Nominate articles for the next Best Technology Writing

This is a fantastic series, BTW. Buy the whole set and keep 'em by the toilet for a series of short and thought-provoking reads.

The Best of Technology Writing Nominations (Thanks, Julian!)

• Hosted malware allows n00bs to hack along with the leet - Boing Boing
• German Bavarian gov't caught buying malware to intercept Skype ...
• Malware gets a EULA - Boing Boing
• Malware bots as papercraft - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: Sony's malware uninstaller leaves your computer ...
• Could official Beijing 2008 Olympics screensavers contain malware ...
• Killing BadWare via a Community - Boing Boing
• Anti-copying malware installs itself with dozens of games - Boing ...

• Fibonacci MIDI - Boing Boing
• Mathematics of botanical beauty - Boing Boing

• Pudding guy turns $3k into 1.2MM airmiles and gets tax receipt to ...
• Mileage Runners hack air travel for maximum miles - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: More Air Miles in circulation than dollars
• Cheap air travel via bulk cheese purchasing - Boing Boing
• US frequent flier programs deliver less and less - Boing Boing
• British Airways adds a "fly next to your children" fee - Boing Boing
• Air Canada: for $35, we'll let you talk to customer-service reps ...
• Another five-year-old on the no-fly list: meet Sam Adams - Boing Boing

Stooper supports a family by cashing in erroneously discarded betting slips

Mr. Leonardo, who is married with two teenagers, is hardly living on the fringes. He said that stooping brings him $100 to $300 a day, and more than $45,000 a year. Last month, he cashed in a winning ticket from bets made on races at Santa Anita Park in Arcadia, Calif., for $8,040. His largest purse came in 2006, when he received $9,500 from a Pick 4 wager (choosing the winners of four consecutive races) at Retama Park Race Track in Selma, Tex.

It is all taxable income. "I file my winnings with the I.R.S. every year," Mr. Leonardo said in his thick Dominican accent...

Over time, Mr. Leonardo devised a plan to increase his winnings. He enlisted two friends to pick up the trash at four other OTB parlors around the city and take it to him for $25 per bag. By the time Mr. Leonardo boards his train, he is carrying 2,000 to 7,000 discarded tickets.

At home, two other friends help him bundle the tickets in stacks of 300, which Mr. Leonardo places in a red satchel. He heads back to New York in the morning and spends hours in front of a ticket machine, scanning each ticket. If anyone else needs the machine, he moves aside.
Picking (Up) Winners Without Placing a Bet (via Kottke)

(Image: OTB and me, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike image from swanksalot's photostream)

Previously:

• Papercraft horse-race - Boing Boing
• Boing Boing: Man wins person-v-horse race for first time in 25 years

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:59 pm

Saboteur Launch Plagued By Problems With ATI Cards

An anonymous reader writes "So far, there are over 35 pages of people posting about why EA released Pandemic Studios' final game, Saboteur, to first the EU on December 4th and then, after knowing full well it did not work properly, to the Americas on December 8th. They have been promising to work on a patch that is apparently now in the QA stage of testing. It is not a small bug; rather, if you have an ATI video card and either Windows 7 or Windows Vista, the majority (90%) of users have the game crash after the title screen. Since the marketshare for ATI is nearly equal to that of Nvidia, and the ATI logo is adorning the front page of the Saboteur website, it seems like quite a large mistake to release the game in its current state."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:58 pm

US airport screening secrets posted online - Reuters

ABC News

US airport screening secrets posted online Reuters WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The US Transportation Security Administration accidentally posted a document online containing secrets related to airport passenger screening practices, the Washington Post reported on Wednesday. The TSA operating manual, ... TSA investigates online posting of airport screening proceduresLos Angeles Times TSA Breach Exposes Passenger Screening ManualChannelWeb TSA posts document on airport screening procedures onlineComputerworld The Associated Press -BBC News -ABC News all 235 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:42 pm

Photos of Ethiopia's vanishing tribes

LIFE has a photo gallery of Brent Stirton's photos of tribal groups in Ethiopia's Omo River Valley.

Brent Stirton is a senior staff photographer for Getty Images and a LIFE.com contributor who routinely spends nine months of the year on assignment, all over the world, covering everything from narco-wars in Afghanistan to "fog harvesting" in Nepal. In 2007, Stirton spent two weeks in Ethiopia's Omo River Valley, documenting tribal groups that still live largely as they have for centuries. "This is a woman of the Mursi tribe, wearing boar's tusks, which traditionally would be considered men's decoration. The Mursi women are famous for their clay lip plates, a symbol of beauty. A woman would literally have a little hand bag with three or four of them featuring different designs. Sort of their own version of Prada."

Ethiopia's Vanishing Tribes


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:04 pm

Epic Big Wave Surfing Contest Hits Oahu's North Shore

It's possible that somewhere on the planet, something happened yesterday that was cooler than the Quicksilver Big Wave Invitational in Memory of Eddie Aikau, aka "the Eddie." It's possible, but I doubt it. The Eddie is named for the North ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:01 pm

Your Favorite Sci-Fi Movies, 2000 and Beyond

Modern masterpieces like Wall-E and Moon make the cut when Wired.com readers rate the best science fiction cinema.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:00 pm

Office Space Actor Sues Wikipedia Vandal

Actor Ron Livingston sues the anonymous Wikipedia and Facebook prankster who is posting that Livingston is gay. The courts are likely to out the alleged vandal's identity.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:00 pm

Join this group: Google Groups joins Google Apps

Blogs, wikis, social networks, YouTube and Twitter are changing how many of us connect with others. Yet within most businesses, especially large corporations, the software hasn't evolved much over the last decade. While traditional business technologies give companies the necessary security and controls, they do so at the expense of rapid innovation. Businesses shouldn't have to make this compromise.

This is one reason why customers are so enthusiastic about Google Apps. It offers enterprise-grade security and control while letting businesses instantly tap into a swift stream of innovation, based on services tested by hundreds of millions of people around the world. We've launched over 100 improvements to Google Apps in the last year, and the pace of innovation continues to increase.

Today, we're happy to announce the launch of Google Groups to Google Apps Premier and Education Edition users. Google Groups is one of our most widely used applications, enabling everyone from the local hiking club to the family next door to create mailing lists and discussion forums. Now employees within a company can create groups for their departments, their teams or their projects. Employees can use these groups as mailing lists, but they can also share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, calendars, videos and sites with groups, instead of many individual recipients. They can choose to receive communications directly to their email inbox, in a digest format, or in the Groups forum view, and can access all the information in the groups archive, without the intervention of an IT administrator.




Google Groups is a boon for IT administrators too. After enabling the new service from the administrative control panel (add "user-managed groups"), users can start managing their own groups without burdening administrators for support. Administrators can still set group policies and manage other group settings. If you want to learn more, check out our post on the Enterprise Blog.

Google Groups is just one of the many consumer features that we've tailored for the enterprise since we launched Google Apps for businesses nearly three years ago, and we're looking forward to bringing more innovation to our customers in the months and years ahead.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager, Google Apps

Source: The Official Google Blog | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:00 pm

GWAVA Releases Version 3.1 of Its Novell GroupWise Disaster Recovery Product

MONTREAL and QUEBEC, Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- GWAVA announces the release of Reload 3.1 for Novell GroupWise. Reload is a popular hot backup and disaster recovery solution for GroupWise email systems.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:00 pm

Google Steps Up Collaboration For Apps Users With Google Groups Integration

Google recently added a sharing feature to Google Groups with the search giant’s productivity suite, Google Apps to make the two products work more efficiently together. Tonight, Google is going full monty with Groups and launching an enterprise-friendly version of Groups that will integrated with Premier and Education Editions of Google Apps.

Google says that Groups is one of its most widely used applications. Groups is a collaborative application that essentially lets anyone create discussion forums, mailing lists, pages, and more for small and large scale groups. With the Apps version of Groups, employees can create groups for their departments, their teams or their projects. Employees can also use groups as mailing lists to share documents, spreadsheets, presentations, calendars, videos and sites with entire groups. Users can receive communications directly to their email inbox, in a digest format, or in the Groups forum view, and can access all the information in the groups archive, without the intervention of an IT administrator.

On the administrator side, Groups gives users more flexibility to set up groups without relying on admins for support. Admins can also set group policies and manage other group settings. This is key because previously Groups was only able to be controlled by IT admins, whereas now admins can let users create “user-managed” groups which are operable by any employees of an organization using Apps. Additional features include the ability to search group archives, and reply on behalf of a group.

As with most of the features in Google Apps, the collaborative component of Groups is the cornerstone to the announcement. As Rajen Sheth, Senior Product Manager for Google Apps, told me, “Collaboration is key to Google Apps,” and each product within the suite reflects this. Apps has been steadily growing in users, and counts more than 2 million businesses with 20 million users. While it still hasn’t caught up to Microsoft yet it’s certainly in the rear-view mirror.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:57 pm

Interactive Computer Exhibits For Ages 3-8?

Johnny Mnemonic writes "My company has the opportunity to contribute to a children's museum in our area. We are a technology company, so I'd like the exhibit to be computer/networking related, and to raise the awareness and understanding of how the Internet, networking, and computers work. However, children's museums cater to a pretty young age group, 3-8 years old, so the the exhibit needs to be highly interactive, durable, tactile, and yet instructive of the concepts. Google fails to turn up any turn-key options, and, although the concepts are computer related, a computer-based exhibit tends to be too fragile and susceptible to withstand the rigors of 250 preschoolers/day. How would you design a display that meets these requirements and is still fun and educational?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:30 pm

HD Radio gets smaller, more popular

Get ready, 2010 might just end up being the year of HD radio. Rumor is that we’re going to see something like eight new portable HD radio devices at CES this January.

Now, we saw some HD radio devices last year at CES too, but this time they think you’ll really REALLY like them. HD radio seems to have an awareness problem, honestly. The HD radio manufacturers want you to buy their devices this time, and the hope is that by targeting the Zune/iPod crowd by coming up with add-ons, you’ll bite. We should also start seeing some headphone based units as well, and some are even going to include HD AM as well.

You can get HD radio receivers currently in the Zune HD, from The Shack, and Best Buy even has their own headphone style unit already on the market.

Source: Gizmodo | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:20 pm

Winter 2009 issue of h+ magazine available for download

The latest issue of R.U. Sirius' posthuman magazine, h+, is ready for downloading.

The Winter 2009 Issue of h+ Magazine features The Ray Kurzweil Interview, CAPRICA: Birth of the Cylons, DIY Transhumanism, The Chinese Singularity, and more.

I'm excited to read the article about self tracking. h+ Winter 2009


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:05 pm

Verizon Business Issues 2009 Supplemental Data Breach Report Profiling 15 Most Common Attacks

(NOTE: To download high-resolution images relating to the supplemental report, visit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/verizonbusiness.)
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:01 pm

Widely Anticipated Blackbox Republic Now Open for Business

PORTLAND, Ore., Dec. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, Blackbox Republic (www.blackboxrepublic.com) launched a brand new private network for people of all orientations, relationship combinations and lifestyles.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:01 pm

Olympus E-P2 not just official, but for sale too

So we told mere moments ago (in internet time) that Olympus had officially announced the leaked and rumored E-P2, the latest in their line of EVIL cameras. The good news: they’re not just announced, you can buy one online too!

Yep, if you’re ready to drop your $1099.99 on an E-P2, Amazon is ready to check you out. It’s actually being sold by J&R Music and Computer World, but they enjoy an excellent reputation in New York and are a pretty safe company to buy from.

Thanks to Ron for the tip!

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:00 pm

Rachel Maddow eviscerates "Coming Out Straight" author embraced by Uganda's "kill the gays" squad

Rachel Maddow tears "Coming Out Straight" author Richard Cohen a new one. Cohen's work is cited as inspirational by authorities in Uganda who propose killing gay people. "You have blood on your hands," she says. Can I get an amen? Related: Rick Warren, silent enabler.


Source: Boing Boing | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:59 pm

U.S. District Court Rejects Motion to Dismiss in Phoenix Technologies' Lawsuit Against DeviceVM

MILPITAS, Calif., Dec. 8 /PRNewswire/ -- Phoenix Technologies (Nasdaq: PTEC), a global leader in core systems software, security solutions and instant-on operating systems environments, today announced that a U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:57 pm

Faster apps for a faster web: introducing Speed Tracer

Do you ever wonder what's going on inside the browser when a webpage doesn't load or respond as quickly as it should? Many developers do, especially when trying to build powerful web applications for their users.

But up until now, it's been difficult for developers to identify problems in a slow-to-respond application. So, tonight at Google Campfire One, we're happy to announce that we're adding a new tool to Google Web Toolkit called Speed Tracer.

Speed Tracer is a Google Chrome extension that enables developers to identify performance problems in their web apps using a "Sluggishness Graph," in combination with many other metrics. In the spirit of clean, simple design, developers need only look at the Y-Axis of their application's Sluggishness Graph to see how they're doing:

• If the y-axis is close to zero, then the app is fast
• If the y-axis registers around 100%, then the app is, well, sluggish

And in either case, Speed Tracer provides lots of additional data to help diagnose any particular performance issue.

We think developers will find that Speed Tracer looks under the covers of web applications like never before. In fact, we even used Speed Tracer to optimize the performance of Speed Tracer itself! (It's really an HTML application after all, built with Google Web Toolkit, and deployed as a Google Chrome extension.) If you're a web developer, download and install Speed Tracer on the Google Chrome Developer Channel.



This is one of many other improvements in GWT 2.0 — which we released at this evening's Campfire — that make building web applications fast, and the applications you build run even faster. Check out the Google Code Blog for more information and to watch our Campfire One developer announcement.

Posted by Bruce Johnson, Engineering Director

Source: The Official Google Blog | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:14 pm

Projector-packin’ LG Expo gets delayed

If you were gettin’ all antsy in the pantsies about yesterday’s launch of the LG Expo and it’s detachable projector accessory, you might be a bit bewildered right now. A full day later, AT&T’s still showing no sign of the handset.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:08 pm

Google Web Toolkit: Now With Speed Tracer, Code Splitting, And More

This evening at its Campfire One event, Google showcased a number of new technologies coming to Google Web Toolkit (you can see my live blog of the event here). The big announcements include the release of a new Speed Tracer tool to help developers speed up their web apps; a code splitting tool that enables developers to deploy apps as incremental downloads; and UiBinder, a UI framework that allows developers to separate the ‘logic’ presentation of their apps from the presentation portion.

Speed Tracer is a new extension for Google Chrome that is meant to help developers streamline their web applications. In particular, the tool is built to help optimize AJAXy applications. Obviously there are other tools for speed optimization, but many of these have to do with load time. Speed Tracer is meant to track performance over an extended period of time, as users tap into an app’s various functions. Google’s Andrew Bowers explains that Speed Tracer can track performance bottlenecks in ways that were not previously possible, because it taps into APIs that were built into Webkit for that very purpose (APIs other browser engines don’t offer).

The tool will allow developers to isolate exactly which functions in their app are taking a long time to perform, allowing them to monitor performance in real time. It will suggest that developers take a look at certain problem functions (namely actions that take over 100ms, which is when users begin to notice a lag time).

The second major addition announced at tonight’s event is developer guided code splitting. Bowers says that when the Google Wave team was first building Wave, the size of their JavaScript app grew to 1.4 megabytes (that’s a lot, and will lead to a long initial loading time for users). To help deal with this Google found a way to split code into chunks and to only initially serve the portions users needed. In other words, when you go to Wave now, your browser is only downloading the portion of the app it needs to run the most basic functions. If you decide you want to access something beyond that — say, the Settings menu — the app will quickly fetch that once you click the ‘Settings’ button.

This isn’t the first time developers have been able to split their code — in fact, some of them try to fully automate the process. Bowers says that Google is taking a different approach. Rather than try to fully automate the code splitting, Google Web Toolkit will allow developers to pick and choose which functions users will need to be able to access. The tool will then identify which code corresponds to those functions. In effect, developers are still responsible for choosing which functions they want to have available on the app’s initial load, but the tool can manage things beyond that.

The third tool to launch this evening was UiBinder, which came out of some of the work Google has done with AdWords. Bowers describes UiBinder as a declarative UI that allows developers to bind a layout template and associate it with a Java file, without having to merge the two. He explains that in a typical Java file, developers often have to combine the layout portion of the application with the logic portion of the app. In that scenario, when a designer wants to tweak the look of the app, the logic has to be tweaked too. Using UiBinder, developers can keep the two separate, so layouts can be adjusted without having to rewrite any logic code.

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Source: TechCrunch | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:00 pm

Service-now.com Gets $41M Infusion; CEO, CFO Take $37M Off Table

Service-now.com has raised $41M of a $66M funding round, the company disclosed in an SEC filing today. The company was founded by Fred Luddy in 2004 to provide on-demand Enterprise IT services and 2009 has been a boom year for the company. Service-now.com specializes in cloud-based Software as a Service (Saas) IT service management solutions. They cover everything from licensing compliance to the service desk all with a built in analytics system.

On July 21 of this year a company press release detailed some of the company’s accomplishments including: recurring revenue of more than $28 million, 105 percent growth in recurring revenue and a variety of accolades. We’re awaiting word from Service-now.com about the funding. In the meantime we can deduce that some of the funding is probably from Sequoia Capital. Douglas Leone, who may have already been an investor, has become a director and the page of Partner Patrick Grady has been updated to reflect a new involvement with Service-now.com (Nov 30 and now).

Interestingly, the company did not gain much capital from the funding. The SEC filing notes that $37M of the funding was used to repurchase shares of the Service-now.com’s common stock held by its CEO Frederic Luddy and CFO Andrew Chedrick. That is ~90% of the money received in the tranche and over 55% of the total round. From time to time discussion flares up about the idea of founders taking money off the table in funding rounds. It appears investors Sequoia Capital and JMI Equity were okay with it in a big way this time around.

Update: We’ve just received word from CEO Fred Luddy confirming that Sequoia led the investment and that the entire round went towards buying employee stock, not just his own and his CFO’s. He sounds excited about the involvement of Sequoia and Douglas Leone.

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Source: TechCrunch | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:50 pm

Monkeys With Syntax

jamie writes "The Campbell's monkey has a vocabulary with at least six types of basic call, but new research published in the PNAS claims that they combine them and string them together to communicate new meanings. (Login may be required on the NY Times site.) For example, the word for 'leopard' gets an '-oo' suffix to mean 'unseen predator.' But when that word is repeated after 'come over here,' the combination means 'Timber!' — a warning of falling trees. Scientists have known for some time that vervet monkeys have different warning calls for different predators — eagle, leopard, and snake — but unlike the Campbell's monkeys, vervets don't combine those calls to create new meanings, a key component of syntax. The researchers plan to play back recordings to the monkeys to test their theories for syntax errors."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:46 pm

Music labels bet Vevo.com is next MTV (Reuters)

Reuters - In a grainy black and white Web video, similar to footage from an in-store security camera, you can make out the muscular frame of rapper 50 Cent, smashing dozens of TV sets with a baseball bat.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:39 pm

Redbox is making life very difficult for the movie industry

Proving once again you can find a study to prove almost anything, a report came out today showing that Redbox will bring down the movie industry by continuing with their $1 a night business model. Sounds like some sour grapes to me.

And what is Redbox doing that is so heinous you ask? Well, according to the study, renting DVD’s for a buck is cannibalizing sales, making customers want other outlets to offer similar deals, and harming the “perceived value” of movies in general. As an example of this, Blockbuster recently started their own kiosk system to try and muscle in on Redbox.

On top of these crimes, Redbox is also making quite the killing in the aftermarket sales area. Of course, Redbox claims that what they are doing it’s that bad, and they contest some of the data that the study collected.

[Via NewTeeVee]

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:30 pm

'True Blood' barfly Bauer becomes a regular (Reuters)

Reuters - Eric's sidekick Pam on "True Blood" is getting a promotion.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:25 pm

Brizzly Is The Most Handsome Chrome Extension. If Only It Were A Little Faster…

As we all know, today was Chrome Extension day. By now, you’ve likely tried out many of them and picked some that you like as well as those that you don’t. Easily one of my favorites so far is the Brizzly extension built by Thing Labs. It’s hands down the best-looking app out there right now, but it has some limitations.

Brizzly is a web app that gives you access to your Twitter stream and more recently, Facebook data. It’s Chrome extension offers just about everything the web app does in a much more compact package. You can see photos and videos right in your tweet stream without having to click through to another site. All URLs are expanded so you know exactly what you’re clicking on. You can favorite, reply, and retweet people with the click of a button. The last one will be of particular interest to those who hate the new Retweet functionality, since Brizzly still uses the old “RT” style syntax. And you can mute people (remove them from your stream without unfollowing them) and edit your Lists easily all within the extension.

And as I noted, the Brizzly extension looks great with its sleek black background. It also has a killer feature in that it auto-populates a link for whatever page you’re on when you hit the Brizzly extension icon. This makes it very easy to tweet out a piece of content with one click. I suspect a lot of Chrome users may start using this extension as their way to quickly share things they are reading.

But there are a couple of downsides to the Brizzly extension too. The main problem is that it takes a few seconds to load each time. This may not seem like a lot of time but it adds up. And it’s compounded by the fact that there is no new tweet notification badge for the extension icon. Another early Twitter-based extension, Chromed Bird, is both faster and has the badging capabilities to let you know when to click it. That said, it doesn’t look nearly as good, and lacks many of Brizzly’s advanced features (inline media, etc). Another issue is the Facebook connectivity. I’ve had problems bringing up my Facebook data all day, and a few times it has caused Chrome to crash (though it must be noted that I’m using Chromium on my Mac — here’s how to get those working — which isn’t officially supported yet).

Limitations aside, it’s one slick extension, and it’s impressive that the Thing Labs guys got it this polished in time for the official Extensions launch.

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

Source: TechCrunch | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:19 pm

How to: Sell your used games to Amazon.com in 7 easy steps

FROM GAMERTELL - If you want to sell your old and unwanted games and systems to Amazon.com and aren’t how to do it, don’t worry. Gamertell will guide you through the process in seven simple steps.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:14 pm

Cisco Still Open to IBM Partnership (PC World)

PC World - Cisco Systems tried to partner with major server vendors several years ago before coming out with its own blade servers earlier this year, and it's still open to a partnership with IBM, Chairman and CEO John Chambers said Tuesday.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:00 pm

Microsoft Patch Tuesday: Critical Update for IE (PC World)

PC World - Today was Microsoft's final Patch Tuesday of 2009. Microsoft released a total of six new security bulletins, the most urgent one affecting a zero-day flaw in Internet Explorer for which exploit code already exists.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:53 pm

Microsoft Patch Tuesday: Critical Update for IE - PC World

Reuters

Microsoft Patch Tuesday: Critical Update for IE PC World Today was Microsoft's final Patch Tuesday of 2009. Microsoft released a total of six new security bulletins, the most urgent one affecting a zero-day flaw in Internet Explorer for which exploit code already exists. ... Microsoft plugs zero-day IE holeCNET News Partners Say Microsoft Bungled Windows 7 Family PackChannelWeb Microsoft Releases Surprise AdvisoryPC Magazine InformationWeek -TopNews United States -Computerworld all 226 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:45 pm

John Lennon tribute: "War is Over!" crowd-sourced translations

Today, December 8, marks the anniversary of the death of John Lennon. In tribute, Yoko Ono and the Imagine Peace team are crowd-sourcing translations of the famous John & Yoko "WAR IS OVER!" poster for people to print and share over the holiday season as cards or posters.

Simon from Imagine Peace says,

If any Boing Boing readers would like to contribute and don't see their language included, then please ask them to send us a translation so we can make a poster for their language. If they could format it like this (below), that would be most helpful:

WAR
IS
OVER!
IF YOU WANT IT
Happy Christmas from John & Yoko

Yoko Ono also invites tributes and memories here. After the jump, video with John and Yoko: WAR IS OVER (if you want it).

Source: Boing Boing | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:42 pm

Home-built Kodachrome machine – that’s some serious DIY

Film lovers may be finding it hard to get their hands on their favorite brand of film. Film dealerships are getting fewer and fewer, and many types of film currently being manufactured aren’t compatible with old cameras. What’s a guy to do when his favorite color stock is extinct forever? How about make his own?

Putting film together isn’t as simple as brushing a photosensitive layer onto some plastic. There’s a whole science to doing it right, to say nothing of the chemical recipes necessary. The layers are micrometers thin and… well, there’s no use getting into the nitty gritty. If you wanted to build your own film-making machine, you’d have your nose in this kind of stuff all day long anyway. More details at the Flickr page.

It is a sweet-looking rig though, isn’t it? I’d like to have one even if it didn’t make workable film.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:40 pm

Seagate finally enters the SSD market

Section: Computers, Hardware

The SSD market so far has been close to non-existent in terms of recognizable hard drive manufacturers.  It looks like that’s about to change, with Seagate finally entering the market.  The company has an impressive first entry with its new Pulsar drives.

Seagate’s Pulsar drives are SSDs built for enterprise use.  The big draw of the SSDs is the included supercapaciter.  The supercapaciter will allow the drive to hold enough power to complete any write task needed in case of a power failure.  Seagate’s single-layer-cell technology in the drives is supposed to increase the durability and reliability of the drives, compared to the SSDs currently in netbooks and laptops.  The Pulsar drives are 2.5-inches, so expect to see them inside desktops or servers.  They will come in storage sizes of 50, 100 and 200 GB.

Seagate entering into the SSD market is a very good sign.  While OCZ, Intel and Kingston among others have been doing a good job with the market so far, with at least one major hard drive producer in the game, we can expect to see more penetration.  Western Digital and others are expected to be entering the market soon as well.  Hopefully this will lead to a decrease in price of SSDs as the companies compete.  More computers using SSDs is definitely a good thing.

Read [PC World]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:39 pm

The Droid Has Been Rooted — Now What? - Wired News

Geeky gadgets

The Droid Has Been Rooted — Now What? Wired News The Motorola/Verizon Droid is a brand new phone today. Like many smartphones before it, the Droid has been rooted so that owners of the Android 2.0-based smartphone can install multitouch support (including pinch-to-zoom gestures), ... Verizon CFO: Feels Good About Goal Of 1M Post-Paid CustomersWall Street Journal Verizon CFO says happy with handset line-upReuters Verizon updates Droid software; Users hope it fixes echo problemComputerworld PC World -ZDNet (blog) -InformationWeek all 144 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:19 pm

The Droid Has Been Rooted — Now What?

The Motorola/Verizon Droid is a brand new phone today. Like many smartphones before it, the Droid has been rooted so that owners of the Android 2.0-based smartphone can install multitouch support (including pinch-to-zoom gestures), enhanced themes, and other previously forbidden goodies.

Cyanogen, a well-known Android modder, tweeted this afternoon “Droid does… ROOT” and linked to an Android message board where the exploit is posted. Zinx Verituse, the hacker who discovered the exploit, posted the essential details and links to the file so the modders can get down to business.

So, what does this mean for Droid owners?

A rooted Droid means the user will have administrative rights and the ability to control every aspect of the phone, not just those that Motorola or Verizon have provided access to. A person will be able to download widgets that allow them to overclock their processor or install themes that dramatically change the appearance of their phone. Cyanogen offers custom builds that truly customize a device and provides easy access to hidden features.

For instance, why does the lower-end Droid Eris have multi-touch while the high-end Droid doesn’t? Because Motorola and Verizon decided not to implement pinch-to-zoom in the Droid even though it has the capability to do so.

Now that the Droid is “rooted,” in modder lingo, it will be easy for someone like Cyanogen to simply turn on pinch-to-zoom in a custom build.

While today marks a great feat in the Android community, rooting a phone does involve risks. If you have no idea what you’re doing or what unlocking is, you might run the risk of bricking your phone (making it useless) or disabling essential features. Needless to say, unlocking will probably void your warranty and might put you in violation of the carrier’s terms of service agreement.

But now that the Droid floodgates have been opened, it’s only a matter of time until we see the Droid doing some really cool stuff.

See Also:

• Why I'm Not Getting a Droid Today
• Android Army Pumped for All-Out Attack on iPhone
• 12 Phones Strong, Android Army Mobilizes for Explosive Growth …

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:14 pm

CPUC Taps Vial Center To Study State's Green Jobs Needs

The California Public Utilities Commission has chosen University of California, Berkeley's Donald Vial Center on Employment in the Green Economy to lead a $1.1 million study to assess California's workforce development needs as part of the state’s long-term strategic plan for energy efficiency."If we do this right, our efforts to build a clean energy economy hold great promise for all Californians.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:13 pm

Turning Metal Black More Than Just A Novelty

University of Rochester scientists discover that laser technique used to change the colors of metals could have important implications for medicineUniversity of Rochester optics professor Chunlei Guo made headlines in the past couple of years when he changed the color of everyday metals by scouring their surfaces with precise, high-intensity laser bursts.Suddenly it was possible to make sheets of golden tungsten, or black aluminum.A recent discovery in Guo's lab has shown that, beyond the aesthetic opportunities in his find lie some very powerful potential uses, like diagnosing some diseases with unprecedented ease and precision.Along with his research assistant, Anatoliy Vorobyev, Guo has discovered that the altered metals can detect electromagnetic radiation with frequencies in the terahertz range (also known as T-rays), which have been challenging, if not impossible, to detect prior to his discovery."When we turned metals black, we knew that they became highly absorptive in the visible wavelength range because the altered metals appear pitch black to the eye.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:08 pm

Study Shows Link Between Working Memory And Reactive Parenting

Any parent knows that sometimes maintaining your cool with misbehaving children is a challenge. We all have times when we get frustrated or angry and lash out at someone without thinking.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:05 pm

Appletell reviews the GlideTV Navigator

FROM APPLETELL - The Mac Mini is one of the best devices you can hook up to your TV, but it’s hard to control while sitting on your couch. So, let’s look at the GlideTV Navigator.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:02 pm

New projector displays an image 65 feet wide

Projectors have come a long way in the past couple of years, but they aren’t exactly suitable for replacing monitors. What they can do, however, is put images on almost any surface — and there are a select few like the Projectiondesign F35 that can create truly enormous displays.

The F35 projects at an astounding 2560×1600, the first projector to produce that level of resolution. This is important because it’s the same resolution as larger LCD monitors, which up to this point have been the only devices capable of displaying at that level of detail.

The F35 reportedly supports 720p and 1080i, and will accept input from DVI-D, dual HDMI 1.3, dual VGA, and component. No word on exactly how much this thing is going to set you back, but I have no doubt it’ll be a small fortune.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

10 Best Sports Gear Innovations

Wired pitches the sports world's smartest inventions, from the Ping-Pong ball to soccer cleats to the Zamboni.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

Instrument Inventor Hears Music Everywhere

Artist-inventor Trimpin begins using seismic data as musical material after a temblor strikes his adopted hometown of Seattle. The Seismofone is one of several contraptions featured in Trimpin: The Sound of Invention, a documentary about his life.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

10 Gizmos for a Home Theater Tuneup

Nothing kicks more ass than a finely calibrated home theater system. But you need the right tech to do it. Here's our top gear for entertaining folks this holiday season.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

How the Afghanistan Air War Got Stuck in the Sky

Guidelines from the top U.S. commander in Afghanistan make it difficult to call in an air strike these days. The attempt to eliminate civilian casualties puts U.S. troops on the ground in more danger. Ironically, the military's ability to plan and execute precision strikes has never been better.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

10 Gizmos for a Home Theater Tuneup

Nothing kicks more ass than a finely calibrated home theater system. But you need the right tech to do it. Here's our top gear for entertaining folks this holiday season.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:00 pm

Merkel Cells Revealed As Secret Behind Sensation Of Light Touch

Cells required for sensory coding of light touch needed to distinguish shapes and texturesScientists have proved experimentally what has been suspected since the discovery of Merkel cells in the skin over a century ago: the sense of light touch that is critical for hand dexterity would not be possible without these cells.In a presentation at the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) 49th Annual Meeting, Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:57 pm

Human Umbilical Stem Cells Cleared Mice's Cloudy Eyes

Research will be presented at America Society for Cell Biology conferenceTransplanting human stem cells from umbilical cords onto the abnormally thin, cloudy corneas of laboratory mice significantly improved corneal transparency and increased the thickness of the animals' corneal stroma, the transparent middle layer, according to research that will be presented at the American Society for Cell Biology (ASCB) 49th Annual Meeting, Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:55 pm

U Of M Studies Psychological Impact Of Casual Sex

University of Minnesota Project Eating Among Teens (EAT) researchers have found that young adults engaging in casual sexual encounters do not appear to be at increased risk for harmful psychological outcomes as compared to sexually active young adults in more committed relationships.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:53 pm

Publishers Make Plans for Devices Yet to Come - New York Times

Washington Post

Publishers Make Plans for Devices Yet to Come New York Times Five major magazine and newspaper publishers announced plans on Tuesday to build an industry-standard platform to present their work on the Web, smartphones and electronic readers in a richer, more flexible and more lucrative form ... Digital Publications May Be A Hard SellPC World 5 top publishers plan rival to Kindle formatThe Associated Press Media monsters float co-op ebook 'storefront'Register PC Magazine -Washington Post -Reuters all 441 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:52 pm

Nanoparticle Protects Oil In Foods From Oxidation, Spoilage

Using a nanoparticle from corn, a Purdue University scientist has found a way to lengthen the shelf life of many food products and sustain their health benefits.Yuan Yao, an assistant professor of food science, has successfully modified the phytoglycogen nanoparticle, a starchlike substance that makes up nearly 30 percent of the dry mass of some sweet corn.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:50 pm

The ABCs of Wii, Xbox and PlayStation 3 [The Mossberg Solution]

With holiday shopping comes anxiety about getting the right gifts. Does Dad already own a copy of “Frank Sinatra’s Greatest Hits”? Was Mom expecting a new pepper mill, or was that Aunt Carol? It’s even worse for people shopping for the video gamers in their lives: Understanding the technical specifications of each console can seem as difficult as getting to the highest level in a game of Halo.

This week, I’ve done the dirty work for you: I’ve amassed a collection of vital details about the three most popular systems—Microsoft’s (MSFT) Xbox 360, Sony’s (SNE) PlayStation 3 and Nintendo’s Wii—so that you can get a handle on what each offers and what it will cost you.

Nintendo Wii

Nintendo recently dropped the Wii’s price, for the first time, to $200 from $250. The Wii Console comes with a controller, an additional controller called a Nunchuk, and the Wii Sports game, which includes baseball, tennis, golf, bowling and boxing. It holds 512 megabytes of flash memory, but you can increase this by inserting SecureDigital memory cards. It also accepts high-capacity SD cards, or SDHCs, of up to 32 gigabytes.

The couch-potato world of videogamers was shaken up when the Wii, with its motion-sensitive remote control, was introduced about three years ago. Users can play Wii Golf, for instance, by swinging the remote like a golf club. In September, Nintendo added to its lineup a $20 remote-control accessory called Wii MotionPlus that was designed to add more precision to game motions. I tested this snap-on piece and found that it did make the Wii’s motions feel more realistic. But it works only with Wii MotionPlus games—and there are only six of them; 10 more are planned for 2010.

Wii encourages users to move around in more ways than just waving a remote: Its Wii Balance Board, which comes with the Wii Fit Plus game in a $100 bundle, works like a digital exercise step. It records the body’s weight shifts and movements for activities from yoga to wake-boarding.

The Wii accesses the Internet and lets users compete online against others. About 655 packaged games are available for between $30 and $50. Also, you can use pre-purchased Nintendo Points to buy and download about 150 WiiWare games and over 325 titles from the older Virtual Console library. Each game costs between 300 and 1,500 points, or between about $3 and $15.

WiiConnect24 can send messages from one Wii to another over the Internet, as long the two users exchange “Wii numbers.” Users can also surf the Web with Wii’s Opera browser. But beyond this, no other Web features—like downloadable movies, social-networking applications or streaming music—will work on this system.

Parental controls can be set on the Wii to restrict kids from using the Web browser, playing games that have a certain rating or communicating online.

Microsoft Xbox 360

Microsoft recently stepped up its game by adding features to its $200 Xbox 360 that make it well-rounded rather than strictly geared toward serious gamers. People who buy the Xbox LIVE Gold membership, for $50 a year, get applications for Facebook, Twitter, the Last.fm music-streaming service, online multiplayer game play, video chat, Netflix (Netflix subscription required), photo sharing via the Xbox, and movie or photo “parties” that allow users to watch a movie simultaneously with seven other friends.

Xbox LIVE Silver membership is free and includes basic features like voice and text chat, as well as access to the Zune video library’s 20,000 TV shows and movies to buy or rent. The Xbox also allows media-streaming over a home network. To connect your Xbox to the Internet, you’ll need to buy a $100 Wi-Fi adapter. By contrast, the Wii and PlayStation 3 have built-in Wi-Fi.

Anyone who owns a Microsoft Zune media player can buy a TV show or movie and download it to an Xbox or PC as well as the Zune. Zunes can be plugged into the Xbox to play music, as can Apple (AAPL) iPods.

The base Xbox comes with a wireless controller and 512 megabytes of memory. For $100 more, the Elite Holiday Bundle includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive, headset, wireless controller, and two games: “LEGO Batman: The Videogame” and “Pure.” More than 1,200 games are available for the Xbox, mostly costing between $29 and $60. About 350 of the games can be downloaded from the Xbox LIVE Arcade (costing 400 to 1,600 points, or $5 to $20) or the Games on Demand library.

Microsoft confirmed plans to introduce Project Natal, a system that lets people operate games with gestures and body movements rather than remote controls. Natal will work with all Xbox 360 consoles. Microsoft won’t confirm a date.

Family settings let parents control whether their kids play games online and with whom they play, as well as the ratings of the games. A Family Timer regulates how long kids play.

Sony PlayStation 3

Sony’s PlayStation, like the Xbox 360, is designed with serious gamers in mind. Its base version costs $300 and includes a 120-gigabyte hard drive and a DualShock 3 wireless controller; $50 more buys a version with a 250-gigabyte hard drive. Both systems can be upgraded with any standard 2.5-inch hard drive. The PlayStation is also a Blu-ray disc player.

Like the Xbox, the PlayStation 3, or PS3, now offers extra features, but these features are all included in the PlayStation Network, which is free (not $50 monthly like Xbox LIVE Gold). These PlayStation Network extras include Netflix (NFLX) instant streaming, a Web browser, photo slide shows, the ability to stream media over a home network to the PS3, a Facebook application that shares game information with friends and the PlayStation Network video-delivery service, where users can purchase 2,400 high- and standard-definition movies and 15,000 TV episodes.

The PS3 and the PlayStation Portable, Sony’s portable gaming device, are married in many ways. A new feature called Blu-ray Portable Copy lets users make a free standard-definition copy of some Blu-ray movies for transfer to a PlayStation Portable. Remote Play lets people stream media files from the PS3 to the PlayStation Portable in Wi-Fi hot spots or remotely turn the PS3 on or off using the PlayStation Portable. Movies and TV shows from the PlayStation Network can be transferred to either system, so you can start a movie on a big-screen TV and finish it on the PlayStation Portable; the same can be done for games.

About 400 games are available on Blu-ray for the PS3; these cost between $30 and $60. More than 150 titles, costing between $3 and $40, can be downloaded directly to the PS3. Sony confirmed that it will release a motion-sensing controller, but it hasn’t set a date.

Parental restrictions for the PS3 include the ability to restrict games, DVDs and Blu-ray discs with certain ratings. Parents can also limit monthly spending or Web browsing.

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Games: A Cheat Sheet

Here are some of the key differences among three popular videogame systems.

	NINTENDO WII	XBOX 360	PLAYSTATION 3
Price	$200	200 or $300*	$300, $350
Includes	Wireless controller, Nunchuk, Wii Sports	Wireless controller/ Wireless controller, headset, 2 games	DualShock 3 wireless controller
Additional remotes	$40 wireless; Nunchuk is $20	$50 wireless, $40 wired, $20 headset	$55 DualShock 3 wireless controller, $50 Bluetooth headset, $40 PlayStation Eye, $25 Blu-ray disc remote control, $50 wireless keypad
Memory	512 MB, can be increased with SD cards	512 MB, $300 Xbox comes with 120 GB	120 GB or 250 GB
Built-in Wi-Fi?	Yes	No. $100 Wireless adapter sold separately	Yes
Games	1,100	1,200	550
Cost of Games	30-$50; $3-$15 for downloads	Most are $29-$60; $5-$20 for downloads	$30-$60; $3-$40 for downloads
Other features	Web browser, ability to message other Wii consoles	Netflix, Last.fm, movie parties, MSN Messenger, Facebook, Twitter, photo sharing, online multiplayer gaming	Netflix, Facebook integration, photo slide shows, PlayStation Network videos, online multiplayer gaming
Extras	$100 Wii Balance Board and Wii FitPlus, $20 Wii MotionPlus	Xbox LIVE Silver is free, Xbox LIVE Gold is $50/year	Blu-ray disc playing, multiple tie-ins with Playstation Portable
Family Settings	Restrict online browsing, communication, game ratings	Restrict online play, with whom users can play, game ratings, time spent playing	Restrict online play, games or movies with certain ratings, monthly expenses, Web browsing
Relationship w/portable device	Wireless, free demo downloads from Wii Channel onto DS or DSi	Play videos bought anywhere on Zune, PC or Xbox 360	Blu-ray Portable Copy gives free copy of some movies for transferring to PlayStation Portable
Media streamed to console over home network?	No	Yes	Yes

Email: mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Write to Katherine Boehret at mossbergsolution@wsj.com

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:47 pm

Following His Study Of Business Students, K-State Professor Says Lesson On Ethics, Character Development Can Prevent Unethical Behavior In The Workplace

A Kansas State University professor's research is showing a gap between the character traits that business students say make a good executive and the traits they describe having themselves.Thomas A.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:43 pm

Facebook Axes "Beacon," Donates $9.5M To Settle Suit

alphadogg sends in a Network World piece that begins "Facebook has agreed to shut down a program that sparked a lawsuit alleging privacy violations, and set up a $9.5M fund for a nonprofit foundation that will support online privacy, safety, and security. The lawsuit centers around Facebook's Beacon program, which let third-party Web sites distribute 'stories' about users to Facebook. Beacon was launched in November 2007 and less than a year later plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit 'alleging that Facebook and its affiliates did not give users adequate notice and choice about Beacon and the collection and use of users' personal information.' ... Facebook never admitted wrongdoing but as part of a proposed settlement the company began sending notices to Facebook users this week. The settlement provides no compensation directly to users who receive the notice. Facebook users can opt out of the settlement, and should do so if they wish to pursue further legal action against Facebook related to the Beacon program. 'If you choose to do nothing and remain in the settlement class, you will be legally bound by the settlement,' a FAQ on the settlement Web site says. "By doing nothing, you will be giving up the right to sue Facebook and the other Defendants over claims related to or arising out of the Beacon program.'" Other defendents included Blockbuster, Fandango, Overstock.com, Zappos.com, and Gamefly. Neither the article nor the settlement site mentions what part, if any, they play in the settlement.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:39 pm

Format Your Mac's Hard Drive

Sometimes it makes sense to wipe the slate clean when your Mac's hard drive is bogged down by the remains of long-forgotten applications. We'll show you how to wipe the cobwebs away and start fresh.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:30 pm

Format Your Mac's Hard Drive

Sometimes it makes sense to wipe the slate clean when your Mac's hard drive is bogged down by the remains of long-forgotten applications. We'll show you how to wipe the cobwebs away and start fresh.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:30 pm

Seagate Expands Beyond Disks for Storing Data - Wall Street Journal

CNET News

Seagate Expands Beyond Disks for Storing Data Wall Street Journal SAN FRANCISCO—Seagate Technology Inc., the biggest maker of computer disk drives, is launching its long-awaited entry into the market for devices that store data on memory chips. The company Tuesday announced its Pulsar solid-state drive, ... Seagate's Pulsar Drives Bring SSD to Enterprise PrimetimePC World CNET News Daily Podcast: Seagate gets into SSD marketCNET News Seagate Launches Its First Enterprise SSDeWeek Ars Technica -DailyTech -PC Magazine all 156 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:25 pm

iPhone App Transcribes Speech Into E-Mail, SMS

The iPhone’s touchscreen is pleasant to tap, but writing a long message gets tiring. A speech recognition app called Dragon Dictation addresses that by transcribing your speech into text, which can then be copied into an e-mail or text message.

The app’s interface is dead simple. Launch the app, hit the record button and start talking. Dragon Dictation immediately sends your speech to software developer Nuance’s server, whose algorithm analyzes your speech. After the app spits out text, you can tap any inaccurate words and hit delete, then choose to send the text via e-mail or SMS. You can also store transcribed messages into your clipboard.

Pretty neat. From our testing, the app is surprisingly fast and not bad with speech recognition (although it does censor out the F word with an asterisk). Dragon Dictation is free for a limited time in the App Store.

Download Link [iTunes]

See Also:

• Free Voice Dialing Finally Arrives on iPhone
• ‘Say Where’ Enables Speech-Recognition Queries on iPhone

Via TUAW

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:17 pm

Augmented Reality Start-Up Tonchidot Moves Beyond Buzz [Voices]

By Timothy Hay, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal

Last year, Japanese start-up Tonchidot Corp. stole the show at a technology conference in San Francisco where 50 young companies across various industries demonstrated their wares.

Tonchidot Chief Executive Takahito Iguchi, facing tough questions from a savvy audience about his company’s “augmented reality” technology, gave a series of emphatic single-word answers, exhibiting a never-say-die attitude that delighted the TechCrunch 50 conference crowd.

After claiming that Tonchidot would never be sold to a larger tech company–and briefly pumping his fist in the air–Iguchi ended a flamboyant presentation by shouting, “Join us!” The video of that presentation and a demo of its product has been watched tens of thousands of times on YouTube, and the company spurred lively debate for weeks in the tech blogosphere.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:15 pm

Well, at Least Someone's Making Money Off Twitter [Digital Daily]

Dell generated some $61.1 billion in revenue last year and $57 billion the year before.

And of that $118.1 billion, $6.5 million was generated by Twitter promotions.

Which is nothing. Don’t get me wrong; it’s certainly interesting that Dell pays enough attention to the social media space that it can accurately track the sales leads generated by services like Twitter. And it is, perhaps, worth noting that the company’s leadership describes Twitter as a “very vibrant channel for us and it’s growing aggressively.”

But $6.5 million over two years? That’s not exactly going to push Dell (DELL) past Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) and Acer in worldwide sales of PCs, is it?

Source: All Things Digital | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:06 pm

Reaping what they sow: Canadian record industry faces potential $6 billion fine for copyright infringement

Oh dear, oh dear. How utterly delightful! It seems that the major members of the Canadian Recording Industry Association have been a bit hypocritical over the last… oh, 20 years. It seems they’ve included a truly enormous amount of tracks on compilation CDs without paying the artists a dime, instead putting them on a “pending list.” This list is somewhere around 300,000 items long, and a class-action lawsuit is underway in which the plaintiffs are calling for (and this is the best part) the same statutory damages the recording industry has pursued with individuals: $20,000 per song. Ironisterical!

That’s $6 billion in damages if the industry plays by its own rules (or more), and so far they’ve admitted that they do in fact owe $50 million. It’s not quite an admission of guilt, but let’s say that during a rash of candy store robberies, you admitted to robbing half. You better believe the other half will be on the judge’s mind as he raises that gavel.

Actually, to be honest, I don’t expect the $6bn figure to fly, given that this is not only a different court but a different country from that where the RIAA’s ridiculous damages were awarded. Even if they end up owing “only” fifty mil, I’ll be happy to see them pay it.

The suit is in Canada, and has to do with Canadian royalties law, but I guarantee there are people scouring the RIAA’s records right now looking for a willful oversight like this. Oh man, I would die laughing if the RIAA went under on piracy charges.

[Correction: $6bn not $60bn. Still.]

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:00 pm

CrunchGear in China: Getting From There to Here

Shenzhen City Hall

For a long time my concept of sourcing – basically order fulfillment – was all wrong. When I ordered a USB charger or headphones for my phone or MP3 player, I thought some little old lady in Texas headed over to a warehouse, put the item in a box, gummed on a few stamps, and sent the item posthaste. I’m sure there was a computer in there somewhere, but it was a pure transaction – item, box, mail truck, my door. Little did I know that everything in the world came out of a one-square mile gated complex in Shenzhen, China.

The area is called the Shenzhen Special Economic Zone and it’s an ultra-dense supernova of commerce. Items sold from the zone are shipped out through customs officials and you can’t take a laptop or a phone in or out without proper paperwork. It is a capitalistic game preserve designed to allow ostensibly Communist China to enable ostensibly capitalistic suppliers to do business with the world while taking advantage of China’s low wages and vast populace.

Compared to the other factory I saw, this area looks more like Switzerland than China. Aside from the smoky pall covering the hills surrounding the park and the gray functionaries behind the customs desk in the building I was in, you could be anywhere. I was led up to a modern Western office with Chinese English-speakers manning the doors. A female guard saluted us as we passed. She can’t have been more than twenty, and her uniform was baggy on her small frame. This was a secure area. Nothing left or came in without authorization. There is no such thing as pilferage here.

A word on these factories. Most of the factories are built in similar economic zones and they provide everything for their workers. There are canteens, dorms, and education centers (although English isn’t usually on the menu). One factory, Foxconn, has an estimated 350,000 employees in its Shenzhen campus. To put this into perspective, one of the largest state schools I know, Ohio State, has 60,347 students. Microsoft has about 93,000 employees.

Another metric: Foxconn’s Shenzhen campus kills 4,000 pigs a day for the cafeteria. That’s a lot of pork.

There was no way I was getting into the factories, but I saw the next best thing. When you order something online, say a USB adapter or set of headphones, or even a laptop – the factory makes it immediately. It’s like ordering a burger at McDonald’s. Sometimes it sits around but mostly there’s some underpaid dude who can slap it together in a minute or two. It’s that simple. It’s just in time manufacturing at its finest. Sure some of the stuff they make and store – other commodities, maybe, or smaller, popular items. But there is no expectation that your device exists today. Remember how Dell used to say they made your PC as soon as you ordered it? Well the assumption was that they sourced the parts and put it together. But in this case the device could have feasibly been plastic beads and solder a few minutes before your order.

The manufactured item ends up on a long table staffed by women who place it in the package and send it further down the line. It’s almost always women in these factories, except on some of the lines for larger items like TVs. They place the item in the pre-made box, put in a little instruction card, and send it down the line. The order then moves down to the sealing station. It is cheaper to hire women than to buy a sealing robot, so each and every item is sealed by hand. While this may be different in some factories, it is the Chinese norm. The sheer number of human hands involved in this process is staggering.

The item hits a box and then hits the shipping area. An item made in the morning can be winging its way to you that night and arrive the next day. Another factory I saw was able to source twenty prototype MP3 players for a major retailer in a day, and they arrived in time for a meeting two days later, custom box and all.

This is the new Chinese manufacturing. It is just-in-time, always running, and staffed by humans from stem to stern. Again, my experience is limited to a few factories within a small area but this jibes with explanations I’ve heard elsewhere.

Now the question is this: If these factories have thousands of people, why aren’t there leaks? And when they do occur, why do they happen? The answer to the first question is that the employees are fiercely loyal to their employer. It is amazingly difficult to lure an employee out of Foxconn to work in another job let along gather intelligence. Work is siloed and everything is kept separate. One factory may make the memory for a new laptop (or iTablet) and another factory will make the screen. The twain will only meet in the just-in-time shipping facility. For example, toy companies may manufacture in the same building but each individual factory is hidden behind a locked wooden door. The guys from Hasbro don’t talk to the Wowwee guys. It just doesn’t happen. To leak is to lose face and risk losing a contract.

So what is happening when things leak? It’s a pump and dump scheme. This happens all the time for news sources based in Taiwan and China. A company can make perhaps a 7 percent profit to manufacture an item for customer A. If that customer is big enough and important enough, however, they will often take a quick risk: they’ll leak the news that they’re making “screens for Apple” or “phones for Motorola” and get a 21 percent uptick in their stock price. The same goes for blurrycam photos of tech. There is no monetary, legal, or personal incentive for a low-ranking employee of these factories to leak the things they are building. They’re not reading blogs all day, nor are they likely to be aware that anyone gives a damn about whatever they’re working on, be it iTablet, Zune phone, or Playstation 4. To them it’s just another item on the assembly line.

The real value comes from the folks higher up with a few thousand shares of the company. We, the neophile gadget lovers, are essentially driving the pump and dump scams.

And so the cycle continues. We order something, it comes. We want to see new things, someone provides. Everything is just hours away.

Next: The Ex-pats
This article is part of a series about manufacturing in China. Read more parts here.

Source: CrunchGear | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:00 pm

TJX Hacker to Plead Guilty to Credit Card Breach

Admitted TJX hacker Albert Gonzalez agrees to plead guilty to charges that he hacked into Heartland Payment Systems and other companies. The agreement will bring to a close all charges brought against him in three states.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:00 pm

Super Strength Substance Approaching Human Trials

kkleiner writes "You may remember Liam Hoekstra, the baby apparently born without the myostatin gene, and consequently sporting 40% more skeletal muscle than his peers. Using gene therapy, NCH scientists have been able to get follistatin (a myostatin blocker) to promote phenomenal muscle growth in macaque monkeys. NCH is now working with the FDA to perform the preliminary steps necessary for a human clinical trial. Is this the prelude to a super-strength gene therapy for all of us?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:55 pm

Google bundles coverage from NY Times, Wash. Post (AP)

AP - Internet search leader Google Inc. is teaming up with The New York Times and The Washington Post in its latest attempt to help out the ailing newspaper industry.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:54 pm

Chinese DSis come with Nintendogs

FROM GAMERTELL - Chinese DSis will come with 1,000 DSi Points to spend on DSiWare and a preinstalled copy of Nintendogs when they launch on December 15, 2009.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:51 pm

Ubicom Expands Long-Term Relationship With Denali by Adopting Its Predictable Protocol Verification Solution

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:42 pm

Projector-packin’ LG Expo gets delayed

If you were gettin’ all antsy in the pantsies about yesterday’s launch of the LG Expo and it’s detachable projector accessory, you might be a bit bewildered right now. A full day later, AT&T’s still showing no sign of the handset.

WMExperts did a bit of digging, and found out that the Expo has been delayed for at least “a few days” due to shipping issues.

When this sort of stuff happens, it’s generally because a cargo ship coming from Asia had to turn around for one reason or another, or otherwise never left the port. There’s no word just yet on a new ETA for the handset – we’ll let you know if that changes.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:39 pm

Google Chrome browser adds extension gallery and BETA for Mac/Linux users

Section: Web, Web Browsers

Google’s Chrome web browser made two big splashes today: a beta version of Chrome has been released for Mac and Linux computers, and an Extensions Gallery has been launched to distribute browser add-ons. Sadly, the extensions work only on the Windows and Linux editions of Chrome, but the gallery is stocked with new browser enhancements. Options for bookmark syncing across computers, integrated notifications for Google products, Twitter support, lyrics search, and much more are now available with the roughly 350 most popular add-ons.

As a long time Firefox user and a Google Chrome fan, I’m very excited to see the addition of extensions. My unwillingness to part with many of the Greasemonkey scripts and Firefox add-ons I’ve become accustom to is the only thing keeping me from using Chrome full-time, so it’s encouraging to see the progress. After just 5 minutes of browsing the gallery, I’ve already found a number of extensions that perform similar functions to my cherished Firefox add-ons.

Mac users will be unable to see the extensions at the moment; however they can finally get a firsthand look at Chrome built with them in mind. Take a look at this official video announcing the beta.

Browse [Google Chrome Extensions Gallery] Download [Google Chrome for Mac] Download [Google Chrome for Linux]

 

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:13 pm

Sonic Solutions to Present at Brigantine Advisors: Tech Trends in Ten ('10) Conference

NOVATO, Calif., Dec. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Sonic Solutions® (Nasdaq: SNIC) today announced that Chief Executive Officer and President, Dave Habiger, will participate in Brigantine Advisors: Tech Trends in Ten ('10) conference on Thursday, December 10, 2009, at 11:30 a.m.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:12 pm

Texas Instruments raises 4Q profit, sales targets (AP)

AP - Texas Instruments Inc. raised its fourth-quarter profit and sales outlook on Tuesday, citing an improving market for chips used in cell phones and other electronic gadgets like hard disk drives and video game consoles.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:11 pm

Questionable "Best Effort" Copyright Enforcement

pmdubs writes "Princeton University Professor Michael Freedman, creator of CoralCDN, discusses how he received around 100 pre-settlement letters in one month from various copyright agencies after invalid BitTorrent tracker requests were issued through CoralCDN's proxies. Interestingly, the participating agencies made no effort whatsoever to verify that the Coral nodes were actually running BitTorrent, which they weren't! He questions just how much effort agencies take to reduce false positives when it comes to DMCA notices. Considering the credence that network operators give to such notices (they'll often cut your service upon receipt), it would seem that the answer is 'not enough.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Dec 2009 | 4:07 pm

Signature Devices Provides Q3 Unaudited Financials

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Dec. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Signature Devices, Inc. (Pink Sheets: SDVI) (www.signaturedevices.com) and its subsidiary Graffiti Entertainment, Inc.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:56 pm

Services Tailor Apps for Small Businesses - Wall Street Journal

Sky News

Services Tailor Apps for Small Businesses Wall Street Journal Barbara Heinrich says she' isn't computer-savvy, but last month the owner of Local Motion, a clothing boutique in Minneapolis, went online and built her own mobile-phone application. It was worth a try, she figured, considering how ... Why Apple Won't Clean Up App Store User ReviewsPC World How the iPhone Could Reboot EducationWired News Game makers: Apple still the gatekeeper of successVentureBeat Macworld -BusinessWeek -Washington Post all 416 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:50 pm

Target’s retro toys holiday gift cards

FROM GAMERTELL - OK, so this year’s high-tech holiday gift cards are arguably lower tech than previous years but they are still kinda cool…
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:49 pm

Mozilla Thunderbird 3 Released

supersloshy writes Today Mozilla released Thunderbird 3. Many new features are available, including Tabs and enhanced search features, a message archive for emails you don't want to delete but still want to keep, Firefox 3's improved Add-ons Manager, Personas support, and many other improvements. Download here."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:48 pm

AT&T App Invites iPhone Owners to Report Network Problems

AT&T iPhone customers are more familiar than anyone with network problems ranging from spotty 3G coverage to dropped calls. To pin down the areas of network weaknesses, AT&T has released an iPhone app inviting customers to report issues directly from the problematic area.

Called “Mark the Spot,” the free app allows you to choose from five issues: dropped calls, failed calls, no coverage, data failure or poor voice quality. You can also select how often this issue occurs in this area: once, seldom, often or always. After users report a problem, AT&T sends a text message thanking them for the feedback.

“Feedback from customers via AT&T Mark the Spot, combined with data from more than 964,000 miles of drive testing conducted by an independent third-party source, will enable us to most quickly and effectively identify trends and maximize the impact of our ongoing network investment,” said John Donovan, AT&T’s chief technology officer, in a statement. “We encourage all customers to download and use the app.”

Mark the Spot is a neat premise that indicates AT&T acknowledges its network has its woes, but there’s no way to know whether this app will improve anything. That’s because this is a crowdsourcing project, so we’ll see positive results only if users report accurate data. So do everyone a favor and answer honestly, won’t you?

Download Link [iTunes]

See Also:

• Wired.com’s iPhone 3G Survey Reveals Network Weaknesses
• AT&T Addresses Network Challenges, iPhone’s MMS Delay in Video …
• AT&T Rolls out Wireless Upgrades in SF Bay Area

(Thanks, Seth!)

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:37 pm

5 top publishers plan rival to Kindle format (AP)

AP - Five of the nation's largest publishers of newspapers and magazines are teaming up to challenge Amazon.com Inc.'s Kindle electronic-book reader with their own technology that would display in color and work on a variety of devices.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:35 pm

Google releases Chrome browser for Macintosh computers (AFP)

AFP - Google on Tuesday released a version of its Chrome Web browser for Macintosh computers in a challenge to Safari software Apple offers users of its machines.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:08 pm

Barley + Space = Space Beer

Sapporo's new Space Barley beer is made from barley that spent five months in space.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

Chrome for Mac and Linux Is Here. Be Excited

Beta releases of the Mac and Linux versions of Google's Chrome browser have arrived. Here's why you should go download Chrome right now.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 3:00 pm

PS3 optional 3.15 firmware update coming soon

FROM GAMERTELL - Sony is going to release PS3 firmware 3.15 very soon. The optional update will include two new features, a data transfer utility that will allow you to move data from one PS3 to another and minis game compatibility.
MORE »

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 2:33 pm

Hands on with Mac Chrome beta: incomplete but looking good - Ars Technica

PC World

Hands on with Mac Chrome beta: incomplete but looking good Ars Technica Chrome for Mac and Linux are officially in beta after months of developer builds. Does the browser hold up against Safari on the Mac? We think it definitely could, but there are still a number of improvements to be made. We've also got a couple of ... Google Releases Chrome For Mac, LinuxInformationWeek When Google Said No Extensions For Mac Yet, They Meant ItWashington Post First Look: Chrome for MacMacworld The Money Times -Macworld UK -CNET News all 259 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Dec 2009 | 2:06 pm

Get up to $400 cash back from AT&T - U-verse campaign heats up

Section: Video, Communications, Gadgets / Other, Household, Web, Websites

For online orders only, AT&T is offering up to $400 via a AT&T Reward Visa Prepaid card on orders for a combination of services. The offer starts today and ends 12/31/09.

Here is the reward system:

• $200 Reward Card for U-verse service (U200 or higher)
• $350 Reward Card for U-verse plus Internet service (U200 and higheralong with High Speed Internet)
• $400 Reward Card for U-verse plus Internet plus Voice (U200 and higher,High Speed Internet Pro or higher, and Unlimited Voice)

If you jump through these hoops, then AT&T will provide redemption details within 4 weeks of activiation. After redemption, the customer will recieve the cards in 4-6 weeks. It could well be March by the time many customers recieve the Visa card. The Visa cards expire in 90 days from issuance.

More card caveats

Customers should note the card cannot be used at automated gasoline pumps or for cash withdrawl. The cards cannot be used to purchase AT&T products or services in some states but even the terms and conditions don’t identify which states prevent purchases on this card for “regulated services”.

While the obstacles to clear seem many, it is clear AT&T best deals can be found online.

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 2:02 pm

EF Johnson Technologies, Inc. Named on Contract from U.S. Internal Revenue Service

Company to provide P25 compliant two-way radios IRVING, Texas, Dec. 8 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- EF Johnson Technologies, Inc. (Nasdaq: EFJI) today announced that it has been named as one of several contractors under a contract issued by the U.S.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 2:00 pm

Gladstone, Mich., Residents to Benefit From Verizon Wireless Network Enhancement

GLADSTONE, Mich., Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:33 pm

TI updates fourth-quarter 2009 business outlook

DALLAS, Dec.
Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:30 pm

A stroll around Pompeii, courtesy of Google’s Street View

If you can't be one of the 2.5 million tourists who wander through the streets of Pompeii every year, you now have another option: Google's Street View. Pompeii on Street View The 360-degree panoramic street-level service debuted last week in ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:27 pm

Paper Batteries Could Power Almost Anything

Take ordinary office paper, a little carbon and a dash of nanomaterials, and you have a perfectly functional battery.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:15 pm

Rocketship revealed: 8-seater to head to weightlessness and peer at Earth curves

Section: Gadgets / Other, Lifestyle, Transportation

Fancy-man Sir Richard Branson unveiled what his rocketship will look like in the Mojave Dessert yesterday.  Branson outlined an aggressive testing and launch plan that sees the rocket prototyped and rigorously tested next year and commercial trips beginning as soon as 2011.  Each seat will cost $200,000.

Branson says each passenger will get to experience the thrill of space flight.  This includes six minutes of weightlessness and enough altitude to see the curvature of the Earth.  Branson and his family have committed to be among the first trip’s passengers.

Branson hopes to put thousands of passengers into space, mocking NASA for only getting 480 people in space for billions of dollars spent.  Branson already has $480 million dollars from prospective customers waiting to ditch this rock.

The ship will reach altitude using a booster craft plus it’s own engines to get them the full 65 miles about the earth’s surface.  It is estimated that the trip will last 2 and a half hours.  Despite the complexity of a flight such as this, Branson says, ‘We’re literally hoping to send thousands of people into space over the next couple of years. We want to make sure that we build a spaceship that is 100- percent safe.’

The line forms to the right.

Read [monstersandcritics]

Photo credit: Yahoo!

 

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 1:06 pm

The Top iPhone Apps of 2009: Apple’s Picks and Yours

With 2010 around the corner, Apple has compiled its favorite iPhone apps of 2009 as well as the year’s best sellers. Now Wired wants to know what your favorites are.

In its iTunes Store, Apple is featuring a page titled “Rewind 2009: Apps” displaying this year’s iPhone showstoppers. The lists are divided into apps and games.

Apple’s favorite games include Canabalt (a side scroller),  Sally’s Spa (a productivity roleplaying game) and Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor (a spider simulator). Apps that made the cut include I Am T-Pain (a voice transformer), Leaf Trombone: World Stage (a musical instrument) and ConvertBot (a unit converter).

As for the year’s top sellers, some of the most popular games were Flight Control (an air-traffic control simulator), Cooking Mama (a cooking action game) and Wheel of Fortune (uh, you know). Best-selling apps include SlingPlayer Mobile (a TV viewer), Pocket God (a free-form revenge fantasy)  and the Moron Test (to double check if you’re a moron).

Clap, clap, clap. Some mighty fine apps made it to the iTunes page, but we’re more interested in what Wired readers chose as their favorite iPhone apps of 2009.

Submit and vote on your choices in the Reddit-powered widget below; we’ll follow up with a post compiling your top 10 to honor your picks. We’ve submitted three of our favorites just to get the conversation started: BeeJive (an IM app), Words With Friends (an online Scrabble game) and Tweetie 2 (a Twitter app).

Rewind 2009: Apps [iTunes Link, Apple]

Submit and vote on your favorite iPhone apps of 2009!

Submit your favorite iPhone apps/games of 2009.

While you can submit as many apps as you want, you can only submit one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.

Back to top

See Also:

• 10 Most Awesome iPhone Apps of 2008
• Wired.com Readers’ Best iPhone Dongleware Inventions
• Top 10 iPhone Games, as Voted by Wired.com Readers
• Five iPhone Apps That Replace Bike Hardware

Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:55 pm

Top iPhone Apps of 2009: Apple's Picks and Yours

Apple is listing its favorite iPhone apps of 2009 as well as this year's best sellers. We want to hear what your favorites are, too. Submit your suggestions in Wired.com's Reddit widget.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:55 pm

iTunes Rewind Highlights The Best Apps Of 2009

With Christmas looming, the post-holiday spike of app sales is just weeks away. As new iPhone owners find their way into the App Store for the first time, they’ll be looking for the best of the best to throw their money at – and Apple’s ready to cash in.

Earlier today Apple released “iTunes Rewind 2009″, a list of the top selling and most loved applications of the year.

They’ve broken things down in four ways: Best of Games, Best of Apps, Top Selling Games, and Top Selling Apps. The “Best of” categories appear to be staff picks, rather than a list of the apps with the best user ratings – which, considering that the ratings system is endlessly being gamed, is probably a good thing.

Here’s how it all worked out:

Best Selling Games of 2009:

• The Sims, EA
• The Oregon Trail, Gameloft
• Need For Speed, EA
• Madden NFL 10, EA
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour, EA
• Assassins Creed, Gameloft
• Flight Control, Firemint
• Cooking Mama, Taito
• Civilization Revolution, 2k Games
• Wheel Of Fortune, Sony
• Peggle, Popcap
• Sonic The Hedgehog, Sega
• Let’s Golf, Gameloft
• 2XL Supercross, 2XL Games
• Real Racing, Firemint
• Sally’s Spa, Games Cafe
• Stick Wars, John E. Hartzog
• Ragdoll Blaster, Backflip Studios
• Deer Hunter 3d, Glu
• Fast & Furious, I-Play
• Metal Gear Solid, Konami
• F.A.S.T, SGN
• Zenonia, Gamevil
• 3d Brick Breaker, Digital Chocolate
• Bookworm, Popcap
• Modern Combat: Sandstorm, Gameloft
• Doom Resurrection, id

As you can tell by looking at the top of the list, EA and Gameloft absolutely dominated the App Store this year. Few other developers have more than one item in the top sellers; EA and Gameloft both have 4.

Best Selling Apps of 2009:

• MobileNavigator North America, Navigon
• MBL.com at Bat, MLB
• Textfree, Pinger
• TomTom US & Canada, TomTom
• Golfshot, Shotzoom
• Slingplayer Mobile
• ColorSplash, Pocket Pixels
• PocketGod, Bolt Creative
• Quickoffice Mobile Office Suite, Quickoffice
• The Moron Test, DistinctDev
• I Am T-Pain, Smule
• Red Laser, Occipital
• Camera Zoom 2, Kenditech
• AppBox Pro, ALLABOUTAPPS
• iBird Explorer, Mitch Waite
• Documents To Go, DataViz
• ViewTi Golf, ViewTi
• Emoji Icons, SpiceLoop
• AIM, AOL
• Weather Channel Max, Weather Channel Interactive
• Wolfenstein 3d, ID
• PicFree, Pinger
• Proloquo 2 Go, AssistiveWare
• CNN Mobile, CNN
• Camera Genius, CodeGoo
• MotionX GPS Drive, MotionX
• FlightTrack Pro, Mobiata
• Family Guy, Fox Mobile
• iSoda, Hottrix
• ESPN Radio, ESPN

Unlike the Top Games list, there aren’t any repeat winners here. It appears that we’re looking at the top grossing apps, not necessarily the apps that sold the most units. Note the appearance of Proloquo2Go, a $190 text-to-speech system for people who have difficulty speaking.

Best Games of 2009:

• Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor, Tiger Style
• Real Racing, Firemint
• ZENONIA, Gamevil
• Ravensword: The Fallen King, Chillingo
• Earth Vs. Moon, Low Five Games
• Sally’s Spa, Games Cafe
• Ragdoll Blaster, Backflip Studios
• Canabalt, Semi Secret
• Blades of Fury, Gameloft
• Doom Classic, iD
• Sway, Illusion Labs
• geoDefense, Critical Thought
• Flight Control, Firemint
• Alive 4-ever, meridian
• Fantastic Contraption, inXile
• Samurai: Way of the Warrior, Mad Finger Games
• Backbreaker Football, NaturalMotion
• Meteor Blitz, Alley Labs
• Rolando 2, ngmoco
• Star Hogs, IUGO
• Paper Toss, Backflip
• Boost 3d, Jonathan Lanis
• Doodle Jump, Lima Sky
• Zen Bound, Chillingo
• Stick Wars, John E. Hartzog
• Eliminate Pro, ngmoco
• Tap Tap Revenge, Tapulous
• Call Of Duty: World At War: Zombies, Activision
• iBomber, Cobra Mobile
• Jet Car Stunts, True Axis

The contrast in Apple’s favorites vs. the top sellers is interesting. Where as Gameloft and EA dominate the top sales lists, only Gameloft even shows up here, with Blades Of Fury. It seems like Apple made it a point to highlight the smaller dev teams as much as possible.

Best Apps Of 2009:

• ReelDirector, Nexvio
• Magellan Roadmate 2010 North America, Magellan
• Jamie Oliver’s 20 minute meals, Zolmo
• I Am T-Pain, Smule
• CBS Sports: Live College Games, CBS
• Sketchbook Mobile, Autodesk
• Star Walk, Vito Technology
• Convertbot, Tapbots
• Leaf Trombone: World Stage, Smule
• Pano, Debacle Software
• Color Splash, Pocket Pixels
• (SHAZAM)Red, Shazam Entertainment
• SmackTalk!, Marcus Satellite
• Awesome Note, BRID
• Mathemagics – Mental Math Tricks, Blue Lightning Labs
• Tweetie 2, atebits
• Musée du Louvre, Musée du Louvre
• Flight Update Pro, Silverware Software
• CNBC Real Time, NBC Universal
• ESPN ScoreCenter, ESPN
• Vintage Video Maker, MacPhun
• Storyboard Composer, Cinemek
• Fandango Movie, Fandango
• Beejive IM with Push, Beejive
• Zipcar, Zipcar
• Credit Card Terminal, Inner Fence
• NBA League Pass Mobile, MobiTV
• NearestWiki, acrossair
• Golfshot, Shotzoom
• Mover, Infinite Labs

What do you think – any apps on the top lists that you wouldn’t have expected? Any that you expected to see that didn’t make it?

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:49 pm

Bionic Fingers Give Amputees New Dexterity

British company Touch Bionics has created the world’s first powered bionic fingers that can be used by patients with missing fingers.

ProDigits, as the device is called, can help its users bend, touch, pick up and point — reflecting almost all the key functions of a natural hand. The prosthetic fingers are for those who have a partial hand, where the absence of fingers is due either to congenital anomalies or to amputation, says Touch Bionics.

Maria Iglesias, a former concert pianist from Spain, is among the first patients to get the custom-made mechanical fingers. The bionic fingers cost between $57,000 and $73,000. Touch Bionics already has a prosthetic arm called i-LIMB that has become a part of more than 3,000 patients.

Advanced prosthetic arms are an active area of research, as scientists and doctors try to find ways to replicate the functionality of the human arm. The human hand is difficult to create artificially, because it is not just about movement. The hand also offers feedback about the texture and nature of the object. Conventional prosthetic arms have been little more than hooks with fingers that are fused together.

Touch Bionic’s ProDigits fingers help solve one part of the problem. For some patients, not having fingers or opposable thumbs makes small tasks such as holding a fork or a cup difficult and frustrating. ProDigits’ artificial fingers can wiggle independently or come together to form a fist.

Each of the bionic fingers is custom-built. The sockets are designed and fabricated to suit each patient’s specific needs, says the company.

ProDigits are activated either by myoelectric sensors that register muscle signals from the residual finger or palm, or by a pressure-sensitive switch input in the form of a touchpad. The fingers also have a feature that detects when they have closed around an object.

As the video shows, the degree of flexibility that the ProDigits offers is amazing.

For more on prosthetic arms, see our photo gallery featuring prototypes such as a thought-controlled prosthetic arm and an arm powered by a miniature rocket motor.

Photo: Touch Bionics

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:14 pm

Bionic Fingers Give Amputees New Dexterity

A U.K.-based company Touch Bionics has introduced the world's first powered bionic fingers that lets patients with missing digits pick, bend and grip objects again.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:14 pm

CNET gets hands-on with the JooJoo

Section: Computers, Mobile Computers, Gadgets / Other

Yesterday we learned how the CrunchPad was renamed the JooJoo and in turn given a rather large price tag. And aside from the blogoshpere poking fun at both the name and high price, there were many that still seemed curious as to how well the tablet would perform. Unfortunately not everyone has been able to get their hands on just yet. So far we know that pre-orders are set to begin this Friday, but still unclear is when these units will actually ship. That means for now we are going to have to rely on the web for information, and so far it looks like the first (only ?) to get a personal demo is CNET. Just what did they think?

Of course, to really even care what anyone thinks one will have to get past that $499 price tag, which personally is out of my ballpark. But that aside, in a good start, CNET noted that;

“The hardware is slim and pleasing to hold. The screen is gorgeous, and huge, and the plastic back is gently curved.”

But with that, it was also quickly pointed out that this is simply a tablet to browse the web with.

“Also missing: a user-accessible file system and printer drivers. This is one focused device. It browses the Web. That’s it.”

And despite the review having some good things to say about the JooJoo, once again, just like those other comments—it seems to have come down to price in the end.

“If you have money to burn, though, go for it. It’s pleasing to use and will be a great toy for your living room. At least until Apple figures out how to tackle this category.
Like so many other tech gadgets out there, in other words, many people will really want a JooJoo. But I doubt they will pay for it.”

In the meantime, check out the hands-on video (below) and then click through the “Read” link to see the full review.

Read [CNET]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:06 pm

Lightning Strikes Could Help Map Hurricanes

Three-dimensional imaging of lightning bursts may improve forecasting of these deadly storms.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 12:05 pm

Nuance launches Dragon Dictation for iPhone – Get it while it’s free!

Nuance is one of the most important companies in the mobile space, yet few cell phone owners have any idea who they are. You know that T9 feature that lets you blast out texts on your number pad? That’s theirs. If your phone does text-to-voice or voice transcription, that’s probably their technology too.

Nuance’s latest move to take over the mobile world: the iPhone. While they don’t have anything on the iPhone out-of-the-box (yet), they’ve just released an App called “Dragon Dictation”, which lets you speak your texts and emails. Drunk texting just got even easier – well, as long as you’re not slurring too bad.

Here’s how it works: Launch the app, hit the record button, and speak. Once you’re done, they pass the clip through the Dragon NaturallySpeaking engine, and return the transcribed text, which you can push into an SMS, E-mail, or to your clipboard for use with any other app.

The transcription service was more accurate than I would have expected, though not perfect. My harsh Californian (read: non-existent) accent must have been tripping it up – it would nail “Blu-ray” in one sentence, and then miss it the next time. Tapping any word it got wrong presents a list of other words it thinks you may have meant. It seems to work better when you talk at a certain pace; not too fast, and not too slow. Once you find the right cadence, accuracy is pretty solid.

Whether it’s perfect or not, it’s free – for now, at least. Nuance says that the gratis pricing is “for a limited time”, which means you better grab it while it’s hot. Here’s the iTunes link.

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

Source: MobileCrunch | 8 Dec 2009 | 11:39 am

Confirmed: Google Goggles Will Reach Other Platforms - PC World

Joy Online

Confirmed: Google Goggles Will Reach Other Platforms PC World Google's limited launch of its Goggles visual search app has plenty of people wondering when they'll be able to try out the new tool. Google Goggles, released to Android users on Monday, allows you to search on your cell phone simply by snapping ... Hands Off with Google GogglesPC Magazine 3 Reasons Google's Real-Time Search Blows Away BingChannelWeb Google flexes its muscles: Enter the Real-Time webZDNet (blog) InformationWeek -Computerworld -eWeek all 1,114 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 8 Dec 2009 | 11:34 am

Car Catches Fire at Gas Pump

One of the video producers here at Discovery forwarded me a link to a car catching fire at a gas pump. In the video you see the guy fueling, getting in and out of his car and talking on his ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 11:00 am

Exploring a new, more dynamic way of reading news with Living Stories

There's been no shortage of talk recently about the "future of news." Should publishers charge for news online? How do they replace lost sources of revenue such as classified ads? How will accountability journalism endure? And, even more fundamentally, will news survive in the digital era? These are questions we're deeply interested in, and we've been exploring potential solutions. But what's often overlooked in these debates is the nature of the news story itself and the experience of how it's read online. We believe it's just as important to experiment with how news organizations can take advantage of the web to tell stories in new ways — ways that simply aren't possible offline.

While we have strong ideas about how information is experienced on the web, we're not journalists and we don't create content. So over the last few months we've been talking to a number of people to help develop the concept of something that we and some others in the industry call the "living story." Today, on Google Labs, we're unveiling some of the work we've done in partnership with two world-class news organizations: The News York Times and The Washington Post. The result of that experiment is the Living Stories prototype, which features new ways to interact with news and the quality of reporting you've come to expect from the reporters and editors at The Post and The Times. We're excited to learn from this experiment, and hope to eventually make these tools available to any publisher that wants to use them.

The idea behind Living Stories is to experiment with a different format for presenting news coverage online. News organizations produce a wealth of information that we all value; access to this information should be as great as the online medium allows. A typical newspaper article leads with the most important and interesting news, and follows with additional information of decreasing importance. Information from prior coverage is often repeated with each new online article, and the same article is presented to everyone regardless of whether they already read it. Living Stories try a different approach that plays to certain unique advantages of online publishing. They unify coverage on a single, dynamic page with a consistent URL. They organize information by developments in the story. They call your attention to changes in the story since you last viewed it so you can easily find the new material. Through a succinct summary of the whole story and regular updates, they offer a different online approach to balancing the overview with depth and context.

This project sprang from conversations among senior executives at the three companies. We shared thoughts about how the web can work for storytelling, and the Times and Post shared their core journalistic principles. The Living Stories started taking shape over the summer after our engineering and user interface teams spent time in the newsrooms of both papers. We're providing the technology platform, the Times and Post's journalists are writing and editing the stories, and we're continuously collaborating to make the user interface fit with their editorial vision.

Over the coming months, we'll refine Living Stories based on your feedback. We're also looking to develop openly available tools that could aid news organizations in the creation of these pages or at least in some of the features. If you're a news reader, we'd love to hear your thoughts. If you're a news organization, we want to hear your comments on the Living Story format. If you decide to implement this on your site, we would love to hear about that too. At the very least, we hope this collaboration will kick off debate and encourage innovation in how people interact with news online. To learn more about Living Stories, check out the video below.



Posted by Neha Singh, software engineer, and Josh Cohen, senior business product manager

Source: The Official Google Blog | 8 Dec 2009 | 11:00 am

Looking Deeply Into the Distant, Dim Universe

How far is far? And how do you know when you get there? This is not a Dr. Seuss riddle, but a line of investigation being pursued by several international teams of astronomers who have gotten their hands on the ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:21 am

Google Chrome for the holidays: Mac, Linux and extensions in beta

There was nothing more excruciating for me as a kid than seeing the presents pile up under the Christmas tree but knowing that I couldn't open them until Christmas morning. On the Google Chrome team, we've had the same feeling as we've been working to get betas ready for Mac, Linux and extensions. It's been a long time coming, but today we can check the top three items off our users' wish lists.

Google Chrome for Mac (Beta)
We've been working hard to deliver a first-class browser for the Mac — it took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it! We wanted Google Chrome to feel at home on the Mac, so we've focused on uniting our clean, simple design with subtle animations and effects to create a snappy and satisfying browsing experience on OS X. As you might expect, the speed of Google Chrome for Mac is something we're very proud of. If you have a Mac, try installing the beta and see how fast it launches — there's hardly even time for the icon in the dock to bounce!

For more details on this beta release of Google Chrome for Mac, read on in the Google Mac blog or watch this video from one of our engineers, Mike Pinkerton:



Google Chrome for Linux (Beta)
At Google, most engineers use Linux machines, so we certainly heard loud and clear how much they wanted Google Chrome for Linux. Just like Google Chrome for Windows and Mac, we focused on speed, stability and security, but we also wanted a high-performance browser that integrated well with the Linux ecosystem. This includes tight integration with native GTK themes, updates that are managed by the standard system package manager, and many other features that fit in natively with the operating system where possible.

Google Chrome for Linux in various GTK themes

Just as important, we've had quite a bit of help from the open source community. More than 50 open source contributors have worked on Chromium and they've been especially helpful on delivering our Linux version of Google Chrome. For more details on the beta release of Google Chrome for Linux, check out the Chromium blog.

Extensions in Google Chrome for Windows and Linux (Beta)
When we first launched Google Chrome in September 2008, we knew that we wanted to make it easy for you to customize the browser with extensions. We also wanted to make extensions easy to create and maintain, while preserving Google Chrome's speed and stability. Extensions on Google Chrome accomplishes all these goals: they are as easy to create as web pages, easy to install, and each extension runs in its own process to avoid crashing or significantly slowing down the browser.

If you're on a PC or a Linux machine, you can check out more than 300 extensions in the gallery, including a few cool, useful and cute extensions. Extensions aren't quite beta-quality on Mac yet, but you will be able to preview them on a developer channel soon. And if you're a web developer, you can learn more about writing extensions for Google Chrome on the Chromium blog.

Extensions installed on Google Chrome (for PC or Linux)

We hope the betas for Mac, Linux and extensions were some of the things on your wish list this year. We'd like to say thanks to Mac and Linux users who gave our early developer versions of Google Chrome a test drive on these platforms, as well as developers who wrote great extensions for Google Chrome. And in case you're wondering what we'd like for the holidays, we're always eager for feedback — and I wouldn't mind a brand new extension that makes it snow on demand!

Posted by Brian Rakowski, Product Manager

Source: The Official Google Blog | 8 Dec 2009 | 10:00 am

Discouraging news from the distant past

Government scientists looking back to a time when Earth was as warm as it is expected to get by the end of this century have come away with a disquieting conclusion: In the long term, climate may be 30 to ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:59 am

How the iPhone Could Reboot Education

How do you educate a generation of students eternally distracted by the internet, cellphones and video games? Easy. You enable them by handing out free iPhones — and then integrating the gadget into your curriculum.

That’s the idea Abilene Christian University has to refresh classroom learning. Located in Texas, the private university just finished its first year of a pilot program, in which 1,000 freshman students had the choice between a free iPhone or an iPod Touch.

The initiative’s goal was to explore how the always-connected iPhone might revolutionize the classroom experience with a dash of digital interactivity. Think web apps to turn in homework, look up campus maps, watch lecture podcasts and check class schedules and grades. For classroom participation, there’s even polling software for Abilene students to digitally raise their hand.

The verdict? It’s working quite well. 2,100 Abilene students, or 48 percent of the population, are now equipped with a free iPhone. Fully 97 percent of the faculty population has iPhones, too. The iPhone is aiding Abilene in giving students the information they need — when they want it, wherever they want it, said Bill Rankin, a professor of medieval studies who helped plan the initiative.

“It’s kind of the TiVoing of education,” Rankin said in a phone interview. “I watch it when I need it and in ways that I need it. And that makes a huge difference.”

The traditional classroom, where an instructor assigns a textbook, is heading toward obsolescence. Why listen to a single source talk about a printed textbook that will imminently be outdated in a few years? That setting seems stale and hopelessly limited when pitted against the internet, which opens a portal to a live stream of information provided by billions of minds.

“About five years ago my students stopped taking notes,” Rankin said. “I asked, ‘Why are you not taking notes?’ And they said, ‘Why would we take notes on that?…. I can go to Wikipedia or go to Google, and I can get all the information I need.”

Conversely, the problem with the internet is there’s too much information, and it’s difficult to determine which data is valuable.

These are the specific educational problems Abilene is targeting with the iPhone. Instead of standing in front of a classroom and talking for an hour, Rankin instructs his students to use their iPhones to look up relevant information on the fly. Then, the students can discuss the information they’ve found, and Rankin leads the dialogue by helping assess which sources are accurate and useful.

It’s like a mashup of a 1960s teach-in with smartphone technology from the 2000s.

Each participating Abilene instructor is incorporating the iPhone differently into their curriculum. In some classrooms, professors project discussion questions onscreen in a PowerPoint presentation. Then, using polling software that Abilene coded for the iPhone, students can answer the questions anonymously by sending responses electronically with their iPhones. The software can also quickly quiz students to gauge whether they’re understanding the lesson.

Most importantly, by allowing the students to participate in polls anonymously with the iPhone, it relieves them of any social pressure to appear intelligent in front of their peers. If they answer wrong, nobody will know who it was, ridding students of humiliation. And if students don’t understand a lesson, they can ask the teacher to repeat it by simply tapping a button on the iPhone.

“Polling opens up new realms for people for discussion,” said Tyler Sutphen, an ACU sophomore who has participated in the iPhone initiative for a year. “It’s a lot more interactive for those who aren’t as willing to jump up and throw out their answer in class. Instead, you push a button on the iPhone.”

Kasey Stratton, a first-year ACU business student, said her favorite aspect of the iPhone program was how apps are changing the way students interact socially. Many Abilene students use Bump, a free app downloadable through the App Store [iTunes], which enables them to swap e-mails and phone numbers by bumping their iPhones together. Also, the campus’ map app helped her become familiar with the campus quickly when she arrived.

“At ACU it’s like they see [the iPhone] is the way of the future and they might as well take advantage of it,” Stratton said in a phone interview. “They’re preparing us for the real world — not a place where you’re not allowed to use anything.”

Implementing the iPhone program wasn’t easy. In addition to writing custom web apps for the iPhone, the university optimized its campuswide Wi-Fi to support the 2,100 iPhones. Rankin declined to disclose exact figures for money invested in the iPhone program, but he said the initiative only takes up about 1 percent of the university’s annual budget. To offset costs, the university discontinued in-dorm computer labs, since the vast majority of students already own notebooks. Students who opted for iPhones are responsible for paying their own monthly plans with AT&T.

After a successful run, the university plans to continue the iPhone program, with plans to upgrade to new iPhones every two years. Rankin said some UK universities plan to launch similar initiatives as well. In the United States, Stanford doesn’t hand out free iPhones to its students (yet), but it offers an iPhone app called iStanford for students to look up class schedules, the Stanford directory, the campus map and sports news. Stanford also offers a computer science course on iPhone app programming, whose lectures are streamed for free via iTunes.

“For us, it isn’t primarily about the device,” Rankin said. “This is a question of, how do we live and learn in the 21st century now that we have these sorts of connections?…. I think this is the next platform for education.”

See Also:

• From iLightswitch to iBurrito, Stanford Students Concoct iPhone …
• Student Orchestra Performs Music With iPhones
• Apple, Stanford Teaching iPhone Development for Free
• Stanford’s Free iPhone Coding Class Surpasses 1M Downloads …
• Stanford Offers iPhone 101: App Developing Workshop

Photo: Bigarnex/Flickr

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:54 am

How the iPhone Could Reboot Education

A private university in Texas completes the first year of a pilot program in which it hands out free iPhones and iPod Touch devices to its entire freshman class. The goal is to see if, and how, the iPhone can reinvent education.

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:54 am

Party in the Desert, Part 1

You know it’s an unusual day when you wake up to poring rain in the Mojave Desert. About the only people who weren’t happy about it were the folks overseeing the rollout of Virgin Galactic’s first spaceship, the VSS Enterprise ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:29 am

YouTube Microwave Melts Brains While it Melts Food

The microwave oven already looks like a TV set, so why not make it act like one? That’s (almost) exactly what the CastOven does. The working prototype has an LCD screen in the door and is hooked up to a pair of speakers. When set you the timer to nuke some food, it automagically picks a clip from YouTube of around the same length and shows it to you.

The software runs on Adobe Air, and is still running on a PC, but it can’t be long until somebody shrinks it into a chip for real in-oven entertainment. We can’t help but think that this is missing the point of cutting-edge microwave technology, though. Surely the best microwave would be only just big enough to fit in the single thing that anyone ever puts in there — a cup of cold coffee.

Castoven [100kw-sgss]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 9:06 am

Folding Plug System: An Antidote to Britain’s Power Paranoia

Min-Kyu Choi’s redesign of the frankly over-protective, nannying design of the UK power-plug first popped up back in April, and we posted the video of the concept renderings and test models. More than half a year later and Choi’s design, the Folding Plug System, has become a svelte plastic product with a few new twists, both literal and figurative.

The problem with the UK’s three-pronged monster is its unwieldiness. It needs a fat body to house the fuse (inside every plug) and the pattern of the three prongs, all sticking out in the same direction, makes for something that at best rips through any bag it is placed in and at worst provides the perfect painful spike onto which you can stumble on sleepy, nocturnal trip through the house.

Choi’s design keeps this stupid shape when open, but twists and folds into a slim 10mm unit when transported. The new, flat form-factor also means that, when folded, three of these plugs can be lined up like slices of toast in a rack, fitting into an adapter barely larger than a single standard plug. Choi has also added USB charging ports to some of the units which, as chargers take up most of the sockets in a geek’s home, is a space-saver all on its own.

Choi is a student at the Royal College of Art in London, and the Folding Plug System is a graduate project. Somebody needs to make these, and sell them to long-suffering Britons so that they can claim back what will, cumulatively, be millions of cubic feet of space in their homes.

Folding Plug System [Minkyu via Icon Eye]

See Also:

• Fold-Flat Concept Fixes Bulky British Power Plug
• Mysterious Spinning Power Outlet Accepts Any International Plug …
• Smart Plug Could Save You $150 in Electricity
• Clever Power Outlet Incorporates Dual USB Chargers

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:40 am

Boxee Gets a Box, Made By D-Link

Boxee, the free, open-source software that turns a computer or an AppleTV into an internet-connected movie and TV machine, has finally gotten its own hardware home. With the new Boxee Box, the project is ready to stop being just a home-borrowing hermit crab and to move into its own new shell.

Last night, Boxee held a special event at the Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, to announce Boxee Beta, a new, publicly available update to the previously invite-only software. Wired.com’s own Eliot Van Buskirk was there, and you can read all about the new Boxee features over at our sister blog Epicenter. If you want to know about the Box, you’re in the right place.

The Boxee Box is made by D-Link, and comes in the form of a rather fetching truncated cube which appears to be sinking into the desktop. The innards are still a mystery, but as Boxee already runs just fine on the underpowered Apple TV, something like the lowly Atom chips should do just fine. As this is custom hardware to run a single piece of software, the actual specs almost don’t matter.

What is important is what is on the outside, and that we do know. Video comes out through an HDMI connector, and you get optical digital audio-out along with regular composite audio. Ethernet is provided for the vital network connection, and storage comes by way of a pair of USB ports and an SD card slot.

The Boxee Box will be on show at CES in Las Vegas next month, and the new public beta of the free Boxee software will be launched on January 7th, 2010. The box will cost around $200 when it gets into shops.

The Boxee Beta [Boxee Blog]

The Boxee Box [D-Link]

See Also:

• Boxee Unveils Public Beta, 'Boxee Box' Hardware
• Boxee's Software Gets a Box … Sorta
• Hulu Videos Return to Boxee (Sort of)
• Hulu on Boxee: Now You See it, Now You Don't

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 8:10 am

Apple Pulls 1,000 Apps After Developer Scam

Apple has sent a clear message to any developers who try to game its iTunes App Store: Software developer Molinker has been kicked out, along with over 1000 of its iPhone application

Source: Wired: Gadgets | 8 Dec 2009 | 7:11 am

Apple Expels 1,000 Apps From Store After Developer Scam

Apple has sent a clear message to any developers who try to game its iTunes App Store. Software developer Molinker has been kicked out, along with more than 1,000 of its iPhone applications.

The Chinese developer had, according to some estimates, 1,000-plus applications in the store, most of which were copycat knockoffs of existing applications. When the friend of writers at the iPhoneography photography blog saw these rather poor applications consistently scoring 5-star reviews, they got suspicious. Some investigation showed that Molinker’s applications were getting many top ratings and almost nothing in the 2-to-4-star range. In fact, the only other ratings were often 1-star, and likely the only truthful feedback on the apps’ pages.

iPhoneography wrote a long letter to Apple’s marketing boss, Phil Schiller, and posited that Molinker was giving out promotional codes — essentially free copies of the applications — in return for these 5-star reviews. In almost all cases, these reviews were poorly written, and came from customers who almost exclusively reviewed just Molinker applications.

This scam was so effective that the applications regularly rose to the tops of charts. One, called ColorMagic, even made it into the Staff Favorites section of the store (which brings some doubt as to whether these are actually staff picks at all).

After a week of typical Apple silence, iPhoneography wrote again, and received a reply direct from Schiller: “Yes, this developer’s apps have been removed from the App Store and their ratings no longer appear either.”

So what, you say? Some dodgy developer got its entire portfolio chucked down the memory hole, and the App Store continues as if Molinker had never existed. First, the scale of this purging is huge: 1,000 applications represents almost 1 percent of the entire App Store offering. This alone shows that Apple is happy to do whatever it takes to keep its house clean.

It also shows the power that Apple has over those that sell in its exclusive marketplace. Sure, Molinker was caught cheating, and punished, but Apple could pull the same trick on any developer, for any reason. We don’t think that it would, but iPhone developers are a nervous bunch as it is, rubbing on rabbits’ feet and crossing their fingers as their creations make their way through a fickle and seemingly arbitrary approval process.

And what about the customers? We doubt that Molinker will be refunding all the money it has made selling the applications (plus 30 percent on top that went to Apple, and is non-returnable). This means that, at best, these customers can keep using their now-banned apps until a future OS update breaks them. Perhaps, though, they should have bought better applications in the first place?

This is the key. Because there is no clear way to try-before-you buy, the shareware model that works so well for computers, the ratings are absurdly important to choosing an application. Molinker’s scam, then, is almost a symptom of the App Store setup itself. Can Apple actually be blamed for the rise of the ratings scamsters?

Read what others think:

Apple investigates possible US AppStore ratings scam (iPhoneography)

Breaking News: Molinker expelled from the AppStore (iPhoneography)

Apple kicks prolific developer out of iTunes shop (The Register)

Apple comes down hard on one developer - bans 1000 apps (Times Online)

Ratings Scam Gets Almost 1 % of App Store Pulled [Gizmodo]

Source: Wired: Gadget Lab | 8 Dec 2009 | 6:48 am

Feminine Appeal Can Be a Curse (for Fruit Flies)

The most attractive female fruit flies can be harassed by males to the point where it inhibits feeding.
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:21 am

NASA Cooks up Ingredients for Life

How does life take hold in the vacuum of space?
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 8 Dec 2009 | 5:00 am

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