European MPs votes on new telecoms law

Two US senators demand publication of secret copyright treaty

Two US senators demand publication of secret copyright treaty

We are surprised and unpersuaded by assertions that disclosures of basic information about the negotiation would present a risk to the national security of the United States, particularly as regards documents that are shared with all countries in the negotiations, and with dozens of representatives of large corporations. We are concerned that the secrecy of such information reflects a desire to avoid potential criticism of substantive provisions in ACTA by the public, the group who will be most affected by the agreement. Such secrecy has already undermined public confidence in the ACTA process, a point made recently by Dan Glickman, the CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) - a group highly supportive of the ACTA negotiation, as well as by the members of the TransAtlantic Consumer Dialogue -- a group more critical of the negotiations.

We firmly believe that the public has a right to know the contents of the proposals being considered under ACTA, just as they have the right to read the text of bills pending before Congress.

Senators Sanders and Brown ask White House to make ACTA text public (via /.)

Inkscape 0.47 Released

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Mobile Web surge continues in October: Opera (Reuters)

Reuters - Global mobile data traffic continued to surge in October, growing at the fastest pace in seven months, Internet browser company Opera Software said on Wednesday.

Hacked Climate Change Emails Set Off Political Storm (NewsFactor)

Mobile Web Usage Continues To Explode As Opera Mini Nears 40 Million Monthly Users

Mobile Web Usage Continues To Explode As Opera Mini Nears 40 Million Monthly Users

We all know the Mobile web is exploding in popularity. Opera Mini, Opera’s mobile browser, grew its monthly users by 11 percent to nearly 40 million users in October from 32 million users in August. In terms of page views, Opera Mini delivered 17.2 billion last month, a 238 percent annual increase, indicating that mobile web usage is growing fast. Since September’s report, page-views have gone up by nearly 15 percent.

Opera also reported increased data consumption on its mobile browsers, which compresses up to 90% of the data to save network bandwidth, with Mini users generating more than 263 million MB of data for operators worldwide in October 2009, a 16 percent increase in data consumption since September 2009. Since October 2008, data traffic is up 233 percent.

Although these stats are impressive, it’s important to acknowledge the immense popularity of Webkit and Apple’s Safari Browser. But Opera Mini does seem to have a stronghold in Russia, Asia and Europe. The top 10 countries for Opera Mini usage are (in order): Russia, Indonesia, India, China, Ukraine, South Africa, United States, United Kingdom, Poland and Vietnam.

From October 2008 to October 2009, overall page-views in these countries listed increased by 332 percent, but Opera released some interesting statistics about usage in Latin America in this month’s State of the Browser report. Brazil, Mexico and Argentina lead the countries with the most usage in Latin America.

Unsurprisingly, Google and Facebook are doing well in Latin America, according to the report. While Orkut is strong in Brazil and Paraguay, Facebook is slowly chipping away at its stronghold. Hotmail is the most popular e-mail site in Latin America and Auction site MercadoLibre, eBay’s Latin American partner, is drawing large amounts of users in Argentina, Venezuela, Colombia and Peru. And Nokia and Sony Ericsson are by far the most popular handset brands chosen by Opera Mini users in Latin America.

Opera claims that using Opera Mini saves people “billions of dollars every year off their mobile phone bills” because the browser compresses data by up to 90%, which could reduce the amount users pay each month for mobile data. To promote these savings, Opera is launching a new cost savings calculator to let users figure out how much they could save each month. Opera claims that Mini users save a total of $9.4 billion USD per year.

It’s important to take this number with a grain of salt. Opera’s complex calculations look at the top operators in each country, and determine how much they typically charge per MB of browsing, and averaged those figures together. The average cost of browsing in each country is then multiplied by the amount of traffic generated in each country, and the resulting totals are summed and compared to the totals for uncompressed data traffic. The caveat is that Opera’s calculations reflects metered rates (cost per MB) and not flat-rate subscription options, which skews the numbers in their favor.

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

S.Korea halves ceiling on text messages to fight spam

Source: Gizmodo | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:20 pm

Conscious "coma man"'s words seemingly delivered via discredited "facilitated communications" technique

And therein lies a problem, because facilitated communications has been widely discredited as a kind of Ouija board, in which the aide's unconscious movements guide the disabled person's hands around, without the aide even knowing that she's doing it.

Mr Houben's brain activity seems normal, and he can apparently communicate a little by moving one foot, but without more information, it's impossible to say whether the words attributed to him that we're reading are his, or a product of his facilitator's unconscious mind.

"If facilitated communication is part of this, and it appears to be, then I don't trust it," said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. "I'm not saying the whole thing is a hoax, but somebody ought to be checking this in greater detail. Any time facilitated communication of any sort is involved, red flags fly...."

"I believe that he is sentient. They've shown that with MRI scans," said James Randi, a prominent skeptic who during the 1990s investigated the use of facilitated communication for autistic children. But in the video, "You see this woman who's not only holding his hand, but what she's doing is directing his fingers and looking directly at the keyboard. She's pressing down on the keyboard, pressing messages for him. He has nothing to do with it."

According to Randi, facilitated communication could only be considered credible if the facilitator didn't look at the keyboard or screen while supporting Houben's hand, and helped him type messages in response to questions she had not heard, thus ensuring that Houben's responses are entirely his own.

The James Randi Educational Foundation has offered a million-dollar prize to a valid demonstration of facilitated communication, and Randi invited Houben to participate. "Our prize is still there," he said.

Conscious "coma man"'s words seemingly delivered via discredited "facilitated communications" technique

Computer Games and Traditional CS Courses

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

New Disney princess movie sounds pretty good

New Disney princess movie sounds pretty good

But Salon's Mary Elizabeth Williams has me convinced. This sounds like a damned good movie. Maybe I'll take the kid to see it.

Tiana takes the princess role a step further -- she's not just Disney's first African-American to wear the crown, she's the first one with a regular job. (Unless you count Mulan's gig as a warrior.) She also, like "Ratatouille's" Remy, makes the case for great food as a social leveler and the cornerstone of a good life. Tiana knows that food "brings people together" with more reliable results than even voodoo.

But the strides here aren't just for princesses. Those Charming Guys of bygone days have traditionally been even less interesting than the ladies they rescue. Campos makes his Naveen such a cocky player that he doesn't stop seducing even when he's turned green and asks for just one kiss ... "unless you beg for more." He's a spoiled rich guy who needs to grow up, and the movie is just as much about his journey as it is about Tiana's.

And what a felicitous spot to take that journey. The Crescent City, in all her late 19th-century glory, shines like a jewel here: an enchanted, lively, multicultural town full of bright blossoms and infectious songs. As they say in the movie, "Dreams come true in New Orleans." Randy Newman [ed: ugh], who wrote the score, does a bang-up job of paying tribute to the city's rich musical heritage in a series of colorful, trippy numbers. There's a jazzy Armstrong-like song (featuring a crocodile named Louis), a gospel-tinged showstopper, a zydeco throwdown, and a boogie-woogie paean to the town sung by Dr. John [ed: that's more like it].
"The Princess and the Frog" is Disney royalty

Previously:

• Disney Princess wedding dresses - Boing Boing
• Disney asks Gizmodo to clarify that jewel box is not intended for ...

Source: Boing Boing | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:04 pm

Blogging Vs. Microblogging: Twitter’s Global Growth Flattens, While WordPress’ Picks Up

Only a year ago, the conventional wisdom was that blogs were dead and microblogging would soon replace them. Twitter was supposed to kill blogs because it’s so much simpler to publish one sentence fragment at a time rather than whole thoughts bunched together into what is known in the trade as “paragraphs.”

Today, blogs are doing fine, while Twitter is struggling with flattening growth, at least to its Website Twitter.com (clients like Seesmic and TweetDeck have seen no slowdown). The weakness Twitter has been experiencing in the U.S. since last summer is now finally hitting its worldwide visitor growth as well.

In October, comScore estimates that Twitter had 58.3 million unique visitors worldwide, down from 58.4 million in September. Meanwhile, Wordpress.com gained 10 million unique visitors to end the month at 151.8 million—this is after going pretty much nowhere since March, 2009.

Of course, I am using Wordpress.com as a proxy for all blogging here (I could have just as easily used Blogger, which is actually bigger with 291.7 million visitors worldwide. And Blogger saw a similar holding pattern since March, with a huge sudden jump of 18.2 million visitors in October

So is blogging back, while microblogging is on the skids? A one-month spike in the popularity of blogs doesn’t tell you much of anything, but in any case it’s the wrong question. Blogging never really went away, and was in fact helped by Twitter, which is becoming the preferred feed reader for many people (thanks to services like Twitterfeed).

And don’t count out microblogging just yet. Twitter is finally rolling out improvements to its site such as Lists and the new Retweet button. Once geo-location features kick in, Twitter’s growth could come back with a vengeance.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:03 pm

Google eyeballs to track Tivo watchers - Register

PC World

Google eyeballs to track Tivo watchers Register Google has inked a deal with digital video recorder (DVR) outfit Tivo that lets the search firm snoop on audience numbers as a way of fueling its TV advertising business. Tivo said the agreement allows the Google TV Ads platform to draw anonymous ... Google teams with tivo for viewer dataSan Francisco Chronicle CNET News Daily Podcast: Google to track tivo dataCNET News Google To Supply Ads to tivo, Use DataPC Magazine Mediapost.com -Digital Media Wire -Los Angeles Times all 107 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:02 pm

Amazon Improves Kindle Battery, Adds PDF Support - PC World

UberGizmo.com

Amazon Improves Kindle Battery, Adds PDF Support PC World Device's wireless-on life boosted to seven days on a charge, and PDF support obviates conversion to Kindle's native format. There's almost no such thing as “enough” in the world of tech. But Amazon's Kindle e-reader, which can run for two weeks on a ... Amazon Boosts Kindle FeaturesInformationWeek Amazon Kindle Gets Huge Battery Boost, PDF ReaderPC Magazine Amazon Upgrades Users' Kindles, AutomaticallyWall Street Journal The Money Times -Techworld.com -ChannelWeb all 104 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:01 pm

TV vs Web: consumption characteristics

On cranky usability guy Jakob Neilsen's Alertbox, this wonderful chart on the relative "consumption" characteristics of TV vs the web.

Velocity of Media Consumption: TV vs. the Web (via ResourceShelf)

Previously:

• CNN ends a web news experiment - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: Design critique of Jakob Nielsen
• Boing Boing: Good Jakob Nielsen AlertBox on
• Jakob Nielsen consisely summarizes all - Boing Boing
• Web-headlines benefit from passive voice - Boing Boing
• Jakob Nielsen on online Reputation - Boing Boing
• Updated: Nielsen: User-education won't fix security - Boing Boing

Source: Boing Boing | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:57 pm

EFF sets sights on abusive EULAs

The Electronic Frontier Foundation's new Terms Of (Ab)Use project tracks news, litigation and fights related to abusive terms of service, EULAs and other electronic flimflam. Now's a good time to mention once again my own EULA, which I put at the bottom of my emails:

"READ CAREFULLY. By reading this email, you agree, on behalf of your employer, to release me from all obligations and waivers arising from any and all NON-NEGOTIATED agreements, licenses, terms-of-service, shrinkwrap, clickwrap, browsewrap, confidentiality, non-disclosure, non-compete and acceptable use policies ("BOGUS AGREEMENTS") that I have entered into with your employer, its partners, licensors, agents and assigns, in perpetuity, without prejudice to my ongoing rights and privileges. You further represent that you have the authority to release me from any BOGUS AGREEMENTS on behalf of your employer."

Using a TOS, online service providers can dictate their legal relationship with users through private contracts, rather than rely on the law as written. In the unregulated and unpredictable world of the Internet, such arrangements often provide the necessary ground rules for how various online services should be used.

Yet TOS agreements also raise a number of concerns for the consumer, as they can be a vehicle for abuse by online service providers. For starters, TOS provisions are usually written by the service providers themselves. As a result, they tend to end up being one-sided in the service provider's favor, and are often designed to be beyond any judicial scrutiny. Even more importantly, most users never even bother to read, let alone understand, these agreements, filled as they are with confusing legalese.

The time has come to shed light on what these Terms of Service agreements actually say, and what it means to users. In conjunction with our TOSBack project, EFF is working to make the contents of these TOS more transparent for the average user.

Terms Of (Ab)Use

Previously:

• Thomas Edison's crappy, price-fixing EULA - Boing Boing
• Hardest-to-understand EULA *ever* when you install WoW on GNU ...
• Sketch comedy troupe proposes a EULA for friendship - Boing Boing
• Grapes with a EULA - Boing Boing
• A fair EULA for downloaded works - Boing Boing
• ReasonableAgreement.org - the anti-EULA - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: Sony's EULA is worse than their rootkit
• Malware gets a EULA - Boing Boing
• Worst ToS on the entire Internet - Boing Boing
• ToS for Universal's free movie screenings - Boing Boing
• New AT&T terms of service: We'll cut off your Internet connection ...
• Orkut OD: TOS hack, and craziest community yet - Boing Boing
• Reuters email-an-article-TOS - Boing Boing
• TOS on Cingular's wireless data service sucks as much as Verizon's ...
• Orkut members launch Orkut Paranoia community about Orkut TOS on ...

Source: Boing Boing | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:53 pm

Delicious sprinkles on everything photoshopping contest

Today on the Worth1000 photoshopping contest, "Fudge and Sprinkles: Putting Delicious toppings on Everything!" Worth it for several of the images, but especially this delicious deep-sea banana split by "Mandrak."

Fudge and Sprinkles 5


Source: Boing Boing | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:47 pm

NYC tenants' rights flashcards

John sez, "Candy Chang teamed up with Tenants & Neighbors to create a boxed set of 30 flash cards on tenants' rights."

Many residents in New York are unfamiliar with their housing rights. What is my landlord required to repair? How does rent stabilization work? When can my landlord enter my apartment? Thanks to a generous grant from Sappi Ideas That Matter, Candy collaborated with non-profit group Tenants & Neighbors to develop and produce a boxed set of 30 flash cards on tenants' rights. The flash cards translate New York's official Tenants' Rights Guide into a fun and friendly format that covers everything from security deposits and subletting to privacy and eviction so residents can enjoy good times while becoming empowered residents. The flash cards are available for $10 in Tenants & Neighbors' online store and all profits go towards their good work. Buy one for yourself and all of your friends - a righteous gift for anyone in New York state!

Candy Chang - Design - Tenants' Rights Flash Cards (Thanks, John!)

Previously:

• Terrible apartment ad -- probably not real, funny nevertheless ...
• Japanese Apartments - Boing Boing
• Upside of squatters - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: Bad info in background check database nixes apartment ...

Source: Boing Boing | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:44 pm

Bad-ass Mad Max campout weekend, complete with working gyrocopter!

Erin sez, "This past weekend in the Mojave desert Mad Max fans got together for a 3-day, one time only 'Road Warrior Weekend' campout and built replicas of the Gyrocopter and Interceptors."

OK, so not only are these incredible vehicles and costumes -- but those are some damned stylish and attractive cosplayers. They should do a runway show.

Road Warrior Weekend (Thanks, Erin!)

Previously:

• Boing Boing: Amazing "Mad Max" vehicles in Iraq
• Boing Boing: Mad Max Interceptor on eBay
• Retro-futuristic motorcycle - Boing Boing
• Replica Mad Max badges - Boing Boing
• Rat-bikes: homebrew motorcycles like Mad Max meets HR Gigers ...

Source: Gizmodo | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:40 pm

Anti-energy drinks

(CC-licensed photo by Francis Bourgouin)

As a gimmicky antidote to "energy drinks," several companies are selling calming beverages in a can. (No, not beer.) DailyFinance recently surveyed the choices:

Promising a "vacation in a bottle" or an "acupuncture session in every can," makers of anti-energy drinks, as they're known, say that after bailouts, foreclosures and Ponzi schemes, Americans nowadays would rather chill out than tweak out. To help us do so, they're spiking their new beverages with ingredients such as chamomile, melatonin, and valerian root -- all known for their supposed calming effects. Now in convenience-store display cases across America, drinks with names like Slow Cow, Ex Chill and Malava Relax are increasingly jockeying for space with their amped-up alter-egos like Jolt, Monster and Rockstar.

"It's my quest to relax the world," says Innovative Beverage Group Holdings (IBGH) CEO Peter Bianchi, who developed the anti-energy beverage Drank. "I saw America becoming more and more hurried. We are going to burn out after a while."

"Adios, Red Bull? Anti-energy drinks seek to soothe frazzled Americans" (via IFTF's Future Now)


Source: Boing Boing | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:05 pm

AT&T and Verizon ads duel on airwaves and in court

Source: Gizmodo | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pm

Nov. 25, 1920: Gaston Chevrolet Dies in Race Crash

The youngest of the three Chevrolet brothers meets an early end in the middle of a race at the end of a season. And yet, he wins.

Source: Gizmodo | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:20 pm

Shedding Your Identity In the Digital Age

newscloud writes "Writer Evan Ratliff tells how he managed to hide from crowdsourced searchers for 27 days. The first person to find him and photograph him would claim a $5,000 prize. In addition to hiding out as a roadie with indy band 'The Hermit Thrushes' for a week, Ratliff donned a variety of increasingly impressive disguises. It's an interesting read on how to disappear in the digital age: 'August 13, 6:40 PM: I'm driving East out of San Francisco on I-80, fleeing my life under the cover of dusk. Having come to the interstate by a circuitous route, full of quick turns and double backs, I'm reasonably sure that no one is following me. I keep checking the rearview mirror anyway. From this point on, there's no such thing as sure. Being too sure will get me caught. About 25 minutes later, as the California Department of Transportation database will record, my green 1999 Honda Civic, California plates 4MUN509, passes through the tollbooth on the far side of the Carquinez Bridge, setting off the FasTrak toll device, and continues east toward Lake Tahoe. What the digital trail will not reflect is that a few miles past the bridge I pull off the road, detach the FasTrak, and stuff it into the duffle bag in my trunk, where its signal can't be detected. There will be no digital record that at 4 AM I hit Primm, Nevada, a sad little gambling town about 40 minutes from Vegas, where $15 cash gets me a room with a view of a gravel pile...' Spoiler alert: We previously discussed the denouement of the contest."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:11 pm

Dropbox Raised $6 Million Sequoia-Led Series A In October 2008

Earlier today GigaOm reported that Dropbox raised a new $7.25 million funding round over the summer (a number they derived from a SEC filing but that CEO Drew Houston wouldn’t confirm). We just spoke to Houston, who says that figure is wrong, and it’s off by nearly a year: Dropbox did close a Series A funding round, but it was for $6 million, and it was back in October 2008. And it was led by Sequoia, not Accel (though Accel did participate in the round).

Previously, Dropbox raised a seed round from Sequoia that was $1.2 million in convertible debt (they also raised money through the Y Combinator program).

Aside from the not-so-recent funding, Dropbox has been killing it lately. Houston tells us their membership numbers were up 25% in October, spurred in part by their new iPhone app. And the company also managed to gain control over Dropbox.com (previously their service was hosted on the domain getdropbox.com). They’ve also recently hit 3 million users, only two months after they passed the 2 million user milestone.

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

Source: Gizmodo | 24 Nov 2009 | 8:40 pm

Microsoft CFO Resigns Effective Year-End

Source: Gizmodo | 24 Nov 2009 | 8:00 pm

Google apologizes for offensive first lady image (AP)

AP - Google Inc. is apologizing for a racially offensive image of the first lady that appears at the top of the list when users search for pictures of Michelle Obama on its site.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Nov 2009 | 7:14 pm

Two Senators Call For ACTA Transparency

angry tapir writes "Two US senators have asked President Barack Obama's administration to allow the public to review and comment on a controversial international copyright treaty being negotiated largely in secret. The public has a right to know what's being negotiated in the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), Senators Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, and Bernard Sanders, a Vermont Independent, argue in the letter."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Nov 2009 | 7:10 pm

If Kerouac Lived In The Present, OnTheRoad, The Service, May Have Interested Him

There’s a ton of buzz around location right now. Our discussion on it at the RealTime CrunchUp this past Friday easily could have gone on twice as long as it did. There are just so many interesting facets: Business models, privacy, real-life social implications, and so on. Not surprisingly, we’re seeing an explosion of services that are built around it. One such service was a TechCrunch50 demo pit company this year, OnTheRoad.

Started in 2004 in the Czech Republic to connect travelers, newer devices like smartphones with GPS are poised to take the service to the next level. While a lot of location services such Foursquare, Gowalla, and now Loopt are built around the idea of “checking-in” to venues, OnTheRoad takes a different approach. It’s more about creating a geotagged travel diary when you specifically go on a trip somewhere.

Visitors to your OnTheRoad travel page see a map with various locations marked. On the other side of the screen there is a dynamic timeline of entries depending on what place on the map they click on. (A good example is the page the OnTheRoad team created for their TechCrunch50 trip.) This journal can contain both text and pictures. The use of this map-plus-timeline to navigate through your trip makes a lot of sense. There is also a horizontal timeline along the top of the page to go step-by-step through a trip that way.

And for the person on the trip, it’s easy to update on the go, which is obviously key. You can update your OnTheRoad journal via SMS, email, IM, or the service’s dedicated mobile apps. But what’s great is that even if you don’t have access to something like GPS to tag an entry, if you simply state where you are, the service will be able to figure it out. And if you do have access to the service’s Android or iPhone apps (the latest version of the iPhone app was rejected recently due to an API issue that they are resolving, we’re told), it’s even easier to update.

The company says Symbian and BlackBerry apps are also in the works. They also have an API they will be launching later this week. If you choose to update your page through the main website admin center, it’s a little cluttered, but overall seems to be pretty intuitive. But again, the mobile way to update seems to be key.

Though, as I said, OnTheRoad originally launched in 2004, the new direction for the service as a location-based travel journal only came about around 9 months ago. Since then, they have added about 5,000 registered users with over 50% of those coming from mobile devices. And the service is only currently localized for three areas, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the U.S. (with Japan and China in beta testing). They hope the new iPhone app, when approved, will help them make a stronger push in the U.S.

So what’s the plan to make money? Next year, the team has “5 or 6 revenue streams” they’re going to look at, U.S. marketing manager Michaela Romanova tells us. One is looking at subscription-based premium features, such as breaking news for locations. Another interesting idea involves using OnTheRoad to supply worldwide 911 numbers to travelers. In Europe, the company has already been monetizing a bit, having launched in the past year a promotion with a new Volkswagon SUV that had OnTheRoad built in to the dashboard console.

They face some competition from the likes of TripIt and Dopplr, but really this trying to be something else. It will no doubt help you organize trips a bit better like those services do, but this is more about simply sharing stories and pictures from where you are while on the go with people back home.

OnTheRoad may not be the Ker0uac novel, but it’s interesting.

CrunchBase Information

OnTheRoad

Information provided by CrunchBase

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Nov 2009 | 7:07 pm

Amazon announces firmware update for Kindle 2

Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks

Amazon has announced a firmware update is on the way for its popular Kindle 2 e-reader. The update will give the 6-inch e-reader native PDF support and also claims to increase battery life by a whopping 85%, meaning the device will last up to 7 days between charges (even with the wireless service turned on) rather than 4.

“Kindle, already the #1 bestselling, most wished for, and most gifted product on all of Amazon.com, is now even better—with 85 percent more battery life and a built-in PDF reader,” said Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle. “These two significant enhancements are available now.”

The company says the update is the product of 6 months of testing and development and will offer the native PDF support of the update to owners of the original Kindle as well. It will be delivered wirelessly, although Amazon has yet to say when.

Kindle has been wildly popular since its release 2 years ago. It’s appearance on the Oprah Winfrey show in October 2008, along with her pronouncement that it was her favorite gadget, led to the device selling out just as the holidays hit. A minor controversy followed when Amazon discontinued it and releases the Kindle 2 in February of this year. It has remained popular but now faces competition from Sony, Barnes and Noble, and other manufacturers, and has versions of its software for the iPhone/iPod Touch, PC, and soon for the BlackBerry.

Read [Amazon]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 7:04 pm

Nerdbots: throwbacks to the tin toy era

These cute little robot figures are strictly for decoration, but they hearken back to a day when decorative figures were our toys. Do none of you remember the fun we had with immobile, poorly-molded Star Wars figurines and the original tin robots these ones emulate? Toys are a bit more complicated these days — not that I don’t enjoy them too.

These Nerdbots are made from household items, and remind me a bit of what might happen if you went around the house zapping things with the All Spark. They’re pretty expensive at around $200 (they’re one-of-a-kind), but if you can’t spare the bread, they look easy enough that you and the little you could put some together some rainy Sunday.

[via Apartment Therapy]

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Nov 2009 | 7:00 pm

TGI Black Friday app hits the App Store

FROM APPLETELL - Looking for Black Friday deals? Conviniently, there’s a free iPhone and iPod touch application available in the App Store to help you out.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:51 pm

A Clicker To Watch TV Online [The Mossberg Solution]

Finding TV shows online can be a major hassle. If you can remember which network hosts the show, you then must hunt through a maze of listings of several other television shows on that network’s Web site to find it. The show you want to watch might not even be available since many networks rotate only a handful of recent episodes online at a time. And if you do finally find the correct episode, you may be required to download a special media player to watch it.

Some services make this process a little easier. Hulu holds episodes from 1,200 television shows, but is still missing many. Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Store offers over 50,000 episodes, but unlike network sites or Hulu, it requires viewers to pay to download and watch them (though they are commercial-free). Video search engines like Truveo browse the entire Web, returning an often-overwhelming number of results. And while YouTube is the king of Web video, it can too easily return a search result that isn’t a complete and genuine episode of the show you’re seeking.

[ See post to watch video ]

This week, I’ve been testing Clicker, a free Web site that aims to be the TV Guide for all full episodes available to watch on the Web. It searches over 1,200 sources, so it can index some 400,000 episodes from 7,000 shows. Results include television programs as well as “Web originals,” or shows that are native to the Internet and are of broadcast quality. Clicker either plays the video on its site or links you to where this content is shown on another hosting site—like NBC or Hulu. If a show isn’t available online, Clicker tells you so you don’t have to keep hunting all over for it.

I like Clicker and found it to be a quick resource for finding all sorts of shows online. In many cases, it directed me to find the episodes I wanted to watch and saved me the hassle of less efficient searching. It also suggested shows I might like and offered a playlist where I could subscribe to receive episodes as they became available or save available videos to watch later.

Clicker makes descriptive pages about each show

Though it has a search box, Clicker feels more like a directory than purely a robotic search engine that relies mainly on algorithms. In fact, Clicker created a descriptive page for almost every show, and these pages can be edited or created via user submissions, which Clicker will review before posting them to the site. And because it’s focused on TV shows or Web originals, it won’t clutter your results with kids’ birthday parties or cats on skateboards.

The site is still rather new, so it has some kinks to work out—like links to videos that didn’t actually play if, for example, they were pulled by the network. But these were rare, and for the most part, if a video wasn’t available, a clear, brief explanation was displayed at the top of the page. Also, if Clicker sends you back out to a network’s site and that network uses a special player for videos, you’ll still have to download that player.

Filtering Results

Clicker’s program pages contain a description of the show, and a way to filter results by season, airdate or popularity. And the site shows the actual airdate of each video—something that not many other sites do. A column on the right side of each page displays several related shows, like the suggestion of “Modern Family” for fans of “How I Met Your Mother”; and “Roswell” and “Dead Like Me” suggested for people who like “Heroes.” In December, these recommendations will become even more personalized.

Some of Clicker’s sources include NBC, Fox, ABC, PBS, the Food Network and Web original content (i.e. “The Onion”). It also can search movies and music videos; the movies can be watched free in some cases, or paid for via Amazon’s (AMZN) Video on Demand or Netflix (NFLX) Instant Streaming. In January, Clicker plans to incorporate shows and movies from iTunes, using Apple’s pay-and-download method.

Clicker is especially handy when you’re looking for a show that isn’t where you think it should be. “Seinfeld,” for example, is on TBS rather than NBC, where it originally aired, and only nine episodes are available at once before they rotate out and are replaced by nine more. “Friends” is found on theWB.com, rather than on NBC’s site. “Damages” isn’t available on its network site, FX; instead, it can be found at Crackle.com, another video-hosting site. It’s easy to understand why people settle for missing an episode rather than trying to find a show online.

Clicker finds over 400,000 television and Web-original episodes so you can search less and watch more.

Clicker also comes in handy when you’re querying something or someone you need to learn about. By typing in a term like “Thanksgiving travel,” I get news results from NBC’s “Nightly News with Brian Williams,” the “CBS Evening News” and the Associated Press. I also get tips for traveling during this busy time of year from an AOL Travel online video, as well as a 1968 episode of “The Beverly Hillbillies” called “The Thanksgiving Spirit.”

Clicker isn’t the site to use if you want to find the hot video clip that everyone is watching. When I searched for “Whitney Houston” the morning after the American Music Awards, the most recent video I found was the singer performing on “Good Morning America” in September—not the one showing her singing during the awards show the night before.

But the fact that Clicker can find Whitney Houston on “Good Morning America” is useful in itself. A search for Warren Buffett’s most recent appearance on the “Charlie Rose” show can be conducted in a similar manner—either by typing his name into the box at the top of the page or by opening the show’s page and searching within that show for anyone who has appeared as a guest. Performing a search within a show like this anywhere else is nowhere near as easy as on Clicker.

Playlist of Your Shows

Clicker can be used as a TiVo (TIVO) of sorts if you create a username on the site or simply sign in using Facebook Connect, which I did.

Users can make playlists where they can add just one episode, all episodes, or new episodes to this list—subscribing to receive all new episodes in the playlist as they become available. I added episodes of “The Amazing Race” and “It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia” to my playlist. This list can be accessed anytime, and it’s helpful for people who don’t have enough time to watch a show that they found. In December, email and Facebook notifications will be added to tell users that new episodes are in their playlists.

If you spend a lot of time in front of your computer and find yourself searching all over the Web for the TV shows you’d like to watch, Clicker will be a huge help. And even if your show isn’t available, you might find something similar—or better—in Clicker’s recommendations.

Edited by Walter S. Mossberg. Email mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:43 pm

'Godfather Of Spam' Hit With Four-Year Prison Sentence - ChannelWeb

Erictric

'Godfather Of Spam' Hit With Four-Year Prison Sentence ChannelWeb "Godfather of Spam" Alan Ralsky was sentenced to more than four years in prison by a US District Judge in Detroit for spearheading an e-mail stock scam that defrauded victims and violated the CAN SPAM Act, according to ... Security Fix Brian KrebsWashington Post 'Godfather of Spam' Sentenced to Four Years in PrisonPC World 'Godfather of Spam' Sentenced to 4 YearseWeek The Money Times -Ars Technica -Right Juris all 248 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:37 pm

Overstock.com Chairman and CEO Corrects Misstatements in Grant Thornton Letter to SEC

SALT LAKE CITY, Nov. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Overstock.com, Inc. (Nasdaq: OSTK) yesterday filed a Form 8-K/A which included a letter from the company's former auditor to the SEC.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:37 pm

For Teracent Rival Tumri, Google Becomes A Frenemy

Google’s acquisition of display advertising startup Teracent yesterday had significant meaning for rival Tumri; the San Mateo-based advertising platform now counts tech giant Google as a competitor. Tumri, which launched in 2004, provides a similar advertising technology to Teracent. The startup’s product, the AdPod, creates display ads that are customized in realtime to the specific consumer and site.

Tumri’s dynamic ad platform is optimized at the creative level to enable advertisers to change the animation, background template, featured product, headline, image, and more dynamically based on who is viewing the ad and where the individual is viewing the ad from geographically.

Over the past five years, Tumri has picked up a roster of impressive clients including HP, Dell, Lenovo, Sears, K-Mart, Nike, Bank of America, Expedia and British Airways. While Tumri’s CEO Calvin Lui won’t reveal the startup’s revenue numbers, he says Tumri has seen triple digit revenue growth over the past few years.

Interestingly, Tumri has an ongoing partnership with Google which allows them to serve Tumri’s display ads within Google’s content network and via DoubleClick. Tumri also has partnerships with AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Both Tumrui and Teracent partner with Yahoo to power its Smart Ads program or PC and mobile advertisers.

Lui told me that he doesn’t anticipate the partnership with Google ending but he did admit that with the acquisition of Teracent, Google has become somewhat of a “frenemy.” As I wrote yesterday, Google says that Teracent’s technology will now be offered to its display advertising clients who run campaigns in Google’s Content Network and to DoubleClick clients. Both Teracent and Tumri were reported as possible acquisition candidates as of a few weeks ago, but Lui declined to comment on any talks with Google about a buyout.

It’s unclear what the state of these partnerships will be when the dust settles post-acquisition but a Yahoo spokeswoman told me that they anticipate to continue its deal with Teracent. But it should be interesting to see if Google will be ok with parsing out its new advertising technology to competitors. Regardless, Lui and Tumri seem to seem optimistic about its prospects facing now rival Google. Says Lui, “This has been an a great opportunity to evangelize this part of the advertising market.”

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:25 pm

Ratings Box: What's Hot/What's Not (Mediaweek.com)

Mediaweek.com - Week seven of the Live Plus 7 Day Ratings, which include DVR usage, have been released. Thursday, as always, remains the most active night for the DVR, with six of the top 10 (and 8 of the top 15) shows Thursday occupants. But the good news, in particular, for ABC was the 2.36 million additional viewers (representing 16.4 percent) who watched the series-premiere of V via the DVR.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:12 pm

Powered cooler to replace ice at picnics – and you ask why there’s an energy crisis

Here’s the thing. I appreciate innovation. This rechargable portable refrigerator looks handy. Handy if you live in a world without ice. I mean really now: there is more water than anything else in the world, and you possess the means to freeze it in your very own home. Once you decide that you’d rather use up about a gazillawatt of energy to keep a couple drinks cold rather than reach into get your hand cold for one second, then you’ve gone too far.

It’s like buying a rechargeable shirt that pushes your chest in and out. Why not just breathe?

Yes yes, that’s all well and good, but where do I buy this miracle of refrigeration, you ask? Apparently at Bed, Bath and Beyond. This is the Beyond part, I’m guessing. Oh, and it costs $450. MM-HM! It’s no more than you deserve.

[via Crave]

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:00 pm

Editors' Picks for the Wired.com Sleep Photo Contest

:

Though Wired.com readers selected 10 excellent photos in our sleep photo contest, we here at the photo department like to fight for the underdog. Here are our 10 favorite submissions that we think deserved more attention.

The morning after

by J.C. Rojas

"Morning comes and you know the sun will wake her up pretty soon. You take a mental note on how the light looks on her legs before leaving."

:

Seasons

by Jorge Aragon

"Dreaming about the sun"

:

The Cocoon

by Alexandra Mederrick

"Suspending sleep, hammocked in dreams fluttering; secluded now until she wakes."

:

Jerusalem Syndrome

by CoVisions

"Late-nite at the Western Wall ..."

:

Mizouen's Back

by Van Royko

"France has co-ed hostels. Go figure. This girl was sleeping in the bed across from me. I liked the light."

:

Linn-Kjersti

by Anonymous

"Sleeping beauty"

:

Asleep at the Wheel

by Eric J Scott

"This taxi driver in Delhi seemed exhausted."

:

Beauty Sleep

by Anonymous

"All that glitters is gold"

:

sleepy sleepy

by adeyinka s

"sleeping on d bus home"

:

Book Store Nap

by Mark Lazarus

"Taken in the Tattered Cover bookstore in downtown Denver."

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:00 pm

Canopy Financial Turns Into Sad, Comical Game Of Hot Potato

This morning we broke the news that Canopy Financial, no. 12 on this year’s Inc. 500 list of fastest growing companies, is a complete sham.

And it’s no surprise that today, everyone is trying to point the finger at everyone else.

The company’s investment bank, Financial Technology Partners, which has represented Canopy Financial through at least two separate rounds of fraudulent fundraising, emailed to say:

“Hi there, I’d respectfully ask for some consideration here and would like to have our information / logos / screenshots taken off of your Canopy Financial posts. We clearly had no clue about any such wrongdoing and exposure to this is not something we are interested in. Understand you guys are all about the news, but we’re a small firm and had nothing to do with this. Please pass to Michael Arrington if you don’t mind.”

Let me just highlight one part of that email – “We clearly had no clue about any such wrongdoing.” Err, what? You are the investment bank that was out pitching the deal to venture capitalists. You proudly stated that you were the company’s “sole strategic and financial advisor.” And you never made a call to KPMG to see if they actually represented the company and if their financial statements were real? A 10 second phone call could have cleared this up before investors plowed $85 million into the company.

But even better is CEO Vikram Kashyap’s comment, which comes via his attorney:

Statement from Ismail Ramsey, Vik Kashyap’s Attorney Regarding Allegations of Fraud at Canopy Financial

Vik Kashyap had no prior knowledge whatsoever of any fraud regarding Canopy’s financial statements. He is as surprised as anyone about these allegations. He relied on financial and legal professionals in accepting the authenticity of the company’s financials. Going forward, he will leave his role as CEO of Canopy, but will remain as Chairman of the Board of Directors, helping to ensure that anyone who committed fraud is held fully accountable.

I mean, sure, he’s just the CEO. What does he know? The company was engaging in long term financial fraud with completely made up numbers. And he’s the victim. Never fear, though, he’s “helping to ensure that anyone who committed fraud is held fully accountable.”

Except himself.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:54 pm

AT&T introduces the HP iPAQ Glisten

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile

It has been a long time since HP released an interesting iPAQ device.  Now, with the release of Windows Mobile 6.5, it looks like the iPAQ is back once again with the Glisten.  The HP iPAQ Glisten is a smartphone heading to AT&T targeted at business users over everyone else.

The iPAQ Glisten looks to be a good alternative to those who like the BlackBerry-esque form factor, but either require or prefer Windows Mobile 6.5.  It has a 2.5” AMOLED touchscreen, along with a QWERTY keyboard and five-way directional pad.  In terms of specs it holds 256 SDRAM/512 MB Flash memory, GPS, 3.1 MP camera, 3G and Wi-Fi (complete with a dedicated on/off switch, which could prove very handy).  It runs stock Windows Mobile 6.5, along with Flash support in the browser, and built in apps for Facebook and HP’s Snapfish.

The iPAQ Glisten may not be the most exciting Windows Mobile 6.5 phone compared to others recent releases, but it does seem like a decent choice.  The combination of a candybar smartphone with a QWERTY keyboard, and a touchscreen makes it fairly interesting, and could put it above popular BlackBerries.  There is also a great brand in iPAQ, with it being one of the better PDAs back when those were still around.  The only thing holding it back is the $180 price tag after the $50 mail-in rebate.  Unless users really need Windows Mobile or a physical keyboard, there’s no reason to pick this up over the 16GB iPhone 3GS.  Unless, of course, you hate Apple’s policies for the iPhone and can’t switch the Verizon for a Droid.

Read [AT&T] Read [HP]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:41 pm

What's Really Behind the Rupe-a-Dope With Google and Microsoft? Here Are Five Possibilities! [BoomTown]

Please see this disclosure related to me and Google.

There certainly is a lot of noisy swirl of late around the escalating fight between Google and some traditional media companies over content online.

The loudest voice in this fight has clearly been News Corp. (NWS) kingpin Rupert Murdoch, who seemingly has not met a television interviewer of late he did not regale with tales of Google’s nefariousness.

Part of what he is saying is surely justified–it’s definitely a crisis for the news business.

And in Murdoch’s mind, the blame should largely fall on Google (GOOG), which he believes is profiting from expensive content others have created and that the search giant is not paying for to such a warped and massive degree that it makes a mockery of fair use.

In Silicon Valley style, Google defends itself by saying it sends valuable Web traffic to News Corp. and other sites, so perhaps a hand-written thank-you note is really the proper response.

That missive is definitely not in the mail from Murdoch, who instead has sent a series of poison-pen letters to Google.

Most notable is that he has threatened to “de-index” at least some of his content assets–which are not insubstantial–from the now-inevitable crawlers sent out by the search giant.

These are, of course, vintage tactics from the Global Media Mogul Playbook: Causing a public hubbub and spooking perceived enemies by threatening drastic action and implying dire consequences, while simultaneously dealmaking behind the scenes.

Trying mightily to make the stakes more dramatic, News Corp. has pulled Microsoft (MSFT) into the fray as a possible white knight–if you live long enough, you do see it all–for publishers.

Under this scenario, the software giant would fork over some sum of money to get News Corp. and perhaps other key content companies, such as Associated Press, exclusively and prominently featured on its Bing search site.

The reward, presumably, would be increased searching on Bing for the stuff consumers could now not find on Google.

BoomTown reported earlier this week that, in fact, Microsoft was unlikely to hand over any kind of king’s ransom to publishers.

As I wrote:

While a spate of reports has Microsoft execs girding the globe offering gobs of cash to content companies to block Google and favor its Bing search service, sources close to the situation caution that it is extremely unlikely that the software giant would pay giant sums for that pricey privilege, which many inside the company think will not help it gain much search share.

“While there is a lot of mutual interest, it’s doubtful Microsoft is going to pay to ‘rent’ a corpus of content that it does not own,” said one source close to the situation. “The economics are not there for anyone.”

In other words, this wrestling match is not about whether Google or Microsoft will serve up links to content online, but about how much–or not at all–they are willing to pay for doing so.

So, what’s really happening here? Here are five possibilities to consider, each of which is true in part:

1. Murdoch really means it

In this scenario, Murdoch, as well as others like AP’s Tom Curley, truly believe that Google–like that creepy salt-seeking alien from “Star Trek”–is sucking the life out of the media industry by making bank from its news content, but not giving back nearly enough in return.

Of course, a lot of these companies have willingly done distribution deals with Google over the years.

But now they don’t like it because the increasing money being made by Google, even as their revenue has suffered, has developed into a growing problem.

Which is simply this: There is a lot more money to be made in searching for content than in making it.

This realization has to shake content czars like Murdoch to the core, but it is indeed the situation they find themselves in.

Murdoch makes a fair point in that journalism costs money to make and it used to have a solid economic system under it until Google and others on the Web disaggregated it wholly.

Thus, online aggregators become “tapeworms,” as The Wall Street Journal Managing Editor Robert Thomson quipped.

Thomson also, on a recent panel at the Web 2.0 conference, said to Google’s front page head, Marissa Mayer, that she “unintentionally encourages promiscuity.”

Ouch. That remark, which was was quite striking if you were there to hear Thomson say it, said volumes more.

(Full disclosure: News Corp. owns Dow Jones, which owns this site.)

2. Murdoch really means to create a lot of confusion, in order to shake down Google

Well, it would not be the first time Murdoch and many others of his ilk have used public sharp elbows and saber-rattling to get what they want.

Except in this case, the algorithm experts over at Google know precisely–down to the tenth decimal–how much linking to News Corp. makes for them.

And it is not much, especially when looking at the vast sea of data Google serves up.

Its money-making is widely dissipated, from searches for vacation information to mapping to car-buying to health. While news-finding definitely is part of the mix, it is not at the center of the Borg.

Ironically–and oddly left out of this debate–it is Yahoo (YHOO) that has a lot of power in this arena, with massive content sites that shoot traffic all over the Web (including to this site).

But, what Google cannot and never can quantify–although I have seen co-founder Larry Page try once or twice–is the impact of public perception on the company, which has slowly morphed from being a benign, brightly-colored digital, librarian-like helper to a scary, answer-to-no-one, evil-doing monster.

The company’s growing influence over what people see and do not see on the Web is palpably frightening to publishers, advertisers and anyone who wants to be digitally discovered.

Bad luck for Google: Creating and then attacking bogeymen is a Murdoch talent, bar none.

3. Murdoch really means to create a lot of confusion, in order to shake down Microsoft

Also obvious is the full-scale obsession Microsoft has with Google. While the software giant’s execs try to hide it, their panic over the success of Google has been tough on the once dominant tech company, which has struggled in the Internet arena.

Worse still, Google rakes in the dough, while Microsoft, um, does not.

Finally, this year, Microsoft has created–with no small amount of much needed innovation–Bing, a laudable effort that is starting to show some traction.

While Bing still has a very small market share compared with Google–by a factor of seven to one–it’s definitely got some momentum.

And, after much turmoil, Microsoft finally did a deft and relatively inexpensive deal to join with Yahoo in a search and advertising partnership to give them both more heft, which will surely help matters.

More important, one of the ways Bing has differentiated itself is via product innovations and intense focus on search niches, such as health.

In this topic area, for example, Bing has struck a not-expensive content licensing arrangement with the Mayo Clinic in order to better feature content.

This is smart business and offers consumers something better and different.

But overpaying big media publishers for the same thing, even if they de-indexed Google at the same time, is not smart, unless it is for really niche things like special financial information.

And even then, there are so many other sources of information out there, it would not take Google long to mount a similar offering, even in the face of some kind of OPEC of News consortium.

Even more–how much do consumers love OPECs of any kind? Not much!

Sources at Microsoft agree:

“If it was everyone, that might become interesting. But even that has issues, since Microsoft is not interested in having exclusive news for a temporary period of time by overpaying for it. It’s essentially a marketing expense, and there are a lot better ways to spend that money to win market share than giving it to publishers.”

Finally, Microsoft has been to the Murdoch party before too, having been part of talks to fold News Corp.-owned social networking site MySpace into Yahoo, had Microsoft prevailed in its attempt to acquire it.

Microsoft missed that pricey bullet and might be more inclined to grow Bing the old-fashioned way–via innovation, marketing and product improvements–rather than just using up too much of its energy trying to mess with Google.

4. A deal will be made

My not-too-surprising prediction is that in the end, News Corp. and others will probably strike some kind of lesser deal with Microsoft–although it will tout the heck out of it–while taking some of its content behind a pay wall and, thereby, de-indexing it from Google.

More damaging would be if AP, which actually provides the most used news content online, removes its links completely from Google, because–unlike the premium content from other publishers–this is the bread and butter of consumer usage of content.

As to promotional material or links to television shows and movies from publishers like News Corp.? Well, it would seem the most self-destructive form of pique to remove those links from any of the top search engines.

That said, even if it really pissed me off for publishers to do so, I would probably switch to another search engine to find information on “Glee” if forced to. That’s how much I love those singing kids and Jane Lynch!

Finally, Murdoch has also threatened to challenge the fair use doctrine–which allows others to use copyrighted content within limits, as Google and many others do (such as this site).

While some think that is a bridge too far, it might be Murdoch’s best argument of all. Why should Google make a fortune on the content of others, even if only listing it? Doesn’t the sheer volume of what the search giant vacuums up make its use of fair use as a defense pretty ridiculous?

You can be sure Murdoch has his many lawyers and lobbyists all over this one, as does Google.

5. The truth is out there

In perhaps his most strident television interview, with his Sky News Australia service (which you can see below on–oh, the irony–on Google’s YouTube), Murdoch said about those who use Google to find News Corp. content:

“They don’t suddenly become loyal readers of our content. We’d rather have fewer people coming to our Web site but paying.”

That really is the honest truth in all this hubbub: Murdoch and other publishers have to find a way to get a some pool of dedicated online readers to pay enough to be able to then provide them with content that will keep them coming back for more.

That’s a business that Google truly cannot help or hinder, really.

And more to the point, it is also a business that Rupert Murdoch does seem to know a thing or two about.

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:34 pm

Windows 7 install base overtaking OS X

There’s no real cause for alarm here, but it might be a good talking point (or at least something to be aware of) that Windows 7 is nose and nose with OS X for install numbers, according to stats published by Net Applications. This isn’t really significant in and of itself, as it was sure to happen at some point or another.

The fun part is that both sides can use it as ammunition: “We sold more copies in a month than you’ve sold in ten years!” or “A month later and only 5% have upgraded? Either Windows 7 sucks or you’re all stupid, or both.” Good points all around, guys.

The total share of the net commanded by Windows 7 (and by OS X, as they’re currently tied) is around 5%. Windows in its various forms makes up 95% of web traffic, a statistic I found surprising. Windows’ total proportion has gone up a touch since the 7 launch, but that’ll likely revert soon as redundant installs and such are cannibalized.

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:30 pm

Black Friday DSi bundles with pre-installed games

FROM GAMERTELL - Black Friday offers more great deals with two different DSi bundle packs that come with differnt built in games depending on the color.
MORE »

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:26 pm

Brain Scans Used In Murder Sentencing

sciencehabit writes "For what may be the first time, fMRI scans of brain activity have been used as evidence in the sentencing phase of a murder trial. Defense lawyers for an Illinois man convicted of raping and killing a 10-year-old girl used the scans to argue that their client should be spared the death penalty because he has a brain disorder. Some experts say the scans are irrelevant because they were taken 20+ years after the crimes were committed. Others point out that the scans are only being considered because the sentencing phase of a trial has less stringent standards about evidence than those used to establish a defendant's innocence or guilt." In the Illinois case, the fMRI defense didn't help the defendant, whom a jury sentenced to death.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:09 pm

Thankful Yet? Online Ad Revenue Improving, but Slooooowly. [MediaMemo]

I’d like to say this is a half-full, half-empty scenario. But the more I think about it, the more I’m thinking the latter.

Internet advertising increased a bit–1.7 percent, precisely–over the past three months. But that’s only when compared with the previous three months, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau. Compared with the same period a year ago, Web ads are still down 5.4 percent, the trade group said (see chart below; click to enlarge).

Given that I work for a free, ad-supported Web site, I’m anything but an unbiased observer here, and I’d like to put a sunnier spin on things. But recall that the economy started its freefall well over a year ago, so comparisons to Q3 2008 should be particularly easy to beat. Even the boosterish IAB can only call the numbers a “hopeful sign” at best.

Still, if you’re looking for positive signs, you can take Google’s (GOOG) declaration that the worst is over, and I’ve heard plenty of anecdotal stories from small online players that spending is perking up again–though I’m also beginning to hear that some folks may have been overly optimistic about Q4. We’ll know soon.

Source: All Things Digital | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:07 pm

The twee-est iPod speakers on the planet

I think we can all agree that these require a collective “aw.” Then again, I’m guessing the sound is somewhat… anemic.

They’re cute, but I prefer the look and sound of my Muji cardboard speakers (–>). Plus, they’re compatible with anything with a 3.5mm headphone jack. Either one would make a good present, I think.

[via Akihabara News and Gizmodo]

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:00 pm

In Time For The Holiday Retail Frenzy, Lucky Magazine Makes Editorial Picks Shoppable

As fashion magazines, like Vogue, are trying to establish viable digital strategies, Lucky Magazine is making their first venture into the e-commerce world with the launch of a online retail site. Partnered with loyalty shopping technology startup Mall Networks, Lucky is rolling out a retail site that makes editorial picks “shoppable.”

The site will feature daily editorial picks on clothing, accessories, and beauty products. Users can then click to purchase the picks on various retail sites. You can filter results by category, designer, price range and store. Users can share products to Facebook, Twitter and save any items to an Amazon Wish List. The site also serves as a comparison shopping site between merchants, and features nearly 100,000 various fashion items from more than 450 brands.

Lucky is using Mall Network’s loyalty shopping technology to power a rewards program that would let shoppers receive up to 25 percent cash back for purchases. The site is an obvious take on how to incorporate editorial content with retail engagement. It seems like the first step for the magazine to create more of a digital presence in the retail world

Lucky is making money from affiliate fees from retailers as well as advertising on the site. Vogue Magazine, which like Lucky, is a Conde Nast publication, just hired President Obama’s campaign digital strategists, Blue State Digital, to help them maximize revenue online. But Lucky seems to have curated its own digital strategy without the help of consultants. The magazine’s Editor-in-Chief, Kim France, says the new site is designed to bring the magazine’s content online, but in an engaging and contextual way. The site doesn’t aim to create an e-commerce platform but is geared more towards supporting editorial content and retail stores. Inspired by the idea of comparison shopping portals on Google, Bing and other search engines, Lucky’s web director, Mary Gail Pezzimenti, aimed to create a better version of this that caters to fashion products.

Pezzimenti says that Lucky is looking to broaden its footstep in the digital world in the future, with the possibility of partnering with online sample sale sites, which are gaining serious traction in the space. The magazine is also interested in exploring the intersection of social media and shopping, which startups IMshopping and Weardrobe is furthering. Pezzimenti also highlighted the possibility of bringing click-to-buy technology to Lucky’s site, where users could by products directly from a video or phone. And Lucky is looking into providing personalized styling recommendations, like that of Like’s Covet.com, to help create customized product referrals for users

Earlier this year, Lucky launched a pretty nifty iPhone app that serves as a digital concierge service. The app will locate the closest retailer that carries a particular item or you can buy it online immediately. Once the app locates the retailer that contains the desired item, it will put it on hold at the store. The app has seen over 160,000 downloads since February.

You’ve got to hand it to Lucky. In an age where print magazines are floundering, it’s refreshing to see a publication look towards startups, social media and the web for digital inspiration.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:50 pm

Microsoft says cost-cutting CFO to step down (AP)

AP - Microsoft Corp. on Tuesday said its chief financial officer is departing at the end of the year and will be replaced by the man now responsible for the books at the division that produces Microsoft Office and other business programs.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:37 pm

China's 3G Conversion Boosts Telecom Software Firm's Earnings (Investor's Business Daily)

Investor's Business Daily - U.S. telecom firms have hit a ceiling as most Americans have a cell phone and Internet access. These firms can only dream of untapped potential in China, the world's largest mobile market.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:30 pm

Contest: 10 free codes for Pet Acoustics Pet Jingles app

If you got excited reading about the Pet Acoustics app for pets, but were dismayed by the whopping $2 price tag, here’s some holiday cheer that might help your heart grow three sizes larger: we have ten codes for the Pet Jingles holiday app from Pet Acoustics! And just like Santa, we’re going to make a list, and check it twice. How do you get on that list? I’m glad you asked!

To enter our little contest, just send an email to contest@crunchgear.com with the subject “PET JINGLES”, and include a picture or video of you and your pet sharing some holiday cheer. Whether it’s listening to Ol’ Blue Eyes croon some carols, or making a snowman together, or decorating the family tree, the cuter the better! The cuteness is strictly for our viewing pleasure, as the codes will be doled out first come, first served – so act fast. Your picture or video will be posted when we announce the winners, to help spread holiday cheer to all the CrunchGear readers!

And for those of you that have already bought the Pet Jingles app, or will buy it because you don’t win the contest, you can feel extra good about yourselves: a portion of every sale of Pet Jingles goes to the American Humane Association!

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:30 pm

Alliance for Digital Equality Appoints Victoria M. DeFrancesco Soto, Ph.D., Assistant Professor at Northwestern University to Board of Advisors

About The Alliance for Digital Equality -- Founded in 2007, The Alliance for Digital Equality is a non-profit consumer advocacy organization that serves to facilitate and ensure equal access to technology in underserved communities. The Alliance also serves as a bridge between policymakers and minority individuals in order to help the public understand how legislative and regulatory policies regarding new technologies can impact and empower their daily lives. For more information on The Alliance for Digital Equality, please visit www.alliancefordigitalequality.org.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:24 pm

Google Analytics May Be Illegal In Germany

sopssa sends in a TechCrunch story that begins "Several federal and regional government officials in Germany are trying to put a ban on Google Analytics, the search giant's free software product that allows website owners and publishers to get detailed statistics about the number, whereabouts, and search behavior of their visitors (and much more)." Here's Google's translation of the article from Zeit Online (original in German). A German lawyer cited there says that penalties for websites that uses Google Analytics could amount to €50,000 (about $75,000). Reader sopssa adds, "The amount of data Google collects from everywhere on the Internet is indeed huge, and website owners should be using a local open source alternative to keep visitor data private."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:19 pm

Datel suing Microsoft over lockout of unauthorized memory cards

FROM GAMERTELL - Datel isn’t taking getting locked out of making Xbox 360 memory cards lying down…
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:09 pm

Most Top Medical Journals Have Conflict Of Interest Policies Available For Public Review

Although substantial variation exists in definitions of COINearly 90 percent of medical journals with relatively high impact factors have policies addressing author conflict of interest (COI) available for public review, according to a report in the November 25 issue of JAMA.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:08 pm

Scientists Say a Dirty Child Is a Healthy Child

Researchers from the School of Medicine at the University of California have shown that the more germs a child is exposed to, the better their immune system in later life. Their study found that keeping a child's skin too clean impaired the skin's ability to heal itself. From the article: "'These germs are actually good for us,' said Professor Richard Gallo, who led the research. Common bacterial species, known as staphylococci, which can cause inflammation when under the skin, are 'good bacteria' when on the surface, where they can reduce inflammation."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:07 pm

YC-Funded WakeMate Helps You Kiss Groggy Mornings Goodbye

Ah, the curse of the groggy morning. You may have followed all the rules: no caffeine before bed, an early bedtime, and all the rest. But your best efforts are oftentimes for naught, foiled by the mysterious ways of sleep cycles. There may be an answer: WakeMate, a Y Combinator-funded startup that’s launching today, is looking to help you catch that ever-elusive good night’s sleep (and maybe even the perfect nap, too).

WakeMate is one of the few startups we’ve see that actually involves its own physical product (another that comes to mind is FitBit). To use the service, you first order the WakeMate wristband from the website, which costs $50. Then, you download an application for your Bluetooth-enabled smartphone (WakeMate is launching with support for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android, Windows Mobile, and a standard Java app for non-smart phones; support for Palm’s WebOS is on the way).

Once you’ve installed the app and paired your wristband with your phone, you set your alarm (more on that later) and hit they hay. The wristband tracks the movement of your wrist through the night, which it can use to analyze your sleep patterns. If you’re raising your eyebrows you’re not alone – this sounded strange to me at first, but co-founder Greg Nemeth explains it’s a well established sleep-study technique called actigraphy.

The WakeMate wristband collects data throughout the night and stores it on internal Flash storage. When it’s time to wake you up WakeMate doesn’t necessarily sound an alarm at exactly the time you set. Instead, it monitors your sleep patterns for the 20 minute window prior to that and sounds your alarm when you’re in the lightest sleep mode, which can help eliminate that groggy feeling you sometimes wake up with. The alarm doesn’t come from the wristband though – instead, the wristband uses Bluetooth to trigger your cell phone’s alarm. It then transmits your sleep data to your phone, which in turn uses its cellular data connection to upload it to the WakeMate servers. You can then browse through your sleep history from the WakeMate website.

WakeMate will be facing off with a number of other sleep devices, including the Zeo Personal Sleep Coach, which was released over the summer. The Zeo consists of a standalone alarm clock that pairs with a headband that measures your brianwaves as opposed to your wrist movements. It’s also quite a bit more expensive than WakeMate, running around $250. Nemeth says he says the Zeo as a powerful tool for people who need to diagnose their sleep problems. But he says that WakeMate has a much broader appeal, in part because of its lower price, but also because it’s more portable.

For example, WakeMate can be used to help you take the ideal nap, even when you’re on the go. The device has modes for both ‘power naps’ (which last around 30 minutes) and ‘full naps’, which range from 60-90 minutes.

WakeMate shows promise, but I don’t love the fact that it requires a Bluetooth handset to trigger its alarm. It seems like it would be easier just to integrate an alarm directly into the wristband, along with a cheap LED display so you can set the time (you could still use Bluetooth to transfer your sleep data via a handset). Co-founder Arun Gupta says they’ve considered this, but that integrating an alarm would make it bulkier, less comfortable, and more expensive. He also points out that some people might sleep with their arm under their pillow, which could muffle the alarm (perhaps they could include a ‘vibrate’ mode).

All of that said, the sleep industry has a broad appeal – who hasn’t wished they could kiss those groggy mornings goodbye? And the $50 pricepoint is low enough to make the product attractive even for people who don’t have serious sleep issues. You’ll have to wait a while to try one though: the site is now accepting preorders (you get $5 off) but the wristbands won’t start shipping until January.

Image by
HilaryAQ

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

Source: TechCrunch | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:02 pm

News Release : CO2 Emissions Continue Significant Climb

The annual rate of increase in carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels has more than tripled in this decade, compared to the 1990s, reports an international consortium of scientists, who paint a bleak picture of the Earth’s future unless “CO2 emissions [are] drastically reduced.”These CO2 emissions increased at a rate of 3.4% per year from 2000 to 2008, in contrast to 1% each year in the previous decade, scientists from the Global Carbon Project report in the current issue of Nature Geoscience.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:58 pm

Facebook creates dual-class structure, but no IPO (AP)

AP - Facebook has created a dual-class stock structure designed to give founder Mark Zuckerberg and other existing shareholders control over the company.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:57 pm

Roccat’s new USB hub looks like it wants to sting you

Would you make a monitor that had a fake arm sticking out of it, brandishing a knife at the viewer? I would, too, but we would never sell any because people find that sort of thing scary. I don’t know why. But whatever the reason, it’s the same as why they’d be afraid of this Apuri USB hub from Roccat. It looks like a tripodal scorpion ready to thrust its barb into your hand should you attempt to unplug that thumbdrive.

I try to make my computer look as menacing as possible, so guests aren’t tempted to tamper with it, so I might have to get one of these. The sting is actually for your mouse cord to travel over, so it doesn’t drag all over your desk, catching pens and flinging them down for your pet to gnaw on. I can’t overstate how skeptical I am of that feature working as advertised (though I’d love to be surprised), and besides, if you’ve got enough cord between it and the mouse to let it move freely, wouldn’t that necessitate the hub being rather far back on your desk?

Well, it looks cool, at least. If it seems like the kind of thing you’d like, pick one up here for $57. Yeah, kind of steep for a USB hub, but everyone loves a freaky looking gadget, right? Well, you and I do.

Oh, I know now. It reminds me of that thing.

[via Red Ferret]

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:57 pm

Statement On The Politicization Of Evidence-Based Clinical Research

By Joseph W.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:54 pm

Study Shows Flavanol Antioxidant Content Of US Chocolate And Cocoa-Containing Products

A recent study confirms that the antioxidants and other plant-based nutrients in chocolate and cocoa products are highly associated with the amount of non-fat cocoa-derived ingredients in the product.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:51 pm

K-State Organizational Psychologists Use The Video Game Rock Band To Study How People Achieve Flow While At Work, Performing Skilled Tasks

By playing the video game Rock Band for an hour, Kansas State University students were able to help a pair of psychology professors with their research to understand how people can achieve flow while at work or while performing skilled tasks.Clive Fullagar, a professor, and Patrick Knight, an associate professor, found that -- like Goldilocks -- most people achieve flow with work that is neither too easy nor too hard but just right."For those students who have a moderate level of skill at Rock Band, the song has to be moderately challenging and match his or her skill level for optimal enjoyment to occur," Fullagar said.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:34 pm

Major IE8 Flaw Makes "Safe" Sites Unsafe

After this weekend's report of a dangerous flaw in IE (which Microsoft confirmed today), intrudere points out an exclusive report in The Register on a new hole in IE8 that could allow an attacker to pull off cross-site scripting attacks on Web sites that ought, by rights, to be safe from XSS. This is according to two anonymous sources, who told El Reg that Microsoft had been notified of the vulnerability a few months ago.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:32 pm

Lock, Unlock: An Arduino-powered robotic lock

Arduino-Controlled Lock from nootropicdesign on Vimeo.

This kit uses a CD-ROM drive and an Arduino board to build a clever robotic lock. This dude used a bolt to create the project and it’s voice activated.

I’d be a little worried that anyone could come up to the device and say “Unlock,” but what do I know about robotics. Also, that bolt looks flimsy. Maybe he could make a new system that shoots spikes through the floor?

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:30 pm

Reborn Coma Man's Words May Be Bogus

The Belgian man recently discovered to be conscious and not comatose for 23 years has given some interviews with the help of an aide. But experts say his words may actually be those of the facilitator guiding his finger over the computer keyboard.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:30 pm

Six Individuals Sentenced for Multi-Million Dollar E-mail Stock Fraud Scheme

WASHINGTON, Nov.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:28 pm

Plexus to Webcast Investor Presentation at the Credit Suisse 2009 Annual Technology Conference on December 1, 2009

NEENAH, Wis., Nov. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Plexus Corp. (Nasdaq: PLXS), today announced it will webcast its investor relations presentation at the Credit Suisse 2009 Annual Technology Conference in Phoenix, AZ on December 1, 2009 at 10:30 a.m.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:17 pm

IQWiG Calls For Compulsory Publication Of All Clinical Trials

Manufacturers who conceal data are harming patients and hindering the work of IQWiG and the G-BAToday the Institute for Quality and Efficiency in Health Care (IQWiG) is calling for registration and publication of the results of all clinical trials to be made obligatory. The German Federal Government must push for a mandatory regulation to be implemented at EU level; in the USA this obligation has been in force since 2008. This has been brought to a head by the publication of the final report on three antidepressants which was greatly hindered by Pfizer. For a long time, the manufacturer refused to make information on trials available to IQWiG. Only when put under public pressure did Pfizer finally disclose the data."By concealing available study data, the manufacturer is depriving patients and doctors of the opportunity to make an informed decision on different therapy options," explains Peter T. Sawicki, Director of IQWiG. Furthermore, it hinders the work of institutions such as IQWiG. IQWiG's aim is to draw reliable conclusions concerning the benefit and harm of drugs. These provide the Federal Joint Committee (G-BA) with a scientific basis for its decisions on reimbursement of drugs.No trivial offenceThe fact that study results are only partially published has been known by the term "publication bias" for over 20 years. In this respect, it has been shown that particularly "negative studies", in which, for example, the company's drug did not produce the hoped-for result or even proved to have no effect, are published only years later or not at all. This means that patients and doctors receive an overoptimistic picture of the effects based solely on published reports.This trend is still one of the most important and dangerous sources of error in medicine. "Deception through concealment is no trivial offence," says Sawicki. "In extreme cases, patients may even receive useless or harmful treatments if information is incomplete."For example, in the treatment of depression other researchers have already shown that the effect of several agents has always been overestimated in the published literature - up to 70% (on average about 30%). In the case of some agents, it is even doubtful whether a benefit is detectable at all, if all trials are considered.Voluntary commitment is not enoughIt is particularly dangerous that doctors and researchers are often totally unaware that unpublished trials exist. In order to solve this problem, IQWiG concluded a basic agreement on the transfer of such data with the German Association of Research-based Pharmaceutical Companies (VFA) as early as 2005. Furthermore, in January 2005 the international associations of the pharmaceutical industry announced a voluntary commitment to disclose information on clinical trials.However, these announcements from the pharmaceutical industry cannot be relied upon. In recent years, companies have repeatedly refused to provide the Institute with study documents required for the benefit assessment of drugs. Frequently, clinical trial registries, which have been set up in recent years, do not contain these data either.Only one third of data on reboxetine has been made publicly availableThe aim of the project just completed was to assess the benefit of the three agents, reboxetine, mirtazapine and bupropion XL in the treatment and prevention of depression. The complete data on reboxetine now available to us show that approximately 5100 patients were treated in the 17 trials included in the benefit assessment. Sufficiently transparent published data were available for only 1600 of those patients. Thus, the results of approximately 2/3 of the patients are missing in the publicly available literature. The published results suggest a benefit, but this cannot be proven when all the data are considered.Rapid implementation of statutory regulations is necessary
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:15 pm

Be Thankful for $29.99 Gateway LT Netbook and Much More at Verizon Wireless

IRVINE, Calif., Nov.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:10 pm

'Too Fat To Be A Princess?' UCF Study Shows Young Girls Worry About Body Image

'The Princess and the Frog' and other movies can help parents start conversations with their children about weight, skin color and beautyEven before they start school, many young girls worry that they are fat.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:10 pm

Strategic Management Theory Offers Fresh Take On The Economic Crisis

New research published in Strategic OrganizationThe recent financial crisis and resulting global economic downturn has been the most defining global economic event since the Great Depression.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:04 pm

Review: Samsung Behold II

Short Version: T-Mobile’s 4th Android device has a lot going for it. 5.0 megapixel camera, all the smartphone basics, WiFi, 3G, GPS, and a 3.5 mm headphone jack. But it feels kinda cheap, runs Android 1.5, and for $229.99? No thank you.

I remember when Android was the cool hip new thing. Well, it still is, but the Behold II marks the end of when Android phones are unique. Every feature on this phone has already been done the same or better by someone else.

Let’s start with the body. The phone is a bit heavier than my HTC Hero, but for some reason it feels cheaper. It’s just a hair taller and about the same width and thickness. You have 6 dedicated function buttons on the front, along with a 8-way directional selector. The left side has a volume rocker, and the right holds two buttons. One for the camera and one attached to the screen lock. The top holds the microUSB port and headphone jack. An expandable microSD slot is behind the battery door, and there is no physical keyboard.

The interface was nothing to get excited about. You get three customizable home screens and a Google search bar. But the tab to access your apps is that arrow on the left side of the screen. It takes some deft maneuvering not the hit that when you’re trying to go the left screen. Perhaps the most unique feature on this device is the Cube. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment. The Cube is, as you might have guessed, a cube with a different multimedia function on each face. With a flick of a finger you can spin the cube and select the function you wish to activate. You can’t customize it however, so you’re stuck with YouTube, the Amazon MP3 store, Facebook, your photo folder,  your audio player, and the video player. About the funnest thing you can do is swing the phone, and since the Cube is tied to the accelerometer, it’ll spin. Good for maybe two minutes of chuckles.

So at the end of it all, its just another Android phone under T-mobile’s belt. It hit stores last week if you want to go grab one, but why when you can get the Droid for cheaper? The Behold II is $229.99 with a two-year contract.

Source: CrunchGear | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

Gasoline Fumes May Fuel Road Rage

It might not be the price of gasoline that's making you angry.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:00 pm

Researchers Establish Common Seasonal Pattern Among Bacterial Communities In Arctic Rivers

Discovery identifies aquatic bacteria as possible markers for monitoring Arctic climate changeNew research on bacterial communities throughout six large Arctic river ecosystems reveals predictable temporal patterns, suggesting that scientists could use these communities as markers for monitoring climate change in the polar regions.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:51 pm

Storyboard: James Cameron's Epic Quest for 'Avatar'

As the Titanic director gets ready to unveil his long-awaited sci-fi adventure, Wired magazine looks at the self-assured filmmaker — and the technological achievements that helped him bring his stunning 3-D Avatar to the big screen.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:48 pm

bmw's Diesel Hybrid Pulls 63 MPG, Outruns an M3 - PC Magazine

New York Times

bmw's Diesel Hybrid Pulls 63 MPG, Outruns an M3 PC Magazine bmw's efficientdynamics Vision concept car combines the best of all worlds with incredible fuel efficiency, breaktaking performance, and sensational looks. It's powered by a three-cylinder turbo-diesel engine, lithium polymer batteries, ... First Drive: 2010 BMW 550i Gran TurismoBusinessWeek BMW 5-Series debuts with long wheelbase and multiple engine optionsUSA Today New pics: BMW Vision gets 63mpg while blasting 356hpDVICE New York Times -Automotive News -CNET Crave (blog) all 142 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:38 pm

Road Rage

Fuel vapor heightens aggressionOutrageous prices may not be the only thing causing anger at the petrol pumps.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:35 pm

Thanksgifting for the Holidays at ideeli

NEW YORK, Nov. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- This Thanksgiving, ideeli, Inc. announces, 'tis better to gift and receive with its Thanksgifting spectacular. Shop-till-you-drop through the holidays with nothing-short-of-fabulous brands and enjoy daily savings up to 90% off of retail.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:26 pm

Microsoft Announces Chief Financial Officer Transition

REDMOND, Wash., Nov. 24 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Microsoft Corp.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:05 pm

Buying an HDTV? Here's What You Need to Know

HDTVs of all sizes and descriptions are more affordable than ever. Wired's quick guide helps you select the perfect flat-panel for your room and personal preference.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm

Buying an HDTV? Here's What You Need to Know

HDTVs of all sizes and descriptions are more affordable than ever. Wired's quick guide helps you select the perfect flat-panel for your room and personal preference.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 2:00 pm

CORRECTION: Scarborough Research Partners With MMA to Give Brands and Marketers Deep Insights Into American Mobile User Demographics and Behaviors

NEW YORK, Nov.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:27 pm

Wegener Corporation Sets Fourth Quarter Fiscal 2009 Earnings Announcement Date

DULUTH, Ga., Nov.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:26 pm

Video: Saturns Spectacular Aurora in Action

NASA's Cassini spacecraft captures Saturn's aurora in visible light, in a series of high-resolution images assembled into an amazing video.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:07 pm

Apple's 27-Inch iMac Is Big, Bright, Beautifully Fast

With a gigantic 27-inch screen and a screaming-fast Core i7 processor, Apple's biggest iMac is an all-in-one computer to reckon with.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

It's Magic! The First Apple Mouse That Doesn't Suck

Apple's mashup of a multitouch trackpad and a wireless mouse makes for a surprisingly usable pointing device.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

It's Magic! The First Apple Mouse That Doesn't Suck

Apple's mashup of a multitouch trackpad and a wireless mouse makes for a surprisingly usable pointing device.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

Apple's 27-Inch iMac Is Big, Bright, Beautifully Fast

With a gigantic 27-inch screen and a screaming-fast Core i7 processor, Apple's biggest iMac is an all-in-one computer to reckon with.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

Google Lays the Groundwork for Extensions in Chrome

Google's Chrome web browser is expected to gain extensions before the end of the year. Now the company has put out a call to developers encouraging them to submit their add-ons for its new Chrome Extensions Gallery.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 1:00 pm

Fring gets Skype video chat support on Nokia devices

If we were to make a “Amazing ideas” list and a “Things that have totally failed to take off” list, there would be at least one item that you’d find on both: mobile video chat. Blame the carriers for not agreeing on a standard, or blame the consumer populace for not pressing hard enough; either way, its an idea that has been sitting on the launch pad for ages.

That might be about to change. The popular P2P VoIP service Fring has just announced that they have begun to add support for Skype video calls to their messaging client. Skype has hundreds of millions of users, and this service allows for mobile-to-desktop calls – in other words, mobile video chat finally has a chance at being useful and — more importantly — used.

For the time being, video chat support has only found its way into a handful of Nokia devices: the X6, N97 Mini, N97, 5800, N82, and N95. If you’re not touting an N-series device, fear not: Fring promises that support is “coming soon on other popular platforms”. Time to start adding front-facing cameras to your hardware again, manufacturers!

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Nov 2009 | 12:50 pm

Some Palm Pre Profiles Get Lost in the Cloud

Several Palm Pre customers have reported major problems with their handset’s online backup system, resulting in the loss of phone numbers, calendar events, memos and other data.

The issue stems from corrupted backups, according to Pre enthusiast blog PreCentral. The Pre backs up its data as a “Palm Profile” online, and it only stores the most recent backup. That means if the most recent backup becomes corrupt, Pre owners could not revert to an earlier, non-corrupt profile.

“We are seeing a small number of customers who have experienced issues transferring their Palm Profile information to another Palm webOS device,” a Palm spokesman said in a statement. “Palm and Sprint are working closely together to support these customers to successfully transfer their information to the new device.”

Though Palm says only a small number of customers were affected, the PreCentral blog said it had received several tips throughout the day suggesting this was a widespread issue. Recently, T-Mobile Sidekick owners faced a similar problem. Microsoft, T-Mobile and Danger hosted the data of all of T-Mobile’s Sidekick users in the cloud, and recently the server crashed, losing everything. These incidents are rare, but they underscore the risk of trusting a third party to secure your data over the web.

Via DaringFireball

See Also:

• 6 Reasons Why the Palm Pre Is Special
• Palm Pre
• Apple Blocks Palm Pre iTunes Syncing Again
• Nothing Unusual in Palm Pre Return Rates, Say Analysts

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Nov 2009 | 12:32 pm

Belgian Man Conscious During 23-Year Coma

Car-crash victim Rom Houben says through an aide that being able to communicate again was like a rebirth.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Logitech's Mouse Will Track Just About Anything, Anywhere

Logitech's hypersensitive mouse uses all that dirt and dust around your home office to track on ultra-smooth surfaces, even glass.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Urban Nuclear Attack Scenarios Examined

Mapping the impact of a nuclear weapon could help emergency responders plan for the worst.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pm

Is Holiday Travel Bad For The Earth?

Today we got some bad news about climate change: it's happening faster than expected. If I'm one of the 38.4 million people hitting the roads and skies tomorrow, does this mean I'm going to make things even worse by adding ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:59 am

Verizon announces the Windows Mobile based Samsung Omnia II, available as of December 2

Section: Communications, Cellphones, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile

Plenty of people nowadays are looking to an iPhone, BlackBerry or something sporting Android for their smartphone needs, but that should not rule Windows Mobile based handsets out.

That said, Verizon Wireless and Samsung have recently announced the upcoming availability of the Omnia II. And in a nice twist on numbers, the Omnia II will be available as of December 2 for $200. Well, more specifically it will set you back $199.99, but that price does come AFTER a $100 mail-in-rebate and along with a two-year commitment.

Feature wise, the Samsung Omnia II is running Windows Mobile 6.5 with Opera 9.5 for browsing and has a 3.7-inch “ultra-briliant” touchscreen display, a virtual QWERTY keyboard and a 5.0-megapixel camera with flash, auto-focus and video recording. Additionally, the Omnia II also offers Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g, EV-DO Rev. A, Bluetooth, 8GB of internal storage and has a microSD card slot for additional storage.

Read [Verizon Wireless]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:59 am

Are You a Global Warming Sucker?

Yesterday the "big news" in global warming was that some hackers broke into the private emails of climate scientists, cherry-picked a few comments, then published them completely out of context to make it appear like the scientists were lying to ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:44 am

New search ad formats

At Google, we're committed to giving you the information you want — regardless of the form in which it might appear.

Text is often useful, but sometimes videos and pictures are a more effective way to receive information. For example, if you want to learn a magic trick, a video showing you how to perform the trick is likely the best result. So over the past few years, we've blended videos, images, maps and more into the search results on Google.com.

It also makes sense to provide you with richer types of information in the ads. If you're looking to buy your mom a new handbag for the holidays, for instance, you might want to see pictures, prices, the addresses of boutiques in your area and a map of how to get there — all within the ad.

To provide a better search ads experience, we've been developing and testing a variety of new ad formats. These formats are focused on giving you the information you need, while retaining what you love about Google advertising: that the ads are relevant and useful.

If you’re in the U.S. you may have already seen a number of these ad formats when searching on Google.

Some of them include visual elements. For example, if you’re curious about the movies that are playing this holiday season, you might see an ad with a video that lets you watch a trailer.


You might also see an ad with more links so you can quickly find a specific page in an advertiser’s website. If you're researching airfare to visit your relatives for the holidays, it saves time to go directly to Priceline's page about booking flights, rather than the general homepage or rental car page.


Or, if you’re trying to find a holiday bouquet to bring to your dinner party hostess, you might see an ad that shows your local florist's location on a map and provides driving directions.


Other new ad formats might help you find all the addresses and locations of a chain store in your area. So if you're vacationing abroad this season and have a craving for something familiar, the ad might show you all the nearby Pizza Huts that can deliver to your hotel.


And starting today, you might spot ads that include images and prices for specific products. When shopping for the ski outfit your nephew has been hinting about all year, you might see pictures from the retailer’s inventory to help you quickly determine if they have the color and style you had in mind.


Still other ad formats may introduce new ways of presenting information, such as Comparison Ads, which allow you to specify exactly what you're looking for and to compare rates and prices in a single location. With the approaching new year comes resolutions to get things in order, so you might want an ad that lets you see side-by-side refinancing offers.


While we experiment with new formats, we'll remain loyal to our core principle: that getting the right ad to the right person at the right time matters. As we continue to think up innovative ways to give you the information you want, you’re likely to see even more ad formats until we pinpoint the most useful, relevant and engaging ones. We’ll keep trying new things until we discover the “perfect” ads that improve your overall search experience.

Posted by Susan Wojcicki, VP, Product Management

Source: The Official Google Blog | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:35 am

Friday News Feedbag for November 20th

If this is your first exposure to the Friday News Feedbag...we're glad to have you in the club. Welcome to Feedbag Nation. Below you'll find an audio link to a weekly podcast where you can hear three of us Discovery ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:33 am

Melting Away

The conclusions of the newly-released Copenhagen Diagnosis report - that climate change is proceeding more rapidly, and its effects are being felt more dramatically, than models had predicted - is not news to anyone who has been tracking the issue ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:30 am

First Butterfly Chrysalis on Space Station

One Butterfly Coming Up: For the first time, a butterfly has formed a chrysalis on the International Space Station. The single chrysalis can be seen attached to the habitat in the lower left of the image (National Space Biomedical Research ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:29 am

Nokia debuts two entry-level sliders, the 6700 and 7230.

It’s not all N900s and lollipops in the Nokia kingdom, folks. Nokia has made a big chunk of their piggy bank with the entry level stuff, and they’ve got two new ones for that market today.

The grander of the two is the Nokia 6700, which comes in a very iPod-Nano-esque array of colors. For around $240 bucks unlocked, you’ll get a 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, FM radio, microSD expandability, 2.2″ QVGA display, and HSDPA/HSUPA.

The Nokia 7230 tones things down a bit in terms of specs and hues. $150 bucks gets you a 2.4″ display, 3.2 megapixel camera, FM radio, microSD expandability, and Bluetooth.

Look for both handsets in Q1 of next year.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Nov 2009 | 11:28 am

Joost: It coulda been a contender, or not - CNET News

AFP

Joost: It coulda been a contender, or not CNET News by Caroline mccarthy An announcement Tuesday tells us all that "certain assets" of a "white-label" online video service called Joost have been acquired by Adconion Media, which calls itself "the largest independent global audience and content network. ... Joost Sells Most of Its Assets to AdconionNew York Times Adconion Media Group buys Joost assets, ending a long sagaVentureBeat Joost's Remaining Pieces Sold Ad firm buys remnants for undisclosed sumDslreports Wall Street Journal (blog) -ClickZ News -InternetNews.com all 172 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:45 am

LG X120 netbook coming to the US by way of AT&T and Radio Shack

Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Broadband Cards, Mobile, Computers, Mobile Computers, Netbooks, Wireless

I first saw the LG X120 netbook back in January of this year during CES, and although it looked to be a decent offering design wise there were a few points that kept me from really being interested. First, it was nothing out of the ordinary in terms of specs, and second it was not available here in the US.

That said, things change with time, and although the specs have remained the same as when I first saw the X120, it is now going to be available here in the US.

So moving on, the fortunate or unfortunate part here, depending on who you ask is that the LG X120 will be tied to AT&T. In other words, it is coming 3G-equipped, and that means it will require an AT&T DataConnect plan.

Anyway, the X120 will be found exclusively at Radio Shack and will set you back $179.99. And as I mentioned, the DataConnect plan is required, which means you will sign a two-year agreement at $60 a month.

Feature wise, the X120 has a 10.1-inch display, 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB hard drive and is running Windows XP. The one nice part here is that the X120 also features the SmartOn interface which means you can boot up and connect quickly.

Basically, if you are looking for a subsidized netbook then this appears to be a nice option, but at the same time I have to offer just three words of advise; “Get a MiFi.”

Keep reading to check out the full press release…

LG Netbook Debuts Revolutionary SmartOn Interface That Takes a Shortcut to the Fun Stuff and Puts Users at the Center of Their Social Universe

AT&T’s 3G Mobile Broadband Service to Help People Stay Connected

SAN DIEGO, Nov. 23 /PRNewswire/—LG Electronics MobileComm U.S.A., Inc. (LG Mobile Phones) announced today the newest addition to their innovative product line-up with the launch of the LG X120 netbook. The first of its kind from LG, the LG X120 delivers the benefits of netbook functionality and gives users a shortcut to the fun stuff with a unique SmartOn(TM) interface that makes staying connected faster, easier and just seconds away. Available at RadioShack, the LG X120 is the perfect computing companion for social networkers, college students and young professionals on the go.

Weighing only 2.8lbs, the slim and stylish LG X120 provides the computing power of a laptop with the freedom of a mobile device. Equipped with an innovative SmartOn interface that loads in seconds, the LG netbook connects to web and photos, instant messaging and MP3 player with just the touch of a button. Designed with a sleek white matte exterior and fashionable blue trim, the LG X120 delivers 7 hours of battery life and built-in AT&T 3G wireless connectivity. Users can explore the internet, update blogs and download music from just about anywhere, anytime on the nation’s fastest 3G network.

The LG netbook also features 1GB RAM and 160GB hard drive that offers users ultimate storage space for music, photos and gaming while a generous 10.1” screen with crystal clear LED backlighting creates a viewing experience perfect for watching videos and reading e-mails while on the run. A built-in 1.3 megapixel camera and HD stereo speakers provide clear, more precise video chatting and conferencing with friends and colleagues.

“We created the LG X120 to allow consumers to stay connected on their own terms,” said Ehtisham Rabbani, vice president of product strategy and marketing for LG Mobile Phones. “The SmartOn button puts consumers seconds away from the fun stuff such as showing off your vacation photos or picking your fantasy football line-up.”

LG X120 also includes a traditional start up feature booting the complete Windows XP Operating system that allows users to plan a budget or build a basic presentation on professionally based applications. No longer limited to Wi-Fi hotspots, 3G HSDPA provides on-the-go connectivity giving users instant access to all the tools that keep them connected and make them unique.

The LG netbook will be available at select Radio Shack stores nationwide and online at www.RadioShack.com for $179.99 with a 2-year AT&T DataConnect service agreement, a $60 monthly 5GB plan. AT&T DataConnect subscribers also receive access to AT&T Wi-Fi service, which includes more than 20,000 Hot Spots nationwide.

Limited-time offer. Other conditions & restrictions apply. See contract, rate plan brochure and rebate form at store for details. Subscriber must live & have a mailing address within AT&T’s owned wireless network coverage area. Up to $36 activation fee applies. Equipment price & availability may vary by market & may not be available from independent retailers. Early Termination Fee: None if cancelled in the first 30 days, but a restocking fee may apply; thereafter up to $175.

 

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:37 am

Appletell reviews the Be.ez LE rush notebook bag

FROM APPLETELL - Never heard of Be.ez? they’ve been making bags and notebook protectors for a while now, and they’ve just announced their new line of bags for MacBooks.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:19 am

Switchgrass Looks Like a Dream Field

If you grow it, the cars will run. That's still the idea behind cellulosic ethanol, which is biofuel from tough, reedy, and often discarded plant parts. A recent study indicates that switchgrass could yield the most biomass for this fuel. ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:17 am

Save money with Google Mobile coupons

Section: Web, Web Apps, Websites

Remember coupons?  Those little rectangles of paper designed to bring you to one store or to purchase one brand?  Their back and their mobile.  Thanks to Google, these coupons are now added to their search results and can be shown to clerks to reap the savings.

If a business adds a mobile coupon to their Local Business listing on Google, the coupon will appear in a Google search on the “Places” page.  I searched in vain to find a local retailer offering a coupon but it looks like existing offers by local merchants will have to be enabled to go mobile, new offers from here out will be offered mobile as the default.  It will take a little for savvy businesses to catch on but when it does, a simple Google search as you head to check out might save you some money.

If you are a business owner and want to learn how to turn your coupons into mobile coupons, click here.

Read [Official Google Mobile Blog]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:09 am

Rare Darwin Book Found in Toilet

A first edition of Charles Darwin's seminal "The Origin of Species" will be sold this week after it was found in a family's toilet in southern Britain, an auction house said Sunday.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 24 Nov 2009 | 10:01 am

Amazing Software Turns Cheap Webcam Into Instant 3D Scanner

It’s called ProFORMA, or Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition, but it is way cooler than it sounds. The software, written by a team headed by Qui Pan, a student at the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University in England, turns a regular, cheap webcam into a 3D scanner.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:33 am

Creative drops new HD handheld video recorder

Section: Video, HDTV, Portable Video

Creative launched their 3rd generation Vado video camera yesterday, selling at $179.  The new version is glossy, better looking and addresses a list of issues that plagued the first two designs.  Is it ready to be added to your holiday wish list?

Creative touts their ease of use for the Vado and previous Vado’s featured a HDMI out port along with a wide angle lens.  The third generation updates the device with a microphone jack (as complaints about the original audio recording were common), improved video in low/high light recordings, headphone output, motion detection to activate recording based on movement, PC and Mac compatibility and still image capture.

The only thing keeping me from recommending this video camera is memory.  The 3rd gen Vado comes with 4GB and no expansion slots.  In this day of relatively inexpensive SD cards featuring up to 32GB of space, I am uneasy about being locked into just 4.  Even a 4GB SD card gives me the freedom to swap out cards and keep going without stopping to download and clear memory on the device.  I see myself on a Caribbean island, wedged between some giant rocks filming whales in the setting sun when a out-of-memory message pops up.  Is it just me that worries about these things?

If you can live with 4GB, check out the new Vado, it is a fine looking device.

Press release: [Creative] Product page: [Creative]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:07 am

Gallery: Sega Genesis Teardown

Sega’s Mega Drive was first born in 1988, made its way to the US a year later and at last to Europe in 1990. In the United States, it got a change of name: Genesis. At the time, the 16-bit marvel was just amazing, giving us an almost perfect home version of Streetfighter II and the iconic (and dizzying) Sonic the Hedgehog. I had one, and I loved it.

So imagine how I felt when I found one on the street corner this past weekend, sitting alone without controllers, cables or games, but in otherwise perfect condition. That’s how we recycle in Barcelona — we leave things on the street — so I grabbed it, took it home and opened it up. Guess what’s inside? Not much:

This is the control center. You have headphone volume (also used to hook the machine up to a stereo), a reset button and a cartridge lock which, I have discovered, works by stopping the double flap on the game cart slot from opening.

The underside. Not much here but patent numbers and and a slide-off hatch to access an expansion port on the side.

The controller ports, just like VGA sockets. At this time you only ever got two ports, so you’d have to buy a 4-way multitap adapter to add more players.

The logo. If I remember right, only the early models had that hideous burgundy-colored strip below the cart-slot (in my photo, it has come out pinker than it really is). In later models it changed to white.

In and out. This is where you would hook up to the TV, providing a stunningly high resolution of 224 lines (US NTSC) and 240 lines (PAL). One great hack was to buy a US model and hook it up to a TV capable of accepting an NTSC signal. Because NTSC runs at 60Hz and PAL at 50Hz, doing this would give your games a 20% speed-boost. I owned a US SNES which I used for this purpose.

No torx screws here. The Mega Drive is held together with plain ol’ Philips-head screws.

The innards, most notable by the amount of empty space and lack of fans. The old Motorola 68000 chip must have run a lot cooler than today’s power-guzzlers.

The chip.

Close-up: It’s like a tiny cityscape in there.

The reverse of the circuit board. And finally, just because I can:

Yes, it works: I just slid an iPod dock inside, secured it with gaffer tape and ran the USB cable out of a hole. Once the circuitry is out of the way, there is plenty of room in there for modding. I considered putting the guts of active speaker system in there to make a standalone iPod music center, but it’s just more junk taking up space. This Mega Drive will be going back to the street from where it can find a new home.

Photos by Charlie Sorrel under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Nov 2009 | 9:02 am

Large Hadron Collider starts up, produces first collisions - Ars Technica

Times Online

Large Hadron Collider starts up, produces first collisions Ars Technica After a series of complications and setbacks, the Large Hadron Collider sees its first particle-particle collisions after a weekend of furious activity. While these weren't at any significant energy, the milestone marks an important step in getting the ... Near Geneva, Particles Finally Come Together With a BangNew York Times Restarted LHC Sees First CollisionsNational Geographic Big Bang atom smasher starts speeding proton beamsThe Associated Press Register -Reuters -BBC News all 1,727 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Nov 2009 | 8:47 am

Does there need to be an app for that? Pet Acoustics, the music app for pets

It stands to reason that a general purpose mobile computing platform, like the iPhone or iPod Touch, will engender a host of special purpose niche applications. Pet Acoustics is one such application: “Pet Acoustics music has been specifically designed for the hearing sensitivities of your pet, both in frequency, volume and rhythm to calm and soothe your pet anytime, anywhere.” This $1.99 app includes music for dogs, cats, and horses, and includes a timer feature for scheduled playback.

Amazingly, dogs, cats and horses hear two to three times more than humans. In our homes, barns and pet-care environments, animals can develop stress, anxiety, and aggression in reaction to sounds. Pet Acoustics music has been specifically developed to support your pet’s sensitive hearing thereby ensuring relaxation. An easy tool for pet owners, this music will greatly benefit your pet by filling their environment with a sense of safety, connectedness and love.

I don’t doubt for a moment the therapeutic benefits of music for animals. I am skeptical, though, of how well the Pet Acoustic’s “specifically developed” music can “support your pet’s sensitive hearing” through the crappy iPhone speaker. It’s not like the iPhone is a precise audio device, calibrated to produce sounds in that spectrum that animals can hear but humans can’t.

My own experience with the Pet Acoustics music has been mixed. My cat is too inscrutable for me to determine whether he likes the sounds or not. He certainly doesn’t seem to be bothered by them, but he’s a sufficiently easy-going animal that I can’t tell whether he’s any more calm. Our high energy dog doesn’t seem to notice the music at all. She whines and paces when traveling in the car, regardless of whether I’m using the Pet Acoustics app; and at home she’s too interested in licking our faces to reveal how calm the music is making her. I happen to like the music — it’s reminiscent of any smooth jazz station you might find in a metropolitan city — but my beautiful wife gets agitated by it. Go figure.

The timer feature of the Pet Acoustics app intrigues me. Using two separate timers, you can program start and stop times to begin automatic music playback (assuming that the app is open, of course). I can see this being handy in a number of situations. In my own house, my cat is not allowed into my bedroom, because my beautiful wife is allergic to him. So every night he sits outside the bedroom door and wails about how lonely and dejected he feels. I could leave my iPhone in the living room, playing soothing music for him, and schedule it to turn off at a specific time every time. Of course, I haven’t done that yet because my iPhone doubles as my alarm clock, and me waking up on time is marginally more important than my cat being pacified.

The Pet Acoustics app weighs in at a whopping 200 megabytes. It’s not expensive, and it’s easy to use; but I can’t help but wonder if a couple of MP3s would be a better option for most people. If you need the timer feature, then get the app.

Also, there is a Pet Jingles holiday version of the app for sale. So if your pets are really into the holiday spirit like you are, you can share the Yule Tide with them!

This special collection of themed holiday music will bring a joyous atmosphere to your home, a veterinarian office, an animal shelter or anywhere people and pets are gathered throughout the holiday season. Pet Jingles is a unique gift for pet lovers to enjoy while gift shopping, walks with the dog, while entertaining family and friends or to play for pets while they are home alone.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 24 Nov 2009 | 8:15 am

Coasties: Fixed-Gear Style, Only With Brakes

Coasties takes the fixed-gear trend for clean, cable-free lines and single cogs and applies it to the cruiser. The company offers cheap deep-V wheel-sets which swap out the rear track-hub for a coaster hub. This means you get all the aesthetic advantage of running a fixed-gear — non-visible rear brake, no cables or brake levers, but you actually get a brake so you can stop without blowing out your knees.

Better for some, you can also freewheel (a coaster brake, often found on Dutch city bikes, engages when you pedal backwards) and ride without toe-clips. I know a girl here in Barcelona who runs exactly this setup, and although she didn’t buy the wheels from Coasties, her bike looks fantastic.

Some might say that this is just jumping on the “fixie” fashion-train, but who really cares? “Purists” are often short-sighted whiners anyway, and using a pair of Coasties on your ride means you can have a very cool looking (and lightweight) bike that is also comfy to ride. The Coasties come in various powder-coated colors and are finished for use with a brake. They ship with an 18-tooth cog and start at $140.

Coasties product page [Coasti.es via Urban Velo]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Nov 2009 | 6:28 am

BassJump Subwoofer Beefs Up MacBook Speakers

BassJump is a subwoofer that turns your MacBook into a pair of satellite speakers. Instead of silencing the MacBook’s surprisingly good built-in speakers when you hook it up, like a regular external speaker, it augments them with what they lack the most: bass.

After installing a preference pane on the host Mac, you plug in the BassJump to a spare USB port (good luck there). The software controls the crossover frequency (the frequency at which the sound is split and sent to either the sub or the satellites) and lets you choose an EQ preset such as “rock” or “pop”. You can also control the volume of the bass independently to choose how big a kick you get.

At $80, the aluminum-bodied BassJump costs the same as many full 2.1 speaker setups. The advantage, we suppose, is that the BassJump means fewer boxes and cables on your desk.

Bassjump product page [TwelveSouth]

Bassjump press release [TwelveSouth]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:57 am

Amazing Software Turns Cheap Webcam Into Instant 3D Scanner

It’s called ProFORMA, or Probabilistic Feature-based On-line Rapid Model Acquisition, but it is way cooler than it sounds. The software, written by a team headed by Qui Pan, a student at the Department of Engineering at Cambridge University in England, turns a regular, cheap webcam into a 3D scanner.

Normally, scanning in 3D requires purpose-made gear and time. ProFORMA lets you rotate any object in front of the camera and it scans it in real time, building a fully 3D texture mapped model as fast as you can turn an object. Even more impressive is what happens after the scan: The camera continues to track the objsct in space and matches it’s movement instantly with the on-screen model. Here’s a video of it in action:

It works by generating a 3D point cloud from the image coming through the camera and then uses some clever math to both ignore the occasional occlusion of the model by a hand and to work out where the surfaces are. Then things go over my head, involving a process called Delaunay tetrahedralisation to turn the 2D surfaces into a 3D model.

Like I said: clever math. But imagine, for a second, the uses. Forget Nintendo’s Mii avatars, for instance. Instead you could make a 3D version of yourself, or add your favorite household items into a game of Mario Kart. You could quite possibly hook this rig up to a 3D printer and make fast facsimiles of almost anything. And remember, this is all done using a single camera, just like the one that’s probably staring from the top of your laptop screen as you read this. I want to play with this right now.

ProFORMA product page [Cambridge University via Core77 via BoingBoing]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Nov 2009 | 5:01 am

Video: Inside an Ikea Factory

Ever wondered what lurks inside one of Ikea’s Lack tables, the cheap, light and ubiquitous side tables that litter our homes? The answer: almost nothing, which is kind of what I expected.

This video from the National Geographic gives us a peek inside the Ikea factory where these tables are made, in Zbaszynek, Poland. The Lack is little more than a shell with a paper honeycomb skeleton inside, and has more in common with a corrugated cardboard box than with a wooden coffee table. Despite their light weight, the factory sends out 400,000 tons of this faux-wood board a year. That’s 10 million coffee tables per year.

I’m a sucker for watching things being made on production lines. My guess is that you are too, so enjoy the video of these tables being made, from start to finish. You might be surprised just how much of it is done by humans.

Ultimate Factories [National Geographic]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Nov 2009 | 4:28 am

Cult Leader Buys Tube Amp, Sees The Light

Leander Kahney, ex-Wired.com editor and Cult of Mac boss, just dropped $800 on an amplifier for his computer. He reckons he got a bargain.

Back in the days before the MP3, I was something of an audio geek. My spike-footed, floor-standing speakers sat atop pennies to protect the parquet and were fed by an amplifier with just two knobs: volume and source. Into those went CDs, and that was it. It sounded amazing.

So I’m getting nostalgic (and jealous) twinges when reading about Leander’s new T-2 amp, from Neuhaus Laboratories. The T-2 is a tube amplifier with a digital input (optical or USB). Leander has hooked one end up to a Mac, of course (this model will work with any computer but was designed with the Mac in mind) and the other to a pair of 1980s Polk speakers and a JVC subwoofer. Here’s how it sounds:

I’m definitely no audiophile. I love music, but I’m happy listening to a cheap radio or a pair of iPod headphones. Or so I thought.

Crank it up and woah! What a sound! It’s gorgeous. Fat and meaty. Beautifully detailed, with a solid kick from the sub. There’s no comparison to the old computer speakers. They’re nasty and horrible now, like a cheap tranny radio.

We’re not sure why he’s comparing anything to a transvestite’s radio, but the rest is as clear as the sound he’s getting out of his new setup. With a good stereo, you can really hear things that are buried by an inferior setup.

The specs are, well, the specs are here. What you need to know is that the 2 x 20W amp weighs a chunky 20lbs and comes in stainless steel. It even includes the cables and a pair of white gloves.

Of course, Leander is now entering the world of lossless audio — MP3s just won’t cut it any more. And there’s another problem, summed up by this line from the final section of his review: “Now everything else sounds like sh*t.”

Neuhaus Labs’ T-2 Tube Amp Transports You To Audio Heaven [Cult of Mac]

Product page [Neuhaus]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 24 Nov 2009 | 3:48 am

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