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California Firefighters, Evacuees Relying on Verizon's Wireless and Wired Networks

250GB Xbox 360 revealed in South African ad: the “Super Elite”

Confirming what we saw yesterday on Amazon.de, there is indeed a new 250GB model of the Xbox 360 called, disappointingly, the “Super Elite,” unless that’s just what this particular South African retailer decided to go with. Forza 3, two controllers, no HDMI cable. Seriously? at this point, I should be getting HDMI cables in my Multi-Grain Cheerios.

Oh, there is one wrinkle. The advertisement has the price at 4200 Rand, which translates to… about $550. Let’s hope that’s just the local price.

Okay, that’s just alarmism. Based on the pricing we’ve seen here in the states, this model should be $400.

[via Joystiq]

Sun absorbs $147M loss as Oracle deal looms

Source: Gizmodo | 28 Aug 2009 | 6:00 pm

Making an Open Source Project Press-Friendly

blackbearnh writes "Corporations know that part of launching a successful project is projecting the right image to the media. But a lot of open source projects seem to treat the press as an annoyance, if they think about it at all. For a reporter, even finding someone on a project who's willing to talk about it can be a challenge. Esther Schindler over at IT World has a summary of a roundtable discussion that was held at OSCON with pointers about how open source projects can be more reporter-accessible. 'Recognize that we are on deadline, which for most news journalists means posting the article within a couple of hours and for feature authors within a couple of days. If we ask for input, or a quote, or anything to which your project spokesperson (you do have one? yes? please say yes) might want to respond, it generally does mean, "Drop everything and answer us now." If the journalist doesn't give you a deadline ("I need to know by 2pm"), it's okay to ask how long you can take to reach the right developer in Poland, but err on the side of "emergency response." It's unreasonable, I know, but so are our deadlines.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:57 pm

MGM Grand Brings The Casino Feel To The iPhone Minus The Smoke-Filled Room

The MGM Grand at Foxwoods is trying to make its foray into iPhone app store with the upcoming launch of a branded-iPhone app that will be one of the first casino branded-applications in the app store.

The casino says that the app will have a variety of MGM Grand at Foxwoods’-themed games, which will all use play money. I’m assuming these games will be a take on the standard casino activities-blackjack, slots, roulette etc. The game will attempt to simulate all the sights and sounds of an actual casino, trying to immerse users in the environment of the casino at Foxwoods. The app will also have a “resort experience” feature, which gives users the in-depth property tours, with the ability for users to visit Foxwoods hotel rooms, restaurants, retail shops, spas and more. You can also book real spa appointments and read how-to guides on best strategies for various table games at the casino.

The iPhone app seems like combination of a branding gimmick and gaming opportunity. Of course, casino-oriented games aren’t new to the iPhone. Zynga has a popular iPhone app out there and there many apps in the app store that let users play the slots, blackjack, poker and more. What’s interesting is the use of the iPhone app as a branding tool for the resort part of the casino. It looks like there are very few resort and hotel chains which have iPhone apps out there but iPhone apps for popular resorts may be an interesting way to engage consumers. Th only other hotel-oriented iPhone app I could find was the an app for Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin resort in Orlando but something tells me that more of these interactive resort apps may be launched in the future.

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Source: TechCrunch | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:15 pm

Sexy S T R E T C H shelf is basically a giant rubber band

You can always use a few more shelves in your life, right? And this one is not only original and cool-looking, but (dare I say it) flexible as well. Because it’s rubber! I’m such a card!

It is nice-looking, though, that’s no joke. And you can rearrange the pegs, so it really is flexible. I wonder, though, doesn’t it have a bit of a design flaw there?

I mean, if you have it on your wall the way it’s shown, all the weight is on the top peg, minus a little bit being put sideways onto the lower pegs. If they rate the shelf as holding fifteen pounds, for example, that’s probably only if it’s evenly distributed among the three pegs. I’d think carefully about the physics before I put anything in there. The four-peg approach looks more stable, though.

It’ll cost around $120, but don’t expect to see it in your local Ikea. It was created by Pete Oyler for a design showcase and probably will only be in boutique stores.

Source: CrunchGear | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:15 pm

Play with Megan Fox on Xbox Live August 29, 2009

FROM GAMERTELL - Megan Fox will play the new Transformers game on Xbox Live August 29, 2009.  Microsoft better hope those servers are ready to handle the crush of her adoring public…
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:13 pm

Gadgetell Experiment: Testing Jolicloud OS for netbooks

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

For the past few months, I have been running the Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 on my netbook, an Asus Eee PC 1000HE.  While Windows 7 was great at first, as time progressed, it became sluggish.  So, thanks to our friends at Jolicloud, I got a chance to check out the alpha release of Jolicloud OS for netbooks.

Installation

Jolicloud OS is fairly easy to install.  You have to download the Jolicloud ISO directly or by bit torrent and then create a bootable USB key or burn the ISO to a blank CD.  Jolicloud offers its own bootable USB-key creator to make the process easier.  However, when I used Jolicloud’s bootable key creator for my USB-key, I could not get Jolicloud to boot and install.  I ended up burning a CD with an external CD burner, which I was then able to use successfully for booting and installing the OS.  Total install time was 30 to 40 minutes.

The look and feel

The look of Jolicloud is nothing like your typical OS.  There are three main panels, similar to a webpage layout.  There are tabs on the left in a narrow panel with categories of applications, which are displayed in the much larger middle panel.  In the right panel, there are basic file folders (Music, Pictures, Documents, etc.) and a desktop link.  Along the top is your taskbar – to the left, open applications are indicated by small icons and on the right are your icon indicators for Wi-Fi, battery, and so forth.  All in all, it is a very clean, simple, and intuitive user interface.

Getting apps

Adding applications and updating your system is actually fun.  By clicking on the cloud icon in the upper left corner, you are taken to the “My Jolicloud” dashboard.  Here you will find a history of your install/uninstall activity, a settings menu, system update announcements, and available applications.  The layout of the applications section feels very much like Apple’s App Store and install is just as easy – just click the Install button and you are good to go.  The selection of available applications is quite good considering Jolicloud is still in alpha.

Day to day usage

Jolicloud, which is based on Linux, runs very smoothly on my 1000HE.  Applications start up and close quickly and run without a glitch.  Power consumption with this OS is comparable to my Windows 7 experience.  Also, as with Windows 7, I have noticed my fan running more often than it did with Windows XP, but I’m not sure why. 

Initial start-ups and wake-ups from hibernate are quick – about 11 seconds from hibernate to login.  Of course, Jolicloud is still in alpha so there are frequent system updates and only select systems with which it is compatible (a complete listing is on Jolicloud’s website), though many netbooks are covered

Definitely worth checking out

Overall, Jolicloud seems well suited for the netbook user who uses a lot of online applications, does basic computing tasks, and wants a streamlined, uncluttered user interface.  From the installation process, to the startup page, to the dashboard, Jolicloud is simple to use and user friendly.  Right now, I think I will stick with Jolicloud since it runs so smoothly and Windows 7 was misbehaving on my system.  If you have a netbook, I would highly recommend checking out Jolicloud OS.

See: [Jolicloud]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:13 pm

Sun Microsystems posts loss as Oracle deal nears (Reuters)

Reuters - Sun Microsystems Inc reported a fourth quarter loss on Friday, as the computer server maker's planned acquisition by Oracle Corp nears expected completion.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:05 pm

Court of Appeals Rejects FCC's Cable Subscriber Cap

olsmeister writes "The US Court of Appeals Friday threw out the FCC's cap on the number of cable subscribers one operator can serve, saying the FCC was 'derelict' in not giving DBS its due as a legitimate competitor. 'We agree with Comcast that the 30% subscriber limit is arbitrary and capricious. We therefore grant the petition and vacate the Rule,' said the court, which concluded that there was ample evidence of an increasingly competitive communications marketplace and that cable did not have undue control on the programming pipeline. The FCC commissioner's statement (PDF) is available online."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:59 pm

iPod Stocks Dwindling in Advance of Sept. 9 Apple Event [Digital Daily]

If you’re a student planning on taking advantage of Apple’s “Buy a Mac, get a Free iPod touch” back-to-school promotion, you might want to plan a trip to the Apple Store in the very near future. Because sources in the Apple reseller community tell Ars Technica that it looks like the company’s current iPod line is being discontinued.

Seems stocks are running low, there’s no sign of resupply shipments and current SKUs are being scrapped. That all this is occurring in advance of Apple’s as-of-yet unannounced Sept. 9 event suggests that a fall iPod refresh is a near inevitability. Though just what it will entail isn’t clear–presumably, increases in clock speed and memory, and perhaps even a camera.

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:57 pm

Venezuela Lawmakers Vote to Ban Violent Video Games [Voices]

By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily

Venezuela’s National Assembly this week passed a bill to ban the sale of violent video games and toys, as the country struggles to fight rampant crime, Reuters reports.

The piece notes that “dozens of people are murdered every week” in Caracas, “one of Latin America’s most dangerous cities,” and that some of the killings occur for “as little as a pair of shoes or a mobile phone.”

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:45 pm

China Unicom in 3-year deal for Apple's iPhone (Reuters)

Reuters - Apple's iPhone will go on sale later this year in China, the world's largest mobile market, but its partner China Unicom (0762.HK) may find selling the phone carries its own burdens.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:39 pm

You Decide Who Photoshop Hacked Microsoft The Best

We are overwhelmed with the 168 responses to our “It’s A Meme! Get Photoshop Warmed Up And Win A Bing Tshirt” post where we asked you, the readers, to come up with a better photoshop hack job than Microsoft was able to do on their own marketing material.

One of the submissions will win a Bing tshirt and sticker. I originally said the winner would be selected by our summer interns, but we want to turn this into a poll. We’ve selected the six we like best, but you can write in your own as well.

View all of the submissions here

Thanks everyone. And thanks to Cameron Christoffers, our star intern, for organizing all the photos.

Who Wins The Microsoft Photoshop Poland Contest?(surveys)

Oh, by the way. We told Bing that if they didn’t retweet this post we’d be forced to burn our Bing T-shirts. This was their cheeky response, courtesy of icanhascheezburger:

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Source: TechCrunch | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:32 pm

A Mega Man II chain-link wall scroll 1.5 years in the making

Ta-da! I like to think of myself as a Mega Man II fan, but clearly i’m mistaken. I’m a Mega Man II poseur. The real fans spend 500 days linking 63,608 tiny rings together to make a pixel-perfect wall-hanging of all the major characters and items in the game. That’s not Metal Man’s best look, though.

There we go, that’s the Metal Man I know, love, and always defeat first because his weapon is so awesome. Interestingly, speedruns (the latest TAS clocks in at under 24 minutes) don’t use it much, probably because it reduces the game to a cake walk.

The chain wall hanging weighs 16 pounds, so it’s not inconceivable that I could borrow it and wear it to PAX.

[via Geekologie]

Source: CrunchGear | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:30 pm

The Venn Diagram of Social Media

Available on a t-shirt for $20.

[via Kevin Kelly]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:26 pm

FCC Probe Underscores Consumer Depend... - PC World

Ars Technica

FCC Probe Underscores Consumer Dependence on Wireless Industry PC World The FCC has begun a three-pronged probe into the wireless industry. The inquiry is partially a response to recent controversies with Apple and Google, but it is more about a shift in ideology and the maturity of the wireless industry as a critical part ... FCC Probes Wireless Industry CompetitionInformationWeek FCC launches far-reaching investigation of cellular industryArs Technica FCC Probes Wireless IndustryChannelWeb Apple Insider -BusinessWeek -Register all 360 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:12 pm

FCC Probe Underscores Consumer Dependence on Wireless Industry (PC World)

PC World - The FCC has begun a three-pronged probe into the wireless industry. The inquiry is partially a response to recent controversies with Apple and Google, but it is more about a shift in ideology and the maturity of the wireless industry as a critical part of the communications backbone.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:11 pm

Crime Expert Backs Call For "License To Compute"

The Cable Guy writes to mention that Russel Smith, one of Australia's principal criminologists, is pushing for first-time computer users to be required to earn a license to browse the web. "The Australian Computer Society launched computer driver's licenses in 1999. It aimed to give users a basic level of competency before they started using PCs. But the growth in cybercrime has led to IT security experts such as Eugene Kaspersky to call for more formalized recognition of a user's identity so they can travel the net safely. Last week Dr. Smith sat in front of a Federal Government Inquiry into cybercrime and advised Australia's senior politicians on initiatives in train to fight cybercrime. He said that education was secondary to better technology solutions."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:08 pm

Transcend Communications, Inc. of Minneapolis, Minnesota Has Announced That It Has Signed A Letter of Intent to be Acquired by Fastech Investment Group.

MINNEAPOLIS, Aug.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:08 pm

Dads Say The Darndest Things…On Twitter (Probably NSFW)

Twitter is used for a lot of things these days, but this has to be one of my favorites. A 28-year-old guy named Justin has set up a Twitter account simply to tweet out random things his elderly father says. The title of the feed: “Shit My Dad Says.”

Apparently, I’m a bit slow stumbling upon this; even though it was only started at the beginning of August, Justin’s account for his 73-year-old father’s sayings already has over 150,000 followers. But I don’t care, it needs to be pointed out again how awesome this idea is.

My parents, while not that old yet, often say things worthy of tweets, like when my mom seriously thought netbooks were computers built for little people. And had Twitter been around when my grandfather was, this would have been the perfect medium for his bits of comedic wisdom.

Here are some of my favorites from Justin’s dad:

“Your mother rented this film, What Happens In Vegas. I thought it was going to be non-fiction, but it’s fiction, and it’s about some idiot.”

“Who is this woman?….Kate Beckinsale? Well, you can tell Kate Beckinsale she sucks.”

“Your mother made a batch of meatballs last night. Some are for you, some are for me, but more are for me. Remember that. More. Me.”

“Your brother brought his baby over this morning. He told me it could stand. It couldn’t stand for shit. Just sat there. Big let down.”

“Love this Mrs. Dash. The bitch can make spices… Jesus, Joni (my mom) it’s a joke. I was making a joke! Mrs. Dash isn’t even real dammit!”

“Why would i want to check a voicemail on my cell phone? People want to talk to me, call again. If i want to talk to you, I’ll answer.”

You know how else I know this site idea is awesome? Some random girl at the cafe I’m at just saw Shit My Dad Says on my screen and stopped to tell me that it’s awesome.

[via 1to10reviews]

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Source: TechCrunch | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:59 pm

More 7D ephemera surfaces, along with two awesome lenses

A poster showing the rumored Canon 7D, along with some specs, has entered the rumor arena, and it looks totally legit to me. I would guess, from the name and specs (18MP, 8FPS, 100% VF coverage), that this is a direct competitor with Nikon’s D300s, priced well above a 50D but far below a 5D mk II. Say $1899 MSRP, just off the top of my head?

The specs on the box are in Chinese, but helpful commenter maxxevv gives a translation:

i) 18Mp
ii) 100% viewfinder
iii) 8 frames / second
iv) Digic IV
v) 19 pt AF
vi) 3 inch LCD
vii) ISO 6400
viii)Video
ix) “Real Time Display” which probably is LiveView
x) What looks like “artificial horizon tilt”

And another 2 items which I cannot make out. One of them looks like “zone metering” … ?

Sounds like dynamite, assuming the movie mode isn’t the same shabby one that’s on the T1i.

In addition to the poster, there were leaked the following two lenses:

Are you kidding me? Those look fantastic. 15-85 and 18-135, f/3.5-5.6 IS? Damn, son, sign me up! That puts Canon in a much better position when comparing against Nikon’s excellent kit lenses, which have always been a selling point for their cheaper DSLRs. We’ll see what the pricing and performance are, but the numbers are looking hot like magma.

Source: CrunchGear | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:59 pm

Details of Kennedy Funeral Include Twitter Account [Voices]

By Susan Davis, Lead Writer, Washington Wire, The Wall Street Journal

More than a dozen of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s closest friends and family will pay tribute to the late senator this evening at a private memorial service at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum billed as a “Celebration of Life.”

According to Kennedy’s office, speakers will include former Democratic National Committee Chairman and current chairman of the JFK Library Paul G. Kirk Jr., Father Gerry Creedon, former Rep. Joe Kennedy, the son of Robert F. Kennedy, Connecticut Sen. Chris Dodd, former Kennedy aide Nick Littlefield, Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain, Massachusetts Sen. John Kerry, Utah Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, former Iowa Democratic Sen. John C. Culver, Vice President Joe Biden, and Kennedy’s niece, Caroline Kennedy.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:51 pm

Fla. man in credit card data theft accepts plea (AP)

AP - A computer hacker accused of masterminding one of the largest cases of identity theft in U.S. history agreed Friday to plead guilty and serve up to 25 years in federal prison for his crimes.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:47 pm

Apple: Exploding iPhones Not Our Fault - PC World

Voice of America

Apple: Exploding iPhones Not Our Fault PC World Apple says it's not to blame for a series of exploding iPods and iPhones, according to a report published on Friday. The company has been under fire, so to speak, for devices overheating and shattering across Europe and the UK Sheesh...and you thought ... Apple lands deal to sell iPhone in ChinaCNET News China will account for 15-20% of all iPhone sales in 2010, says ...Computerworld China gets the iPhone OfficiallyTechtree.com San Jose Mercury News -PC Magazine -DailyTech all 1,254 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:32 pm

Let’s remember Azeroth as she once was: Proud, full of confidence

It’s sort of a shame that the Azeroth we all know and love will be going away with World of Warcraft: Cataclysm, the game’s next expansion. To that end, one brave soul has taken it upon herself to collect desktop wallpaper-sized images of the old game world.

Says the collector:

If anyone has suggestions of particularly picturesque places for me to use, please let me know. I’d like this to be a good tour of all the places that make Kalimdor, Eastern Kingdoms, Outland, and Northrend particularly beautiful, so I’m happy to head out to any spot on any continent!

How weird is it that some people, myself included, actually have sentiment for these virtual lands? I don’t know if that means we have a problem, or just know a good game when we see one.

via wow.com

Source: CrunchGear | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:30 pm

Joyland Bounce for iPhone (Macworld.com)

Macworld.com - A colorful game developed by Gamesmith, Joyland Bounce has you collecting stars as you try to navigate through the challenging twists and turns of the game’s many stages. Apparently, the moon and stars have fallen from the sky, and it’s up to you to round them all up. Sound easy? Well, you character is a small orange ball who bounces off everything. So guiding him can be a bit of a challenge.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:28 pm

NVIDIA Predicts 570x GPU Performance Boost

Gianna Borgnine writes "NVIDIA is predicting that GPU performance is going to increase a whopping 570-fold in the next six years. According to TG Daily, NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang made the prediction at this year's Hot Chips symposium. Huang claimed that while the performance of GPU silicon is heading for a monumental increase in the next six years — making it 570 times faster than the products available today — CPU technology will find itself lagging behind, increasing to a mere 3 times current performance levels. 'Huang also discussed a number of "real-world" GPU applications, including energy exploration, interactive ray tracing and CGI simulations.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:17 pm

Citizen Sports’ iPhone App Is Better Than ESPN’s, But They’re Not Named ESPN

As a startup in the sports sphere, Citizen Sports has a simple, but annoying problem: They’re not ESPN. And it’s simply hard to compete with the name that has basically become synonymous with sports. Yahoo might be able to do it because, well, they’re Yahoo, but for a startup, it can be frustrating when, on many levels, you’re beating your competitors in innovation, but still trailing by so much.

That’s the basic gist I got after a meeting with Citizen Sports’ Jeffrey Ma and Brian Mead. The fact is that they are doing some innovative stuff in the space, but still getting overshadowed, and that means it can be hard to make meaningful money. For example, their fantasy sports options are hugely popular thanks to their Facebook app (Ma thinks they have a shot at being the overall number 3 fantasy option behind Yahoo and ESPN in the business), but this hasn’t translated into the types of ad deals that ESPN sees because they are able to leverage their television network, and Yahoo can leverage all its other properties.

Citizen Sports recently released a “pro” version of their iPhone app Sportacular. It’s great; for Push Notification junkies like myself, it’s a dream come true. Not only can you get final score updates pushed to your iPhone, you can get an update every time the score changes, when an inning ends (in baseball), after every third inning, etc. ESPN, despite promises of push on stage during Apple keynotes, still doesn’t have the functionality.

But Citizen Sports is running into a problem that many iPhone app developers run into: How do you monetize an app? They’ve been trying the advertising model with the non-pro version for a while, but the returns aren’t great. So now they’re trying the paid method, but it’s hard build an audience to a level that can pull in any meaningful kind of money. Sometimes it doesn’t matter how good an app is, all that matters in moving it is something like if Apple features it. And while ESPN can afford to promote its app (and certainly does on its own network), Citizen Sports can’t match that.

So Citizen Sports is thinking about what else it can do, perhaps in-app purchases of some kind, Mead says. But while those seem like they’ll work for iPhone games, the jury is still out as to just how well the option will work in other kinds of apps.

It’s not like Citizen Sports is totally going it alone, they have a partnership with Sports Illustrated on their popular Facebook app. But despite being a very well-respected name in sports, SI doesn’t have the kind of pull online that ESPN does.

“The next 6 months in the ’sports 2.0 space’ will be interesting,” Ma tells us. “How will startups deal with the ad sales challenge — how do you compete with Yahoo and ESPN?”

He notes that if they absolutely needed to, they could probably cut costs and get to profitability at some point next year, but that would mean cutting a lot of the things keeping them ahead of ESPN in terms of innovation.

Instead, Citizen Sports plans to continue the march forward. They’re working on Android apps, and looking at the other mobile platforms. The problem is that all of that development is expensive, but Ma notes that their backers have been very supportive.

And they have some big names both in the VC space and the sports space, funding them. They include Kevin Compton, a partner at Kleiner Perkins, Jeff Moorad, a former sports agent and now owners of the San Diego Padres, and even former Cowboys QB Troy Aikman is an investor.

You can find the Sportacular Pro app here in the App Store. And here’s the free version.

(And yes, Ma is the same guy who the main character in Bringing Down The House and the subsequent movie 21, is based on.)

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TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco

Source: TechCrunch | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:13 pm

Coming Soon to Your iPhone: Major League Baseball for a Dollar a Game [MediaMemo]

If you’re out of town and on the move and still want to watch your favorite baseball team, Major League Baseball is about to make you a very interesting offer: The ability to watch a game streamed live to your iPhone, for 99 cents a pop.

Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball Advanced Media–pro baseball’s standalone digital media company–tells me iPhone and iPod touch users will soon be able to buy individual games. The feature will be added to the company’s existing MLB.com app and will roll out as soon as Apple (AAPL) finishes approving the update, which Bowman expects to happen within the next few days.

As far as I know, that will make baseball the first pro sports league to sell mobile access to live games on an on-demand, a la carte basis.

The current version of the MLB.com app, which sells for $9.99, gives users the ability to watch a couple of live games each day, but MLB.com selects the games. And those who owns both the app and subscribe to baseball’s MLB.TV–an all-you-can eat subscription service–can stream live games to their phones. iPhone and iPod touch users have bought about 250,000 downloads of the app.

Bowman, not surprisingly, says he’d prefer to sell the app-plus-Web subscription together, but says he’s offering the games a la carte as an experiment to gauge demand. The test will run through the rest of the regular season, which ends Oct. 4.

News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox and Time Warner’s (TWX) Turner, the two networks that own the rights to the baseball playoffs and World Series, have a Web blackout for the TV broadcasts of those games. (Bowman says he is working with both networks to offer a compromise to iPhone app users–a “four screen” version with live, stationary feeds of the game–so that, for instance, you may be able to see the dugout, etc. Pricing, if any, still undetermined.)

There is one other restriction to the offer, and it’s the same one that exists with the Web subscription service: You can’t watch games that are broadcast in your home market. That is, I can watch the Minnesota Twins play on an iPhone if I’m in Brooklyn, but not in Minneapolis.

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:10 pm

Profile of Make columnist Tim Anderson, a "Do-It-Yourself Guru who Makes Treasures From Trash"

I enjoyed this NPR profile of extreme DIYer Tim Anderson, who writes our "Heirloom Technology" column for Make.

Do-It-Yourself Guru who Makes Treasures From Trash


Source: Boing Boing | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:10 pm

NVIDIA Congratulates Jim Henson's Creature Shop(TM) on Winning Primetime Emmy Engineering Award

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Aug. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- NVIDIA Corporation congratulates a premier technology partner, Jim Henson's Creature Shop(TM), on winning an Engineering Emmy at the 61st Primetime Emmy Engineering Awards, held Saturday, Aug.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:06 pm

Pomeroy IT Solutions Announces Renewal of Service Contract With the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

HEBRON, Ky., Aug.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:05 pm

Gadgetell Review: Plantronics Voyager Pro

Section: Communications, Accessories, Peripherals, Reviews

What is it?

The Plantronics Voyager Pro is a Bluetooth headset available for $99.99 at the Plantronics Store. 

The Good

The device gets about three hours of full talk time out of the battery before it starts to get low.  How do I know its low?  A helpful voice speaks into my ear advising me to prepare for a charge.  I can’t tell you how helpful it is to have this seemingly silly feature.  In a day and age when we are used to LCD screens and light up bars acknowledging battery life, headsets are generally absent of these.  It is a nice addition to know when you are running low.

Its dual microphone as well as its cleverly designed volume rocker and answer/end buttons makes operation and communication easy enough for an amateur Bluetooth headset user.  The dual microphone helps filter the outside noise so much so that I was actually able to talk with my car windows down and my music at a low, but audible, volume.  The listeners on the other end were not aware that I was on a headset, which made the experience great. 

One overlooked element of headset selection is durability.  I had the opportunity to get a behind the scenes video tour of the strict standards these headsets are tested through to ensure customer satisfaction.  Plantronics has an entire Dr. Doom dungeon designed to beat these devices until they are “blue in the tooth.”  They go through rigorous tests from pulling the earpiece to twisting the skeleton almost completely around; these devices are strong enough to withstand the mistaken drop on the ground, the rear-end crusher, and even a dog bite. 

The Bad

I do have some minor reservations.  The content kit includes 3 types of ear gels and well as an additional soft padded cover to extra comfort.  I found that regardless of the size of the ear-gel and soft padding, after about 20 minutes of usage my ear canal was a little irritated; however this is not a deal breaker.

The easy access of the answer/end button makes it both easy to answer/end and unfortunately easy to mistakenly answer/end.  Again, this is not the end of the world, but make the mistake of answering or hanging up on grandmother and you’ll know what I mean.  Lastly, I would have loved an additional car charger to come standard with the package.

The Crux

At $99.99 this headset is a great deal.  The minute issues I have with the headset are tolerable.  The call quality and battery life are most important to me.  The comfort was there, however, like the sun, prolonged exposure can only hurt. 

I do recommend this headset for those of you who are always on the phone, and even for those who are just to lazy to hold the phone. I spend extraordinary amounts of time in my car and traveling, this is one item that I do not leave without.

Product site: [Plantronics Voyager PRO]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:03 pm

Here’s a list of applications that are glitchy with Snow Leopard

Head’s up to any of y’all looking to upgrade to Snow Leopard this weekend (that’s my plan, along with installing Windows 7). It’s not exactly a surprise, but some applications may be a little wonky with the new operating system, and this Web site has a list of what’s what.

Apparently World of Warcraft has some minor issues, and you’ll need to upgrade popular FTP application Cyberduck to a new beta to get it to work with 10.6.

There also seems to be some issues with Growl and Google Gears, so best to consult the list before you zap away plain ol’ Leopard forever.

Also, if I may, the Guardian has the best review of Snow Leopard I’ve read thus far, so be sure to read it when you have a few free minutes.

That is all.

Source: CrunchGear | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

SLIDE SHOW: The Week's Top Stories

Take a look at the past week's top news in the Flashback Slide Show.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Full Moon Credenza Glows In The Dark

Designer Sotirios Papadopoulos developed "ELI" (Eco Light Inside) a material that glows in the dark and, previously, was used on this illuminating mirror.

Beats using a night light. Maybe.

[via Generate]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:00 pm

Nikon D300s gets the hands-on treatment in a Best Buy

I’ve got good news and bad news, Nikon-lovers.

The good news is that the D300s is available now and looks great.

The bad news is the movie mode still features major jelly-motion, and the autofocus is comically slow. We already got a taste of the HD movies with these official productions, but as we noted then, they avoided certain camera movements which embarrass the camera somewhat. Not now!

Nikon Rumors kindly documented the bits we’ve all been waiting to here about. Here’s that jelly effect we observed in the D90 (and 5D mk II):

And here’s the autofocus, which is contrast-based and as slow as death. Can this really be the maximum speed? I mean, other contrast-based focusing cameras are no faster, but it’s still ridiculous.

Though to end a good note, the 7FPS drive sounds great and looks super responsive (of course, there’s no lens so it’s not focusing or metering):

I’m sure it’s a great camera, but like all the other DSLRs, the video has some serious issues. Don’t let it stop you from getting a D300s, though — its movie mode is on par with any other DSLR’s.

Source: CrunchGear | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:30 pm

Micromem Technologies Grants Options to Directors and Key Employees and Completes Private Placement

TORONTO, Aug.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:30 pm

Oracle To Sell Sun's Hardware Business To HP?

Underholdning writes "With the DOJ approving Oracle's Sun buyout the question arises what Oracle might want to do with Sun's hardware business. It's no secret that what Oracle wanted was the software part. Now The Inquirer is running a story claiming that Oracle will sell the hardware business of Sun to HP. This will give Oracle a juicy check while HP can increase its services. Larry Ellison denies that it will take place, but a source for CNN claims otherwise."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:25 pm

The Weekly "Screw Google" Meeting? It's Between the "F@%! Linux" Luncheon and the "Ream Apple" Social. [Digital Daily]

Get this: Microsoft has been holding secret “Screw Google” meetings in Washington where it schemes to undermine Google and prevent the company from subsuming the businesses that took it decades to build. “Microsoft is at the center of a group of companies who see Google as a threat to them in some combination of business and policy,” a source familiar with the matter told DailyFinance. “The effort is designed to make Google look like the big high-tech bad guy here.”

Those ruthless, conniving bastards. Strategizing to thwart a rival.

I’m sure nothing of this sort goes on over at Google (GOOG), where everything is altruism and Segways and don’t-be-evil happy rainbows. Surely, the lobbyists Google employs are working exclusively to advance the company’s mission of organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible and useful. They’d never do anything untoward like conspire to protect Google’s interests from a competitor. They’d never, for example, draft an antitrust complaint to the Justice Department that forced Microsoft (MSFT) to make changes to its new Vista operating system.

Please. This is business is usual. And if Google’s lobbyists aren’t holding a weekly “Screw Microsoft” meeting or some variation on that, then Google should get some new lobbyists.

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:19 pm

Snow Leopard ate my data

I was really excited to install Snow Leopard on my MacBook. Yay for more hard drive space and better usability for only $30! Less than 10 minutes into the install process, though, I got an error message. Something about not being able to find my drive or not having enough space. And then the MacBook died. It refused to start up. I got a gray screen, and then it turned itself off. Gray screen, off. Gray screen, off. Three times. Starting in safe mode failed, and starting from the disk got me to a disk utility page where it tried to repair my disk and then told me to back up, reformat, and restore.

Luckily, I'd saved all my stuff on the Time Machine two days prior, so three hours later I am now able to write this blog post from my MacBook, where little has changed except for my wallpaper and a couple of notes I took on some Stickies yesterday. Maybe I did something wrong &mdash I should do my homework, read the instructions or the "things you should do before making the leap to Snow Leopard." But then again, I got a Mac so I could stop worrying about stuff like that.

I'm sure Snow Leopard is awesome once it's installed, but right now I'm not willing to invest the time into reading the precautions or to risk losing everything again.

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:16 pm

Bush, Obama Science & Technology Advisers to Speak at STEM Enterprise Workshop

WASHINGTON, Aug. 28 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Members of the Bush and Obama science teams probably don't get together too often, but senior officials from both administrations will share the stage at an IEEE-USA event in October. Dr.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:10 pm

RadioShack Corporation Announces Cash Tender Offer and Related Consent Solicitation for its 7 3/8% Notes Due 2011

FORT WORTH, Texas, Aug.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:08 pm

FCC expands wireless industry inquiries

Here, in this glorious land of the free and home of the brave, there is generally one thing that most all Americans can agree on: the major mobile wireless carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint) suck leave much to be desired.

As more and more people come to depend solely on their cell phones and the related services (voice, data, multimedia), it becomes that much more important for the FCC to ensure that the wireless industry remains legitimately competitive for the sake of reliability, innovation, and most importantly, for all of us, the American consumers. Fortunately, by law, the FCC is required to report annually on the state of competition in the “commercial mobile services” market.

In an effort to gather more useful information for its next mobile wireless competition report, the FCC announced (pdf) yesterday a Notice of Inquiry that seeks to enhance its analysis of competitive conditions in the mobile wireless market.

Wireless mobility has become central to the economic, civic, and social lives of over 270 million Americans. We are now in the midst of a transition from reliance on mobile voice services to increasing use of and reliance on mobile broadband services, which promise to connect American citizens in new and profound ways. A robustly competitive mobile wireless market will be essential to realizing the full benefits to American consumers and channeling investment into vitally important national infrastructure. The FCC is seeking to ensure that competition in the mobile wireless market continues to bring substantial benefits to American consumers.

Today’s NOI builds on the Wireless Telecommunications Bureau’s Public Notice on mobile wireless competition, released May 14, 2009, by seeking input on new issues and topics. The FCC said it is seeking to enhance its understanding of the mobile wireless industry in three main ways. First, the FCC inquires about which analytic framework and data sources will most clearly describe competition in the mobile wireless market. Second, it adjusts the inquiry to include new market segments not covered thoroughly in previous reports, such as device and infrastructure segments. Third, it inquires about vertical relationships between “upstream” and “downstream” market segments, and how these relationships affect competition.

In addition, the FCC also announced (pdf) yesterday a Notice of Inquiry on whether there are additional opportunities to protect and empower American consumers by ensuring sufficient access to relevant information about communications services.

As communications technologies and services become more essential, and the communications market more complex, information is key to consumer protection and empowerment. The Commission seeks comment from communications service providers, academic researchers, consumer groups and third-party analysts on how best to ensure consumers have the information they need to make informed decisions in the communications marketplace.

In light of the recent Apple / AT&T / Google brouhaha, these inquires have that much more significance riding on them. The FCC has an increasingly tough job of balancing the carriers’ needs and rights alongside the (more important) needs and rights of American consumers. And although the FCC is just doing what is required of it, it is reassuring to see that the federal agency actually appears to be concerned with the current state of the mobilesphere and that it appears to have a sincere interest in making the future of mobile wireless communications better for everyone.

So what do you think, dear readers, about the current state of the mobile wireless market? We’d love to hear your opinions on everything from iPhone / any-phone exclusivity to VoIP to long-term contract agreements. In the meantime, let’s hope that the FCC not only gathers useful data for its upcoming reports, but also puts its money where its giant federal agency mouth is…and succeeds in increasing competition and empowering the American people with more information and choice.

via AppleInsider

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:07 pm

Swinxs now shipping, kids everywhere told what to do by strange man in a box

So this is a weird thing. It’s kind of like an electronic camp counselor and it’s called Swinxs. Kids wear RFID bracelets and then the box tells you to do stuff like run around and play hide and seek. You check in with the box by moving your RFID band near the box.

There are 25 games so far, most of which involve running around and then coming back to the box for further instructions. Parents can also make their own games including, presumably, my Dad’s old favorites, Go to the Store and Get Me Some Beer and This Is What You Get When You Spill Paint in the Garage.

The box will cost $150 and it’s on Amazon right now. We’ll have a full review shortly because I totally want to see how this thing works in real life.

Source: CrunchGear | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:06 pm

Three genes determine a dog's coat

The many textures found in the coats of dogs can be traced to variants in just three genes, researchers in Maryland have learned. The study at the National Human Genome Research Institute, Bethesda, Md., targeted three genes responsible for every coat type from a poodle's curls to a terrier's wiry hair, Eric Green, the institute's scientific director, said in a release Friday. This study is an elegant example of using genomic techniques to unravel the genetic basis of biological diversity, said Green, whose team analyzed DNA samples of 1,000 dogs representing 80 breeds. Until the study, little was known about the genes responsible for the length, growth pattern and texture of dog coats.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:05 pm

Proposed law would give White House ‘cybersecurity emergency’ powers over the Internet

Internet King and America’s news editor Matt Drudge is freaking out right now, complete with his trademark scare quotes. (I swear, you could probably write a thesis about how Drudge influences the American media.) There’s a bill that’s currently floating around the U.S. Senate that would, in times of emergency, put the Internet, in a sense, in control of the White House. And then the government will make you eat fruits and vegetables! Tyranny!

The bill, still only a draft (and one that’s sure to be amended again given the reaction we’ve seen today), was put together by Sen. Jay Rockefeller. What it does it allows the president to “declare a cybersecurity emergency,” with such a decree even affecting non-government computers that are still critical the country. It would also create a new, government certification that “cybersecurity professionals” would have to pass in certain private sector and governmental situations.

A few organizations are a little uneasy with the bill. (Remember: it’s just a bill, and one that has already been revised in the past few months. Don’t be surprised if nothing at all comes from all of this.) The Internet Security Alliance says it “cannot support the bill” until it’s further clarified exactly what’s going on. (Not that I see why the Internet Security Alliance is any more trustworthy than the federal government, but that’s a fight for somewhere else.) The EFF has also expressed concerns about the federal government getting involved in the private sector Internet.

And while I’m not about to freak out over a bill, I can understand, on some level, people’s concerns with giving the White House the ability to turn to, say, Verizon during a huge catastrophe and saying, “We’re sending someone to monitor the situation in your server room ASAP. Please fully cooperate with him.” It just seems weird, you know? On the other hand, if we can trust the president to declare federal states of emergency—think hurricanes and the like—why can’t we trust him with the ability to declare a “cyber” state of emergency?

But, as I so like to end these “controversial” posts these days, our planet could easily by wiped out by a huge meteor and there’d be nothing at all you, private sector or otherwise, you can do about it. Or there could be a huge earthquake and wipe out cities all along the west coast. The point is, freaking out at the drop of a hat cannot be healthy.

That’s all.

Source: CrunchGear | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:00 pm

Snow Leopard's Hidden X [Voices]

By Nitrozac and Snaggy

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:00 pm

Review: Fagor Portable Induction Cooktop Won’t Burn Down Your House

Cooking with a hotplate? Awesome. Burning your dorm room down because you went to the Phish show for 6 hours and left said hotplate on? Not so much. That’s where a device like the Fagor comes in. Yeah it’s basically a hotplate designed to stoke your macaroni and cheese but it won’t serve as an impromptu space heater. Why? The device uses magnetic induction to warm your pots and pans, not your drapes. Here’s a breakdown of the tech.

And while you’re at it, here’s a review of Fagor’s machine by Bryan Gardiner:

The cooktop brought three cups of water to a full and violent boil almost twice as fast (in just over four minutes) as our gas stove. You’ll also get five power levels to choose from, depending on whether you want to slow melt some chocolate or sauté the hell out of a bag of shrimp.

For all its speed, however, this induction cooker isn’t quite perfect. First, with no visible flame or glowing red coils, fine-tuning the heat levels is a tad tricky, particularly on the lower power settings. And despite the company’s claim of even and precise heating, there was a very discernible hot spot in the middle of our test pans.

Would you like to know more? Read the full review of the Fagor Portable Induction Cooktop at our product reviews website.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:53 pm

Instapaper: A $5 App That Justifies Your iPhone Purchase

Marco Arment’s Instapaper is one of two* killer apps for the iPhone: It’s so useful that it just about justifies the phone’s purchase price all by itself.

Now Arment has cut the price of the Pro version in half, to $5, and you should buy it.

Instapaper started out as a simple web service. To use it, you drag a special “Read Later” bookmarklet to your browser. Whenever you find something that you’d like to read but don’t have time for at the moment, just click that “Read Later” button. The article gets added to your personal page on Instapaper. When you’ve got time later, just visit that page and read away. Conveniently, every article is automatically reformatted (all excess HTML and graphics are stripped out) leaving nothing but highly-readable text.

The Instapaper iPhone app lets you view all those saved articles in an iPhone-friendly format. The free version is so useful that I use it several times a day: On my commute, in the evening, during the odd moments of downtime.

In effect, it turns the iPhone into a super-convenient mini-reading tablet, great for catching up on the news, reading long-form articles, and more.

Instapaper Pro adds a couple new features. It now downloads articles in the background, so any time you have it open, it’s updating the list of stories for you to read. It handles the “graphical version” (with photo) of articles better than the free version. It lets you archive articles that you’ve read more easily. And it adds some minor interface enhancements, such as a reversed mode (light text on a dark background, good for reading at night) and tilt-scrolling.

And, it adds features that let you optionally share your articles with the wider Instapaper community, or read popular articles that have been shared by others.

But even if you don’t feel like you need those features, you should still get the Pro version. It’s only $5, and most of that goes to Arment. For developing such a great app, he certainly deserves it.

One side note: Instapaper pro is rated “17 and up” for “Frequent/Intense Mature/Suggestive Themes,” which is an indication of Apple’s bizarre and arbitrary approval and rating policies.

* The other killer iPhone app is Tweetie, a $3 Twitter client that, if you’re a Twitter user and have multiple accounts, is as indispensable as a needle to a heroin addict.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:45 pm

Robofish Takes To Water

These new small, robotic fish may one day help to monitor environmental hazards.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:45 pm

Facebook to Nonprofits: More Pages, Fewer Apps [Voices]

By Andrew LaVallee, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Nonprofit organizations seeking to harness Facebook can get the most bang for their buck by using fan pages in addition to groups, streamlining their app usage and livening things up, one of its marketing execs said Friday.

Pages operate like profiles for organizations or businesses, can only be created by official representatives and can add applications, while groups are unofficial and can be created by any user. Relying on groups, which have been available longer, is one of the biggest mistakes nonprofits make, said Randi Zuckerberg, who works on marketing and nonprofit initiatives and is co-founder Mark Zuckerberg’s sister. “You lose a lot of the incredible viral power.”

Because fan pages are official, it’s also easier for Facebook to take down fake ones, she said, as opposed to groups, which can be run by enthusiasts.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:40 pm

TomTom’s iPhone Car Kit guides itself through the FCC

It has been a good two months or so since TomTom announced that they were making a GPS-boostin’, speaker-totin’ car cradle for the iPhone, and we’ve heard a whole lot of nothing since. Aside from a UK retailer preorders indicating that the cradle might cost £99.00 (roughly $161), TomTom has been pretty quiet on the matter.

It looks like we might be hearing more soon, though. The product has just made its way through the FCC’s torture tombs, indicating that the product is on the last leg of the development cycle.

Fun fact: The TomTom cradle should work with the iPod Touch, giving it the navigation abilities generally reserved for its better connected, contract-required bigger brother.

You can see all the FCC documentation splayed out here.

[Via Engadget]

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:39 pm

Thieves Use Social Networks To Target Victims

Users of Facebook who post information about their latest purchases or about upcoming travel plans may be setting themselves up to be victims of burglars, according to a new report entitled “The Digital Criminal”, prepared by insurance firm Legal & General with the help of reformed burglar Michael Fraser.  The British-based insurer surveyed 2,092 social media users and found that 38 percent of those using social networking sites like Facebook or Twitter post details about holiday plans, while 33 percent post details of a weekend getaway."Coupled with the finding that an alarmingly high proportion of users are prepared to be 'friends' online with people they don't really know, this presents a serious risk to the security of people's home and contents," Legal & General said.People use social media sites to connect with virtual strangers, the report said, which could provide potential burglars with vital, personal information.To determine how willing people are to accept 'friends' online, Legal & General commissioned a survey conducted by European market researcher Opinion Matters, which sent out 100 'friend' or 'follow' requests to randomly selected strangers.Of those, Facebook users accepted 13 percent while Twitter users accepted 92 percent – without any checks.Despite having these new, and virtually unknown, 'friends,' 64 percent of 16-24 year olds shared information about holiday plans, with younger users being the most likely to reveal information about their whereabouts, the research found.Men were found to be rather nonchalant about disclosing their personal information online.   According to the report, 13 percent provided their mobile number on their profile, with 9 percent revealing their address as well.  By comparison, just 7 percent of women posted their mobile phone numbers, with 4 percent revealing their address."This reaction could result in a complete stranger potentially being able to learn about a person's interests, location and movements in and out of their home," said Legal & General.The majority of users turn to social networking sites to connect with people who are virtually strangers, the study found.  Indeed, 79% believe they are a good way to track down people they "met on holiday", while 75% say they are a good way to meet "friends of friends", and 47% use the sites to meet new people based only on the person having a nice picture.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:38 pm

Publisher Whining Prompts Italian Investigation of Google

Complaints about "lack of transparency" from publishers have prompted Italian competition authorities to begin an investigation of Google's search and news services. I'm sure their motives are completely altruistic. "Because Google does not disclose the criteria for ranking news articles or search results, he said, newspapers are unable to hone their content to try to earn more revenue from online advertising. Ad revenue on the Web is directly proportional to the size of the audience, which is heavily influenced by search or Google News rankings."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:33 pm

8-Story Antigravity Forest Facade Takes Root

When Patrick Blanc was a boy, he suspended plants from his bedroom wall and ran their roots into a fish tank. The greenery received nourishment from the diluted—ahem—fertilizer and purified the water in return. Forty-five years on, the French botanist's gardens have grown massive in scale. One inside a Portuguese shopping mall is larger than four tennis courts, and there's one in Kuwait that's almost as big. But Blanc's recently completed facade for the Athenaeum hotel in London (shown) could be his most high-profile project yet. Looming over Green Park, it's an eight-story antigravity forest composed of 12,000 plants.

Blanc uses a kind of techno-trellis as the underlying structure: A plastic-coated aluminum frame is fastened to the wall and covered with synthetic felt into which plant roots can burrow. A custom irrigation system keeps the felt moist with a fertilizer solution modeled after the rainwater that trickles through forest canopies.

But plants for this vertical landscape must be chosen with care. Because the walls are so high, conditions vary widely. The shade at ground level is perfect for rare Asian nettles; on the brighter upper stories, plants that usually cling to windblown cliff faces brave the blustery British breezes.

Blanc, who still has a fish-tank setup in his apartment, says his creations will always reach upward: "I leave horizontal gardens to others. I only think vertically."

<< previous image | next image >>

The vertical garden at the Athenaeum, which is eight stories tall, has 260 plant species and more than 12,000 plants

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Eighty percent of the plants at the Athenaeum are evergreen; 20 percent are seasonal. They are planted according to environmental demands — those that need more sun, for example, go up top. Ferns go below, where there's more shade.

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Blanc designed the first vertical garden in Spain, which covers an entire wall facing the entrance of the CaixaForum Madrid, designed by starchitects Herzog & de Mueron

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The gardens don't have to be outside. Here's one designed for the Taipei Concert Hall. Blanc first began experimenting with vertical gardens in his bedroom 40 years ago, when he was 12.

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Photo: Loram ipsum

Before he was known as a vertical gardener, Blanc was a precocious botanist. Many of the plants he uses are species he brought back himself from across Asia.

<< previous image | next image >>

Photo: Loram ipsum

A vertical garden adorns the underside of a bridge, Pont Juvénal, in Aix-en-Provence.

<< previous image | next image >>

Photo: Loram ipsum

Blanc's largest garden lies on Rue d'Alsace, in Paris, covering more than 15,000 square feet.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:30 pm

Ancient beads discovered in Morocco

Twenty-five shell beads excavated in Morocco suggest people were wearing and possibly trading jewelry 80,000 years ago, archaeologists said. The beads found at four sites in Morocco are similar to beads found previously in Algeria, Israel and South Africa, the European Science Foundation reported
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:22 pm

Mercedes Makes a Small Bet on Hydrogen

We'll see a (very) small number of hydrogen fuel cell cars from Mercedes by the end of the year.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:22 pm

Find textbook savings with the new SMS service from Chegg.com

Section: Communications, Mobile, Web, Websites

If you’re like most college students, money is super tight and looking at the price of textbooks can bring on an instant panic attack.  To help with this expense, Chegg.com has launched a SMS service to provide instants quotes on the rental of student textbooks.  A new mobile site has also been introduced by the textbook rental company.

The SMS service is simple to use and will require that the user know the ISBN of the textbook they are interested in renting.  Simply, send a text to 44144 with “ISBN” and then the ISBN number in the body.  You will receive a return text with the rental cost of the book.  The mobile site (m.chegg.com) involves entering either the book’s title or ISBN to receive a price quote.  The rental cost will be sent to your email address.

A perk of renting textbooks is that you can simply return them when done instead of going through the hassle of reselling them.  Chegg.com estimates that users will save as much as 85 percent off the cost of their textbooks.  However, these estimates are based on new textbooks and not used versions. 

Site: [Chegg.com]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:14 pm

DHS Clarifies Laptop Border Searches - InformationWeek

Ars Technica

DHS Clarifies Laptop Border Searches InformationWeek The new rules leave open the possibility that travelers may face penalties for refusing to provide passwords or encryption keys. By Thomas Claburn The Department of Homeland Security on Thursday released new directives covering border searches of ... New DHS laptop search policy: crap sandwich, fancier breadArs Technica Government Explains Border Laptop Search Rules To Appease CriticsChannelWeb DHS: Expect your computer to be seized without suspicionBetaNews PC World -TechNewsWorld -InfoWorld all 515 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:07 pm

Nitrous Oxide Depleting Ozone Layer

NOAA has released the first-ever study of the climate impacts of the man-made substance, nitrous oxide.Researchers A.R. Ravishankara, J.S. Daniel and Robert W.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:05 pm

The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

When Good Enuf Is Great

Entire markets have been transformed by products that trade power or fidelity for low price, flexibility, and convenience.
— Erin Biba

Phone
Net-based calls can be laggy, and they sometimes drop out in mid conversation. But they can also be free—even international calls—and it's easy to turn conversations into shareable MP3s. Skype now accounts for 8 percent of international calling minutes, and the service added nearly 38 million users in the second quarter of 2009, a 42 percent increase over the same period last year.

Books
Amazon's Kindle can't display complex graphics, and paper still has much higher resolution. But the device does store hundreds of titles in a slim package, ensuring that you always have access to whichever Philip K. Dick tale you're in the mood for. The Kindle is expected to generate $310 million in revenue by the end of 2009. Barron's estimates that annual sales could reach $2 billion by 2012.

Televison
Its content may not be hi-def, and you're stuck watching it on a computer screen, but Hulu lets you catch recent television shows and popular movies whenever and wherever you want. For free. No wonder it has 40 million unique viewers—up from just 7 million a year ago.

In 2001, Jonathan Kaplan and Ariel Braunstein noticed a quirk in the camera market. All the growth was in expensive digital cameras, but the best-selling units by far were still cheap, disposable film models. That year, a whopping 181 million disposables were sold in the US, compared with around 7 million digital cameras. Spotting an opportunity, Kaplan and Braunstein formed a company called Pure Digital Technologies and set out to see if they could mix the rich chocolate of digital imaging with the mass-market peanut butter of throwaway point-and-shoots. They called their brainchild the Single Use Digital Camera and cobranded it with retailers, mostly pharmacies like CVS.

The concept looked promising, but it turned out to be fatally flawed. The problem, says Simon Fleming-Wood, a member of Pure Digital's founding management team, was that the business model relied on people returning the $20 cameras to stores in order to get prints and a CD. The retailers were supposed to send the used boxes back to Pure Digital, which would refurbish them, reducing the number of new units it had to manufacture. But customers didn't return the cameras fast enough. Some were content to view their pictures on the tiny 1.4-inch LCD and held on to the device, thinking they'd take it in later to get prints. Others figured out how to hack the camera so it would download to a PC, eliminating the need to return the thing altogether.

Brisk sales combined with a lack of speedy returns destroyed the company's thin margins, and the camera failed. But the experience taught Kaplan and Braunstein a lesson: Customers would sacrifice lots of quality for a cheap, convenient device. To keep the price down, Pure Digital had made significant trade-offs. It used inexpensive lenses and other components and limited the number of image-processing chips. The pictures were OK but not great. Yet Pure Digital sold 3 million cameras anyway.

Kaplan and Braunstein also learned something important about camera retailing in general. The market had long been split into two main segments: point-and-shoots (including disposables) and single-lens reflex cameras, which use interchangeable lenses and other high-end accessories. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of cameras sold then—as now—were the handy point-and-shoots; SLRs tended to attract only serious hobbyists and professionals.

Oddly, though, there was no point-and-shoot analogue in video cameras—and that's where the pair saw their next opportunity. Home videocams were almost without exception expensive, complicated devices loaded with features like image stabilization, night-vision mode, and onboard color correction. And even with tools like Apple's iMovie, it was a hassle to get footage off the cameras and onto a computer for editing and sharing. In terms of complexity and price, the camcorder market resembled the SLR market, but with no low-end alternative. Kaplan and Braunstein suspected that there might be a place for a much cheaper, simpler video camera. So they decided to make one.

After some trial and error, Pure Digital released what it called the Flip Ultra in 2007. The stripped-down camcorder—like the Single Use Digital Camera—had lots of downsides. It captured relatively low-quality 640 x 480 footage at a time when Sony, Panasonic, and Canon were launching camcorders capable of recording in 1080 hi-def. It had a minuscule viewing screen, no color-adjustment features, and only the most rudimentary controls. It didn't even have an optical zoom. But it was small (slightly bigger than a pack of smokes), inexpensive ($150, compared with $800 for a midpriced Sony), and so simple to operate—from recording to uploading—that pretty much anyone could figure it out in roughly 6.7 seconds.

Within a few months, Pure Digital could barely keep up with orders. Customers found that the Flip was the perfect way to get homebrew videos onto the suddenly flourishing YouTube, and the camera became a megahit, selling more than 1 million units in its first year. Today—just two years later—the Flip Ultra and its subsequent revisions are the best-selling video cameras in the US, commanding 17 percent of the camcorder market. Sony and Canon are now scrambling to catch up.

The Flip's success stunned the industry, but it shouldn't have. It's just the latest triumph of what might be called Good Enough tech. Cheap, fast, simple tools are suddenly everywhere. We get our breaking news from blogs, we make spotty long-distance calls on Skype, we watch video on small computer screens rather than TVs, and more and more of us are carrying around dinky, low-power netbook computers that are just good enough to meet our surfing and emailing needs. The low end has never been riding higher.

Photo: Kenji Aoki, Lego sculpture: Nathan Sawaya

Computers
On paper, netbooks might seem like crappy toys. They have almost no storage, processing power, or graphics capability. What they do have, though, is accessibility: Cheap, small, and light, they let you connect to the Internet from almost anywhere. Netbook shipments were up sevenfold in the first quarter of 2009.

Trade Shows
It sounds lame, and it is: virtual trade shows inhabited by eager sales avatars and their potential clients. No, it's not the same as meeting face-to-face, but with the economy flatlining, digital confabs are a working alternative. Analysts expect 5,000 virtual events next year, an increase of 500 percent for the industry.

Advertising
They're not high-concept, and they don't feature celebrities (or even pictures). But text-based ads are highly targeted, incredibly cheap to produce, and make up 90 percent of Google's net revenue (and 45 percent of all Internet ad sales in the US).

-D Modeling Software
Rendering software like AutoCAD is notoriously hard to use. Google's SketchUp is dead simple. The result: It has been embraced by architects, engineers, educators, and artists. The full version costs $500—a pittance compared to AutoCAD's $4,000 price tag. SketchUp has become so popular, in fact, that Autodesk has responded with its own lo-res app: Project Dragonfly.

Illustrations: Quickhoney

So what happened? Well, in short, technology happened. The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they're actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as "high-quality."

And it's happening everywhere. As more sectors connect to the digital world, from medicine to the military, they too are seeing the rise of Good Enough tools like the Flip. Suddenly what seemed perfect is anything but, and products that appear mediocre at first glance are often the perfect fit.

The good news is that this trend is ideally suited to the times. As the worst recession in 75 years rolls on, it's the light and nimble products that are having all the impact—exactly the type of thing that lean startups and small-scale enterprises are best at. And from impact can come big sales. "When the economy went south before Christmas last year, we worried that sales would be affected," says Pure Digital's Fleming-Wood. "But we sold a ton of cameras. In fact, we exceeded the goals we had set before the economy soured." And this year? Sales, he says, are up 200 percent. (Another payoff: In May, networking giant Cisco acquired Pure Digital for $590 million.)

To some, it looks like the crapification of everything. But it's really an improvement. And businesses need to get used to it, because the Good Enough revolution has only just begun.

Speaking at an Online publishers conference in London last October, New York University new-media studies professor Clay Shirky had a mantra to offer the assembled producers and editors: "Don't believe the myth of quality." When it comes to the future of media on the Web, Shirky sternly warned, resist the reflex to focus on high production values. "We're getting to the point where the Internet can support high-quality content, and it's as if what we've had so far has all been nice—a kind of placeholder—but now the professionals are coming," Shirky said. "That's not true." To reinforce his point, he pointed to the MP3. The music industry initially laughed off the format, he explained, because compared with the CD it sounded terrible. What record labels and retailers failed to recognize was that although MP3 provided relatively low audio quality, it had a number of offsetting positive qualities.

Shirky's point is crucial. By reducing the size of audio files, MP3s allowed us to get music into our computers—and, more important, onto the Internet—at a manageable size. This in turn let us listen to, manage, and manipulate tracks on our PCs, carry thousands of songs in our pockets, purchase songs from our living rooms, and share tracks with friends and even strangers. And as it turned out, those benefits actually mattered a lot more to music lovers than the single measure of quality we had previously applied to recorded music—fidelity. It wasn't long before record labels were wringing their hands over declining CD sales.

"There comes a point at which improving upon the thing that was important in the past is a bad move," Shirky said in a recent interview. "It's actually feeding competitive advantage to outsiders by not recognizing the value of other qualit ies." In other words, companies that focus on traditional measures of quality—fidelity, resolution, features—can become myopic and fail to address other, now essential attributes like convenience and shareability. And that means someone else can come along and drink their milk shake.

To a degree, the MP3 follows the classic pattern of a disruptive technology, as outlined by Clayton Christensen in his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma. Disruptive technologies, Christensen explains, often enter at the bottom of the market, where they are ignored by established players. These technologies then grow in power and sophistication to the point where they eclipse the old systems.

That is certainly part of what happens with Good Enough tech: MP3s entered at the bottom of the market, were ignored, and then turned the music business upside down. But oddly, audio quality never really readjusted upward. Sure, software engineers have cooked up new encoding algorithms that produce fuller sound without drastically increasing file sizes. And with recent increases in bandwidth and the advent of giant hard drives, it's now even possible to maintain, share, and carry vast libraries of uncompressed files. But better-sounding options have hardly gained any ground on the lo-fi MP3. The big advance—the one that had all the impact—was the move to easier-to-manage bits. Compared with that, improved sound quality just doesn't move the needle.

Photo: Kenji Aoki, Lego sculpture: Nathan Sawaya

Of course, there are those who appreciate the richer sound of uncompressed files, CDs, or even vinyl records (regarded by some audiophiles as the highest-fi format available). But most of us don't give it a second thought. In fact, there's evidence that consumers are simply adapting to the MP3's thin sound. Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford University, recently completed a six-year study of his students. Every year he asked new arrivals in his class to listen to the same musical excerpts played in a variety of digital formats—from standard MP3s to high-fidelity uncompressed files—and rate their preferences. Every year, he reports, more and more students preferred the sound of MP3s, particularly for rock music. They've grown accustomed to what Berger calls the percussive sizzle—aka distortion—found in compressed music. To them, that's what music is supposed to sound like.

What has happened with the MP3 format and other Good Enough technologies is that the qualities we value have simply changed. And the change is so profound that the old measures have almost lost their meaning. Call it the MP3 effect.

We've seen it again and again. Consider, for example, the rise of cloud computing. For years, software was something you bought and installed on your hard drive. A lot of it was made by Microsoft, which solidified its dominance by releasing ever more powerful, feature-laden updates. But with the advent of services like Gmail and Zoho Writer, many users are now turning to the Web for basic tasks like word processing, spreadsheets, and email. These cloud apps have inherent limits: They run through a browser window and can't directly access your local hard drive or processor. They lack features. Their performance depends on the strength of your Internet connection. Nevertheless, tens of millions of people use Gmail, while Zoho Writer boasts 1.8 million users and is growing at a rate of 100,000 subscribers a month. Microsoft, of course, is now jumping into the cloud as fast as it can. Redmond says that Office 2010 will be largely cloud-based. Not to be outdone, Google recently announced a mostly cloud-based operating system that will work in tandem with the company's Chrome browser.

Web tools are succeeding because they're Good Enough. They do most of what we need from a word processor or a spreadsheet or an email program or even an OS. But, like the MP3, they also offer other advantages. You can access them from any computer. If your hard drive crashes, you don't lose your work. And they are incredibly cheap—free in the case of simple tools or just a few dollars a month per user in the case of business apps.

Compare these qualities with those of the MP3 and the Flip, and a clear pattern emerges. The attributes that now matter most all fall under the rubric of accessibility. Thanks to the speed and connectivity of the digital age, we've stopped fussing over pixel counts, sample rates, and feature lists. Instead, we're now focused on three things: ease of use, continuous availability, and low price. Is it simple to get what we want out of the technology? Is it available everywhere, all the time—or as close to that ideal as possible? And is it so cheap that we don't have to think about price? Products that benefit from the MP3 effect capitalize on one or more of these qualities. And they'll happily sacrifice power and features to do so.

By traditional military standards, the MQ-1 Predator isn't much of a plane. Its top speed is a mere 135 miles per hour. It has an altitude ceiling of 25,000 feet. It carries only two 100-pound Hellfire missiles. It has a propeller. By comparison, an A-10 can travel 420 mph, cruise at 45,000 feet, and carry up to 16,000 pounds of bombs—not to mention a 30-mm gatling gun. An F-16 can reach a blistering 1,500 mph (Mach 2), climb to more than 50,000 feet, and back up its 20-mm multibarrel canon with six missiles.

All three of these aircraft are used for surveillance and close air support. But more and more, the military is relying on the unmanned Predator. In the past two years, it has logged more than 250,000 flight hours, nearly all of them in combat. It has been deployed to the Balkans, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Photo: Kenji Aoki, Lego sculpture: Michael Psiaski

Why, if manned planes are so superior, is the Predator saturating the combat market? Because military aircraft are experiencing their own version of the MP3 effect.

Over the past few decades, the armed services—like many industries—have been radically changed by the Internet and other modern communications technologies. Now that the military can digitize and share information quickly, engagements are conducted differently: Greater emphasis is being put on "situational awareness," the ability of remote commanders to know what's happening on a battlefield at all times. This in turn has altered what the military looks for in a plane, much the same way small digital files changed what music fans value in a recording.

There is at least one measure by which the Predator has piloted aircraft handily beat: the ability to maintain a constant presence in the air. That's because the drones are relatively cheap to build, can fly for more than 20 hours straight, and don't require pilots who need sleep, food, and bathroom breaks (and who might die if the plane is shot down). In Afghanistan and Iraq, a Predator is available pretty much anytime the military needs one. Accessibility, in other words, has become a dominant aircraft value—prized as much as, and sometimes more than, speed, altitude, and armament.

"Sustaining the sorts of operations we conduct with the Predator used to be virtually impossible," says Eric Mathewson, director of the Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Task Force. "The idea of putting an aircraft over an area of interest 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, was simply unsustainable."

Piloted aircraft are still valuable, he's quick to add, but because the Predator can linger, it has enabled a new type of strategy—remotely guided surgical strikes with fewer troops and armaments. It's a lesson that surprised the Air Force and other services, Mathewson says, but one that has been learned definitively. "We're now looking at aircraft capabilities for the future that are even more persistent," he says. "We're exploring airships again, which could stay airborne for up to five years."

The impact of the Predator illustrates the potential of the MP3 effect to transform almost any market. In fact, Good Enough tech is already gaining a foothold in two other huge industries: the legal profession and health care.

Richard Granat is a pioneer in a field called elawyering. It shouldn't be confused with Web sites that merely offer legal documents for downloading, Granat explains. Elawyering involves actual lawyers, and clients who use these services get help sorting through legal issues.

Granat, who runs his own law firm and cochairs the American Bar Association's task force on elawyering, has designed and marketed a number of Web tools that walk people through common legal procedures. He created a child-support calculator, for example, which assists couples going through relatively amicable divorces. There's also a tool to help people decide whether they need Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy. These widgets then generate legal forms, which may be reviewed by a licensed attorney who can make suggestions or offer advice over the phone.

It turns out to be a remarkably efficient way of offering what Granat calls legal transaction services—tasks that are document intensive. For everything from wills to adoptions to shareholder agreements, elawyering has numerous advantages. It's cheaper, for example; a no-fault divorce, Granat says, might run a fifth of what seeing an attorney would cost. It's also faster—customers can access the tools anytime and never have to interrupt their day to meet with someone in a distant office. Simply put, elawyering makes certain legal services more accessible.

There are trade-offs, of course. "The relationship has less richness than what you'd get from sitting in a lawyer's office," Granat says. "And if you have an issue that's more complex, then you still need to see a lawyer face-to-face." In other words, it's a lower-fidelity experience.

But for most simple legal interactions, elawyering is, well, Good Enough. It gets the job done, even if it doesn't let you ask every question or address every contingency. And not surprisingly, it's on the rise. "Elawyering will be mainstream in three years," Granat says. "I predict that in five years, if you're a small firm and don't offer this kind of Web service, you're not going to make it."

Photo: Kenji Aoki, Lego sculpture: Nathan Sawaya

In the case of health care, the Good Enough mindset can be seen in a new initiative by Kaiser Permanente. The largest not-for-profit medical organization in the country, Kaiser has long relied on a simple strategy of building complete, self-sustaining hospitals—employing 50 doctors or more—in each region it serves. "It's an efficient model," says Michele Flanagin, Kaiser's vice president of delivery systems strategy. "It offers one-stop shopping: pharmacy and radiology and everything you want from health care in one building." But that approach forces patients who don't live near a hospital to drive a long way for even the most routine doctor's appointment.

As it happens, though, Kaiser has become one of the most technologically advanced health care providers in the country, digitizing everything from patient records and doctors' notes to lab data and prescriptions and putting it all online. The system is networked, so patients can email their doctor, check lab results, and make appointments from their PC or mobile Web device. Getting a referral doesn't mean carrying medical records from one doctor to another, as it does at many hospitals.

In 2007, Flanagin and her colleagues wondered what would happen if, instead of building a hospital in a new area, Kaiser just leased space in a strip mall, set up a high tech office, and hired two doctors to staff it. Thanks to the digitization of records, patients could go to this "microclinic" for most of their needs and seamlessly transition to a hospital farther away when necessary. So Flanagin and her team began a series of trials to see what such an office could do. They cut everything they could out of the clinics: no pharmacy, no radiology. They even explored cutting the receptionist in favor of an ATM-like kiosk where patients would check in with their Kaiser card.

What they found is that the system performed very well. Two doctors working out of a microclinic could meet 80 percent of a typical patient's needs. With a hi-def video conferencing add-on, members could even link to a nearby hospital for a quick consult with a specialist. Patients would still need to travel to a full-size facility for major trauma, surgery, or access to expensive diagnostic equipment, but those are situations that arise infrequently.

If that 80 percent number rings a bell, it's because of the famous Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. And it happens to be a recurring theme in Good Enough products. You can think of it this way: 20 percent of the effort, features, or investment often delivers 80 percent of the value to consumers. That means you can drastically simplify a product or service in order to make it more accessible and still keep 80 percent of what users want—making it Good Enough—which is exactly what Kaiser did.

Flanagin believes these clinics will enable Kaiser to add thousands of new members. And they'll do it for less. The per-member cost at a microclinic is roughly half that of a full Kaiser hospital. The first microclinic is set to open in Hawaii early next year. Medical care is now poised for its own manifestation of the MP3 effect.

The phenomenon certainly won't stop with hospitals, lawyers, and military campaigns. As more and more industries move their business online, they too will find success in Good Enough tools that focus on maximizing accessibility. It's a reflection of our new value system. We've changed. To benefit from the MP3 effect, companies will have to change as well.

No one understands this better than the folks at Pure Digital Technologies. Two years ago, the Flip Ultra nailed all three of those accessibility traits: It was significantly less expensive than other digital video cameras—so much so, it almost seemed an impulse buy in comparison. It was much easier to use, not only for shooting video but also for uploading clips to the Internet. And its pocketable size and Web-sharing abilities made video available anytime, anywhere. The Flip hit the Good Enough trifecta.

When asked why he thinks the Flip has succeeded where more powerful videocams—and even new Flip knockoffs from the likes of Sony—have failed, Pure Digital's Fleming-Wood has an interesting answer: "I think it's because we have a better product." What's odd is that executives at Sony and Canon would likely say the same thing—after all, their models have far more features and often produce sharper images. But Fleming-Wood is using a different definition of "better." He now defines quality entirely in terms of ease of use—how easy it is to shoot and share the video. "The one thing everyone wants to do with their footage is show it to someone else," he says.

Even so, it's easy to imagine that feature creep will one day seep into the Flip. After all, the company recently released models that record in HD, so why not image stabilization or a bigger LCD—or hey, how about a touchscreen! "We will always prioritize accessibility over features," Fleming-Wood insists. The increase in pixel count, he says, is simply the result of Moore's law advances in chip speed and storage capacity, not a signal that Pure Digital is changing its focus. Once HD components became available that would not drastically raise the price of the camera or make it harder to use, "it made no sense not to go HD," Fleming-Wood says. He points out that Pure Digital has yet to include other features like an optical zoom or image stabilization, adding that he knows people love the Flip because of how simple it makes recording and sharing video. "We will never sacrifice that."

When he thinks about how the Flip line will improve in the future, Fleming-Wood envisions adding features that will make the video even easier to share. "Well, we could add Wi-Fi or cell connectivity, so if you were filming your kid's soccer game, you could be uploading the footage to the Web in real time so Grandma could watch from home," he says with a daydreamer's enthusiasm. To do something that ambitious, of course, might require sacrificing some of that HD image quality. No problem, as long as it's Good Enough.

Senior editor Robert Capps (rcapps@wired.com) wrote about Judd Apatow in issue 15.06.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:00 pm

Soft & Beautiful(R) Just for Me!(R) Promotes Child Safety

MELROSE PARK, Ill., Aug. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- This back to school season, Soft & Beautiful(R) Just for Me!(R)( ), the #1 children's brand in America, is giving parents the gift of peace of mind.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:00 pm

The Good Enough Revolution: When Cheap and Simple Is Just Fine

When Good Enuf Is Great

Entire markets have been transformed by products that trade power or fidelity for low price, flexibility, and convenience.
— Erin Biba

Phone
Net-based calls can be laggy, and they sometimes drop out in mid conversation. But they can also be free—even international calls—and it's easy to turn conversations into shareable MP3s. Skype now accounts for 8 percent of international calling minutes, and the service added nearly 38 million users in the second quarter of 2009, a 42 percent increase over the same period last year.

Books
Amazon's Kindle can't display complex graphics, and paper still has much higher resolution. But the device does store hundreds of titles in a slim package, ensuring that you always have access to whichever Philip K. Dick tale you're in the mood for. The Kindle is expected to generate $310 million in revenue by the end of 2009. Barron's estimates that annual sales could reach $2 billion by 2012.

Televison
Its content may not be hi-def, and you're stuck watching it on a computer screen, but Hulu lets you catch recent television shows and popular movies whenever and wherever you want. For free. No wonder it has 40 million unique viewers—up from just 7 million a year ago.

In 2001, Jonathan Kaplan and Ariel Braunstein noticed a quirk in the camera market. All the growth was in expensive digital cameras, but the best-selling units by far were still cheap, disposable film models. That year, a whopping 181 million disposables were sold in the US, compared with around 7 million digital cameras. Spotting an opportunity, Kaplan and Braunstein formed a company called Pure Digital Technologies and set out to see if they could mix the rich chocolate of digital imaging with the mass-market peanut butter of throwaway point-and-shoots. They called their brainchild the Single Use Digital Camera and cobranded it with retailers, mostly pharmacies like CVS.

The concept looked promising, but it turned out to be fatally flawed. The problem, says Simon Fleming-Wood, a member of Pure Digital's founding management team, was that the business model relied on people returning the $20 cameras to stores in order to get prints and a CD. The retailers were supposed to send the used boxes back to Pure Digital, which would refurbish them, reducing the number of new units it had to manufacture. But customers didn't return the cameras fast enough. Some were content to view their pictures on the tiny 1.4-inch LCD and held on to the device, thinking they'd take it in later to get prints. Others figured out how to hack the camera so it would download to a PC, eliminating the need to return the thing altogether.

Brisk sales combined with a lack of speedy returns destroyed the company's thin margins, and the camera failed. But the experience taught Kaplan and Braunstein a lesson: Customers would sacrifice lots of quality for a cheap, convenient device. To keep the price down, Pure Digital had made significant trade-offs. It used inexpensive lenses and other components and limited the number of image-processing chips. The pictures were OK but not great. Yet Pure Digital sold 3 million cameras anyway.

Kaplan and Braunstein also learned something important about camera retailing in general. The market had long been split into two main segments: point-and-shoots (including disposables) and single-lens reflex cameras, which use interchangeable lenses and other high-end accessories. Not surprisingly, the vast majority of cameras sold then—as now—were the handy point-and-shoots; SLRs tended to attract only serious hobbyists and professionals.

Oddly, though, there was no point-and-shoot analogue in video cameras—and that's where the pair saw their next opportunity. Home videocams were almost without exception expensive, complicated devices loaded with features like image stabilization, night-vision mode, and onboard color correction. And even with tools like Apple's iMovie, it was a hassle to get footage off the cameras and onto a computer for editing and sharing. In terms of complexity and price, the camcorder market resembled the SLR market, but with no low-end alternative. Kaplan and Braunstein suspected that there might be a place for a much cheaper, simpler video camera. So they decided to make one.

After some trial and error, Pure Digital released what it called the Flip Ultra in 2007. The stripped-down camcorder—like the Single Use Digital Camera—had lots of downsides. It captured relatively low-quality 640 x 480 footage at a time when Sony, Panasonic, and Canon were launching camcorders capable of recording in 1080 hi-def. It had a minuscule viewing screen, no color-adjustment features, and only the most rudimentary controls. It didn't even have an optical zoom. But it was small (slightly bigger than a pack of smokes), inexpensive ($150, compared with $800 for a midpriced Sony), and so simple to operate—from recording to uploading—that pretty much anyone could figure it out in roughly 6.7 seconds.

Within a few months, Pure Digital could barely keep up with orders. Customers found that the Flip was the perfect way to get homebrew videos onto the suddenly flourishing YouTube, and the camera became a megahit, selling more than 1 million units in its first year. Today—just two years later—the Flip Ultra and its subsequent revisions are the best-selling video cameras in the US, commanding 17 percent of the camcorder market. Sony and Canon are now scrambling to catch up.

The Flip's success stunned the industry, but it shouldn't have. It's just the latest triumph of what might be called Good Enough tech. Cheap, fast, simple tools are suddenly everywhere. We get our breaking news from blogs, we make spotty long-distance calls on Skype, we watch video on small computer screens rather than TVs, and more and more of us are carrying around dinky, low-power netbook computers that are just good enough to meet our surfing and emailing needs. The low end has never been riding higher.

Photo: Kenji Aoki, Lego sculpture: Nathan Sawaya

Computers
On paper, netbooks might seem like crappy toys. They have almost no storage, processing power, or graphics capability. What they do have, though, is accessibility: Cheap, small, and light, they let you connect to the Internet from almost anywhere. Netbook shipments were up sevenfold in the first quarter of 2009.

Trade Shows
It sounds lame, and it is: virtual trade shows inhabited by eager sales avatars and their potential clients. No, it's not the same as meeting face-to-face, but with the economy flatlining, digital confabs are a working alternative. Analysts expect 5,000 virtual events next year, an increase of 500 percent for the industry.

Advertising
They're not high-concept, and they don't feature celebrities (or even pictures). But text-based ads are highly targeted, incredibly cheap to produce, and make up 90 percent of Google's net revenue (and 45 percent of all Internet ad sales in the US).

-D Modeling Software
Rendering software like AutoCAD is notoriously hard to use. Google's SketchUp is dead simple. The result: It has been embraced by architects, engineers, educators, and artists. The full version costs $500—a pittance compared to AutoCAD's $4,000 price tag. SketchUp has become so popular, in fact, that Autodesk has responded with its own lo-res app: Project Dragonfly.

Illustrations: Quickhoney

So what happened? Well, in short, technology happened. The world has sped up, become more connected and a whole lot busier. As a result, what consumers want from the products and services they buy is fundamentally changing. We now favor flexibility over high fidelity, convenience over features, quick and dirty over slow and polished. Having it here and now is more important than having it perfect. These changes run so deep and wide, they're actually altering what we mean when we describe a product as "high-quality."

And it's happening everywhere. As more sectors connect to the digital world, from medicine to the military, they too are seeing the rise of Good Enough tools like the Flip. Suddenly what seemed perfect is anything but, and products that appear mediocre at first glance are often the perfect fit.

The good news is that this trend is ideally suited to the times. As the worst recession in 75 years rolls on, it's the light and nimble products that are having all the impact—exactly the type of thing that lean startups and small-scale enterprises are best at. And from impact can come big sales. "When the economy went south before Christmas last year, we worried that sales would be affected," says Pure Digital's Fleming-Wood. "But we sold a ton of cameras. In fact, we exceeded the goals we had set before the economy soured." And this year? Sales, he says, are up 200 percent. (Another payoff: In May, networking giant Cisco acquired Pure Digital for $590 million.)

To some, it looks like the crapification of everything. But it's really an improvement. And businesses need to get used to it, because the Good Enough revolution has only just begun.

Speaking at an Online publishers conference in London last October, New York University new-media studies professor Clay Shirky had a mantra to offer the assembled producers and editors: "Don't believe the myth of quality." When it comes to the future of media on the Web, Shirky sternly warned, resist the reflex to focus on high production values. "We're getting to the point where the Internet can support high-quality content, and it's as if what we've had so far has all been nice—a kind of placeholder—but now the professionals are coming," Shirky said. "That's not true." To reinforce his point, he pointed to the MP3. The music industry initially laughed off the format, he explained, because compared with the CD it sounded terrible. What record labels and retailers failed to recognize was that although MP3 provided relatively low audio quality, it had a number of offsetting positive qualities.

Shirky's point is crucial. By reducing the size of audio files, MP3s allowed us to get music into our computers—and, more important, onto the Internet—at a manageable size. This in turn let us listen to, manage, and manipulate tracks on our PCs, carry thousands of songs in our pockets, purchase songs from our living rooms, and share tracks with friends and even strangers. And as it turned out, those benefits actually mattered a lot more to music lovers than the single measure of quality we had previously applied to recorded music—fidelity. It wasn't long before record labels were wringing their hands over declining CD sales.

"There comes a point at which improving upon the thing that was important in the past is a bad move," Shirky said in a recent interview. "It's actually feeding competitive advantage to outsiders by not recognizing the value of other qualit ies." In other words, companies that focus on traditional measures of quality—fidelity, resolution, features—can become myopic and fail to address other, now essential attributes like convenience and shareability. And that means someone else can come along and drink their milk shake.

To a degree, the MP3 follows the classic pattern of a disruptive technology, as outlined by Clayton Christensen in his 1997 book The Innovator's Dilemma. Disruptive technologies, Christensen explains, often enter at the bottom of the market, where they are ignored by established players. These technologies then grow in power and sophistication to the point where they eclipse the old systems.

That is certainly part of what happens with Good Enough tech: MP3s entered at the bottom of the market, were ignored, and then turned the music business upside down. But oddly, audio quality never really readjusted upward. Sure, software engineers have cooked up new encoding algorithms that produce fuller sound without drastically increasing file sizes. And with recent increases in bandwidth and the advent of giant hard drives, it's now even possible to maintain, share, and carry vast libraries of uncompressed files. But better-sounding options have hardly gained any ground on the lo-fi MP3. The big advance—the one that had all the impact—was the move to easier-to-manage bits. Compared with that, improved sound quality just doesn't move the needle.

Photo: Kenji Aoki, Lego sculpture: Nathan Sawaya

Of course, there are those who appreciate the richer sound of uncompressed files, CDs, or even vinyl records (regarded by some audiophiles as the highest-fi format available). But most of us don't give it a second thought. In fact, there's evidence that consumers are simply adapting to the MP3's thin sound. Jonathan Berger, a professor of music at Stanford University, recently completed a six-year study of his students. Every year he asked new arrivals in his class to listen to the same musical excerpts played in a variety of digital formats—from standard MP3s to high-fidelity uncompressed files—and rate their preferences. Every year, he reports, more and more students preferred the sound of MP3s, particularly for rock music. They've grown accustomed to what Berger calls the percussive sizzle—aka distortion—found in compressed music. To them, that's what music is supposed to sound like.

What has happened with the MP3 format and other Good Enough technologies is that the qualities we value have simply changed. And the change is so profound that the old measures have almost lost their meaning. Call it the MP3 effect.

We've seen it again and again. Consider, for example, the rise of cloud computing. For years, software was something you bought and installed on your hard drive. A lot of it was made by Microsoft, which solidified its dominance by releasing ever more powerful, feature-laden updates. But with the advent of services like Gmail and Zoho Writer, many users are now turning to the Web for basic tasks like word processing, spreadsheets, and email. These cloud apps have inherent limits: They run through a browser window and can't directly access your local hard drive or processor. They lack features. Their performance depends on the strength of your Internet connection. Nevertheless, tens of millions of people use Gmail, while Zoho Writer boasts 1.8 million users and is growing at a rate of 100,000 subscribers a month. Microsoft, of course, is now jumping into the cloud as fast as it can. Redmond says that Office 2010 will be largely cloud-based. Not to be outdone, Google recently announced a mostly cloud-based operating system that will work in tandem with the company's Chrome browser.

Web tools are succeeding because they're Good Enough. They do most of what we need from a word processor or a spreadsheet or an email program or even an OS. But, like the MP3, they also offer other advantages. You can access them from any computer. If your hard drive crashes, you don't lose your work. And they are incredibly cheap—free in the case of simple tools or just a few dollars a month per user in the case of business apps.

Compare these qualities with those of the MP3 and the Flip, and a clear pattern emerges. The attributes that now matter most all fall under the rubric of accessibility. Thanks to the speed and connectivity of the digital age, we've stopped fussing over pixel counts, sample rates, and feature lists. Instead, we're now focused on three things: ease of use, continuous availability, and low price. Is it simple to get what we want out of the technology? Is it available everywhere, all the time—or as close to that ideal as possible? And is it so cheap that we don't have to think about price? Products that benefit from the MP3 effect capitalize on one or more of these qualities. And they'll happily sacrifice power and features to do so.

By traditional military standards, the MQ-1 Predator isn't much of a plane. Its top speed is a mere 135 miles per hour. It has an altitude ceiling of 25,000 feet. It carries only two 100-pound Hellfire missiles. It has a propeller. By comparison, an A-10 can travel 420 mph, cruise at 45,000 feet, and carry up to 16,000 pounds of bombs—not to mention a 30-mm gatling gun. An F-16 can reach a blistering 1,500 mph (Mach 2), climb to more than 50,000 feet, and back up its 20-mm multibarrel canon with six missiles.

All three of these aircraft are used for surveillance and close air support. But more and more, the military is relying on the unmanned Predator. In the past two years, it has logged more than 250,000 flight hours, nearly all of them in combat. It has been deployed to the Balkans, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Iraq.

Photo: Kenji Aoki, Lego sculpture: Michael Psiaski

Why, if manned planes are so superior, is the Predator saturating the combat market? Because military aircraft are experiencing their own version of the MP3 effect.

Over the past few decades, the armed services—like many industries—have been radically changed by the Internet and other modern communications technologies. Now that the military can digitize and share information quickly, engagements are conducted differently: Greater emphasis is being put on "situational awareness," the ability of remote commanders to know what's happening on a battlefield at all times. This in turn has altered what the military looks for in a plane, much the same way small digital files changed what music fans value in a recording.

There is at least one measure by which the Predator has piloted aircraft handily beat: the ability to maintain a constant presence in the air. That's because the drones are relatively cheap to build, can fly for more than 20 hours straight, and don't require pilots who need sleep, food, and bathroom breaks (and who might die if the plane is shot down). In Afghanistan and Iraq, a Predator is available pretty much anytime the military needs one. Accessibility, in other words, has become a dominant aircraft value—prized as much as, and sometimes more than, speed, altitude, and armament.

"Sustaining the sorts of operations we conduct with the Predator used to be virtually impossible," says Eric Mathewson, director of the Air Force Unmanned Aircraft Systems Task Force. "The idea of putting an aircraft over an area of interest 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, was simply unsustainable."

Piloted aircraft are still valuable, he's quick to add, but because the Predator can linger, it has enabled a new type of strategy—remotely guided surgical strikes with fewer troops and armaments. It's a lesson that surprised the Air Force and other services, Mathewson says, but one that has been learned definitively. "We're now looking at aircraft capabilities for the future that are even more persistent," he says. "We're exploring airships again, which could stay airborne for up to five years."

The impact of the Predator illustrates the potential of the MP3 effect to transform almost any market. In fact, Good Enough tech is already gaining a foothold in two other huge industries: the legal profession and health care.

Richard Granat is a pioneer in a field called elawyering. It shouldn't be confused with Web sites that merely offer legal documents for downloading, Granat explains. Elawyering involves actual lawyers, and clients who use these services get help sorting through legal issues.

Granat, who runs his own law firm and cochairs the American Bar Association's task force on elawyering, has designed and marketed a number of Web tools that walk people through common legal procedures. He created a child-support calculator, for example, which assists couples going through relatively amicable divorces. There's also a tool to help people decide whether they need Chapter 7 or Chapter 13 bankruptcy. These widgets then generate legal forms, which may be reviewed by a licensed attorney who can make suggestions or offer advice over the phone.

It turns out to be a remarkably efficient way of offering what Granat calls legal transaction services—tasks that are document intensive. For everything from wills to adoptions to shareholder agreements, elawyering has numerous advantages. It's cheaper, for example; a no-fault divorce, Granat says, might run a fifth of what seeing an attorney would cost. It's also faster—customers can access the tools anytime and never have to interrupt their day to meet with someone in a distant office. Simply put, elawyering makes certain legal services more accessible.

There are trade-offs, of course. "The relationship has less richness than what you'd get from sitting in a lawyer's office," Granat says. "And if you have an issue that's more complex, then you still need to see a lawyer face-to-face." In other words, it's a lower-fidelity experience.

But for most simple legal interactions, elawyering is, well, Good Enough. It gets the job done, even if it doesn't let you ask every question or address every contingency. And not surprisingly, it's on the rise. "Elawyering will be mainstream in three years," Granat says. "I predict that in five years, if you're a small firm and don't offer this kind of Web service, you're not going to make it."

Photo: Kenji Aoki, Lego sculpture: Nathan Sawaya

In the case of health care, the Good Enough mindset can be seen in a new initiative by Kaiser Permanente. The largest not-for-profit medical organization in the country, Kaiser has long relied on a simple strategy of building complete, self-sustaining hospitals—employing 50 doctors or more—in each region it serves. "It's an efficient model," says Michele Flanagin, Kaiser's vice president of delivery systems strategy. "It offers one-stop shopping: pharmacy and radiology and everything you want from health care in one building." But that approach forces patients who don't live near a hospital to drive a long way for even the most routine doctor's appointment.

As it happens, though, Kaiser has become one of the most technologically advanced health care providers in the country, digitizing everything from patient records and doctors' notes to lab data and prescriptions and putting it all online. The system is networked, so patients can email their doctor, check lab results, and make appointments from their PC or mobile Web device. Getting a referral doesn't mean carrying medical records from one doctor to another, as it does at many hospitals.

In 2007, Flanagin and her colleagues wondered what would happen if, instead of building a hospital in a new area, Kaiser just leased space in a strip mall, set up a high tech office, and hired two doctors to staff it. Thanks to the digitization of records, patients could go to this "microclinic" for most of their needs and seamlessly transition to a hospital farther away when necessary. So Flanagin and her team began a series of trials to see what such an office could do. They cut everything they could out of the clinics: no pharmacy, no radiology. They even explored cutting the receptionist in favor of an ATM-like kiosk where patients would check in with their Kaiser card.

What they found is that the system performed very well. Two doctors working out of a microclinic could meet 80 percent of a typical patient's needs. With a hi-def video conferencing add-on, members could even link to a nearby hospital for a quick consult with a specialist. Patients would still need to travel to a full-size facility for major trauma, surgery, or access to expensive diagnostic equipment, but those are situations that arise infrequently.

If that 80 percent number rings a bell, it's because of the famous Pareto principle, also known as the 80/20 rule. And it happens to be a recurring theme in Good Enough products. You can think of it this way: 20 percent of the effort, features, or investment often delivers 80 percent of the value to consumers. That means you can drastically simplify a product or service in order to make it more accessible and still keep 80 percent of what users want—making it Good Enough—which is exactly what Kaiser did.

Flanagin believes these clinics will enable Kaiser to add thousands of new members. And they'll do it for less. The per-member cost at a microclinic is roughly half that of a full Kaiser hospital. The first microclinic is set to open in Hawaii early next year. Medical care is now poised for its own manifestation of the MP3 effect.

The phenomenon certainly won't stop with hospitals, lawyers, and military campaigns. As more and more industries move their business online, they too will find success in Good Enough tools that focus on maximizing accessibility. It's a reflection of our new value system. We've changed. To benefit from the MP3 effect, companies will have to change as well.

No one understands this better than the folks at Pure Digital Technologies. Two years ago, the Flip Ultra nailed all three of those accessibility traits: It was significantly less expensive than other digital video cameras—so much so, it almost seemed an impulse buy in comparison. It was much easier to use, not only for shooting video but also for uploading clips to the Internet. And its pocketable size and Web-sharing abilities made video available anytime, anywhere. The Flip hit the Good Enough trifecta.

When asked why he thinks the Flip has succeeded where more powerful videocams—and even new Flip knockoffs from the likes of Sony—have failed, Pure Digital's Fleming-Wood has an interesting answer: "I think it's because we have a better product." What's odd is that executives at Sony and Canon would likely say the same thing—after all, their models have far more features and often produce sharper images. But Fleming-Wood is using a different definition of "better." He now defines quality entirely in terms of ease of use—how easy it is to shoot and share the video. "The one thing everyone wants to do with their footage is show it to someone else," he says.

Even so, it's easy to imagine that feature creep will one day seep into the Flip. After all, the company recently released models that record in HD, so why not image stabilization or a bigger LCD—or hey, how about a touchscreen! "We will always prioritize accessibility over features," Fleming-Wood insists. The increase in pixel count, he says, is simply the result of Moore's law advances in chip speed and storage capacity, not a signal that Pure Digital is changing its focus. Once HD components became available that would not drastically raise the price of the camera or make it harder to use, "it made no sense not to go HD," Fleming-Wood says. He points out that Pure Digital has yet to include other features like an optical zoom or image stabilization, adding that he knows people love the Flip because of how simple it makes recording and sharing video. "We will never sacrifice that."

When he thinks about how the Flip line will improve in the future, Fleming-Wood envisions adding features that will make the video even easier to share. "Well, we could add Wi-Fi or cell connectivity, so if you were filming your kid's soccer game, you could be uploading the footage to the Web in real time so Grandma could watch from home," he says with a daydreamer's enthusiasm. To do something that ambitious, of course, might require sacrificing some of that HD image quality. No problem, as long as it's Good Enough.

Senior editor Robert Capps (rcapps@wired.com) wrote about Judd Apatow in issue 15.06.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 1:00 pm

Sony Sides With Google in 'Library of... - Wired News

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Sony Sides With Google in 'Library of Future' Settlement Wired News In the battle to win readers for the books of the future, Sony has sided with Google over a controversial, proposed copyright lawsuit settlement that lets Google build out the library and bookstore of the future. ... Google Releases Books in Portable EPUB FormatPC Magazine Google Sides Against Amazon in eBook Format WarsPC World Sony sees Google Books settlement as 'profoundly positive'Los Angeles Times TG Daily -New York Times -Bloomberg all 56 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:50 pm

Hello Kitty–A Snow Leopard Review Roundup [Digital Daily]

Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, the latest iteration of Apple’s operating system, arrived at market today–about a month earlier than originally anticipated. And while it doesn’t really deliver the GUI enhancements we’ve come to expect from Apple (AAPL) and some incompatibilities are riling people up, Snow Leopard’s under-the-hood improvements and price point appear to have struck a chord with critics. Below, a selection of early reviews:

Overall, I believe Snow Leopard will help keep the Mac an appealing choice for computer buyers, and I can recommend it to existing Mac owners seeking more speed and disk space, or wanting to more easily use Exchange. But I don’t consider Snow Leopard a must-have upgrade for average consumers. It’s more of a nice-to-have upgrade. If you’re happy with Leopard, there’s no reason to rush out and get Snow Leopard.

– Walt Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal

The changes here are modest, and the performance gains look promising but beyond the built in apps, just a promise. If you’re looking for more bells and whistles, you can hold off on this upgrade for at least awhile. But my thought is that Snow Leopard’s biggest feature is that it doesn’t have any new features, but that what is already there has been refined, one step closer to perfection. They just better roll out some new features next time, because the invisible refinement upgrade only works once every few decades.

– Brian Lam, Gizmodo

Here’s the thing about Snow Leopard, the single inescapable fact that hung over our heads as we ran our tests and took our screenshots and made our graphs: it’s $30. $30! If you’re a Leopard user you have virtually no reason to skip over 10.6, unless you’ve somehow built a mission-critical production workflow around an InputManager hack (in which case, well, have fun with 10.5 for the rest of your life). Sure, maybe wait a few weeks for things like Growl and MenuMeters to be updated, and if your livelihood depends on QuickTime you might want to hold off, but for everyone else the sheer amount of little tweaks and added functionality in 10.6 more than justifies skipping that last round of drinks at the bar–hell, we’re guessing Exchange support alone has made the sale for a lot of people.

– Joshua Topolsky, Engadget

Snow Leopard is Apple’s lowest-priced OS update in eight years. Granted, it’s a collection of feature tweaks and upgrades, as well as under-the-hood modifications that might not pay off for users immediately. But the price of upgrading is so low that I’ve really got to recommend it for all but the most casual, low-impact Mac users. If you’ve got a 32-bit Intel Mac (that is, one powered by a Core Solo or Core Duo processor), the benefit of this upgrade will be a little less. But for most Mac users, especially the kind of person who reads a Web site devoted to the subject, the assorted benefits of Snow Leopard outweigh the price tag. I’d pay $30 just for the improved volume ejection, the ability to create services with Automator, and the improvements to the Dock and Exposé–though I admit I’d pay slightly more to not have the misguided QuickTime Player X as a part of the package. If you’re a user who connects to an Exchange server every day, upgrading to Snow Leopard really is a no-brainer. For everyone else, maybe it’s not quite a no-brainer-but it’s awfully close. Snow Leopard is a great value, and any serious Mac user should upgrade now.

– Jason Snell, Macworld

Impressive and important, it’s an update that will revitalize your existing Mac even though you’ll be stumped for a quick five-minute demo that convinces the people around you that much of anything has changed at all.

– Andy Ihnatko, Chicago Sun Times

In my experience, Mac OS X was already a superior operating system to Windows. With Exchange and other technologies, Snow Leopard adds bite, especially for business. But as upgrades go, this one is relatively tame.

– Ed Baig, USA Today

If you’re already running Leopard, paying the $30 for Snow Leopard is a no-brainer. You’ll feel the leap forward in speed polish, and you’ll keep experiencing those ‘oh, that’s nice’ moments for weeks to come. If you’re running something earlier, the decision isn’t as clear cut; you’ll have to pay $170 and get Snow Leopard with Apple’s creative-software suites–whether you want them or not. Either way, the big story here isn’t really Snow Leopard. It’s the radical concept of a software update that’s smaller, faster and better–instead of bigger, slower and more bloated. May the rest of the industry take the hint.

– David Pogue, New York Times

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:44 pm

Sony Sides With Google in 'Library of Future' Settlement

Sony comes to Google's rescue in the controversial Book Search settlement, which lets the search giant create the library of the future. Other tech companies hate it, but Sony says it will be good for its e-book reader.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:44 pm

Shuttle prepares for night launch

The rotating support structure was rolled away from the shuttle Discovery Friday in preparation for a night launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., NASA said. The shuttle was targeted for liftoff at 11:59 EDT with no issues reported that could affect the launch, NASA officials said. A launch
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:43 pm

NASA's Most Awesomely Weird Mission Patches

Perhaps the best habit NASA picked up from the military is making patches for its missions. Here we go through the some of the strangest, including ones featuring a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle and Stephen Colbert.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:37 pm

WATCH: Why Do We Feel Thirst?

Explore what makes us feel parched in this Why? Tell Me Why! segment.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:35 pm

Britain's Top Car Nut Bullish on Green Racing Tech

Lord Drayson tells us how auto racing can go green, and why green racing isn't an oxymoron.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:33 pm

Invasive mussel studied for stickiness

The invasive green mussel has a powerful form of adhesion in its foot that could be copied to form synthetic adhesives, scientists in California said. The mussel, formally known as Perna viridis, has a sticky adhesive with a chemistry far more complicated than mussels studied previously, said J.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:31 pm

iPhone Owner Sues AT&T, Apple for Tricky MMS Marketing

A peeved iPhone customer has filed a lawsuit against Apple and AT&T, and surprisingly it’s unrelated to dropped calls or spotty network performance. It has to do with the multimedia messaging, which still isn’t available for iPhone customers in the United States.

Filed in Ohio by customer Deborah Carr, the lawsuit alleges that Apple and AT&T used tricky marketing to deceive consumers into believing multimedia messaging would become available for iPhones by June.

“Millions of customers, as a result of the false and deceptive representations and concealments of Apple and AT&T purchased the 3G and 3GS, waiting for the wonderful day in June 2009 when the new application would be available which would allow MMS,” the court filing [pdf] states. “Unfortunately, after downloading the new 3.0 Software Update application, MMS still did not work on both the 3G and 3GS.”

The complaint acknowledges that Apple and AT&T provide a disclaimer stating “MMS support from AT&T coming in late summer,” but the lawsuit says the font is so small it’s barely readable.

Apple in March demonstrated iPhone 3.0 at a media event, where the company highlighted MMS support as a major new feature in the OS. Then in June, Apple delivered the news that MMS support would be available for 29 carriers as soon as the iPhone 3.0 OS launched June 17 — but not for AT&T customers until “late summer.”

Apple has not commented on the reasons for the delay. AT&T provided a vague statement, saying the reason was unrelated to AT&T’s 3G network.

“We absolutely will offer MMS on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G with 3.0 upgrades in late summer once we complete some system upgrades that will ensure our customers have the best experience with MMS,” an AT&T spokesman said in a statement. “These upgrades are unrelated to our 3G network.”

Apple and AT&T have until Sept. 22, when fall officially begins, to fulfill the promise of delivering MMS by “late summer.” Mark your calendars.

How do you feel about how Apple and AT&T are handling MMS for iPhone? Vote in the poll below.

See Also:

• AT&T: Lack of MMS, Tethering Support for iPhone Is Not Network’s …
• AT&T Denies Rumors of MMS Delays, Tethering Costs for iPhone …
• Apple Bestows Cut-and-Paste, MMS on iPhone Users
• How AT&T Stumbled Through the iPhone 3GS Launch
• First Look: Apple Stays Ahead of the Curve With iPhone 3.0 OS …

Via InformationWeek

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:31 pm

iPhone Owner Sues AT&T, Apple Over MMS Claims

A disgruntled iPhone customer sues Apple and AT&T, alleging that the companies' marketing misled customers to believe that multimedia messaging service would be available by June.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:31 pm

iPhone Owner Sues AT&T, Apple Over MMS Claims

A disgruntled iPhone customer sues Apple and AT&T, alleging that the companies' marketing misled customers to believe that multimedia messaging service would be available by June.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:31 pm

Folks on Bikes: Blind Pilot's Slow Road to Success

The Oregon band Blind Pilot completed two bicycle tours of the West coast, but they arrive in San Francisco (by van this time) to play the Outside Lands festival Friday night.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:30 pm

Swiss Wardens Seek 3 Wolves; Dead Or Alive

Swiss authorities are on the hunt for three wolves that have exceeded their kill count of sheep in western Switzerland's canton Valais.According to AFP, authorities issued a death warrant for the wolves, which entered the country from Italy and France.The order came after sheepherders reported that their flocks were under attack by the pack of wolves.On the night of August 1 and 2, about 15 sheep fell prey to the wolf trio.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:25 pm

New marine life found in mile-long cave

A crustacean with poisonous fangs and no eyes has been discovered in an underwater cave in the Canary Islands, researchers in Texas said. Tom Iliffe, a marine biologist at Texas A&M, Galveston, discovered the crustacean, and worms smaller than a grain of rice, in a mile-long underwater
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:02 pm

Apple Inks Chinese iPhone Deal [Digital Daily]

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Horrendously Ugly Notebook Has Performance at Heart

There's really no way to put this delicately: the Toshiba U505 is ugly as hell. Touted as a "thin and light" machine, it's fat and heavy. But what it lacks in good looks and a trim figure it makes up for in fast performance and great battery life.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Horrendously Ugly Notebook Has Performance at Heart

There's really no way to put this delicately: the Toshiba U505 is ugly as hell. Touted as a "thin and light" machine, it's fat and heavy. But what it lacks in good looks and a trim figure it makes up for in fast performance and great battery life.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 12:00 pm

Spy Son Rats Out Mole Father

The story of a convicted CIA spy using his son to collect overdue bills for the father's nefarious activities is taking a new turn. The son, in a bid for leniency, agrees to plead guilty and testify against his father if necessary.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 28 Aug 2009 | 11:51 am

Gentlemen, Start Your Engines: Time for Another Round of Cable Deals? [MediaMemo]

Did a federal court just give underemployed M&A guys a boost? Could be: The United States Court of Appeals in Washington, D.C., has overturned a longstanding cap on cable-system ownership.

If the court’s decision holds up, it could well start another round of dealmaking similar to the one we saw at the beginning of this decade in which the industry consolidated to about half a dozen major players.

Reuters:

“The commission has failed to demonstrate that allowing a cable operator to serve more than 30 percent of all cable subscribers would threaten to reduce either competition or diversity in programming,” the court said.

The judges pointed to rising competition among video providers, including satellite companies like DirecTV Group Inc, as well as telephone companies like AT&T Inc and Verizon Communications Inc, which have been rolling out their own subscription television services.

“Cable operators, therefore, no longer have the bottleneck power over programming that concerned the Congress in 1992.” the court said. The FCC’s cable ownership limit has been the focus of court challenges for years.

As Reuters points out, new FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski can try to appeal the decision or try to write a new one. But if the cap stays off, we’re likely to see another round of combinations, or attempted combinations, at the very least.

Lots of handicappers have already been expecting big cable operators like Comcast (CMCSA) to make a run at programming assets, as it did with Disney (DIS) years ago. But what if the company deploy its assets to bulk up with more subscribers instead? Investors in Cablevision (CVC), the smallish, New York-based cable system that is a perpetual supposed takeover target that never gets taken over, like the idea: CVC shares are climbing modestly in a flat market.

Source: All Things Digital | 28 Aug 2009 | 11:21 am

Nepalese suffering water shortage

The effects of climate change on Nepal will mean more suffering for millions of people living in extreme poverty, an international aid agency said. Nepal already is experiencing poor harvests and water shortages in rural areas, an Oxfam report said.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 11:15 am

iPhone Goes to China Without Wi-Fi

Apple and carrier China Unicom have struck a deal to sell iPhones in China later this year, marking Apple’s entrance into the world’s largest wireless market.

China Unicom delivered the news in a press release Friday stating that a three-year agreement had been reached with Apple, and that iPhones would begin selling in the four quarter of this year.

The company did not disclose details on pricing or revenue sharing. However, two weeks ago China Unicom let slip that it has paid Apple 10 billion yuan ($1.46 billion) for 5 million iPhones. An 8GB model of the iPhone is estimated to sell for 2,400 yuan ($350), and a 16GB may be sold at 4,800 yuan ($700), China Unicom said in an interview with the International Business Times — a statement the company unsuccessfully attempted to retract.

The official iPhone heading to China isn’t exactly the same as the ones we see here: Apple removed Wi-Fi hardware from its iPhones for China Unicom to comply with Chinese government standards. Why? The history behind China’s Wi-Fi regulation on smartphones is controversial and complicated. For years, the country has been trying to push tech companies to adopt its own wireless encryption standard called Wireless Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure (WAPI), which competes with the Wi-Fi (IEEE 802.11) standard.

Years ago, the Chinese government failed to impose WAPI as a mandatory security measure in China. Then, 22 companies formed an alliance agreeing to help push WAPI as a standard. China Unicom is part of that alliance.

Though China has about 700 million wireless subscribers (twice the population of the United States), Apple and China Unicom face challenges in this market. They face competition with not only other smartphones, but also iPhones smuggled through the gray market as well as counterfeits of Apple’s popular device. As many as 1.5 million consumers have purchased iPhones through the gray market, according to WSJ.

Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein, told WSJ that he estimates Apple can sell 2.9 million iPhones in China by the end of 2011. That’s a big number, but that of the of the 5 million that China Unicom purchased, that would leave 2 million unsold.

See Also:

• China Mobile Still Open to iPhone Deal
• Chinese iPhone Knockoffs Described With Hilarious Engrish
• Say Hello to Wired.com’s Fake Chinese iPhone — the HiPhone …
• Unicom

Photo: William Hook/Flickr

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 11:05 am

Who’s on Crack in Tech: 08.28.09

Section: Audio, Video, Computers, Gadgets / Other, Web, Web 2.0, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack

Welcome to this week’s “Who’s on Crack” where we pick apart the stories from the past week that refuse to have any relation to reality.  With announcements just around the corner to fill up the holidays, things are getting zany, even silly.  Clearly, more than a few companies appear to to be on crack.

This week’s winners:

• Microsoft sees black
• Way too many eReaders
• Twitter business model to fail
• FLO TV bringing Personal TVs?

Microsoft sees the world differently

This week, Microsoft apologized for photoshopping out a black man and replacing him with a white man.  Our Sue Walsh posted this about it: “It was glaringly obvious because the designer forgot to change the man’s hands, resulting in a white man with a black man’s hands.  It’s not clear why Microsoft felt the need for the sloppy race change, but they promise they are looking into the incident and have yanked the ad.”

The image has turned into one of the back cover of Boys’ Life where you try to find hidden images.  In the Microsoft ad, you can find a Mac (whoops), and a computer monitor that is connected to nothing.  Silly props.

Going back to the people in the room, I find the black man’s head looking just as preposterous as the white mans.  Take a look at that melon!  He looks like a JibJab stop motion singing head.  So who was really sitting there?  Perhaps a Native American?  A Latino?  An Aussie?  Something tells me this secret is guarded better than who shot JFK.

How many eReaders will you use?

Our Editor, Iyaz was one of the talking heads on TechVi rattling on about Sony’s new eReaders.  I’ll probably regret saying this, but he was the more rational ones in the room.  The reason?  It’s one thing to build a nice piece of hardware, something Sony is great at; it’s another thing to drive customers to your product.

The problems with eReaders are two fold: cost and confidence.  $299/$399 is a steep price for replacing something I get for $5 at my local library (I factor in late costs with every book I borrow, I am a realist).  Cost is a very real issue to win this market over. 

The second is replacing ink and paper.  Everyone understands how a book works, we’ve been hooked on paper for hundreds of years.  There is no menu to memorize and no batteries to worry about.  This is a bigger issue than most folks think.

The other talking head on this edition of TechVi was from PC Mag and he was completely sold on the Sony book, saying he was going to get the $299 version that required a connection to a laptop to download new books.  Good gosh man, you’re a tech guy, chip in for some wireless.  While all his pals are partying, I can see him chilling at home download more books for his trip the next morning.

Do we, as Americans, really read this much?  Are they gearing up for overseas readers?  Are we building a ladder to the moon with eReaders?  That or it’s a freakin’ fantastic domino set.

Twitter business model doomed

Everyone’s tried to guess how Twitter will monetize.  Its solution was presented as this: “Twitter co-founder Biz Stone announced Thursday that the popular micro-blogging service plans to offer paid accounts to businesses by the end of the year.  Users of the accounts will have access to stats and analytics not available to regular users, and quite possibly a new commercial API.”

So, company execs can Twitter freely but to do it under the @megacorporation there will be a fee.  Um, OK.  Really?  This is how you are going to put bread on your plate?  I can see some bites for this, but not many and not nearly enough to keep the site stable. 

Here is a study I ran at the local Odd Lot: I put out a bubble gum machine.  Day one, I marked it “free.”  Darn thing was emptied in an hour.  The next day, I made it “free*” and hung out charging folks in suits $1.  You know what happened, Biz?  The folks in suits laughed at me and didn’t buy my bubble gum.

Now, sure, I didn’t do that.  But if I did, I expect the same results.  Putting a price on something you give out for free to some makes those that have to pay kinda angry at you.  Making the sell to a bunch of angry folks is rather tough.  But hey, I didn’t invent this cool train, so maybe Biz knows best.

FLO didn’t get the memo?

To round out my tech gear, I need a personal TV.  After all the 4 foot long boom box, Sony Walkman Sports cassette player, car phone and computer that’s as big as a sofa, are together not enough to keep me happy.  I need a personal TV.

Oh, wait.  This isn’t the 80s and I no longer sport an afro.

Our Robert Nelson tells us about FLOs plans: “But more importantly, I also learned that Audiovox was currently in the process of building a mobile television device for FLO TV, which I suppose could be known as a Personal Television.  The details that I have are pretty light, but I was told that it was going to be designed as a rear seat entertainment device for the car and that it was initially going to be sold as an aftermarket device with hopes that it would later become an optional accessory from the dealer.”

I can’t find anything to watch on 130 channels, so how are 20 channels going to improve that for my kids who happen to be pickier than me.  How is this better than SlingPlayer, you know that stuff I’ve already decided I want them to watch?  And yet another screen to lug around?  I am utterly mystified.

This seems like a giant step backwards in time.  Maybe there are secrets hidden that will reveal themselves.  Like maybe they’ve found a time machine.

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 28 Aug 2009 | 11:00 am

Offshore wind farms at least a year off

Permits for the first offshore U.S. wind farms remain at least a year away but are on track to be approved, Interior Department officials said. We are going to see this commercial development occurring, both offshore and solar.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 10:51 am

Storm 2, Touch Pro 2, Omnia II, Samsung Convoy, and two mystery Palms show up in Verizon’s inventory

We’ve got good news, and we’ve got not-so-good news. The good news: PhoneArena just got their hands on 6 screen shots showing off a handful of devices making their first appearances in Verizon’s inventory system. The not-so-good news: They don’t really answer any questions. In fact, they raise more questions than they answer - but we still love us a good leak!

A couple of devices that have already been confirmed (or, at least, are pretty much undeniable) make an appearance; namely, the Storm 2, Touch Pro 2, and Omnia II. Outside of phones that highlight the fact that everyone is just strapping some form of “Two” onto the names of their popular handsets and calling it a day, the Samsung Convoy and two mystery Palm devices also show up: the P101, and the P121. We can assume that one is the Pre - but what’s the other? The Palm Eos, perhaps?

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 28 Aug 2009 | 10:47 am

Disease threatens African banana fields

Drastic action is needed against two diseases attacking banana fields in Uganda and other African countries, scientists said. It's a big danger because the affected areas have the banana as their staple crop, Christopher Chemirehreh, a spokesman for Uganda's Kawanda Agricultural Research
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 28 Aug 2009 | 10:36 am

Second place in the App Store brings in $6,300 a day

There are few things more coveted in the iPhone developer world than the top spots on the App Store sales chart. Sure, there’s only one way to go once you’ve hit the top; but while you’re there, you’re riding high. You get to sit back, relax, and watch as Cupertino’s little talkbox prints out money.

But how much are those spots worth, exactly? How much do these top Paid Apps bring in?

While most developers that reach the top aren’t looking to spill the beans on how much change they’ve just walked away with, TapTapTap, creators of the current second best-selling Paid App, Convert, have put it all out on the table. After launching with a great product and the helpful hand of positive blog coverage, Convert shot up the charts to #2 with roughly 50,000 sales spread out across two weeks. But once it hit #2, the downloads spiked: 9,000 downloads per day.

After Apple takes their cut, that’s roughly $6,300 a day. Considering that taptaptap is just a handful of guys (their primary team is made up of just 3) — and that they made $35,000+ from sales in two weeks as they climbed the charts — that’s a whole lot of coin. Enjoy your yachts, guys.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 28 Aug 2009 | 9:51 am

3M launches pocket-sized projector, the MPro120

Section: Audio, Video, Accessories

It’s an easy situation to imagine.  You’re traveling somewhere with just a netbook, but you want to show something to more people than can fit around that tiny screen.  An external monitor of some sort would be nice, but what about a projector?  Usually that would would mean lugging around a huge machine that would need to plug into a wall and just generally be a hassle to set up.  With 3M’s new projector that issue is gone.

The new projector from 3M is small enough to fit in your pocket, laptop bag, purse, or whatever you use.  It doesn’t even need to to be plugged in, lasting for 2-4 hours on a single battery charge.  The tiny projector, the MPro120 produces a VGA picture (640x480), at anywhere between 8 and 50 inches large.  It also projects at up to 10 lumens so brightness shouldn’t be too much of an issue.  The MPro120 even packs in two half-watt speakers so no longer will you have to worry about having video with no sound on your projector.

The MPro120 looks to be a neat device, though it might be worth waiting for the next generation.  While it is an industry standard for projectors, VGA can be very limiting to what you want to show.  It’ll be nice when projectors finally get to resolutions that equal or surpass netbooks.  Though, if VGA doesn’t bother you, the MPro120 definitely has it’s uses that would make it a good choice for anyone who needs a tiny projector to use anywhere that the have a wall.  The MPro120 costs £299.00. 

Read [3M]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 28 Aug 2009 | 9:50 am

First Look: Facebook 3.0 for iPhone - PC World

Telegraph.co.uk

First Look: Facebook 3.0 for iPhone PC World Facebook updated its popular iPhone app, delivering lots of improved features for the official iPhone Facebook 3.0 rev. But sadly, Facebook fails to deliver everything a mobile Facebook warrior could want. Apple approved version 3.0 of the Facebook app ... Facebook Updates iPhone AppInformationWeek Rearrange your iPhone appsCNET News Apple Approves Spotify Music AppPC Magazine Techtree.com -Washington Post -PC Magazine all 470 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 28 Aug 2009 | 9:37 am

BirkenCrocs!!!

Birkenstock's Birkies shoe was developed by fuseproject. Simple, slip-on clogs you can wear gardening, at the beach, or even while cooking, just like NY chef Mario Batali.

Looks familiar, no?

[via Bike Snob NYC]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 9:30 am

PODCAST: Zombie Outbreak Modeled

Researchers use zombies to model the spread of infectious disease.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Aug 2009 | 9:30 am

Fast-Spreading Bug Threatens Calif. Citrus

An aphid-like insect is found farther north in Calif. than it has ever been seen before.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Aug 2009 | 8:35 am

Sony's Waterproof Universal Remotes

Sony is set to release a new line of waterproof remotes next month.

Bad news: Japan-only, at least for now.

Good news: You probably don't need a waterproof remote.

[via New Launches]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 8:30 am

NYC Giving Away Cool Bike Helmets

There’s probably one thing that stops adoption of bicycle helmets more than anything else, and that’s the fact that they all look so dorky. The standard road-style noggin-covers make your head look like some ridged Klingon nightmare, and the slightly cooler-looking BMX lids are still rather unwieldy, and will muss your hair to boot.

Some of us just buy the best-looking helmet we can. Others would rather present their fragile melon to the asphalt in its raw, naked form. In New York, there is a third way. The Fuseproject is an attempt to make headwear look good. Inside is a skate-style helmet, and outside you can cover up with one of many “caps”. They do share a problem with other BMX-type helmets which have such little ventilation that they’ll boil your brain in anything but deepest winter.

These are not on sale yet, but are being handed out by the City at various NYC community events. Good luck!

NYC Helmets by fuseproject [Flylyf]

See Also:

• Yakkay Helmet and Cover
• Bern Brentwood: The Only Bike Helmet You'll Ever Need
• Smart Bike Helmets Disfigured by Decoration

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 7:32 am

720p HD webcams from Microsoft and Hercules coming in September

Section: Video, Peripherals, Webcam/VoIP

While full 1080p HD is still coming, a crop of 720p HD webcams will be here before you know it.  Microsoft and Hercules (the company, not the demigod) will be releasing 720p cameras for your computer in September, 2009. 

Microsoft’s LifeCam Cinema is a barrel shaped clip-on webcam that will bring 720p video in widescreen to your computer.  There is a built in microphone as well.  Microsoft claims that the camera is set to handle the normal lighting situations of a home, so low light situations shouldn’t result in cruddy video.  The LifeCam Cinema will cost $79.95.

Hercules is also bringing out its own 720p webcam called the Dualpix HD720p.  It has the same features as the LifeCam Cinema with 720p HD and a built in mic.  The Dualpix captures video at 30 frames per second.  Hercules went with a flatter design which could make packing the device easier.  Another distinction is the price—$59.99 for the Dualpix HD720p. 

Both cameras are designed for Windows and don’t officially support Mac OS X.

If all of this 1080p/720p stuff has you confused, here’s a quick refresher on what these terms mean:  The 1080 and 720 numbers refer to resolutions of 1920 x 1080 and 1280 x 720 respectively.  The “p” designation refers to how the image is drawn onto your screen; the “p” stands for progressive.  That means that an image is drawn on your screen from top to bottom line by line.  The other designation is “i,” which stands for interlaced.  Interlaced video draws every other line (the odd lines), then fills in the rest of the picture (the even lines).  Most sports programs are broadcast in 720p because it handles motion better.

Product site: [Hercules Dualpix HD720p]
Read: [Microsoft Press Release]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 28 Aug 2009 | 7:00 am

New, Cheaper Sony DSLR Almost Identical to Older Brother

Today there are three more Sony DSLRs in the world. First, the consumer-level A550 ($1050) and A500 ($850). Both have twist-n-look flip-out LCD screens, and the more expensive A550 packs 921,000 pixels onto the screen. Both also have an auto-HDR mode (which combines two differently exposed frames into one), new low noise CMOS sensors (14.2 and 12.3MP respectively).

But more interesting is the new A850. The full-frame camera has the same relationship to Sony’s flagship A900 as Nikon’s D700 has to the D3. Internally, it is almost identical to its big brother, only it costs $700 less.

The new A850 is $2000, the A900 $2700. The tradeoff is in the viewfinder coverage (98% Vs. 100%) and a slower continuous shooting speed (3fps Vs. 5fps). Other than that, it is functionally identical, with the same 25 megapixel sensor, image stabilization and everything else. It will be available in November, with the A500 and A550 arriving in October.

A850 Product page [Sony]

A550 Product page [Sony]

A500 Product page [Sony]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 6:52 am

African Tree Makes Soils Rich for Crops

A close cousin of the acacia tree proves a valuable fertilizing tool for African farmers.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Aug 2009 | 6:45 am

Great Pacific Garbage Patch Swells

An enourmous mass of garbage in the Pacific hosts much more debris than scientists expected.
Source: Discovery News Top Stories : Discovery Channel | 28 Aug 2009 | 6:45 am

Six Million Songs in Your Pocket: Apple Approves Spotify for iPhone

Spotify, the music streaming application which brings any of six million songs instantaneously to your desktop has been approved by Apple for the iPhone. Paying Spotify customers will be able to access all this music, anytime, and your playlists are even cached locally for access offline — useful for both air-travelers and iPod Touch owners. In short, Apple has just approved an application which renders iTunes obsolete.

For the political and behind the scenes details go to Eliot Van Buskirk’s excellent article on our sister blog, Epicenter, in which he describes the worries of the Swedish company that Apple would swat their app flat, and the implications of having six million songs in your pocket.

Back at Gadget Lab, we’re wondering just what this means for the iPhone itself. First, right now we don’t know how much space Spotify can use to store music offline. I’d happily wipe all my music and start over, especially if the iPhone app is using the higher quality 320kbps Ogg Vorbis codec that the desktop version uses.

In fact, I’d happily dump iTunes altogether, if only there was a viable podcast solution (my main audio use of my iPod) which grabbed podcasts and put them into the actual iPod music library. That would be it: apps can be downloaded direct to the device, my contacts and calendars are already synced over the air to Google’s services.

However this shakes out, though, one thing is clear. Spotify can only drive sales of the iPhone. Unless Apple adds its own subscription service to iTunes, what does it care how you get the music onto the device?

The app should be in the iTunes Store any time now, but only in Sweden, Norway, Finland, Britain, France and Spain.

Apple Approves Spotify iPhone App; US Rollout Still On Hold [Epicenter]

See Also:

• U.S. Exclusive: Hands-On with the Spotify iPhone App
• Spotify Becomes Platform, Makes U.S. Music Fans Even More Jealous …
• Biggest Record Label Earns More from Spotify than iTunes in Sweden …

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 6:14 am

Japanese iPod Speaker Looks Like Wooden Shopping Bag

A little more elegant than the tinny plastic or huge-woofered alternatives, this little speaker comes in the shape of a shopping bag, and packs a fairly decent (for small speakers) 30 watts of output. You can pop your iPod or other MP3 player into the top, and the handles of the bentwood case can be used to hang it up.

Sadly, it is both non-stereo and non-portable: you have to plug it into the mains, which precludes wandering the streets uptown and blasting out the strains of Mozart to an appreciative crowd of lunching laydeez. ¥31,500, or $335.

Product page [E-Select via BBG]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:48 am

1959 Wittnauer Cine-Twin: Camera and Projector in One

Remember we told you that Nikon’s Coolpix S1000pj was the “the first that we know of in a consumer camera”. We were wrong. Way back in 1959 you could buy the Zoom Cine-Twin, a honking great 8mm film camera which ran on D-cell batteries which was billed as the “World’s first movie camer and projector combination”.

Not only was it big, it was expensive. According to Retro Thing, the camera was sold in jewellery stores instead of camera stores. There were more innovations too, especially in the later zoom model (pictured). The zoom lens had a companion zoom viewfinder, and there was a built-in exposure meter.

Now, the trouble with a film-based two-in-one is that, unlike the digital Nikon, you need to remove the film, process it and then put it back in. Hardly convenient. In fact, very inconvenient, making the camera bigger and heavier, and more delicate than a standalone 8mm camera.

This wasn’t even the first, either. Retro Thing mentions the “cinematograph” of 1892, but really, any still film camera is also a projector. You just leave the back open and shine a strong light through there. Now, sit back and enjoy this ten-minute demonstration from camera collector Kerry Decker.

New Nikon S1000pj Not First Camera/Projector Convergence [Retro Thing via the Giz]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:26 am

Gallery: OS X Snow Leopard Unboxed

It’s Friday morning, February 28th 2009, and look who came to breakfast. Why, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, of course. I popped into the local branch of FNAC to pick it up (after trying yesterday, when the Genius gave me an apologetic shrug and told me not to worry, and that there would be “hundreds of copies” in the morning).

Here in Europe you’ll pay €29, which works out at $41.50, a hefty chunk of change more than the US price. I shouldn’t complain, though, as normally we have to wait weeks and pay more.

I saw no queues, and I suspect that there won’t be many anywhere. After all, its a product which adds little of note to the normal user, and is certainly not in short supply. On to the pictures. This is an unboxing, after all.

The box. You’ll see this is the Spanish version, although of course it still has the same awful clip-art. We’re fully expecting to see v10.7 featuring Comic Sans on the box. This is what happens when Steve Jobs goes on leave.

Gah! This is messy, too. I think we can peg the beginnings of this design decline to the purple space picture that “graced” every Mac’s desktop since 10.5.

This one, at least, retains some Apple minimalism.

Does anyone ever read this part?

The same horrific picture on the disk. Seriously, Apple, what happened? Can’t you afford a graphic designer?

Some things never change. Stickers! Who doesn’t love stickers? These are destined for my hackintosh.

Product page [Apple]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:03 am

Universal external notebook battery will keep your notebook and gadgets charged while on the go

Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Laptops, Netbooks, Gadgets / Other, Miscellaneous, Peripherals

Keeping your gadgets charged up while you are on the go always seems to be a constant struggle, but thanks to a little gadget from LaptopBatteryExpress your notebook or netbook (or just about any other gadget) will be able to keep a charge a little longer.

The gadget is simply called the “Universal External Laptop Battery” and is noted as being able to offer you up to an additional four hours of battery life.  The external battery ships with a variety of seven adapter tips that should work for most notebooks (except Apple).  In terms of specs, the battery is 6600mAh, measures in at 9 x 4.9 x 0.59-inches and weighs 1.7-pounds.  Also in addition to the seven included adapter tips the battery also has a USB port that will let you plug in (and charge) smaller gadgets such as a Zune, iPod, or iPhone.

All things considered this could be a nice item for any road warrior to keep in their gear bag.  Of course, this power does come with a price tag and it is not cheap—$179.99.  But on the flip side, I suppose paying $179.99 for this battery would be cheaper than buying multiple external batteries for multiple devices.

Product [Laptop Battery Express]  Via [SlashGear]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:01 am

Power On Self Test: Spunky Lamps

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 5:00 am

Game consoles could be a drain on your utility costs

FROM GAMERTELL - Hey buddy, turn off that console when it’s not in use! You’ll thank yourself when you get your utility bill…
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 28 Aug 2009 | 4:45 am

Chinese iPhone Gets Official In English. China Unicom Nearly Doubles AT&T’s Subscriber Base.

Just as we wrote about yesterday, Chinese telecom giant China Unicom has just officially announced that it has reached a deal with Apple to sell the iPhone in China. They did so as an aside in their earnings announcement, which you can find here. Some details not revealed yesterday include that this is a 3-year deal between China Unicom and Apple, and that the first iPhones will ship sometime in Q4 of this year (the report yesterday had said October, which is certainly a possibility). Not stated is whether this will be the iPhone 3GS or the older iPhone 3G. Recent reports had indicated that either way, the device would not come with WiFi functionality (which had supposedly long been one sticking point between Apple and the Chinese carriers).

Source: MobileCrunch | 28 Aug 2009 | 3:32 am

Review: Sennheiser's IE8 noise-isolating headphones

I spent much of the summer staring at the Sennheiser IE8s in anticipation. They're the second-most expensive headphones in my possession, at $449, and as the owner of two other pairs of Sennheisers, I wanted to savor the moment.

I spent considerable time just opening the package. The IE8's presentation is out of this world: several layers of foam surround the headphones and their brushed-metal, slide-open carrying case, which has dedicated spots for each earbud, a cord winder, four additional hooks for storing spare ear cushions, and a slot for the cleaning tool. The case has a pop-out compartment in back which, I learned, is used to hold one of those silica-gel packs to keep the headphones dry. The IE8s actually shipped with a silica gel pack in shrinkwrapped plastic that is meant for consumer use.

The IE8 comes with manual bass response tuning. A little dial on each ear piece allows the listener to fine-tune bass performance (with a tiny screwdriver) to match personal preferences. The performance shift is similar to a car stereo--higher bass provides greater rumble, but not necessarily better sound. I found the sound to be pretty spot-on out of the box, with the bass knob on its gentlest setting.

I found the Sennheisers to be a fascinating case study when compared to the high-end competition in my possession. The Shure SE530s are ready to rock: booming bass, shimmering treble, not a lot of concern about midrange. The Etymotic ER-4 microPro, on the other hand, are the smooth operator, not getting excited, just delivering exactly what is supposed to be delivered.

The Sennheiser IE8, meanwhie, goes for robust. These are the warmest headphones I tested, with enveloping middle tones and balanced calibration throughout the tonal range. Bass is strong and resonant (at every manual-adjusted level), and high notes come through cleanly.

Sennheiser's no-nonsense Teutonic approach minimizes the impact of the IE8's sound reproduction. Shure's bass notes boom; Sennheiser's thump. Etymotic's high notes sparkle; Sennheiser's arrive. It's a striking difference, most noticeable when trying several headphones in rapid succession.

Ultimately, the Sennheiser's low-key excellence became my favorite. By not overdoing any one aspect of its audio response, the IE8s were the most reliable at handling whatever music I threw at them. Noise isolation was solid, especially on an airplane, where I used the double-flanged silicone cushions to seal out cabin noise. I'd pick the SE530s for Van Halen and the ER-4s for Mingus, but I can recommend the IE8s for anything.

I had a lengthy discussion with my coworkers at Ai about these headphones, and the potential lunacy of spending $449 on earbuds. I then went back to my desk and thought to myself, "Meanwhile, they sound fantastic." End of story. The best-in-show ribbon hangs here.

Product Page [Amazon]

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets | 28 Aug 2009 | 2:53 am

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