|
|
|
|
Israeli Scientists Freeze Water By Warming Itccktech writes "As reported by NPR and Chemistry world, the journal Science has a paper by David Ehre, Etay Lavert, Meir Lahav, and Igor Lubomirsky [note: abstract online; payment required to read the full paper] of Israel's Weizmann Institute, who have figured out a way to freeze pure water by warming it up. The trick is that pure water has different freezing points depending on the electrical charge of the surface it resides on. They found out that a negatively charged surface causes water to freeze at a lower temperature than a positively charged surface. By putting water on the pyroelectric material Lithium Tantalate, which has a negative charge when cooler but a positive change when warmer; water would remain a liquid down to -17 degrees C., and then freeze when the substrate and water were warmed up and the charge changed to positive, where water freezes at -7 degrees C."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 Feb 2010 | 3:30 am Nsyght Releases New Ways To Manage Realtime Social Streams
Nsyght is a startup we broke just before the Christmas vacation which focuses on making realtime streams manageable and is similar in scope to Friendfeed and Cliqset. It currently integrates accounts from Twitter, Facebook, digg, Vimeo, Stumbleupon, Flickr, Delicious, and Last.fm – with other networks planned – and has now introduced a bunch of new features.
Source: TechCrunch | 6 Feb 2010 | 3:28 am New Rules May Raise Cost of Buying Gadgets Onlineericatcw writes "Buying your next laptop or smartphone online could suddenly get a lot more expensive if a little-known US Department of Transportation proposal to tighten rules around the shipment of small, Lithium-Ion battery-powered devices by air goes through, says an industry group opposing the move. The changes, designed primarily to reduce the risk from Lithium-Ion batteries, would also forbid air travelers from carrying spare alkaline or NiMH batteries in their checked-in luggage, according to the head of the Portable Rechargeable Battery Association. The proposal is under review until March 12. It can be viewed and commented upon by members of the public."Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 6 Feb 2010 | 2:33 am Amazon Says No To Blippy
Cofounder Philip Kaplan first mentioned that Amazon had turned off Blippy’s access to the service on an episode of TWiST with Jason Calacanis. I spoke to Kaplan tonight about Amazon’s reaction to Blippy. He says they didn’t block Blippy, but simply insisted that the service stop pulling user purchase data, and erase all historical data they had already collected. They were also summoned to Seattle to speak with a “high ranking executive” of the company. Blippy complied (with both the summons and the demand to stop accessing user data). Kaplan is soft stepping around the Amazon issue, and is hoping to come to some agreement with the company to allow them to access data in the future. He says “We believe our users feel strongly, as we do, that it is their right to access and use their data however they want. We’re optimistic that Amazon will come to the same conclusion.” None of the other thirteen companies Blippy takes data from have complained, Kaplan says. And he notes that users must actually request data to be collected before Blippy begins to do that. There is certainly an issue with how Blippy collects data – by storing user credentials on their own servers. But Blippy says they use APIs to log users in when available. And that may be the issue Amazon has with Blippy. But it doesn’t explain why they’re insisting Blippy delete historical data that’s already been collected. The users have given their permission, and in fact have indicated that they want this data to be moved to Blippy. And it is the users’ data, after all. Amazon would be smart to remember that. Perhaps, and I’m speculating here, there’s a reason Amazon doesn’t want all this data published. They’ve engaged in variable pricing in the past to test the demand curve, for example. They certainly may be using it again.
Source: TechCrunch | 6 Feb 2010 | 1:15 am Amazon Says No To BlippyBlippy, the Twitter-like service that lets users publish the details of all their purchases, is just a couple of months old. But it already got Stephen Colbert's attention (thumbs up). And now it has Amazon's...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Feb 2010 | 1:15 am Siri Assistant, a personal assistant appSiri Assistant is a new iPhone app that helps people get things done by combining intelligent voice recognition with hooks into tons of different web services, making it easy for people to use their mobile...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Feb 2010 | 1:03 am Apple Bans Location-based iPhone AdsApple has told developers it will not accept iPhone applications that use the smartphone's global positioning system to distribute location-based advertising. Information Week reports. The company did...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Feb 2010 | 12:58 am Working steampunk firearmsJamie sez, "Denver artist Jonathan Alberico has created two fully functional steam punk guns. Black Betty, a dual barrel pistol uses flash paper to shoot fire balls. Doris is a beastly air cannon that...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 6 Feb 2010 | 12:01 am Working steampunk firearms Jamie sez, "Denver artist Jonathan Alberico has created two fully functional steam punk guns. Black Betty, a dual barrel pistol uses flash paper to shoot fire balls. Doris is a beastly air cannon that fires bouncey ball at high enough speeds to rip through boxes and even bounce back and catch the videographer in the hip! Both pieces have corresponding youtube clips of them in action."
(Thanks, Jamie!)
Previously:
 Source: Boing Boing | 6 Feb 2010 | 12:01 am Locus poll, 2009 editionIt's time once again for the annual Locus Poll and Survey , where you, the readers of science fiction, get to vote for the best books and stories of the year.Source: Boing Boing | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:56 pm Locus poll, 2009 editionIt's time once again for the annual Locus Poll and Survey , where you, the readers of science fiction, get to vote for the best books and stories of the year.Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:56 pm Cambodia rebukes Google over disputed Thai border map (AFP)
Source: Yahoo! News: Technology News | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:52 pm Santa Fe Institute economist: one in four Americans is employed to guard the wealth of the richHere's a fascinating profile on radical Santa Fe Institute economist Samuel Bowles, an empiricist who says his research doesn't support the Chicago School efficient marketplace hypothesis. Instead, Bowles...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:46 pm Santa Fe Institute economist: one in four Americans is employed to guard the wealth of the richHere's a fascinating profile on radical Santa Fe Institute economist Samuel Bowles, an empiricist who says his research doesn't support the Chicago School efficient marketplace hypothesis. Instead, Bowles...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:46 pm Santa Fe Institute economist: one in four Americans is employed to guard the wealth of the richHere's a fascinating profile on radical Santa Fe Institute economist Samuel Bowles, an empiricist who says his research doesn't support the Chicago School efficient marketplace hypothesis. Instead, Bowles argues that the wealth inequality created by strict market economics creates inefficiencies because society has to devote so much effort to stopping the poor from expropriating the rich. He calls this "guard labor" and says that one in four Americans is employed to in the sector -- labor that could otherwise be used to increase the nation's wealth and progress.Born Poor? (via MeFi)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:46 pm Zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribes An Indian U of Maryland physics prof came up with these zero rupee notes that Indians can slip to officials who demand bribes. They've been wildly successful, with a total run over over 1,000,000 notes, and the reports from the field suggest that they shock grafters into honesty. Fifth Pillar is the NGO that produces the notes, and they're available for download in Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. One such story was our earlier case about the old lady and her troubles with the Revenue Department official over a land title. Fed up with requests for bribes and equipped with a zero rupee note, the old lady handed the note to the official. He was stunned. Remarkably, the official stood up from his seat, offered her a chair, offered her tea and gave her the title she had been seeking for the last year and a half to obtain without success. Had the zero rupee note reached the old lady sooner, her granddaughter could have started college on schedule and avoided the consequence of delaying her education for two years. In another experience, a corrupt official in a district in Tamil Nadu was so frightened on seeing the zero rupee note that he returned all the bribe money he had collected for establishing a new electricity connection back to the no longer compliant citizen.Paying Zero for Public Services (via Kottke)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:39 pm Zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribesAn Indian U of Maryland physics prof came up with these zero rupee notes that Indians can slip to officials who demand bribes. They've been wildly successful, with a total run over over 1,000,000 notes,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:39 pm Zero rupee note that Indians can slip to corrupt officials who demand bribesAn Indian U of Maryland physics prof came up with these zero rupee notes that Indians can slip to officials who demand bribes. They've been wildly successful, with a total run over over 1,000,000 notes,...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:39 pm Tahoe-LAFS: a P2P filesystem that lets you use the cloud without trusting itZooko sez, Tahoe-LAFS is a p2p filesystem. You pool your spare hard drive space together with that of your friends. This forms a distributed filesystem which endures even if some of your friends' computers...Source: RSS feed - channel BNBlogTech | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:32 pm Tahoe-LAFS: a P2P filesystem that lets you use the cloud without trusting itZooko sez,This looks like some exciting stuff! From the announcement: In addition to the core storage system itself, volunteers have developed related projects to integrate it with other tools. These include frontends for Windows, Macintosh, JavaScript, and iPhone, and plugins for Hadoop, bzr, duplicity, TiddlyWiki, and more. As of this release, contributors have added an Android frontend and a working read-only FUSE frontend. See the Related Projects page on the wiki [3].ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File System, v1.6 (Thanks, Zooko!) (Image: King Cloud, a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike photo from akakumo's photostream)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:32 pm Cheshire Cat papercraft Here's a lovely little Cheshire Cat papercraft to print and assemble, released a month before Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland adaptation hits screens. Exclusive! Cheshire Cat Paper Toy in Wonderland: (via Super Punch!)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:22 pm Red Hat Exchange Is Deaddarthcamaro writes "In 2007, Red Hat launched the Red Hat Exchange (RHX) — an appstore, if you will, of open source partner applications sold from a Red Hat website. Sounds like a good idea, right? While an appstore works well for Apple, turns out that an appstore for open source (from a Linux vendor) isn't such a good idea. 'When we came out with RHX we were hoping for more ambitious adoption but we've learned that selling third-party applications via a marketplace is challenging,' Mike Evans, Red Hat's vice president of corporate development said. 'When you've got marketplaces that offer buyers the choice of buying in the marketplace or directly from the vendor themselves, which is what our marketplace was, there isn't a real efficient marketplace.'"Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Source: Slashdot | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:20 pm Photog sued for shooting a street that contained publicly funded artGinger sez, " A Seattle man is being sued for taking photographs of public art--after he complied and destroyed his photos. The city commissioned the Dance Steps of Broadway more than 30 years ago, and used public funds to cover some costs. And the neighborhood quickly embraced it."But the artist claims that because the publicly funded art is copyrighted by him, people who violate his copyright must face the full might of the law. The photographer took some pictures of the street that incidentally reproduced part of the sculpture, and as far as the sculptor in concerned, that's illegal. I think the city needs to find some new art. Let them sell off the Dance Steps and use the money to commission art from a sculptor who won't demand that residents stop documenting their own streets. Man sued over photos of public art on Seattle street (Thanks, Ginger Red!) (Image: Komo News)
Previously:
Source: Boing Boing | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:17 pm Feds still troubled by Google's digital book deal - BusinessWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Feb 2010 | 11:05 pm Judge Orders 'Virtual Visitation' for Father & Son Based on New LawSource: RSS feed - channel BNewsTech | 5 Feb 2010 | 10:38 pm Amazon.com Resumes Selling Some Macmillan Books on Web Site - BusinessWeek
Source: Sci/Tech - Google News | 5 Feb 2010 | 10:32 pm Macmillan books coming back to Amazon
|
 BBC News | Microsoft Patches Coming Tuesday: Brace Yourself PC World Here are two keys words for Microsoft Windows shops to remember come this Patch Tuesday: "six" and "restart." Six is the number of a critical bulletins Microsoft will release on February 9 that affect all the currently supported versions of Windows on ... Microsoft Patch To Leave IE Hole Open Unlucky 13 Microsoft Patches Due Next Week Microsoft to patch 17-year-old computer bug |
Earlier today I was driving to Google for a product briefing, minding my own business, talking on my Google phone with Google PR and trying to figure out what Google building I was supposed to be driving to. I stopped at a crosswalk for a bunch of Googlers to pass. And this guy, who’s wearing a Google employee badge, decides it’s time to take a stand against cell phone use in cars. So he stands in front of my car and won’t move. That’s right, it was his Tiananmen Square moment.
Cars behind me start swerving. I back up to go around him. He steps forward, vigilant in his defense of the law. I’m off the phone now, and snapping this picture didn’t help getting him to move on. The light changes. The light changes again. Cars are now backed up behind me.
I’m not sure what comes next in a situation like this. I can either drive over him or park my car. So I put the car in park, open the door to get out and discuss the situation with him. That’s when he ran away. His mission, apparently, accomplished.
I’ll note for the record that I was absolutely violating the law. California is one of a handful of states that bans cell phone use while driving, and I was flaunting that law with careless abandon. I am now subject to a $20 fine.
Whereas blocking a street and creating a traffic hazard is a $220 fine.
And the cell phone ban hasn’t actually resulted in less accidents.
If anyone knows who this is, please let me know so we can send him a TechCrunch tshirt.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
My opinion? Because games don't nail diplomacy in a realistic, dynamic manner.
Want The Heavy Rain Demo Right Now? Here's How...
Heavy Rain looks like one of the few things that Sony is doing really right.
Project Needlemouse Is... Sonic 4, Episode I
It's taken a decade and a half, but I just may care about Sonic again.
Sega Offers Reasons Iron Man 2 Won't Be Dreadful
Oh, the sellout studios ALWAYS say this stuff. (And we so often believe them.)
Star Trek Online: One Million Served
I need a ship name, if anyone has any ideas.
Mario & Sonic's Relationship Isn't Quite What It Used To Be
It's funny because it's true.
Mass Effect 2 And The Curse Of The Tiny Text
I feel for people with tiny, SD TVs for more reasons than just this one.
So, How Did Mass Effect 2 End For You? SPOILERS
Let's just say my character was going through a bit of a dry spell.
What's Happened To Nintendo's "New Play Control"?
Lame, Nintendo. Lame.
Madden Predicts Saints Win In Super Bowl XLIV
I'm between making chili and pork for my Superbowl celebration. Oh, and there's football on or something, too.
"Mass Affect" - BioWare's Upcoming Hipster RPG
I know some people who've played this.
If you'd rather view this roundup in a single page, click here.
To use the iPhone app, you just have to say aloud a command like "Book a table for six at 7pm at McDonalds" (I'm sure you're classier than that, but let's stick with it for now), and then using speech-recognition technology and the iPhone's GPS capabilities, your command is translated and processed by the app, responding with confirmation of booking-or lack of availability.
The app is paired with OpenTable, MovieTickets, StubHub, CitySearch and TaxiMagic, and recognizes a respectable number of commands with surprising accuracy. Success seem to vary voice to voice, and some types of requests seem to have a higher success rate than others, but really, just find out for yourself—it's free, and very impressive.
Turning your iPhone into a remote controlled whoopee cushion is what I had in mind. Little Worlds, the makers of the app, apparently also had it in mind, including more than one variety of fart among the dozen or so sound effects included with the download.
Here's what's going on: "Where is my Phone" listens for your whistle and then plays the sound effect of your choice (or your own recorded soundbite) when it hears it. The makers claim it can recognize you Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah-ing from up to 30 meters away, and I had no trouble in activating sirens, explosions and the rest just by whistling on the other side of the room.
Not bad for a buck, athough you'll have to get comfortable with the prospect of planting your iPhone, which is not cheap, in various risky places for sound gags, which decidedly are. Anyway, far be it from me to put a price tag on a good fart joke.
All in all, it's a palpable improvement for a worthwhile product, especially one so durned cheap. That's right, it's still just $1, with $3/month or $25/year turn-by-turn voice service. You may hate GPS navigators, you may even hate GPS apps, but if you are on vacation and you don't have this app-at the very minimum, that is-you are just crazy.
See, in the App Store, three bucks buys you a decent novelty soundboard, or, you know, that cross-country road trip you've been aching to take your whole life.
What it can't do, though, is take a single food item and break it down for you, which is what it feels like this app is reaching for. If you have the patience to enter ingredients individually, and don't mind an app that errs (way) on the side of caution with some of its recommendations, you'll get a lot of use out of this thing.
Anyhow, this is that print program, adapted for the iPhone. It's five bucks, packed with photos, historical context, stats and fresh editorial content. Warning: there is roughly a 50% chance (feel free to debate that figure in the comments) that you'll hate this app come Sunday.
This list is in no way definitive. If you've spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see our previous weekly roundups here, and check out our Favorite iPhone Apps Directory and our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a swell weekend everybody.
Yesterday, we got a nice little breakdown of which clients are used most often for the location-based service Foursquare (hint: still the iPhone). Today, the company has some new big news to share via a tweet: they’re now doing over a million check-ins a week.
Not even a month ago, Foursquare noted that they were seeing a check-in each second. We extrapolated this out to show that they were getting roughly 86,000 check-ins a day. But if you stretch those numbers out over a week, you get “only” 600,000 check-ins. That means that in under a month, Foursquare’s check-in rate has almost doubled. Actually, it has doubled. As Foursquare also notes in the tweet, the last seven days have seen 1.2 million check-ins.
While traffic may be up threefold over the past two months, the check-in rate is growing even faster.
The Mr. T Mobile is one of my favorite old memes and I'm glad that some fellow by the name of Shed Simove decided to bring it into meatspace. Even if it creeps the hell out of me.
Please note that I do not really intend to torture any future offspring of mine. At least not intentionally. [Jailbreak]
FROM APPLETELL - This week is brought to you by iTunes Preview. A useful feature for sure, now you can browse these apps at work. Don’t worry, I won’t tell.
MORE »
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Could Apple’s (AAPL) future as a multichannel video distributor lie not with AppleTV but with the iPad? Might the “best of TV” iTunes subscription offering the company has been pitching to TV networks since last November be primarily intended for that device, which Apple is positioning as the successor to its sleeper AppleTV platform? With company executives still dismissing AppleTV as a “hobby” and TV itself becoming a more personal, intimate experience, it’s worth thinking about.
Consider this scenario from Bernstein Research analyst Craig Moffett.
Imagine a portable set top box, but with its own killer screen. When in the home, it would be docked in a cradle connected to iTunes via a wired broadband pipe. Navigation of programming guides and iTunes listings would occur on the iPad, using an intuitive touch interface. Output would go directly to the wide-screen TV on the wall…until you left the house. Then, you’d simply pop the device out of its cradle and take it with you. And in the process, you’d be taking your TV with you as well. A 3G (and eventually 4G) wireless connection would allow you to keep watching live TV in the back of the car or cab. Once you got on the airplane you could choose from a library of your favorite shows saved on your DVR…which also happens to be a half-inch thick ergonomically gorgeous high definition tilt-sensitive screen that fits comfortably in your hands.
A dockable, portable set-top box with LED-backlit widescreen display? Seems a bit of a stretch at this point. And it would be enormously bandwidth-intensive. But it’s not entirely inconceivable, is it?
Reuters - Facebook is taking full control of display ads on the world's No. 1 social networking website, cutting short an exclusive deal that had allowed Microsoft Corp to manage part of that business.
Twitter just recently launched a new Twitter Engineering blog, and to kick things off, one team member, Ben Sandofsky, decided to share a video he made representing Twitter’s development history. The video was made using Code Swarm, a software tool used to visualize data.
As Sandofsky notes, “it isn’t exactly scientific, but it still goes to show Twitter’s explosive growth mirrored in engineering.” More importantly, it looks awesome. You can see the shift in Twitter development from Jack Dorsey in the early days (2006) to Blaine Cook to Alex Payne to Twitter’s now large team of developers. Each team member is represented in the video by their Twitter avatar.
Watch it below. It’s mesmerizing.
Twitter Code Swarm from Ben Sandofsky on Vimeo.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Could gesture recognition become the successor to touchscreen? And if it does, what would it be like to use it to interact with our gadgets.
A prototype design shows a cube-shaped device that can be used to access music, look up recipes and flick through photos.
The idea called Gesture Cube senses hand movements made close to the screen and translates them into commands for the device. It’s an user interface idea for the next generation of digital devices, says German company Ident, whose technology powers the device.
The cube has sensors that detect the approach of a hand and transmit the coordinates to the electronics. Functions such as pulling up the playlist or activating the browser can then be assigned to the co-ordinates. Finally, touching a switch or button finally activates the task.
For now, the idea is the concept stage. But with the interest in gesture recognition, it’s to see that this idea could find a way into real world devices soon.
Check out the video to see the Gesture Cube concept at work.
Photos: Gesture Cube
[via GizmoWatch]
Answer each of the 50 questions below and give yourself one point per question you answer "yes" to. At the end, score yourself. Be honest, this is just for your own benefit... until you report your shocking score in comments, that is.
1. Do you eat most of your meals while at the computer or in front of the television?
2. Do you sometimes bring your laptop when you sit on the toilet?
3. Do you check your feeds more than 1x per hour?
4. Do you make a nervous habit out of refreshing your inbox over and over, just in case someone emailed you in the last 45 seconds?
5. Can you not remember the last time you didn't check online reviews before eating at a new restaurant?
6. Do you freak out if you're in a car and there's no GPS?
7. Does the verb "tweet" come up regularly in your real-life conversations?
8. Have you ever changed vacation plans based on wi-fi availability?
9. Are there more than two portable electronic devices within reach right now?
10. If your house were on fire, would you run in to rescue your laptop?
11. Are you closer with some online-only friends than people you actually see in real life?
12. Are you pretty sure you'd have killed yourself if you lived in the days before Internet?
13. Do you buy things online that you could easily drive across town to get in person?
14. Do "electronics" have their own category in your monthly budget?
15. Are you a member of any sort of online "guild?"
16. Do you answer questions in support forums when you're bored?
17. Do you bring your smartphone with you to church?
18. Do you own 3 or more video gaming systems? (Oh come on, portables count.)
19. Do you have multiple t-shirts with references to Internet memes, linux, or webcomics?
20. Do you know what the word "meme" means, for that matter?
21. Has your significant other (or mom, if applicable) ever banned you from your smartphone?
22. Do you spend more time on Facebook than you do in the presence of actual people?
23. Are you currently in a virtual relationship? (WOW, Second Life, etc)
24. Do you have 3 or more active social media accounts?
25. When something happens in your life, is your first thought usually "How can I fit this into 140 characters?"
26. Do you need multiple wall outlets to charge all your stuff at night?
27. When you sit down in a coffeeshop, do you tend to position yourself close to a power outlet "just in case"?
28. Do you generally spend most of your day looking at a computer screen and then go home... only to look at a computer screen for the rest of the night?
29. Have phrases like "BRB" and "ROFL" worked their way into your real vocabulary?
30. Do you often skip meals because you've lost track of time in front of the computer?
31. Do you call people by their screen names when you see them in real life?
32. Do you have more than five tabs open in your browser right now?
33. Are there more than three screens of some kind in the room you're in right now?
34. Are there more computers in your house than there are people?
35. Do you tweet or read blogs while watching movies at home?
36. Do you put your phone on vibrate at the movie theater rather than turn it off, even though you're not expecting anything important?
37. Have you ever turned down a romantic encounter in order to play video games?
38. Does your Internet usage cut into the time you should be spending on personal hygiene?
39. When you see the last names Cerf, Otellini, Ballmer and Berners-Lee, do you know who is being mentioned?
40. Do you ever leave your laptop open in social settings, even though you aren't actually doing anything on it?
41. Have you ever had a dream where you were surfing the Internet?
42. Can you type text messages faster than you can handwrite the same words?
43. Have you ever left an event or date early so you could get online?
44. Would you classify yourself as an "expert" multitasker?
45. Can you read machine code?
46. Do you regularly have to put blocks of ice, portable fans, or frozen packages of hash browns on or near your computer to keep it cool?
47. Do you have carpal tunnel syndrome?
48. Do you keep multiple webcams around your house?
49. Are you up on the computer past 3am at least once a week?
50. Did you make it all the way to the end of this quiz?
0-1: Clean as a Whistle - You are either 95 years old, or you lie compulsively to make yourself feel better about your internet addiction. Sorry to call you out like that.
2-9: Social Drinker - You're not great with technology, but dabble. You probably play sports and actually have a significant other. Either that or you've recently been released from Internet rehab and haven't slipped back to the old ways yet.
10-19: Coffee Fiend - You're about as plugged in as the next person—but you gotta have your daily fix. Let's face it, gadgets are everywhere nowadays, right? That's what you tell yourself at least, but what you don't know is everyone calls you "nerd breath" behind your back.
20-29: Chainsmoker - You recognize that you're a little too plugged in, and you're trying to quit. Your tech addictions are starting to ruin your social interactions, between signing out of the real world every 10 seconds and stinking up the room when you enter. Take this as your cue to shower.
30-39: Pothead - You're addicted, but you have no desire to quit. There's a box of Ho Hos on the desk, and you had to brush Cheeto dust off the keyboard to log into your computer, which you keep password protected with heavy encryption. You hurried through this quiz because your guild is waiting for you in the other window. You really should consider counseling.
40-49: Crackhead - You get all shaky when you think about technology, always searching for your next fix. You've considered constructing a biotech bathtub for your body to lie in, so you can plug your consciousness permanently into the Internet. Family members are planning to stage an intervention and check you into a clinic. You look forward to the shock therapy.
50: Permafried - There's no higher brain activity going on anymore. Doctors should prescribe you video games and/or marijuana for medicinal purposes. Just to keep you from flat lining.
Based in New York City, Shane Snow is a graduate student in Digital Media at Columbia University and founder of Scordit.com. He's fascinated with all things geeky, particularly social media and shiny gadgets he'll never afford.
The details of the deal aren't public, but the NYT specu-reports that Amazon probably "demanded that no other e-book vendors, such as Apple, get preferential access to new titles, or any kind of pricing advantages" and maybe asked for the ability of Kindle users to lend out ebooks, which would be awesome. Though Amazon's still the loser in this aboutface, ultimately. [Bits]
It’s no secret that Facebook Photos is massively popular, with the company boasting that it receives a whopping 2.5 billion photos uploaded every month. And as the site continues to grow — it just passed 400 million users — that number is only going to get more staggering. Unfortunately, the photo uploading experience hasn’t always been smooth; you’ve to wait for the photo uploads to finish, and the entire process was just sort of clunky. Today, the company announced that it’s rolling out an improved photo upload browser plugin.
The new plugin includes a new photo navigator that should make it easy to choose the photos you want. And once you’ve started the upload process, you can browse to another page — the plugin will keep uploading the files in the background.
This plugin has actually been available for the last few months in Facebook’s Prototypes section, and has even been rolled out to a very small number of users before now. Starting today it’s getting released to everyone, though the rollout will take a few weeks. Before now Facebook has offered an upload plugin based on Active X and a Java applet, but the company says this one was built entirely in-house. One important thing to note: because this was built by Facebook, the company could potentially add more functionality in the future, including things that aren’t related to photo uploads.
Of course, there are plenty of other ways to upload photos to Facebook. The functionality has been integrated into iPhoto, you can download a Picasa Uploader, and there are plenty of unofficial apps available too.
EventVue set out three years ago to transform the way people interact with and network during events. Today, sadly, they have announced they are shutting down.
In an overlay message that appears now on the main site, co-founders Rob Johnson and Josh Fraser write:
Dear customers, friends, and fans -
We have made the difficult decision to shut down EventVue.
After our recent relaunch of EventVue to be the best way to experience events in real time, we did not see enough traction to continue.
We have enjoyed the past 3 years of working with all of you and are deeply appreciative of everyone who used our product, sent us feedback, and cheered us on.
The events industry is experiencing a social transformation and we are proud of the work that we did to contribute. We will now cheer on those who are leading the charge.
If you are interested in learning from our entrepreneurial mistakes, you may wish to read the post-mortem on our blog.
Regards,
Rob Johnson and Josh Fraser
Fraser let us know about the shutdown himself via email and wrote, “hopefully other entrepreneurs can learn from our mistakes.” The Boulder, CO-based EventVue was a TechStars company in 2007, and shortly after that got its first round of angel funding.
In his lengthy and heartfelt farewell post, Johnson lays out a number of mistakes the company made over the years that led to the shutdown today. The key ones he highlights are:
Our Deadly Strategic Mistakes:
- tried to build a sales effort too early, with too weak of a product after initial financing
- waited too long to address the “nice to have” problem
- went after enterprise sales model with a non-recurring, small price
- didn’t make eventvue self-serve to let anyone come and get it
Our Deadly Cultural Mistakes:
- didn’t focus on learning & failing fast until it was too late
- didn’t care/focus enough about discovering how to market eventvue
- made compromises in early hiring decisions – choose expediency over talent/competency
He ends the post on an upbeat note, “EventVue has been a fun journey. Thanks again to everyone who has supported us over the last few years. You should follow us (Rob, Josh) to see what’s next.“
Section: Peripherals, Displays/Projectors
I don’t even know where to begin with this one. Transparent AMOLED displays are awesome in so many ways, I think my geekiness is about to reach record highs. Just imagine the possible applications of transparent displays, you can replace your windows with it and probably use them as HUDs on your vehicles’ windscreen!
Samsung dropped some tidbits about launch details on upcoming products using transparent AMOLED displays. The first device rolled out by Samsung that uses the technology is an all-in-one MP3 player called the IceTouch. The product functions as a hybrid music player, radio, DVD player, picture viewer and portable storage unit. A demo video is displayed at the bottom of this post.
Samsung isn’t planning to take a time off any time soon, as they are also planning to launch a laptop featuring a 14-inch see-through colour OLED screen within 12 months! Not only that, they are looking to apply this transparent screen technology onto any other devices they can put their hands on, even the ones they don’t currently manufacture. Could my windscreen HUD dream come true? Well, Reid Sullivan, VP of audio/video and digital imaging marketing at Samsung Electronics America, admits that they are also considering to place GPS systems on windscreens. That pretty much answered my question. As promised, here’s a demo video of the Samsung IceTouch:
Read [+Plastic Electronics] Via [Engadget]
The video's well worth watching if you enjoy seeing a CEO flustered and stuttering, but Consumerist sums up what went down rather well:
Sen. Franken said that Comcatastrophe Roberts had met him in his office and said that the FCC rules "will make sure that you always have a wide variety of programs because they forbid [Comcast/NBC] from discriminating against other company's programs."
Then Franken pointed to a sign he had printed with a quote from Comcast's attorneys saying that those same rules were unconstitutional.
"In other words, looking to get approval for this merger, you sat there in my office and told me to my face that these rules would protect consumers but your lawyers had just finished arguing in front of the Commission that it would be unconstitutional to apply these rules," Franken said.
Whoops. [Consumerist]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 Boston Globe | Twitter to Major Tom: NASA Lets Public Tweet Astronauts PC World Ever wanted to ask an orbiting astronaut what it's really like up there? Is the food any good? Can you sleep well in zero-g? And, of course, is that urine recycler still acting up? Well, now's your chance. NASA astronaut Mike Massimino is accepting ... 'Bittersweet' time for shuttle team Astronauts Enter The Twitterverse Night shuttle launch may be seen on East Coast |
By Mary Pilon, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
A year ago, Lauren Leto and Ben Bator started anonymously publishing their friends’ text messages.
Since then, their site, Texts From Last Night has received over 3 million text messages.
The Michigan-based friends from college just released a new TFLN book. Like the site, it chronicles the digital dispatches of those unforgettable nights most would rather not remember. We caught up with Lauren and Ben about ditching law school, quarter-life crises and lessons they’ve learned from culling through America’s text messages.
WSJ: Where did the idea for Texts From Last Night come from?
Ben Bator: Our friends used to send us text messages that were too good not to share.
Lauren Leto: I’ve gone back and deleted some of mine that were mine in the beginning when we were just started because I was so embarrassed. We tried to be anonymous, and only post the area code and text.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
In October, computational engine Wolfram Alpha launched a slick iPhone app. The only problem? They miscalculated what it should cost. The app is great and all, but it’s simply not worth $50 when you can use the website for free.
Today, they launched their first major update to the app, version 1.1, which brings with it one new feature: new keyboards. Specifically, Wolfram Alpha now has a “default” keyboard, a “math” keyboard, a “Greek” keyboard, and a “symbol” keyboard. As they describe it, “the specialized keyboards that greet you when you first open the Wolfram|Alpha App, have been painstakingly constructed to ease the burden of entering queries.” Fair enough, these are definitely nice to have for advanced queries. But do they justify the $50 price yet? Nope.
To be fair, Wolfram Alpha also launched some updated graphics and tables with the new version of the app, but it’s still all the same data you can get on the website — again, for free. And while they slyly removed the iPhone-optimized version of the website in an attempt to try and get people to buy the app, that still doesn’t appear to be happening in droves. In fact, the smartest calculation they’ve made was slashing the price down to the more reasonable $19.99 for the holidays (it’s now back at $49.99).
When compared to the just-released $1,000 iPhone app, BarMax, Wolfram Alpha may seem like a steal. But for the third time, all the Wolfram Alpha data is available for free on the web. And you can access it on your iPhone through the browser, it just won’t presented as pretty. I’m not saying they shouldn’t charge for the app; they should. But something a lot less than $50. BarMax may actually be worth the $1,000, but only because it’s replacing a program that costs $3,000 to $4,000.
Still, if keyboards are your thing, find the $50 Wolfram Alpha app in the App Store here.
HTC’s no stranger to stuffing ridiculous mechanisms into smartphones. I mean, have you seen the HTC Tilt — or better yet, the HTC Universal?
Looks like they’re at it again, if this just unearthed patent is any indication.
Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
HTC’s no stranger to stuffing ridiculous mechanisms into smartphones. I mean, have you seen the HTC Tilt — or better yet, the HTC Universal?
Looks like they’re at it again, if this just unearthed patent is any indication.
The graphic above may be a bit confusing, so here’s how it works: Imagine a clamshell phone, like the LG enV. Instead of opening the handset by pulling the hinged halves apart, however, you slide the top layer down a few millimeters, and bam! It springs open. When you slide the top half down, you’re breaking the connection between two magnets (one in each half of the phone) that held it closed, allowing the spring-loaded hinge to do its thing.
If you’ve ever owned a Sidekick, you know how oddly addicting the act of opening/closing a spring-loaded handset can be when you’ve got idle hands. The patent, as dug up by the guys over at WMPoweruser, can be found here.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
 The Hindu | Apple Bans the Word 'Android' From App Store PC World This, my friends, is one of those instances. Apple has apparently just forbidden a developer from using the word "Android" in his app's description. The message: Drop the A-word, or drop your application. Apple's heavy-handed use of the rejection stamp ... Apple Bans Location-based iPhone Ads Apple tells devs that location-based advertising is a no-no Apple tells iPhone developers not to use GPS just for ads |
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
In the past week we have seen what could be the end of Amazon’s $9.99 pricing model for ebooks. First was the spat between Amazon and Macmillan, then Rupert Murdoch chimed in with Harper Collins and now the Hachette Book Group looks to do the same—sell ebooks at prices higher than $9.99.
This news comes by way of an email that was sent from Hachette Book Group CEO David Young who stated that;
“At Hachette Book Group, we have been considering a new pricing model for some time, and have decided to transition to selling our e-books through an agency model.”
Bottom line, the Hachette Book Group seems to be joining forces with Macmillan and Harper Collins. I just wonder how long before we hear similar news coming from Penguin as well as Simon & Schuster. It seems the iPad, at least in the case of ebooks and the iBook store has (despite not being available for at least two more months) already had a dramatic effect.
Read [Media Bistro] Via [Gizmodo]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Section:
Haven’t caught all of the Gadgetell news this week? Here’s your chance to catch up on this week’s top 10 articles!
Full Story » | Written by NEWS for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Artist Logan Zawacki (what a fun name!) put together some pretty impressive game-themed skateboard decks for the I’M BOARD skateboard art show held earlier this week in Florida.
Zawacki created four decks in all, each with the following theme: Mega Man, Super Mario Bros. 3, Street Fighter II, and TMNT: The Arcade Game. If you look really closely at each deck, too, you’ll notice that a bunch of the characters are riding skateboards themselves.
Cool stuff. More photos over at ALBOTAS.
Sick Video Game Inspired Skateboard Designs for the I’M BOARD Skateboard Art Show [albotas.com]
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Now that Apple has chosen the famously awkward name “iPad” for its tablet, the most obvious candidate “iTablet” is up for grabs. Sure enough, a UK company is leaping at the opportunity.
X2 is happy to announce it’s “hot on the heels of Apple’s latest product launch” with the iTablet, which will run Windows 7 and Linux. The iTablet will ship April in two screen sizes — 10.2 inches and 10.7 inches — with a 1,024-by-768 resolution TFT touchscreen (multitouch optional).
Other specs sound like the guts of a netbook: a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, up to 250GB hard drive capacity, built-in stereo speakers, three USB ports, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, HDMI output, a 1.3-megapixel webcam and 3G connectivity.
It’s good to see competition for the iPad (I did, after all, predict 2010 would be the year of the tablet), but it’s hard to draw positive impressions from a company whose website is practically impossible to navigate. No details on price have been announced.
See Also:
X2 via [Pocket Lint]
By Nitrozac and Snaggy
It’s time we start implementing DRM on console games. I mean, look at this nonsense. The Xbox 360 version of BioShock 2 leaked yesterday, a full five days before its official release. The same thing happened with Mass Effect 2, which leaked something like six days for the Xbox 360 before its official release. Since publishers are so keen to treat PC gamers like filthy thieves, I say we start implementing annoying DRM on console games, too.
Granted, the differences between PC games and console games are such that you’d need to implement different forms of DRM, but here’s a few ideas.
• Game discs will be permanently linked to consoles. No taking that new game you just bought to your friend’s house to play there!
• On every disc is a special phone number that you need to call to get permission to play the game (phone centers open only from 9-5pm EST)
• To prevent online cheating, all game saves will be stored on, and only on, the publisher’s servers
• You need to sign up for four different “value enhancement” accounts in order download any and all DLC, which will then be linked to your social security number (or equivalent)
• Any game discs inserted into a console before the approved release date will result in a temporary console lockout, rendering your video game console inoperable until publishers’ technicians come to your house to verify that you are, indeed, a legitimate owner
These are just a few measures that can be taken to prevent console piracy. I mean, if we’re going to keep pretending that all PC gamers are pirates because the games are easily available only, well, why not take the same stance with console gamers? Surely, in 2010, it’s just as easy to burn an Xbox 360 game to a blank DVD as it is to mount an ISO of a PC game? Or do publishers think that flashing an Xbox 360 disc drive so it can run pirated games is beyond the abilities of your average 16-year-old kid?
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Section: Video, Content, HDTV, Gadgets / Other, Household, Web, Online Music/Video
According to Disney EVP Kevin Mayer , Hulu isn’t transitioning to a paid model of any kind any time soon. Hulu, a video content distribution website partnership between Fox, NBC and Disney, has rocketed in popularity. Mayer did add that Hulu will be asking it’s customers to pay, though it is unclear how that will work or when it will happen.
Mayer suggested it will come in the form of subscriptions, one-time rentals, or perhaps movie rentals. The company hopes to augment it’s ad-supported free content with a revenue stream to capture dollars as some consumers consider transitioning to an online TV entertainment scheme. The perhaps dangerous question for Hulu quickly becomes: will forcing consumers to choose between traditional cable and satellite TV subscriptions and online subscriptions hasten the transformation of their current business model?
It is interesting to note that Steve Jobs, Apple CEO, is on the Board at Disney and is a staunch advocate for removing Flash (on which Hulu is based) from our future. Both the iPhone and coming iPad lack Flash support and that stance doesn’t look to change as more companies embrace HTML5.
Read: [All Things Digital
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Lego’s programmable robotics set Mindstorms is a fun toy for computing enthusiasts but if you really want to take it to the next level, check out Mark Weller’s project.
Weller, a machinist and technician at the McCoy School of Engineering at Midwestern State University, combined milled plastic pieces with the basic Lego Mindstorms set to create a robotic spider that can crawl and turn.
“I wanted to open students’ minds to go beyond ‘let’s put the parts together and program the robot,’” he says. “This project is more than sticking the wheels on a Lego set.” The school uses Lego Mindstorms to introduce freshman students to robotics.
The spider robot’s legs are based on a concept called the Klann linkage. A single leg has a six-bar linkage with a frame, crank, two rockers and two couplers connected with pivot joints. This transforms rotating motion into linear motion.
Weller says he created the spider’s legs from 3/8-inch plastic sheet stock on a 3-axis CNC mill. But it can also be made by a 3-D printer such as Makerbot and RepRap.
As the video shows, the robotic spider moves with grace and turns around with flair, even on a smooth surface. Miller has posted the details of his Lego spider project and says he hopes 3-D printing enthusiasts will try it out.
Photos: Mark Weller
See Also:
 PC World | Read all 'Xbox Live' posts in Beyond Binary CNET Microsoft said on Friday that it plans to discontinue support for playing original Xbox games on its online service. In a blog posting, Microsoft's Marc Whitten said that after April 15, users of the Xbox Live service will no longer be ... Microsoft Kills Xbox Live for Original Xboxes Microsoft Discontinuing Xbox LIVE for Xbox Gamers Microsoft dropping Xbox Live for original Xbox games |
Microsoft will kill Xbox Live support for original Xbox games. Rumor has is that this is being done to increase the numbers of friends you can have on Xbox (360) Live. Right now it’s at 100 people—a limit imposed by old Xbox architecture—, but clearly you need more.
The switch will be flipped on April 15—Tax Day here in the U.S.—and from then on, no Xbox Live for your orignial Xbox.
The move will also affect Xbox Live Originals played on Xbox 360.
Let’s be clear: you can still play your original Xbox games, you just can’t use them on Xbox Live.
The biggest original Xbox game still being played on Xbox Live is Halo 2, where some 3,500 people still play the game regularly, according to some place I forget.
Xbox Live launched in November, 2002. I was 16 at the time, and picked up Xbox Live on day one—I wisely predicted that it would be sold out at Best Buy, so I picked it up from Circuit City— and played Unreal Championship online like it was my job for a while there. I was pretty good! Oh, memories.
Two things.
First of all: No, the image has absolutely nothing to do with the post. It was between “Stock photo of a bunch of survey check boxes” and this picture of a cat with a human smile – which would you have chosen?
Second: Please take this reader survey. We’re working on some awesome new stuff moving forward, and knowing a bit more about our readers would really help make it happen. It’ll only take a moment, and I’d really appreciate it.
By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Could Howard Stern be the next Simon Cowell?
The New York Post reports that the producers of American Idol are eager to hire Stern for the show. The Page Six item says that Stern is the show’s top choice to take over from Cowell, who will leave the show at the end of the current season. Stern’s current contract with Sirius XM (SIRI) expires in January 2011.
An excerpt from the Post:
A source connected to “Idol” said, “It’s one of the few shows that could compete with Stern’s $100 million-a-year Sirius contract, and ‘Idol’ bosses think he’d be even nastier than Simon.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
Fujitsu has just recently added the LifeBook MH380 into the available category. The netbook is selling for $449 and as of this posting is showing an estimated shipping date of February 8, 2010.
Spec wise the MH380 has a 10.1-inch display, a 1.66GHz Intel Atom N450 processor, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, Bluetooth, built-in webcam and a 6-cell battery. In other words, it has the netbook standard of specs. Additionally the MH380 ships with Windows 7 Starter and weighs in at 2.97 pounds.
As of now it looks like the model that is available is the glossy ruby red, however it is also expected to become available in black, white and brown.
Product [Fujitsu]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
Stupid Steam, making me spend money whenI had no intention of doing so. This weekend’s deal is the FarCry collection, which includes FarCry and FarCry 2: Fortune’s Edition (includes DLC and other bonus items). (Of course, you could have just visited that Web site I mentioned the other day.) It costs $15. Yeah, I can part with $15 to have those two games in my ever-growing collection. Note the use of the word “have”: I still have BioShock, Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Final Fantasy XII to beat, to say nothing of World of Warcraft, before I get into these FarCry games. Sigh.
I’ll admit it: When the oh-so-damned-clever coding community managed to get an SNES emulator running on the N900 at fullspeed with features like TV-out, I got all kinds of excited. Hell, even Nokia was excited about it until they got smacked by the Mighty Hand of the Law for showing it.
Well, it just got even better.
Read the rest at MobileCrunch >>
Apple has posted a news bulletin for iPhone developers, informing them they may not use the phone’s geolocation features primarily for delivering targeted ads.
What that means is if you’re playing a game that doesn’t use geolocation for gameplay, and all it’s doing is tracking your location to serve location-based ads, it’ll get rejected. (Many media outlets have reported that Apple has banned location-based ads altogether, which is not the case.)
Apple’s news bulletin reads:
The Core Location framework allows you to build applications which know where your users are and can deliver information based on their location, such as local weather, nearby restaurants, ATMs, and other location-based information.
If you build your application with features based on a user’s location, make sure these features provide beneficial information. If your app uses location-based information primarily to enable mobile advertisers to deliver targeted ads based on a user’s location, your app will be returned to you by the App Store Review Team for modification before it can be posted to the App Store.
Many apps currently serve location-based ads through AdMob, an advertising firm recently acquired by Google. Apple’s new rule implies apps using AdMob ads will get rejected if geolocation is not part of the software’s functionality.
In a statement provided to Wired.com, an Apple spokeswoman said the move was for the benefit of the consumer.
“The Core Location framework allows developers to deliver information to customers based on their location,” an Apple spokeswoman said. “This should be done with the customer’s permission and for a purpose that is directly beneficial to the customer.”
Many, however, have been quick to conclude that the regulation is a move for Quattro Wireless, a mobile advertising company Apple purchased in January, to gain a leg up in mobile advertising against Google’s recently acquired mobile ad firm AdMob. It’s conceivable that Apple could indeed be improving the mobile ad experience for customers, the Core Location regulation could also be an effort to deter developers from serving ads with AdMob.
My friend Matt Buchanan of Gizmodo argues, “It’s not to protect you.”
“It’s not too much of a stretch to see Apple’s ad platform in the future being the best way to deliver ads in apps, which might offer perks like, say, location-based targeted advertising, or more dynamic ads than you can do now on an iPhone,” Buchanan writes. “It’s also not crazy to think Apple’s way is going to be the only way to get some of those features, like location-based ads.”
Updated 12:30 p.m. PDT with a statement from Apple.
Photo: Fr3d.org/Flickr
Just the other day, AT&T announced that it was able to work with Sling Media in order to optimize Sling player for AT&T’s 3G network. That’s good news for consumers and all, but it appears as though AT&T might have been doing a little posturing to make itself look like the good guy. After all, Sling users were disappointed about the lack of a Sling player on the iPhone when the application had been avaiable on BlackBerry for some time – and on AT&T’s network, no less.
Read the rest of this entry at MobileCrunch>>
And the Apple-Google war continues. This time, instead of just bad-mouthing each other, Apple is running with a strategy that they’re no stranger to: censoring words in the App Store. Instead of just “boobs” and “booty”, which they don’t seem to have a problem with anymore, Apple’s new target is the word “Android”.
Now, Apple only seems to be looking for the word used within a particular context. A quick look through the App Store reveals a decent number of apps with “Android” in the title that have gone totally unscathed. However, at least one developer in particular has had their app held up pending removal of an Android reference. In its preview Tim Novikof’s Flash of Genius SAT app made mention of the fact that it was a finalist in Google’s Android Developers Challenge, and Apple had him remove the offending snippet before it could go live. Apple’s justification?
“providing future platform compatibility plans or other general platform references are not relevant in the context of the iPhone App Store.”
Novikof reportedly didn’t mind having to pull the reference, but it’s crazy that a developer would have to remove a recommendation (and a weighty one at that) just because Apple doesn’t like who it came from.
[via AppScout]
Apple, which launched its first iPhone barely three years ago, has already become the third largest smartphone maker worldwide, according to an IDC ranking of the top five mobile device companies.
Apple ranked third in terms of market share in smartphones for the fourth quarter of 2009 and the entire year, behind Nokia and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion.
The numbers should be no surprise to smartphone enthusiasts. Apple’s iPhone has become an iconic product as it has set the standard for elegant hardware design and the distribution of third-party software applications through the App Store. Much of Apple’s gains has come at the expense of smaller smartphone makers, clubbed in the “others” category. These include Palm, Samsung and companies such as Sharp and Fujitsu, says IDC analyst Ramon Llamas.
Surprising as it may seem to have Nokia as the market leader on the list–its smartphones are unloved in North America–the company continues to hold on to consumers elsewhere. “Nokia’s shift to bring more touchscreen-enabled smartphones to market began to pay off, as its 5800, N97, N97 mini, and 5530 models drove both revenue and profits,” says IDC in its statement.
Motorola returned to the top-five mobile phone makers list during the fourth quarter, after a year-long hiatus, says IDC. Last year, Motorola launched a slew of Android-powered devices including the Cliq on T-Mobile and Droid at Verizon Wireless. Combined sales of both the phones crossed two million since their debut.
Overall, 54.5 million handsets were shipped in the fourth quarter of 2009, up 39 percent from the same quarter a year ago. During the year, mobile phone makers shipped 174.2 million handsets.
As for operating systems, IDC says to watch for what Symbian and Windows Mobile do this year.
“2009 was the coming-out party for Google’s Android and Palm’s webOS,” says Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC. “More advances are in store for 2010 as Symbian and Windows are expected to unveil new versions of their respective operating systems.”
See Also:
Most hardware manufacturers are finally rolling out USB 3.0 devices. We’ve seen motherboards, hubs, hard drives, and notebooks all rocking the new and improved USB standard. It’s clearly the future of USB with backwards compatibility, dramatically faster speeds and full-duplex data transfers. That’s great, but it’s still not faster than eSATA right now.
Testing parameters: These numbers were gathered using HD Tune Pro 4.01. I also timed an 8.34 GB file transfer onto the drive for real world results. The two external drives were 7200 RPM models, while the internal was a 5400 RPM drive. I would have liked to show the Western Digital MyBook 3.0’s results as well, but the drive and HD Tune Pro didn’t get along. Check out the review for a comparison between the Seagate PS110 — it’s just slightly faster.
Of course USB 3.0 brings a host of other improvements over the 2.0 spec and eSATA. It’s dramatically more power efficient, allowing more power-hungry bus-powered devices and better power management when devices are idle. USB 3.0 also can theoretically hit 600 MB/s. But right now it’s not the ultimate external data transfer protocol. That title belongs to eSATA.
This will likely change over the next few years as computer hardware catches up to USB 3.0. The situation is nothing new. Most up and coming technology is limited by current hardware. USB 2.0 went through the same thing years ago. But if you’re looking for a reliable and fast external hard drive right now, forget USB 3.0 and instead look at eSATA drives.
Section: Computers, Software / Applications
A leak on the Microsoft website has revealed some details in regards to how those who purchase Office 2007 between March 5 and September 30 of this year will be able to get a copy of Office 2010 for free upon release.
Of course, that page was also quickly removed, which means that Microsoft was either not ready to make that deal official or that the offer may still be subject to change.
Either way, what we can tell you is what was on the page when it was showing—and that was that any customer who purchases Office 2007 between March 5 and September 30 will be able to get Office 2010 for free. The catch here is that you will need to not only purchase the software, but also make sure you activate the software and also save your dated receipt.
Read [ars technica]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
When Nexus One owners were suddenly blessed with multi-touch support on their handsets, we saw the same comment posted just about everywhere we looked: “Great! Now when will the Droid get it?”
The answer, it seems, is today.
Just a few hours ago, reports started coming in that an update for Google Maps had just found its way to the Droid Market. It bumps the version number up to 3.4, which just so happens to be the same version that got sent out to Nexus Ones – and sure enough, pinch-to-zoom multitouch gestures are in place.
Alas, Maps stands alone when it comes to new-found multitouch support. At the moment, the multi-touch enabled Browser and Gallery apps now found on the Nexus One have yet to make their way down the pipes.
[Via Android Central]
Just the other day, AT&T announced that it was able to work with Sling Media in order to optimize Sling player for AT&T’s 3G network. That’s good news for consumers and all, but it appears as though AT&T might have been doing a little posturing to make itself look like the good guy. After all, Sling users were disappointed about the lack of a Sling player on the iPhone when the application had been avaiable on BlackBerry for some time – and on AT&T’s network, no less.
AT&T CEO Ralph De La Vega said:
Sling Media was willing to work with us to revise the app to make it more bandwidth sensitive. They made important changes to more efficiently use 3G network bandwidth and conserve wireless spectrum so that we were able to support the app on our 3G mobile broadband network.
Sounds like a happy ending for all, right? Everyone working together to make things happen for you and me. Unfortunately, it’s not all butterflies and rainbows because Sling replied Media’s John Santoro replied: “We didn’t change anything. AT&T never discussed any specific requirements with us.” Uh oh. Either there was some miscommunication or AT&T decided to accept Sling player for the iPhone and had to come up with a reason why it didn’t allow the application sooner.
Apparently, Sling player was always able to adjust to network conditions so that it delivered the same streaming experience regardless of signal strength. After being lambasted for its shoddy 3G network, AT&T may have been reluctant to allow Sling for the iPhone due to the heavy strain it would cause. AT&T did mention recently that it is taking steps toward beefing up its network after admitting that some cities were experiencing sub-par service. Now we just have to wait for Apple to approve the Sling application.
[Via Ars Technica]
Facebook has given itself (wince) another facelift. In celebration of its sixth birthday, the social networking site has redesigned its homepage and navigation with an eye toward increased usability. Among the improvements: A new search field, a more prominent chat tool and a revamped top menu.
In addition, a notifications icon has been changed from a signpost to a globe.
Fascinating.
And welcome news for the signpost-averse. Also, a total yawner–though to be fair, Facebook is probably wise to keep its design tweaks subtle given extraordinary levels of outrage some of its more substantial changes have inspired in the past.
Look at all these prizes~!
This may be a first: a Twitter Super Bowl party! Sirius XM’s Ron and Fez is having some sort of Twitter party celebrating The Big Game. Trivia, prizes, virtual booze, Chris Stanley passed out at a speakeasy in Long Island City—what more could you want? Oh, that’s not enough for you? Then how about a pair of knissors signed by East Side Dave McDonald, whom I interviewed last summer?
It’s pretty easy to join the fun. All you have to do is follow @202Friends, the radio show’s Twitter feed. Once Sunday rolls around, be sure to check the feed for trivia questions. The first to answer, wins. Done and done.
There’s other prizes besides the knissors, not that you’d need anything other than knissors, or course. You can be in the running for sports goodies signed by true legends like Jerome Bettis, Michael Strahan, and Bruce Jenner. There’s also items signed by Bill Cosby and Aubrey Plaza, who plays April on Parks and Recreation. She’s a fellow NYU alum, so that’s neat.
So yeah, a Twitter Super Bowl party. This is truly the future.
I’ll admit it: When the oh-so-damned-clever coding community managed to get an SNES emulator running on the N900 at fullspeed with features like TV-out, I got all kinds of excited. Hell, even Nokia was excited about it until they got smacked by the Mighty Hand of the Law for showing it.
Well, it just got even better.
Some nerds (and we mean that in the most positive of ways) have managed to get a PS3 Sixaxis controller to pair with the N900, and they’ve modified the SNES emulator to play friendly with it. Best of all, they were nice enough to write up a set of instructions and share it with everyone. It is by no means for the faint of heart — there’s a good bit of manual hackery to be done, at this point — but if you’re ready to dive in, you can find the instructions here.
[Via Giz]
Section: Audio, Home Audio, Communications, Computers, Gadgets / Other, Features, Originals, Columns, Who's On Crack
Welcome to this weeks look back at the dumbest moves in tech I could find. The thrum of iPad talks are dying as we enter the Apple waiting game for a few months while hot phones are expect to show up in Barcelona later this month. Here are the nominees for tech moves sponsored by illegal narcotics:
This week a leaked memo revealed a firmware upgrade for the nook, version 1.2. Our Editor, Robert Nelson wrote, “Unfortunately, while the memo revealed that the in-store display units would be receiving the update, it also revealed that they would be receiving it before the customers.” The memo made no note of when existing users can upgrade, other than it won’t be first.
This is actually a good business practice, as I hold the “buyers are liars” and customer is #453. That is the model you should build on as alienating your early adapters can only bring good things. Witness the iPhone: charge them an early adopter fee, then pull the rug out and drop the price - and the iPhone went on to win us all. You can’t fault the nook folks for following such grandiose steps. Also, can’t we just stick to normal capitalization rules. Not capitalizing the nook seems disrespectful, crackheads.
Gadgetell writer Cheng Hung posted this about Sony, “Can Sony make one that’s on par with its rival? Oneda (Sony’s CFO ) admits that they are lagging “a little” behind Apple, but given their track record, Sony is usually a year behind Apple in terms of handheld devices. “
3 things bug me right there:
1. As a marketing rule, you don’t let the CFO intro new product directions or concepts. CFO’s follow money and while that is dandy they usually don’t buy into marketing vision or product vision. So you end up with “we’re making this freakin’ awesome tablet that is going bring in bucket loads of cash.”
2. Sony is lagging “a little” behind Apple; a year behind Apple in handheld devices. From the CFO’s POV perhaps. But from everyone else’s view, um, no. The easiest comparison for me is the XPERIA vs iPhone. Sony’s come a long way but still isn’t there. Maybe by little, he mean like how there were little dinosaurs that were as big as my house.
And 3. Facts I can tell you about Sony’s tablet: it will look pretty and be expensive. Can they build something amazing? Maybe. The new XPERIA X10 looks handy with Android and they could parlay that into a tablet form that might work. It will take a lot of work to get it to Sony standards (and by that I do not mean something that is liable to catch on fire). A Sony tablet with nothing new to offer (aka most of Sony’s products for the past 15 years) will fall short of their and probably my expectations. Don’t get me wrong Sony, I want to love you, it’s just you need to get off the rock and realize Sony doesn’t mean today what it meant in the 80s, in consumer products anyway.
It was a good run, Amazon. The dream of all books $9.99, peace and harmony in the world. Well, that’s gone down the crapper: Our Robert Nelson writes, “Macmillan was upset because of the $9.99 pricing with Amazon, Amazon pulled their content, Amazon then later allowed them back in at the prices they wanted.”
Much has been writ in the media about Amazon blew this or Amazon won this. The truth is Amazon got beat up in the school yard with everyone watching. Now, Amazon doesn’t even both bringing in lunch money as it knows everyone is coming for a similar beating. The cocky and possibly high, cool kid just got served, to use the vernacular of kids of 5 years ago -I am phat like that.
Amazon’s big plan is in turmoil, pricing is expected to go fruity, the Kindle’s next gen device can’t get here fast enough and now the king of integrated buying (iTunes) is coming to play. Competing on price looks to have failed for Amazon, so what’s next?
Our Editor pays for IT.
I like to pick on Robert, mostly because (a) I knows he reads this and (b) because he can take it. Last week, Robert revealed what he is willing to pay for in terms of web services.
“Personally I have never been one to shy away from a paid service, that is, assuming I actually use it and find value in it. The services that I pay for vary from time to time, but there always seems to be a core group that I keep.”
In looking at his list, so many are paid for options for more storage. Photo storage, Evernote storage, MobileMe storage, SugarSync storage… Good God man, how prolific a writer/phototog/digital content creator are you? You’ve got more storage than a fleet of U-Hauls!
Not that I want you to change, heavens no. Your generous contribution to all these paid offerings mean you shoulder my weight at most of them. I take the freebie road and max out. Then I add another alias and max that out. You get a goodwill feeling for flashing the cash while I get a free smugness on how I am gaming the system. That’s a win-win - so thanks Robert. Even though I think you are on Crack for having that much storage. Maybe that will change now that you’ve fallen for a pink Pogoplug?
Full Story » | Written by JG Mason for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
A new app invites you to command your iPhone in the same way that Captain Kirk addressed the Enterprise’s computer.
Siri's visual interface displays a transcription of what you say, then hands the data off to an appropriate web service or search engine.
Siri, an artificial intelligence-based voice-recognition startup, launched an iPhone app incorporating its technology on Friday. With the app running, you can address requests to your phone verbally, asking it things like, “Will it rain today?” or “Where is a good place for pizza nearby?” and “I’d like a table for two at Il Fornaio tomorrow night at 7.” The Siri app parses the sound, interprets the request, and hands it off to an appropriate web service, such as OpenTable, Yelp, CitySearch, and so on. It displays the results onscreen as it goes, giving you a chance to correct or adjust your request via onscreen taps.
It’s the most sophisticated voice recognition to appear on a smartphone yet. While Google’s Nexus One offers voice transcription capabilities — so you can speak to enter text into a web form, for instance — the Nexus One doesn’t actually interpret what you’re saying.
The voice recognition and interpretation abilities built into Siri have their origins in artificial intelligence research at SRI, a legendary Silicon Valley R&D lab that was also the birthplace of the mouse and of the graphical user interface. Spun out of SRI in 2007, Siri garnered a lot of attention for its ambitious plans to develop a virtual personal assistant. Actually bringing the product to market has taken quite a bit longer than expected.
In a demo shown to Wired.com, Siri responded quickly to spoken requests, answering questions about restaurants, directions and the weather with relative ease. It’s well-integrated with about 20 different web information services, and Siri representatives say that their application programming interface will allow many others to connect in the future.
From our initial testing on an iPhone 3GS, the app was zippy and smooth. Siri understood broad requests like “Find Chinese food nearby” and more specific ones like “Find Nearest Chase bank.” Impressive, and a much more efficient than searching for businesses in the Yelp iPhone app.
The Siri app is free, and the company says it has no plans to charge end-users; the goal is to make money from referring customers to services via affiliate fees.
Siri is available for download in the iTunes App Store. It requires an iPhone 3GS, because it relies on that phone’s faster processing power, but Siri representatives say a version compatible with the older iPhone 3G is in the works.
See a video of Siri in action, below.
Download Link [iTunes]
By Daisuke Wakabayashi, Reporter, The Wall Street Journal
After enduring several painful quarters of restructuring, Sony Corp. (SNE) posted its first quarterly profit in a year and narrowed its full-year loss projections.
The company also reaffirmed that its cost-cutting measures should finally deliver profitability at its closely watched electronics and videogame divisions.
“We think we’ve bottomed out and we can do fairly well going forward,” said Sony Chief Financial Officer Nobuyuki Oneda.
Restoring profitability at the electronics and videogames businesses, which account for about two-thirds of Sony’s revenue, has been at the core of a restructuring implemented at the trough of last year’s global economic downturn.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
If I were Jared Allen, Drew Brees, or Reggie Wayne, I’d run screaming from Doritos and EA Sports. Whether you believe in the Madden Curse or not, the fact remains that just about every player that’s appeared on the cover of one of EA Sports’ Madden games has suffered a serious injury or seen his once-dominant playing ability severely decline.
So for Madden NFL 11, Doritos and EA have teamed up to let football fans “log on to www.doritoschangethegame.com to vote daily for one of three nominees for the Madden NFL 11 cover.” The nominees, of course, being Jared Allen, Drew Brees, and Reggie Wayne.
Here’s a brief rundown of past victims of the Madden Curse. Madden titles are a year ahead, so Madden NFL 10, for instance, came out right before the 2009 NFL season started.
Madden NFL 10: Troy Polamalu and Larry Fitzgerald. This marked the first time two athletes had appeared on the cover together. Polamalu sprained his MCL in the first game of the season, missed four games, returned for three more, and then injured his PCL to knock him out for the rest of the season. Fitzgerald, on the other hand, had a pretty good year. So maybe the only way to break the curse is to have two people on the cover. Even then, though, there’s still a 50-50 chance of being cursed.
Madden NFL 09: Brett Favre. Seeing as though Favre is the Chuck Norris of professional football, it looked like the curse had finally been broken. However, Favre fell apart in the second half of the season after suffering an injury to his throwing arm.
Madden NFL 08: Vince Young. Pretty good 2007 season, but injured his knee in the first game of the 2008 season. Then he ran away from home. As a grown-up. Then he didn’t play again until mid-way through the 2009 season.
Madden NFL 07: Shaun Alexander. Missed much of the 2006 season after breaking his foot, then broke his wrist during the first game of the 2007 season, sprained his knee and ankle in Week 9, was cut from the Seahawks in April 2008. Remained unsigned until October 2008, was picked up by the Redskins, who cut him a month later. He hasn’t played since.
Madden NFL 06: Donovan McNabb. Knocked out halfway through the season with a herniated disc in his back, the Eagles finish in last place and miss the playoffs for the first time in years.
Madden NFL 2005: Ray Lewis. Also like the Chuck Norris of football, Lewis did an admirable job of keeping the Madden Curse at bay. He had a relatively uninspiring 2004 season, but that’s about it. No major injuries or anything like that.
Madden NFL 2004: Michael Vick. Broke his leg, missed the first 3/4 of the season. Then all that dog-related stuff happened. Not that the dogs had anything to do with Madden.
Madden NFL 2003: Marshall Faulk. Recorded his worst season since 1996.
Madden NFL 2002: Daunte Culpepper. Minnesota finishes 5-11, Culpepper misses four games, worst Vikings record since 1984.
Madden NFL 2001: Eddie George. No injuries and a pretty good 2000 season. In 2001, though, Tennessee finished 7-9 and George didn’t break 1000 yards rushing.
Madden NFL 2000: Barry Sanders. Only kinda, sorta appeared on the cover. Whatever the case, he unexpectedly retired before the season even started.
Madden NFL 99: Garrison Hearst. Only appeared on certain covers, broke his ankle in a playoff game so severely that he missed two seasons.
So looking back on the 10+ years of Madden cover athletes, it seems that a few have dodged major bullets but most have experienced a mysterious dark cloud overhead. And judging by the three finalists for this Doritos thing, I’d venture a guess that Drew Brees may get the nod, especially if his team wins the Super Bowl on Sunday.
At any rate, I’d politely decline if I were Allen, Brees, or Wayne. And if that didn’t work, I’d decline with shouting and arm flailing. Voting ends March 15th.
Doritos Presents: Change the Game [Voting Site]
 CBS News | Facebook Rolling Out Redesigned Home Page PC Magazine Facebook started rolling out a revamped homepage Thursday night, a redesign intended to make it easier to find certain features, like notifications, news photos, and chat. Since the new design is rolling out, not all users will have ... Facebook celebrates 6th birthday with redesign Facebook revamps homepage; redesign backlashed Biz Break: Facebook, happy birthday! Another redesign?! |
Section: Gadgets / Other, ebooks
Earlier this morning we saw the leaked memo detailing the software update plans for the nook. That memo stated that the stores would be receiving the update “this week” and that the employees would be able to side-load the version 1.2.
Well, it seems that this week is here for the customers, because reports of the new update rolling out have begun to roll in. According to Matthew Miller from The Mobile Gadgeteer, his nook was updated earlier this morning. At least in his case, the update, which brought he version up to 1.2.0 came over-the-air on a 3G connection. Some of the changes that he pointed out included;
- Newly designed icons are present in the lower color display
- The navigation up and down button in the lower touch display are bigger (one of my favorite improvements)
- You can sort you My Documents library by title and author
- The Lend Me icon is clearly present so you know which books can be loaned out
- There are no longer weird title issues in content I side-loaded myself from other ebook stores
- Overall response to touch and navigation seems snappier with
Read [The Mobile Gadgeteer]
Full Story » | Written by Robert Nelson for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »
The fourth quarter was a record one for smartphone sales. Research firm IDC reports that the industry shipped 54.5 million of the devices during the period. That’s a 39 percent increase year-over-year and one that benefited most top smartphone peddlers, particularly Apple.
The company shipped 8.7 million iPhones in Q4, up from 4.4 million a year ago, for a whopping 97.7 percent in year-over-year growth. With a 14.4 percent share of the worldwide smartphone market, Apple (AAPL) is now the No. 3 maker in the world, behind Nokia (NOK) and Research in Motion (RIMM), which hold 38.9 percent and 19.8 percent of the market, respectively (see table below; click to enlarge).
But it’s becoming increasingly difficult for Nokia and RIM to maintain their leads. Though it shipped 10.7 million BlackBerrys in the fourth quarter–a nice increase from about 7.6 million–RIM’s market share for the period remained nearly flat at 19.6 percent. Meanwhile, market leader Nokia saw its share drop slightly to 38.2 percent from 40 percent in 2008, even though it shipped 20.8 million phones during the quarter, one third more than in the prior year.
So, 97.7 percent growth for smartphone upstart Apple and 37.7 percent growth for Nokia, the undisputed smartphone leader worldwide. Quite a disparity.
By Eric Savitz, Blogger and Columnist, Barron’s, Tech Trader Daily
Motorola (MOT) shares are moving higher this morning after Barclays Capital analyst Jeff Kvaal upped his rating on the stock to Overweight from Equal Weight, while keeping his price target at $9. The stock closed yesterday at $6.32.
“Our checks indicate Android sell-through has been solid even post the Verizon Droid push,” he writes in a research note this morning. Kvaal expects the company to launch new Android-based phones this quarter at AT&T (T), Verizon (VZ) and possibly T-Mobile. The analyst contends that the company’s target of 11-14 million units for 2010 is reasonable; he expects 13 million. While feature phone declines have been steeper than expected, they are “ultimately inevitable” and don’t change his thesis. Meanwhile, he sees healthy demand in the company’s public safety unit.
Read the rest of this post on the original site
 Reuters | Google's alleged tie-up with NSA raises concerns USA Today Google has declined comment on a Washington Post report that it has asked the National Security Agency to help track down the cyberattackers who recently breached its databases. Reporter Ellen Nakashima's front page story on Thursday rekindled concerns ... EPIC Sues for Details of Google-NSA Arrangement Google Said to Seek Spy Agency's Advice After Attack How Cozy Are Google and the NSA? |
For years, Japan was the innovation leader in the cell phone industry, until South Korea and the US started catching up rapidly. If you look back at what Nippon’s mighty carriers have released in the past few months, you mainly see super-powerful handsets with large OLED screens, 12MP cameras, Blu-ray recorder connectivity, double digital TV tuners, etc.
But the form factor never really changes, as the majority of Japanese consumers still demands clamshell phones with jog dials enabling them to conveniently thumb-text emails. But if a country churns out 100 different handsets per year, there have to be some exceptions. And the most notable exception (that now has been priced and dated) is Fujitsu’s F-04B featuring the world’s first separable two-module body.
In other words, the so-called Separate Keitai (Keitai means handset in Japanese) breaks into 2 parts that can be used separately (a keyboard section and a display slate). One part is a 3.4-inch touchscreen with a 12.2MP camera (there’s also an inner camera), acceleration sensor, Blu-ray recorder connectivity, e-wallet function etc. The other part is a full numeric/QWERTY keyboard with a geomagnetic and an acceleration sensor.
The parts are joined by a magnet and connected via Bluetooth. Fujitsu says the main idea is to enable users to send or receive mails while talking on the phone. During video calls, users can keep the keyboard section to their ear while holding the display slate at a distance. When horizontally attached, the touchscreen will switch to character entry mode or display a “virtual” game pad so that users can write emails or play games (the keyboard can be used as a game controller, too).
In areas with weak signals, for example in a house, users can put the display section near to a window and go inside to talk via the keyboard part (up to 10m away). Fujitsu claims the Separate Keitai offers superior battery life, too, as users can expect 2,000 hours of standby and 500 minutes of continuous talk, basically tripling the battery life of conventional Japanese cell phones.
I first saw the Separate Keitai back in October 2008 when it made its debut as a prototype at the CEATEC exhibition near Tokyo, and thought it’s a great concept. Fujitsu already plans to offer Bluetooth accessories for the device, for example a mini projector that could be remote-controlled with the keyboard section.
As part of NTT Docomo’s winter lineup, the phone will hit Japanese stores in either March or April for $660.
Here are some videos showing the Separate Keitai in action:
The Department of Justice still isn’t sold on the Google Books settlement agreement. In a brief filed late Thursday, the DOJ said that significant legal problems remain despite the considerable changes Google, publishers and authors have made to it.
“Although the United States believes the parties have approached this effort in good faith and the amended settlement agreement is more circumscribed in its sweep than the original proposed settlement, the amended settlement agreement suffers from the same core problem as the original agreement,” the DOJ said in a filing with the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
“It is an attempt to use the class action mechanism to implement forward-looking business arrangements that go far beyond the dispute before the court in this litigation,” the report continues. “Under the [revised proposal], Google would remain the only competitor in the digital marketplace with the rights to distribute and otherwise exploit a vast array of works in multiple formats. Google also would have the exclusive ability to exploit unclaimed works–including so-called ‘orphan works’–without risk of liability.”
And then there was this:
Google’s exclusive access to millions and millions of books may well benefit Google’s existing online search business. Google already holds a relatively dominant market share in that market. That dominance may be further entrenched by its exclusive access to content through the ASA. Content that can be discovered by only one search engine offers that search engine at least some protection from competition. This outcome has not been achieved by a technological advance in search or by operation of normal market forces; rather, it is the direct product of scanning millions of books without the copyright holders’ consent.
In other words, the amended deal continues to give Google (GOOG) significant anticompetitive advantages and rewards the company for scanning books in violation of copyright protections. And while the Justice Department did not go so far as to explicitly urge rejection of the deal, it recommended that parties to the settlement make further changes before the Feb. 18 fairness hearing at which it is to be reviewed.
Another setback for Google, or as Gary Reback–a Silicon Valley antitrust lawyer who represents Microsoft (MSFT) and the Open Book Alliance, a coalition opposed to the settlement–said, the filing is a “profound embarrassment–bordering on an outright humiliation” for the search company.
 Telegraph.co.uk | Pluto's dynamic surface revealed by Hubble images BBC News The icy dwarf planet Pluto undergoes dramatic seasonal changes, according to images from the Hubble Space Telescope. The pictures from Hubble revealed changes in the brightness and the colour of Pluto's surface. ... Pluto: Still a dwarf, but a gaudy one Pluto images show a dynamic world NASA Pluto mission only just beginning |
| World : News Archives | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Technology | Science | Marketplace Audio |
| India : News | Business | Entertainment | Sports | Telugu | |
| Blogs : Humor pages | Norkay's Blog | Kids Stories | Indian Recipes | Database Tech Blog |
| Sundries : World Video Clips | Songs Clips | Indian Video Clips | |
Tahoe-LAFS is a p2p filesystem. You pool your spare hard drive space together with that of your friends. This forms a distributed filesystem which endures even if some of your friends' computers are unreachable. Everything is automatically encrypted, so backing up your files onto the distributed filesystem doesn't necessarily mean sharing the files with your friends. But, it is easy to share specific files or directories with specific friends.
Mike Hipple took photos of those steps, and he's now being sued for the photos that earned him $60.
Ah, the college library photo. Look through any school’s brochure, and there’s a good chance you’ll see photos of an ethnically diverse group of students pouring over the same math problem together, all of of them inexplicably grinning ear to ear. It’s a nice thought, but unfortunately it doesn’t happen all that often — instead, many students wind up studying alone, and when they can’t figure something out, they’re out of luck. Now, entrepreneur 
