tamper resistance, payment via smart card, auditing capabilities, and an estimated $30 million annually in fare collection revenue. Other major cities, including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, and San Diego, have made similar moves. This presentation details our evaluation of electronic parking meters, including hardware disassembly, smart card protocol emulation, and silicon die analysis.

Slides and presentation: Smart Parking Meters: Grand Idea Studio.

News coverage: CBS, PC World, Venturebeat, internetnews, infoworld, CNET (thanks, Jake Appelbaum).


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:56 pm

Name that Netbook: What should Apple call its rumored tablet PC? - CNET News

Telegraph.co.uk

Name that Netbook: What should Apple call its rumored tablet PC? CNET News According to various rumors and reports, Apple's got a new slate-style Netbook in the works that may be announced as soon as next month. While we have no confirmation from Apple--or anybody else--that such a product really exists, ... Apple tablet spooks world of PCsRegister Apple Tablet Prototype In PlayInformationWeek Tablet Mac: a Kindle-killer for September ?The Digital NewsRoom PC World -ChannelWeb -Apple Insider all 91 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:34 pm

Twitter’s bad URL block not so good

Section: Computers, Security, Web, Web 2.0, Websites

Plagued with what seems like constant attacks from hackers and spammers, Twitter has finally put a feature in place that blocks malicious URLs.  However, the feature, which was introduced with little fanfare, is not exactly a rock solid defense.

When someone posts a link that is malicious, they get an immediate notification from Twitter which says “Oops! Your tweet contains an URL to a known malware site” and the post is deleted.  While the feature is a good first step, it also falls victim to a popular and necessary feature on Twitter-URL shortening.

Thanks to Twitter’s insistence that tweets be no more than 140 characters long, services like TinyURL and Bit.ly has flourished.  Unfortunately they also allow a hacker or spammer to easily get around the new block, which ignored malicious URLs that had been shortened using such services.  In another blunder, the block also ignores malicious URLs if the “www” has been removed.

These are very serious flaws which effectively render the new block more or less useless.  Almost no one on Twitter posts complete URLs, they use URL shortening services.  For such a block to be truly effective, Twitter is going to have to either find a way for it to block malicious URLs hidden behind shortened URLs or better yet, remove the 140 character limit so such services no longer have to be relied on.

Twitter has so far refused to comment on the issue.

Read [PCWorld]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:26 pm

Monster Hunter Tri on the way to the Wii in 2010

FROM GAMERTELL - Capcom has officially announced that it is releasing Monster Hunter Tri outside of Japan in 2010. The English version of the game will make it’s debut at GamesCon 2009.  No word yet if the classic controller or black Wii bundles will be worldwide releases.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:15 pm

Motorola Clutch now in “Graphite” on Boost Mobile

Lets face it: one look at the Motorola Clutch i465 is all it takes to know if it’s your thing or not. It’s not the prettiest handset on the block by anyone’s take, but it is the only one packing both iDEN (Push-to-talk) and a QWERTY keyboard. Its target audience was already fairly small; take everyone who wants a cell phone, then strip that down to those who want a push-to-talk phone. From that, cut it back to those who also want QWERTY. From that, slim things down to those looking to carry a red phone. As we said - it’s a pretty small group.

Boost has gone and widened the spectrum a little bit by adding a more neutral color: good ol’ black - or “Graphite”, as they call it. It’s about as simple as can be - but when you’re selling to a niche, that’s just how it should be.

The new hue is available today for $129.99, no contract necessary.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:08 pm

Blast Off With 10 Space-Rocking Astronaut Songs

Kick your ears into interstellar overdrive with Wired.com's sonic salute to spacefaring explorers.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:03 pm

Dog Domestication Likely Began in Africa

Dog domestication may have started in North Africa, not East Asia, according to a new study.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:01 pm

Malaria Jumped From Chimpanzees to Humans

Newly discovered strains of chimpanzee malaria suggest that the deadly human malaria parasite jumped from chimps to humans in the last 2 million years, instead of evolving along with humans as was thought.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Browser Market Share Claims Are Dubious (PC World)

PC World - Mozilla has announced that the Firefox Web browser has reached one billion downloads and some sources claim that Firefox has attained a solid 32 percent of the browser market. The methods used to calculate market share for web browsers though seems dubious and in some cases seem to betray a bias on the part of the organization gathering the statistics.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Aug 2009 | 2:54 pm

Network Neutrality Back In Congress For 3rd Time

suraj.sun writes "Ed Markey has introduced his plan to legislate network neutrality into a third consecutive Congress, and he has a message for ISPs: upgrade your infrastructure and don't even think about blocking or degrading traffic. The war over network neutrality has been fought in the last two Congresses, and last week's introduction of the 'Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2009' [PDF] means that legislators will duke it out a third time. Should the bill pass, Internet service providers will not be able to 'block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade' access to any lawful content from any lawful application or device. Rulemaking and enforcement of network neutrality would be given to the Federal Communications Commission, which would also be given the unenviable job of hashing out what constitutes 'reasonable network management' — something explicitly allowed by the bill. Neutrality would also not apply to the access and transfer of unlawful information, including 'theft of content,' so a mythical deep packet inspection device that could block illegal P2P transfers with 100 percent accuracy would still be allowed. If enacted, the bill would allow any US Internet user to file a neutrality complaint with the FCC and receive a ruling within 90 days."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Aug 2009 | 2:41 pm

White House 'Cyber Czar' Resigns; Let's Not Replace Her

The acting "cyber czar" just resigned, and there's no permanent replacement in sight. That's fine. We can make more progress on the network security front without this kind of interference.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Aug 2009 | 2:16 pm

Verizon cuts pricing of many smartphones to $99 with a 2 year contract

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones

Verizon has dropped all smartphone pricing to $99 with a few exceptions.  Prominent smartphones such as the HTC Touch Pro and the HTC Touch Diamond have also received price cuts and are now selling for $99 with a two year contract.  Maybe Verizon wants to give customers’ wallets a break, or they are trying to clear these devices to make way for the HTC Touch Pro 2 and the HTC Touch Diamond 2. 

The Samsung Omnia is also priced at $99, but the Samsung Saga and the BlackBerry Tour remain at their respective pricing - $199 for the Saga and $199 for the Tour.  However, the Storm is also at $99, which gives us good reason to believe the HTC Touch Pro 2, HTC Touch Diamond 2, and the BlackBerry Storm 2 should all be launching in the coming months.  It’s also possible that Verizon is looking to combat the price cut for the iPhone 3G, by dropping all smartphone prices.  Once the Samsung Saga and BlackBerry Tour become a little older, expect those prices to drop as well. 

Read [Verizon HTC Touch Diamond] Read [Verizon HTC Touch Pro]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 2:14 pm

Key Pirate Bay Cofounder Jumps Ship

Peter Sunde, known online as brokep, resigns from 5-year-old notorious BitTorrent tracker. Sunde's departure suggests that the proposed $7.7 million deal to sale The Pirate Bay is close.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Aug 2009 | 1:59 pm

BringIt.com Allows Players to Bet on Console Game Matches

eldavojohn writes to tell us of a new service, "BringIt.com," that allows gamers to put their money where their mouth is with respect to their console gaming skill. "BringIt supports the PlayStation 2, the PS3, the Xbox 360 and the Wii. Players challenge each other on the site, but play on their consoles. BringIt holds players' entry fees until the game is finished. After the game is done, it verifies the results and credits the winner, minus the service fee. To attract players of a broad range of skill sets, BringIt has separate tournaments meant for novice players and expert gamers. Levin compared it to the handicap system in golf or the weight-class system in wrestling.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Aug 2009 | 1:58 pm

First Ever Criminal Arrest For Domain Name Theft

Domain Name News writes "Until recently, there hasn't been a case of a domain theft where the thief was caught and arrested. However, on July 30th, Daniel Goncalves was arrested at his home in Union, New Jersey and charged in a landmark case, the first criminal arrest for domain name theft in the United States. 'Cases of domain name theft have not typically involved a criminal prosecution because of the complexities, financial restraints and sheer time and energy involved. If a domain name is stolen, the victim of the crime in most cases would need experience with the technical and legal intricacies associated with the domain name system. To move the case forward, they would also need a law enforcement professional who understands the case or is willing to take the time to learn. For example, the Angel's told us that in their case they called their local law enforcement in Florida who sent a uniformed officer in a squad car to their home. The first thing you can imagine the officer asked was, "What's a domain?"'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Aug 2009 | 1:11 pm

Gadgetell Review: Pogoplug

Section: Computers, Desktops, Gadgets / Other, Reviews

What is it?

The Pogoplug is an easy way to get your files from a USB hard drive on the Internet in under five minutes.  More technically, the Pogoplug is an easy to set up home server that uses a web interface to access your files available for $99.00.

The good

The device is incredibly simple in design and setup is a breeze.  The Pogoplug people even included an extension cable to power the device if you don’t want a wall wart on your surge protector.  All needed items are included in the box (except a hard drive).

There is no user manual.  Instead, follow the three step instructions that are printed in the box.  Setup is done via web browser.  Plug the Pogoplug into your network and it will be automatically detected as you run through the setup.  If it is not automatically detected, you can attempt to find the device using a long keycode. 

Hooking in a hard drive (or multiple hard drives via a USB hub) lets you have access to the drive’s contents.  Downloading an optional piece of free software from Pogoplug.com lets you use the hard drive attached to the Pogoplug as a local hard drive. 

Listening to audio or watching video is possible via the web interface thanks to a built-in flash player.  Files are also downladable and shareable.  If you want, you can set up a folder to have an RSS feed.  You share that RSS feed and people can get notified of your latest pictures or files uploaded to that folder.

An iPhone app also gives access to shared files.  The app also allows for mobile uploads to your Pogoplug enabled hard drive.

The bad

The built-in flash player does not support every video format.  Xvid files did not play as the player supports only FLV and H.264 MPEG-4 files.  However, if you know what an Xvid file is, you can probably get around this.  Additionally, the RSS feeds are not iTunes friendly, so you can’t use the Pogoplug as a quick and dirty server for a podcast just yet.  More functionality is coming to the RSS feed feature in the future.

The crux

If you want a drop-dead easy way to access your files on the Internet, the Pogoplug is hard to beat.  The web interface is powerful, yet simple.  The Pogoplug is easily worth the $99 price tag.

Product Page: [Pogoplug]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 1:04 pm

From the NASA Archive: Astronaut-Butt Molds

This odd 1959 photo of molded astronaut couches was fished out of the massive NASA archive for your enjoyment.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Aug 2009 | 12:55 pm

Analyst Claims to Have Seen Apple Tablet

To dispel any disbelief in Apple’s rumored tablet, an analyst claims to have seen a prototype of the gadget in person.

The analyst, who remains anonymous in the story, told financial publication Barron’s that Apple’s tablet could be introduced in September for a November release. The source shared no details on the specifications of the device. Other publications’ sources have described Apple’s rumored tablet as a 10-inch version of the iPod Touch with multimedia specialties.

“One veteran analyst who has seen first-hand a prototype slate-style computer from Apple says the device could be announced in September for release in November,” the story reads. “Whatever the exact dates, the computer industry is so anxious to see what Apple introduces that it has held off on competing designs until Apple CEO Steve Jobs gives the device his final blessing.”

We’re skeptical about the validity of this claim. First, we question if remaining anonymous would benefit this source, because we imagine Apple doesn’t show its secret products to many analysts; thus it’d be easy to narrow down the possibilities. Second, if the analyst is going to blabber anonymously anyway, why not share additional details of the product? The only reason such a source would come forward would be with the permission of Apple to perpetuate the hype surrounding the product — which seems unnecessary considering the flood of previous reports on this rumored device (see below).

In any case, with all the rumor reports added together, an Apple tablet seems inevitable in the near future. And Wired.com has also heard that in the next year, a large number of tech companies — including Dell, Intel, HTC and Nokia — plan to compete with their own tablet PCs, too.

See Also:

• Financial Times Confirms Apple Tablet for September
• Rumor: $800 Apple Tablet Coming in October
• How an Apple Tablet Could Pit iTunes Against Amazon.com
• Analyst Predicts Apple Will Unleash Touchscreen Tablet Next Year …
• Rumor: 10-Inch Apple Tablet Landing in Early 2010
• Large-Screen Kindle Won't Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives …
• Apple COO Reveals Plans for Touch Tablet — Kinda

A mocked-up illustration of an Apple tablet: Photo Giddy/Flickr

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 12:24 pm

Apple tablet exists, says analyst

FROM APPLETELL - According to a Barron’s report a “... slate-style computer from Apple,” retailing betwen $699 and $799, will launch in November and feature high-def video playback and gaming.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 12:15 pm

Apple bans App Store’s 3rd-most prolific developer

Over the past few weeks, Apple has been much-maligned for keeping apps such as Google Voice off the App Store. These weren’t some random garbage apps; there was no farting, or baby shaking. Google Voice apps are utilities which many have come to rely on, and thus many (including TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington) are none too happy with Apple’s blockade. But what if Apple deleted a completely useless app from the store? What about 900 useless apps - all from one developer? Apple has decided to test those waters: it has revoked the developer’s license of one of the App Store’s most prolific developers, Khalid Shaikh, founder of Perfect Acumen.

Khalid Shaikh has been making a killing off the App Store through questionable means. In less than 9 months, Khalid Shaikh and his 26-employee team (most of which are in Pakistan) have published 943 applications (thank you TapMetrics for validating these numbers). That’s roughly 5 apps a day, every day, for 250 days. All of these apps have gone through the entire Apple review process, sometimes taking as long as six weeks to get reviewed, and have been published on the App Store. Users have bought these apps in droves; Khalid has refused to give official numbers but we gather from his comments that it’s a few thousand dollars in sales per day. This business was making solid money until last Friday, July 24, when Khalid Shaikh was officially banned from the store. Without advance notice or forewarning of such an action, Apple revoked Khalid’s developer license and asked him to remove all of his apps from the store.

Whoa. Wait a second. Over the course of 9 months, Apple has accepted 900 applications submitted by Khalid Shaikh and his team of developers. Then, realizing their mistake months later, Apple tells Khalid he has to delete all of his apps? I’m not going to say that Khalid’s apps aren’t useless (more on that later), nor would I argue that they are providing any value to the App Store (they aren’t). Yet, there are obviously some major inconsistencies when Apple lets hundreds of applications through the App Store, all from one developer, and then suddenly revokes the developer’s license to do business altogether. Apple’s e-mail to Khalid, which is attached to the end of this article, cites copyright infringement and other intellectual property infringement on behalf of Khalid. It is a near-certainty that Khalid publishes material for which he does not have the rights: most of his apps simply re-package online content into an iPhone app on a specific subject. Yet, the fact still remains: Apple has accepted hundreds of these apps into the store; it is a bit misleading to allow these apps to come through and then turn around and cancel the license of the developer who made those apps.

Apple claims that it has asked Khalid about more than 100 of his applications and that it “continue[s] to receive the same or similar types of complaints regarding [his] Applications despite [Apple's] repeated notices to [Khalid Shaikh].” Clearly, Apple does not want to (nor should it have to) expend its resources trying to determine the legality of all of the applications on the store. Still, the fact that Apple continues to play mediator and reject applications on the basis of violating copyright infringement is a signal to developers that it is going to play watchdog on their apps. So even if there is nothing wrong with Apple discontinuing Khalid Shaikh’s developers license, this further highlights the inconsistencies of Apple’s review process.

As we mentioned, Khalid’s apps were of questionable value and quality. He has told us over the phone that he is not concerned about creating particularly valuable apps. Instead, he says, he’s going for “less product value” and “more monetization.” So, instead of developing one or two apps and charging $0.99, Khalid prefers to create hundreds of apps and charge $4.99. The vast majority of his apps simply provide topic-specific news on a given subject. Apps such as “US Army News” and “Skin Care Updates” cost $5, and aggregate articles from various internet sources. He has mastered SEO on the App Store, and uses the App Store’s search as a way to target users (or victims, depending on how you look at it). Many have questioned the value of the apps he produces, and there’s a small contingent of developers who are absolutely furious about his business. Rightfully so, it seems: a review of an app titled “WWE Updates” reveals that the user isn’t just getting updates of World Wrestling Entertainment; he’s also getting breaking news about Michael Jackson. Khalid says that he tests every app he submits to the store, but I can’t imagine that even a team of developers can submit 5 apps a day and sufficiently test each one.

Unfortunately, because all of his apps are off the App Store, you or I cannot see any of them on iTunes. Fortunately, there are websites that keep data from the App Store: a quick search on App Shopper shows a list of 854 of his applications. They include “Top Sexy Ladies: Audrina Patridge,” which (from what we gather; again, we cannot test these apps because they are not up anymore) is an app that takes 5 pictures of The Hills star from online and puts them on your phone. Yes, it costs $4.99. There are hundreds of others like this, including Top Sexy Men apps and various news update apps (ETFs Updates, iSoaperStarsUpdates, and Economical Crisis Updates). And Khalid Shaikh is not the only one littering the App Store. Brighthouse Labs has released over 2,000 apps on the store: each one for $0.99. They, too, seem to be quite successful (we’ve used number of ratings on some of their apps as a benchmark for sales), and are using similar tactics as Khalid Shaikh.

Both Khalid Shaikh and Brighthouse Labs seem to be running a pretty sketchy business. I simply can’t find a website for Brighthouse Labs. And if you search Khalid Shaikh’s name on Google, it is unlikely that you’ll figure out which result is his company, Perfect Acumen. That’s because it doesn’t mention anywhere on his website that the iPhone apps made by “Khalid Shaikh” are in fact related to Perfect Acumen. Furthermore, the website claims that Perfect Acumen has Apple, AT&T, Microsoft, Motorola, Intel and HP as clients. When I asked him about it, he said that “the website isn’t focused on the iPhone company. Those are companies we’ve done services with in the past, but it has nothing to do with the current iPhone company.” That’s all well and good; however, he’s got 26 engineers and all of his apps are supposed to be made by Perfect Acumen, yet his website doesn’t reflect the same company. The problem here is not that Khalid Shaikh doesn’t have a proper website. It’s that when you put out 900+ applications, many of which have bugs, then it should be easy for a user to e-mail you and ask for support on your apps. To top it off, when you e-mail the only contact information on the site, you get an auto-generated e-mail from Perfect Acumen HR about a job at their New Delhi, India, office (see the full e-mail below).

This story highlights dozens of problems with the App Store review process and developing for the App Store. Clearly, Apple doesn’t know what the hell it’s doing. It inconsistently applies its rules and regulations: allowing companies such as Brighthouse Labs (which has the most apps on the App Store) to grow to 2,000 applications that seem to have similar copyright issues as Khalid Shaikh’s 900 apps. Not to mention the fact that it at first accepted Khalid Shaikh’s 900 apps, and then later pulled them all from the store. In addition, it is clear that developers that spam the store with hundreds of apps can win, much to the chagrin of those who toil for months just to get one app out. Finally, there is also an incomplete customer feedback system; developers can put out hundreds of applications on Apple’s store, and yet never have to have a website or an e-mail address for customers to use to troubleshoot.

Now, we open these issues up to you, oh wonderful commenters: what do you think about Khalid Shaikh? About the Apple Review process? About the various developers who spam the App Store?

Apple’s e-mail to Khalid:

From:
Date: Fri, Jul 24, 2009 at 4:45 PM
Subject: Notice of Termination
To: XXXXXXXXX@gmail.com

Please include the line below in follow-up emails for this request.
Follow-up: 79376777

July 24, 2009

Khalid Shaikh
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
XXXXXXXXX, California 9XXXX

Dear Mr. Shaikh:

This letter serves as notice of termination of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement (the “iDP Agreement”) and the Registered iPhone Developer Agreement (the “Registered Developer Agreement”) between you and Apple, effective immediately.

Pursuant to Section 3.2(d) of the iDP Agreement, you agreed that “to the best of Your knowledge and belief, Your Application and Licensed Application Information do not and will not violate, misappropriate, or infringe any Apple or third party copyrights, trademarks, rights of privacy and publicity, trade secrets, patents, or other proprietary or legal rights (e.g. musical composition or performance rights, video rights, photography or image rights, logo rights, third party data rights, etc. for content and materials that may be included in Your Application).” Apple has informed you of numerous third party intellectual property complaints concerning over 100 of your Applications and reminded you of your obligations to obtain the necessary rights prior to submission of your Applications. Nevertheless, we continue to receive the same or similar types of complaints regarding your Applications despite our repeated notices to you. The persistent nature of such complaints has led us to conclude that you are entering into the representations and warranties in the iDP Agreement in bad faith by misrepresenting that you have all the necessary rights for your submissions.

As required by Section 12.3 of the iDP Agreement and Section 8 of the Registered Developer Agreement, please erase and destroy all copies, full or partial, of the Apple Software and any information pertaining to the services and all copies of Apple Confidential Information in your and your Authorized Developers’ possession or control. After you have completed those steps, please provide certification of that destruction to Apple, as provided in Section 12.3 and Section 8. Finally, please note your additional obligations on termination as set forth in those same sections. This letter is not intended as a complete statement of fact with respect to the subject matter hereof, and nothing in this letter should be construed as a waiver of any rights or remedies Apple may have in connection with this matter, all of which are expressly reserved.

Sincerely,

Worldwide Developer Relations (WWDR)
Apple Inc.

Auto-generated e-mail from Perfect Acumen:

Dear Candidate,

Thank you for applying to Perfect Acumen Inc.

We develop iPhone applications exclusively using Objective-C and the
Mac. We have a strict work schedule of 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

Please read the first two chapters of ObjC.pdf before you can process
to the next stage of this interview process.

You should review a PDF we will send before interviewing on-site.
http://www.perfectacumen.com/welcome/india

Please review “ObjC.pdf” & “iPhone in Action.pdf”

Our offices are in New Delhi, India.

Please confirm once you have read the 2 chapters that you are ready
for the interview.

Best,
Sanchay

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 11:51 am

3jam: Google Voice like service with a lot less Google

Section: Communications, VoIP, Web, Web Apps

Sure, you may want to check out Google Voice, but are still missing the one item that is key at this point—an invitation.  Having to wait happens to the best of us, but there is another Google Voice like service available, and it is one that does not require you to have been invited.  Sure it may not be carrying the same cool factor that comes along with getting early access to a Google service, but it does have many of the same features.

The service is called 3jam and it promises to “free your phone number.”  Of course what it actually offers is similar to what Google is offering with Voice.  Here are some of the key features that you can expect with 3jam;

• One number to reach you anywhere
• The ability to route calls to Skype/IM and save
• Receive and respond to SMS by email
• Voicemail with transcription

Additionally, 3jam currently allows you to port your existing number over to their service, however on the flip side, 3jam does not have the same call filtering features that seem to make Google Voice special.

With all of that, there is one difference that may keep you waiting for a Google Voice invitation, 3jam is not a free service, instead pricing begins at $4.99 a month and goes up depending on your service options.

Read [3jam]  Via [Lifehacker]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 11:06 am

Personal Supercomputers Promise Teraflops on Your Desk

About a year ago John Stone, a senior research programmer at the University of Illinois, and his colleagues found a way to bypass the long waits for computer time at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications.

Stone’s team got “personal supercomputers,” compact machines with a stack of graphics processors that together pack quite a punch and can be used to run complex simulations.

“Now instead of taking a couple of days and waiting in a queue, we can do the calculations locally,” says Stone. “We can do more and better science.”

Personal supercomputers are available in many flavors, both as clusters of CPU and graphics processing units (GPUs). But it is GPU computing that is gaining in popularity for its ability to offer researchers easy and quick access to raw computing power. That’s opening up a new market for makers of GPUs, such as Nvidia and AMD, which have traditionally focused on high-end video cards for gamers and graphics pros.

True supercomputers, the rock stars of computing, are capable of millions of calculations per second. But they can be extremely expensive — the fastest supercomputer of 2008, IBM’s RoadRunner, costs $120 million — and access to them is limited. That’s why smaller versions, no bigger than a typical desktop PC, are becoming a hit among researchers who want access to massive processing power along with the convenience of having a machine at their own desk.

“Personal supercomputers that can run off a 110 volt wall circuit allow for a significant amount of performance at a very reasonable price,” says John Fruehe, director of business development for serve and workstation at AMD. Companies such as Nvidia and AMD make the graphics chips that personal supercomputer resellers assemble into personalized configurations for customers like Stone.

Demand for these personal supercomputers grew at an average of 20 percent every year between 2003 and 2008, says research firm IDC. Since Nvidia introduced its Tesla personal supercomputer less than a year ago, the company has sold more than 5,000 machines.

“Earlier when people talked about supercomputers, they meant giant Crays and IBMs,” says Jie Wu, research manager for technical computing at IDC. “Now it is more about having smaller clusters.”

Today, most U.S. researchers at universities who need access to a supercomputer have to submit a proposal to the National Science Foundation, which funds a number of supercomputer centers. If the proposal is approved, the researcher gets access to an account for a certain number of CPU hours at one of the major supercomputing centers at the universities of San Diego, Illinois or Pittsburgh, among others.

“Its like waiting in line at the post office to send a message,” says Stone. “Now you would rather send a text message from your computer rather than wait in line at the post office to do it. That way it is much more time efficient.”

Personal supercomputers may not be as powerful as the mighty mainframes, but they are still leagues above their desktop cousins. For instance, a four-GPU Tesla personal supercomputer from Nvidia can offer 4 teraflops of parallel supercomputing performance with 960 cores and two Intel Xeon 5500 Series Nehalem processors. That’s just a fraction of the IBM RoadRunner’s 1 petaflop speed, but it’s enough for most researchers to get the job done.

For researchers, this means the ability to run calculations faster than they can with a traditional desktop PC. “Sometimes researchers have to wait for six to eight hours before they can have the results from their tests,” says Sumit Gupta, senior product manager at Nvidia. “Now the wait time for some has come down to about 20 minutes.”

It also means that research projects that typically would have never get off the ground because they are deemed too costly and too resource and time intensive now get the green light. “The cost of making a mistake is much lower and a lot less intimidating,” says Stone.

The shift away from large supercomputers to smaller versions has also made research more cost effective for organizations. Stone, who works in a group that develops software used by scientists to simulate and visualize biomolecular structures, says his lab has 19 personal supercomputers shared by 30 researchers. “If we had what we wanted, we would run everything locally because it is better,” says Stone. “But the science we do is more powerful than what we can afford.”

The personal supercomputing idea has also gained momentum thanks to the emergence of programming languages designed especially for GPU-based machines. Nvidia has been trying to educate programmers and build support for CUDA, the C language programming environment created specifically for parallel programming the company’s GPUs. Meanwhile, AMD has declared its support for OpenCL (open computing language) this year. OpenCL is an industry standard programming language. Nvidia says it also works with developers to support OpenCL.

Stone says the rise of programming environments for high performance machines have certainly made them more popular. And while portable powerhouses can do a lot, there is still place for the large mainframe supercomputers. “There are still the big tasks for which we need access to the larger supercomputers,” says Stone. “But it doesn’t have to be for every thing.”

Photo: John Stone sits next to a personal supercomputer- a quad-core Linux PC with 8GB of memory and 3 GPUs (one NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800, and two NVIDIA Tesla C1060) each with 4GB of GPU memory/ Kirby Vandivort

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 11:00 am

Advisor: Don't let social networking ruin your social skills

The head of England's Roman Catholic Church is worried that social networking is costing people &mdash especially teenagers &mdash their social skills. Is he right?

In an article published yesterday in the UK's Telegraph, Archbishop Vincent Nichols, the man in charge at the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, blamed the Internet for causing things like bad community relations, shoddy friendships, and child suicides. "Too much exclusive use of electronic information dehumanizes what is a very, very important part of community life and living together," he said. And then: "Among young people often a key factor in them committing suicide is the trauma of transient relationships.They throw themselves into a friendship or network of friendships, then it collapses and they're desolate." He was speaking in response to a recent incident in which 15-year old girl killed herself after a bout of bullying on Bebo.

I get where he's coming from, kinda. There is something deeply impersonal about the way information is relayed on social networks. In the past year, I've found out about half a dozen engagements, four weddings, two divorces, two deaths, and scores of newborn babies via Facebook updates. When I want to know what my friends are up to, I check their Twitter feed. Twitter is also where most intelligent daytime discussions take place &mdash why bother meeting someone for coffee to discuss current affairs when you can do the same with two hundred people at once on Tweetdeck? I don't remember any phone numbers anymore, let alone addresses or birthdays &mdash Facebook has all those answers, too. Maybe the Internet really is making me socially retarded. It must be even worse for kids who are growing up now and have never known an analog era.

I understand the Archbishop's concern, although I do think he's overreacting, especially with the transient relationships stuff. Relationships are transient everywhere, not just online &mdash in fact, hating and un-friending can be just as hurtful, if not more so, when they take place in the real world.

By the way, it appears &mdash although I haven't been able to verify whether this is his actual account &mdash that the Archbishop himself is on Facebook. So is the Roman Catholic Church. So if you want to ask him what he meant by "transient relationships," you could just send him a direct message. Or we can discuss it here in our very social online forum. Even better, grab a colleague or two, invite them out for a drink, and have a face-to-face conversation about it.

Advisor is a new weekly column about how to juggle technology, relationships, and common sense. Got a story to tell? Email it to mango [at] tokyomango [dot] com.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 11:00 am

Personal Supercomputers Promise Teraflops on Your Desk

Personal supercomputers that lash together a stack of graphics processing units and can sit on a desktop are becoming popular with researchers. These machines can be used to run calculations by the desk instead of waiting for time on one of the national supercomputers.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Aug 2009 | 11:00 am

Personal Supercomputers Promise Teraflops on Your Desk

Personal supercomputers that lash together a stack of graphics processing units and can sit on a desktop are becoming popular with researchers. These machines can be used to run calculations by the desk instead of waiting for time on one of the national supercomputers.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 11:00 am

Bacon and Egg iPhone case: If cute things raised cholesterol, we’d be doomed

If I know our readers, most of you are probably wondering two things: “Why the hell would someone make an iPhone case that looks like bacon and eggs?”, and “Why the hell would MobileCrunch post about this?”.

Two questions, one answer: “Because they can.”

Actually, the main reason we’re posting about this is because its inching closer to lunch time and we haven’t even had our first meal yet. At this point, I would eat this iPhone case. Also, we’re posting it because its cute as all hell and MobileCrunch lacks cute, but we’re not quite ready to start posting daily kitten pictures yet.

It’s handmade, so it’ll set you back a rather painful $35 bucks.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 10:58 am

One part NES. One part iPhone. All parts awesome.

Ol’ Nintendo probably isn’t going to be too excited about having their controller’s likeness and console’s name audaciously sprinkled throughout some random iPhone app, but then they’ll hear the sweet siren song pumping from the speaker and forget all about it.

Take various NES chiptune effects, and jam them into an iPhone app. Skin’em up with various synthesizer interfaces and, for good measure, an NES controller. Shake, then chill. The result? NESynth. When Japanese developers Newforestar needed someone to give NESynth a runthrough, they went to Renaissance Geek (as in well-rounded, not as in the faire) Denki. The result is glorious — and tucked right after the jump.

NESynth is not yet available, but should be up on the app store here by the end of the week.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 10:39 am

FCC wants to talk to Apple about Google Voice app

FROM APPLETELL - Apple has remained quiet about the whole Google Voice fiasco, but I have a feeling they won’t be able to ignore the FCC.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 10:29 am

Plague Strikes Again; China Seals Town

A pneumonic plague outbreak has Chinese health authorities on high alert.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 3 Aug 2009 | 10:15 am

Giant Star Boils, Releasing Matter Into Space

Giant gas bubbles spotted on a supergiant star's surface reveal it's boiling.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 3 Aug 2009 | 10:05 am

Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet

After years of enticing rumors, ambitious prognostications and flat-out blather, 2010 may finally be the year that the tablet PC evolves from being a niche device to becoming a mainstream portable computer.

The tipping point comes via word to Wired.com from a well-connected industry executive that mainstream heavyweights Dell and Intel are collaborating on a touchscreen tablet due for release next year. Though our source has learned little about specifications of the device, what’s apparent is that the tablet will serve as a subscription-based e-reader for displaying newspapers, magazines and other media, giving Amazon’s Kindle — particularly, the nearly $500 large-format DX model — a run for its money.

As notable as the format is the business model: The tablet will be free for consumers who opt into a contract subscribing to one or more digital media subscriptions, according to our source. That’s similar to how telecom companies currently subsidize cellphones when customers agree to two-year contracts.

Our source, who requested to remain anonymous due to a non-disclosure agreement, said the companies are aiming to launch this product in about six months.

Dell and Intel are just the latest examples of a growing trend. MKM Partners analyst Tero Kuittinen said he, too, has heard rumors about not just Dell, but also handset makers Nokia and HTC delivering tablets by end of first quarter 2010. Nearly everyone has now confidently reported that Apple is launching a tablet by early next year. Singapore start-up Fusion Garage and TechCrunch are rushing to release the CrunchPad touchscreen tablet by this November.

Market research firm Display Search now projects the touchscreen market will triple in the next few years, from $3.6 billion to $9 billion.

“The iPhone was a big catalyst for the whole touchscreen industry, even if it’s just from a 3.5-inch mobile phone,” said Jennifer Halgrove, an analyst and director of display technologies with Display Search. “It encouraged people’s imaginations, and now companies are saying, ‘Oh, I can make a bigger one, and I can also have this user friendly interface.’ That really opened this industry.”

The idea of the tablet computer is nothing new to the tech industry. The development of tablet PCs can be traced as far back as 1888, when the United States Patent office granted a patent to electrical engineer Elisha Gray for an electrical-stylus device for capturing handwriting. In more recent years, plenty of hardware companies, such as Hewlett-Packard and Acer, have presented tablets that have only succeeded to fulfill a niche. Controlled with a stylus on a touch-sensitive “digitizer” screen, tablet PCs have traditionally been tailored toward artists and designers, failing to break into the mainstream.

But in recent years, costs of touchscreen components and software have been declining, and new types of touchscreens are emerging in the display market, Colegrove said. After stylus-controlled digitizer touchscreens came resistive touchscreens, which were very cheap to produce but suffered from low durability and poor transmittance. Then, a newer technology called capacitive touch became available, in which electrodes sense a user’s fingers on the X and Y axes, negating the need for a stylus.

In 2007, Apple featured capacitive touch technology (which it marketed with the more friendly term “multitouch”) in its iPhone and iPod Touch, which have sold 40 million units worldwide to date. Clearly, there is a mainstream audience for these keyboard-less computers, and Apple opened the doors with a superior user interface.

“The touch-based user interface is something we got from the handset market,” Kuittinen said. “And now that you have this innovation, it’s easier to go back to the tablet concept, and say, ‘Wait a minute, let’s add this.’ All of a sudden the device is a lot more appealing and sexier, especially since you have multitouch.”

A $0.00, media-centric tablet from Dell and Intel would certainly be competitive against Amazon’s Kindle in terms of price. Who would buy an Amazon Kindle reader if a free tablet were made available? The Kindle 2 costs $300, and the large-format Kindle DX runs for $490 — and even after purchasing a Kindle, consumers must still pay for content.

At Amazon’s Kindle DX launch event in May, The New York Times teased the idea of subsidizing longer term subscription commitments, but only in areas where “home delivery is not available.” Still, no such subsidy model has yet come into fruition for Amazon’s Kindles.

The idea of opting into a contract might initially sound like a turn-off, but Kuittinen told Wired.com that for cellphones, carrier-subsidy has been an extremely successful method to reel in customers. He said he would expect similar results with a subsidized tablet.

Kuittinen added that he has heard the Dell tablet would measure 5 inches — slightly larger than an iPhone but smaller than a Kindle. However, he said he is skeptical about Intel’s involvement with the product. Given the nature of the company, Intel would provide the guts of the device — perhaps a low-powered processor such as the Atom, which is currently used in netbooks. Kuittinen said this processor is not adequately energy-efficient to power a tablet PC compared to the ARM-based chips used in iPhones and devices running Google Android.

“There’s really no other viable alternative,” he said. “Android has such a strong moment right now. It’s going to be so much easier to develop for it.”

The low cost of Intel’s Atom chips would help keep the a rumored device’s overall price down in order to make subsidy not too hefty for content providers involved. But the software would be the key ingredient to drive the success for this device, and an Intel-based machine would either have to run a Windows or Linux-based operating system.

A tablet produced by Dell and Intel would most likely run a mobile version of Windows 7. In presentations marketing Windows 7, Microsoft has been heavily promoting the upcoming operating system’s support for multitouch. Windows 7 is slated for an October 2009 release.

The challenge for Dell and Intel is unlikely to be the creation of the product, but rather cementing negotiations with content partners. The companies will find it difficult convincing large newspaper companies to convert from being an advertisement-based business to a fee-based business. However, they might be more open to the idea if Dell and Intel keep their tablet at a low cost.

Intel and Dell declined to comment on this story.

See Also:

• Analyst Predicts Apple Will Unleash Touchscreen Tablet Next Year
  
• Rumor: $800 Apple Tablet Coming in October
• Financial Times Confirms Apple Tablet for September
• How an Apple Tablet Could Pit iTunes Against Amazon.com
• Large-Screen Kindle Won’t Mean Squat if Apple Tablet Arrives
  
• Rumor: 10-Inch Apple Tablet Landing in Early 2010
• Rumor: Mac Tablet Coming Fall 2009

A MacBook modified into a tablet:  Jim Merithew/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 9:38 am

Review: Klipsch's Image X5s headphones

Klipsch's Image X5s came to me almost by accident: at the tail end of my research, I happened across a mention of the Image S4 model in Entertainment Weekly, of all places. After talking to the company, it sent the Image X5 noise isolating model. Klipsch is well known for its stereo speakers, and I was curious to see if Klipsch headphones would be of similar quality.

Fast answer: yes. The Image X5s sound consistently great, in a variety of settings and across a variety of music. High and low notes are equally strong, with nice separation of tones and clear details at low volumes. That's a crucial test for noise-isolating headphones: many of the models being reviewed sound much different, and better, with the volume cranked. The Image X5s provide consistent audio quality regardless of volume level.

At $249 suggested retail, the Image X5s are more pricey than the first few headphones we've tested, but they compete in audio quality with the Etymotic's hf2 model. Klipsch's offering is clean and crisp across the audio spectrum. It's not quite as pure as the hf2s, which puts every detail in striking repose. But unlike the hf2, the Image X5s give rock and pop music the vibrancy and depth most listeners expect. Bass notes are more pronounced and drums have more resonance.

The Image X5's only drawback is its minimal noise isolation. They come with a bunch of comfortable white silicone cushions, some with double flanges, but the material doesn't do much muting. On an airplane, the X5s were almost impossible to hear at low levels, and white noise was not drowned out.

But I like these X5s, so I did a little hacking--I took an old pair of Shure foam ear cushions and wrangled them onto the bases of the Image X5s. The process was a bit kludgy, but the end result worked. I wound up with more or less the same audio quality, and added to it the better noise isolation of foam earbuds. When set up like this they were even usable on the plane. (I don't recommend this, but the test did confirm that the shortcoming lies mainly in the material.)

These Klipsch headphones come five pairs of silicone ear cushions. Their case is a small, hard box, covered in leather and felt with a magnetic flap, for which I have an irrational appreciation.

I'm trying to figure out a way to get better across-the-board sound isolation for the Image X5s. When in quiet settings--at work, at home, on the beach--they're uniformly excellent headphones. My personal quest for the perfect product continues, but not without a hearty endorsement for the sound quality and enjoyment of Klipsch's Image X5s.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 9:35 am

Britain To Put CCTV Cameras Inside Private Homes

As an ex-Brit, I’m well aware of the authorities’ love of surveillance and snooping, but even I, a pessimistic cynic, am amazed by the governments latest plan: to install Orwell’s telescreens in 20,000 homes.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 9:33 am

With Tenenbaum Facing $675000 Judgment, Who's Next? - ChannelWeb

guardian.co.uk

With Tenenbaum Facing $675000 Judgment, Who's Next? ChannelWeb With Joel Tenenbaum having lost his copyright infringement case and fined $675000 for illegally downloading music from the Internet, the question is, who's next? A spokeswoman for the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), which has been ... Joel Tenenbaum joins the I-Owe-the-RIAA-My-Firstborn clubLos Angeles Times Boston student fined thousands for NapsteringRegister Jury Orders File-Swapper to Pay Record Labels $675000Digital Media Wire WHDH-TV -Inquirer -Yahoo! Tech all 92 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 3 Aug 2009 | 9:22 am

Recently on Offworld: a double dose of Indie Spirit, glitched-out planetscapes, brave invaders

Recently on Offworld we saw heartening tales of Indie Spirit leading to two cross-promotional cross-overs: Crackerblocks' Enviro-bear -- ursine motorist star of the indie PC favorite and recently-launched iPhone port of the same name -- coming as an unlockable character to Mountain Sheep's just-launched iPhone shooter Minigore (above), and bunny battleships coming to Positech's Gratuitous Space Battles to help promote Wolfire's leporine/lupine battler Overgrowth.

We also saw the first footage of an entirely new game from Knytt and Night Game creator Nifflas -- the fantastically ambient and atmospheric platformer project title Q -- and it's every bit as gorgeous as his earlier games above.

Elsewhere, we got the latest update on homegrown voxel-deforming puzzler Flipper as it makes its way to DSiWare, purchased one ticket to mouth-foaming seizures and glitched-out landscapes in a video for chiptune artists Chromelodeon, saw papercraft artist Harlancore do an 8-bit console Speakerdog, and read an interview with the founder of abandonware repository Home of the Underdogs, who, as it turns out, is Harvard alum and investment bank exec Sarinee Achavanuntakul.

Finally, our one shot's for the day: making love, not Wor, and the tale of the bravest invader.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 9:13 am

Gaming on the Throne: Review of Ten Pin Championship Bowling for iPhone

Of course, nothing can really ever compare to the two bowling extravaganzas forever etched into my memory. These would be Shawnee Lanes and the inconceivably named Mr. Bill’s Bowling Center. Edificial landmarks that stain the Midwestern memory of my youth. I was no bowling champion. I was no bowler at all really. In fact, I don’t even like bowling. So when I was asked to review Skyworks Interactive’s Ten Pin Championship Bowling for iPhone/iPod Touch as part of my Gaming on the Throne series, the only real alley experiences I had to lean on were foot fungus fears from borrowed bowling shoes, dusty hand dryers and a bout of food poisoning. That’s not a happy place to start thinking of descriptors for a review yet “Ten Pin” brought me new light and actually made me want to brave the bowling underground again (from the safe distance of my couch). Such was their little game; the Pip to my Miss Havisham, the Winston Smith to my O’Brien, the Roy Munson to my Ernie McCraken… you get where I’m going with the histrionics? Ten Pin Championship Bowling is a great game! This is no surprise, considering that the braintrust behind Skyworks is David Crane—a gaming industry vet with old-school cred and some decidedly new ideas and leadership.

I’ve examined two other Skyworks games and I have to say, they really make it easy on you when it comes time to write the review. Their work is elegant and this is a testament to their staff and organized approach. OK, enough horn tooting already—let’s get off the can and get on with the review.

Synopsis
Straight from the Skyworks website:

“Ten Pin” combines incredible graphics and ball physics with awesome sound-design and camera work to capture the local-color and action of America’s Bowling Alleys. It features 2 uniquely styled alleys each with Trophy Rooms to track your stats. Accelerometer controls let you curve the ball as it speeds down the lane. Play with up to 4 players with a variety of ball colors and weights.

Um, not to cop-out on this review, but that description pretty much sums up the game accurately. I feel there is mostly no boasting on Skyworks’ part because the game delivers in subtlety, charm and premium features. As far as capturing “the local-color and action of America’s Bowling Alleys”…well, I’m not sure any iPhone app alone is capable of prehending that mystique. Playing a video game about bowling is just not the same as being at Shawnee Lanes or Mr. Bill’s. Perhaps when NTT COM perfects their mobile “smell-o-nator” or whatever it’s called the dream of the authentic proxy bowling experience can come to fruition. I am not sure I want it to though and I won’t be holding my breath—or will I? In any event, this game is a damn good study of the sounds, environments and action going on at your local bowl-o-rama.

The Good
The accelerometer implementation in “Ten Pin” is outstanding. The sensitivity is just right for curving the ball’s path to the pins. This lets you quickly make up for any goofs in your initial hurl of the ball that, incidentally, you initiate by flicking your finger on the touch-pad. Now you REALLY CAN affect the ball trajectory AFTER you throw it (instead of standing there waving your arms like an idiot trying to telekineticly alter the outcome of pitching one down the gutter). Also the pin movements upon impact are realistic and feel right. Clearly, a nice study of motion went into their development.
The graphics are top-notch too and it’s this kind of attention to detail that sets the game above others. While playing, you will eventually notice little things like the reflection of the pins and signage on the wooden lanes, beveling on the scoreboards and flickering neon signs. It adds to the experience. The sound design is superb right down to the alley’s intercom announcing “Tina, your chicken wings are ready” with the slight, intentional microphone feedback you would expect.

There are other advanced features like the Trophy Room for your high scores and a networked global scoreboard for competing against other players out there. This is premium stuff for a ninety-nine cent game my friends! Bravo Skyworks!

The Bad
I did have a few performance problems while playing. It crashed once during the initial loading sequence and there were a few stutters here and there during the action. It really wasn’t enough to be distracting though. I tested “Ten Pin” on an iPhone 3G running OS 3.0 and honestly I have noticed problems with many apps since I upgraded the OS. I am guessing those very few and seemingly temporary hiccups I experienced were related to my phone and not the game.

The Bottom Line
Ten Pin Championship Bowling is premium gaming for less than a dollar. It’s worth all 99 pennies and then some. Go get it!

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 9:12 am

"Going Google" with Google Apps

Every morning, millions of people wake up to a very refreshing experience at work. They don't see "mailbox is full" errors in their email. They don't worry about backing up their data. They can get to any file they need from any computer, anywhere with Internet access and a browser. They can all access and edit the same documents and spreadsheets at the same time as their colleagues. They use Gmail and Google Calendar at work as fluidly and easily as they use their personal Gmail accounts. They video, voice and text chat with their peers globally as naturally as they send email.

The IT people at these companies and organizations don't waste time or money buying, installing or managing email servers. They focus on the smart, innovative stuff they want to work on, because they never have to bother with expensive and painful software upgrades, hardware compatibility issues or managing data centers. They have left many IT frustrations and costs behind and moved on to something better.

Here at Google, we have a term for the moment a company realizes there's a better way and goes for it: "going Google." Over 1.75 million businesses, schools and organizations have gone Google — including Motorola, University of Notre Dame, the Mercy Corps and many more — and each day, 3,000 more organizations join them. We want every organization to understand the benefits of going Google, so today we're telling the story in a new way. We're kicking off a series of outdoor billboards in four cities — Boston, Chicago, New York and San Francisco — that will change every weekday for the next four weeks. The billboards tell the story of an anonymous IT manager who gets so fed up with the typical IT status quo that his company eventually — you guessed it — goes Google. Here's a preview:



Visit www.google.com/appsatwork to get more information about the benefits of going Google. Already gone Google? Tweet your story and check out our tools to help spread the word.

Posted by Andy Berndt, Managing Director, Google Creative Lab
Source: The Official Google Blog | 3 Aug 2009 | 9:11 am

Marijuana Proven to Affect Memory

Memory loss is often linked to cannabis use, but researchers have just discovered why it happens.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 3 Aug 2009 | 9:00 am

Verizon Wireless slashes most smartphone prices to $99

Huzzah! Verizon knows what’s up. The prices of its smartphones have been slashed, cut, and discounted down to iPhone 3G levels. Every single smartphone - expect for the new BlackBerry Tour and Samsung Saga - can be had for $99 or less on-contract. This means that the HTC Touch Diamond, HTC Touch Pro, and Samsung Omnia are now only $99 straight up. It’s like Verizon is talking right to those feed up with AT&T’s shenanigans.

There was one question that constantly popped up after Apple dropped the price of the iPhone 3G down to $99: Why would anyone buy a different phone? The answer of course has to do with the monthly service plan and that AT&T is notoriously a terrible wireless provider, but the question is sort of valid. The iPhone 3G is a heck of a phone for $99.

Before this price cut, the iPhone 3G ruled the $99 price point and it may still, but at least it now has competition. Both of the HTC smartphones from VZW are solid Winmo devices. The Samsung Omnia has a killer display and a 5.0MP camera. To be honest, the BlackBerry Storm isn’t half bad after the latest update. (I use one daily)

Hopefully the $99 price point isn’t just for these somewhat older phones and VZW introduces new smartphones at the same price.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:53 am

Time lapse: Public helps build massive Lego light bulb

Amazing--some dedicated Lego fields built an enormous light bulb over the course of a day--and the public helped out! LEGO sent over time-lapse footage of the work in progress:

In honor of National Inventors' Month, LEGO Systems Inc. launches its LEGO® CLICK! Awards, an essay contest for children ages 6 to 13. In addition, the Smithsonian Institution's Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation and LEGO Systems Inc. hosted families for a two-day collaborative build of the world's largest light bulb - the universal symbol of a big idea - made entirely of LEGO bricks on August 1 and 2 at the National Museum of American History.

The 8-foot-tall light bulb was assembled by museum visitors with the help of LEGO Master Builders. Additionally, the museum's hands-on invention space, Spark!Lab, hosted special interactive, construction play-themed activities for children where they are able to "patent" their creations. All of the programs reinforced the connection between play and invention explored in the museum's "Invention at Play" exhibition and celebrate the philosophy that anyone can have a big idea and then can bring it to life.

Check out the awards' page here: Lego CLICK.

Previously: Blade Runner LEGO Spinner Car Syd Mead w Joel Johnson
Welcome to LEGO, these are your business cards
Frank Lloyd Wright's Fallinglego
Boing Boing Gadgets Lego archive

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:52 am

BLOG: Shark Teeth Rip Open Climate Mysteries

A direct link between shark teeth and ocean temperatures is found.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:35 am

Google CEO Eric Schmidt leaves Apple’s Board of Directors

Section: Business News, Apple, Web, Google

In a completely unexpected move, today (August 3, 2009), Google CEO Eric Schmidt has decided to leave the Apple Board of Directors he’s been a part of since April 2009.  While Google and Apple have seemed to look at the technology world from almost to completely different viewpoints, it seemed that Schmidt would remain on the Apple board for the foreseeable future.

It’s been known that Schmidt would remove himself from talks on the board when the conversation turned to something in which the two companies competes.  For a while, that was limited only to talks of the iPhone.  Recently, however, Schmidt has also had to remove himself from conversations about the Mac OS thanks to the recently announced Chrome OS.  As Apple CEO Steve Jobs says in the press release, “Eric’s effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest.”

What’s not mentioned is the recent Google Voice/iPhone debacle.  It wouldn’t be surprising if Schmidt was upset about the app being rejected.  It would be even less surprising if Jobs grew to be infuriated when the FCC decided to step into the situation.  Schmidt probably wouldn’t have full sway to get the app put into the App Store, but one could assume he probably would have tried.

Also not mentioned is how this will affect the relations between Apple and Google.  Apple integrates Google service such as Maps and YouTube into both the iPhone and parts of its main OS, including iLife and iWork.  There is a small chance that those partnerships might be a bit strained going forward.  Apple wouldn’t (or at least shouldn’t) take those features out of future releases, but this situation casts a a shadow over possible future integrations.  Those integrations will always be available in Android, and presumably Chrome OS, however.

Read [Apple]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:30 am

Cycle Law: Should Bikes Be Treated Like Cars?

One of the beauties of bike riding is the freedom. You buy one, or find one, and just jump on. There are no taxes, no fuel to buy and almost anything that goes wrong can be fixed by the rider. They’re also cheap enough that anyone can own one.

But should bikes be treated more like cars? Further, is it even possible to do so? Bike riding seems to be getting more and more popular, a result of green concerns, money concerns and the attentions of politicians. London Mayor Boris Johnson plans to spend £111 million on cycling infrastructure in the capital in the coming year. It might not surprise you to learn that Johnson is a keen cyclist.

So as the use of bikes explodes, and bike-sharing schemes in many European cities bloom, are we heading for a changes in the law?

Taxes

One way to pay for bike lanes is to levy a tax. This could be on sales, or something like the vehicle tax on cars. Many drivers like this idea, as they bemoan that they are giving cyclists a free ride. But road tax doesn’t exist, and there are many other taxes which pay for their upkeep, including the vehicle license of cyclists who own cars.

Also, once bike lanes are built, they require little maintenance other than stopping cars from parking in them. It’s also likely that taxation would be impossible to enforce. How would you know who had paid for what? Bikes would need to carry registration plates, and that seems unlikely. A sales tax on new bikes would slow sales and be, in these times of peak oil, political suicide. It looks like we’re safe for now.

Insurance

Car-advocates often propose mandatory third party insurance for cyclists. It is available, and it’s cheap — a testament to the difference in damage-causing capability beween a two wheeled, human powered bike and a two-ton, gas-fuelled monster.

As bikes become more common in cities, it is likely that pedestrians will start to sue cyclists for crashing into them, so insurance could be useful. But again, how would you possibly police mandatory insurance without registering all bikes and making them carry license plates? Add to this that most policies would be void the moment that a rider runs a red light of hops onto a sidewalk and you’re looking at a whole mess. Which brings us to:

Road Laws

Cyclists flout the law. We run stop lights, drive on the pavement (legal here in Barcelona, although wearing an iPod will get you a fine) and head in the wrong direction down one-way streets. All clearly illegal, but all, at times, the safest thing to do. Sure, a bad cyclist will likely do all three at once, at top speed, and give some poor grandmother a heart attack. But for the more careful rider, a slip down a one-way street can avoid a dangerous junction, for example.

It has been argued that red lights and street directions shouldn’t apply to cyclists anyway, as they are not inventions for safety but inventions to lubricate traffic-flow, specifically motor-traffic. As a bike, carefully and sensibly ridden, cannot cause a traffic jam, it follows that they should not have to abide by these traffic schemes. With the exception of driving on the correct side of the road, why should bikes obey car laws?

Roadside Assistant

As easy as bikes are to fix, not everybody want to repair a flat or gets their hands dirty on their way to work. Roadside assistance for cyclist has just been announced for AAA members in Oregon and Southern Idaho. The catch is that you’ll have to have a car to get it, as there is no standalone package for cyclists: It’ll come as part of the Plus, Plus RV and Premier packages. These start at $105 per year.

Neither will the mechanic fix it for you. He will give you a lift, for up to 25 miles, but apparently it is too hard to mend a bicycle. Marie Dodds of the AAA told Oregon Live that “There are a million sizes of tires and tubes. Our people are not prepared to repair bikes.”

This seems like an excuse: apart from removing the bottom bracket of my bike, I can repair everything on it with a multi-tool, a 15mm wrench, a pump and a puncture repair kit (slipped into a pocket made from an old inner-tube section). I can true a wheel, break and remake the chain and swap in a new saddle, all with a kit that fits into a pocket. I’m sure that an AAA van could carry everything needed in a small tool-box, and how much space does a box of different sized tubes take up?

Still, late night rescue in the rain is still a nice service to have. Or you could try the Better World Club, which has offered a bike assistance scheme for some time. It’ll cost $40, and they will even fix a puncture for you.

What do you all think? Should bikes be, legally, treated like cars, or should cars be penalized further to push people onto bikes? There are plenty of opinions, and we haven’t even started on the savings in health costs made by riding instead of driving. Have at it in the comments, and keep it clean.

Photo: mugley/Flickr

See Also:

• Bike Accidents Decline As Ridership Rises
• Should Bikes Be Taxed? Vancouver Commissioner Thinks So
• Bailout Bill Gives Bicyclists a Tax Break
• Five Ways To Make Bike Commuting Easy

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:12 am

Should Bicycles Be Treated More Like Cars?

As bicyclists become more numerous, some are arguing that they should be subject to the same laws and taxes that apply to motorists.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:12 am

Machine Light, by Frank Buchwald

Each example of Frank Buchwald's work is made to order. His Machine Lights create a serious "Do Want" situation.

Frank Buchwald via The A.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 8:08 am

HTC Click to launch in China

Images of the Click first appeared on the Interwebs a few weeks back and PC World is reporting that Dopod will launch the low-end Android device later this year in China. However, Dopod has plans to launch the Hero this month before the Click goes live in Q4. The Click will come with two interchangeable faceplates and sell for 3400 yuan ($500).

A couple of changes are coming to the Chinese Hero, though. For one thing, Google Maps will be removed as an embedded app because the Chinese government considers it to be “sensitive.” You can still download the app regardless. China will see a white, light brown and “Chinese red” version of the Hero as well. The other alteration to the Hero will be support for the wireless LAN security protocol that’s required in all mobile devices that have Wi-Fi in China. The Hero will launch in China for 5600 yuan ($819).

via PC World

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 7:54 am

INTERVIEW: How Sharks View the World

A shark researcher talks about some of sharks' magical sensory abilities.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 3 Aug 2009 | 7:35 am

Google’s new tool to beat Microsoft (it’s not Yahoo!)

Section: Computers, Software / Applications, Web, Web Apps, Google

If you haven’t realized yet: it is on.  The “it” being the battle between Google and Microsoft for control of, well, control of everything.  Today, we’ve got the billboard war.

Where does tech bleed out of blogs and in front of the common man?  Billboards.  If you happen to be in San Fransico, Chicago, New York, or Boston, you’ll be greeted by reasons why Google Apps are better than Microsoft Office.  Google will tout why 3,000 companies a day are making the switch and how silly and outdated you look by not switching (it’s implied).  Over 1.75 million have made the switch, so why not you?

The “Going Google” campaign will also include online components as well such as “Day #2, Patch Tuesday made me go Google”, making fun of Microsoft’s Tuesday scheduling of patch downloads.

Over at the Google at work site created to hook customers, a rather simple calculation shows how much money you could save by going Google.  By inputing your deployment base and what your company pays an IT Manager, Google compares the cost of using Microsoft vs. Google.  The calculations were created using the experiences of sample customers and may or may not fit your organization.  A quick estimate shows my shop would save money using Google Apps by a margin of $50 per employ vs. $73 with Microsoft (excluding labor).

Not only is Google pushing savings but also features such as instant messaging, video and voice conferencing, real-time collaboration and more.  It is enough to break Microsoft’s strangle hold on business productivity?  Is it changing your mind?

Product page:  [Google]  via [TechCrunch]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Aug 2009 | 7:25 am

Elephant Seals Moved Fast With Climate Change

Elephant seals proved highly mobile when an ice sheet retreated 8,000 years ago.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 3 Aug 2009 | 7:20 am

Why 2010 Will Be the Year of the Tablet

Dell and Intel are working on a touchscreen tablet PC, according to an industry executive. And with several other manufacturers rumored to be launchign similar devices next year, tablet PCs appear to finally be breaking into the mainstream.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 7:00 am

CrunchDeals: $99 for a Palm Pre today only

If you weren’t one of the lucky ones that happened to snag a Palm Pre for $99 at Best Buy the other weekend thanks to a pricing snafu, LetsTalk.com has a deal for you. The website has managed to drop the price of the Palm Pre down to only $99 through a combination of instant and mail-in rebates.

It seems like this deal is exclusive to this retailer as the site is issuing the mail-in rebate itself and not Sprint. You better hurry up and decide if the Pre is right for you though. The deal is only good for today, August 3, 2009.

LetsTalk.com via SlashGear

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:53 am

Arrington loses libel case, but it doesn't mean jack

Michael Arrington and TechCrunch have lost a libel case brought against them in the U.K. by a former business associate, Sam Sethi.

The key word in that last sentence is "U.K.". Libel cases are very difficult to fight in Britain and Arrington chose not to fight this one, resulting in a default judgment. British libel law is so plaintiff-friendly that it attracts "forum shoppers" who would be unable to win elsewhere. New York even has a law on the books to exclude even the possibility of U.K. libel judgments being collected locally.

Assuming TechCrunch has no assets to plunder in the U.K., the likely worst result for Arrington is being unable to visit the country without great inconvenience.

In other words, the result doesn't say anything meaningful about any of the parties.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:52 am

Britain To Put CCTV Cameras Inside Private Homes

As an ex-Brit, I’m well aware of the authorities’ love of surveillance and snooping, but even I, a pessimistic cynic, am amazed by the governments latest plan: to install Orwell’s telescreens in 20,000 homes.

£400 million ($668 million) will be spend on installing and monitoring CCTV cameras in the homes of private citizens. Why? To make sure the kids are doing their homework, going to bed early and eating their vegetables. The scheme has, astonishingly, already been running in 2,000 family homes. The government’s “children’s secretary” Ed Balls is behind the plan, which is aimed at problem, antisocial families. The idea is that, if a child has a more stable home life, he or she will be less likely to stray into crime and drugs.

It gets worse. The government is also maintaining a private army, incredibly not called “Thought Police”, which will “be sent round to carry out home checks,” according to the Sunday Express. And in a scheme which firmly cements the nation’s reputation as a “nanny state”, the kids and their families will be forced to sign “behavior contracts” which will “set out parents’ duties to ensure children behave and do their homework.”

And remember, this is the left-wing government. The Shadow Home Secretary Chris Grayling, batting for the conservatives, thinks these plans are “too little, and too late,” implying that even more obtrusive work needs to be done. Rumors that a new detention center, named Room 101, is being constructed inside the Ministry of Love are unconfirmed.

Sin Bins for Worst Families [Sunday Express. Thanks, Annaliza]

Photo illustration Charlie Sorrel, original image public domain

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:36 am

Androgena@Little Computer People

LCP 2009: The Harvest [8 bit today]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:10 am

Truck Farm, A Roving Vegetable Plot In a Truck

As a dedicated lazy-bones, I think that the best thing about the Truck Farm is that, to make it, you don’t have to lug garden supplies back home. You just drive over to the store and load up on, say, topsoil, and you’re done.

The mobile allotment was built by “four-wheeled-farmers” Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, two Brooklynites with no garden, but a 1986 Dodge Ram with an empty load-bed. It uses technology proven in roof gardens, with custom drainage by rainwater management company Alive Structures, and even the soil itself is a special, gas-friendly lightweight hybrid, mixing up styrofoam, gels, clay and organic matter.

What’s the point? The Truck Farm is a business, and works a lot like the vegetable box schemes found around the world. You pay a monthly fee and the Truck Farm will pay a visit to your home, where you can pick produce fresh out of the dirt. The guys have even made a series of short movies (see part one, below) showing the history and making of Truck Farm, complete with their own music.

Project Page [Wicked Delicate via Inhabitat]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:01 am

The Palm Pre is now available on Amazon

There is probably a good chance that if you wanted the Palm Pre, you already snagged it at a Sprint store or Best Buy. Amazon now has the smartphone in case though. The on-contract price is the same at $199, but the off-contract price is surprisingly low at only $499. That’s a heck of deal considering the boys in blue have it listed at $749 sans contract. The only kicker is that it will take 4-6 weeks to ship. Sorry.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:00 am

Mammoths Doomed by Hunting, Climate

Mammoths were not wiped out by a comet or asteroid, a new study concludes.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 3 Aug 2009 | 6:00 am

Fabric Horse Utility Belts: Just Don’t Use The F-Word

Can a fanny-pack ever be cool? The answer is a resounding “no”, but try telling that to the worldwide tourist throngs that carry their valuables in one easy-to-snatch pouch on their waists. The only good thing about it is the name, which in British English means something quite different.

But the fanny pack is as useful as it is dorky. What if somebody came up with a hipper hip-bag? You’re ahead of me here. Fabric Horse make a whole range, only they’re not fanny packs. They’re utility belts. Like Batman wears. Awesome.

The packs, sorry, belts, are designed for cyclists, and are especially handy in the summer when heavy messenger bags or rucksacks make you sweat. They come in full and half sizes (more or less pockets), have clip or Velcro fastenings, metal loops for clipping carabiners and wrenches. They also have the Lock Holster, a loop at the back designed to carry a Kryptonite Evo Mini, apparently the bike messenger’s lock of choice. The holsters are “made from seat belts pulled from junk yards,” so they’ll last.

Could it be that Fabric Horse has finally made the fanny pack not just acceptable but actually desirable? Maybe. Packs run from $55 up to $120, and a standalone (hang-alone?) lock holster is just $10.

Product page [Fabric Horse. Thanks, Google!]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 5:36 am

Hybrid Camera and Projector Planned by Nikon?

According to the French magazine Chasseur d’Images, a dead-tree publication dedicated to photography, Nikon is readying a camera with a buit-in LED projector, which will throw images of up to 8 x 12 inches onto the wall of a darkened room.

The reason we like this rumor (or leak) is because of the pedigree of the French magazine: Chasseur d’Images, because of the long lead times for printed publications, often gets the scoop early. This was the magazine that broke the Leica Noctilux 50mm ƒ0.95 lens well before its official birth.

Nikon is certainly focusing (ahem) on the more interesting side of photography. Since it dropped out of the megapixel race we have seen some amazing work on low light imaging, an extraordinarily good strobe (the SB 900) and a consumer camera with built in GPS. A camera with a projector inside doesn’t seem so far-fetched now, does it?

Groundbreaking Nikon news = code name Nikon VP650 [Nikon Rumors]

Photo: pedrosimoes7/Flickr

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 3 Aug 2009 | 5:12 am