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Shake-n-Chop: Release yourself from the suffering of SlapChop
Unlike the SlapChop, the Shake-n-Chop does not cause pain. Instead, it causes kitchen enlightenment. It is not available for purchase and the website was made by a twelve year old on summer vacation but it is clear that the Shake-n-Chop has a great future ahead of it in the manufacture of what appear to be maggots out of any prime organic material.
Source: CrunchGear | 12 Sep 2009 | 4:14 am EPA review could delay mine projects - Columbus Dispatch
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 12 Sep 2009 | 4:10 am $358 Million Patent Judgment Against Microsoft Overturnedeldavojohn writes "Last year, Microsoft was ordered to pay Alcatel-Lucent hundreds of millions of dollars for patent infringement. Well, that award has just been overturned by the United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, saving Microsoft a considerable sum. But Microsoft isn't in the clear yet; the appellate court said that they did infringe on Alcatel-Lucent patents, but that those infringements did not warrant $358 million in damages. The case needs to be retried."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 12 Sep 2009 | 3:10 am Gazprom, Rosneft say Europe to remain No.1 customerMOSCOW, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Russian state-run energy majors Gazprom and Rosneft said on Saturday they would expand supplies to Asia but the Asian markets would not displace Europe as the main outlet...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 12 Sep 2009 | 2:43 am Gazprom CEO sees risk to Ukraine Jan gas paymentsMOSCOW, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Russia still sees risks to timely payments by Kiev for Russian gas supplies for January 2010 when Ukraine will have presidential election, the head of Russia's gas export monopoly...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 12 Sep 2009 | 2:39 am Shuttle astronauts prepare for Texas homecomingAfter diverting to California, astronauts from space shuttle Discovery prepared to reunite with their families and NASA managers in Texas on Saturday. Discovery took a cross-country...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 12 Sep 2009 | 2:16 am NASA names target for water hunt at moon's south pole - Los Angeles Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 12 Sep 2009 | 12:59 am Geist On Copyright As Canada Consult Nears EndAn anonymous reader writes "Canadian law professor Michael Geist, who has been leading the charge on the national copyright consultation with his SpeakOutOnCopyright.ca site, has posted his own submission to the consultation. Geist focuses on issues like fair use and circumvention, and warns against a Canadian DMCA, copyright term extension, and three-strikes program. 'If copyright veers too far toward specific technologies by mandating new protection for specific business models or technological innovations, those rules risk being overtaken as the technologies and marketplace evolve. ... It should only be a violation of the law to circumvent a technological protection measure if the underlying purpose is to infringe copyright.' He also pointed out a few days ago that Bell Canada seems to be advising content owners to sue its own customers. The public consultation ends on September 13th."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 12 Sep 2009 | 12:08 am The new iPod Nano: More features, same size - Los Angeles Times
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Sep 2009 | 10:40 pm Indie Game Dev On the Positive Side To DRMspidweb writes "The online backlash against DRM has gotten a bit excessive, especially since the purpose of DRM is entirely admirable: to stop thieves and free riders and to help creators actually get paid for their work. This blog entry calls attention to XBox Live, a place where strong DRM is helping to encourage quality games at low prices which make money for their developers. Quoting: 'If I could snap my fingers and give myself the same absolute control over the games I make that XBox Live has over theirs (in return for lower prices), I would. The freedom of the current system is nice, but it comes at too high a cost. Honest people need to pay extra to subsidize thieves. The unfairness is just this side of intolerable, and it's only getting worse. DRM is fair if, for what the corporations take, we get something in return.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 11 Sep 2009 | 10:02 pm Surgical Robots Operate With PrecisionThe inexorable march of technology brings robots into the operating theater. The new generation is capable of some first-rate cutting. A Wired.com photo gallery.
Source: Wired Top Stories | 11 Sep 2009 | 10:00 pm All the words in Scribblenauts (spoiler alert)
Part of the fun of the game, however, must be in trying out the craziest stuff you can think of and see if it’s in there. However, those of you who play through games with the strategy guide in your lap will probably just want to look at a huge list of all the words you can put in. Luckily for you, that list exists. Some hackerish type took apart the ROM and ripped the full dictionary. It comes off as a mix of… well, everything. Internet memes, deities, objects, scientific names of creatures, chemicals, and pretty much everything in between. Warning, it’s over 20,000 items long. Here are a few of my favorites, which I can’t wait to try when I get the game:
I think some of the words have a letter left off the end. I have trouble believing they put in “Apoll” and not “Apollo.” [via Reddit]
Source: Gizmodo | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:30 pm GeoEye, Inc. Commences Cash Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation for its Floating Rate Senior Secured Notes Due 2012DULLES, Va., Sept. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- GeoEye, Inc. (Nasdaq: GEOY) today announced that it has commenced a cash tender offer (the "Tender Offer") to purchase any and allSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:30 pm GeoEye, Inc. Commences Cash Tender Offer and Consent Solicitation for its Floating Rate Senior Secured Notes Due 2012DULLES, Va., Sept. 11 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- GeoEye, Inc.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:30 pm Orginal Computer Space arcade machine up on eBay
I mean, what else would you do with $2,500? Spend it on a modern gaming notebook? Blah. That will get old after a year or two, but an original Computer Space machine will get you ladies. Everyone knows that chicks dig guys into nostalgic gaming.
Source: CrunchGear | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:27 pm Space Shuttle scheduled to land near LA this evening, big sonic boom expectedUpdate, 5:55pm PDT: Heard just now on Mission Control audio: "Home! (...) Welcome home Discovery, after a successful mission, stepping up science to a new level on the International Space Station." A beautiful...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:17 pm Space Shuttle scheduled to land near LA this evening, big sonic boom expected Update, 5:55pm PDT: Heard just now on Mission Control audio: "Home! (...) Welcome home Discovery, after a successful mission, stepping up science to a new level on the International Space Station." A beautiful touchdown at 5:53pm PDT, and damn tootin' we heard (and felt) the twin booms here in LA.Southern California BB readers, here's your evening forecast: breezy with a chance of BEWMMMM! Expect a large sonic boom between 530-555pm PDT this evening if you're in one of the colored areas in the map embedded at left (click to see large size). That's when the Space Shuttle Discovery is scheduled to land at Edwards Air Force Base out in Mojave, instead of KSC in Florida (due to sketchy weather back east). Snip from LA Times item: The so-called "deorbit burn" is scheduled to begin at 4:47 p.m. PDT for a 5:53 p.m. landing at Edwards in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles, according to details published on NASA's website. The second opportunity for leaving orbit will come at 6:23 p.m., ending with a landing at 7:28 p.m.The mission to deliver supplies and equipment to the International Space Station lasted 2 weeks and spanned 5.7 million miles. More: LA Times, NASA "Landing Blog." Wooo! The deorbit burn is beginning as I type this blog post. Snip: Discovery's orbital maneuvering system engines are firing now. This two-minute, 35-second deorbit burn will slow the orbiter's forward speed by about 267 feet per second, enough to begin its descent through the atmosphere. Update: Sonic boom + unsuspecting dog = the video below (via @caseymckinnon via @georgeruiz).
Space Shuttle scheduled to land near LA this evening, big sonic boom expectedUpdate, 5:55pm PDT: Heard just now on Mission Control audio: "Home! (...) Welcome home Discovery, after a successful mission, stepping up science to a new level on the International Space Station." A beautiful...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:17 pm Boing Boing's September 11, 2001 archives.Very early that morning, as the smoke was rising, Boing Boing re-blogged this eyewitness account by Teresa Nielsen Hayden: I just climbed back down from my Brooklyn rooftop. An airplane has flown into...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:17 pm Boing Boing's September 11, 2001 archives.Very early that morning, as the smoke was rising, Boing Boing re-blogged this eyewitness account by Teresa Nielsen Hayden:I just climbed back down from my Brooklyn rooftop. An airplane has flown into the World Trade Towers. There's thick black smoke billowing out of several floors of both towers. Let me pause for a moment to say with all the lucidity I can muster that it is the strangest sight I have ever seen in my life.And Cory wrote: The Internet's major news sites have been shut down by a massive flood of traffic as everyone in the world calls and emails everyone else in the world to tell them the news. God, this feels so apocalyptic. Five people have just called me to tell me about this, and more -- all flights in the US have been grounded, the Pentagon's been hit, the flights were hijacked commercial airliners... Holy crap.And Mark linked to this prescient piece by Dan Gillmor: What happened on Tuesday was an act of war. The American government and military should and will respond in kind. If law enforcement and national security agencies declare war on the American people in the process, they will give the terrorists a gift. The despicable people who planned this will triumph if we add to the damage.On 9/11, Boing Boing linked to this, from John Perry Barlow: Control freaks will dine on this day for the rest of our lives. Within a few hours, we will see beginning the most vigorous efforts to end what remains of freedom in America. Those of who are willing to sacrifice a little - largely illusory - safety in order to maintain our faith in the original ideals of America will have to fight for those ideals just as vigorously.Boing Boing: September 11, 2001. Source: Boing Boing | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:17 pm Discovery glides to smooth California landing - CNET News
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:17 pm 9/11/2009From a 2001 story in New York magazine written a couple of weeks after the attacks, by David Carr: # Everyone who comes after will never understand.18 Truths About the New New York (New York, 10-2001)
Worth reading today:
Previously:
Source: Gizmodo | 11 Sep 2009 | 9:00 pm Battle of The Billboards in LA: Giant Boozy Ladyparts are OK, Criticizing Insurance Companies Ain't.In LA's Koreatown district, two dueling billboards over on Wilshire Boulevard. Two enter, one leaves. Guess which? At left, Consumer Watchdog's ad, arguing that you can't trust Mercury Insurance. Yup,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Sep 2009 | 8:40 pm Battle of The Billboards in LA: Giant Boozy Ladyparts are OK, Criticizing Insurance Companies Ain't. In LA's Koreatown district, two dueling billboards over on Wilshire Boulevard. Two enter, one leaves. Guess which? At left, Consumer Watchdog's ad, arguing that you can't trust Mercury Insurance. Yup, you guessed it -- THAT billboard was dismantled last week when the subject of the ad issued lawyergrams.
At right, the Absolut "If you drive three to four blocks east of where ours was," said Jamie Court, "there's a huge Absolut Mango ad, and it's really not a mango." Court said he was alerted by his wife, who happened upon it while driving and made the following observation: "There's a five-story vagina on a building."So, happy mutants, lesson learned: You may or may not be able to trust Mercury Insurance, but you can trust humongous hoo-hahs.
Read: LA Times via MSNBC. Images from Consumer Watchdog; howunoriginal.com. Battle of The Billboards in LA: Giant Boozy Ladyparts are OK, Criticizing Insurance Companies Ain't.In LA's Koreatown district, two dueling billboards over on Wilshire Boulevard. Two enter, one leaves. Guess which? At left, Consumer Watchdog's ad, arguing that you can't trust Mercury Insurance. Yup,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Sep 2009 | 8:40 pm Yeah, But Did You Steal The Zynga Playbook, Playdom?It's a day late, but social game site (and Zynga-antagonizer) Playdom has finally responded to our request for comment on the lawsuit and temporary restraining order they got hit with earlier this week...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 11 Sep 2009 | 8:39 pm Yeah, But Did You Steal The Zynga Playbook, Playdom?
The statement, emailed to us earlier today, is short and sweet and contains very little information at all:
The lawsuit stems from seven former-Zynga, now-Playdom employees who may or may not have taken a few proprietary documents with them to their new jobs. Among the documents Playdom is accused of stealing is the fast-becoming-legendary/mythical “Zynga Playbook”: “The Zynga Playbook is literally the recipe book that contains Zynga’s “secret sauce,” and its contents would be invaluable to a competitor like Playdom,” says Zynga in the lawsuit. Did Playdom steal it? All they say is they have “no interest” in the document. It seems to me that the only way they could know that for sure is if they’ve read it. I mean, if the New York Times had a playbook, I sure would be interested in it. Unless I’d read it and found it uninteresting, that is. So I’ll ask again, Playdom. Did you steal the Zynga Playbook? And if you did, can I have a copy? Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0 TechCrunch50 Conference 2009: September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco
Source: Gizmodo | 11 Sep 2009 | 8:30 pm Symark International Buys BeyondTrust
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 The Money Times | Console video game sales fall for sixth straight month VentureBeat Dragged down by the recession and free games, the US console video game industry saw its sales fall for the sixth consecutive month in August, according to market researcher NPD Group. Sales were $908 million in August in the US, down 16 percent from ... EA, Nintendo Titles Rule NPD Top 20 For Another Month Video Game Market Continues Decline EA hopes console price cuts will boost slow Madden NFL sales |
There’s been a big brouhaha over comments Steve Jobs made to NYT’s David Pogue in an interview following Apple’s event on Wednesday. Basically, most people are interpreting what Jobs said about eBook readers to mean that Apple plans to completely stay away from the market. But that’s not actually what Jobs said at all.
How do we know? Because before Pogue re-wrote his interview, he posted the transcription of the Q&A, which still resides in Google’s cache. Here’s the relevant part:
Q: Has your opinion of e-readers changed?
A: I’m sure there will always be dedicated devices, and they may have a few advantages in doing just one thing. But I think the general-purpose devices will win the day because I think people just probably aren’t willing to pay for a dedicated device. You notice Amazon never says how much they sell; usually if they sell a lot of something, you want to tell everybody.
We don’t see that it’s a really big market at this point. And in the future, the more general-purpose devices will tend to win the day.
I’m not sure that Amazon, as an example, really cares that much about being in the hardware business. If I were Amazon, I’d love selling stuff where I didn’t have to have a warehouse, didn’t need UPS.
Translation: We’re making a tablet, and eBooks will be a part of those.
Jobs isn’t saying Apple isn’t interested in eBooks, he’s saying that Apple isn’t interested in making a stand-alone eBook reader. And they shouldn’t be. While the devices will exist for a while, eventually the thought that this won’t be a functionality wrapped into other devices is silly. Why carry around multiple devices when you can carry around one? That’s kind of Apple’s thing, isn’t it?
Basically, a lot of people are wrongly translating Jobs’ thoughts about eBook readers as eBooks themselves. eBooks are a huge portion of the App Store, why wouldn’t Apple want to expand their support of them? They do, and they are. It’s just going to be on their tablet device or their other devices, not some stand-alone reader.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
The startup incubator model pioneered by Y Combinator is quickly spreading across the country, with programs popping up in places well outside the Silicon Valley bubble, including Colorado and South Carolina. Earlier this week Capital Factory, an incubator based out of Austin, held its first demo day where the program’s five startups presented themselves to a number of potential investors and press. The demo day also included a discussion panel with six venture capitalists, who discussed some of the things involves in building a strong startup. We’ve embedded a video of the event below, along with a description of each startup.
Cubit Planning — Cubit Planning is a service that allows agencies to automate some of the more tedious and time consuming parts of writing NEPA documents — the documents that summarize how a project will impact the environment as part of the National Environmental Policy Act. The startup says that you can get “cut and paste ready” data for these reports in as little as five minutes.
Famigo is a gaming company that focuses on helping bring parents and their kids together. The company will soon be releasing an iPhone version of the game ‘hot potato’, which it plans to launch in the next few weeks. In the long run, the company plans to be a platform that other developers can leverage to help make family-oriented games. For more, you can see a video interview with the company here.
Hourville is a marketplace for local service providers, who can offer anything from private tutoring to haircuts and more. The site lets these service professionals create a sharable calendar so potential customers can see when they’re available, and allows customers to book online (service professionals will get Email alerts and phone calls when someone books a timeslot).
PetsMD is a new resource for pet-related health information. There are plenty of sites on the web that offer guidance for taking care of your dogs and cats, but these can be inconsistent and poorly organized. PetsMD looks to offer a comprehensive and accurate database of this data, and includes reports that have been approved by the site’s “Veterinary Review Board”. There’s also a Symptom Checker where you enter in the behavior your pet is displaying to see what the problem might be (the site recommends that you still visit a vet if there appears to be something wrong).
Sparefoot is a site that lets you rent out any extra storage you might have around your house — be it a shed in the backyard or a room in your house — and also gives more traditional storage facilities another marketplace to present their available space on. The site also features a site that lets users who are looking for storage to browser through the available offerings.
Over the course of the last ten weeks, each startup was given “up to $20,000″, along with mentorship, PR support, server usage, and legal help, while the incubator took a 5% stake in each company.
Other incubators we’ve seen recently include Y Combinator (demo day coverage here) , fbFund (coverage here), and DreamIT Ventures (coverage here).
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
A $1-million reward has been offered by an anonymous source for information leading to the recovery of the paintings. Weisman, who was friends with Warhol, commissioned the silk-screen paintings in the late 1970s - a time when Warhol produced hundreds of pieces of work for wealthy patrons able to pay the roughly $25,000 he charged for portraits.
What do you do when you're sitting on a nearly endless torrent of finely-focused content and a few million bucks in venture capital? You go mobile.
That's exactly what Glam Media, the distributed media network behind the womens lifestyle site Glam.com and its male-oriented counterpart Brash.com, is about to do. As one of the fastest growing sites on the web, its taken a bit longer for them to take on the mobile front than we would have guessed - but their quest to conquer portables begins tomorrow.
Sharp (yes Sharp, I was surprised too) has developed an improved version of the current technology used to read and write Blu-ray discs. By changing the way the discs are made and improving the laser, Sharp has been able to increase the maximum capacity of the Blu-ray disc to 75GB and 100GB, from the current standard of 50GB.
What they’re doing is actually really complicated, but the gist of it is that they are changing the laser used to read the disc, and replacing the coating with a new aluminum oxynitride one instead of the old dielectric film. This will allow for the use of discs with three and four layers, as opposed to the standard two.
When will we see this new tech? It’s still unclear at this time. Sharp is currently working to get their upgrades approved by the Blu-ray Disc Association. We’ll let you know when we know more, but at this point there’s no ETA.
[via Blu-ray.com and Engadget]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 DailyTech | Twitter Confirms User Ownership Of Tweets InformationWeek Users of Twitter can rest assured that they own their tweets, even if not every tweet can be owned. By Thomas Claburn Twitter co-founder Biz Stone on Thursday said that the popular online messaging site had updated its Terms of Service to clarify what ... Twitter 'leaves door open' for targeted ads Twitter assures users' ownership of content Twitter keeps it simple with new terms of service |
Oyster Hotel Reviews, a site that launched a few months ago, has raised $4 million in an extended Series A round of funding from Bain Capital Ventures and Accelerator Ventures. To date, the startup has raised $10.4 million in funding.
The site provides consumers with qualified professional reviews of hotels around the world, hoping to compete with the likes of Frommers, Fodors, Conde Nast Traveler and others. Oyster aims to differentiate itself from the plethora of other travel review sites by offering longer, more magazine-like reviews that are written by a staff of full-time journalists who actually travel to each hotel reviewed.
The online travel industry is a competitive landscape, with TripAdvisor, Fodors, Frommers and TripKick all vying for traffic. But Oyster has received a good amount of positive press since its launch and has raised a fair amount of funding in a tumultuous economic environment, so it may be able to survive in the space. The advantage that Oyster has in terms of content is a team of experienced travel journalists who write detailed and informative reviews that seem to be unbiased. And as the site adds more locations and perhaps more verticals, it should gain a loyal following.
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
What do you do when you’re sitting on a nearly endless torrent of finely-focused content and a few million bucks in venture capital? You go mobile.
That’s exactly what Glam Media, the distributed media network behind the womens lifestyle site Glam.com and its male-oriented counterpart Brash.com, is about to do. As one of the fastest growing sites on the web, its taken a bit longer for them to take on the mobile front than we would have guessed – but their quest to conquer portables begins tomorrow.
Tomorrow morning, Glam will be announcing GlamMobile, a mobile ad publishing and content platform. The new operation is finding its roots in Japan first, with plans to roll out in Europe and the U.S. shortly thereafter.
From what we’re hearing, GlamMobile will make heavy use of GlamAdapt, their re-branded version of the AdaptiveAds service they purchased in January of this year. GlamAdapt detects the user’s carrier, the device’s resolution and multimedia capabilities, then custom-tailors an ad optimized for that phone and user. Initial ad partners at launch all fall right in line with what one would expect for a fashion-focused network, ranging from Maybelline to Diesel.
The first fruits of their labor, http://m.glam.jp, will go live tomorrow morning.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
Ideally, your backup storage solution, whatever it is, should be the most reliable part of your system. After all, who wants to back up a backup? I’ve never had a drive fail on me, but that hasn’t stopped me from having multiple copies of my music, photos, and miscellaneous junk spread over several external drives.
Apple saves you the trouble with Time Machine and Time Capsule, but what if — I know it’s ridiculous but bear with me — what if the Time Capsule hardware wasn’t the most rock-solid, and they started to fail after a year and a half? I only ask because, you know, that’s what’s happening.
It seems there is a growing contingent of users who are having their Time Capsules just shut right down on them, never to start again. Whether it’s the drive or some other component, the fact is that lots of people are reporting the same problem occurring in around the same time frame.
Proud owner of a Time Capsule? You can roll the dice, or you can buy another hard drive and double up. Look, here’s 1TB for just over $100. Is peace of mind worth that kind of money? I’d say so. Plus, then you’ve got more room for all kinds of legitimate media purchases.
Skype is terminating its Extras developer program, they announced earlier today, because “not enough people were using [the tools] to justify” it. No new projects will be certified, and existing ones will expire over time. This is exactly the wrong thing for Skype to be doing.
Om Malik goes on a justifiable rant, arguing that Skype doesn’t understand developers, never understood developers, and shouldn’t be trusted by developers. For the record, I agree. Skype has not been much of a team player when it comes to community over the years.
And they’re right, the Extras program was a dud. But only because developers didn’t have any real ability to do deep integrations. For all the pomp, third party developers have never been able to do much more than skim the surface of Skype functionality. No wonder the program never took off.
What developers need to really integrate with Skype is the ability to treat the call function as a service, and build it directly into other applications. Today, almost without exception, to make a Skype call requires the Skype client to be opened.
Skype has made a very few exceptions to this rule. iSkoot for example, runs the heavy part of Skype on a server so that mobile users could get the functionality on their devices. But these were one-off deals, not via an API or developer program.
What developers need is the ability to build the core Skype functionality directly into applications. Like Outlook. Or Facebook. And give those developers a revenue share from paid Skype-out calls, supposedly Skype’s biggest and fast growing revenue source.
It’s not clear Skype is going to go in that direction, although the new buyers have said quietly that they’re going to look hard at skype-as-a-service. and some Skype employees I’ve spoken with have said much the same – at some point, expect developers to be able to do deep integrations with the Skype service, not just launch the Skype client.
We’re all waiting for that day. And when it comes Skype will win, too. Skype-out calls will absolutely skyrocket, and the revenue will pour in. But for now, Skype, you’re going in the wrong direction. Instead of killing your limited APIs and tools, you should be expanding them dramatically.
Crunch Network: CrunchBase the free database of technology companies, people, and investors
By Geoffrey A. Fowler, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
Tech CEOs spend a lot of time taking questions in front of the camera. Lately, eBay’s (EBAY) top boss John Donahoe has been spending some time behind one.
Amid a turnaround effort at eBay’s online marketplace, he has been meeting with the company’s merchants and taping the conversations with a Flip camcorder. He’s posted many of these to a video blog for eBay’s internal employees.
Recently one interview with an eBay merchant named Quick Ship Electronics even made its way to YouTube.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 The Age | Why the DOJ wants more on Yahoo search deal CNET News The long road toward Microsoft and Yahoo's search deal could be set to get a little longer, or fall off a cliff. Both companies have long expected the US Department of Justice to scrutinize the deal to install Microsoft as the exclusive ... US Justice Department Seeks Info On Microsoft-Yahoo Deal Microsoft, Yahoo Face In-Depth Review of Search Deal DOJ to investigate Microsoft/Yahoo deal |
There’s quite a big vulnerability with FriendFeed right now. Using the FriendFeed By Email function, apparently anyone can post a message as anyone else on FriendFeed. For example, someone posted this pretending to be FriendFeed co-founder Bret Taylor.
Obviously, this is a huge security problem. When it was spotted just about an hour ago, FriendFeed jumped on it quickly, and has shut down email posting while they look into the issue. (Good to know they can still hop on these problems with FriendFeed even though they are now technically Facebook employees.) Still, you have to wonder if this bug has existed for months, or however long this feature has existed?
We’ve reached out to FriendFeed to see if there have been any serious compromises because of this bug.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
My own view as a parent is that this is a bit too complex for three year olds but Kasper, our reviewer here, seems to enjoy it.
Basically you step on colors to make stuff happen on screen. Most of the games are absurdly simple but we all had fun watching Mickey and Minnie along with some other non-cannon Disney characters like some weird girl named Darcy in the Winnie the Pooh world.
Bottom Line
Recommended for other kids.
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Dread going the doctor? It could be worse. Your next physician could have the bedside manner of a robot. In fact, your next physician could be a robot.
Scared yet?
Surgeons and medical engineers have been trying to create machines that can assist in surgery, increase a surgeon’s dexterity and support hospital staff. These aren’t humanoid robots but computer controlled systems that have been optimized for use in sensitive situations. An exhibition called Sci-fi Surgery: Medical Robots, opening this week at the Hunterian Museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, shows a range of robots used in medicine.
“Industrial robots appeared in factories in the early 1960s and robots have become an important part of space exploration,” says Sarah Pearson, curator of the exhibition. “But robots have been comparatively slow to be used in medicine because surgeons haven’t felt comfortable with them.”
Robots in medicine aren’t intended to replace surgeons, says Pearson, but act as companion devices. Most robots used in medicine aren’t autonomous because surgeons haven’t been comfortable giving up control, but with advances with technology, we can expect more autonomous machines.
The exhibition offers a peek into some of the most interesting surgical robots out there, from one of the earliest medical robots to a prototype camera pill.
Above: PROBOT
In 1988, Brian Davies, a medical robotics professor at the Imperial College in London, designed a robot (with help of colleagues) that could remove soft tissue from a person. It was one of the first robots to do so. What’s more, it could perform the task with a fair degree of autonomy.
Most industrial robots usually have an arm, complete with a shoulder, elbow and wrist mechanism, and a gripper tool for the hand. That’s overkill for surgical purposes, and because of the room needed to move a robot arm around, it might even be dangerous for use in very small spaces inside human bodies. That’s why Davies and his team designed a small robot that has three axes of movement, plus a fourth axis to move a cutter for prostate surgery. (See a simplified drawing of the robot’s structure.)
The geometry of this design allows the robot to hollow out a cavity from within the prostate gland. The robot is controlled by a pair of programmable embedded motor control systems. The system are directed using a i486DX2-based PC. The robot allows surgeons to specify the correct cutting sequence to remove tissue.
But the idea of having any degree of independent behavior in a robot didn’t catch on. Although its designers tested the PROBOT in the lab and in human subjects, it was never used widely in surgery.
“Doctors just didn’t feel comfortable with the idea,” says Justin Vale, a consultant neurological surgeon at Imperial College and a fellow at the Royal College of Surgeons. “The PROBOT project shut down when funding for it ran out.”
Caption: PROBOT/ Imperial College London
The first generation of pico projectors sort of landed with a thud; their lackluster performance and poor battery life, combined with a relatively high price, have pretty much relegated them to “experimental” status. The major releases were Optoma’s PK101, 3M’s MPro 110, Dell’s whatever-it-was. Recently 3M has updated their pico to the MPro 120, which you’ll see a review for shortly, and now Optoma has improved their offering and iterated its version number as well. We’re waiting on you, Dell!
The new PK102 has some serious improvements. The contrast ratio has been doubled, for one thing, to 2000:1. Wery nice. But the big move is that it now has 4GB of on-board memory and a on-screen menu with which to navigate it. That’s certainly big enough for a couple episodes of this or that, or a few home movies. This solves the problem of having to carry around something to output through the projector, which reduced its utility somewhat. That gives it a definite edge over the MPro 120, but I’d have to see them side by side to see if the image on one is better.
The price is also much lower, at $250 (the MPro is $350). Do we have a winner? On paper (or rather, on screen), it appears so.
Holy Mother of Football Heaven. Talk about a head-to-head matchup. Gaming heavyweight Electronic Arts against mobile superstar Gameloft. We've seen this before, folks, on various mobile devices. But never on a stage like this. And never with the stakes so high. The iPhone is the ultimate arena for this blockbuster duel, and we're going to judge this match play-by-play for you. We'll go through each of the major aspects of a quality simulation football game and tell you how each game scored. But first, a little background on the contestants:
EA is the owner and developer for the best (and only) football franchise in the world, Madden NFL Football. They've also kicked ass on the iPhone platform with titles such as The Sims 3, Need for Speed, Tiger Woods PGA Tour, and more. Gameloft, despite having far less success with their football franchise, has managed to dominate the iPhone platform. Gameloft has racked up more than 6 million sales with titles such as Gangstar, Rise of Lost Empires, Assassin’s Creed: Altair’s Chronicles, and others. This will be a truly epic battle, but nobody can deny that EA, what with more than a decade of experience with the Madden franchise, is favored in the bout of a lifetime: EA's Madden NFL 2010 head-to-head with Gameloft's NFL 2010.
Meet RIBA, the robot nurse bear.
The cheery-looking machine has long, multi-jointed arms embedded with an array of tactile sensors that help it optimize the lifting and carrying of humans. For safety purposes, RIBA's entire body is covered in a soft skin molded from an advanced lightweight urethane foam developed by TRI. The soft skin is designed to ensure the comfort of patients while they are being carried. In addition, the arm joints yield slightly under pressure -- much like human arms do -- further increasing the level of comfort and safety.Video and more photos at link. RIBA robot nurse bearThe robotic bear can also recognize faces and voices, as well as respond to spoken commands. Using visual and audio data from its surroundings, RIBA can identify co-workers, determine the position of those nearby, and respond flexibly to changes in the immediate environment. The motors operate silently, and a set of omni-directional wheels allow the robot to navigate tight spaces inside hospitals and nursing facilities.
Sure, we’ll admit it: there might not be a whole lot of apps available right now for webOS on the Palm Pre, especially when compared to the iPhone App Store’s 70,000. That said, there’s at least one application that the Pre has that you won’t find on the iPhone – well, at least not anymore: Google Voice.
It’s not Google-made, but homebrew-developer flpalm’s GDial Pro still packs most of what you might be expecting. Dialing out from your number? Check. SMS? Yep! Voicemail? It’s there. It looks like there are already at least 40,000 users rocking the application – so what are you looking for?
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
When iFixit tore apart the new iPod nano, there was nothing surpising. But that’s not the case with the new iPod touch. It seems that the Broadcom BCM4329 chip found at the heart of the portable supports 802.11n WiFi and FM transmitting. But they also found something a bit more interesting related to the rumored camera.
Even the iPhone 3GS doesn’t have these features but we’re sure most users would love to have them. No one would turn down faster WiFi or the ability to stream music to a FM radio without an adapter. Both features would open up even more possibilities from the App developers.
Although it should be noted that an included FM transmitter would kill off more than a few products from 3rd party companies that pay hefty royalty fees to Apple and Apple likes its money. Now just because the chip supports these features, doesn’t mean that they will be enabled anytime soon. But I guess there is always the possibility.
Besides those surprises, the folks at iFixit also noted that there seems to be enough room above the Broadcom chip for a small camera supporting the well documented rumor. After all, we saw cases after cases meant for an iPod touch with a camera, but maybe that rumor of component shortages was actually true and it caused Apple to push back the announcement – or delay it permanently.
It's too easy to describe anything that's kinda creepy as being "Lynchian," but I can't think of a more apt term for this old Scopitone video that Spike Priggen of Bedazzled sent me. It's the Freddy Bee 4 performing "Can't Take My Eyes Off You." Excuse me while I go in the corner to quake.
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Sep 2009 | 3:19 pm
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Amid the flurry of announcements Apple made Wednesday, the company quietly released the latest version of its iPhone operating system. And as is often the case with iPhone updates, Steve Jobs giveth some new features and Steve Jobs taketh away others.
A major addition to iPhone 3.1 are Genius recommendations. Similar to the iTunes function of the same name, iPhone’s Genius feature helps you search for apps you may wish to download based on those you already own. Also, iPhone 3.1 enables you to easily sort apps on your computer screen using iTunes 9. As helpful as these new features sound, iPhone 3.1 comes with major drawbacks: the loss of free, unauthorized tethering and the inability to access the unauthorized app store Cydia. One more caveat: After upgrading to iPhone 3.1, you can’t downgrade to 3.0.
That’s a tough predicament, and many likely face a dilemma. Should you download now or give hackers some time to re-exploit the system? Here, we dive into the pros and cons of the software update to help you make a decision you won’t regret.
App Genius: Smart Enough for You?
Serving up 75,000 apps and counting, the App Store was dying for a better way to sort through its endlessly growing list of third-party software. The addition of the Genius recommendation tool for iPhone apps was a logical step for Apple. Genius first appeared in iTunes 8, automatically generating playlists for you based on a song selection. Genius does this by analyzing the tunes in your library in relation to other iTunes users’ libraries to see which songs are the most compatible for a playlist.
The Genius approach to the App Store is to recommend iPhone apps for you to download based on those you currently have on your iPhone, as well as what others with the same apps have on their iPhones.
Here’s what’s weak: It does not make recommendations based on every app you’ve ever downloaded, such as those you deleted, and how you rated each of those apps. Thus, the Genius feature is only making recommendations based on stuff you decided to keep in relation to what others own. That creates a rather bland list of recommendations.
Some examples: Why would I download another Twitter app if I already own Tweetie? Do I really need another IM client in addition to BeeJive? I like a game called Cooking Dash, and Genius says others who downloaded it got Super Monkey Ball — but I downloaded Super Monkey Ball before and deleted it because I wasn’t a fan. If Genius would account for all the apps I deleted and the ratings I assigned, it would know which apps to avoid recommending and be even smarter. Like the Genius feature for iTunes songs, we find the App Store version to be pretty average.
We know these are nitpicky criticisms. Any time Apple makes the App Store easier to navigate, it’s a good move, and Genius is overall a solid idea. But we don’t think it’s a killer feature just yet, and we’re optimistic it will get a lot better in the next year.
Easy iPhone App Sorting With iTunes 9
This freaking rules. The iPhone’s touchscreen is sure pleasant, but it takes a lot of tedious finger work to put your apps where you want them. IPhone 3.1’s ability to organize apps on your computer screen in iTunes is a huge improvement of this experience.
After plugging in your iPhone and loading iTunes 9, you get a full preview of your iPhone springboard screen broken down page by page. To move an app to a specific page you click and drag with your mouse; you can also select and move entire pages (e.g., you can move a screen containing all your games from screen 4 to screen 3 by selecting and dragging the screen upward). You can even hold down shift to select multiple apps and move them simultaneously.
That’s super sweet, and we have no complaints here. This will be extremely useful for anyone with 40+ apps.
Free AT&T Tethering Is No More
Tethering — the ability for your computer to surf the web using your smartphone as a wireless modem — is not officially available for AT&T iPhone customers. It’s a promise that AT&T has yet to deliver, and nobody knows when the folks aboard the Death Star will finally make that function fully operational. But some clever nerds figured out an unofficial method (flashing the firmware) to enable Apple’s easy tethering feature, which we documented in a previous post.
Unfortunately iPhone 3.1 has nuked this workaround, meaning if you’re stranded at an airport, you’re going to have to pay up the nose just to surf the internet, or you’ll have to buy one of those pricey EVDO modems.
Underground Cydia Store Is Temporarily Closed for 3.1 Users
As a solution for no more free tethering, normally we would say you could still get it by jailbreaking your iPhone and downloading an unauthorized tethering app through Cydia, the underground app store. However, this isn’t the case yet with iPhone 3.1.
There is currently no solution to install Cydia in iPhone 3.1, according to Cydia creator Jay Freeman. This may change in the future, but if you upgrade to 3.1 today, you’ll lose your unauthorized apps as well as access to the Cydia store.
The biggest drag is, if you regret upgrading to 3.1, you can’t restore your software to iPhone 3.0: Apple stopped signing the older version. Long story short, jailbreakers are screwed until a workaround is released.
Our Final Thought
IPhone 3.1’s added ability to sort apps in iTunes 9 is a must-have feature, and the Genius recommendation system for iPhone apps is just OK. The loss of free AT&T tethering and access to the Cydia app store could be a loss to some, but we imagine the majority of iPhone owners won’t care. If you absolutely love your jailbroken iPhone and unauthorized apps, stay away from this upgrade for a little while: We’re sure the hacker community is working on making Cydia accessible for 3.1 soon. Otherwise, if you don’t care about jailbreaking, download away.
Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com
Twitter has already had repercussions in the courtroom. Now it has had them at Microsoft’s annual company meeting as well. Employee tweets from the gathering Thursday revealed that we may see a major update to the company’s Bing search engine as early as next week.
“Saw the demo of Bing 2.0, super imressive! Watch out its release next week,” said one catalogued by All About Microsoft’s Mary Jo Foley. “BING 2.0 terrific,” enthused another. “Watch out guys ! bing + silverlight in maps = amazing !! goodbye google” (GOOG). And another: “Bing 2.0’s upcoming search visualization is pretty sexy…”
Finally, my favorite: “wondering if the Bing team really wanted everyone at the company meeting to announce on twitter when Bing 2.0 is going to be released?”
Evidently not. Reached for comment, Microsoft (MSFT) had only this to say: “We’re very excited about some of the new Bing features set to roll out over the next few months, but have nothing to announce today.”
But perhaps next week.
While Foursquare’s apps on other platforms (Android, BlackBerry, and WinMo) have been garnering most of the buzz recently, the company remains firmly committed to the only app it developed entirely in-house: It’s iPhone app. In fact, it recently submitted a new version, 1.4, to the App Store for approval. I’ve had a chance to play with an ad-hoc build for the past couple of weeks, and it’s great. It significantly improves two key areas: Usability and its social layer.
See Who Else Is Here
The most important new feature of Foursquare 1.4 is that it now allows you to see who is checked into any venue at any given time. While previously, you had to rely on your main “Friends” tab to see a stream of where people were checked in, now you can click on any venue, click on the new “People” tab, and see who is there. If you see someone you are not currently friends with, you can click on their name, and you will load up their profile where you can add them as a friend.
On that profile page, you can also see their Twitter stream (if they have hooked up their Foursquare account to their Twitter account) and their Facebook profile (if they’ve hooked that up). What’s great is that the tweet stream loads up right in the app, while clicking on the Facebook profile loads the Facebook iPhone app (assuming you have it). Both of these features should allow you to determine if you want to friend that person or not.
O
bviously, not everyone is going to love this ability to see everyone who is checked in at a place. Some will think this is an invasion of privacy, of sorts. But really, it’s a very nice extension of the social capabilities of the Foursquare app. For any social application to work, there needs to be a way to navigate its social graph. Previously, you could only add new friends by either entering their phone number, or looking up account by way of your Twitter friends. Neither of these methods are really ideal, and the idea of friending people that you actually see at places you frequent seems like a good one.
Respect The Mayor
Alongside being able to see who else is at a particular venue, you can also now see who the mayor is at any given time. A “mayor” of a venue is the person who has checked in there the most amount of times in the past 60 days. Battling for mayorships is a particularly fun element of Foursquare.
On your main friend stream you can also now see when your friends are checked in places that they’re the mayor of. With the new app, you’ll see a crown next to a person’s name if they’re currently the mayor of the place they are at.
Better Maps
One of the nice features of both the Android and the upcoming WinMo versions of Foursquare is that they have much nicer map integration than the current version for the iPhone. Version 1.4 changes that, as you can now click on the map in a venue’s “Details” section, and it will load a larger Google Map which you can manipulate just as you would the regular iPhone Maps application.
However, you still cannot get directions to a venue from your current location within the app (but you can do this by clicking through and going to the Maps application on the iPhone). More importantly, you still cannot see where your other friends are on the map. Such a Latitude and Loopt-like feature would be a very nice addition to Foursquare. The Windows Mobile version of the app should have this, I’m told.
Mayor Deals
Mayor deals, which we’ve previously covered, are also now much more visible in this new version. When you’re at a place that has a deal nearby, you’ll see a green ribbon alerting you about it. Clicking on that will tell you what the deal is, and where it is. They continue to extend these deals in new venues in various cities.
Location, Location, Location
A subtle, but potentially huge addition to the Foursquare app is the ability to see tweets nearby. Right now, this feature is a bit crippled, as it pulls them in based on location set in Twitter users’ profiles (what you say you location is in your profile, some people use exact coordinates provided by some Twitter apps). But when the Twitter Geolocation API goes live, this could be an awesome feature. And that’s why Foursquare included it, I’m told.
Basically, on a venue’s Details page, underneath the map there is a button to “View tweets nearby.” Clicking on this will show you a stream of tweets around that venue. When the Geolocation API is working, it should show what people are saying that are currently in and around that venue, which is another potentially powerful layer of social discovery.
Foursquare.com Finally
Foursquare formally announced its $1.35 million seed round earlier this week. Right now, the company only has 3 employees, but they hope to add a fourth soon. They also used some of their money to buy the important foursquare.com domain. Previously, they only owned playfoursquare.com, which obviously would confuse new users.
Interestingly enough, Foursquare is the name co-founder Dennis Crowley originally had wanted to use for his previous startup, Dodgeball (which was acquired by Google). Since he wasn’t able to obtain the foursquare.com domain at the time, he went with Dodgeball instead. He’s been trying for over 11 years to get the domain, so now that he has it, he’s obviously quite pleased.
Soon
Foursquare is still limited to a select group of cities that they’ve rolled the product out in (most recently, Vancouver), but soon they hope to start crowdsourcing cities, meaning opening them up for users to start populating venues. Right now, Foursquare mainly uses third party data for city population before they roll a new city out.
Foursquare submitted version 1.4 of the app for approval several days ago, so assuming there are no problems, it should be available soon. As usual, it will be free. Watch for it to appear here.
Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.
The highly anticipated Motorola announcement has come and gone. After all the dust cleared, the world of Android handsets had grown by one - Motorola's first Android-powered smartphone, CLIQ.
How polite! A husband and wife team, the founders of Barcelona-based FairCompanies, visits Silicon Valley. And unlike a certain group of Dutch entrepreneurs, they don’t decide to break into my house as a publicity stunt.
Instead they visit our office in the wee hours of the morning and leave a very nice note on our window:
TechCrunch – We are visiting from Barcelona and are readers of your blog. We don’t want to go into Michael’s house like the random Dutch guys, but we wanted to let you know about our site. We are a husband and wife team (he: ex-tech writer for Spanish Playboy & she: shooter/producer for MTV) with a site with tools on sustainability. Well, check it out @ faircompainies.com
Best, Kirsten & Nico
They add “Please don’t print this unless necessary” (it was, plus they didn’t write “off record” on the note) and apparently taped a Spanish Focaccia to the note that never actually made it to my desk.
Good luck with your startup, Kirsten and Nico. And next time, email ahead and we’ll meet you in person!
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By Nick Wingfield, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
It’s no secret to anyone at Microsoft (MSFT) that more than a few employees tote around iPhones in their pockets. Some staffers make little effort to hide the Apple (AAPL) device, while others seem to treat the iPhone a bit like a flask of whisky–a secret, irresistible source of shame.
Of the unspoken rules among Microsoft employees about using iPhones, it’s fair to say this could be second from the top: don’t show it to company CEO Steve Ballmer, who has made turning around Microsoft’s own flagging mobile-software efforts an important priority at the company. And whatever you do, don’t attempt to take a photo of Mr. Ballmer with your iPhone in front of a stadium full of Microsoft employees at the all-company meeting.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
SF in SF & Tachyon Publications present Nalo Hopkinson & Michael KurlandI've never heard Michael read, but Nalo is an astounding performer of her own work (daughter of an actor, runs in the family). It doesn't hurt that her work is so goddamned good.Saturday, September 12
Doors and cash bar open at 6:00 PMAuthors read at 7PM; followed by Q & A moderated by Terry Bisson, and schmoozing and booksigning will be in the lounge afterwards
$5 suggested donation goes straight to Variety Childrens' Charity - drop it in the donation box, or buy a beer!
The Variety Preview Room Theatre
The Hobart Bldg. 1st Floor - entrance between Quiznos and Citibank
582 Market Street at 2nd & Montgomery
San Francisco
Phone night of event - 415-572-1015
Questions? email sfinsfevents@gmail.com
September Reading: Michael Kurland & Nalo Hopkinson
Source: Boing Boing | 11 Sep 2009 | 2:33 pm
It’s looking like the latest version HTC Hero firmware will be coming out tomorrow for users in the US. How do we know? Well, the company has released an update specific to the Nordic countries today, and has warned users in other countries not to use that version, as it’s missing some bits that will be needed.
This update looks to be a big one, and is reputed to speed up screen transitions and application performance, which in and of itself would be worth the download. It’s also reported to include a new “touch to focus” feature to the camera, something that had previously been lacking. HTC support has stated that users in the US and UK should not download the Nordic version, as the appropriate version for those regions will be coming out tomorrow. We don’t know if this is true, so that’s why we’re calling it a rumor, but it’s probably a done deal.
[via SlashGear]
Crunch Network: CrunchBoard because it’s time for you to find a new Job2.0
Oh, there's tons of Poe treasure here. I'm in hog heaven.
The Edgar Allan Poe Digital Collection (Thanks, Lori!)The digital collection incorporates images of all Poe manuscripts and letters at the Ransom Center with a selection of related archival materials, two books by Poe annotated by the author, sheet music based on his poems, and portraits from the Ransom Center collections. Poe's manuscripts and letters are linked to transcriptions on the website of the Poe Society of Baltimore.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
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MAKE's marvelous editorial assistant, Laura Cochrane, told me about her recent visit to a discount surplus store called Mr. Stuff. I asked her to write a short piece about it.
A couple of weeks ago, I flew down to LA to visit my friend Alex. His mom recommended that we go to Brent’s deli in Northridge for breakfast one day. We did, and it was delicious.Sidenote: Mr. Stuff's tagline, “All Kinds of Stuff!” must have been where John Kricfalusi got the name for his blog. John likes getting names from things he comes across in the San Fernando Valley. He got the name for his George Liquor character from a liquor store called George Liquor, which amused him to no end.After breakfast while walking back to the car, my eye caught on a store called Mr. Stuff. The sign was punctuated by a caricature of a regular-looking guy in jeans and a sleeveless t-shirt, with a cape and eye mask on. The sign promised: “All Kinds of Stuff!”
“We have to go in!” I announced. Alex -- a friend that kindly indulges all my random whims -- followed. The store lived up to its name: Mr. Stuff is filled with bizarre, random inventory, each object more ridiculous and hilarious than the last. I loved it! Of course thrift stores are pretty good for this sort of experience, but I’m partial to these closeout, just-fell-off-the-truck outlets.
Among Mr. Stuff’s treasure trove: Extra short screwdrivers and hammers, pots of fake dirt and moss (presumably for fake plants), talking Dr. Laura and Dennis Miller dolls, Colgate brand soap (?), blonde tape measures (with drawings of feet on them), unidentifiable Japanese hygiene products, scented canned oxygen, lots of tools, dusty TVs, $10 jeans, a mug that says "Ring bell for more coffee" (that had a bike bell attached to the handle), a mug that says “I have a crush on you!” (A mug seems like the wrong vehicle to convey that message), a wide selection of bolt cutters, machine oil (it must have been poured from a bulk container into many small containers because each label was hand-written), and lots of dishes that look like they had lead in them.
To me there’s something fascinating about surplus, unwanted products. Mr. Stuff will definitely be on my itinerary the next time I visit LA!
Pumped for some pigskin this Sunday? Me too. But actually watching a game this weekend, or most of the year, may be tricky for a big swath of the NFL’s fans.
That’s because the league’s blackout rule, which shuts off local broadcasts if the home team can’t sell out its stadium, may end up affecting about 20 percent of this fall’s games for fans in up to a dozen cities. No idea why NFL teams thought it was a good idea to raise prices during a recession, but they have. Team Marketing Report says prices jumped four percent, to an average of $75 a head this year, and the consequences have been obvious: Lots of unsold seats.
This week, the NFL announced that fans in blacked-out cities would be able to watch the games online–after midnight on game day after the game ends. So that’s a nonsolution.
My question: How many people who can’t watch their teams on their big-screen TVs will turn to pirate sites, torrents and the likes of Ustream to get their fixes?
All of the above are pretty good options if you have the time and inclination to find something that’s already aired on TV. But you’ve got to be a real devotee to put up with the technical hassle, crummy images, etc., that you get if you’re trying to watch something in real time. Then again, lots of people really, really like football in this country.
The big picture here is that major sports leagues and events are supposed to be the most impervious to the disruptive power of technology like the Web and the DVR. Which is why they command such huge premiums from the TV guys–they’ll pay the NFL alone $11.6 billion between 2008 and 2011.
But what happens when people have absolutely no choice but to use the Internet, no matter how unsatisfying that is? We may find out.
My humble suggestion for Web surfers with gridiron itch to scratch: If you haven’t seen it recently, or at all, go find North Dallas Forty, which remains the best football movie ever made.
 Siliconrepublic.com | Facebook Lite: Thanks, but No Apps PC World Facebook has made a potentially risky choice in designing Lite, the simpler version of its social network that is generating much buzz: Lite doesn't run any of the tens of thousands of external applications built for Facebook's main site. ... Facebook's Lite Touch Has Heavy Implications Facebook Lite Goes Live Elgan: Why you'll love Facebook Lite |
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 New York Daily News | Hands On: Motorola's New Android Phone Nails Design, Fumbles Software Wired News Motorola announced its first Android operating system-based device, the Cliq yesterday. The hardware is beautifully designed while the software makes a serious attempt to incorporate social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. ... The Cliq may raise the bar for smart-phones Analysis: Motorola Wrenches Focus Away from Google Motorola Cliq: Is Android Becoming the Cell Phone's Linux? |
Motorola announced its first Android operating system-based device, the Cliq yesterday. The hardware is beautifully designed while the software makes a serious attempt to incorporate social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook. But more importantly, the future of Motorola may ride partially on the success of the Cliq.
First off, let’s just say the handset gets a lot of things right: The phone itself is nicely designed and feels impossibly thin (for a slider), the touchscreen is responsive and the social networking options are subtly ingrained into the phone — they don’t come out and slap you in the face.
But let’s also say this that the Cliq suffers from feature overload. The UI is messy and challenging to learn — it attempts to bring together too many mobile features and can be confusing and clogged. We suspect that after a few days with the device, it would become easy to master. But right off the bat, operating the phone left us befuddled.
The Cliq’s coming out party was September 9, and then we got the device behind closed doors. Here are the highlights.
Hardware
The Cliq is lovely to hold. It feels quite slim (about 0.62 inches thick) and light (weighing 5.6 ounces). Comparatively, the Palm Pre is 0.67 inches thick and weighs 4.76 ounces, while the iPhone 3G is 0.48 inches thick and weighs 4.7 ounces. The sliding keyboard on the Cliq is smooth and the physical(!) keypad offers fantastic tactile feedback, making touch-typing a very real possibility. The phone comes in a polished black the company calls “Titanium” and “Winter White.” The 3.1-inch display is bright and easy to read — at least under the florescent lighting where we put the phone through its paces. The screen is touch capable and very, very responsive. It’s certainly on par with the iPhone.
User interface
The Cliq runs the Android OS draped in a custom skin from Motorola called Blur. Besides having an idiotic name, the skin collates e-mail, social networking services (Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace) and contacts into a single stream so users don’t have to click through different apps. The phone’s homescreen has three widgets: Social Status, Happenings and Messaging.
Social Status has a text box where you can broadcast your status (eating ice cream or hanging out with friends) and choose the service, such as Facebook, Twitter or MySpace, you want it to be updated to. It’s a neat service and fans of mobile tweeting will appreciate having a feature like this built into their phones.
Messaging can aggregate corporate and personal e-mail accounts and display them on a single screen. You can arrange new messages to pop up in a cardlike view (similar to the Palm Pre) or in an easily scrollable list.
The Happenings widget looks much like a Facebook feed except it brings in information about status updates and photos from other services like Twitter and MySpace too.
Camera
The Cliq has a 5.2-megapixel auto-focus camera. We tested it briefly by shooting some pics in low light and comparing it to photos from the iPhone’s camera. Guess what? The Cliq’s cam captured finer details and offered a brighter picture with true colors. It’s easy to share and upload photos, in the spirit of Cliq fun. The user interface on every photo has four choices: Share, Gallery, Set as Wallpaper and Delete. Clicking on the Share tab means you can post the photo to MySpace, Gmail, Picasa or any other photo-sharing site you have set up such as Flickr.
Phone
Hey, this thing is supposed to make calls, right? The phone sports a dialer similar to the iPhone, and the keypad has additional features, such as a speed dialer and history (a mashup of e-mails, phone calls and status updates). We didn’t get to test the voice quality of this device, which will be available on the T-Mobile network later this year. Motorola and T-Mobile haven’t said how much the phone will cost, but we’re betting under $200.
Overall
The Cliq is a beautiful piece of hardware, but it suffers from features creep. Too many options are jammed into a skin that, quite frankly, can’t handle them. There’s a reason why the iPhone, the Pre and even the G1 have done so well — the user interfaces are simple and elegant, and they can be learned without an instruction manual. Motorola screwed up with Blur — it adds an obtuse layer of functionality to a device that does not need it.
Moto admits the phone can be overwhelming at first, but claims the complete customization of social networking sites like Twitter, MySpace and Facebook are worth it. We disagree. Let people pick and choose what social networking sites they want to use on their phones and download apps that best serve their needs. An additional skin like Blur just over-complicates things.
Motrola, hear us out: You guys are not doing well right now. You make great hardware and crappy software. If you want phone buyers to take you seriously, keep producing excellent handsets like the Cliq, load them with top-notch operating systems (Android FTW!) and let it be. People will start buying your products again.
See more photos of the Cliq.
Photos: Courtesy IntoMobile/Will Park
Section: Gadgets / Other, Miscellaneous, Transportation
Maybe one day we’ll be putting on our special mag-lev suits so we can float around and avoid walking all together. Why is that? Mice, which are quite biologically similar to humans, have been floated using magnetism recently.
In case you are thinking that scientists have way too much time and money on their hands, the research is geared towards helping NASA train astronauts in low gravity environments. The 10 gram mouse that was levitated, which I will name “Chester” (even though there is no mention of its name), was unhappy with being floated. Apparently, Chester tried to grab on to something, wound up kicking in the air, which caused him to spin around, which, in turn, made Chester more agitated.
Since no one wanted to see Chester irritated, he was sedated and when subsequently floated, Chester was fine with floating. Tests lasted for several hours and yielded results such that a mouse could become used to the low gravity environment and maintain its daily activities such as eating in this altered state. After NASA gets a hold of this technology and has it working well, I could see this entering amusement parks before we know it.
Source: [LiveScience]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Courtney Love went into a Twitter frenzy yesterday, threatening to sue Activision Blizzard (ATVI) over of its use of the image of her late husband and grunge music legend Kurt Cobain in the latest version of its popular music game, Guitar Hero.
Some tweet gems:
“not in twenty JILLION years would i EVER have allowed this and this is lethal.”
“we get NO money for this, travesty, Frances gets NO money for the rape.”
Except, oops, Love signed the contract herself and also, sources said, the check has long been cashed from Activision.
Smells like mean spirit!
“Guitar Hero secured the necessary licensing rights from the Cobain estate in a written agreement signed by Courtney Love to use Kurt Cobain’s likeness as a fully playable character in Guitar Hero® 5,” said Activision in a statement.
Cobain, who killed himself in 1994, is an “unlockable” character in the Guitar Hero 5 game recently released. When a character is unlockable, the avatar can play other songs too.
So, presumably Cobain could play Bon Jovi, which apparently pisses Love off.
In fact, Love’s lawyer told the TMZ.com Web site: “Activision is exploiting Kurt’s image in a manner anathema to the very essence of his music, spirit and essence. I along with Ms. Cobain hope those who love Kurt’s music strongly voice their sentiments to Activision and demand his image not be debased by singing the songs of Bon Jovi.”
But one still has to wonder why Love–who is now better known for her wacky antics than her own music (you can see a list of some of her frequent outbursts here from Entertainment Weekly)–chose to go nuts now rather than before the game was released.
Well, BoomTown has a very good guess, but I will keep it to myself!
So until the more dulcet meds kick in for Love, here’s a video from a recent tour I did at Guitar Hero HQ in Silicon Valley, on the release of GH5:
By Brent Kendall, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
A federal appeals court Friday affirmed a jury verdict that Microsoft Corp.’s (MSFT) Outlook software and two other products infringed an Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) patent, but ruled that a $358 million damages award against the software giant was not supported by evidence and needed to be re-calculated.
The case largely centered on Lucent’s claim that Microsoft Outlook’s calendar function infringed one of its patents. Microsoft argued that the patent was invalid and not infringed, but it also attacked the jury’s damages award as far too high.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
FROM APPLETELL - The biggest app to hit the App Store this week? The official Flickr app. It was a slow week, but we’ve got a full list for you.
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 Digitaltrends.com | Appeals Court Throws Out $358M Verdict Vs Microsoft Wall Street Journal WASHINGTON (Dow Jones)--A federal appeals court Friday affirmed a jury verdict that Microsoft Corp.'s (MSFT) Outlook software and two other products infringed an Alcatel-Lucent (ALU) patent, but ruled that a ... Posted by Soulskill on Saturday September 12, @05:10AM Jury verdict against Microsoft overturned in precedent-setting ruling Microsoft $358m patent violation damages tossed |
Motorola is getting a bit of long lost love from Wall Street today, now that it has unveiled the CLIQ–the Android-powered handset with which it hopes to regain market share in the intensely competitive cellphone business. Shares in the company spiked more than seven percent after the CLIQ announcement Thursday, and today they’re up well over six percent at $8.49.
Clearly, there’s quite a bit of enthusiasm around the device and its Motoblur feature, which connects a variety of social networking services to the phone’s core functions.
Said Mark Sue, an analyst at RBC Capital: “Our initial take is favorable, and it seems that Motorola is carving out a niche in the crowded smartphone market by focusing on socially minded demographics as opposed to enterprise users or pro-sumers. We think it’s a step in the right direction.”
C.L. King analyst Lawrence Harris was similarly impressed. “Our initial impression of the CLIQ is that it is not an iPhone killer, but that it will be a contender,” he said in a research note issued today. “…Initial reviews suggest that the CLIQ’s build quality is excellent with a solid keyboard, two important selling points.”
And Tavis McCourt at Morgan Keegan said the CLIQ is a credible device–assuming Motorola (MOT) can sell enough of them. “MOTOBLUR clearly differentiates a Motorola Android-based smartphone from others on the market and provides Motorola a fighting chance at successfully turning around Mobile Devices with Android-based devices,” he noted today.
“The CLIQ appears to be a solid touch screen smartphone,” McCourt added, “but we will defer from offering a more confident opinion until we get a chance to test one and note that we expect the upcoming Motorola Android-based device for Verizon Wireless may be somewhat more impressive. We believe Motorola ultimately needs to sell about 2 million smartphones/quarter in order to become sustainably profitable in its Mobile Devices business.”
McCourt’s conclusion: “Given Motorola’s global distribution, this does not require a ‘home run’ product, but only a series of ‘solid’ products. The CLIQ appears to be a good first step in this turnaround.”
Section: Apple, Audio, Portable Audio, Video, Portable Video, Communications, Smartphones, Mobile, Gadgets / Other, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack
Greetings, crackheads! Time for another round of everybody’s favorite game: (shout it with me) Who’s on Crack. Since we last spoke, more and more companies are showing they might be on the rock by taking some rather unusual steps. Let’s dig right in:
This whole time, maybe it was Steve Jobs’ liver that drove him to make the right decisions? Now that Jobs has had a transplant, Apple is no longer at the top of their game. Their choice to leave off a camera is going to hurt iPod touch sales.
If we can agree that many iPod sales are upgraders, Apple’s decision to leave off the camera is going to hurt them. By believing touch sales would hurt iPhone sales, the camera got left off of Wednesday’s announcement. A lower model got the nod with the iPod nano receiving the camera. Now many iPod touch users that would have run out to buy the next thing Steve sells, just aren’t.
Take Charlie Sorrel over at Wired’s Gadget Lab: “If Apple had piled the features onto the Touch, the decision would be made, and Apple would have $400 of my money. As it is, I think I’ll wait.” That sentiment is echoed all over the net. Whoops.
Sprint’s made a bold move to allow their most favored customers (the ones paying the most, of course) the privilege of calling any mobile number at any time for gratis. Take that Fav Five. Suck it A-List. Sit on it, Friends and Family. Sprint is going for the jugular.
Imagine the meeting this came up in: 4:30PM on a Friday. Jimmy is two beers in when his boss asks, “So if you ran the company, what would you do differently?” Jimmy looks up at his peers, feeling the beer prop up his self worth and says with a half-smile, “Do what they are afraid of.” Beer or crack - you decide.
The move goes so far as put Sprint back in the hunt. Even more impressive, Sprint is throwing this at current customers for free, automatically. Will Sprint force Verizon or AT&T to expand their offerings or will they let Sprint go this one alone and see what damage they can do. As it stands now, Sprint looks more and more tempting.
I love nothing more than to sit and watch people all day long. Strike that, I like to sit and make fun of people all day long. Now, the net helps my addiction and make it a little creepy - I don’t have to leave home to do it.
Thanks to sites like People of Walmart. Our Heather Wood explains, “When you log on the site, you get the pleasure of seeing a collection of photos of real life Walmart shoppers. Some examples? An overweight woman in a motorized scooter with an ‘I Like It From Behind’ t-shirt, a car in the parking lot with Confederate bra decals, and a guy dressed up as Tony the Tiger roaming the aisles.”
The result: I just lost a half hour giggling at the site. Combine this with Lamebook and you’ve got a fun lunch break. Points to Heather for correctly pegging my humor: grade school.
There was this girl in high school I had a crush on. I found her phone number and proceeded to call her. After deciding she wanted nothing to do with me, she wouldn’t take my calls. So I pretended to be someone else from class, that worked once.
That anecdote pretty much sums up the Apple/Palm relationship so far regarding the Pre syncing with iTunes. iTunes 9 again hangs up on Palm so what is next?
Well, back to my story, the next time I called, her dad got on the phone and suggested I find a better way to spend my time. So, will we soon hear about Mr. Jobs picking up the phone and telling Palm to go take a hike? Or will the role of “Dad” be played by the Apple legal team?
After all, I didn’t call her back again after that.
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
FROM GAMERTELL - Did this year’s Dreamcast anniversary leave you feeling nostalgic? Never fear, we’ve come up with the perfect guide to get you back into the Dreamcast realm.
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Artist Chris Jordan wanted to point out how much electricity is wasted in the US, so he made a photo collage representing 320,000 lightbulbs, which amount to the number of kilowatt hours we don't really need to be spending.
[via Moco Loco]
Add another name to the list of opponents of the Google Book Search Settlement: Marybeth Peters, U.S. Register of Copyrights. In testimony before the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee Thursday, Peters tarred the deal as “fundamentally at odds with the law” and villainized Google, saying the company is making a “mockery” of the copyright protections in the U.S. Constitution.
“The settlement would alter the landscape of copyright law, for millions and millions of rights holders of out-of-print books,” Peters said. “It would flip copyright on its head by allowing Google to engage in extensive new uses without the consent of the copyright owner–in my view, making a mockery of Article One of the Constitution, that anticipates that authors shall be granted exclusive rights.”
The settlement, as Peters sees it, will allow Google (GOOG) to profit from the work of others without prior consent. “It could affect the exclusive rights of millions of copyright owners, in the United States and abroad, with respect to their abilities to control new products and new markets, for years and years to come,” she said. “In essence, the proposed settlement would give Google a license to infringe first and ask questions later, under the imprimatur of the court.”
One of the more blistering attacks on the deal to date, especially given its source: The nation’s top copyright official. But Google nevertheless dismissed it as unfounded: “We think the settlement is legal, and we think it is structured well within the guidelines of what you can do in a class action settlement,” David Drummond, Google’s chief legal officer, said during the hearing. “It certainly is not usurping Congress’s authority to do whatever it wants.”
A typically arrogant response from Google, though the company does appear to be conceding a bit of ground in the face of widening opposition to the deal. Responding to Peters’s criticism and claims that the deal will essentially grant Google a de facto monopoly over out-of-print books, Drummond said the company plans to make those works available to any book retailer.
“For the out-of-print books being made available through the Google Books settlement, we will let any book retailer sell access to those books,” Drummond told the committee. “Google will host the digital books online, and retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble or your local bookstore will be able to sell access to users on any internet-connected device they choose.”
Sadly for Google, that conciliatory gesture did not go over well with critics of the deal. “The Internet has never been about intermediation,” Paul Misener, Amazon’s vice president of public policy, said of the company’s offer. “We are happy to work with rights holders without anyone else’s help.”
The Internet Archive’s Peter Brantley was even more disdainful. “I fail to see what’s really new here,” he told the Los Angeles Times. “It’s like Macy’s telling Sears, ‘You can sell Macy’s clothing.’ There’s no fundamental change of the conditions under which Macy’s acquires those clothes. Google remains in control.”
Section: Web, Web 2.0, Web Apps
Ning has just added apps so social network creators can make their social networks function better. Here are some examples of the new Ning apps: the Sellit app allows a site creator to build in a store, a Wordpress app that shows Wordpress.com blog posts, and Ustream.tv and Qik for live streaming video.
Ning is a site that lets a user create their own social network relatively easily. Facebook or Linked In may be too general to find like minded people for some things. You could see a social network of artists and craftspeople cropping up where a storefront could be very useful to sell members’ goods. Showing off video in real time could also bolster a social network. These apps will probably be very helpful to any budding social network.
Source: [Ning Blog]
Full Story » | Written by Iyaz Akhtar for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The announcement from RealNetworks that Apple had approved its iPhone app–all you can eat music, to go, for $15 a month–gave the company’s stock a brief jolt.
But that was Thursday, and that’s old news. After a run-up of more than 10 percent, Real’s stock is back in the $3.30 range, where it stood before the iPhone announcement.
The problem: While a lot of digital music nerds I’ve talked to in the last day or so are excited about the app, the first of its kind to hit the market in the U.S., Wall Street seems to think consumers won’t care. They’re just not going to pay a monthly fee to listen to music.
Here’s JP Morgan’s Vasily Karaysov: “Rhapsody’s subscriber base (750K as of Q2 ’09, a decline of 50K sequentially) reflects the existing demand for a subscription-based music service irrespective of the device on which it’s available. We don’t expect the new application to reverse the challenging trend.”
To be fair, Real Networks (RNWK) is a thinly traded stock with other challenges, and it can move for all sorts of reasons. For instance, there has been a bit of buzz about the damages that Real will have to pay Verisign (VRSN), which could be significant.
But I do get the sense that even in the Apple-crazed tech press, which goes bananas for every Apple (AAPL) morsel it can find (true or not), Real’s app seems to have floated under the radar. But Real’s rival, Spotify, whose app does more or less the same thing at the same price but is only available in Europe (for now), says that demand has been overwhelming, so much so that Spotify has had to restrict its offering to new subscribers, at least temporarily. So what gives?
[Image credit: Kaibara87]
Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Mobile
Recent scrutiny has come on cell phone providers as questions arise on how they can justify the rate that they charge their customers to use their SMS messaging service. According to Time Magazine, it only costs 0.3 of a cent to provide SMS messaging to consumers. So, why are paying as much as 25 cents per message?
Profits are huge for cell phone providers, especially since the results of a recent study by Nielsen Mobile found that the average teen sends and receives close to 3,000 messages per month. It is very cheap to offer text messaging since providers can now rely on digital phone networks and messages are typically less than 160 characters. Yet, despite how cheap it is prices have steadily been on the rise over the past three years. Text message rates now average at 20 cents per message instead of the 10 cent average three years ago.
Cell phone providers contend that instead of focusing on per message charges, consumers should look at affordable pricing packages that allow you to access bundled or unlimited messaging at a low rate. Just make sure you don’t go over the set amount or you could be responsible for a pricey cell phone bill.
Read: [Time]
Full Story » | Written by Heather Wood for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section: Communications, Cellphones, Smartphones, Mobile, Web, Web Apps, Google
Google Voice, despite still being in a closed beta, has more than its share of loyal followers and now Palm Pre users will be able to make better use of their account. Just recently the once homebrew only gDial Pro app was accepted and moved into Palm’s official App Catalog.
The app, which is available as a free download, will allow you to fully use your Google Voice account directly from your Palm Pre. Features include the ability to make calls, send and receive SMS messages, check your voicemail, view your call history, and more.
Interestingly, the gDial Pro app has also remained available (in a slightly different format) in the homebrew directory. That version is, for the most part the same as the official App Catalog version with one major exception—it has universal search which is nice when looking up contacts. All things considered, if I were a Pre user that had my phone enabled for homebrew use, I would continue using that version of gDial Pro. On the flip side, this addition into the App Catalog should be good news for anyone who has not yet, or is not interested in the homebrew community.
Read [Palm Blog]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
After we cheekily offered a how-to on making knock-offs of Dave Honl’s small-flash light modifiers, The Company got in touch. And surprise, they didn’t want to break our knees, or even our fingers. Instead, the folks sent over one of everything so we could try them out and compare to our rather excellent home-made solutions.
The Honl gear is a set of light-shaping tools for speedlights. Off-camera, small-light flash is a section of the camera market that has taken off in the last couple of years, thanks in part to the Strobist community and also, presumably, because the instant-replay on our digital cameras takes away the terrifying uncertainties of using lights too fast to really see. This popularity in turn has brought a demand for add-ons, but these have historically been for studio lights, or crazy expensive. The Honl range isn’t dirt cheap, but in the realms of photo gear it is a steal.
We checked out a gobo (or go-between, which blocks part of the light), a snoot (a fabric tube which lets you point light in a very tight beam), a speed grid (another directional tool which resembles a wad of plastic drinking straws in a box) and a set of color correcting filters. All of these are attached to the flash unit with Velcro, and here is the heart of the system: the Speed Strap, a semi-rubberized strap which wraps around the head and offers soft fuzzy velcro to the hard hooks on the accessories.
It works great. Above you see a picture taken as the sun was going down using a Nikon SB900 sitting on the ground and fired wirelessly using the Nikon D700’s built-in flash. The light is colored using a half CTO gel (CTO stands for color temperature orange — it warms up the flash light). The gels supplied come pre-cut and have velcro on two edges. When the sun is sinking you have to work fast and although the SB900 comes with colored gels and a holder, they’re all too fiddly. With the Honl gear you stick and rip, and it’s fast enough to keep up. In fact, if you leave the straps on the flashes, you pretty much don’t need to think about using the gear, which is the goal of any technology.
The snoots, gobos and grids are all perfectly competent. In fact, they’re probably no better at shaping light than what you could make yourself. The twist is that they are so reasonably priced that most people won’t bother with a trip to the hardware store. They are also sturdy. I’m no pro photographer, but neither do I pamper my gear. The review units are looking a little worn, but are holding up fine.
The real winner though, is the Speed Strap. A simple idea that makes swapping out light modifiers a breeze. Can you make your own? Hell yeah. We did, and we love the results. But if you just can’t be bothered, or if you want to just buy something that’ll work, the Honl gear will do the trick.
Product page [Honl]
See Also:
Western Digital’s My Passport portable hard drives have long hit the sweet spot in the price/size/looks triumvirate. Cheap, small, and plain but good-looking, I have a few around as backups and for general storage.
With the latest update, WD has managed not only to squeeze in more bytes (one whole terabyte) to the USB-powered enclosure, it has actually managed to shrink the box and at the same time smooth off some of the sharper corners. This has been achieved by tossing the SATA to USB interface and just hooking the drive right into USB.
Another bonus, one increasingly useful with these portable drives, is hardware encryption, which will still keep things safe if the drive is pulled and put into a different box. The 1TB Passport Essential SE will cost $250 when it makes it into stores, and the basic 320GB My Passport Essential will be $100.
Product page [Western Digital]
You, Gadget Lab reader, love cranes. Of course you do — they can either rear majestically into the sky, balancing on a single flamingo-like leg, or offer the satisfaction of seeing a badly parked BMW lifted and towed off to an expensive overnight facility.
But unless you have stopped to watch a construction crane under, well, construction, you probably wonder just how the tall, slim structure gets up there in the first place. The answer is, of course, another crane, which puts us into a chicken and egg situation.
The above video will answer your questions (warning: hit mute before pressing play). There are a few tricks. The first is that the crane is actually rather short when the boom is put on, short enough that hanging one side before the other doesn’t tip the whole thing over. The second is that the huge concrete counter weights aren’t added until there is some weight to counter (obvious, really, when you think about it). And third, there is a lift system for adding vertical sections, meaning that the crane can be raised in place as the building grows.
The video was put onto YouTube by San Marco Cranes, an Italian company that sells around the world, and which also has a fascinating video demo of a self-erecting crane on its Canadian site. Also, did you know that a self-erecting crane costs $10,000 a month to rent, before adding any other costs? Were you aware of it?
Tower Crane Assembly with Climber Demo [YouTube via Noquedanblogs]
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It’s a day late, but social game site (and 
Charlie Rose interviews Sprint’s CEO Dan Hesse and they get all kinds of crazy talking about the mobile phone industry. Well, not that crazy, but he does make Dan compare the iPhone to Michael Jordan and complain about the actual cost of smartphones. Engadget’s got 
