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UK's Freeview HD To Go DRMgbjbaanb writes "The BBC has been granted provisional approval to introduce copy protection for Freeview HD after they resubmitted an amended plan. Quoting from Ofcom's statement: 'In view of the fuller submission provided by the BBC, Ofcom is currently minded to approve its request for a multiplex license amendment subject to consultation responses, on the basis that in principle, content management is a justified objective which ensures that the broadest range of HD content is made available to citizens and consumers.' However, it's not too late yet — you can submit your comment and tell them you'd like to be able to record broadcast HD TV. I'm sure the 'content providers' will continue to sell content to the BBC, ITV, etc., if this is not implemented. They'll still take our license fee money (or advertising) and sell us the content, but refuse to let us record or copy it, hoping we'll go out and buy the DVD/Blu-ray as well."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Jan 2010 | 3:11 am 23 Stellar Stella McCartney Features - From Designer Markers to Laid-Back Lingerie (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) Innovative, daring, feminine and chic, these Stella McCartney features prove exactly why she is one of the top fashion designers in the world. Even if she didn't come from famous roots,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 2:40 am Obsessive Pokemania - Pokemon Collector Lisa Courtney Breaks World Record for Stuffies With 13,400 (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) Ten years ago I took my sons to see 'Pokemon 2000' on the big screen. Even though it was a great night out with the guys, right then and there came a realization that anything and everything...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 2:30 am Analyzing Dating Profiles - OKCupid Gives Tips on What Works Best for Profile Pictures (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) OKCupid, a hugely successful free online dating site, did a statistical analysis of the success of different kinds of profile pictures. Their findings are quite surprising, and reading...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 2:20 am 10 Insane 'Avatar' Innovations - From 'Avatar' Tattoos to 'Avatar' Depression (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) Not since 'Titanic' has there been a movie that has evoked such awe and avid, loving fans/followers. You know which film I'm referring to. If you don't, well, you need to go out and...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 2:10 am Experimental Evolutionary Mosaics - The Incredible Creations of Tsevis Visual Design (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Charis Tsevis is an artist and designer who creates amazing experimental mosaic illustrations under the name Tsevis Visual Design. The Greece-based typography and editorial design professor...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 2:00 am UN climate panel blunders again over Himalayan glaciers - Times Online
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 24 Jan 2010 | 1:54 am Fairytale Paintings - Alice in Wonderland's Duchess Gets Her Own CASE Painting (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Artist CASE (who is also known by the name Andreas von Chrzanowski) created this painting of the Duchess from Alice in Wonderland. This CASE painting is some impressive work, and the...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 1:50 am 22 Wonderful Wedges - From Holey Wedged Heels to Stud Muffin Wedges (CLUSTER)(TrendHunter.com) Thanks to such fictional phenomena as Carrie Bradshaw and real-life fashion experimenters like Lady Gaga, high heels are in full effect. Yet sometimes a girl wants the height without...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 1:40 am Extracurricular Explosives - The Quanum Radio-Controlled Bomb Militarizes a Model Plane (GALLERY)(TrendHunter.com) Need a fun accessory that will make flying model planes extra fun? This radio-controlled bomb is just the thing you need to deliver a payload to unsuspecting individuals. It splits...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 1:30 am Mac Poetry - Gary Snyder Shares a Poem He Wrote About His Macintosh(TrendHunter.com) Mac fans are a devoted bunch, and apparently poet Gary Snyder counts himself among them. Snyder wrote a bit of Mac poetry that was featured in the New York Times. Among other things,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 1:20 am Partying Jesuses - The French Jesus 2000 is No Savior of Mankind (VIDEO)(TrendHunter.com) Strangely, the biggest question on my mind right now is if the plural of Jesus is in fact Jesuses, or if it would be Jesi. Anyway, Jesus 2000 is a fantastic animation featuring a rough,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 24 Jan 2010 | 1:10 am Artwork Re-Sells Itself Weekly On eBayLanxon writes "How much would you pay for a piece of artwork that you could only own for a week? A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter, 2009, is a black acrylic box that places itself for sale on eBay every seven days thanks to an embedded Internet connection, which, according to the artist's conditions of sale, must be live at all times. Disconnections are only allowed during transport, says the creator, Caleb Larsen. Larsen tells Wired UK: 'Inside the black box is a micro controller and an Ethernet adapter that contacts a script running on [a] server [every] 10 minutes. The server script checks to see if the box currently has an active auction, and if it doesn't, it creates a new auction for the work.'" Another condition of sale is that the artist gets 15% each time the piece is sold. Maybe the First Sale Doctrine works differently in the UK.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 24 Jan 2010 | 12:14 am Adventure 06: Beehives, Bluegrass and Beautiful IgnoranceThe Osbourne Brothers: "Rocky Top", "Ruby" This clip comes from another "must have" DVD... Bluegrass Country Soul. Back in the sixties, there was an explosion of bluegrass festivals- gatherings of fans and musicians in an open air venue to relax and enjoy music together. They were informal affairs. People would bring a picnic lunch and lawn chairs and sit in the sunshine enjoying the Dillards, the Stanley Brothers, Flatt & Scruggs or Roy Acuff. The performers even encouraged fans to bring along reel to reel tape recorders, and you can find hundreds of these incredible live recordings circulating in the mp3 trading newsgroups. When I watch this clip, I'm transported to another time and another place. Those beehive hairdos would be hilarious in any other context, but here they seem right at home. A lot of hipsters look down their nose at "hicks" and "trailer trash", but I see great beauty in this stuff. My friend John K describes this old time country music as "beautiful ignorance: the high lonesome sound of an injured animal all alone in the woods, not knowing why he hurts or whether it will ever stop." My God! My heart stopped when he said that. Beautiful ignorance! What a beautiful way of putting it.
Adventures in Music Link Page Here is a jump page to all the posts in my online screening, "Adventures in Music". Jump in to the comments and share your thoughts.
 Source: Boing Boing | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:41 pm Save the tiger: Pressure mounts for tougher actionAfter trudging through the wilds of western Thailand for several hours, the forest rangers thought they were finally onto something: the distant sound of crunching leaves. Automatic...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:39 pm Orphan ad
An antique Chicago orphanage ad,
Homeless Children
Neil Gaiman in the New YorkerNice profile of Neil Gaiman in this week's New Yorker, written by Dana Goodyear, who really followed Neil around to get the story -- caught their duo act at the WorldCon in Montreal last year, where Ms Goodyear was being introduced to everyone who had a good Neil story to tell.Kid Goth (via Forbidden Planet) (Image: Neil Gaiman, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from torre.elena's photostream)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 23 Jan 2010 | 10:56 pm Adventure 15: The "Boffo" FinishFinale to "Stormy Weather" 1943 with Cab Calloway, Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, Lena Horne and the Nicholas Brothers Any performer will tell you, the way you leave the audience is the way they'll remember your act. There's no finale like the one in Stormy Weather. As I said at the beginning of this program, I'm constantly amazed at the "pop culture amnesia" that seems to be an epidemic today. People have forgotten some of the greatest achievements of mankind... and what have they replaced it with? Infomercials, current events clowns, celebrity gossip and patently phony reality shows. Now, I can already hear you saying... "Well. me and all my friends know about important stuff... all kinds of stuff!" Whenever I ask one of my archive interns what kind of music they listen to, I always get the same answer- "All kinds of music!" Then I ask, "Who's your favorite country and western artist?" or "What's your favorite opera?" and I get blank stares. It turns out that "all kinds of music" means "acid house, electronica, trance, darkwave, eurobeat, speedcore, etc."- a million different names for the same kind of music. It isn't their fault that they're ignorant of the cultural riches of the 20th century. Big media has kept them in the dark so they can spoon feed them "pre-packaged, pasteurized entertainment product". The "good stuff" is all out there. You don't need a fancy shmancy archive. All it takes is a "breadcrumb", a clue, a YouTube video clip, an MP3, a name to Google- and this wonderful world opens up like a flower. It turns out that the world we live in isn't such a drab and dreary place after all! But if you need reminding just how ignorant the world we live in can be, click through that Amazon link up there and look at the credits for the stars of "Stormy Weather". If you know who those people actually are, all you can do is slap your forehead and shake your head. I hope I gave you some good "breadcrumbs" today. Give me a few in return in the comments.
Adventure 14: The Importance of SkillNathan Milstein: "Paganiniana" 1968 (sorry for the typo in the slate) Now here's an area of music where I'm a little out of my familiar territory. I played violin for one grueling year in elementary school and swore off it forever (much to the relief of my parents). Although I'm interested in violin music (as long as someone else is holding the fiddle) I've never really explored the repertoire for solo violin. I know a little bit about Paganini- he was a flamboyant showman who used pyrotechnic technique to dazzle audiences- and I know Nathan Milstein was a great violinist who performed into his 80s- but I can't call myself knowledgeable about this stuff at all. But I can tell you that when I first saw this clip on EMI's Great Recordings of the Century DVD, my jaw was hanging on the floor. Ever since Andy Warhol made "ideas without skill" fashionable back in the 60s, it seems to me that popular culture has been playing a game of "skill limbo". How low can we go? How badly drawn can a cartoon be and still be considered a cartoon? How many drum machines and sequencers can we stack up to avoid having to learn a real instrument? How much plastic surgery does it take to make acting skills unnecessary? I really don't know the answers to those questions. Every day is a new horror. But when I see someone who has both an idea AND skill, I'm reminded just how doggone powerful and dynamic a creative artist can be. I'm sick and tired of accepting "half a loaf". Speak to me with eloquence. Dazzle me with your skill. Communicate an important idea. I insist on "all of the above".
Adventure 10: Bernstein On What Makes American Music AmericanAaron Copland: Fanfare for the Common Man, Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts Here is another hot tip on a fascinating set of DVDs... Leonard Bernstein's Young People's Concerts. Leonard Bernstein was an accomplished composer and conductor, but if you want my opinion, he really stood out as being one of the world's greatest educators. He began a series of televised educational concerts in 1958 called "Young People's Concerts", and systematically educated America's youth about great music for the next 15 years. Bernstein didn't talk down to the kids. Looking at these lectures today as an adult, there's still plenty for me to learn. It distresses me that there's nothing even remotely like this available to kids on television today. It's a crime in fact. In this clip, Bernstein sums up how America's melting pot of cultures distilled many different kinds of music into quintessentially "American" music. Too often we try to ignore cultural differences and pretend they don't exist. Pointing out the things that are particular to a group of people is seen as "impolite". I prefer to celebrate all of the ethnic cultures around me here in Hollywood- Hispanic, Asian, Black, Middle Eastern- it's all more interesting to me than the plain old white bread people I grew up around. As a cartoonist, the differences between all of us are much more interesting than the similarities. Viva la difference! Anyway... In this clip, Bernstein turns over his baton to a guest conductor, composer Aaron Copland. Great stuff!
Twitter’s Project Mayhem Dilemma
The core idea behind this is that anyone on the SUL leading up to the change has gotten an unfair advantage in terms of the number of followers they now have on Twitter. Leaving aside the fairness of it, it certainly is true that just about every person with over a million followers on the service only got that many because of the SUL. And while you may wonder why anyone cares about the number of followers they have, for some accounts, such as those tied to blogs, a huge number of followers is beneficial in terms of clicks coming into the site when links are tweeted out. TechCrunch has certainly benefitted from this, as have a number of other large blogs on the SUL. As we showed yesterday, the new version of the SUL has drastically altered the rate at which new followers are being added to these accounts. And in many cases, people on the list are now actually losing followers. But as I noted, those who were on the old SUL are unlikely ever to be caught in terms of followers by anyone else now given these new rates — hence, the call for the resetting of the counts. It’s an interesting idea, but not one that is likely to happen. After all, if Twitter did a reset of users on the old SUL, it would mean breaking all the relationships accumulated over months or even years by those accounts — including plenty completely unrelated to the SUL. And while that may seem more fair to some, to at least as many, it would just be annoying — you would have to follow those accounts all over again. Meanwhile, resetting every user on Twitter to zero followers would just piss everyone off. And the complete distruction of the social graph could even threaten Twitter as a service itself. All social networks, whether they are Twitter or Facebook, are only as strong as their social graphs. Twitter wiping it own out, giving user less of a reason to return would be foolish. So where does that leave us? Well, as I said, in reality, nothing is likely to change. While it is a bit odd that the users on the old SUL (including @techcrunch) will continue to have follower counts in the millions while no one else does (except for maybe eventually the hard-charging @billgates), there really isn’t a good solution (or at least one that Twitter would be willing to do). But one thing Stern is concerned about with regard to the inflated follower counts is that anyone who was on the list can use it to their advantage for publicity. A simple solution to that would be to remove the follower count entirely. I wrote about this in length back in April. If Twitter were to simply not tell you how many people are following you, it would remove a huge part of why it matters so much (to both those on it and not on it): vanity. Of course, that wouldn’t be a perfect solution either because it wouldn’t take a smart third-party developer long to figure the follower numbers out through Twitter’s API. Twitter is well aware that the original SUL was a less than ideal solution. No less than co-founder Evan Williams admitted back in October that he wanted to kill it off. But the fact remains that it did and still does serve a purpose. Without a suggested users list, most people who sign up for Twitter would have absolutely no idea who to follow and would simply leave. While statistics point to a good number of users doing that even with the SUL, Twitter is unlikely to have gotten to where it is today without this type of feature. It would have been the classic problem of: no one I know is using the site so I’m not going to use it either. As I see it, Twitter’s only real solution is to keep improving this new SUL. While they say it’s already being dynamically updated frequently as determined by a number of unnamed factors, they should really work to make even more personalized. Maybe you get the default category SUL (as it is now) when you first sign up, but depending on your tweets (assuming they’re public), Twitter could offer you more personalized recommendations on who to follow. And they could also do what Facebook does and suggest friends based on other friends you have in common (something which it is promoting even more now, so it must be working). Thanks to their new geolocation API, Twitter could also do some interesting things with recommending users who are nearby to you at any given moment. That may sounds a little creepy, but as long as it’s opt-in, it might be useful for some. Undoubtedly, whether they say so or not, Twitter sees this type of SUL backlash as a minor bump in the road. After all, they have their goals set much higher then the millions of users they currently have. They want Facebook numbers, and beyond. If that happens, users will a million followers won’t be so uncommon, and the old SUL advantage will be rendered moot. It’s still a big “if,” but I would bet that’s their thinking on the matter.
[images: 20th Century Fox]
Source: TechCrunch | 23 Jan 2010 | 9:41 pm Adventure 13: Artists Communicating Together Without WordsDuke Ellington: "Improvisation for Miro" Another stunning clip from Norman Grantz's Improvisation. Here, the painter and sculptor Joan Miro (apologies in advance to the punctuation police) and jazz composer Duke Ellington meet for the first time for an improvised jazz session. I've witnessed similar unusual artistic collaborations myself- I produced a rock video for Bjork (more apologies!) that was designed and animated by John K. Parties at my house are always interesting interactions between cartoonists, musicians and creators of all stripes. Sometimes these sorts of things don't work out- Walt Disney and Salvador Dali's "Destino" was never meant to be (and when it finally was completed, it was even worse than it started out!). But when two great creative minds in different disciplines can work in tandem, wondeful things can happen. I'm sure there are more unusual collaborations between artists. If you can think of some, tell me about them in the comments.
A Practical LCD Writing TabletAn anonymous reader passes along a word about an innovative LCD writing tablet. The Boogie Board costs $30, can be written on with a stylus or a fingernail, and uses no power in the act of writing. Only erasing consumes power — from a watch battery, which lasts for 50,000 erases. The total cost per "page" comes out to only 1/15th that of steno paper. The writing surface is pressure-sensitive and "highly responsive to variable amounts of pressure," so you can make thick and thin lines.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 23 Jan 2010 | 9:19 pm Adventure 12: A Priceless Fragment of American Folk Blues History"Three Songs By Lead Belly" 1945 In case your credit card isn't maxed out from my previous recommendations, here is another "must have" set of three DVDs... Legends of Country Blues Guitar. Just like "Swingin' the Blues" perfectly catches the essence of Jazz, this landmark film distills the essence of folk blues. The staging and cutting in this little film is exquisite. Lead Belly was a man whose temper kept him in trouble with the law. Bob Dylan described him as "one of the few ex-cons to record a children's album". But he is best known as the "King of the 12 String Guitar". Like the Carter Family, his extensive recording career was responsible for documenting and preserving scores of folk songs that would not have survived otherwise. His importance to American folk music can't be overemphasized. This clip is the only time he ever appeared on film- a treasure of the first magnitude.
Adventure 11: Jammin' The Blues"Jammin' the Blues" with Lester Young Quick Note: I uploaded the legendary short film, "Jammin' The Blues" starring Lester Young to YouTube to share it with you. But Warner Bros has seen fit to disable the audio in my YouTube upload. So instead of recommending Warner's release of this classic film on DVD, I am going to point out that the same short is available on Norman Grantz's Improvisation. The print isn't quite as clean as on the Warner Bros DVD, but it contains rare outtakes from the making of the film. The YouTube video above is from Grantz's DVD. Animation is anything but an improvisatory medium. Every frame is painstakingly created by hand, and animators time the action down to a 24th of a second. Only the very best animators are able to overcome the constraints of frame by frame filmmaking and imbue their work with a feeling of spontaneity. Chief among these rarified breed of animators is Ralph Bakshi. I've written about him twice already in my stint here as guest blogger, but it's not just because he's my pal. It's because he is so unique. Ralph's first three pictures, Fritz the Cat, Heavy Traffic and Coonskin are intensely personal- just like Lester Young's sax solos. He accomplishes his results in the same way- by constructing his films as a real-time performance with virtuoso animators. Scenes are animated and laid down and another scene takes its place. The result might not be as polished as other animated films, and the narrative can become quite fragmented, but it's a hundred times more honest than talking dogs and princesses. "Jammin' the Blues" may just be the most beautiful film about Jazz ever made. I don't need to say anything more than that.
Magic Wand Bomb Detector Deemed Fraudulent, Inventor Imprisoned Remember back a few months when news broke about a little device that claimed to detect different sorts of bombs? The ones that the Iraqi government spent $85 million on over the last few years even though American military commanders and the FBI stated that they simply don't work. Well, as we all assumed, the ADE-651 is a sham. It's just a dirty racket. Good thing that the British government finally caught on, banned the device and threw the inventor in jail. (He's out on bond as of writing)
It seems that the heart of the device is ID badge-sized cards that are supposed to be used for detecting different items. There are different cards for everything from TNT, plastique, to even money and elephants. However, as the Cambridge Computer Laboratory found out, these cards contain nothing more than a dumb RFID tag. Seriously, watch the BBC investigation video after the jump.
Source: TechCrunch | 23 Jan 2010 | 8:26 pm Magic wand bomb detector deemed fraudulent, inventor imprisoned
It seems that the heart of the device is ID badge-sized cards that are supposed to be used for detecting different items. There are different cards for everything from TNT, plastique, to even money and elephants. However, as the Cambridge Computer Laboratory found out, these cards contain nothing more than a dumb RFID tag. Seriously, watch the BBC investigation video after the jump.
Jim McCormick as quoted by the TimesOnline,
The ADE-651 isn’t McCormick’s first unit. Randi.org states that he has sold $85 mil worth of the devices over the past 10 years. Interestingly enough, James Randi previously offered up a $1,000,000 purse to whoever proves that dowsing actually finds anything. McCormick never took the test. An export ban on the ADE-651 and similar devices start next week in Britain. McCormick was arrested on suspicion of fraud by misrepresentation but later released on bail. Who knows what will happen to him and his company, ATSC. But even if the courts take him down, five more companies will likely spring up around the globe and take up his cause of scamming governments while putting people at risk.
Source: CrunchGear | 23 Jan 2010 | 8:22 pm Lenovo joins the e-Reader war with its Tianji iBook EB-605 e-readerSection: Gadgets / Other, ebooks  Lenovo has jumped on the e-Reader bandwagon with its own Tianji iBook EB-605 e-Reader sporting a 6” screen and Samsung ARM 400MHZ CPU with dimensions of 178 mm x 128.4 mm x 9.9 mm. It has a multi-lingual interface, and supports multiple ebook formats including DF, CHM, EPUB, TXT, HTM, HTML, RTF, PDB, DJVU, MOBI, and PRC. A point worth noting is that it may support wireless using SIM card access (note the SIM card logo in the picture), which probably means GPRS/3G connectivity. It is expected to be priced at 2,000 yuan (approximately $300), and it will be launched any time soon. Via [Engadget] Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 23 Jan 2010 | 8:00 pm US enables Chinese hacking of Google - CNN
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 23 Jan 2010 | 7:43 pm Crazy Firewall Log Activity — What Does It Mean?arkowitz writes "I happened to have access to five days worth of firewall logs from a US state government agency. I wrote a parser to grab unique IPs out, and sent several million of them to a company called Quova, who gave me back full location info on every 40th one. I then used Green Phosphor's Glasshouse visualization tool to have a look at the count of inbound packets, grouped by country of origin and hour. And it's freaking crazy looking. So I made the video of it and I'm asking the Slashdot community: What the heck is going on?"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 23 Jan 2010 | 7:24 pm Top 10 Gamertell posts for the week of January 17, 2010FROM 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! CES 2010 Hands On: MLB 10 The Show” Sony’s MLB The Show franchise has been a dynasty in recent years, convincing millions of baseball fans to take the PlayStation… MORE » A combination of the federal budget deficit and a number of successful unmanned space endeavors—think Hubble, Mars Rovers—has dimmed Dubya's plan to put man back in space in a big way. Bolden, however, refuses to let the Astronaut die on his watch. "I do not see this president being the president who presides over the end of human spaceflight," he said. Bolden expressed an interest in partnering with other nations on practical manned missions, in addition to continuing to develop more efficient space flight technologies. Still, there are many powerful voices who consider manned spaceflight a frivolous endeavor. NASA's course will be determined in large part by Barack Obama and the funding he allots to the agency in the next few weeks. Here's to hoping he's looking towards the stars. [PhysOrg] Source: Gizmodo | 23 Jan 2010 | 6:00 pm Claims of Himalayan Glacier Disaster Melt AwayHugh Pickens writes "VOA News reports that leaders of the United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change have apologized for making a 'poorly substantiated' claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035. Scientists who identified the mistake say the IPCC report relied on news accounts that appear to have misquoted a scientific paper — which estimated that the glaciers could disappear by 2350, not 2035. Jeffrey Kargel, an adjunct professor at the University of Arizona who helped expose the IPCC's errors, said the botched projections were extremely embarrassing and damaging. 'The damage was that IPCC had, or I think still has, such a stellar reputation that people view it as an authority — as indeed they should — and so they see a bullet that says Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035 and they take that as a fact.' Experts who follow climate science and policy say they believe the IPCC should re-examine how it vets information when compiling its reports. 'These errors could have been avoided had the norms of scientific publication including peer review and concentration upon peer-reviewed work, been respected,' write the researchers."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 23 Jan 2010 | 5:29 pm WakeMate Delays Initial Shipment, Makes Moves To Appease Upset Customers
The WakeMate device, which costs $50, consists of a small wristband that you wear during the night. It tracks your movements throughout the night, which you can analyze from your computer, and can also work in tandem with your phone alarm to wake you up in the lightest phase of sleep (which is supposed to help eliminate grogginess). There are competitors in this space, like the Zeo Sleep Coach, but WakeMake is about $200 cheaper. Dru Wynings has posted the Email in its entirety. The reason for the delay? WakeMate says it wanted to make more improvements:
WakeMate’s letter stirred up quite a bit of unrest among users who had preordered, in part because WakeMate offered access to premium analytics features as compensation for the delay. That would be all well and good, but users who ordered before now were not informed that they would have to pay for premium subscriptions to unlock the full potential of the device. WakeMate says that the premium features referred to are actually in addition to the features they had previously announced, so customers aren’t dealing with a bait and switch. But in light of the confusion caused, today they’re sending users a follow up Email to announce that all pre-order customers will have access to all premium software features free of charge. Here’s the second Email, which will be going out this afternoon, in its entirety:
Delays are nothing new when it comes to startups that are building hardware. Fitbit, a startup that makes a exercise-tracking gadget, took a year to launch after its debut at TechCrunch50, and new customers still face lengthy waits to receive their devices. Image by HilaryAQ. Information provided by CrunchBase
Source: TechCrunch | 23 Jan 2010 | 5:23 pm Is Genetically Modified Corn Toxic?In the United States, we grow and eat corn whose genes have been tweaked to make the plants more resistant to pests and pesticides. Most European countries don't, largely because the citizenry fears it isn't safe. But try as scientists ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Jan 2010 | 5:13 pm Hot gaming news for the week of 1-17-2010Section:  No need to scour the interwebs for hot gaming news, Gamertell‘s already done that for you! Here’s a look at this week’s top stories…
OK, the view isn't anything special: the plane stays grounded outside the Teuge airport in the Netherlands. But the room itself, dubbed the Vliegtuigsuite, is spectacular, including three flat screen TVs, a Blu-ray player, a sauna, and a jacuzzi. Guests have access to the entire plane, from your king-size bed in the back all the way up to the cockpit. My Dutch isn't quite what it should be, but from the looks of things a night in the aircraft will put you back €350. A bit steep, sure, but totally worth it if you've always wanted to get it on in an airplane without worrying about a foot ending up in that weird blue toiletjuice. [Hotelsuites.nl via WeHeart]
Though just a proof of concept for now, this clip shows the hack-friendly Nokia N900 dual-booting Maemo and Android. It's only a taste, but as the dual-booter Brandon says, "its real and it could be spectacular." [Brandon's Posterous via jkOnTheRun] The graphic uses an intricate system of symbols, patterns, and shadings to illustrate the precise proportions and exact ingredients for 44 classic cocktails, including champagne coolers, vodka gimlets, and one intimidatingly complex concoction called a Zombie. I'm not sure I'm enough of a visual learner to get much real use out of this, but if anyone gives one of these a go, I encourage you to drunk-comment the results. [Flowing Data via Fast Company] Source: Gizmodo | 23 Jan 2010 | 4:20 pm Lemonade from the Lithium LemonChecking in on John Peterson, the excellent, well-versed skeptic of the electric vehicle, finds him increasingly strident in his criticism of plug-ins generally and lithium ion (Li-ion) particularly. He surfaces a fatal flaw in resting the entire EV enterprise on ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Jan 2010 | 3:36 pm Russian Whistleblower Cop ArrestedRemember the Russian cop's YouTube narrative on police corruption? Reader Max_W writes with the news that Alexei Dymovsky, the cop whose videos started a movement, was arrested (Google translation; Russian original) on January 22, 2010. He is in prison in the south of Russia. Max_W adds: "It seems only a president is allowed to have a video blog in Russia."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 23 Jan 2010 | 3:35 pm Oil Spill in Texas Waterway ContainedIn the waterway near Port Arthur, up to 450,000 gallons of crude oil spills after collision between an 800-foot tanker and towing vessel.Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Jan 2010 | 3:33 pm BOOM! Top Apple news for the week of 1-17-2010Section:  We may not cover Apple 24x7… but we know someone who does! Here’s a few of this week’s hottest from Appletell to get you started…
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article » Source: Gadgetell | 23 Jan 2010 | 3:30 pm Weekend Update 01.23.10- The Bated Breath Edition [Digital Daily]
We’ve all seen it, that spiro-graphed, color-splotched invitation to Apple’s (AAPL) Jan. 27 event at the Yerba Buena Center. Weekend Update isn’t on the inside, but we hear rumors that Jobs will storm the stage dressed as Moses, carrying the new tablet, which will be made of stone, under his robes. Apparently, that’s where it’s been hiding all along. Either that, or Weekend Update is going a little nuts from “tablet fatigue.” Before we got to rumors, plans and all important educated guesses, AllThingsD spent the week doing reporting about real companies with products you can actually buy. Walt’s column wasn’t exactly its normal, gadgety self this week. Maybe he’s saving his strength. Instead of the newest thing that won’t be leaving your pocket, he covered a service that claims to help you remember everything. Evernote, with its adorable little elephant logo, aims to be a sort of digital filing cabinet in the cloud, allowing you to save information, images, notes and just about anything else that can be digitized. Walt had good things to say all around, even if the available apps didn’t give every device the same functionality. Weekend Update liked the auto text-recognition feature that makes pictures of text searchable. We’ll never carry a business card home again. Neither rain nor snow nor tablet rumors can keep Walt from his appointed rounds to the mailbox, and this week he grabbed a couple questions about e-readers, Microsoft’s (MSFT) Internet Explorer 8 and the right laptop for the young and litigious. He cleared up the myth that e-books can’t highlight text (even if they don’t do it in color yet), and then moved on to a question about what IE8 refers to as accelerators. Before tying up the mailbag strings for anther week, Walt also gave counsel to a future counselor. He recommended a moderately priced Windows 7 laptop or a Macbook for the incoming law student but added that checking with the school and current students for specific needs would be a good idea. Weekend Update thinks that last bit is extra good advice. Katie was busy this week testing out the latest bluetooth earpiece from Aliph’s Jawbone line. The Jawbone Icon is the first earpiece to run with a software package that allows the addition of apps just for the earpiece. Overall Katie thought the Icon represented a step forward for bluetooth earpieces but hopes for upgrades to the app suite will bring more robust features. Oh yeah, and she was glad that they finally got rid of those tricky hidden control buttons. Peter gave us the continued saga of e-magazines and the world’s slowest moving electronic construction project. It looks like’s Time’s e-mag concepts won’t be part of Wednesday’s Apple event, even though there was much hullabaloo made over their Sports Illustrated concept. Condé Nast, on the other hand has declared it’s GQ mag-as-app tests a success. No word yet on who will be three-quarters naked on the first 10-inch screen edition. Completing the out-with-the-print, in-with-the-electronic trifecta was Peter’s post about The New York Times (NYT) paywall announcement. They claim they will erect a metered wall in 2011, which seems like an awfully long time in the shifting sands of the Web. Outside partners may be playing a factor, and some speculate that the 2011 date is just a declaration that they will be waiting-and-seeing. Peter doesn’t see what that would accomplish and cites some experts that assert that a year isn’t an unreasonable amount of time to build a complex paywall with necessary features. Digital Daily was on the ball this week with John’s signature, hard-hitting hilarity. John’s early report proved correct when sources suggested that the EU’s approval of the pending Oracle (ORCL)-Sun (JAVA) acquisition was nigh. Not to leave the tablet news out in the cold, John asked some important questions about a future tablet’s data consumption habits and thinks it might end up in a class of its own. A big, beautiful screen means big, beautiful images and video, which mean gloriously huge file sizes. Hooray for wifi. To round out the week, John coverd a story about Google’s (GOOG) Larry and Sergey planning to sell about $5.5 billion in stock over five years. We’re not sure whether the proper term is “cashing out” or “cashing in,” but they are going to be doing a lot of one or the other. The move will remove them as a two-man majority voting block, but their remaining 47 percent will assure their velvety duet will still ring clearly at board meetings. Boomtown led off with some viral video for the ages. Jimmy Fallon one-upped the “pants on the ground” video by performing the sarcastic ballad as Neil Young. We’re not sure the audience caught that it was Jimmy right way, partially because Young was making the TV rounds about that time and partially becuase Fallon does a decent Neal impression. Kara asked her readers to vote on what they expect the new tablet’s name will be, making the iPad her own prediction. Kara has an eerie way of getting this stuff right, so Weekend Update is gonna go ahead and get that tattoo this weekend. Kara finished us off with a quick post about her trip to Sundance and all the geektastic happenings there. Kara’s Winnebago, which we call “Operation Rolling Thunder” was crammed full of wife, kids, mom, dog, and maybe a few stowaway Bay Area indie filmmakers who tied themselves to the undercarriage. Read the post; there’s never a dull moment on a Swisher expedition. This is especially weird in the cases of the Droid and Nexus One, which don't just support multitouch on a hardware level, but fully support it on an OS level, too. It's really just the apps, like the browser, the photo gallery and the maps app, which exclude support for multitouch gestures such as pinch-zooming. Why can't all Android users have use the same gestures that iPhone, Pre and HTC Hero owners can, if their phones can already accept multi-finger input? Only Google knows. But there's something you can do about it. Actually, there are two things: RootingRooting is most intensive method, and can actually do a lot more than add multitouch to your phone. What this does, basically, is give you deep, system-level access to all your phone's software and parameters, which lets you run unsanctioned tethering apps to writing apps to your SD card (by default, Android phones restrict you to the device's limited, onboard memory), modify the device's stock apps, and most importantly, swap your phone's software out completely, with what's called a new ROM. To get native multitouch apps on your phone, you can opt for an entire flash ROM, or just a more narrow set of hacks. But you will need to root your device. So here's how to get multitouch on your new Android phone, natively: • Google Nexus One• Verizon Motorola DroidNow, if the above instructions seem like overkill for a relatively minor feature, don't have any need for the other goodies that rooting promises, or aren't satisfied with the current state of Nexus One and Droid homebrew, you have another, easier option: Downloadable AppsAs I mentioned before, the Droid and Nexus One's shared dirty secret is that they support multitouch out of the box, but don't support include the gestures necessary to get any use out of it. This means that unless you're willing to hack your phones, as seen above, you're not going to be able to get multitouch in your native browser, or for that matter any of your native apps. The easy solution? Download Dolphin, a browser that include multitouch gestures (and a lot more cool stuff, like swipe gestures, RSS feed subscriptions and a built-in Twitter client. There are other mulitouch apps in the App Market, from games to utilities to simple tech demos. Drop your favorites in the comments, and I'll add them to the post. That's pretty much it! If you have any tips to tricks for getting the most out your phone's hardware, please drop some links in the comments-your feedback is hugely important to our Saturday How To guides. And if you have any topics you'd like to see covered here, please let me know. Happy pinch-zooming, folks! The first patent, published last week, details a system in which an iPod draws power from solar cells covering the device. It includes a description on how constant voltage could be maintained even with the user's hand obstructing some of the cells and explains how the solar power could be used in conjunction with traditional batteries. The less I have to plug my stuff in the better, I say. Check! I was initially skeptical of my MacBook's multitudinous multitouch, but I was quickly converted and now I'm swishing and flicking like a Hogwarts First Year. Apple's next patent expands on gesture-based input, detailing an input device with the ability to sense force and velocity. These sensors allow the hardware to register more more complex and more specific gestures, giving the user more precise control over their devices. Source: Gizmodo | 23 Jan 2010 | 3:00 pm PayPal Freezes the Assets of Wikileaks.orgmatsh sends word that PayPal has frozen the assets of wikileaks.org. From their Web site: "Paypal has as of 23rd of January 2010 frozen WikiLeaks assets. This is the second time that this happens. The last time we struggled for more than half a year to resolve this issue. By working with the respected and recognized German foundation Wau Holland Stiftung we tried to avoid this from happening again — apparently without avail." The submitter adds: "Hopefully we can pressure PayPal to resolve this quickly, since this seems like a dangerous political decision."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 23 Jan 2010 | 2:40 pm Free apps roundup for January 22nd, 2010FROM APPLETELL - It’s been a while since I’ve posted a bunch of game demos, so it’s time that’s changed. This week I have three, along with some other great apps for your pleasure. Apple's January 27th event was confirmed with a splatter of paint. And oh were there rumors. One report said it was an iPhone flattened with a rolling pin. The WSJ said that we'd share our Tablets with our families (yeah right). One even suggested it could cure lupus (not really). We started our Apple Tablet Sweepstakes. There's still time to enter, so guess the mystery device's specs and features and we'll buy you one. Jesus reflected on the Apple Tablet interface and sorted out what makes sense and what just plain doesn't. John rounded up some of the dumbest tablet rumors of all time. Adam rounded up all the iPhone 4 rumors he could find, the dumb along with the not so dumb. Brian added up all those subscriptions you're paying for and it's a serious chunk of change. Mark is still fighting the good fight on the yellow iMac front. Joel revealed the secret of Apple's magic: they show off products that you can actually buy. We reviewed the Palm Pre Plus. Turns out it's not "plus" a whole lot. Last week we brought you customers' Genius Bar horror stories. This week we came back with tales from the other side of the bar. We teamed up with our buddies at Gawker TV and put together this extensive montage of tablets and futuristic interfaces in film and TV. We explained solid-state drives and why you should want one. If you thought Sexting was embarrassing, wait until you read Brian Barrett's hard-hitting report on the seedy subcultures of Becksting, Hexting, and more. Rockers OK Go wrote in and explained that whole business about non-embeddable YouTube videos. Speaking of rockers, the Flaming Lips' Wayne Coyne was chilling in a bathtub on his front lawn when the Google Street View van rolled by. Jason got to live out some lifelong fantasies with the Star Trek Online Open Beta. The verdict: pew pew and pppptththhhbbffffooooo. With YouTube and Vimeo jumping in bed with HTML5, we wonder if the end of Flash video is drawing near. A guy did a text input speed test with a laptop, an iPhone, a Palm, a Newton, a pen and pad, and a Magnadoodle. Okay, okay, all except for one of those. We read the incredible story of a man whose iPhone saved his life when he was trapped under the rubble in Haiti. Amazon opened up the Kindle for development! That exclamation point is all the enthusiasm I can muster. We checked out an electromagnetic cannon that can stop cars dead in their tracks. Unless your car was made before the era of computerized engines (before the drastic change / in production when cars were metal instead of plastic). Sega Genesis is coming to the iPhone, official-style. Mark shared a pretty good tip for snagging a free phone charger: hit up a hotel's lost and found. We found an iPhone app that catches cheating spouses, but if you read the news these days it seems like they're doing pretty OK on their own. I couldn't spot this super-sophisticated ATM card skimmer. Could you? US Airways misinterpreted "red ring of death" and destroyed a kid's XBox 360. A Photoshop user traced his mouse movement during a three-hour session. The result probably looks neater than whatever he was working on. That wild picture of the wolf that won that National Geographic photo contest? It's deadly acoustic weapon, as not to upset it. There are tree houses. And then there are tree houses. A crazy, crazy dude with some serious, serious cajones is going to attempt to break the sound barrier by free-falling from 120,000 feet. MacGruber is coming to the big screen. We looked at some instances in which sci-fi movies became blowing up the flight you're on. Just don't. Microsoft finally got around to fixing a seventeen year old bug. Oh, and those naked airport scanners everyone's always up in arms about? They might not be so good at actually detecting bombs. Source: Gizmodo | 23 Jan 2010 | 2:00 pm Larry & Sergey To Cash In $5.5B of Google Chipstheodp writes "According to an SEC filing, Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have adopted five-year trading plans to sell about 5M shares each, which would yield each about $2.75B based on Friday's closing stock price of $550.01. BTW, Google kicks in 12 cents to Social Security and another 2 cents to Medicare on its founders' celebrated $1 annual salaries." After this stock is sold, the founders will hold less than 50% of the voting shares and thus will give up voting control of Google.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 23 Jan 2010 | 1:21 pm How Facebook And FriendFeed Became Turkish Delights
But first, let me tell you a story. Two years ago I contacted Turkey’s pre-eminent “Web 2.0″ blogger, Arda Kutsal of Webrazzi. I said let’s do a TechCrunch Europe meetup in Istanbul. Duly, a few weeks later I took a flight out, got to the hotel he mentioned and figured Arda had organised the meetup in the bar. No, said the receptionist, “It’s in the Grand Ballroom.” I headed down the hall to find about 400 people. That was the kind of thing that was going on then. Two years on, with a packed room full of European VCs and private equity people hearing pitches from a wide range of Turkish technology companies, it’s clear the investment community is keenly interested in this market.
PALAOA's Livestream page has links to the audio stream in both MP3 and OGG-Vorbis. If you're expecting to tune in and instantly hear glorious, crystal-clear whale song, you might be disappointed. As the page explains:
Still, the idea is undeniably cool and there is some impressive technology that makes it all happen. If you're looking for some ambient noise to listen to while you do some work or drift to sleep, it's hard to think of anything more amazing than this. [PALOAO] Source: Gizmodo | 23 Jan 2010 | 1:00 pm How Google's Nexus One censors cuss words - CNET
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 23 Jan 2010 | 12:45 pm Losing Andrew LangeCosmology suffered a great loss yesterday with the passing of Andrew Lange, co-leader of the BOOMERang experiment, which provided the first experimental evidence that our universe is flat, and offered strong support to the supernova evidence for dark energy. Lang ...Source: Discovery News - Top Stories | 23 Jan 2010 | 12:32 pm Deadline For Data.gov Arrives, and DeliversinKubus writes "According to a story carried by AP, as part of President Barack Obama's 'Open Government Directive,' the 24 major departments and agencies that make up the executive branch of the federal government had until Friday to release at least three 'high-value' data sets. Over 300 new data sets have been released on data.gov. There's a lot of interesting stuff on there and more to come." One of the departments required to release data is the office of the US Trade Representative. Wouldn't it be nice if they posted the ACTA negotiating drafts?Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 23 Jan 2010 | 12:14 pm Facebook Gives Harman His Name Back, Apologizes
Here are the Facebook guidelines on trademark squatting. Which is fine for Nike or coca-cola, but definitely a grey area for trademarks that are also legitimately in use as people’s names. I’d pay to see the emails that must have been flying around Facebook this morning. But they did the right thing here, and that’s all that matters. Update: An interesting twist I missed before. Harman set up a Support Harman facebook group last night after our initial post. Mark Zuckerberg joined it:
No owner is quite good enough for this big-headed piece. Larsen's "Tool," a shiny, black cube with an Ethernet jack, pings a server every ten minutes to determine if it is listed for sale on eBay. If it's not, it creates a new auction. Mind you, this isn't only a conceptual function of the piece; it really is constantly auctioning itself and being purchased by new owners. You can view the current auction at http://atooltodeceiveandslaughter.com/. The going price for the current auction, ending in five days, is $4,250. The piece has been in circulation since 2008. "A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter" isn't for art collectors with fragile egos. It will leave you. Unless, of course, you forget to plug it in. [Caleb Larsen via Make] Source: Gizmodo | 23 Jan 2010 | 12:00 pm Search Engine Usage Soared in 2009 (PC World)PC World - More than 131 billion searches were made by people age 15 or older in December 2009, marking a 46 percent increase from 2008, according to a report from Web analytics firm Comscore. That breaks down into 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:38 am Rockstar Employees Badly Overworked, Say Wivesjuicegg writes "Wives of Rockstar Games employees in San Diego recently published an open letter on their Gamasutra blog. The authors say that Rockstar employees are seriously strained by unending crunch periods of 12-hour work days and 6-day weeks. High levels of stress are leading to serious psychological and physical problems for some of the employees. They charge that studio management uses arbitrary, deceptive and manipulative practices to get employees to work more unpaid overtime hours at greater intensity — despite over $1 billion in Grand Theft Auto revenue. Among the blog comments, some current and past Rockstar employees are confirming problems with the studio. 'Ex Rocker' writes: 'What makes R* crunch periods different then any other studio is that they tell you the game has to be finished in 6 months, so let's start our final push to get this awesome game out there! 6 months turns into 1 year, 1 year turns into 2.' Other comments reveal worker hopelessness and general mismanagement at the San Diego studio. This turmoil is affecting development on upcoming games as well." Read on for responses from Rockstar itself and other members of the industry.Read more of this story at Slashdot.
The Card Speaker is about the same size as an iPod and shares its design principles, too: simple and clean. The company claims it "puts most every mp3 accessory to shame with its good looks and crisp fidelity." The former may be true, though the latter remains to be seen. Still, if its packaging is any reflection on the Card Speaker's sound quality, it could live up to its description. The portable speaker comes in a handsome case with space for a short 3.5mm cord and a USB cable for charging. The Card Speaker's battery lasts up to five hours on a charge, certainly enough time for a stranger to notice your portable audio set up and compliment you on its elegance. The $75 Card Speaker comes in silver or black and can be had at The Ghostly Store. [Unplggd] Source: Gizmodo | 23 Jan 2010 | 11:00 am Why buy an Acer LCD when you can get the same monitor under the Integral name?
[thanks for the tip, iSashaCH]
Source: CrunchGear | 23 Jan 2010 | 10:38 am Thesixtyone Unveils a Gorgeous Redesign, Users Predictably Revolt
Music discovery site thesixtyone unveiled a radical—and gorgeous—redesign a couple days ago. The redesign presents a single, lush full-screen photograph as each song plays, while smaller snapshots fade in and out screensaver-style. The controls are minimized to rollover menus on the upper right, an account-info strip along the lower left, and green arrows to skip to the next or previous songs. You are supposed to just select a type of playlist (top songs, hot, moods) and let it play. Thesixtyone adds Digg-like voting and gaming elements to surface the best indie music. Users hate it. Or at least the vocal ones complaining about the change on the startup’s Facebook wall, organizing a boycott, and sending us tips. This backlash is predictable and always happens whenever a site goes through a radical change. But some of the complaints are valid. For instance, the biggest change is that you can no longer see the playlist of songs you are listening to or skip around willy-nilly. You can see the old design here or in the screenshot below. The old design was more conventional, but it was certainly easier to navigate. I asked founder James Miao about the backlash, and he responds:
He also notes that “we find that lists aren’t very effective for browsing music you don’t already recognize,” but agrees that it should be easier to navigate the site, and more changes are coming which will improve the experience. There is another issue. Thesixtyone was able to build a small but loyal community of artists and music lovers. The biggest complaint is that many of the community features have been stripped out. Esteban, one “pissed off t61 user,” writes us:
Miao says that there were problems with the old community features. Specifically, some artists were abusing the system, trying to game the ratings or spamming users with mass messages. The new site is designed to create conversations between fans and artists around songs, and more features in this area are also going to be introduced in the future. I personally like the new design and the way music just plays with minimal fuss. Many of the navigation and discovery issues can be solved simply by bringing back a playlist view as an option for when you want to dive deeper into the playlist or skip around. Which design do you think is better?
Source: TechCrunch | 23 Jan 2010 | 10:12 am Laptop Mag’s cornucopia of system ratings is really quite thorough
We all know by now that HP is the largest PC seller out there. Good for HP. But when you’re shopping for your next system, it helps to know how Brand A compares to Brand X. Our friends at Laptop Magazine have done just that, and put together a series showcasing the strengths and weaknesses of this brand versus that brand. Best part: regular users—like you!—are invited to give your thoughts, which will be compiled into a sort of go-to glossary. Good idea. Being a Laptop Magazine production, the first round of ratings cover netbooks and notebooks. Let’s quickly look at Toshiba to get an idea of what’s going on. Also, I’ve never owned a Toshiba, um, anything, so it’ll be helpful for me, too. Yay. • Only one out of the 14 machines reviewed by Laptop, one received a 5-Star rating (the Mini NB205) • 43 percent of Toshibas received a 4-Star rating; 21 percent received a 3.5-Star rating; 29 percent received a 3-Star rating • Picking a needle out of a stack of needles, it looks like Toshibas excel when it comes to multimedia playback, what with dedicated buttons and whatnot • On the bad side, Toshibas apparently have rubbish trackpads and mouse buttons And so on. There’s several of these ratings already online, including Apple notebooks, so if you’re either looking to kill a few minutes, or, gasp, actually learn a thing or two before whipping out your credit card, well, there you go. I use a lot of commas, yes. It’s how I talk in real life, too.
Source: CrunchGear | 23 Jan 2010 | 10:00 am Saudi Zain in credit talks after missing commitments (Reuters)Reuters - Zain Saudi Arabia (7030.SE), the kingdom's newest mobile phone operator, said on Saturday it is in talks with lenders after missing some commitments last year on a two-year $2.5-billion Islamic loan.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 23 Jan 2010 | 9:52 am Google Strives to Extend Search Dominance - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 23 Jan 2010 | 9:26 am Patent Watch: IBM Figures Out How To Limit Device Access By Geolocation
Could IBM be prepping more of its own location-aware technology and devices? According to a recent patent filing, it looks like it. On Thursday, Big Blue filed for a patent for a “method and system for location-aware authorization.” The inventors appear to be IBM engineers based in Rome, Italy. According to the filing, the technology would provide a method and technology to control access to a device based on the location of that device. IBM gave the example of a company that only wanted employees to use a particular device in the office or their home and believe that their technology would allow the employer to control where the particular device can be accessed. Here’s an excerpt from the filing:
Talk about GPS-lockdown. In an age of mobile workers and telecommuters, such a product might be more of a hindrance than a help for most organizations. But I could see putting something like that on servers or machines with super-sensitive data that are not supposed to leave the premises. The big question looms: what will Big Blue, which reported strong earnings for 2009 this past week, do with this technology? Thanks for the tip Anand S. Information provided by CrunchBase
Source: TechCrunch | 23 Jan 2010 | 8:57 am Spigit Brings Enterprise Collaboration Tool To SMB’s
Often times when an enterprise software company moves downstream, they simply strip down many core functions of their enterprise product in order to make it affordable for SMB’s. WE by Spigit has additional features in their enterprise model, such as prediction and idea trading markets, but the main functions at the heart of their service remain unchanged. When a company purchases WE by Spigit, they are able to create an “innovation community” where their employees (up to 500), are able to contribute and collaborate on projects immediately. Spigit employs constantly evolving algorithms in their system, which, when added to a thumbs up/down feedback system, creates a reputation value for a user. These values are useful because administrators will see topics and ideas which have the highest reputation rise to the top. Each community is hosted on Spigit’s servers. Another feature is the inclusion of incentives and rewards in order to increase contribution from the communities. Users gain both points and virtual currency for the parts they play in the community; which can then be redeemed for real goods. Spigit hopes that by providing rewards, users will collaborate more, and thus more ideas from within companies can come to fruition. BrightIdea offers services which are similar to those of Spigit, but they, like most other collaboration platforms, cater to larger enterprises. WE by Spigit is pay-as-you-go. The product starts at $500 per month for 50 users, and reaches $2500 a month for 500 users. Spigit received $10M in funding from Warburg Pincus in October of 2009, bringing their total funding amount to $14M since their launch in 2007. They have been cash-flow positive for the past 10 months.
Source: TechCrunch | 23 Jan 2010 | 8:30 am The Macalope Weekly: Awwwwwwww freak out! (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - The Macalope hopes you enjoyed your vacation from tablet rumors last week because itâs just a few days until Apple unveils whatever itâs going to unveil and it looks like everyoneâs had their crazy pills.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 23 Jan 2010 | 8:00 am Video: Peter Ha vs an 11-year old professional gamerWatch and laugh as Peter Ha and Lev Grossman are pwnd by a 11-year old in Halo 3 and Madden. Tools. Just more proof that Peter Ha probably shouldn’t be writing about video games for a living. I’m kidding, Peter. Much love.
Source: CrunchGear | 23 Jan 2010 | 7:52 am CableJive provides a cable for two (Macworld.com)Macworld.com - Cable vendor CableJive has introduced the DuaLink, a USB dock-connector cable for iPods and iPhones that lets you charge and sync two devices simultaneously.Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 23 Jan 2010 | 7:37 am Spyker 'well-positioned' to buy Saab-rival bidder* Says outcome of talks with GM expected early next weekSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jan 2010 | 7:30 am Making Board Games ElectronicRevolutionary technology to be presented at MIT conference next weekA groundbreaking technology developed at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada may make traditional board games a thing of the past.The technology allows groups of friends or family members to play electronic games like they used to do board games: in a sociable and physical setting, placed together around a table. It also eases game controls by using affordances of regular cardboard pieces."This is no doubt the future of board games," says Roel Vertegaal, an associate professor at Queen's Human Media Lab.At first glance, the technology, by School of Computing graduate Mike Rooke and Professor Vertegaal, looks like a set of white, cardboard hexagons taken straight from the game board of Settlers of Catan. However, with the help of an overhead camera and a projector, each piece of cardboard becomes a mini-computer capable of displaying video images.The camera tracking and projection allow researchers at the HML to anticipate technologies 5-10 years down the road, when thin-film Organic LED screens will allow these kinds of board games to become practical. "We just started thinking about, 'What if these new screens exist? What could we do with them?" says Professor Vertegaal.Board games are just the beginning. HML student Eric Akaoka and Professor Vertegaal have also been pioneering research on DisplayObjects. This technology allows any object to become a computer. The DisplayObjects workbench allows designers to carve future appliances out of interactive Styrofoam that immediately displays images, allowing evaluation with users at an earlier stage than is currently possible."In the near future, a computer will have any shape or form, and iPhone-like computer displays will start appearing on any product. Projecting and tracking objects is just the beginning. These Organic User Interfaces will be embedded in real world interactions."---Image Caption: Associate Professor Roel Vertegaal will present his research at a conference at MIT on Jan. 25. Credit: Photo by Jalani MorganSource: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jan 2010 | 7:19 am Truphone Is First To Provide VoIP App For Nexus One
The update for Android device (version 3.0.2) also makes Truphone compatible with the T-Mobile Pulse, taking it to five Android devices now. Truphone worked closely with Google on the app.
Source: TechCrunch | 23 Jan 2010 | 7:12 am 'Trivial' Passwords Enabled Huge Hack - PC World
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 23 Jan 2010 | 7:11 am Tsunamis Signal Their PresenceUnderwater Communication Network May Sense TsunamisTsunamis send electric signals through the ocean that appear to be sensed by the vast network of communication cables on the seabed, according to a new study led by Manoj Nair of the University of Colorado and NOAA.Nair and his colleagues used computer models to estimate the size of an electric field created by the force of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami as it traveled over major submarine cables.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jan 2010 | 7:10 am Biodiversity Loss Must Be AddressedAn inter-governmental workshop held in London concluded that governments must get to the root of the underlying causes of biodiversity loss if they are to determine the rate at which ecosystems and their species are disappearing.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jan 2010 | 6:50 am Does a frozen camera improve its ISO capabilities? 4Chan says so.Please, take this advice lightly. It came from the bowels of 4Chan, after all. But it seems that a user froze his Sony A350 DSLR and actually got better results when shooting at ISO 3200. The results he posted seem to validate his results, but once again, this is from 4Chan home of everything that is vile, rotten and antisocial on the Internet.
4Chan (NSFW of course) via The Phoblographer via Photo Rumors
Source: CrunchGear | 23 Jan 2010 | 6:39 am Aftershocks In Haiti Possible For Next 30 DaysA preliminary U.S. Geological Survey assessment has found that the sequence of aftershocks following the magnitude 7 earthquake that struck near Port-au-Prince, Haiti on Jan.Source: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jan 2010 | 6:35 am Pope to priests: Go forth and blog (AP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 23 Jan 2010 | 5:33 am Twitter Disables Widget Feature Due To Security GlitchThe notorious microblogging site Twitter has halted one if its features that allows users to display updates on their website by using Flash technology.Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the feature called the Flash widget was temporarily shut down when researchers discovered a programming flaw that left the login records of its users susceptible to hackers.A senior analyst said the problem exploits an illustrious vulnerability in Adobe Systems Inc's Flash programming language.Although Adobe has informed many websites of this problem, they have neglected to respond to the notice.The popularity of the social networking site has made it a perfect target for hackers who aim to spread menacing viruses to users of Twitter.Officials with Adobe declined to comment.Mike Bailey of Foreground Security in Orlando, Florida, told Reuters in an interview, "As simple as the attack is, I've been finding them all over the place."He says the Twitter site could have been open to attack for over a year, but it was useless to try and figure out whether the Adobe flaw had actually been exploited.The site was unexpectedly seized last month when a hacker diverted it to a group claiming to have been calling themselves the Iranian Cyber Army.Source: RedOrbit News - Technology | 23 Jan 2010 | 5:20 am Fewer But Stronger Atlantic Hurricane ForecastImage Caption: Hurricane Katrina was the costliest and one of the five deadliest hurricanes in the history of the United States, costing over 1800 lives and $81.2 billion USD. Courtesy Jeff Schmaltz, MODIS Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFCSource: RedOrbit News - Science | 23 Jan 2010 | 5:15 am Watch the PSP Go unassembled and reassemble itself
Source: CrunchGear | 23 Jan 2010 | 5:12 am Engine had problem on A400M maiden flight-German magazineBERLIN, Jan 23 (Reuters) - The Airbus A400M had an engine problem on its maiden flight last month, German magazine Spiegel said in an article on Saturday, citing documents from engine maker Europrop. ...Source: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 23 Jan 2010 | 3:12 am Facebook Snatches User’s Vanity URL And Sells It To Harman InternationalUpdate: Facebook Gives Harman His Name Back, Apologizes
Facebook then apparently did a sales deal around the vanity URL with Harman International. The notice from Facebook (also in image at bottom of post):
There’s just one problem. “Harman” as a vanity URL is perfectly appropriate as a username for someone named Harman Bajwa. Facebook’s VP Global Sales Mike Murphy has /mike, for example, much to my personal annoyance. And while we’re on the topic of Mike Murphy, he may actually be the guy behind all of this. It turns out that the reason Facebook wants to take back that /Harman vanity URL may be more about money and less (much less) about policy violations. That’s because Harman also received an email yesterday from a representative of Harman International, which is apparently “working with Facebook” to take the /Harman username for a initiative they’re doing around the Grammy Awards. They’re offering “promotional items” to Harman to hand the name over willingly:
We’ve reached out to Facebook PR for comment, although the evidence, unless fake, sort of speaks for itself. This is actually one of those times that I’m hoping that we’re being duped somehow, because telling users they’ve done something wrong when really all you’re doing is pursuing a sales quota is really, really distasteful. We’ll update with any comment. Harman, to his credit, isn’t all that angry. “It would be great if I get my User name back,” he said in an email to me, adding that he’s working on a startup that will launch next summer. Rest assured, Harman, we’ll be covering it.
Source: TechCrunch | 23 Jan 2010 | 2:22 am
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Gaiman, who is forty-nine and English, with a pale face and a wild, corkscrewed mop of black-and-gray hair, is unusually prolific. In addition to horror, he writes fantasy, fairy tales, science fiction, and apocalyptic romps, in the form of novels, comics, picture books, short stories, poems, and screenplays. Now and then, he writes a song. Gaiman's books are genre pieces that refuse to remain true to their genres, and his audience is broader than any purist's: he defines his readership as "bipeds." His mode is syncretic, with sources ranging from English folktales to glam rock and the Midrash, and enchantment is his major theme: life as we know it, only prone to visitations by Norse gods, trolls, Arthurian knights, and kindergarten-age zombies. "Neil's writing is kind of fey in the best sense of the word," the comic-book writer Alan Moore told me. "His best effects come out of people or characters or situations in the real world being starkly juxtaposed with this misty fantasy world." The model for Gaiman's eclecticism is G. K. Chesterton; his work, Gaiman says, "left me with an idea of London as this wonderful, mythical, magical place, which became the way I saw the world." Chesterton's career also serves as a warning. "He would have been a better writer if he'd written less," Gaiman says. "There's always that fear of writing too much if you're a reasonably facile writer, and I'm a reasonably facile writer."
In the film Fight Club (the book has a slightly different plot), the members of Project Mayhem’s main goal is to blow up the buildings that contain credit card companies’ records so that everyone’s debt is reset to zero. (Yes, I know this wouldn’t actually work, but never mind that for now.) Yesterday, two Twitter users, 
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For the past couple of days I’ve been in Turkey, absorbing the tech scene in Istanbul (tomorrow I’m in Munich, Germany, for 
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As companies mature from fledgling startups into small and medium-sized businesses, it becomes harder to capture and analyze ideas coming from within an organization. Email and spreadsheets are the usual tools used to deal with internal collaboration, but these modes have no way of bringing the best ideas to the top: many times they are lost in the shuffle. 
Voice app provider 
