Ranbaxy launches skin-care drug in India

Purging the Queen's English of "Tweet," "App," and "Sexting" [Voices]

By Nate Anderson, Senior Editor, Ars Technica

Using an app to tweet about sexting? One university wants you to watch your language.

Lake Superior State University, though no doubt a fine institution of higher learning, doesn’t have big name recognition. But it does have one annual PR stunt created by the school’s public relations director back in 1975: a “word banishment” list for the year that just ended.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Kill Your Web 2.0 Self–Or Change It? (VIDEO) [Voices]

By Jose Antonio Vargas, Technology and Innovations editor, Huffington Post

In retrospect, what we just left was the decade of the rapid, revolutionizing rise of the “Me-on-Web” generation. That’s why it’s called YouTube and MySpace. There’s a reason why Apple (AAPL) banked on a line of I-centered (iPod, iPhone, iTunes, soon-to-be iSlate or iTablet or i-whatchamacallit) digital lifestyle products.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Tomorrow Is National Book Burning Day; Thank Your Friendly Entertainment Industry Lobbyists [Voices]

By Mike Masnick, Editor, Techdirt

January 1st of each year should be National Public Domain Day, when many different creative works enter the public domain, where they can be made useful. In years past, it was a regular occurrence as tons of creative works went into the public domain each year.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Virtual Reality is Coming of Age [Voices]

By Alexander Walters, Journalist and Blogger, Guardian.co.uk

I’m standing outside a branch of Diesel and a colourfully dressed man is dancing the robot in front of me like Peter Crouch on steroids. Browsing through the items on offer in the window, I spot a pair of jeans that I like the look of.

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Enel Green Power, Sharp and STMicroelectronics Sign Agreement for the Largest Photovoltaic-Panel Manufacturing Plant in Italy

A Data Explosion Remakes Retailing [Voices]

By Steve Lohr, Technology Correspondent, New York Times

Most people think of the grand challenges in computing as big science projects, like simulating nuclear explosions or protein folding. But with the holiday shopping season just ended, consider another: retail marketing.

Retailing is emerging as a real-world incubator for testing how computer firepower and smart software can be applied to social science — in this case, how variables like household economics and human behavior affect shopping.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Bam! Avatar Hits $1 Billion In Ticket Sales In 17 Days, Already No. 4 All Time Movie

Bam! Avatar Hits $1 Billion In Ticket Sales In 17 Days, Already No. 4 All Time Movie

James Cameron will shortly be responsible for the two highest grossing films of all time. After just 17 days Avatar has gathered over $1 billion in gross ticket sales, placing it fourth all time after Titanic ($1.8 billion), The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($1.12 billion) and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest ($1.07 billion). At $1.02 billion through Sunday, Avatar will shortly jump from no. 4 to no. 2.

The box office amount is fueled by 3D and IMAX ticket sales, which are more expensive than regular movies. It has brought in $352.1 million domestically and $670.2 million internationally. $66.4 million has come in from IMAX theaters.

We are unabashed fans of the movie – see my review of Avatar here. I’ve now seen it three times in 3D, but haven’t seen in in IMAX yet.

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

Civil rights advocate using text messages to thwart racist Sheriff

D-Link Showcases Next-Generation Digital Home With 'Link Your Life' Theme at CES

Sunnect AP501 Advanced Protection Digital Door Lock Receives the Consumers Digest Best Buy Award in Electronic Keypad Deadbolts

Net Users In Belarus May Soon Have To Register

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

How to Make an iPhone App

Are You Receiving SMS Messages From 2016?

World's Tallest Building To Open Monday

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

AppMakr Transforms App Store Landscape, Enables Anyone To Make Their Own iPhone App

Every once in a while, a startup comes around with a product that we not only cover, but actually want to use ourselves. PointAbout, a Washington, DC-based self-funded startup, has done just that. AppMakr is absolutely ridonkculous. Basically, AppMakr allows you to create your own iPhone app – for $199. You can include feeds from any RSS-enabled website, and the apps are completely native. Your app is published by PointAbout, AppMakr’s parent company, straight to Apple. If you want it published under your own name or Apple’s publishers license, spend $499. It is an extremely simple product and doesn’t help anyone create complex non-RSS-enabled apps, but it seems that PointAbout has democratized app development in a way that hasn’t been done before.

For any MobileCrunch reader (and readers of our sister and parent blogs), AppMakr is offering 1,000 coupons. Use the code “TECHCRUNCH” to get $150 off the cost of making an app (bringing the price to $49). Visit www.AppMakr.com and use the coupon at checkout.

I was skeptical when I first tried AppMakr: it’s common for products like this to be clunky, and to provide the user with too many options. Surprisingly, AppMakr was extremely well done and easy to use. The downside, of course, is that you don’t have that many options for what goes into your application, and it really does serve a limited purpose. For a blogger like me, it’s great, but you can’t use it to create even the simplest of games or anything like that.

To build your own app, you go on AppMakr.com and register for an account. Then you title your app (we titled it “MobileCrunch”). It automatically populates a list of suggested RSS feeds for you. It correctly found MobileCrunch’s RSS feed, Twitter feed, YouTube channel and Vimeo channel. You can select whichever ones you want to be in your app. Then, you can custom-make icons, splash-screens and headers. AppMakr searches Google image search to find suggested images for you – or you can upload your own. Finally, you have options for generating revenue (such as advertising via AdMob) through your app.

It took me just 10 minutes to create my own app, which is impressive. The app is native, too, and doesn’t use Webkit, which is great for user experience because the app stores content on your iPhone for offline reading.

While you are crafting an application via AppMakr, you can also test it on the fly. Every time you make a change, AppMakr.com’s engine shows the change on a mock iPhone on the righthand side of your browser. This lets you test your app and check whether it actually does what you want it to. Furthermore, you can download the app to your iPhone and test it there as well.

All of the apps are packaged the same way and there is no WYSIWYG interface to move buttons around or change the user experience. This also means all AppMakr-made apps will look the same, which is a bit of a problem if a large number of people start using it.

AppMakr has been in beta for quite some time, and during their beta, they’ve managed to attract some tech heavyweights as users. Guy Kawasaki has 12 apps on the store via AppMakr [iTunes link], and Seth Godin has made his own app as well [iTunes link].

AppMakr’s parent company, PointAbout, has been creating custom iPhone apps for companies for 1.5 years, says co-Founder Daniel Odio. They’ve got 15+ employees and are profitable, but felt like there was a huge opportunity to enable anyone to create their own app. As such, they’ve worked hard on developing AppMakr, and even use it for their own custom internal projects. Daniel says that a custom iPhone app can cost anywhere from $50,000-100,000, so they feel that $199 for an iPhone app is a major upgrade.

PointAbout is based in Washington, DC, and has just opened a new office. They are providing office space for free for entrepreneurs in the DC metro area, so feel free to visit their website to find out more.

One significant problem with AppMakr is that it only exacerbates the iTunes App overload, and encourages people (notice I no longer have to say “developers”) to flood the App Store. It seems like someone could easily create hundreds of garbage apps and generate a cash cow business on the App Store. Of course, that is again up to the users – the same thing could be said of Blogger enabling anyone to create a garbage website or YouTube letting anyone put up crappy videos.

The bottom line is: it no longer costs $50,000+ to create an iPhone app, and you don’t need to be a developer to create one. For $199, AppMakr can do it for you. Oh, and if you’re a TechCrunch fan, don’t forget: use the code “TECHCRUNCH” at checkout and the first 1,000 users will spend just $49 creating their own iPhone app.

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

The $199 tablet according to Freescale - CNET News

TechShout! (blog)

The $199 tablet according to Freescale CNET News Freescale Semiconductor has designs on new "smartbook" tablet computers and to prove it it's rolling out a second-generation reference design at the Consumer Electronics Show. To say that tablet concepts are all the rage right now is ... Freescale takes aim at tablet computer marketReuters Freescale Announces Smartbook/Tablet PrototypePC Magazine Freescale to take on the smartbook marketThe Money Times Financial Times -I4U -The Tech Herald all 54 news articles »

Lenovo Unveils New AMD-Powered Business Laptops - PC World

Reuters

Lenovo Unveils New AMD-Powered Business Laptops PC World With its line of consumer PCs slated for rollout at the Consumer Electronics Show later this week, Lenovo has chosen to unveil its latest line-up of business computers on Monday. Ranging from the new ThinkPad Edge series for small ... Hands On: The Lenovo ThinkPad X100e NetbookPC Magazine Lenovo to Use AMD Chips in New ThinkPad ModelsWall Street Journal Lenovo Thinkpad Edge Debuts At CES 2010I4U VentureBeat -Reuters -News & Observer all 78 news articles »

Putting Arrandale to the Test - PC Magazine

Legit Reviews

Putting Arrandale to the Test PC Magazine We ran the new Intel mobile processors through our benchmark tests, and tell you how they stack up to both their predecessors and the competition. by Cisco Cheng Intel's debut at the Consumer Electronics Show of its new mobile processors (codenamed ... Intel To Unveil 32nm Processors At CES 2010ITProPortal Intel Core i5-661 ReviewNeoseeker Intel Westmere 32nm & Clarkdale Core i5-661 ReviewHard OCP CNET News -FiringSquad -ComputerShopper.com all 39 news articles »

Lenovo Unveils New AMD-Powered Business Laptops (PC World)

The Dark Side of the Late 2009 M&A Surge

With the year—and decade—coming to a close, the business press has been awash with stories about just how lousy the ‘00s were. As Paul Krugman details in the New York Times, it was a decade with a tiny amount of job creation, and the first decade on record where private-sector jobs shrunk. The typical family got no economic boost at all. And when the volatility rollercoaster ended there was also no appreciation in home prices and zero gains on stocks.

That pain was felt by venture capitalists as well. I’ve argued for a while now that once the gains from 1999 and 2000 fall off the ten-year index of VC returns, we’re going to be looking at an industry that has returns at or below the S&P 500. Given we’re coming out of a “decade of zero,” that’s a pretty bad thing. Especially for an asset class that is (supposed to) take huge risks in the name of potentially outsized returns.

Dow Jones VentureSource is releasing its year-end liquidity numbers for 1999 this morning and no surprise—it’s just another data point nail in the coffin.

At a high level you can put a good spin on the facts: In the fourth quarter acquisitions rebounded mightily. Public companies snapped up some 86 venture-backed companies for a total of $7.3 billion and three IPOs raised a—let’s be honest—paltry $220 million. And the median amount paid for a company in the fourth quarter was more than $100 million for the first time since 2000.

But as frequently happens in quarter-to-quarter surveys, that $100 million number was skewed greatly by a few large deals, most notably, Zappos’s $1.2 billion purchase by Amazon. Overall, for the year the median acquisition price was just $27 million.

And the overall rebound in fourth quarter liquidity is only impressive compared to the nine months prior. For the year, the industry produced just $17.1 billion in returns, 34% less than the $26.1 billion generated in 2008. And that wasn’t a particularly good year.

The surge in M&A and talk of some promising companies waiting in the wings to go public aside, this industry is in as much trouble as ever for three simple reasons. If these reasons don’t get addressed the 2010s may be worse than the ‘00s for the asset class.

1. The Math Doesn’t Work. An industry that invests roughly $20 billion a year (or even more), can’t survive on returns of roughly $20 billion a year. The basis of a portfolio investing business is that the hits have to make up for the losses—not just pay for themselves. It doesn’t matter how much you believe in innovation, how much you believe in the Valley and how much you believe in venture capital itself—the numbers are now and have for the last decade been hopelessly out of whack. Unless investors can discover an area that can produce many billion-dollar homeruns like the ecommerce, enterprise software and telecom did in decades past, there needs to be dramatically less money investing in early stage firms, period.

As we speak, many once proud venture firms are having a hard time raising their next funds, and many are turning towards less-desirable limited partners out of necessity. A host of funds were supposed to close in 2009 and haven’t yet. Watch the news in 2010 closely: If firms are taking money from state pension funds, raise an eyebrow. Back in the early 2000s state funds came under pressure from Freedom of Information Act requests to divulge information about underlying portfolio investments and privacy-conscious VCs turned their backs on those pension funds as a result. Anyone going back to them now was likely told no by nearly everyone else. Of course, those firms will still be in business. But not all firms will once their current funds are depleted, and ultimately, that’s a good thing for the industry.

2. M&As Alone Will Not Sustain VCs. While it’s true that the bulk of exits VCs get are from acquisitions, this is not where the bulk of returns come from. The economics of venture capital are based on homeruns. That’s why some 5% of the industry makes some 95% of the money. And those big hits come from IPOs or in some cases the threat of an IPO that makes a publicly-held competitor pay a huge premium for a startup. This is why M&A values surged so high in the late 1990s. Companies like Cisco had to shell out hundreds of millions or even billions to buy a company because it was so easy for them to go public. That’s not the case today and when you only have a handful of companies out buying, even a Google or Cisco shopping spree can only net so much in returns.

3. The Perilous Ripple Effect. There is a way that venture capital can adjust to a new normal of smaller exits with smaller multiples: Taking less risk and selling early. That means a switch of focus from building companies to building products. This is how much of the world outside Silicon Valley invests now. The benefit is it requires less capital and less risk. If you build something of value, there’s a likelihood you can get $5 million or even $20 million for it. But that’s the cap of what you’re going to get without a business to back that product up. But that’s OK economically, because you have fewer failures since you’re taking less risk.

Indeed in 2009, Dow Jones found that companies raised a median of just $18 million in venture capital before getting acquired. That’s 18% less than in 2008. And the companies sold faster. It took a median of five years to get an exit, versus six years in 2008.

A lot of entrepreneurs and angel investors argue there’s nothing wrong with this. With far less capital needed to start a company these days, what’s wrong with a smaller exit? You’re still making money, right? Not every idea has to be a $1 billion one to be worth starting.

That’s true for a bootstrapped or angel-funded startup, but not for venture backed deals and the Valley at large. That kind of thinking will eventually destroy an ecosystem that is built on a foundation of homeruns paying for all mistakes. Put another way, the reason we are so famously free to fail in the Valley is that a big homerun can economically make up for those failures. That is what has set Silicon Valley apart for decades. If that changes, the output of the Valley will change too.

And don’t forget: The companies providing these modest exits are the homeruns from previous decades. Without the past big hits of Google, Microsoft, Yahoo and Cisco, who’d be paying $20 million for your Web 2.0 app today? Consider that Facebook—a company that was ridiculed by the press and analysts for not selling for $1 billion or less back in 2006 —has already bid $500 million for Twitter and acquired FriendFeed. Good thing for the Valley Facebook didn’t listen to critics.

You don’t have to look too far to see what a world where VCs only build-to-flip would look like. It’s largely happened already in lifesciences. The industry that gave birth to Genentech, Amgen and a lot of promise for returns, job creation and cures, has now turned into big pharma’s outsourced R&D lab.

I’m not blaming investors. Because of the high costs of clinical trials, biotech companies used to go public to fund clinical trials. But in the post-2000, SarbOx chill it became all-but impossible for pre-clinical trial, pre-revenue companies to go public. That meant the work had to get financed another way, and that other way was licensing deals with big pharma. Unfortunately, that means a lot of the value from those breakthroughs goes to big pharma, all but ensuring the next Genentech or Amgen may never be created.

But tech doesn’t have those costly restrictions. Do we really want to embrace and celebrate an M&A only world of returns anyway?

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

Source: Gizmodo | 3 Jan 2010 | 10:00 pm

Photo Gallery: Top 10 Sci-Fi Weapons That Actually Exist

All the laser weapons, robots, sonic blasters and puke rays pictured here are real. Really. Some of them, in fact, are already in use.

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Jan 2010 | 10:00 pm

Playlist: Mighty Mouse's 'New Adventures,' Flashsticks, SoulPancake

Get your fill of what's Wired this month, from praise for intrinsic rewards in the workplace to the eclectic funk of RJD2 and a rewriting of history through images. Is that Batman at a Fidel Castro press conference?

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Jan 2010 | 10:00 pm

Jan. 4: Braille, Pitman Birthdays Celebrate New Ways to Write

Louis Braille and Isaac Pitman share a birthday, four years apart. Each is known for a new system of writing. Coincidence?

Source: Wired Top Stories | 3 Jan 2010 | 10:00 pm

Venture Funding Roared Back In the Fourth Quarter To Nearly $15 Billion

After a year when venture funding was in the doldrums, it roared back in the fourth quarter of 2009 to nearly $15 billion, according to a tally of the venture rounds in CrunchBase. The total value of disclosed fundings for the quarter was $14.85 billion, up 113 percent from a year ago (when the total was $6.96 billion), and up 78 percent from the third quarter of 2009 ($8.35 billion).

Some of the big funding rounds of the quarter included Zynga’s $180 million, Playdom’s $43 million, and RockYou’s $50 million. But clean tech cleaned up even more, with Horizon Wind Energy bringing in $318 million in financing, Silver Spring Networks adding $105 million to its coffers, and Sun Run Generation raising $90 million.

While the quarter saw a robust return to higher levels of investing, it was not enough to counterbalance the previous three quarters of tepid investing. The total amount of capital deployed over the full year of 2009 was $32.6 billion, which was lower than the $38 billion total for 2008. The first two quarters of 2008 were relatively healthy, with $11.5 billion and $11.8 billion raised in venture rounds, respectively. It wasn’t until third quarter of 2008 that the bottom really fell out. Venture capitalists kept their purse strings tight until the third quarter of 2009, when they started to ease them open

The total number of funding rounds increased 51 percent sequentially between the third and fourth quarters to 1,078.  The number of fundings in the third quarter of 2009 was 715, and the year before it was only 618.  So venture activity definitely picked up in both dollars and deals.  Will these new levels set the tone for 2010?

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

Source: Gizmodo | 3 Jan 2010 | 9:13 pm

Cheap Beer If You Check-In… Or Just Tweet.

One of the most compelling aspects of the location-based service Foursquare is that they are increasingly enticing users to check-in to venues by partnering up to offer special deals to those who do. A person who checks-in at a coffee shop and shows the barista, may get a free coffee, for example. It’s a win-win for both the service and the venue because it gets people using the app more and gets people visiting the venue more. But what if users and venues go around Foursquare and start using Twitter for that?

That has started to happen recently, as venues are getting wise to the idea of using these special deals. For example, Patxi’s Pizza, a Bay Area-based restaurant, recently announced that it would offer a special deal to anyone who simply tweeted that they were at the restaurant, and showed their server the tweet. To be clear, they also have the same deal in place if you check-in on Foursquare, but using Twitter in a way similar to Foursquare is interesting.

One issue with venues offering these deals through Foursquare is that the service is still relatively small and unknown. Twitter, by comparison, is much larger and has become a known entity in the media and other areas of the mainstream. A public tweet by someone that they were at a certain restaurant is potentially a much more powerful form of free advertising for the venue than a Foursquare check-in.

Of course, there’s a downside too. Since Twitter is more popular, doing deals such as the tweet one could mean the restaurant would have to give out a lot more free stuff (depending on what the deal is, obviously). But again, it might be worth it for the free advertising.

Foursquare has another potential leg up as well. Because they’re predicated around the concept of the check-in, they can keep track of who is checking in the most and give out “mayorships.” So far, deals surrounding harder-to-obtain mayorships are at least just as popular as the check-in deals. And some venues appear willing to offer more to these known loyal customers. Patxi’s, for example, offers a you one free pizza a week if you’re the mayor. For checking-in or tweeting, you only get a free soft drink or $1 beer.

Another location-based service, Gowalla, is working on its own similar concept for venue deals. Since that service is largely based around the picking up and dropping of virtual goods at venues, if you got a special good, you could trade it for a free item at a restaurant, for example. This too, is more of a game element, and beyond what Twitter can easily do.

Still, I’d bet that we can expect to see a lot more of venues offering deals to people who tweet about being at a place. And because they don’t have to work on any sort of arrangement to get their deal placed in an app like Foursquare, there’s a much lower barrier to entry for these venues. They could simply tweet about how to secure the deal, as Patxi’s did.

And perhaps Twitter is even thinking of officially offering something along these lines when it rolls out its supposedly premium offering to businesses at some point this year, as it tries to pull in more revenues.

Then of course there’s the 800-pound gorilla in the room: Facebook. If and when Facebook implements its location element, their 300-million-plus user base will be awfully enticing for a lot of venues looking to promote.

[photo: flickr/andre charland]

CrunchBase Information

Twitter

Foursquare

Gowalla

Facebook

Information provided by CrunchBase

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

Source: TechCrunch | 3 Jan 2010 | 8:46 pm

The Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009

destinyland writes "An A.I. researcher lists the Top 5 Technology Panics of 2009 — along with the corresponding reality. There's exploding iPods, the uproar over 'bombing' the moon, and even a flesh-eating robot. But in each case, he supplies some much-needed perspective. 'These incidents are incredibly rare ... the rocket stage weighs around two tons, while the Moon weighs in at a 73,477,000,000,000,000,000 tons... and desecration of the dead is against the laws of war — and plant matter is a much better fuel source anyway.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Jan 2010 | 8:11 pm

Cablevision, Scripps butt heads over fee increase (AP)

AP - The spat over a fee increase between Cablevision Systems Corp. and Scripps Networks Interactive Inc. heated up Sunday with cable TV viewers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut still caught in the crossfire.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Jan 2010 | 7:55 pm

Avatar hits $1bn

Avatar 's made a billion dollars in 17 days. Haters may take some vanishingly small measure of solace in the fact that ticket price inflation means that despite the incredible financial haul, it may have been seen by only half as many people as Titanic.


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 7:33 pm

In Allowing Ad Blockers, a Test for Google - New York Times

Pocket-lint.com

In Allowing Ad Blockers, a Test for Google New York Times IN a manifestolike e-mail message sent last month to all Google employees, Jonathan Rosenberg, a senior vice president for product management, told them to commit to greater transparency and open industry standards. ... TechCrunch, The Google Chrome ExtensionWashington Post Top 10 Chrome Browser Add-onsPC World Google's Chrome grabs No. 3 browser spot from SafariComputerworld Slippery Brick -Apple Insider -I4U all 71 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 3 Jan 2010 | 6:20 pm

Samsung releases NX Series DSLR

Samsung just announced what amounts to their own micro four thirds DSLR with 3-inch AMOLED screen and DSLR-sized sensor. The camera should be available in the Spring but we’ll definitely see it at CES this week where all the hot gadgets will be hanging out.

Not much to tell right now but it records video at 720p resolution and takes shots at 14.6 megapixels. I still haven’t seen a micro four thirds/mini-DSLR I’ve liked so this had better be amazing.

via Giz

Source: CrunchGear | 3 Jan 2010 | 6:11 pm

TSA: tighter screening for flyers coming into USA from 14 countries

The TSA issued a security directive today which states that starting tomorrow, anyone flying into the US "traveling from or through nations that are state sponsors of terrorism or other countries of interest will be required to go through enhanced screening," thought "enhanced screening" is not defined. The NYT reports the 14 countries are: Cuba, Iran, Sudan, Syria, Afghanistan, Algeria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, and Yemen.


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 5:36 pm

Ten things thou shalt not tweet

A funny, cautionary webcomic: Ten things you need to stop tweeting about. (via @jessebdylan)


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 5:25 pm

At Current Rates, Only a Few More Years' Worth of IPv4 Addresses

An anonymous reader excerpts from an interesting article at Ars Technica, which begins "There are 3,706,650,624 usable IPv4 addresses. On January 1, 2000, approximately 1,615 million (44 percent) were in use and 2,092 million were still available. Today, ten years later, 2,985 million addresses (81 percent) are in use, and 722 million are still free. In that time, the number of addresses used per year increased from 79 million in 2000 to 203 million in 2009. So it's a near certainty that before Barack Obama vacates the White House, we'll be out of IPv4 address[es]. (Even if he doesn't get re-elected.)"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Gizmodo | 3 Jan 2010 | 5:00 pm

Advocate uses texting to warn of AZ crime sweeps (AP)

AP - An advocate for immigrant and civil rights has started using text messages to warn residents about crime sweeps by a high-profile Arizona sheriff.
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Jan 2010 | 4:50 pm

Report: TSA Special Agent who threatened blogger spaces out, drops notebook in public place

(Click for large). Oh, those TSA agents are special alright. Mary Kirby, aka Runway Girl, reports that one of the federal agents who showed up at travel writer Steven Frischling's house to issue a subpoena and search his computer for the source of the agency's leaked security directive flaked out and left his notebook lying in a public place.

Yes, a notebook with notes on the very important Department of Homeland Security investigation they were conducting. No TSA response on this one yet. Kirby blogs the photo above, and asks:

Would you define such a misstep as complete ineptitude? Would you wonder how the agency protects the information it gleans from other - more important - investigations (you know, ones involving threats against our nation)?

Such tough questions! These were the same agents who (according to the Wired report) showed up armed at Frischling's home, told him "I don't think you know how much trouble you're in," said they had to run to Wal-Mart to buy a hard drive to burn his MacBook contents to, came back and couldn't figure out how to get that to work, then seized his hard drive and took off, returning it later in malfunctioning order after they'd copied what they wanted.

Wonder what else was in the little notebook ("created with pride by Americans who are blind.") Presumably, some directly identifying information which is not shown in the photos Kirby chose to publish.

Exclusive: TSA agent's notebook discovered in public place (flightglobal)

Previously:

• TSA drops subpoenas issued to bloggers who published security ...
• Update on bloggers threatened by TSA over security directive leak ...
• Did Google get TSA subpoena over the blogged security directive ...
• TSA subpoenas, threatens two bloggers who published non-classified ...
• Yo dawg, I heard you like TSA security restrictions, so I put some ...
• Do new post-pantsbomber TSA security directives kill inflight WiFi ...

Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 4:40 pm

Never Stop at a Gas Station Again

That would be how it works if you drove an electric vehicle. Your refueling would be done in the garage at your house, in a parking space at work, at the places you shop and dine. If wireless power were ...
Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 3 Jan 2010 | 3:50 pm

Bono Hopes Content Tracking Will Help Media Moguls

Khalid Baheyeldin writes "In his New York Times op-ed column, Irish singer Bono, otherwise noted for his humanitarian efforts expressed dismay at losses music artists incur from internet downloads. He notes that 'we know from America's noble effort to stop child pornography, not to mention China's ignoble effort to suppress online dissent, that it's perfectly possible to track content.' He then goes on to wonder 'perhaps movie moguls will succeed where musicians and their moguls have failed so far, and rally America to defend the most creative economy in the world, where music, film, TV and video games help to account for nearly 4 percent of gross domestic product.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Jan 2010 | 3:46 pm

Zynga Investor Calls Scamville Debate Irrelevant And Unfair

Zynga investor Fred Wilson remained mostly quiet during the Scamville debacle in October. But he’s starting to talk now, and he isn’t happy.

In a post about Etsy a few days ago a commenter brought up the Zynga/Scamville stuff. Wilson replied “Citing techcrunch on the zynga stuff is a joke.” He waded into the subject again today on another of his posts, saying in a number of comments “i’ve tried hard to stay out of that debate because it is a false debate…zynga makes almost all of its revenue on virtual goods…the “scammy ads” thing is total red herring that everyone got excited about but is almost entirely irrelevant” and “nobody who got involved in that shitstorm took the time to really do the work and look at what Zynga did and did not do. or compare it to Google and everyone else who does way worse on a daily basis…the whole thing totally annoys me. it’s not fair.” He also said numerous times that we didn’t have our facts straight, and that we didn’t take the time to understand what really happened.

Hogwash. Fred Wilson is a brilliant investor, but he’s conflicted and wrong yet again.

There were a total of 22 Scamville posts (see updates) on TechCrunch alone. For the most part we left Zynga alone, until we were slammed in the face with CEO Mark Pincus on video saying “I Did Every Horrible Thing In The Book Just To Get Revenues” (how do you take that statement out of context?). Pincus also said “we need to be more aggressive and have revised our service level agreements with these providers requiring them to filter and police offers” in a post about Scamville. And Facebook took one of their games offline for a few days for a violation of their terms of service around scammy offers.

Zynga had claimed in the past that fully 1/3 of their revenue came from offers. Some of that wasn’t legitimate, likely tens of millions of dollars, and other companies have said that the bad stuff tended to push out the good stuff.

There is an excellent argument that you can continue to find most of these scams on Google and other search engines. But a big difference is the incentive that social games give users to enter into these scams via virtual currency, as well as the fact that they targeted teens without credit cards by pushing mobile subscription offers. Google is wrong to post these ads. But that doesn’t make what Zynga has done right.

I think Pincus took the right steps to move his company in the right direction, and I think the industry is on the right track now, and Zynga looks to be a legitimate business even without scammy offers. I support Pincus as an entrepreneur. But to deny that there was ever a problem is irresponsible. And to suggest that we didn’t take the time to understand the facts is outrageous. In addition to the 22 posts where we spoke to dozens of sources on and off the record, I asked Pincus to go on video with me to tell his side of the story without editing. He declined.

Zynga continues to be a very close partner to Facebook. They share a major investor, DST. A facebook board member, Marc Andreessen, is also an investor in Zynga. And Zynga is Facebook’s largest advertiser. The fates of these two companies are deeply aligned, and there has been more than a little evidence of wrongdoing. The relationship between Zynga and Facebook needs more scrutiny, not less.

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

Source: Gizmodo | 3 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm

Flat pack ostrich bottom table

The curiously cool ibride Diva Ostrich Console Table is £234.48 from Nest.co.uk. Great inspiration if you know someone who has a laser cutter or ShopBot. I'd love a menagerie of animal bottom furniture pieces. (Thanks, Michael-Anne Rauback!)



Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 2:46 pm

Is Early Childhood Education Technology Moving Backwards?

theodp writes "Four decades ago, the NSF-sponsored PLATO Elementary Reading Curriculum Project (pdf) provided Illinois schoolchildren with reading lessons and e-versions of beloved children's books that exploited networked, touch-sensitive 8.5"x8.5" bit-mapped plasma screens, color images, and audio. Last week, the Today Show promoted the TeacherMate — a $100 gadget that's teaching Illinois schoolchildren to read and do math using its 2.5" screen and old-school U-D-L-R cursor keys — as a revolution in education. Has early childhood education managed to defy Moore's Law?"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Jan 2010 | 2:37 pm

Claim: Millimeter wave body scanners wouldn’t have stopped Christmas plot. Why bother with them, then?

Not to alarm y’all, but those millimeter wave body scanners that have been paraded around as the solution to would-be airplane terrorist attacks? Turns out they’re sorta useless in that, while they’re able to detect dense material (C4, metal, traditional bombs, etc.), they’re completely ineffective against less dense material. And wouldn’t you know it, the powdered explosive that was to have been used in the Christmas plot would not have been detected by the scanners. As Jay-Z would say, on to the next one.

Right, so the millimeter wave scanners—the ones that create a crude image of a nude human being (gasp!)—would not have prevented that Christmas bomb plot because the materials involved (some sort of powdered explosive) aren’t dense enough to be picked up by the scanners. Meaning that if you see any politician (or pundit or whomever) trying to say, “We need these new scanners ASAP; we may not be so lucky next time,” well, kindly point them in the direction of Ben Wallace, who was involved in the development of said scanners before he became an MP in the UK.

The bottom line is, the millimeter wave scanners simply wouldn’t have detected the powered explosive. Now, had the guy tried to smuggle C4 in his underpants that would have been a different story, but that didn’t happen.

And you’ve got to think that for every device that’s developed to help detect illicit materials, the bad guys, however you want to define that, are just as hard at work trying to circumvent said device. It’s not ideal, no.

So now privacy advocates, people who feel the millimeter wave scanners amount to an invasion of privacy have another talking point: they patently would not have foiled the attempt.

(When you think about it, the entire response to the botched attack has been a bit of a joke. Look at the new TSA regulations: people can’t move about a flight in the last hour. What, an attack can’t happen in the time preceding the final hour? You can’t have personal items on your person during the last hour, including blankets and pillows because you could be hiding something underneath… as if a woman’s dress isn’t just as effective at concealment.)

In short, the scanners aren’t going to make you or I any safer than what’s already in place.

And now we wait for the manufacturer of said scanners, or the politician in the manufacturer’s home state, to claim that they’re perfectly effective and that every airport all over the world needs several of them installed now.

Source: CrunchGear | 3 Jan 2010 | 2:24 pm

Commodore 64 unboxing

From the attic at my in-laws' house. I've titled this photo "Anticipation."

And this one? "Disappointment."

Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 2:18 pm

Tablets and netbooks to be electronics show stars (AFP)

AFP - Sleeker, smarter mobile phones, tablets, and netbooks will be stars at next week's premier Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, as firms bring out their latest gadgets to court the Internet crowd.

Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 3 Jan 2010 | 2:04 pm

Leica S2-p revealed and unboxed

Here’s an unboxing of the new Leica S2-p, done by happy new owner Matthew Harrison. Matthew hasn’t just unboxed his new toy, he’s also written a first impression review.

[Thanks to Leica Rumors for the tip]

Source: CrunchGear | 3 Jan 2010 | 2:00 pm

Text messages from the year 2016?

Section: Communications, Cellular Providers, Smartphones, Mobile

There have been several reports about people receiving their new year greetings text messages from the year 2016. Apparently, messages received after 1/1/2010 are being displayed as coming from the year 2016. Those who are affected were mostly using Windows Mobile phones, but there are instances where non-Windows Mobile phones are also affected. HTC and LG are reportedly aware of this problem, but they have yet to make an official announcement.

Some users speculated that the bug may have stemmed from the coincidence that “16” is “10” in hexadecimal. There are also users reporting that T-Mobile users are not facing this problem, allowing the possibility that it may be a carrier-related problem. A temporary workaround has been found, where users facing the problem have to download a CAB file. This is not an official patch, but it works fine.

Via [Ubergizmo] Via [WMExperts]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Jan 2010 | 1:37 pm

How Norway Fought Staph Infections

eldavojohn writes "Studies are showing that Norway's dirtiest hospitals are actually cleaner than most other countries', and the reason for this is that Norwegians stopped taking antibiotics. A number of factors like paid sick leave and now restrictions on advertising for drugs make Norway an anomaly when it comes to diseases like Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). A Norwegian doctor explains, 'We don't throw antibiotics at every person with a fever. We tell them to hang on, wait and see, and we give them a Tylenol to feel better.' Norway is the most MRSA free country in the world. In a country like Japan, where 17,000 die from MRSA every year, 'doctors overprescribe antibiotics because they are given financial incentives to push drugs on patients.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Jan 2010 | 1:32 pm

Gamertell Review: Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Conviction novel by David Michaels

FROM GAMERTELL - Splinter Cell Conviction makes for an average novel but it still gives some hope for the game. Click through to ind out why…
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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Jan 2010 | 12:49 pm

Ideas For Exploiting NASA's SRTM Data

MaxTardiveau writes with an excerpt from an article where the pictures are worth clicking through for: "Ten years ago, in February 2000, NASA mapped the entire world in eleven days. It's true: the mission was called the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM), and over the course of eleven days, it used a big radar attached to the space shuttle to get elevation data from the vast majority of solid Earth; practically all land between 60 degrees North and 56 degrees South was included, with a resolution of 30 meters (90 feet). Over 9 terabytes of data were captured. It then took two years to process that data and make it usable (and it is still being refined to this day). This data is freely available to anyone, and the number of possible applications is almost infinite. It's been used in GIS, cartography, environmental planning, weather modeling (weather patterns are enormously influenced by the topography), flight simulators, Google Earth, and the list goes on. In this short article, I would like to give you a quick tour of the kinds of things this data can reveal. My hope is to get you thinking about what else could be done with this incredible resource."

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Jan 2010 | 12:27 pm

Make a machine that turns itself off

Instructables has instructions for building this Claude Shannon-style box that turns itself off.

The Most Useless Machine EVER!


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 12:05 pm

iPhone apps for your New Year’s resolutions: Quit smoking

FROM APPLETELL - Quitting smoking is hard enough to do with help, so if you happen to be doing it alone, or you just need an extra leg up, these apps can help you to meet your new year’s goal.
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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Jan 2010 | 11:34 am

America's secret "ICE Castles," immigrations and customs prisons

"If you don't have enough evidence to charge someone criminally but you think he's illegal, we can make him disappear." —James Pendergraph, former executive director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement's (ICE) Office of State and Local Coordination. From a Nation article on America's immigration prisons. (thanks, Ned Sublette)


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 11:32 am

Q and A with US Torture Memo attorney John Yoo

Torture Memo attorney John Yoo, on his former boss, George W. Bush: "No, I've never met him. I don't know Cheney either. I have not gone hunting with him, which is probably a good thing for me." NYT.


Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 11:26 am

Building Complex Circuits With Carbon Nanotubes

Lorien_the_first_one writes "MIT's Technology Review reports that carbon nanotubes are being used to fabricate complex circuits. From the article, 'The first three-dimensional carbon nanotube circuits, made by researchers at Stanford University, could be an important step in making nanotube computers that could be faster and use less power than today's silicon chips. Such a computer is still at least 10 years off, but the Stanford work shows it is possible to make stacked circuits using carbon nanotubes. Stacked circuits cram more processing power in a given area, and also do a better job dissipating waste heat.'"

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Source: Slashdot | 3 Jan 2010 | 11:21 am

Future Uncertain for Stuck Mars Rover - ABC News

Astrobiology Magazine

Future Uncertain for Stuck Mars Rover ABC News AP FILE - This undated file image provided by NASA shows the surface of Mars as seen from the stuck... Just weeks after landing in a Martian crater in 2004, it went haywire and transmitted gibberish to Earth. ... NASA works to keep Mars rover Spirit runningComputerworld Spirit rover clocks up six years on MarsRegister Spirit on Mars… 6-year old, but aint looking good!ABH News AFP -Tehran Times -UPI.com all 305 news articles »

Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 3 Jan 2010 | 11:01 am

Prescription for consumers challenging academic textbook cartels

I didn't plan to get into an overview of U.S. academic textbook marketing politics, but a couple of readers took issue with my brief mention of this highly unusual consumer category. Since a lot of Boing Boing readers are students (and faculty, it turns out), I thought I'd give an overview so everyone can make more informed consumer choices.

Faculty behavior is a key factor that drives textbook pricing in academia. Though many academics will claim they are above being swayed by marketers, their consumer behavior is influenced heavily by manufacturers and distributors. I'll use a prescription analogy, summarizing the excellent 2006 overview by Dr. James V. Koch, commissioned by Congress. In this analogy, faculty = physicians, and textbook publishers = drug companies trying to influence them. I also include a link to the rebuttals of Koch's work by the Association of American Publishers and others, as well as some great info for students from Public Interest Research Group and some open-source textbook alternatives. After this, I'll get back to less wonky posts, promise!

The academic textbook consumer category

1. General information

a. This market is generally unregulated.

b. Few organized markets exist where one party (faculty) chooses the product and another party (student) pays. Another example is prescriptions, which have also risen in price more quickly than other consumer products for many of the same reasons.

c. In 2006, 17.66 million U.S. students spent $4.9 billion on textbooks ($1.9 of that was used books).

2. Faculty behavior

a. One study found 42% of faculty did not know the cost of their textbooks.

b. That study also found only 43% of faculty chose a book based on affordability.

c. Faculty get free book samples, just like doctors with prescription drugs. This freebie has a significant effect on faculty consumer behavior, such as brand loyalty, logrolling, etc.

d. In many markets, it is considered a conflict of interest to require someone to buy something when you or your colleagues get a direct benefit. Not as much in academia.

e. Faculty members who devise their own course materials usually charge less, but the materials have little or no resale value compared to textbooks. That loss has to be baked into student budgets.

3. Publisher and bookseller behavior

a. Five conglomerates control 80% of textbook production.

b. They sell their product to distributors/retailers, who in turn sell them to bookstores (on and off campus, including internet).

c. Four wholesalers dominate textbook distribution, especially used books.

d. These four wholesalers operate about 1/3 of college bookstores. About 1/2 are university owned and operated, and the remaining 15% are independents.

e. If a new book costs $100, wholesalers typically buy it back for $15 to $25 and resell it for $50.

f. It can be cheaper to re-import textbooks from non-US markets, just like prescription drugs. The response to this by publishers has been to force booksellers into contracts that prohibit re-importation.

g. Publishers and distributors can work together as a cartel to remove used books from the market, in order to generate more high-margin new book sales.

h. Textbooks have a low back catalog value, meaning you need to recoup your costs quickly because the books get obsolete quickly, like a 3rd-party manual for using a computer program.

i. Publishers routinely bundle electronic media with textbooks, which is often cited as a major reason for recent increases.

4. Institutional behavior

a. Nearly all institutions garner profits from owning and operating their own bookstores, or contracting the operation of their stores to outside firms.

b. College bookstores sell about half as many lower-margin used books as web-based bookstores do.

c. Increasing government financial aid to meet increasing book costs further increases textbook costs, because it creates a cycle of incentives for manufacturers and distributors to increase costs. It's one of the problems with fixing US healthcare, to use the prescription analogy again.

d. Textbook rental systems are one option that can save money, but they require significant up-front expenditures.

e. Non-profit bookstores are making headway, but this potentially reduces a short-term revenue stream for some institutions.

f. E-books are rapidly emerging as a viable option for reducing costs, but DRM makes reselling a big question mark from the consumer POV. If you buy a hardcopy used textbook for $100 and sell it back for $50, that's the same final cost as a non-transferable $50 e-book with DRM.

5. Student behavior

a. Students basically function as a captive consumer audience, like the Joads having to buy from the company store in Grapes of Wrath. Only those with the means or ingenuity to obtain textbooks from alternative sources do so.

b. 80% of students buy the faculty-prescribed books.

c. Internet textbook purchases (which account for 67% percent of used book sales) have greatly contributed to price elasticity and take sales away from bricks-and-mortar bookstores, causing them to recoup those losses by passing them on to the consumer in other forms.

6. Koch's suggested remedies

a. Teach the same editions longer

b. Unbundle supplementary materials

c. End prohibitions on reselling and re-importation

d. Publish textbook lists online early

e. Link to other booksellers for comparative shopping

f. Cut out the middleman

g. Establish nonprofit bookstores

h. Establish text rental systems

i. Encourage used textbook use

j. Patronize the Creative Commons

This last option is where things will head once consumers finally get fed up with this cartel and its antiquated business model. One of the main reasons I am a big Wikipedia chick is because systems like this textbook oligopoly are killing our culture. Check out our sister project Wikibooks or these other excellent open-source alternatives:

Wikibooks

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Main_Page

Flat World Knowledge

http://www.flatworldknowledge.com/

Open Source Text

http://www.opensourcetext.org/

Open Textbook

http://www.opentextbook.org/

The best consumer-POV site on the topic is the "Affordable Textbooks" page from U.S. PIRG (Public Interest Research Group):

http://www.uspirg.org/higher-education/affordable-textbooks

Sources:

Congressional Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance: College Textbook Cost Study Plan Proposal

http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/kochreport.pdf

Summary of the hearing (see Session II)

http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/sept06hringsum.doc

Reply from Association of American Publishers, Inc.

http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/txtbkpres/schroedersup.pdf

Reply from National Association of College Stores

http://www.ed.gov/about/bdscomm/list/acsfa/txtbkpres/hershmanremarks.pdf

You have over $5 billion in purchasing power! Fight for your consumer rights!

Source: Boing Boing | 3 Jan 2010 | 10:59 am

More data on your Blu-ray disc may be possible soon

Section: Video, DVD/DVR/Blu-ray

Sony has recently revealed that you may be able to squeeze in as much as 33.4GB of data onto your blu-ray disc via a technology called i-MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation). What’s good about this technology is that it is entirely software-based. This means that all your current hardware and settings remain unchanged. i-MLSE is a technology that estimates and compensates for the read error rate of a disc on the fly. i-MLSE involves complex calculations in order to determine error rates. With recent hardware advancements, Sony comments “It should be possible to process in real time, just like jitter.” From that statement, it looks like you need a pretty decent processor and other hardware that is capable of processing whatever information this technology involves.

Sony is currently proposing the i-MLSE technology to the Blu-ray Disc Association.

Read [Tech-On!] Via [Ubergizmo] Via [Engadget]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Jan 2010 | 10:20 am

Top 10 Gamertell posts for the week of December 27, 2009

FROM GAMERTELL - Haven’t caught all of the Gamertell news this week?  Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!
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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Jan 2010 | 9:14 am

Chrome takes the spot of third most popular browser

Section: Web, Web Browsers, Google

Passing up Safari, Google’s Chrome internet browser has been named third most popular internet browser with a 4.63% share compared to Safari’s 4.46% according to California-based measurement firm Net Applications. This is the first time that Safari has been in fourth place but I doubt it will be there for long.

Only 16 months into its career, Chrome is becoming more and more prevalent on our computers. It increased 0.7% in December, most likely because of its recent release of beta version for Mac and Linux. December has been a big month for Chrome; those beta releases along with Chrome extensions have marked a big milestone in Google’s venture past search engines. I have personally been using Chrome for probably 13-14 months of its 16 month lifetime and find it to be a browser with great potential.

Probably the biggest contributor to the growth of Chrome is the decline of Internet Explorer. IE has had an average decline of 0.94% for the past six months compared to the average of 0.36% in the six months before that. Things are not looking good for IE8 and it is not entirely their fault. A lot of the problem seems to be people’s reluctance to move from the eight year old IE6 to anything newer. IE6 still holds a 21% share which is larger than IE7’s 15.5% share and interestingly close to IE8’s 23.7% share. And this is the first month that IE8 was the most popular browser, most likely attributed to its compatibility view that allows users to view things in the IE6-7 way of things.

Chrome is a great internet browser. The only downside I have ever found is that I just can’t seem to get it to read .pdf files directly in the browser. Otherwise, the ability to reopen tabs that I accidently closed, having my top six most viewed browsers on the home page, and just the overall smoothness of the browser make it the perfect one for me.

Read [PCWorld]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Jan 2010 | 8:01 am

Sweden Begins Wolf Cull

Sweden launched its first wolf cull in 45 years, following a decision by parliament to control the species’ numbers, according to a recent BBC report.The Swedish parliament recently decided there should be at most 210 wolves in Sweden.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jan 2010 | 7:58 am

New Droid Devour spotted in silver with new details

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

A picture of the silver Motorola Calgary/Droid Devour has surfaced on BGR. The reason silver is mentioned is because it was previously only seen in black, otherwise, not that big of a deal.

BGR claims that the keyboard was “nice” and trackpad “killer”. It is also apparently easier to use than the Droid. They claim that it might be the Blur OS that simplifies things for some people but having never personally played with a Motorola Droid, I can’t say if it is hard to use or not. Though, those “Droid does” commercials make it seem like a robotic arm could use the phone pretty well if it ever needs to look up human.

The phone has WiFi, a GPS, and a 1420mAh battery. But no SIM card slot since it is not a global device. An obvious thing if you look at the picture close enough, is that the phone is going to Verizon.

Sadly, I have Sprint and nothing goes to Sprint. I carry around the Sprint Instinct which unfortunately never lived up to its claims as an iPhone killer or even competition to the iPhone.

Read [BGR]

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

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Source: Gadgetell | 3 Jan 2010 | 6:54 am

World-First Clean-Up Of Acid Wetlands

Australian scientists have announced the world’s first successful large-scale restoration of a coastal wetland being devastated by acid runoff.A dramatic improvement in environmental conditions has been achieved by researchers working on the trial Hills Creek catchment at the East Trinity site near Cairns in Queensland, using a combination of natural tidal action and strategic treatment with lime.Mangrove and wetlands are returning, birdlife is flocking to the area and fish abound in creeks that once ran so acid that nothing could survive in them.
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jan 2010 | 6:00 am

Expedition Uncovers Relic Of Antarctica's First Plane

Image Caption: Mackay, David and Mawson raise the flag at the Magnetic South Pole Jan 16, 1909. Courtesy Wikipedia
Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 3 Jan 2010 | 5:43 am

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